#and it's gotten me inspired to do bigger projects in 2023

[thefearandnow]

Audio Drama Sunday: 12/18/22

The Sheridan Tapes

Alright so I’ve officially finished season one of the Sheridan Tapes and I think overall it was a great run. I’d say the first half of it was a little bit frustrating for me but that the last 6 episodes or so really started to feel much more consistent and focused. I get why the first 14 episodes are the way they are but for me it just felt like so much build up that never fully satisfied me. It’s probably my editor brain kicking into gear but there was a lot of early episodes that I think could’ve been simplified.

That said, I think there is an art to writing a podcast that can anticipate fandom and can play off its audience and I think The Sheridan Tapes is an incredible example of that. It’s not really my style of audio drama but the fact that it’s been able to sustain a fan base and grow a community around the story and characters is really inspiring. It’s that fandom that makes other people want to listen and it’s always amazing to watch that magic play out via different corners of the internet. And quite honestly I’m sure the things that I was frustrated by in terms of plot and pacing are what avid listeners love about it. Even if I had some issues with it, I’m glad I finished the first season and gave it a shot! The people who make it are lovely and I’ll probably at least start the final season (which got fully crowdfunded!!)

Shipworm

Two-Up Productions has produced some of my favorite fiction podcasts (36 Questions, season 1 of Limetown) and though I'm not sure this is really the "first" feature length audio drama piece, it might be the most memorable. Something that I think Two-Up does really well with their audio projects is that they treat the listener's position with a lot of care. In the case of Shipworm, the space for the listener is claustrophobically intimate and yet alienating, cleverly using spatial audio to put the listener in a liminal space between technology and consciousness. This relationship between the listener, Wallace (the main character) and the voice that may or may not be real is the main crux of this piece, holding all the character development, causing story twists and fueling a tone of paranoia throughout. The music and scoring is cinematic and impressive, the acting is masterful and even though details of the story could get confusing, there was never a point where I stopped trusting the writing to fill in the blanks and hold my hand. I recommend finding time to listen to it in all one go, I think there are some natural pause points where you'd expect an episode to end or an ad break to break up the flow but it was an incredible experience to absorb the whole story in a 116 min sprint. I can imagine relistening to this a couple times just to experience it all again, the immediacy and style was such an entertaining listen.

Joy to the World

This holiday limited series from audio drama vets like @starplanes and @innbetween is so cute and wholesome, a perfect feel good listen written for all ages. It’s a sweet little collection of audio Christmas cards in the form of holiday conversations shared over the radio waves, hosted by a lonely astronaut, Joy. It’s got some Charlie Brown Christmas references mixed with Delilah-esque intimacy and some nuanced discussions about family, vulnerability and queerness. Each episode is a snack sized scene that melted my heart, there’s 7 episodes out that I listened to all today. Really looking forward to the rest leading up to Christmas Eve! My favorite one so far is “Dorothy, Out at Sea”

Also for me, Christmas and radio is such a classic combo and it’s so cool to have holiday audio drama like this to listen to. I’m curious if there are other holiday-themed fiction podcasts out there?

Edit: didn’t realize they have a tumblr! @jttwpod

Burning Gotham

This week I listened to episodes 6-7 as well as a behind the scenes bonus episode and it unfortunately is just not doing it for me. In addition to all the other critiques I've had of the show over the last few weeks, what I realized this week is that the thing preventing me from liking this show is my editor brain flagging missed opportunities. Of course, this is kind of useless and selfish feedback because the underlying mentality is "this is what I would've done." But I think for my own ears there are a lot of choices in terms of pacing, structure and aesthetic that feel more distracting for me as a listener than engaging. And it just takes me out of the experience. Like why was there sound effects and 1835 scene audio all the way through the bonus episode? I understand the cutting into the scenes for reference but why is it present throughout people's interviews if this is the non-fiction part of the show? I can hear and see the shape of influences like 1865 or even something like NPR's Throughline which is why I was excited to listen but there isn't any particularly strong commitment to a recognizable style to get me excited to keep listening. I think there's only one episode left so I'm probably going to listen to that last one but I probably won't write about it.

Honorable Mention:

This is just sorta becoming my non-fiction podcast corner but I listened through all of the second season of Cover Story and I’m still just floored. NY Mag’s investigative series was one of my favorite podcasts last year and this season is similarly jaw dropping. In the first thirty seconds they say that most of the people they interviewed lied to them and then from there it’s an absolutely bat shit story that I won’t spoil. So many cringey texts and emails, amazing storytelling and brilliant scoring. It’s only 6 episodes and each one is just as addictive as the next!

[starshapedjello]

Venus Retrograde in Leo 2023

I definitely have felt the V-Rx even in the shadow period. For me, personally, I have felt somewhat uninspired. Since Leo is a sign about creativity, I do feel like my creativity is being somewhat stifled at this time. Not completely stifled, though, because I did randomly feel inspired to start this astro blog and doing so has made me feel quite proud. 🥹

Never the less, something about my usual creative projects have gotten stale or it feels like a loss of direction in them. It’s not that I’m frustrated by it, but as if I am taking a short break to reformulate the formula. 🤔

Maybe this Venus Rx is about stopping our bigger projects just to work on the smaller ones in which we constantly think about, yet never start. It’s time to write that novel you have been thinking about for the last decade! 😉

Don’t let your creative passions pass you by, just bc you don’t think there is enough time for them or enough importance to them. Anything that feels right for you, is right for you. Follow your dreams ☁️💫and don’t look back💖

Sending you the power to start working on your deepest passion projects 😘

[auspicious-voice]

Plans for AUSPICIOUS VOICE Going Forward

EDIT @ 07/10/2023: More explanation on what I will do with my social media accounts at the end of this post

Hey guys!

I'm writing this post to highlight some key changes for this project and its future, especially when I want to move on to other bigger things I'd like to focus on. Of course that doesn't mean I'm abandoning this project, but I just want to scale down on the social aspects of the UTAU hobby significantly for the most part.

If you're interested on what this means for the project, then feel free to read on.

Cover Uploads

Since January 2023, I have been uploading new cover to my YouTube and BiliBili channels on a weekly basis. This was mostly because I had a huge backlog of finished covers I've kept in my hard drive for a long time. But since I've cleared my cover backlog and that I've run into a bit of a burnout AND cover block, I figured that doing weekly uploads isn't really a fun thing to do anymore.

It's hard to find inspiration for songs I want to cover nowadays since I'm all burnt out right now, and I want to upload covers whenever I want to. I won't stop uploading covers but the amount of covers I will upload will decrease over time. I also want to make more time and space for other things I am working on instead of constantly working on covers every week.

Maybe I should build a playlist of songs I want to cover in the future, and when the inspiration really hits, I could revisit the playlist and select the one I like the most...

Voicebank Development and Releases

It never really occured to me that I wanted to stop developing voicebanks up until recently. I will say that I will be stopping voicebank development for Fuwa Maria and Fuwa Mario indefinitely.

Now the reason why I am saying this is because of multiple factors. One is that I don't have the time and energy to devote to developing new voicebanks for my UTAUs these days, and I'm at that point where I look at my current voicebanks and I'm like, "Yeah I don't think I'll record a voicebank as good as that." I'm perfectly fine with the quality of my current voicebanks, and I don't intend to record new versions of them anytime soon. That doesn't mean that I'll stop giving them miniscule QoL updates though.

Producing voicebanks takes a long time, from months to even a year, and it really exhausts me every time I do a voicebank release. So that being said, don't expect new voicebanks to be released anytime soon. This decision isn't permanent, but it will probably remain that way for a long time from now.

Anything else?

For the sake of my social battery and mental health, I won't be directly interacting with the UTAU community (and the greater vocal synth community) from now on. Too much happens on those online spaces to the point where it stresses me out by a ton, and I'm glad that there are people leaving the community to do better things or to improve themselves for the reasons mentioned above. I won't lie that without the UTAU community, I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today, but I think it's time to move on, like a graduation of sorts or something.

That doesn't mean that I won't stop all communications with the UTAU community, but I will be around to check if anything new has been made with Maria and Mario through tags and search results occasionally. I may leave a comment or two at that! I also opened up a new e-mail for inquiries about the voicebanks and characters, so that's my primary form of contact now.

As for the program itself, I have always treated UTAU as a hobby, and I will continue to do so - as something that I like to do for myself in my free time. I will cover the songs I like with my UTAUs (and other voicebanks if I feel like it), and upload them for myself and others to see if they like. And if someone else enjoys it, then that's great! I just love sharing the things I enjoy doing.

Moving forward, this is my way of saying that I will be dialling down on UTAU-related activities significantly in terms of the program itself (maybe a little bit) and the community related to it. I have been valuing my own health recently, which has been bogged down for way too long. And I will be uploading covers sporadically, and I just want to focus on using the new voicebanks I released for years to come. Quite frankly, hobbies and interests are best enjoyed with close friends and probably not with bigger circles, and that alone has done wonders to me.

I will say that if I were to post covers, they might be posted back-to-back on some days. I will post my UTAU work through this site and my YouTube and BiliBili channels from now on, and I have an RSS feed set up in case you guys use them!

See you, HIRA

[hiratelier]

I can finally see myself falling out of using vocalsynths constantly in the next year, because at this point I've gotten myself into new hobbies and interests that I'm far more invested in ^^

It'll be that one hobby I'll get into for like once a month (and maybe post something about it if I even feel like doing it), but other than that, I'm not as interested in vocalsynths as I once was since 2012. I'll look fondly upon the stuff and memories I've made, even if I'm not that active in the respective community anymore (and for good reason because ever since that my wellbeing has improved drastically). I still treasure my own singing robots, and the tradition of making anniversary covers for them will still continue even on their 9th anniversary (I might end up treating them as OCs on a regular basis LOL)

But man 2023 has been the year of slowly falling out of interests you've been into for nearly a decade and falling in into media you never thought you would enjoy and hyperfixate on until at some point in your life...This happened with F/GO (as I've stopped playing the game and lost interest in what's going on in the story; but I like to see whatever TYPE-MOON work they got cooking), and I can see it happening with v*calsynths, though my loss of interest is centered around the releases of new libraries. I'm far more interested in the songs my favourite producers are releasing and if there's one song I'd like to cover, I might chuck it into my cover inspo playlist. Maybe that's the one thing that drew me into this hobby anyway LOL. I guess F/GO and vocalsynths are being scaled down to minor interests of mine that I do indulge in once in a while.

I don't want to be stuck with uploading covers to my YouTube and BiliBili constantly, and I've been planning to upload more animatics, speedpaints (maybe), and other OC shenanigans. And since I got my Community tab back I can start uploading art there again (though I have already uploaded some art there). I also have some major projects that are currently being worked on (one of them is being finalized), and I am so excited working on them :D

I guess I just wanted to say that I'm falling out of using vocalsynths (as I've done with F/GO) and I'm treating it as a small hobby of mine except for bigger occasions (such as anniversary uploads) or when I'm feeling very inspired, and with the new hobbies and interests that I've picked up, I feel more free in what I want to do now haha;; you'll see me upload more comics/art, animatics, speedpaints, and other media and there'll be a decrease in cover uploads over time! I have two cover uploads left, but they'll be posted in December