From Roga

[zvi]

Roga would like to talk about re-editing and re-writing works for podficcing.

Would readers be interested in editing works for podficcing, whether for content (e.g. sex scenes), length, adding dialogue tags, etc.? Does "permission to record" cover a blanket "permission to adapt"?

How would authors feel about re-writing stories so they are easier to be read or to be understood orally? For instance, if your alien language just isn't pronounceable by human beings, or if you've written something in an experimental, visual structure.

And, Roga didn't ask this, but I would like to know, how would we, as listeners, react to getting a story that was changed from the text? How extensive would the changes have to be for you to want a heads up before you downloaded? Would you want the changes indicated in the metadata or also during the story reading?

Comments

[brimtoast]

Cath, I really strongly agree with the bit about being unsettled by taking sex scenes out. And I also agree with your reason for it, that the sex scene is often an important part of the plot, the character journey, or the emotional arc of the fic. Or all three. The idea that it is so low in value that it can just be taken out without harming the fic makes me kind of instinctively defensive. There's this whole implication that the sex is just there for titillation and not actually meaningful. And I am not saying that a person who wants to take a sex scene out of a fic would mean any of those things. But my gut reaction is to see it that way. I just... can't they find a gen fic, and leave the NC-17 stories intact for those of us who enjoy reading and hearing them that way? Because the act of taking a sex scene out seems really different than the act of just not choosing to write or record one in the first place.

The language you disapprove of thing is more interesting. I think I agree about taking it out. My friend was telling me the other day about how, in this long fic she's reading, she found this line that was casually misogynistic. So casually thrown in there that she didn't notice. Here, I'll find the lines she quoted me.

"I’d probably get my head bitten off if I asked for champagne in the dressing room. I asked [female character] if she could get me a Coke Zero the other day; she handed me a Pepsi and told me to go fuck myself."

[Male character 1] laughs. “My sweet little [female character],” he says in a saccharine voice.

"No seriously. That time of the month or something, man, I don't know."

"PMS,” [Male character 1] says. “That's what you get for working with women."

What do you do when you are reading along, in a fic you've already committed to doing and have already put hours and hours of work into, and you come across something like that? If it were by an author I felt comfortable talking with, I'd definitely ask them to alter it in some way to either remove the problem or acknowledge it as problematic. In this case, she doesn't know the author well enough to do that, so she just read it but felt very uncomfortable with it.

[podcath]

Yes, you articulated my concerns much more clearly than I could. Thank you!!! And Zvi's right, of course, that some writers do add the sex scenes on, but I don't want to be the judge of that...

Re the other issue. I've only so far recorded fic by people i knew personally or felt comfortable asking. And I think I'd have emailed them if I came across sth that really bugged me (in fact, i just read a story where i thought there was a continuity error, and i almost emailed but Allison and I went back&forth and I decided it was ambivalent enough to leave).

So that scene. Yeah, that's a hard one! Because now it's your voice SAYING these things!!!

My biggest fear is the in character attempts. I'm just waiting for the first Jerk/Bitch or Douchebag in J2 or SPN that I come across... Maybe i'm lucky I'm not in Life on Mars fandom??? :)

[brimtoast]

And Zvi's right, of course, that some writers do add the sex scenes on, but I don't want to be the judge of that...

That's absolutely true, and I feel that way about some fics that I have read, that the sex scene has no purpose and makes the overall story weaker. And if I were the beta-reader for that fic, I would certainly say so.

But podfic reader is pretty far from beta-reader, and unless it happened to be an author I had both types of relationship with, I would not ask for that kind of change.

I'm just waiting for the first Jerk/Bitch or Douchebag in J2 or SPN that I come across...

In the podfic I'm working on right now, the word faggot is used several times. But it's not tossed off casually, it's used in a very emotionally intense scene and as an expression of hate by a clearly evil character. I wasn't thrilled while recording with having to say that word out loud, but I also didn't feel like its use in the story was gratuitous, and it wasn't a dealbreaker for me the way that, honestly, the "PMS. That's what you get for working with women," scene would probably have been.

So context matters a lot to me when it comes to things like that. I can think of at least one word I would never say, though.