*taps mic* Is this thing on?

[obstinatecondolement]

So! I have been incommunicado on here for Some Time now, but I thought I'd swing by and write a quick update.

RL stuff involving workplace bullying and mental illness

I've been having kind of A Time of it with my mental health and various RL things—I was bullied very badly at work by a supervisor and eventually let go at the end of the probationary period^*, which has been a blow. I will be starting a 1–2 year accountancy technician course soon though, so onwards and upwards.

In more fandom-y news however, I participated in pod_together for the second year, and had a great time. I was in two teams: one as a writer and one as a podficcer. I also contributed some line readings to the team I wrote for, because it was a Discworld fic and I thought that having a second reader for the footnotes would help mitigate potential confusion.

I wrote Radio Killed the Semaphore Star which semperfiona adapted to audio in the podfic version of the story. It's a post-canon imagining of the invention of radio on Discworld (full credit for this premise to semperfiona! I thought it was such a great idea for this event) in the form of various connected vignettes featuring different sets of characters interacting with and reacting to the new medium. The podfic is very creative and semperfiona did a great job with it.

The podfic I made for the event was [Podfic] Death with Dignity, based on a fic by Thebiwife's fic Death with Dignity. The story is s an examination of the social model of disability through the lens of Deanna Troi's backstory and the extent to which she experiences extra sensory abilities having been aritrarily pathologised both on Betazed and Earth depending on what's considered the "default" where she happens to be at the time. In the final part of the fic, she interacts with everyone's favourite ex-Maquis Betazoid murderer, Lon Suder from Star Trek: Voyager, whose lack of empathic abilities have also been pathologised and problematised throughout his life. The fic is very poignant and I think it hit it out of the park.

There is a fully soundscaped version of the audio version I made featuring some intro and outro music, in addition to many bells and whistles as I could jam in artfully integrate from a combination of sound effects available on TrekCore and Free Sound. This was my first time experimenting with audio effects beyond just trying to get the raw audio of my own recording cleaner with noise reduction and the Audacity de-esser plugin etc., and I had a lot of fun with it.

For people who prefer less busy audio in their podfics, there is also an effects light version that is mostly vanilla audio with the exception of a little echo and reverb added to telepathic lines of dialogue—there are time stamps for the above lines in the work itself as well as information and time stamps for specific sound effects I thought could trigger misophonia in the soundscaped version. I will try and add a completely vanilla version in the near future!

^*Possibly these are somewhat related, but it was also just... a mess there for various reasons that I don't think were my fault and I frankly think that it was a terrible management decision to let me go and they didn't know what a good thing they had with me, but you'll have to take my word for it. I also got fired almost immediately after disclosing my disability, so. Lol. [click to return]

Comments

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah, I think it worked really well! I stole the idea from one of the more recent Discworld audio books, which had three readers: one for narration, one for dialogue, and one for footnotes. My specific innovation was clearing my throat before each footnote as if I was interrupting semperfiona's narration, haha.

[ilthit]

Dude that is GENIUS.

I got so excited at the idea that I skipped a breath, closed the mobile I was reading my notification email on and opened my PC to come and tell you that.

I neither produce nor consume podfic but I truly admire it as an artform.

[obstinatecondolement]

Thanks so much! In the audio books I think there is a bell sound effect to signal footnotes, but I thought it was a kind of fun twist to have it more explicitly framed as an interjection like this.

Yeah, there's a lot of skills that go into it! I'm obviously still pretty baby, but I'm very impressed by the community. And honestly the fact that it's got more niche appeal than text-based fic is kind of nice, because it helps me to get some mental distance from the idea that the point of making and posting fanworks is to get lots of attention. Vidding similarly helps me with this. It's kind of a nice return to an earlier form of internet fandom where you interact with a relatively small group of people who are all highly invested in what other people in the group are doing and are invested in building relationships.

I am just now remembering this as I'm writing this comment, but when I was a little kid I had a lot of fairy tales on tape, and my dad then also recorded himself reading my favourite books on cassette for me to listen to, so that I could listen to them when my parents were too busy to read for me, so in a way that was my first introduction to podfic, haha. I think I made one myself too? I imitated the style of a series of books I had that came sort of dual format that you were supposed to listen to and read along with and they would have a bit at the beginning that said, "Turn the page when you hear the chime ring like this *chime sound effect" and in my take on this I also said, "Turn the page when you hear the chime ring like this, 'Brrring!'" so I was making my own foley too 🤣

[ilthit]

I had those books too! Cassette and picture book with text.

Small communities really are better, and I also try to practice distancing myself from expecting reaction. I know I'm going to get a lot more hits on my Scum Villain fic even if it's inane trash, and a fic I think is better might not get any, and you just kind of have to accept that's how it works. I'm not gonna click on any link for an introspective fic in a fandom I don't know either. XD

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah big time! Sometimes you write the best thing you've ever produced and you get 12 hits on it, because it doesn't have an active fandom and like... that's just how it goes! Write it anyway if you want to and the idea inspires you! And maybe in five years someone will read it and be incredibly grateful that you did, or maybe they won't, but either way your first reader (yourself) enjoyed it.