Yikes

[kaixo]

I saw this post yesterday and NGL, I was gobsmacked when people weren’t discouraging someone to attempt a 10k fic as the first fic to someone who has never recorded before. The podficcer in question didn’t know how to use Audacity (and as a fellow Apple user, doesn’t know anything about GarageBand either).

Wherein I’m the arsehole at the dinner table. Sorry.

It is commendable that podficcers are pretty encouraging and welcoming but after long reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that this was a failure of duty of care (community wise) for this potential podficcer. Although yes, fandom isn’t parenting, and people should know their limits, and everyone is busy, but still.

It’s an odd mixture of podficcers selling their skills severely short again (because shit is HARD), and negligence to a newbie coming into the fold.

I had to encourage the person to friend me, and in PMs I told her in no uncertain terms that she really had to practice on smaller fics first. Because between the reading, the breathing, the recording, finding their own processes in editing (which is about a good fifty percent of getting your head around it) is hard enough.

Not to mention hearing your own voice as a listener for the first time, getting used to its timbre, before even having on modulation, expression and damn it, just even pacing.

10k for a first podfic would have been too much, technically, artistically and emotionally. No amount of cheerleading and technical support is substitution for the experience of wiping out on a first podfic, being disappointed with yourself about it, and learning from the shortcomings along the way.

Especially since they are at the level where they wouldn’t know the difference between an mp3 and a .m4b file. Or the notion of what it takes for streaming versus zipped (not good the latter), or how to host podfics. All this with her work and just general life habits (which we don’t know about, tbh, but everyone has absorbing life habits) — she would have been setting herself up for frustration and rage quitting. Or at least, feeling terrible about their first work, because they weren’t prepared for it by people who should have known better.

Yes, I know, there would be cheerleading and betas for the challenge itself, but the podficcer themselves do need their own space to absorb things, so that when advice comes, it’s understood instinctively and immediately instead of having to fudge around to understand what a beta is saying, you know? (Like, the notion of noise plates for noise reduction in the fic. I didn’t even get my head around that till podfic three).

I have beta’d people at many levels of writing, in both IRL and online, and it’s harder to work and express shortcomings of writing to someone struggling at base level (who can barely get their heads about grammar) versus someone who already knows the in and outs re: grammar, and want to work on a fluid style. It also saves everyone time if people are on a basic level. A beta in the context of a fandom challenge is supposed to be a guide/consultant, not to handhold and teach. Nobody has the time for that.

Seriously, guys. I’m surprised that ANYONE didn’t coax the newbie to start small. I know that a 10k fic to podfic in the space of an experienced podficcer isn’t a lot of effort, but for a bb podficcer, that’s the bloody moon.

It took me a good twenty hours of legwork (research, asking questions, testing hypothesis, etc) to do my first podfic and it was absolutely rubbish. I had to sit on that, and work through why on my own because the feedback I was supposed to have gotten, I didn’t get, which is FINE because people are BUSY. Also, it was for the best, because I learnt stuff on my own and it stuck.

Or you’re not supposed to judge people’s work because comparisons are atrocious and some bullshit (which, is bullshit, because the podficcer can and will come to their own comparisons, and wonder why certain things weren’t pointed out).

It was not until podfic seven (about another fourteen to twenty-one hours in - thirty five hours by then) where I finally got the notion of pauses in the actual work itself being a part of the actual work.

I mean, I’m not in the challenge, and after three weeks, my sojourn will be soon at an end (my last piece of work goes up imminently), but… yikes.