Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Day 4

[itsadrizzit]

Day 4

In your own space, create a fannish wishlist. No limits on size or type of fanwork; just tell us what you’d like to see. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. And if you grant a wish, do the same thing!
 

Once more I'm a day late to the party, but I'm hoping I can manage two posts today and get caught up. In this case, the biggest item on my wishlist has been stated much more eloquently by others and there has been much discourse around it in the past day since everyone else posted, so I will just link you to some conversations happening here and here before I add my thoughts since I rather feel like the person who showed up fifteen minutes late to the meeting and burst in with my brilliant idea that everyone has already finished discussing. I keep telling myself someday I'll be relevant. I keep being wrong.

That done, here is my wishlist in no particular order. It gets a bit self-indulgent and existential in parts, as is the way of any wishlist I manage to throw together:

1. Transformative Works Statements
2. Time
3. Curated Rec Lists
4. More podficcers in my fandoms

1. Transformative Works Statements
This is the thing that others have said much better than I, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't still include them, since there are still those out there who don't even know that Transformative Works Statements are something that exists, let alone their utility.

Essentially, these statements express your intentions for what people can/cannot do with you work. They're something that makes things easier for those creating transformative or derivative works of your work since you express your preferences up front, which saves podficcers or artists or translators or remixers or vidders or whatever the time and energy of contacting you to ask permission to create their art based on your art AND it saves you (should you choose) having to answer all those asks.

Many podficcers, myself included, won't even consider making a podfic unless the author has blanket permission to do so, and in my case I generally won't even read a fic unless the author has blanket permission. I realise this is a bit of a hardline and as far as I know I may be the only one with this stance. It's not that I don't think that other fics aren't lovely or captivating or monumentally worth reading...it's that I have a VERY limited time to read fic (see #2 below) and I don't want to run the risk of reading something, falling in love with it to the point that I want to podfic it, and then have to go through the process of asking permission and possibly not hearing back. I get really excited to create things and I 100% understand that authors don't owe me anything, but I want to know that if I fall in love with a fic I can podfic it and the best way for me to do that is limit myself to things that give me permission to do so up front. I have a lot of anxiety and awkwardness around asking authors permissions and this is a way I manage both my time and my self-care. I come off as really blunt here, I realise. I'm not. I'm also an author. I respect the right of refusal. I just also exercise my own right of refusal to read.

So. Transformative Works statements. They can be yes. they can be no, they can be maybe. The whole point is for you to express your intentions so that people know. Put it in your AO3 profile. Put it on your Tumblr page. Put it on your DW. Put it wherever your fic is posted. If you give a "maybe, please ask" that's fine, but then give a place where it will be convenient for people to ask AND where you will somewhat regularly check the messages. Often, podficcers are on a deadline for fests/gifts/challenges and we spend a lot of time playing the "is the author just busy or have they left fandom or are they blatantly ignoring my ask" game, which none of us wants to play, trust me.

I want to re-emphasise. IT IS OKAY TO SAY NO. People have their reasons for not wanting derivative works created and that's fine. You don't owe those reasons to anyone. It's better to (respectfully) say "Sorry, but please don't make transformative works based on my work." than to say nothing. Note: I say "respectfully". I mean, your profile and your statement are your own, so do whatever you need, but don't expect podficcers and other artists not to get a bit upset at you if you say "Podfic is awful and doesn't count as an art form and I hate it so please don't do it because it's gross."

2.TIME
Yes, okay. We all want time. I get that. But! Lately as I become more involved in fandom, I'm noticing that I don't have time for all of: consume canon/source material, create fanworks, participate in reading/consuming others' fanworks, comment on others' fanworks and respond to the comments on your own fanworks. Honestly, it's two full-time jobs for me somehow and I honestly don't know how most of you manage it. I can MAYBE do two out of those things, but three just has me spending every waking moment that I'm not off doing my actual job just trying to keep my head above water in fandom, and that is not the fandom experience I want.

Sadly, consuming others' work and commenting/responding to comments is the thing that falls by the wayside more often than not, which has the effect of making me feel rude and selfish and also slightly disconnected from fandom, neither of which is what I want.

So I need to find time or a balance or a better system or...SOMETHING.

Which brings me to #3.

3. Someone to make me curated fic/podfic/fanwork rec lists
I told you we were getting a bit self-serving.

So here's the thing. I would LOVE to read more fanfic. I would. For one thing, it's hard to podfic if you haven't actually *read* any fic, since you haven't found anything to record. For another, I have all these fandoms that I say "I am in this fandom" and LOVE the canon, but when it comes to actual fannish spaces I'm like ehhhhh I haven't actually read a single fic in that fandom. Again, this makes me feel a bit disconnected since I feel like I can't always fully participate. For another, it makes me feel a bit selfish because I have friends in those fandoms and I want to read their work, but I just...don't. And they are highly supportive of me and my work and then I'm over here like "thanks for loving my content, I can't be bothered with yours!"

This will come off.........poorly, I think, but I'm nothing if not blunt and honest and I never learned how to temper my answers with niceties the way many other more eloquent people have, but...I really don't have time to read anything but the best fic. It's true. I mean, the idea of taking the time and effort to wade through things I don't like is just...I'd rather just not read anything. I acknowledge that this is me being precious because FANDOM IS FREE and no one owes me anything, but it's the way things are.

Partly, this is why I choose podfic over fic most of the time. 1. because I can listen to it all day while working or commuting or walking so I can actually consume it in spaces where I can't consume fic. 2. It's usually, at its heart, a fic rec. Someone else in this fandom has taken the time to read this story and loved it so much that they wanted to read it over and over again and then listen to it over and over again as they edit. Safe to assume, it's probably pretty good fic. 3. I can put it on in the background so if it's not the best work, eh, I can shift my focus elsewhere.

That said, I'm usually pretty conscious to leave feedback for the fic author if I enjoyed their story via the podfic. I think that's important. I can compliment the podficcer on their reading, but if the story itself moved me, it's important to also tell the author that, since they are the ones that crafted the narrative.

So, what I want, is some way to easily access a compiled lists of "If you read no other fic in this fandom, I recommend you read these". And then I will read them. Because sometimes I look for fic I want to read and it takes me an entire evening and I have 50 AO3 tabs open and I just look at it in despair like...fuck it...and close the whole situation, thereby negating all the work of my evening, and that makes me sad because I want to read fic.

4. More podfic in my fandoms
Grasping at straws here. I exist mostly in small fandoms and small spaces within those fandoms and even fewer podficcers hanging out in those fandoms and just...it's not that I *mind* creating my own fanworks, it's just SO LOVELY to think that there are fandoms where you can listen to OTHER PEOPLE read you stories instead of just the sound of your own voice. Add to this my point above that in many cases podfic is the way I consume fic/participate in fandom and it's just...when you're the only one in your space making the podfics you then have to do all the legwork of reading the fic yourself and it takes more time and we're back in this circle of FANDOM IS EXHAUSTING.

So....those are my thoughts. I understand that they are not necessarily nice and that they are probably coming off as harsh. That's just sort of...the way I communicate, for better or worse. I wish I had the art of putting things delicately, but it's not in my culture, sadly. I'm happy to engage (respectfully) on any of this because I assure you that I'm well-meaning and probably just not coming off as well as I want to. Thanks for reading this far if you've made it.