#but i don't produce work for all of them

[tyrantchimera]

Something I've noticed about being in a small, 'dead' fandom... when you're a content creator, it's like the whole remaining fandom *reacts* when you do anything. I'm in a small but dedicated group of authors for a small fandom. If one of us posts after a dry spell, the rest of us perk up. The fans react. Other creators (like myself) are inspired to make their own stuff.

For a small while, we aren't just small-time creators. It's like we're the franchise itself! Everyone knows when we post stuff. Our content is THE content.

Wow. What a feeling.

[thelaurenshippen]

this is a genuine question not at all meant as a rude gotcha, but I feel like I've seen lots of people cite the relatively low barrier of entry as a huge advantage of podcasts as a medium, "if you have access to decent audio tech you can make a podcast" etc etc. So where does the need to sell a script come in? Is it a financial thing, and IP thing, something else?

this doesn't read like a rude gotcha at all, it's a really good question! there is a much lower barrier to entry when it comes to podcasts compared to tv, film, theater, etc. (though not as low as writing a book if we're talking about hard resources - you can technically write a book with just a laptop and a dream and then self publish! though as a writer who has written a lot of scripts and four books (3 published) writing a book is a much bigger psychological burden imo lol).

the need to sell a script, for me, is entirely a financial thing. if I had the money to produce podcasts at the level I want to entirely independently, I would! I know how to do it! but, unfortunately, I really only have the funds to produce something like @breakerwhiskey - a single narrator daily podcast that I make entirely on my own.

and that show is actually a great example of just how low the barrier is: I actually record the whole thing on a CB radio I got off of ebay for 30 bucks, my editing software is $50/month (I do a lot of editing, so this is an expense that isn't just for that show) and there are no hosting costs for it. the only thing it truly costs me is time and effort.

not every show I want to make is single narrator. a lot of the shows I've made involve large casts, full sound design, other writers, studio recording, scoring, and sometimes full cast albums (my first show, The Bright Sessions had all of those). I've worked on shows that have had budgets of 100 dollars and worked on shows that cost nearly half a million dollars. if anyone is curious about the nitty gritty of budgets, I made a huge amount of public, free resources about making audio drama earlier this year that has example budgets in these ranges!

back in the beginning of my career, I asked actors to work for free or sound designers to work for a tiny fee, because I was doing it all for free and we were all starting out. I don't like doing that anymore. so even if I'm making a show with only a few actors and a single sound designer...well, if you want an experienced sound designer and to pay everyone fairly (which I do!), it's going to cost you at least a few thousand dollars. when you're already writing something for free, it can be hard to justify spending that kind of money. I've sound designed in the past - and will be doing so again in the near future for another indie show of mine - but I'm not very good at it. that's usually the biggest expense that I want to have covered by an outside budget.

but if I'm being really honest, I want to be paid to write! while I do a lot of things - direct, produce, act, consult, etc. - writing is my main love and I want it to be the majority of my income. I'm really fortunate to be a full-time creative and I still do a lot of work independently for no money, but when I have a show that would be too expensive to produce on my own, ideally I want someone else footing the bill and paying me to write the scripts.

I love that audio fiction has the low barrier to entry it does, because I think hobbyists are incredible - it is a beautiful and generous thing to provide your labor freely to something creative and then share it with the world - but the barrier to being a professional audio drama writer is certainly higher. I'm very lucky to already be there, but, as every creative will tell you, even after you've had several successes and established yourself in the field, it can still be hard to make a living!

anyway, I hope this answers your question! I love talking about this stuff, so if anyone else is curious about this kind of thing, please ask away.

[novella-november]

Is this fanfic friendly? I feel like an outlier.

I guess this is my sign it's time to throw together a FAQ post to link to lol.

Yes, every event for this blog is fanfic friendly :D

Though as I mentioned on my Ominous October post, for events that include multiple short stories, I encourage everyone to flex their creativity and take one of their planned short story fanfics, and at least *attempt* to turn one of them into something entirely original; rebuilding a character and story from the ground up to stand on its own two legs is no easy feat, and that is what makes it so fun!

It really gets your creative gears turning, to make an "au of an existing material" to be something entirely original, and you can be pleasantly surprised about the things you come up with!

As a few people say, its not just a matter of "filing the serial numbers off" -- you have to add in just as much *or more* as what you take out when you are turning a fanfiction into something that is original and completely divorced from its original source material / inspiration, and that is a hard, but very rewarding challenge!

Obviously, this is not a requirement (there's no hard requirements for any of the challenges, other than no cheating, including no using AI),

but if you would like an extra challenge for the short story events and you're planning on doing entirely fan-fiction, I highly recommend trying it out at least once, and seeing where it leads you--

you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by what you find down that rabbit hole!

[nightlycomet]

Having gone through the original Urusei Yatsura anime twice in full and currently nearing the end of my third rewatch (just going through the episodes I like this time... which is admittedly still most of it lol), I thought it'd be fun to put together a chart on how I'd personally categorize the evolution and different parts of the show.

This is by no means supposed to be an "objective and definitive" categorization or anything. I just wanted to list out in broad strokes how I see the show based on what I've observed and what I feel from it.

[cuttlebirb]

Some Rin and Len artwork, for a charm! I've wanted to do one of them since I made a Miku charm last year or so, but I just kept putting it off! Happy to have finally gotten around to it, I love them <3

[seventh-district]

again and again i find myself lamenting that audio roleplay isn't taken more seriously by some people. like yeah, they often have a romantic element, and by nature they usually directly involve/address the listener- and i totally get that those things aren't to everyone's taste. no art or entertainment is universally appealing, and that's okay! but.. it still makes me a lil sad that the "cringe" reputation of asmr/audio rp precedes it. there's a whole lot of talent and creativity being poured into these audios by so many people that i feel goes unrecognized and/or disrespected simply due to the medium that the stories are being told through.

[spoilthevines]

my brain has chosen to combine two of my biggest hyperfixations of recent years and i am now sitting on a beautiful beautiful concept for an rdr2 au set in the 90s hardcore scene in california*

no but imagine dutch as a manager of a diy hardcore band in the age of every major label suddenly looking to sign the next nirvana and promising the world to bands only then to fuck them over beyond belief and try to make them marketable according to what the labels think is marketable (make micah the pushy label a&r)

mix that with the rise of nu metal and the toxic cis het masculinity of it all and how certain bands literally split up because they couldn't handle their queerer weirder audiences get fucked up at festivals by the nu metal bros

make arthur the frontman (javier is lead guitar, john is bass, bill is fhe drummer) who is very uncomfortable with all this on multiple levels

and i haven't settled on the plot wheels yet but charles is either hired into this as a tech (even though he's a really fucking good musician), OR arthur used to do rhythm guitar as well but now they want him to focus more on performance and "arthur will you stop hiding behind that guitar of yours already" and charles is a session musician they hired for a tour to play arthur's rhythm guitar parts

and we are really fucking golden

don't even get me started about how easy would it be to borrow from larry livermore + green day biography to explain why arthur and john have been around for so long

or on the opportunities for all the side characters (o'driscolls and colm easily morph into a version of epitaph records and brett gurewitz and rancid which makes it easy to draw another link between brody dalle and sadie)

* not in the historic precision sense but in a vague rockstar sense because i have no intention of actually being accurate or figuring out how these characters would fit into the existing dynamic of the scene

[brynn-lear]

I never got too deep into enstars but there are days where I miss Mama 😔

[dramas-vs-novels]

I have two extremely frustrating days of work ahead of me... An event I hate with a burning passion, so much so that they had to trick me into agreeing to work it, and then producing my show on top of all that...

So the theme of the next 2 days will be 'tension headaches'.

[aran-morinorea]

WIP WEDNESDAY FRIDAY

It’s WIP Wednesday on a Friday! It took me a day and a half to get together a snippet to post with this, and it’s not even in the one I wanted. Send asks to kick the words machine, maybe they’ll fall out.

Here’s how it works:

I will post the file names of five WIPs, and will also post a snippet of new content from one of them to get the ball rolling.

Send me an ask with the name of one of the listed WIPs and I will write you a minimum of three sentences in that WIP in response!

Multiple asks are fine ^-^

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

WIP names:

With Tar-Telepta, Aran Morinórea (coruling Mordor for fun and aesthetics; silvergifting; on ao3 here):

Devotional Artwork (The immortal god-king of Mordor, who does not insert himself into religious arguments between his worshipers anymore after The Incident)

Annatar’s Shit Paradigms (catastrophic consent-related miscommunication)

Without Tar-Telepta:

Donating Blood (vivisecting your maia boyfriend; silvergifting)

Mallachel (accidental time travel with Nargothrond Celebrimbor and melted Sauron; silvergifting; on ao3 here)

Non-Euclidean Nan Elmoth (maeglin mind controlling glorfindel for fun and aesthetics)

snippet from Non-Euclidean Nan Elmoth:

Maeglin and that single punched lantern step into the room like a sunrise. He smiles down at Laurefindelë and sets the light on the dresser. “What are you doing on the floor?” he teases, his voice loud and strange after the long silence. “Here, get up,” he offers Laurefindelë a hand and helps him to his feet, then guides him to sit on the bed. Laurefindelë is… not entirely certain that “in a bed with the enchanter whose house he’s trapped in” is a place he wants to be. 

Maeglin glances at him for a moment, looks again, and then bursts out laughing. “No, don’t worry, I just want to sit next to you while we talk,” he assures him, “and I’m certainly not sitting on the floor.”

[mourn-and-watch]

rotating the thought of the chantry explosion backfiring on everyone who was affiliated with anders like kinloch hold or fereldan grey wardens. no way the chantry or its most initiative individuals wouldn't put the blame on anyone who was even slightly associated with the cause of the most defiant insult that had ever been inflicted on it. oh they would never leave one of the most lenient circles and the neutral™ organisation that accepts mages in their ranks alone after that

[pawsitivevibe]

Man some of these "sport dog" breeders will have a whole alphabet soup of titles on their dogs but when you look at them they're like all novice/beginner titles. Or things like CGN. Easy stuff. I want to see Excellent and Masters titles, even if that means your dog has fewer letters after their name.

[0aurelion-sol0]

Me seeing all of the dramas that have begun in the Stranger Things fandom ever since the WGA strike started:

[ask-artsy-oncie]

Yeah I really have no patience for self-important people who desperately want to inject themselves into creative industries just because they consider "enjoying media" their defining trait that somehow other people don't have. Being a dedicated fan is a great thing for sure, but you become self-absorbed when you think that, alone, is why you deserve to cut out a hole for yourself in the industry and not maybe the fact that you've put in the work to hone industry-specific skills.

Creative fields are not easy money or easy clout or whatever. Believing so is such a disrespect to those skills and everyone who's worked so hard to get where they are.

[cosmosarcana]

i don't think it's even been 5 days since i learned of palworld but i'm 1000% getting it as soon as i can. it's been all over my tiktok feed and i'm OBSESSED