Fandom could learn a lot about community from podfic
First I want to acknowledge that a lot of what I’m about to say has been said better in other places by people more knowledgeable than I am. I’ll link to at least one here:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
This is An Abridged History of VoiceTeam, pulled together by thelordoflamancha. It’s 3000% worth a listen (if an hour and twenty minute-long NPR-style fandom audio documentary sounds good to you. It’s SUPER well-produced).
Also: I’m writing this on my phone on my lunch break, so it’s going to be incomplete, messy, and poorly formatted!
I’ll start here: structurally, podfic is different from fanfic and the incentives around it are different as well. There simply isn’t the audience for podfic that exists for fanfic, even in mega fandoms, so you’ll never get the same stats from a pod that you’d get from a similar fic, in terms of hits, kudos, and comments. Further, unless people are streaming short podfics directly from AO3 (which is one way to listen, but not the only way, and is not a very good way to listen to long podfics), people have to leave ao3 to listen, then come back and leave feedback. Engagement is much, much, much lower across the board, so the incentive is just not the same.
Additionally, there’s a respect for other fans pretty well baked into the culture of podfic: you don’t release podfics you haven’t gotten permission for. Some people don’t want other people interpreting their work in this way, and that’s so understandable. But this didn’t happen by accident! People have been pretty intentional about building this culture through:
a) almost always thanking the author for granting permission very obviously, both in the notes of the work and (much of the time) in the audio recording itself
b) always linking the fic back to the original work
Podficcing takes skill and knowledge. Beyond just “please tag for major character death, etc.” Most people aren’t taught how to record and edit audio in school, while we do, generally, reach the age of 16 with some experience writing a 500-word story. Beyond that, ao3 doesn’t support audio files—you have to upload them somewhere else and link to them.
so! When faced with a pastime where there is a barrier to entry, a built-in lower interaction threshold, AND a necessary interaction and respect for with other fans, you’ve basically got two options. Either podfics are the purview of a dedicated few who love audio editing for the love of the game, or you grow the community.
Luckily, this is set up for community-building. There are people who need to ask for expertise and people who can provide it, and there’s already a culture of talking to other fans.
in the case of podficcing, some really dedicated and talented people have taken on the mantle of creating events that highlight and support community-building. The biggest(?) of these is VoiceTeam, which is basically a creative scavenger hunt event. For a month, people join teams to complete a series of challenges set by a mod team, each one of which is worth points. Everyone who participated gets points, so working together is key. The challenges range from “encourage authors from to create a blanket permission statement [a statement on a profile that outlines the author’s preferences for podfic / other transformation of their work]” to “listen to podfic while drawing” to “create a closet cosplay of a character as you listen to podfic.” Of course, there are a bunch of challenges about recording and posting podfic, but crucially, you don’t have to be a podficcer to participate in VoiceTeam.
Podtogether is another unique podfic event that pairs authors and podficcers together to create a new work specifically for podficcing. There’s an element of community baked in.
most podfic events have listening parties associated with them, where people listen to the same podfics and chat about them on discord in a liveblog sort of situation.
Okay, so what can fandom as a whole learn from podficcing? Some things are maybe not transferable; some of this only works because the community is a few thousand fans and not millions. Some things are up to individual fans to choose as opposed to structural innovations in fan spaces (curating your own space vs curating fandom in general). But!
An intentional focus on community, collaboration, and creativity over statistics. I honestly don’t know how to create more of this, but I noticed that one of the things that made Wolfbird (a fic that has largely been revealed as prompted rather than written) so enticing and beloved was the “bookclub” nature of the comments. The prompter added bookclub-style questions to the end of every chapter that encouraged people to talk to each other and share ideas about the story. I also think that the allure of statistics are a major driver of AI-promoted fics (I am not immune to line-go-up).
Creating community norms around fanfiction, and having mature ways to discuss them. I realize that this won’t work across the board, but it’s no secret that one of the biggest success factors in VoiceTeam has been the leadership of klb, a fan who is a teacher of young children. Sometimes fans need to be told that the community norms are different than how they’ve been acting, but it doesn’t need to be a huge proclamation.
Events? I know fic exchanges exist, but those are also fairly solitary environments where you can’t discuss what you’re working on more broadly. Maybe there are other options.
Enjoying not!fic. This is something I DO see in fandom, through blog posts and comments and different things. In podfic spaces people will get on a discord call, record it, and just have a fun time building out ideas. It’s a paper dolls playtime! Have fun with it! It will never get you notoriety, but that’s not the point.
Working intentionally collaboratively. One of the great things about multivoices is the notion of working together on something, sometimes even at the same time! Maybe having writing sprints with friends and then discussing what you write could work? Maybe reading something together and talking about it?
ultimately, I think it comes down to not letting the worst actors define the fandom experience. I think this has two parts: being vocal about what community norms are, and not allowing yourself to get too caught up in the fandom drama.
Recognizing fan creativity in all its glory. I’ve seen knitting projects, songs,
Being willing to put something kind of silly and shitty out into the world. This is a hallmark of voice team. Maybe you don’t post your weird song about how much fun you’re having on ao3, but it’s fun to show it to friends or teammates!
okay, lunch break is over and I can’t figure out how to turn off the list formatting in this post. I also never put a read more break up at the top, whoops. I hope this is legible to people, and I invite discussion here, of course! I also want to recognize that podfic is so great BECAUSE a lot of really awesome people work to make sure it is (klb, silverandblue, all the VT mods, etc)
snowghoul
annaxmalina
ellievsbear
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
janainaart
titsay
stormborns
