So, I wanted to start podcasting again.
But my encounters with bedbugs completely stopped the group from meeting, which stopped the recordings from happening, which obviously stops a podcast.
I was also, obviously, dealing with bedbugs at the time, which cuts into your time pretty severely. As in – totally. There are a few sessions that I still haven’t edited, and at this point I don’t really intend to.
So I wanted to start podcasting and I didn’t have any material to do it with. Then I came across a small community that I knew about before, but had not taken very seriously.
Reddit.com/r/HFY will now be my source.
If you are unfamiliar with reddit, you should know that it actually has an influence that is at least on par with, if not significantly greater than, other platforms – like facebook or twitter. Hell, it was (is?) one of the main targets of the russian troll-factories that are so infamous now for screwing with the 2016 (and following?) elections.
It is a link-aggregate site that has a huge number of sub-communities (called subreddits) that are largely independent, though posts on any given subreddit may get enough notoriety that people browsing r/all (the catch-all, everything has a rank here) or even r/popular (a curated list of the largest and ‘best’ subreddits) have a chance to see it (badly-acting subreddits might also get shut down by the site admins).
r/HFY is a very particular and niche subreddit. It allows no posting of outside links – text posts only. The letters “HFY” stand for “Humanity, FUCK YEAH!”, and this is a reference to the type of SF story that focuses the spotlight on humans and shows off the things that make us awesome. Sometimes it’s our humanity itself – things like mercy and love and honor. Sometimes it’s the simple attitude of “No, I will not give up this fight, even if it kills me.” Sometimes it’s just the fact that omnivorous persistence hunters are crazy scary.
So, not only does the subreddit specifically care about that type of story, it also encourages new stories. There is a huge list of authors that write short stories for the sub – and only for the sub. Enough authors that they could make a smaller, even more niche community out of only the authors.
And what I think is the greatest strength of this subreddit: Almost every single author is an amateur. There are a few accomplished authors there, but honestly – some of the most successful authors on the sub have some other day job. There’s like 3 guys that make their living by writing, and mostly it’s writing for the sub. One guy has an entire saga (The “J-verse”) that is rumored to be greater than 2 million words total. He has a patreon that supports him entirely. From what I understand, he started on r/HFY.
So yeah, as long as I keep getting permission from authors, I’m going to narrate as much of r/HFY as I can. For some less interesting details, keep reading.
I plan on including other narrators quite early. After all, I’m really more interested in the production of the podcast than I am the recording, the narrating, or the voice-acting. In fact, my plan is that episode 7 will be the first non-me narration, and it looks like I’ll have enough other people volunteering that I can share the load 50/50.
At first, I would like to do only one-shot stories – those stories that do not require other reading to understand and are not a prerequisite themselves. I would like to do the more popular (finished) series later, maybe starting around episode 15-20, but I still need to hammer out some of the details that are involved in that. Eventually, I also want to do a full cast story – but that is crazy difficult, and for now just a pipe dream.
I am going to include women, minorities, and non-americans as well. I’m a white dude from midwest USA. Compared to everyone else, I’ve got it made. I’m like, in the stronger 50% of the wealthiest 1% of the world. There’s no reason not to try to help develop the podcasting, voice-acting, and writing world in to something that isn’t nearly so “me-centric.” I’d like it to be generally non-centric.
If you want to be included in this podcast – as a voice-actor, as a narrator, as an author, or some other way, then please email me: seth.kleinpaste@gmail.com. Put “HFY” somewhere in the subject line.