rhythmia

Photograph of cliffside pine trees in San Francisco, standing strong in the sunlight. Overlaid is a crayon drawing of a small family tree, of Chris Chow, his sister, and his parents. Top title text reads: your life as a transient variable, an OMGCP Chowder-centric podfic. Bottom text reads: written by pepperfield, performed by rhythmia. Bottom text bar includes the G-rating sticker and Podfic Bingo 2019 sticker, and a small photograph of fat gou dessert with a small incense holder.

Podfic post: your life as a transient variable [Podfic]
Original fic post: your life as a transient variable
Writer:

pepperfield
Reader:

rhythmia
Rating: General audiences
Content Notes: No archive warnings apply
Pairing: Minor Chris Chow/Caitlin Farmer
Summary: Chris gets older, but he never quite manages to feel less adrift.

Length: 25:11, 20.1 MB
Music: Carousel by Sam Tsui
Cover: by rhythmia, including the digital crayon drawing, which is about my level of skill. Photograph by semslibrarylady on pixabay
Podfic Bingo squares: Incorporate music, read animatedly

Cover Image Description: Photograph of cliffside pine trees in San Francisco, standing strong in the sunlight. Overlaid is a crayon drawing of a small family tree, of Chris Chow, his sister, and his parents. Top title text reads: your life as a transient variable, an OMGCP Chowder-centric podfic. Bottom text reads: written by pepperfield, performed by rhythmia. Bottom text bar includes the G-rating sticker and Podfic Bingo 2019 sticker, and a small photograph of fat gou dessert with a small incense holder.

Under the cut for my ramblings about my process and FEELS!

So this thing really was a labor of love for me <3

I read the fic when pepperfield and sapphee talked a lot about diaspora feels in the comments that I joined in on, end result, I was like, I GOTTA podfic this story.
Recorded it. Never edited it. Cue life happening -_-
Things changed and I wanted to revisit and re-record the story. A couple years later. Still so many feels omg.
- Diaspora feels! I'm 2nd gen Cantonese American (I'm born in the US, parents and grandparents immigrated) and living in the Bay Area, and I'm one of the lucky ones who grew up conversationally bilingual since my grandparents and dad don't DO English really, and I still have a lot of insecurity about my Cantonese speaking and receptive levels since I don't have any kind of academic study of it. So I miss a lot of idioms and references. And ugggggh those feels about just Mandarin being offered in school. I did 3 years of study in undergrad, and I mixed up my Cantonese and Mandarin grammar allllll the time lol.
  - Oh man it was so liberating and I felt so SEEN to get to break out my Canto unapologetically in the middle of the text <3
- Still so much insecurity about being a 'bad' child of immigrants since I dunno if I'm properly carrying the culture down the generations, re: food and other cultural practices. I mean, I've come to some kind of peace about it as an adult, see Hasan Minhaj's conversation with Charlamagne tha God about being a child of immigrants and developing like a kind of creole 3rd culture (uhhh I don't know where in that video it is anymore, sorry)
- Trees and family tree feels!

Music choices! I spent a lot of time looking for the right song to pair with the story, and I really wanted either something in Cantonese or by a Cantonese American artist, but I didn't particularly want any of the old 80's Hong Kong ballads lol. Ultimately I decided to go with Sam Tsui's Carousel. He's a queer musician with a gorgeous voice and lovely original songs and I've followed him on youtube for some time, AND he's part Canto! Anyhow, Carousel felt perfect because he wrote it as a kind of retrospective for his own growth and development (go check out the video, he explains it there), and the lyrics felt just right for the different parts of Chris' growth in the story. <3
Things I learned in the course of this podfic:
- How to add brushes to Photoshop. I found a tutorial for programming a custom brush to simulate crayon strokes. The quality of those crayon drawings are ALLLLLL me XDDD Yes, I draw like a 5 year old nowadays.
- That I can help with contrast and visibility by adjusting the opacity of images or adding a box under text that I can adjust the opacity of :D

Thanks to the podfic discord for their cover advice, and to

ageorwizardry (on DW, AO3, and tumblr) for alpha/beta listening and cheer-listening, and to

pepperfield for sharing this story <3