Like a dandelion up through the pavement, I persist

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Dear podficcer,

I’m SweetPollyOliver/unmanlygrief/obstinatecondolement/obstinatecondolement. Thank you so much for offering one of my fandoms! I’m very excited to see what you make.

I don’t have a preference regarding podfics with or without effects and music, so feel free to do whatever you would prefer. I generally take a long time listening to podfics longer than 10–30 minutes, because I get antsy and lose focus unless I have something to do with my hands—I don’t want to discourage you from making something longer if you want to, but I thought I’d just let you know about this upfront, so that if you did make a longer podfic for me, you weren’t worried that I didn't like it if it took me a while to listen to it in full and let you know how much I liked it. Regarding other preferences, everything I’ve said in this letter is extremely optional and I’ve only included what I have to give people who like a jumping off point some guidance into things I enjoy. Feel free to ignore whatever you don’t vibe with and read as much or as little of this as you like.

Likes

DNWs

I don’t mean to imply any judgement with any of my DNWs and some of them are things that I do enjoy from time to time in some contexts, but aren’t things that I’d like as part of a gift work/that I’m in a headspace for right now.

To anyone else reading letters to look for people to treat, hi there! I have gifts enabled on my AO3 account, so treat away if you so desire, and thank you for the kind thought.

Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture (a link to a picture will be fine!) or description of something that is or represents:

1. Something your favorite character would like
2. Something that makes you laugh
3. A fandom place you would like to visit
4. A fandom creator (pro or not) you'd like to meet
5. Something you find comforting
6. Something from a favorite TV series or movie from your childhood
7. A piece of clothing you love
8. A book or song with a color in the title
9. Something only someone in your fandom would understand

1. Something your favorite character would like
   This one was tricky! For one, I have so many characters who I love it would be hard to single out out as my absolute number one favourite, and for another I am quite different from a lot of my favourite characters in the things I like, or at least am a bit short on stuff they'd like at the moment. So, in the spirit of a well-intentioned relative doing their very best:
   It's the thought that counts, Blorbo...

   

   Who doesn't love nice, warm hand knitted socks? They're made from 100% alpaca fibre yarn! Well, almost 100%, there's a bit of polyamide in there to make them more hardwearing. But all the better, really, less darning! Really, Blorbo, you could be a little grateful.

2. Something that makes you laugh
   This one was a lot easier, because I was in the middle of laughing at it when I first read today's challenge on the snowflake_challenge community.
   You gotta make your own fun sometimes...

   

   This is a once-off single episode podcast I recorded with my fellow trek-rarepair-swap co-mod cosmic_llin recently for voiceteam's Mystery Box 2023 event. The challege was Temptation and bluedreaming tempted people to record a mini-podcast or oral not!fic about their favourite overlooked fandom/rare ship/etc., which I all but jumped at and immediately asked the mods if it would be okay to record something with a non-Mystery Box participant if I did the rest of the work of creating the audio work, i.e. organising, editing and cover art, etc., and fortunately they gave me the all clear.

   It was really lovely to record this with Llin and reminisce on the magical four years we spent modding trek-rarepair-swap together, the amazing community that built around it, the many wonderful fanworks that were created for it, and the Star Trek rarepairs of our own that inspired the creation of the swap.

   If you're interested, you can listen to the pod on AO3 via an embedded stream, or you can use the download link on the work to get a copy of the MP3. Or not, this is not intended as a hard sell, haha. But in my subjective opinion it is a pleasant 51 minutes of listening to two Star Trek nerds being silly.

3. A fandom place you would like to visit
   Now, to be clear, I am not saying that this would be a good idea, but:
   All roads lead to...

   

   or rather away from, the Big Wahoonie itself: Ankh-Morpork! More specifically, the offices of The Ankh-Morpork Times to visit William de Worde, who in many ways is The pedantic, morally scrupulous, yet often a bit of a dick, OCD/autistic character of all time. Also, going to visit a newspaper office at a place that's vaguely analogous to a Gutenberg-era print shop is too good a chance to pass up.

4. A fandom creator (pro or not) you'd like to meet
   I am going to cheat here and pick two...

   

   I went to World Con 2019 in no small part to see both of these creators. Sadly, Lindsay Ellis overslept, I think due to jet-lag, and missed the panel she was supposed to do on the day I had a ticket for, but I did get to go to two things where Naomi Novik spoke, which were both fabulous. In one, she read the first chapter of the then-upcoming A Deadly Education. She was a very engaging and funny speaker and had both sets of crowds in the palm of her hand.

   I've loved Novik's Temereaire series for years, and reading Spinning Silver was what finally got me to get my drop spindle out again after having it for a full year before then but not being able to figure out how to use it from videos, and I at long last managed to crack how to get the first bit of fluff to catch onto my leader thread, which has brought a great deal of fun and quality of life to me in the years since. From reading Novik's work, I really like her sense of humour and her ideas, and I think she'd be fun to chat to in a low stakes sort of setting.

   And, regarding my cheat-y second pick, it would be nice to see Lindsay Ellis speak in person at some point, even if I didn't get to "meet" her, since I didn't get the chance to see her panel in 2019.

5. Something you find comforting
   This one was a doozy...

   

   I've blurred most of the handwriting here to protect the innocent, or myself at any rate, but this is a kind of three, or perhaps even four-for-one thing that I find comforting. Firstly, I find planners and journals very helpful in terms of using pen and paper as a better memory than my fallible meaty brain and in helping me unplug a bit and do something tactile to stop my eyes from getting too square from looking at a screen. Secondly, I also like printing out digital photos on either of my two Polaroid printers, because I so often lose my photographs when I change phones, or I never back them up, and it's nice to just have them somewhere printed out and maybe stuck down. Even, and maybe especially, silly fandom-y ones. Thirdly and fourthly, in the photo-in-the-photo here, you can see my current knitting project, which is another non-digital hobby I am trying to give more time to, and the show that's paused on my laptop in the photo is Porridge, which I've been finding to be very comforting to revisit recently.

   More specifically about journaling though, I have found that with my five-year Hobonichi journal, I've been trying to talk about the things, which so far this year have mostly been silly little fandom things, I'm doing that I want to remember five years from now, and that I want to remember how I felt about them at the time.

   It has been kind of interesting having a five-year journal for the first time, because I've been finding myself very hestitant to be too optimistic about looking ahead, knowing that I will be looking back on what I'm writing, because historically with journaling it has been a bit dispiriting reading about things I wanted/intended/thought I would do that never happened or didn't work out.

   But I suppose that's all part of life, really, and I do want to be able to capture how I really feel in part because I know it will change and I don't want to fall prey to thinking that I don't change my mind and that I've always thought X, Y or Z. The only constant is change, but I like to keep in touch with my past self and write my future self letters about how I'm getting on, you know? So I have, at the very least, been writing down that I'm worried about being optimistic and that it feels foolish, because I don't want to forget that's how I felt. I don't want to put on a brave face to my future self and hope the shame of having over-promised how well I'd do will keep me on the straight and narrow, but I also don't want to self-censor out of some kind of misguided PR-motivated impulse to not look foolish to myself.

6. Something from a favorite TV series or movie from your childhood
   I actually had another plan for this one, until I saw this during the IRL portion of my scavenger hunt...

   

   It wasn't actually the Boom! comics that got me into my brief, but intense, summer of writing Bulk/Skull fic and talking about Power Rangers on Tumblr in 2016, but it was this intense revisitation of my childhood favourite that led me to read the first few volumes of the MMPR and Go Go Power Rangers comics. I sort of fell off around Shattered Grid, and did intend on catching up again at one point, but there has been a lot of lamentation and rending of garments about writing choices that the comics have made from the people I follow on Tumblr who have kept up, so I may or may not at this point.

   Regardless though, it's nice to be reminded of my summer of Power Rangers, because that felt like a very pure and unabashed expression of fannish joy and I want to do that more often for whatever niche corners of fandom I find myself in. It was also around that time that I was revisiting a lot of stuff from my childhood again and allowing myself to just be self-indulgent and juvenile about liking what I liked, up to and including campy '90s shows with questionable monster costumes, which is another thing I want to remember to do more often.

7. A piece of clothing you love
   In the context of #3, this one is kind of funny...

   

   I coveted this Beach Boys-print Aloha shirt a lot before I bought it, because I was, at the time, trying very hard to be better about not buying things on the other side of the world impulsively and wanted to a) buy less new clothes in general and b) buy fewer clothes that weren't 100% natural fibres (this is 50/50 cotton and polyester IIRC). However, after about 5 weeks of sitting on my hands and Thinking Seriously about if I Really Needed it, I bought it. Just in time, really, because my size was very nearly sold out and it's a limited edition print that wasn't going to be brought back in stock. But I absolutely love it and I feel that it is very representative of me as a person, so I think that counts as mindful consumption, haha.

   I have been trying to be more comfortable with the fact that I am not ever going to be able to pull off the willowy androgyne, or tall lumberjack, take on masculinity just because of my basic body type, which even with HRT can only change so much. I will always be short and round with small hands and feet, but that's okay because there are lots of short, round-faced men (and otherwise masculine-of-centre people) and they are great, so if I'm more of the Justin McElroy school of masculine gender presentation then I want to do that very hard and on purpose instead of living in bland unisex clothes that I try to hide in. I've fallen off a bit on this fashion-effort lately, so this is a good reminder to keep persisting in trying to get better at this.

   And, regarding what I said about the relationship to #3, I wore this shirt when I was going to visit some friends in North Wales, one of whom happened to be wearing a Rincewind shirt when I got off the train. The friend wearing the Rincewind shirt took my luggage for me and my other friend remarked, shortly after I got done taking a photograph of the sign for Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,^* "Um, so I've noticed something here..." and we all had a good laugh about me doing touristy things while I was doing an unintentional closet cosplay of Twoflower and my friend was channeling Rincewind at the same time. I, fortunately, did not leave my luggage in Wales, however.

   *Which, incidentally, is a request only stop, so I had to tell the conductor that it was where I was disembarking ahead of time, a task for which I prepared by relentlessly drilling myself with Welsh language tutorials on YouTube and getting Welsh friends at vidukon_cardiff, where I was travelling from, to tutor me on the pronunciation before I left the hotel. All told, I spent almost a full day on this preparation (remember what I said about finding William de Worde relatable?), only, after all that, for the conductor to tell me he was getting off at Chester and I would have to tell the next fella.

   Should you ever be in this situation though, I have been reliably informed that you don't have to say the whole name, and would seem like a bit of a try-hard if you attempted to, and all that you need to do is say "Llanfair-PG" or, if you really want to seem like you're in the know, "Llanfairpwllgwyngyll." I tried the latter the first time pretty successfully with conductor #1, but stumbled at the fence by not taking a long enough run up to it with conductor #2, and had to resort to shamefacedly saying that I'd meant Llanfair-PG.

   The rather unfortuante thing is that even with an abbreviated version of the name in question, I'm really bad at the ll sound in Welsh (to say nothing of other sounds in Welsh that weren't there to trip me up on this occasion, like the trilled r), so I run into issues straight away. But, as an Irish person who gets very irate about tourists on the train who do not even attempt to learn how to say Irish language place-names and just blithely and confidently mangle them by assuming they should be pronounced like English, I wanted to do my best and make a genuine attempt. Which, unfortunately, was not amazing. Better luck next time, I guess, lol. At least I knew that written Welsh has it's own phonetic conventions that are not identical to written English, I suppose?
   [return to where you left off.]

8. A book or song with a color in the title
   
   This is very cheeky, but...

   

   I also recorded this filk for voiceteam's Mystery Box event. It's based on Under a Blanket of Blue, as performed by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. I was taking part in a Filk Broken Telephone and the work before mine was 'Meet me in the blanket fort' (based on Meet Me in the Battlefield) by irrationalpie, so this seemed like a good lead on from that and I liked the opportunity for green as a reference to BrickGrass's browser extension that highlights the usernames of users on Rindle's directory of creators with blanket permission statements for transformative works of their fanworks in green, because an audio fanwork event seemed like the right venue for a work about blanket permission statements.

   I do a fair bit of amateur singing and other kinds of music in a non-fannish context, but this is the first time I've made an attempt at a musical fanwork, so I hope it turned out okay. If I was doing it again I'd use my other mic, because this sounded a bit tinny, but I think it's listenable.

   If you're curious, you can click on the image itself to follow the link to the AO3 work, or for convenience, here's another link here. But absolutely no pressure, and I am linking purely in case people wanted to hear it to save them from hunting it down or asking for a link. My 2024 fandom mission statement is doing whatever I want whether people are interested or not, so if you're not interested then that's genuinely fine.

9. Something only someone in your fandom would understand
   Some more cheekiness...

   

   Once again, the image is a link and here is another one, haha. But also, once again, I genuinely do not expect anyone to make use of either of these links and am just putting them there on the off-chance someone does want a link and, honestly, to scratch the itch caused by the HTML-fuelled goblin that lives in my brain.

   I'm mostly including this at all to show that I am walking the walk re: doing whatever niche bullshit I want as I resolved to as part of my day #2 resolutions, because I've already written another fic for one of the micro fandoms I nominated, requested, and offered for Yuletide,^* in addition to the one I wrote for my assignment.

   I am 10,000% delighted with how well I did out of Yuletide this year—so much in fact that I still wanted to write more because I was all fired up. So I did. Even though it will be completely impenetratible to, I'm gonna say, 100% of the people who are subscribed to my AO3 profile. And I may still write more! I have an idea for a vid too.

   ^*And, happily, which I was gifted two wonderful fics for as well, Long Drawn Sunday Night by twoam and A Bit of Bottle by nomadicwriter, as having the opportunity to write one of my own, What Good Are Cupid's Arrows to a Fletcher Without a Beau?, for my recip Emma_Oz.
   [return to where you left off.]

I got very link happy in this, so if any are broken, give me a shout in the comments and I'll fix them.

P.S. I've screened comments on this because of a minor brain weasels concern about [REDACTED], but I've unscreened every comment I've gotten so far and if yours is screened for a while I'm probably just asleep or haven't checked DW for a bit.

Challenge #13

In your own space, rec three fanworks that you did not create.

• turn a little faster; the world will follow after by katiemariie—hands down my favourite DS9 fic of all time. It has it all! Not one, but two cultural revolutions! Deconstructions of fanon post-canon tropes! Alexander Rozhenko as a midwife! Honestly, I am extremely picking about Garak/Bashir fic, as I find that often it is written in a way that is not to my tastes compared with how it's portrayed on the show, and katiemariee is one of the few authors whose take on the ship I gel with. But Garak/Bashir is by no means the only ship nor is it the main ship! The story is roughly half and half two parallel narratives that feature Lenara Kahn reunited with (now Ezri) Dax on DS9 and the two of them fighting against the Trill reassociation taboo, which is amazing and is probably the reason I am more likely to read Lenara/Ezri than Lenara/Jadzia, and Julian reuniting with Garak on Cardassia as an aid worker-cum-spy (as Kira remarks in the fourth chapter: "Frontier medicine by day, spy by night. Sounds like your dream job."). There is nothing about this fic I would change and I re-read it at least twice a year.
• Profit & Growth by trinityofone—A John Kreese/Terry Silver fic in the Karate Kid/Cobra Kai fandom. This is the (intentionally) problematic kinky mpreg fic of my dreams! I usually am not a cis mpreg fan, but truly nobody is doing it like trinityofone! A guy babytrapping his boyfriend who won't commit by using mad science to knock himself up?? Sign me up! This fic was, to my knowledge, the first fic that used the Dynatox R&D tag which tragically is not yet a filterable tag on AO3, which is used on stories where Terry Silver's company Dynatox's R&D department is the jumping off point for various mad science premises. So far it has just been Kreese/Silver stories, but who knows! Maybe one day the Silverussos will join us in the lab!
• Wedding is Destiny; and Hanging Likewise by sqbr—this is a post-canon Pride and Prejudice fic about Anne de Bourgh and Mary Bennet falling in love. It's... you guys, it's the best P&P fic I have ever read, and I am including the pro-novel Longbourne by Jo Baker in this. Mary is such an insufferable prig and I love her and Anne is such an unbearable snob and I adore her! The premise of the fic is that Mary chooses to go to Rosings Park to be Anne's live-in companion, largely out of a sense of anxiety about her role within her own family of birth after the marriage of three of her sisters. When I first read this fic I went on a liveblogging spree on my Tumblr, which you can read here in chronological order, but I'm also going to c&p one such post here, which includes a passage from the fic itself:

  “You have impure thoughts about me?” asked Mary. “You would like to–do–sinful things? With me?” Her eyes were very bright and Anne could still taste the memory of her kiss. Anne had to look away, sure the answer to Mary’s question was written all over her face.
  
  “I am sorry,” said Anne. “Knowing your disinterest I would never consider…”
  
  “I would be willing,” said Mary. “I had not considered the possibility before, but it solves everything. As your friend, I would be willing to help you resist temptation by lying with you. I have spent some time considering the method, and it does not sound disagreeable.”
  
  “No,” said Anne, horrified. This was like some strange, shameful dream. “No that is…Mary, that is perverse. How is that any better than me simply taking a lover in the first place?”
  
  “Because…” Mary frowned in concentration, seriously considering the question. “Because nobody should touch you that way but me,” she said, in a wondering tone, as if it was some great truth that had just been revealed to her. “They will not love you as I do. It would be impure and sordid. With me it would be a pure, transcendental expression of friendship and love.” She sighed happily and lay back on the pillow, closing her eyes. “We would be like Diana and her acolytes, bathing naked together after a hunt,” said Mary. “How agreeable it would be…”
  
  “Oh my God,” said Anne.
  
  Outstanding heterosexual Mary Bennet smashed on punch after a ball proposing to Anne de Bourgh that they be the closest of chums and kiss and hug and make love with each other the better to help Anne avoid having inappropriate and sinful relationships with women who are not Mary. What’s better than gals being pals?

  This fic is also extremely disgaybled and I would recommend it especially to people who are queer or disabled or both. Obviously Anne and Mary are in lesbians with each other, but additionally Anne's canonical chronic illness is wonderfully represented and Mary Bennet's canonical preoccupation with morality and propriety is given wonderful dimension and life that pings extremely autistic and/or OCD to me (an, admittedly, autistic and OCD person, lol).
  
  It is everything I could ever want from a rarepair fic, a Pride and Prejudice fic, a femslash fic, a post-canon fic, a fic that touches on disability and canon typical cultural attitudes towards women, queer people and people in different social classes. It, as I have so often said, has it all.

quodo

purimgifts

What you offer: at least 3 fandoms, and at least 1 of fanfic or podfic.

What you request: at least 3 fandoms, at least 1 of fanfic or podfic, maximum rating and DNWs.

How you’ll be matched: at least 1 fandom & at least 1 of fanfic or podfic. Signups that have no match for either offer or request will be deleted and not entered into matching.

What you’ll create: 3 works (or 1 work in 3 parts, or some combination thereof), each work (or part) 300-1000 words or 3-10 minutes of audio. You will also need to supply 3 pieces of graphics (can be clipart off pixabay or similar).