gondolinpodfic

Inspired by MelancholyMorningstar’s Femslash February Podfic Edition, I wanted to also create a Sapphic September Podfic Edition 👩‍❤️‍👩

All audio works that are centered on at least one sapphic character or relationship will be accepted in the collection.

Behind the Pod is both a podfic meta challenge and a podcast about the backstage processes of podfic, with audio essays, interviews, and other meta discussions.

For the sixth year, it will be run as a fest, meaning no sign-ups or technical requirements!

Submission deadline: Sunday 12th July,

Reveals: Monday 13th July,

You have 4 weeks until the BtP submission deadline on Sunday 12th July!

With the amnesty period over, it's safe to assume most works have been submitted—meaning it's time for the wrap-up! This time with more podfic! More fandoms! More femslash! More languages!

A truly unprecedented 94 works have been created this year by 27 podficcers, including six creator coming together to make our largest multipod yet and the first podfic in a language other than English—French! Meaning that on average—wait, what's that? 'average person makes 3,5 podfics per poly podweek' factoid actualy just statistical error. average person makes 0 pods per poly podweek. Podfic Georg @kbirbpods, who lives in a blanket fort & made 25 podfics alone is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

Those 94 works were spread across 52 unique* fandoms, likewise the largest number of different fandoms yet!

As per usual, unique fandoms in this context means that different versions of the same franchise were considered separate, however, adaptations and parent tags were not. Eg. ‘Deadpool - All Media Types’ and 'Deadpool (Movieverse)’ would be considered as one fandom, whereas 'Star Wars Sequel Trilogy’ and 'Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order Series’ would be two.

Star Wars is back for its throne, once again taking the top spot with 17 podfics, but MCU came in as a close second with 16!

Altogether, we have created 22 hours and 11 minutes worth of podfic this year. Nearly a full day! So what's left now, other than to sit back and enjoy all the wonderful podfic we’ve made over the past two weeks =D

And that concludes yet another Poly Podweek in numbers! Once again, thank you everybody for participating and making this event such a joy year after year!

You can search the "podfic & podficced works" tag on ao3 and filter by ship, media or character to find existing podfic. Anyone who writes fic can also help podficcers out by adding tags indicating the permission status of the fic- "podfic welcome" is blanket permission, other tags exist indicating to ask first or to refrain from podficcing the tagged work. "Podfic available" can be added to a written work to indicate a podficced version already exists.

If you open a written work which has been podficced you can usually find a link to the podfic included in the "works inspired by this one" section, and podficcers always link back to the written work in the "inspired by" field.

Tags exist to indicate whether a written work is screen reader friendly as well (the tags are "screen reader friendly" and "not screen reader friendly"). Guides to screen reader friendly text are available and I'm hoping to compile a list of them at some point to help authors determine which to tag as and to publish more screen reader friendly fanfic.

I've personally been working on a super secret obikin podfic that is taking 5ever due to Life Stuff, so stay (patiently) tuned! Several obikinville citizens including @kittonafoxgirl have already voiced multiple podfics. The extremely prolific podfic reader GodOfLaundryBaskets has done quite a few Star Wars fics as well, including gen, obikin, anidala, obianidala, quiobi, codywan, and idek how many other ships. GodOfLaundyBaskets also runs a discord server for podfic creators and enthusiasts.

The post nobody asked for but some may find helpful?

This is a very, very bare bones guide I made for those who may feel intimidated about making their first podfic. There are a lot of ways to do it, but I thought I would share my way in case it helps someone!

My main issue is I have no real mic and no computer, so the usual tools—like the awesome free computer software Audacity that lots of other podders use—are unavailable to me right now.

If that’s you, or if computers just scare you in general, keep reading!

So here’s my set up:

iPhone

Earbud/mic combo that came with said phone

The default voice recording app on my phone

A handful of editing apps that I may or may not use for any given project

Not pictured: a quiet space. Sometimes a small, carpeted room or closet, or a blanket fort if I’m feeling fancy.

Also not pictured: another device to read fic off of. I use my e-reader. (You can read off a phone and record with it at the same time. I just find it annoying.)

Here’s my recording process:

Get comfy in whatever recording space I choose. Then, position myself so one earbud is in my ear, and the earbud with the mic is in my hand. This prevents the mic from turning or rubbing on my clothes, which can cause annoying sounds. I also hold the mic a few inches and just to the side of my face, so my plosives (“p” and “t” etc sounds) don’t make loud puffs into the mic.

Open voice recording app, press record, and just start reading. Get a feel for the tone of the story. Sometimes I read a bit and start over, just to get confident.

Once I’m done the recording, I save it to my files so I can open it in other apps.

The apps/posting process:

My two main apps are WavePad and EZAudioCut. I prefer the noise reduction features in WavePad and the precise cutting feature in EZAudioCut. (By cutting I mean deleting mistakes, mouth noises etc.) But you might have different preferences. I find both apps pretty intuitive. Play around! And bonus: both apps let you save in any format! mp4, mp3, and wav. This is pretty crucial for a lot of hosting sites.

Sometimes I’ll use GarageBand if I want to overlap my speaking with music, but this is a completely optional thing. I kind of hate it and have to re-teach myself how to do it every time, but sometimes the heart wants what it wants. My first handful of pods had no music whatsoever, so don’t let that stop you!

Ditto for cover art. I use Canva because it’s fun, but if it became not fun, I would probably stop doing it.

SoundCloud is there because you can get a free account with 3 hours space to upload whatever you want. It also gives you an embed code that you can copy and paste right into ao3. This was very appealing to me as a newbie with zero knowledge of html. I’ve now maxed out my SoundCloud account so I’ve since moved to archive.org for hosting, which is also pretty easy, and also gives you an embed code.

Dropbox is there for hosting photos/cover art, which I won’t get into here, as the process for uploading images to ao3 is covered extensively in a lot of places.

Additional notes: even if you don’t have any kind of external mic, a lot of podders just use the internal phone mic. It’s more important that you find a quiet space with very little echo potential. I’ve even recorded in my car after driving somewhere rural with no traffic. My podfic of “Beards, Booty Shorts, and Binaries” was recorded entirely in my car.

Help Rescue Podfic History (FTP Client Skills)

The largest podfic archive crashed in 2016  and since then no one has been able to take on the task of finding 5000+ missing audio files. That project is underway, so head over to Squidge and look through the spreadsheet of what is still missing.: https://squidgestatus.dreamwidth.org/89520.html

Right now, though they need help transferring the files over. Message from the Project Lead below. They need people familiar with FTP Clients

“First of all, I’m happy to say that so far we have found (as of this moment) 2,337 of the 5,441 files that are missing (or 43%)!  This is amazing!  Hopefully by the weekend we can get to 50% or more! The ssllllooooowww part of this is the processing of files.  Each one can take as few as 2 minutes, or as many as 15.

  So this is definitely slow going - and the reason for my post. If you are interested in helping out/becoming an archivist, great!  But we need a bit more than just an archivist at the moment; We need someone who is knowledgeable with using an FTP client to move files about.  

Micro Pod Fest, a fest for audio works under 5 minutes

(https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MicroPodFest2022)

All kinds of audio works welcome, no minimum, works due 31 January.

Copy of the ao3 FAQ below the cut!

Six and a half days worth of new podfics to dig through! And, omg, I think Chantress must have given either a gift or a treat to every single person who included The Witcher in their letter! 😄

Check it out!

Informal Twitter Podfic Exchange 2020 (Main Gifts)

Informal Twitter Podfic Exchange 2020 (Treats)