Procrastination Central

i noticed today that i almost have a trope_bingo bingo, and that the deadline is in 10 days, and that the two squares i didn't have were relatively easy to fill.

so - here's a relatively quick podfic of 'mile away with their shoes' for the 'unexpected friendship' square. as with last time on katy's podfic, i must warn you that i don't do a good ANYBODY, except orac sometimes (terrible gan). and that i talk too quickly, but it's quite nice to do a podfic again. after about a year.

A Mile Away With Their Shoes
audio // text
31:57 min // 5956 words
Gan and Orac are stuck together for a while.

that leaves the final square as 'fake relationship', so whether you want it or not i'll be writing a commentary on either apple or lindor strategy, because that seems do-able. and i like things to be do-able.

blakefest is open for business! sign ups close on the 14th of december. so - go forth and prompt! (it's on DW, but you can comment anon and/or with OpenID).

podtor_who is still open until christmas eve! in fact, on that note... here are some podfics i did.

( Four Eight-related mini podfics )

( Three non-Eight podfics: a four, a Kaldor City and a Seven era )

trope_bingo's deadline is coming up fast, so i have decided to get a move on. getting a move on means - recording a lot of (short!) podfics. NOW ONLY ONE MORE SQUARE TO GO :D and corngold has written me some b/a to read for that final square, so basically: victory is in sight! or if not victory, at least not crushing defeat.

one of mine (Who), two of elviaprose's (blake). none safe for children. all basically... um, sex. particularly this one-

The Prerogative to Have a Little Fun (1,688w // 8.56 min)
text // audio
In which the Master feels like a woman, and then they done sex. (Five/Kasia!Master)

...Like a Worn out Recording of a Favorite Song (2,000w // 9 min)
text // audio
Tarrant's willing to admit Avon knows a few tricks he doesn't. Just this once. (Avon/Tarrant)

Kerr Avon and the Green Knight (1,673w // 9.15min)
text // audio
PGP, Avon and Blake play an unusual game. A loose riff on the medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." (Blake/Avon)

also - on a related note: big finish have released the details for the 7th lib chronicles (i wasn't even sure they were definitely doing one, so hurrah), and it has a vila&cally by simon guerrier, and an avon&vila heist by eddie robson, and a blake one. GET IN ME NOW, you may think, but friends: you have not heard the best part.

ok, no, the best part is the avon vila heist written by eddie - grand theft cosmos and the best big finish avon - robson, BUT: there's a typo on the listing, which means the audio is described like this:

Disorder by Eddie Robson
Starring Michael Keating as Vila and Paul Darrow as Blake
Division Three. A space station in the process of being decommissioned. Its archives contain key records of the Federation's enemies - and Vila and Avon intend to steal it.

BODYSWAP TIEM! \o/

so i've been vaguely thinking that i should do some blake podfic for... basically as long as i have been reading blake fic. and then my brother asked for his lovely microphones back asap (nooo - i'd just assumed they would be mine forever, boo) and so i thought - i'd better do some now then.

so, that's what i did today.

if you haven't heard my podfic before... i talk too fast and mumble sometimes, but in the spirit of advertisement i will add that people do seem to genuinely like them - these, and the ones i've done before.

annoyingly, as with mcgann's, i can hear darrow's voice very clearly in my head and i can write it down, but i can't quite make my voice do anything like it (perhaps this is darrow's problem in 'logic' and other stories). that said, i quite like the bit of 'gambit' i put at the end of 'something borrowed' - so, i have hope.... that i will not always do a terrible avon.

and my vila's pretty good, if i do say so myself. and my slave.

slave's a pretty minor character, though.

so, with all that borne in mind! - here are some podfics (all gen, or as good as. with a slight b/a tilt for obvious reasons).

two short ones of mine:

Wanted Men (05:08 // 909w)
audio // text
How Deva realised it was too late and he’d already met Blake.

Something Borrowed (12:49 // 2292w)
audio // text
Avon enlists Vila's help in a theft - unfortunately, if they're going to manage it, they'll need to be married. To each other.

and one of mithen's

Albatross (44:18 // 8580w)
audio // text
When Avon abandons the rest of the crew on Horizon, the future unfolds in different ways.


viz - podfic generally, i'm not saying you should or whatever, but if anyone wants to make podfic of anything i've ever written, you are allowed and indeed i strongly encourage this. and also podfic of your own things. or other people's things - but obviously ask them first.

also, podtor_who will run again. we just have to get to the right moment, the aligning of the planets...

i've made a lot of podfic, but haven't been podficced very much (WHY NOBODY LIKE ME, WORLD????)

but croissantkatie has recently podficced my one and only merlin fic - fairytale romance. haven't listened yet, but am excited so to do. i'll add the link to the fic post and my overall podfic post, but you can also find the podfic here (along with a podfic of the fic i remixed into fairytale romance).

exciting!

also in today's news - erin and i have been given a sewing machine. erin and i then spent several hours trying to make it work as we are sewing machine amateurs. but now it is working! let the exotic sewing and/or trouser turning up begin!

http://www.doodle.com/ <-- this is a cool idea for scheduling many people. maybe i will use it for radiosonic stuff.

in other news, was anyone looking for some podfic? because i've got lots, actually. erin left me alone all day on sunday to hang out with such luminaries as grr martin, paul cornell and my former lecturer adam roberts (also goes by the name arr roberts). so basically i had a lot of time to record my own voice... after finishing the readthrough of episode 6, which was basically me recording my own voice but with other people there also.

anyway - firstly, i finally finished recording apolesen's 'the flower tender' (eight/fitz with sam victorian AU). i put it all back in the original post (clicky) and/or i will, depending on how rapidly you are reading this.

there's a bit with some singing at the beginning of chapter 5, which is notable because a) it really really really does not sound like a man/paul mcgann singing and b) i overlaid the singing with a small amount of the dialogue at one point, and it sounds much cooler than usual! like more people are there/like more of a drama. it kind of makes me want to put more music and stuff into podfics, but i don't know whether that would just be annoying and anyway, i have far too much shalka stuff to do.

talking of shalka (as i often am these days), as i said, i recorded a lot of podfic over the weekend - and after i finished 'flower tender', i thought 'i've been meaning to record kept man for a while'(and/or get someone else to do it - this plan? did not go that well). anyway, so i did that. i've actually recorded the christmas special and second series as well, but i haven't edited them yet and the urge to do it has passed for the moment (but will i'm sure return). anyway, here's series one (streaming and download).

Title: Kept Man: Shalka Redux
Characters/Pairings Doctor/Shalka!Master - mainly Nine, also Ten.
Rating: R
Word Count: This part 8,000ish.
Notes: All section titles taken from Paul Cornell's 'Scream of the Shalka'. I considered just copying them directly out of the webcast, but we're being quite careful about music copywrite for Radiosonic and this feels a bit like that - also, let's not kid ourselves: I don't sound much like Jacobi (or REG, but we have to kid ourselves about that for about 14 hours of radio drama, so please do begin), so it would be a bad idea to actually have his dialogue there to compare to me. I sound less like Eccleston, but nobody is surprised there. The Jacobi does improve as the parts go on, or rather I start channelling Jon as Jacobi, which is perhaps all we can hope for.

Mini parts:
1.1 - 'Loathe as I am to admit it, you offer him a companionship that I do not.’ (8.23)
1.2 - ‘I say I do not kill, but then I exterminate thousands.’ (6.25)
1.3 - ‘I am by no means fond of you.’ (4.03)
1.4 - ‘Perfect pitch – finally.’ (5.34)
1.5 - 'Doctor! You’re alive!' (16.07)

Series 1 as album:
Here

back on tindeck again, because although soundcloud is a more elegant, useful and powerful programme - it has a two hour limit for free accounts. fair enough - it is a better programme. although to be totally fair, i don't recall the tindeck album function working last time, and now it is working and seems like a good thing. plus... the adverts magically disappear. brilliant.

here's a scary thought, btw, fandom friends - this fic is now over three years old. quite a lot more, too...

i cannot adequately explain how much it makes me love matt smith and fandom to learn from honorarydoctor's post about restoring the TVM TARDIS console (which i linked to in today's who_daily, and read thinking 'damn you gallifrey - why do you have mcgann, and roberts, and the TVM TARDIS? waaaaaaah')(i may go next year, which would be awesome) that matt smith showed a picture of himself surrounded by cosplay doctors on graham norton. i do not know the context of him showing it, but i do know one of the people in the picture, and it just makes me stupidly happy to know or to think, anyway, that matt smith cares enough about fandom and thinks that was awesome enough to have this still on his iphone. i love that doctor who fandom is run by people who think that fandom is awesome. matt smith doesn't love Who as much as tennant (who i love for loving doctor who) but he is lovely and i assume respectful. and that is brilliant.

i have two other things to say on this point, before i move onto something else.

one - is that i think it's partly because i'm older and therefore people i know have real jobs and i can afford to go to conventions and so can people i know, and also twitter and tumblr exist meaning that more celebrities are real people than ever before, but it's also because doctor who is a tv fandom (therefore many people invovled in creation) and also because it is a really special tv fandom, but i really like how... i don't know, real fandom and pro fans and stuff are, and how easy i feel it would be to actually meet and potentially become friends with a lot of these people. i mean - not easy because i have social anxiety, and i'm not saying matt smith or anything, but i think potentially i could potentially be friends with another socially awkward writer, whose work i had previously heard/read in an official sphere. maybe.

my previous fandom was harry potter, and the only person i care about there was rowling, who sometimes hung around on message boards lolling, but not really. that's not what who fandom is like. so many who people are just fans who are good at writing. and my own actual girlfriend is on panels and stuff for eastercon, and writes reviews for the same place that people who know Who writers write for (also, one of my former lecturers, who seems to crop up all over the place), and it feels like the barriers are blurry and that one could step through if you could get past the social anxiety and/or be willing to actually put yourself out there. erin has suggested i could maybe write for strange horizons too, but they wouldn't just offer me a job because i don't know anyone who is a hugo award-nominated writer who might recommend me. i'd have to write a spec-review and then send it in and... hmm, can't really be bothered. i will be the non famous one in our relationship, i think. which is a weird thing to think, especially if you're me. you have no idea how many jobs i have given myself for radiosonic workshop (lots. anyone want a finger pie?).

anyway - so that was one thing. i think the second thing was that i really like toby hadoke. that's really all i have to say on that matter.

ok, no - here's some more: i heard today that he was going to be at big finish day 2 interviewing tom baker , and it's genuinely the first guest announcement for this big finish day (which has, like, tom baker and paul darrow just to put that into perspective) that has made me think 'hmmmmmmmmmmm... maybe i could go' (last year it was brax). erin had a similar thing but with katy manning, which is much more reasonable, i guess, but for serious - toby hadoke interviewing the doctor? his doctor? it just sounds brilliant.

but largely i think... conventions make me awkward! and this convention was pretty awkward last year! even though it was also sort of nice. and scifi_mel would be there this year, and that would be nice, but hmmmm - and also money: i have spent a lot of it this month. maybe next year (if brax is there again)(no, not really, i have totes met him already)(and it was awesome). gally is different, because it sounds like a really amazing fan hanging out experience rather than me going 'i think that is david richardson. maybe i should speak to him and say how good the companion chronicles are... or maybe not. i don't know. no, i won't. ok, that's fine'.

there's a really nice feature in this month's 'doctor who magazine' - usually the feature involves toby hadoke and johnny candon (?) very genially disagreeing with each other about exactly how doctor who is awesome, but this month (because it is february and valentines day is almost here, apparently)(who knew doctor who fans cared?) it's about how their wives deal with living with them and how much they can stand the doctor (the two sides being represented by two TVM quotes - 'i finally meet the right guy and he's from another planet!' [hadoke] and 'you don't need a doctor. come back to bed' [or whatever - candon]. i lolled). anyway - it's really sweet and lovely, both of them are. which is how the column usually goes, to be fair, but i particularly like this one. apparently hadoke once said (in all seriousness) 'i love you more than seeds of doom - and that's a classic'.

<3

aaaaaanyway - that toby hadoke point went on for a long time, which is a shame because i thought it was going to be quick and i could move onto another thing that i remembered i wanted to say about fandom.

was listening to the big finish podcast today (as i do), and there was a very nice and well considered email from a listener about how it was ok to not like some things because big finish were producing for a whole range of people who like a whole range of genres and how Who is really inclusive etc, which was in response to something nick briggs had written in 'vortex', which was in response to paul magrs(?) being a bit upset in response to nick briggs saying that 'the boy that time forgot' wasn't one of his favourite stories.

anyway - the grown up comment from this listener made me feel a bit bad about thinking "bloody hell, if you can't say that 'boy that time forgot' isn't very good, what can you say?" (and this is from someone [me] who thinks that paul magrs is often awesomesauce. but that story is... well. not one of my favourites). in the wake of such internet controversy as the same paul magrs being obviously upset on the record/on twitter that someone had bad mouthed my all time favourite companion chronicle 'find and replace' i do think that perhaps he is overly... willing to tell people he wishes they wouldn't be rude about his work. but it's also an interesting thing to think about in general - because you sort of get used to slagging off things that you hate in fandom. but, as i was saying above, one of the things i love about this fandom is how its creators are so... people-like.

i don't really check twitter that often but i did glance at it just before i wrote this post, and saw that johnny morris (who's written lots of stories i like)(although, to be fair, none that i love, except perhaps thomas brewster) had also been moved by this podcast to write a blogpost. which i thought was interesting. i do sort of feel it's my right to viscously hate on things i don't like - but at the same time, i thoroughly take and agree with this point (among many good points):

It is virtually impossible to make someone enjoy something they don’t like by pointing out virtues they may have overlooked, but it is extremely easy to make someone stop enjoying something they do like by pointing out faults they may not have noticed. You can only ever bring things down and add to the unhappiness in the world.

maybe if i continue being unfamous it'll continue to be ok for me to hate on things. but it does seem bad to stop people liking things. and there's the boundaries... we did decide on our podcast that it was ok to say most of us didn't like 'bang bang a boom' (neveralarch does, though) and i think if anything should be mildly professional it's the podcasts... (i believe erin has some thoughts that are not necessarily those expressed in this post by me. she may say them somewhere else, or keep them to herself - nope. she says she won't. this is happening in REAL TIME, people. REAL TIME)(not the audio/webast, which i must own i have never listened to/watched because i hear it is awful)(i have no professionalism - this is one of the main reasons i never became a teacher).

hmmmmmmmmmm.

ok - so, onto the thing that wasn't fandom-y, but was kind of about people that i know!

SOMEBODY I KNEW (and didn't like much) FROM UNIVERSITY IS IN A PLAY WITH A FORMER HISTORY BOY (quite a good one)(quite a good history boy, not quite a good play. i haven't seen the play and don't want to). THIS IS WEIRD.

that is all i have to say without potentially incriminating myself (although i still find it likely that someone will report this back to her and it'll be really embarrassing in some way). anyway - it makes me feel old to know(ish) people who are in plays with proper actors (even ones who look young professionally). also annoyed - because i am just spending my time writing substandard rehashes of other peoples books on antiques and do not (yet) know any history boys. i have my eye on jamie parker, though, as he played my favourite one (scripps), seems very nice, plays the piano, and seems to have some sort of contract at the globe where he acts well. (n.b. i do not really have any plans to befriend jamie parker. if this happens it is a coincidence and i probably almost sabotaged it by telling him a long winded and boring [even more boring, i hear you cry] version of this post and then saying 'you were much better than the other scripps who didn't play the piano' [although he totally was].)


on a different note (back to fandom, i'm afraid) i'm at chapter five of my 'flower tender' podfic, and i went off to listen to 'cockles and mussels' (which i have to sing for chapter five)(probably not have to, but since i can sing i figure i might as well/it would be a wussy move to just say the lines) and now i have it stuck in my head. i really like the melody. it's kind of unexpected in places (by which i mean... that second phrase where it goes upwards, which i really like because i don't expect it) and then familiar as a folk song should be. i'm glad i listened to some recordings. (if you're interested in the podfic - chapters 3 and 4 should be up some time this weekend).


ok - that's enough for today. sorry, LJ. i had some thoughts i wanted to share with you.

*i'm going to leave this subject line that i wrote before i realised how stupidly long this post was going to be if i let my extreme liking of toby hadoke and who fandom in general get away from me. but i do realise it is entirely inaccurate and there is nothing quick about this post.

two things about podfic for today - well, two and a bit.

one!

i listed to shalkalaka's podfic of Within, The Enemy and elviaprose's podfic of Just Dandy in quick succession on friday. i hadn't managed to listen to them before christmas, or indeed until now, as work's been a lot of writing, which i can't do while listening to things. anyway - two very different, but very excellent doctor/master fics. my friends, i fell for my ship all over again through these podfics, which were just different enough from the original fics to feel like something new that i could consume, and which reminded me of how good that pairing is when it's good. NEED MORE DOCTOR/MASTER. particularly long doctor/master.

i went to see sherlock holmes 2 again today, incidentally. the way moriarty and holmes look at each other is not suitable for children. oh for a villain who would never use the phrase 'consummate my victory', eh?

two!

i done some more podfic at long last. this is podfic i was supposed to do ages ago as it's part of my calufrax/pod_aware project. whoops. but i have recorded plenty of other things. to be fair. and- i don't know. i lost momentum on the calufrax project once there was no deadline. but anyway, i love the fic in question, and really enjoyed reading it. although the new microphone does make it difficult to read from the computer as the mic is on a straight up and down stand, which doens't give much room for the laptop. when i pretend to be the doctor for radio_sonic i have a printed script. when i recorded the first two parts of 'the flower tender' i had the laptop on my lap and the microphone to the side of me pointed roughly in the direction of my mouth. BUT NO MORE, MY FRIENDS -see two point five, below.

anyway, part 2 is already recorded and just needs to be cut together tomorrow when my brain feels less sludgy. the rest to follow in a few days. will try and get it done by the end of the week :)

here is part one whatever i have thus far recorded of that most estimable fic, the flower tender.

Title: The Flower Tender
Author: apolesen (who told me how to pronounce her username but potentially not well enough)
Reader: aralias
Length: See below
Rating: Overall adult
Pairing/Characters: Eight/Fitz, Sam
Author's Summary: A beautiful madman, who talks of begonias and mermaids. A girl who is not a tenant or a maid or a companion, perhaps not even the pious rescue worker she seems to be. Fitz Kreiner, who leaves his rooms in the semislum of Hoxton to join the eccentric household, entering into a world which challenges the very values of the time.

Links: Chapter 1: Text // Audio
5237 words // 24.30min

Chapter 2: Text // Audio
6013 words // 25.55min

Chapter 3: Text // Audio
5443 words // 25.35 min

Chapter 4: Text // Audio
3887 words // 17.49 min

Chapter 5: Text // Audio
4668 words // 22.40 min

Chapter 6: Text // Audio
4948 words // 22.45 min

The End.

interestingly, fitz kreiner is much like tom baker in that if i say their name i almost can't not do it in the voice (fitz's voice, here, being the one from company of friends, which is not really how i think fitz sounds). i actively stopped myself doing a fake fitz kreiner voice, because i don't really think that's how fitz sounds and it's definitely not how he sounds in this and i wasn't sure i could keep it up if people didn't say 'fitz kreiner' a lot, so he just sounds like me.

two point five!

i can has a kindle!

good service, amazon, thanks. i ordered it yesterday with supersaver delivery and it arrived this morning. i spent an hour or so reading the instructions they provided in various locations (the booklet that comes with it reads 'plug kindle into computer using cable' in about 10 languages, and that's it) and trying to get it to play(?)/show word documents, which i'd been lead to believe it did. eventually i figured out that you needed to send them from an email address, and now we are getting along very well.

my thought behind the kindle purchase being, you see, that i could put things like my radio_sonic scripts and any fic to podfic onto it and then hold the kindle in front of the stand, thus saving paper! and also being awesome. PLUS ages ago (although not any more, i've just checked) the bbc had a free copy of human nature, the novel, as a pdf, which i have, and rather than pay £10 for the book, i thought - i can read this pdf. but it was really annoying to read on the computer. anyway - i can totes read it on my kindle now :D

will there be any real books on my kindle that i have to pay for? mebbe. if the hardback is really thick and heavy. otherwise i'll probably stick with paper books, despite the space crisis in my house.

Made another podfic for podtor_who. Again it's of my own work, because I'm happy to admit that I find reading my own work easier and this was a bit of a last minute sign up that I went for because I wanted to make sure that the Who community got hit with LOTS of podfic this week. And they have! It's been really good, I think. I don't know whether Who people who hadn't heard of podfic will have given it a try because it's been there on who_daily and in doctorwho almost every day - but I hope they have. And if they haven't yet, but do eventually decide they'd like some podfic, at least there's a wider selection of things for them to listen to now. Also I've really enjoyed listening to the ones I've listened to - which was kind of the point. And still many days to go. Hurrah.

This is the first thing I recorded with my brother's spiffy microphone. It is pretty spiffy as regards sound control, but the microphone stand (straight up straight down) makes reading from the computer quite difficult. So it's not quite as spiffy an experience for me. An easy read, though. I read it through once, and then once for realz - this version has only one cut somewhere in the middle.

Anyway - here is some podfic. Enjoy!

Title: The Last Christmas
Author: aralias
Reader: aralias
Length: 14.06 min // 2,700 words
Rating: PG
Pairing/Characters: Five, Adric, Tegan, Nyssa, Ainley!Master
Author's Summary: The Doctor began to say, “This is the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard, even from you,” but before he could finish the first syllable, the child still standing at the Master’s elbow said despairingly, “You’re going to steal Christmas?” (No slash here).

Links: audio // text

SO MANY THINGS DONE FOR pod_aware.

1. radiosonic (previously known as shalka) podcast with bessyboo: catch it here! (this may be bullshit, but tindeck claims that over 2,000 people have listened to it. wonder if that just means times people have seen the little reader thing on their f-list - about five times. would be awesomecool to be that popular). more news and more podcasts (eventually) can be found at radio_sonic.

2. podtor_who (had to ask erin for this inspired name idea) is a doctor who podfic challenge community thing! that i set up. please sign up and record 1,000+ words of doctor who podfic. more info at the community.

3. five fics recced at calufrax by me have been podficced now. some were short. some were not so short.

SO TIRED NOW.

forgot to go to see sue perkins tonight. too much podfic...

Podfic as a fan art is still relatively small, even if it's growing quickly. There are positive steps that can be taken to help podfic as a fan art grow. To learn how check out pod_aware on LJ or DW.