kalakirya

Day 13
In your own space, write about a moment in fandom that meant a lot to you. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Short and sweet: I met my girlfriend through fandom.  We’d interacted a few times - I’d archived her podfics, and she’d thanked me, and I adored - still adore - one of her fics, and I believe I’d commented to that effect.

And then a mutual friend invited her to a group movie-watching and I thought she was so cute and smart and funny and engineered it so we were sitting together and we were laughing throughout the movie, though only sometimes becfause  of the movie. We gravitated towards each other at various fannish get-togethers, then this time last year she asked me on a date.

2016 was crap in many, many ways, but dating her is the best thing that’s happened to  me in ages.

Day 12


What makes you fannish? And by that we mean, what is it about a tv show/movie/book/band/podcast/etc that takes you from, "Yeah, I like that," to "I need MOAR!!!" Is it a character? A plotline? The pretty? Subtext that’s just screaming to be acknowledged?

In your own space, tell us what it is that gets you to cross that line into fandom. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I originally had a much longer post, but I've lost patience with myself, so here we go. If a canon doesn't show things - the world is fully formed, and makes sense, but there are bits of unexplained detail? Interesting secondary characters? Glimpses of the wider world beyond the story? those are my catnip. For the most part I get into fandom because the canonical story doesn't explore the world that it created. Or doesn't explore the bits that I want to know more about. Or I fall into a fandom first, without any contact with the canon (a short, non-exhaustive list of such fandom-first (or fandom-only) fandoms for the curious: the Dresden Files, Hockey RPF, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Teen Wolf, Fast and the Furious, Mad Max: Fury Road). I fall in love with the characters and the world, always, and everything else follows from there.

Day 09

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I blabbered here about how little femslash I podfic, and how that's disappointing. So now I'm making a goal for 2016 to improve my femslash-to-dudeslash ratio. Which has been getting better! My femslash-as-a-percentage-of-my-dudeslash more than doubled between 2014 and 2015! Which is to say that it went from 0.47% to 1.01%. I've clearly been kicking myself over this, because I want to be podficcing more femslash, on a theoretical level.

There were several hundred words here that can pretty much be summed up as "intense navel gazing". So I'll spare my future self and anyone reading this that effort, and just say that my goal for 2016 is to AT THE VERY LEAST WOW THIS IS SUCH A LOW BAR JESS YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO THIS EASILY DON'T FUCK IT UP make the ratio of my femslash-to-dudeslash ratio 2%.

(I'm actually aiming for 10%, but I'm also not really holding myself to that. I try to aim high, but have a lower goal in case I do feel like shooting my foot off [see icon!])

Day 03

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


Children of the Lonely Mountain (the hobbit, gen)
This isn't so much a single podfic as it's twenty-seven side-stories set in and around The Sons of Durin, which I did last year. I'm really proud of these: I did a really good job with the voicing and the pacing, I did good editing (a place I tend to be lazy), I like the covers, and I'm really, really pleased with my music choices for each chapter, which sometimes made me cry, and sometimes made me laugh, but that I think just about always fit very very well.

And Never Been Kissed (ch1-3) (hockey rpf, sid/geno) (ao3 locked)
It feels a little weird to rec this one, because it's not done yet. With any luck, I'll be done with it this year, and I'm halfway through, so I think that's doable. I podfic for any number of reasons, but working on this podfic settles me; I don't usually relisten to my podfics much, but I have relistened to this one, several times. I dunno, I just like it.


The One Where Sid and Darcy Wake Up Hitched (hockey rpf/MCU, sid/geno, jamie/tyler, jamie/tyler/darcy) (not!podfic with lavenderfrost)
AHAHAHA ok this premise is bizarre and things only get weirder from there but I really, really love making not!podfics, and this one was a lot of fun to make.

and the grand facade so soon will burn (star trek reboot, nyota-centric)
my feelings about the star trek reboots are very complicated, but I'm very happy with how this came out.

Day 5

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


AHAHAHA so this is a bit of story XD
Ok so back in sixth grade I am a fairly tall kid with zero social skills and I have recently discovered The Best Thing In The World: the lord of the rings. Everyone has been telling me for years that I would love the books, but because everyone was telling me that, I ignored them (this is something of a theme in my life). However, movie one comes out, I completely fall in love, and devour the books like there's no tomorrow. My best (and only) friend is an Italian girl with limited English skills whom I adore (and still do; she was also the object of my first crush and subsequent lesbian panic). She is also deeply in love with lord of the rings. We spend a great deal of time at each other's houses.
Now, at this point my parents are only a few steps removed from helicoptering. As such, I have access to the family computer, but not my own account. Being an as-yet innocent dove, I have no idea what the internet is for (:porn). My friend, on the other hand, has her own computer. She's also way more savvy on it than anyone else in our class.
At some point in the spring of sixth grade (2002) we're over at her house and she wants to show me something on her computer. I happily pull up a chair. She pulls up the internet and opens a page to libraryofmoria.com, then shows me a page of poorly formatted courier new, because html wasn't a thing that happened yet.
Ok, so let me tell you something about this story. Fourteen years later, I would balk at this story - it's not a pairing I'm interested in, and it's got a number of my squicks. I haven't read this story in four years, and before that I hadn't read it in ten (I looked it up to see if it was still on the 'net - it is, though not on LoM). But the details are branded into my brain and at this point I'm convinced that nothing will ever remove them. It was Legolas/Aragorn, and began with the premise that Aragorn was pissed at Legolas for revealing his identity at the Council of Elrond. It quickly descended into spanking and crying, and at some point Arwen came out from behind a pillar (she'd been watching this whole time) and joined in. It's very, very graphic. Because this was the early 2000s, "Elvish" phrases were liberally sprinkled throughout, with a helpful glossary at the end.
Now, remember that I'm reading this over my best friend's shoulder. I have a massive crush on her, though I haven't quite worked out that that's what this is. Remember that I'm maybe 12.
I lapped it up like nobody's business.
Within a month I'm a regular visitor to LoM and I've learned how to wipe the memory from IE on the family computer. I have ships, though I don't know what these are. I know the jargon. I'm having feels. I know way more about gay male sex than any other kind.
A year later I've branched into another 10 or so fandom (I've always been very multifannish) and have an ff.net account. Three years later I'm writing fic, though I don't post it. A year after that I'm posting to ff.net. Three years after that I discover podfic. The year after that I start recording podfic. And three years after that I'm here :D
(I think I counted those years right? *peers at them*)
This all goes some way towards explaining why all my usernames have been Lord of the Rings related - it was my first fandom, and while I wouldn't say I'm still in the fandom, the world that I built for myself there is very near and dear to me. My current username, kalakirya /kalakirya /kalakirya/kalakirya is the Old Quenya spelling of "Calacirya", which is the name of a pass in the Pelori Mountains in Valinor. It means "cleft of light" (there's a bunch of mythology there), which is where my tumblr username lightinthemountains comes from (someone is sitting on kalakirya.tumblr.com). The fannish identity herein and the platforms listed are the only ones I maintain (there's also a kalakirya at deviantart, but that's also not me). (Incidentally, it's pronounced "kal - uh - KIR - ee - uh". If I'd known people would have so much trouble with it, I might have stuck with halwen, but it's too late now!)

Day 3

In your own space, talk about your creative process - from what inspires you to what motivates you to how you manage to break through blocks. Does your process change depending on the type of creating you're doing?

In fandom I mostly contribute by making podfic, so I'll talk about that (at great length, and not very engagingly, because I've had a hell of a week. sorry)
When I'm thinking about podficcing something, I let the idea sit for a bit - anywhere from a day or so to a week or longer. Occasionally if a story is short and I'm very bored, I'll record the thing instantly, but I've found that my podfic (and most other things in my life) turn out better if I give it a bit of time to percolate. Before I worked this out I accumulated a lot of snippets that were hastily recorded in a burst of excitement, and pretty much universally I haven't liked them when I listen to them. Giving it a little time lets me calm down, think it through, decide if I really want to spend time with that story, bounce around a few ideas for characterization, and find a good time to podfic. Right now my podficcing space is a corner of an unheated storage room, and it gets quite cold at night, so ambient temperature is actually I thing I have to think about! I used to record a lot at night, but no more XD
Once I'm a little more settled down and have some time, I bundle up (some day I will take a picture of me recording - I'm usually wearing a knee-length fluffy blue coat, fuzzy boots and a hat, and huddle around my computer charger for warmth), make myself some tea (no milk, because it makes my voice weird), and venture out into the frozen wasteland that is my recording space. There I settle in, set up my mic, open audacity, and pull up the story on my phone. The mic goes on a box in front of me, the computer goes on some boxes a foot or so away with audacity already running, and I give the header a review and decide how I want to read it. A few takes later, I start recording the story. If it flows decently well, I'll record as long as my voice lets me. If it doesn't... a number of stories/authors don't click, for whatever reason, and if after five or ten minutes it's not working, I let myself get a little bit frustrated, try again, then put it aside. It's taken me awhile to see this as a mismatch of reader and story, rather than a reflection of my abilities as a podficcer, but I think I'm getting better at it. Then I go on to the next item I was thinking of recording. Since I usually entertain at least three podficcing possibilities at any given time, aside from whatever projects I'm in the middle of working on, I usually can find something to record when I'm in a recording mood :D
Once I've ascertained that my reading style meshes with the writing, I record until I've got the whole thing: I don't edit before the whole thing is recorded. Somewhere in there I ask for permission - usually before I've recorded too much, so as not to waste my time if I get a "no". I keep different takes in different files; they're named according to the title, then numbered. Re-takes get a letter too, so if I do a lot of retakes (or just redo the whole thing) when I start editing I have to go through a morass of "sons of durin1" "sons of durin1B" sons of durin 1C" and so on (note that the last has a space between the title and the number; i don't standardize this, which has led to much confusion). The take of the last piece gets an "x" at the end, so I know that I've finished recording the story (e.g. "sons of durin24Cx").
Once it's all recorded then I start editing. I use the click method (every time I flub or repeat the line, I make a clicking sound that makes a visible spike in the waveform), so sometimes I do a visual pass first, but sometimes I just start listening. I usually have to do at least two listening passes, because I miss a lot of stuff. Sometime during the second or third ones, if I want to make a cover, I'll open GIMP.


aaaaand that was an extremely long and overly detailed explanation of the process of making podfic. I didn't even get into posting. /o\

Day 12

In your own space, talk about what you think the future holds for fandom. What are your hopes and dreams for fandom? Do you have any predictions about what the next five years holds for fandom? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I don't spend a lot of time in journaling space – LJ and DW – and do in twitter and tumblrspace. I've seen a lot of complaining about fandom's shift toward the latter rather than the former, and while I can understand a lot of that, twitter and tumblr have made being a voice in fandom a lot easier for me. Those are spaces with a much lower participation threshold, and I've been incredibly lucky to have been able to start in both those spaces with podfic fandom, which gave me a small circle of people to start with rather than just launching myself into the void, which are some of the problems raised with those platforms. I've heard lot of complaining that there isn't as much fan-to-fan interaction, and all I can say is that I was lurking through 2001-2011, and didn't start to really participate until 2012, which is when I found twitter podfic fandom. Maybe there was a smaller, closer-knit community, but I would argue that one of the reasons (among many! Also there were fewer fandoms, a different fan culture (bc fan culture is always changing), etc)) it was more closely knit was because there were people who couldn't figure out how to get in. But that's a discussion for another time and place, and not really one I want to have here. Overall, though, I see fandom expanding – the pie getting bigger, so all the wedges do too, more or less. Some wedges may eat other wedges (my much beloved star trek original series fandom seems to be getting swallowed by reboot fandom somewhat), some wedges may split, so wedges may exist in alternate dimensions than their original canon (looking at you, Teen Wolf). But ultimately, there will be more pie for everyone :D

Day 13

In your own space, talk about setting yourself a fannish goal. Big or small, it doesn't matter. Some great examples include: complete a bingo, sign-up for a Big Bang, write that fic you've been thinking about for years, podfic that story that you love, make a fanmix for your fandom, post that bit of meta or reclist you keep postponing. Maybe resolve to be better at leaving feedback, or answering comments. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm NOT participating in amplificathon this year, EXCEPT for a single long podfic that I haven't asked permission for yet, so I won't name names. I'm not going to jockey for points, I'm not going to record anything I wouldn't have done anyway (looking at you, Five Ways Gabriel Could Have Returned). My plan for this year is to cool my jets a bit. I podfic when I'm stressed and I edit when I'm bored, which is a dangerous cycle for a number of reasons. It's been a cycle that has been really useful for me in the past, and will likely continue to be, but I need to slow down before I burn out. So those are my fandom plans: to slow down, take a little bit longer with my projects, not gorge myself on every new fandom I come across.

Day 10

In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your wish-list if you feel comfortable doing so. Maybe someone will grant a wish. Check out other people's posts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.

Ack, another hard one. Which is the point, right? Ummm...

thing one: fanworks about DUM-E (the robot from Iron Man, featured in my icon). I have no clue why I'm so damn attached to this robot, but I'm really damn attached to this robot. If someone could write me a mini-drabble about DUM-E, or do a sketch or a DUM-E icon or something (I made this one as a stop-gap measure, but am not too happy with it) I would love you FOREVER.

thing two: fanworks in a funky format. Gimme a list of ten hashtags your favorite character uses too much. Gimme only one side of a phone conversation. Gimme a song for your OTP and thirty seconds of audio that consists entirely of you squeeing over how perfect this song is for them. Gimme an icon that's made to look slightly akilter. I just really like seeing what people can come up with when told to bend some of the rules - just enough that it still makes sense, but maybe doesn't fit quite right. I'm very multifannish and have a bad case of fandom osmosis, so whatever tickles your fancy :D

thing three: I really can't come up with a third thing and it's starting to stress me out, so there is no third thing. #makingloopholes