Hello, friends! This will be a brief post, but even if you don’t normally read these, I suggest you do this time, as it will contain VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION about my videos/commissions!
So, first things first! The lovely picascribit sent me her copy of Tipping the Velvet so that I could watch it for her and Arachne_Jericho, and help me it was incredible.
The videos are available as follows:
Oh god, you should watch the first video just because you’ll get to see me freak out over the queer subtext, only to have it turn into the actual text, and then IT IS QUEER WOMEN EVERYWHERE. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. This is a well-acted, at times vicious, and largely touching portrait of one woman’s coming of age in Victorian London. And you know, I’m not really sure this is all that historically accurate, and I don’t care. Straight people have been writing alternate, straight versions of history for centuries, and damn it, why can’t we queer up history? Take that.
In hindsight, this is a fascinating trilogy of episodes that actually follows the trilogy format very well, and the cliffhangers for episodes one and two are brilliant ways to leave me wanting more. Oh god, I love that the second episode only has one man in it: the butler. That’s it. It’s so rare to see something produced for television that’s centered entirely around women. And queer women at that!!!
Ugh, I highly suggest you watch this. IT’S SO LOVELY. And the end is totally worth it, though I nearly fell off the face of the earth because I was so worried about that thing happening.
Anyway, aside from one lone commission that I must wait to do until I receive a DVD, I am ALL DONE. HOLY CRAP. So, I’ll be using my sudden free time to do a lot of things, which I shall tell you about now!
- Watching the second half of Doctor Who series 7. With the exception of “The Bells of St. John,” you are welcome to commission any of these episodes. I will start reviewing them on Thursday, and will most likely make a huge post (or possibly two) to include any commissions/thoughts.
- Redesigning MarkDoesStuff.com and the sites. They haven’t been updated once, lol. I need to do a lot of housekeeping. MarkDoesStuff will be moving to Shopify but staying at the same URL. It’ll be way prettier, easier to navigate, and will hopefully eliminate all the weird bugs that CafeCommerce keeps coming up with.
- Creating an archive of all Mark Watches video commissions. So, I’m sure you’ve all seen the many problems I’ve had with Vimeo, Dropbox, and Rackspace, and I’ve come up with a solution. Starting next week, all Rackspace links will lead directly to a zip file with the video inside it. This will reduce the file size and allow everyone to open the video and play it however they want. There will be no streaming. Additionally, I will be using the new storefront to archive all past Mark Watches videos by episode and season, and to offset the enormous cost of bandwidth, past show commissions will cost 99 cents a piece to download. This will not affect the current season of the show that I am reviewing, nor any commissions I do in the future until they are a month old. Then they will be moved to my store. So! For example, once I finish season two of Friday Night Lights, all videos will be archived, but while I’m still watching it, you can always download everything for free.Â
- I realize I’ve always made everything free, but y’all are literally downloading $200 – $300 worth of bandwidth a month, and it’s getting to be more and more over time. Soon, this site will be more expensive to run than my monthly rent. I cannot sustain any more work than my current load, as I barely have time for proper sleep or free time as it is, so I think this is a fair way to give y’all an archive and not cost me an arm and a leg.
- For those curious, you’ll get a discount for buying an entire season in bulk. I’ll put up a massive zip of the entire season to purchase for a discounted rate.
Anyway, please make sure to check out my summer tour dates as well! Thanks, y’all.
