Like a dandelion up through the pavement, I persist

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]

Dear Purimgifts creator,

I'm SweetPollyOliver! Thank you so much for offering one/some of my requested fandoms! I'm really excited to see what you cook up.

This is my first time participating in Purimgifts, so I am not very familiar with the culture specific to the exchange and how important or unimportant letter writing is considered to be, so please take this simply as an "if this is useful" kind of thing. I'm very easy to please, provided you steer clear of DNWs and the archive tags I have asked to be excluded in my sign-up (i.e. Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con and Underage), and I'd be much happier to think that you made something that you had a great time making than that you got stressed worrying about what I might like or dislike.

I'm writing a letter largely because in other exchanges I have participated in people tended to prefer having some level of guidance from their recip, but nothing I say here should be considered written in stone. Feel free to create a fanwork featuring any characters or ship, I am equally happy with something shippy or gen and I don't have a preference in terms of ratings. If I've strayed too far in the direction of not giving enough ideas, I'm really sorry. Prompts don't come very easily to me and I enjoy being surprised.

( General likes, DNWs and fandom specific likes beneath the cut )