Funny, but as much as I lobby for podfic being thought of as its own transformative work (and not just an accessibility thing), etc, I cannot stand the idea of altering the text. I alter it less than theatre actors; I was shocked when I read what jinjurly wrote once about changing all the 'shhh' in fic she records into 'shush', because that's the sort of change I forbid myself as a reader.
It has meant, as a podfic artist, that there are a lot of stories I enjoyed reading which I could not record because there were grammar issues or sentence flow issues that I could simply not record properly as written; either mistakes or not, they were features of the texts that means we did not match, and there was nothing I envision I could do about it. Even now if I was given the liberty to change stuff and edit the text I'm going to record, I think I would feel very freaked out about it (even though for some stories it might be edits I have dreamed of doing for my own reading pleasure - I have only dreamed of it and never changed the story).
So yeah, anyway - the removal of sex scenes feels particularly shocking to me. As much as I understand the idea that no one receives the same work of art the same way, and audience reception is important to respect as are accessibility issues, etc, I also feel there has to be limits to what 'a work' is, you know? If we edit a story to record it without the sex, or with less misogyny, or removing the swear words, for me it's not the same story anymore, it's not the same 'work'.
And works are SO abundant, really, that I tend to feel like if work X has features 1, 2 and 3 that bother you, your role as audience is to pick another work (and/or critique work X on those grounds, whatever; I'm not suggesting people shouldn't interact with works they don't thoroughly enjoy), because there IS another work out there that matches your tastes, surely.
I dunno, I just, whoa. It's really a topic that freaks me out I guess.
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It has meant, as a podfic artist, that there are a lot of stories I enjoyed reading which I could not record because there were grammar issues or sentence flow issues that I could simply not record properly as written; either mistakes or not, they were features of the texts that means we did not match, and there was nothing I envision I could do about it. Even now if I was given the liberty to change stuff and edit the text I'm going to record, I think I would feel very freaked out about it (even though for some stories it might be edits I have dreamed of doing for my own reading pleasure - I have only dreamed of it and never changed the story).
So yeah, anyway - the removal of sex scenes feels particularly shocking to me. As much as I understand the idea that no one receives the same work of art the same way, and audience reception is important to respect as are accessibility issues, etc, I also feel there has to be limits to what 'a work' is, you know? If we edit a story to record it without the sex, or with less misogyny, or removing the swear words, for me it's not the same story anymore, it's not the same 'work'.
And works are SO abundant, really, that I tend to feel like if work X has features 1, 2 and 3 that bother you, your role as audience is to pick another work (and/or critique work X on those grounds, whatever; I'm not suggesting people shouldn't interact with works they don't thoroughly enjoy), because there IS another work out there that matches your tastes, surely.
I dunno, I just, whoa. It's really a topic that freaks me out I guess.