Sophinisba Solis

I have feelings about the latest episode of Merlin. However, today is the first day of pod_aware 2012!


Help spread the word on podfic (you don't need to be a podficcer to join in!).
pod_aware || pod_aware)

There are so many ways to create podfic and so many ways to listen. We might engage with podfic curled up in bed, in our closet, while commuting or at the gym, in our bathroom with makeshift soundproofing. To find out more information on podfic and how we podfic, check out Pod Aware on DW, LJ or Tumblr.

At that post you can download two podcasts of podficcers talking about their process. There are links to some other posts and podcasts and other works in the comments. [ETA NEW FAVORITE: COMIC BY crazybutsound.] Here I will talk a little bit about how I make podfics, though another part of this conversation is how we listen to podfic.

( How I make podfics )

PSA OUTSIDE THE CUT: DEAR AUTHORS, IT'S OKAY TO SAY NO TO PEOPLE REQUESTING TO PODFIC YOUR WORK. IT IS NOT OKAY TO ASK A PODFICCER TO AUDITION SO YOU CAN DECIDE WHETHER THEIR VOICE/ACCENT/WAY OF READING IS GOOD ENOUGH. THANK YOU.

( Oh god I still haven't even gotten to recording I will never finish this post )

And that is the story of how I make and post podfic these days!! Tomorrow's topic is Podfic Fandom, which is my favorite fandom hooray!

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theatripod is a cool new comm for organizing multivoice podfic projects and right now they are looking for directors and editors - directors will put out calls for actors and other folks later.

I was going to link to some other cool things but I'm super tired now and I don't remember what they are, so I will probably just watch Teen Wolf for a while or something.

Hey all, thank you for your sweet birthday wishes last wee. My day off was not too awesome but I had nice days before and after and a lovely, fannishly productive weekend. I finished my first bingo for this round of kink_bingo! And I feel pretty confident that I can finish two more (top row and middle row) before the end of October. I have ideas for all the squares I need to fill except for:
-temperature play featuring a trans or genderqueer character, or
-sex toys (non-penetrating) featuring a character of color. Suggestions welcome!

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It's been a rough week for many people in podfic fandom. And even for folks who are doing well otherwise, it's always nice to have some extra love! Thus:

Podficcers Love Meme: ON DW | ON LJ
Here is my thread. ♥ ♥ ♥

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fitz_y got me signed up within an hour after merlin_holidays opened yesterday! As often happens when I decide to go be social in mainstream Merlin fandom I felt very out of place at first, but I did see some more friendly names and signups later on. It looks like there are still five spots left for writers and unlimited spaces for artists and vidders with signups closing Thursdays. And it will probably turn out to be a lot of fun in the end, just like summerpornathon was even though signups freaked me out both years. :)

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Today I watched the second-to-last episode of the first season of Teen Wolf and stuff happened that either
-I'd been really frustrated hadn't earlier before because come on, people, or
-I'd heard vague things about before and was glad to finally see what the fuss is about,
so that was nice. I enjoyed it.

Gosh, I like Twitter and my friends there a lot, but I think I need to step away from it for a bit. I just feel like it eats up too much of my day. I like Tumblr a lot too but I use it pretty inconsistently - I haven't been on much lately because I've had inconsistent or slow Internet. So yeah, I think I'm gonna try not checking either of those for a week (starting tomorrow) and see how that goes. I'm also gonna cut back on how much time I spend in chat.

Maybe I will get better at communicating here on LJ and Dreamwidth! I used to be a lot more conscientious about answering every comment I got, and I'd like to get back into that habit.

Maybe I will get a ton of work done!

Or maybe I will just feel lonely and bored!

This seems like a good time to experiment though because I'll be somewhat busy with work stuff this next week.

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In other news, I've started reading the new Crossovers/Fusions challenge at summerpornathon and I'm enjoying that a lot - way more than I expected to! I had thought there would be a ton of Teen Wolf and Avengers crossovers and a bunch of other canons I didn't know and that I'd either be resentful or just confused with reading most of them. But there's a ton of variety and most of them are just fun, even for the fandoms I don't care for or am not familiar with. And that makes sense, I mean, of course most people are going to try to write something with broad appeal. Anyway, I recommend checking those out, and I'm looking forward to working my way through the rest of them.

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I'm still getting over this sore throat and related feeling-generally-awful, but today I managed to record a couple short podfics, so I'm looking forward to editing those and crossing off another two bingo squares! Right now I'm feeling pretty confident about being able to get a blackout done during the regular round, and also hopeful about including five or so different Achievements within that. :)

I never ever spell the word Achievements right on the first try. :(

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the last day to sign up for pod_together!


Open for sign ups June 18 to June 30 on DW and LJ

This is the second time this challenge has happened. I looked at it last year but was too intimidated to sign up. But this year flammablehat and I have signed up as a team and I think it will be great. Besides more philosophical things about the relationship between text and audio I am excited that for the first time I as a reader will have power to ban the words "gasps, gasped, grasps, grasped, clasp, and clasped". Maybe I'll even get rid of "asked", who knows! Maybe I will help write and she will help read! Maybe we will make some Arthur/Gwen porn, or maybe we will do something else!

If you have a buddy or a favorite author or podficcer that you want to sign up with, you can do that, or you can sign up as an individual and the mods will match you with someone! You can work in any fandom or even do meta! You can expand the definition of podfic! You, yes you!

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And! cantarina and nickelmountain are hosting femslash podfic fest for International Day of Femslash, moved this year from podfic_project over to audiofemme! Make some f/f podfic to share with the world on July 14th. "We especially encourage fanworks about women with disabilities, women of colour, asexual women, transwomen, women over forty, and other under-represented groups. Let's get more kinky f/f podfic out there too!"



More Information

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I want my kink_bingo card so bad and I have to wait till Sunday for the new round to start man oh man oh man.

I stopped watching House about a year and a half ago, I think, but I did use to like the show a lot and I'm interested in watching the finale. Can anybody tell me whether it stands up okay on its own or how many episodes before the end they'd recommend watching? I'd go for three or four of them but probably not the whole season.

( links: finales discussions and podcasts )

Okay so it's April! Among other things this means:
-A new round of remopodmo to help us all record more podfic for amplificathon, podficbigbang, or whatever. I always get a ton done during remopodmo months. Thank you, cantarina!
-The official start of welovepodfic, the Podfic Feedback Challenge, including the week 1 mini-challenge, comment on an old favorite to tell the reader how much it's meant to you.
-Also there will probably be a new challenge at kink_bingo! (The mini-challenge post hasn't gone up yet but I'll probably edit this post to link to it when it does.)

Another thing that's happening that started in late March is the People with Disabilities (PWD) Being Awesome Commentwork Fest!, hosted by terajk. You can leave prompts or post fic or drawings or podfic or whatever there.

Hey, speaking of fanworks about people with disabilities, I want to make some! Maybe you can help me. Although I'm paying attention to the kink_bingo mini-challenges and doing my best to participate in those, the two big personal goals I've set for myself during this amnesty period are
-finish a blackout of my second bingo card (some images NSFW), and
-make a Characters With Disabilities bingo for the top row of that card.

I only have four squares left to fill for the blackout! One of them is a fic that I'm writing and am pretty sure I can finish. The other three are part of that top row and I don't know how I will fill them yet. Can you help me find stories that I could podfic, featuring characters with disabilities and the kinks vehicular, guns, and body alteration/injury?

( more about what I'm looking for )

If podficcing doesn't work out for all the squares maybe I will write something, so I would take fic prompts as well! Especially interesting to me would be prompts involving the ladies of Merlin.

For those of you who don't know me, my main fandom is Merlin and I'm also into Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, Community, and a bunch of other fandoms that are listed in my tags.

Thanks so much!

Hey, do you love podfic? So do I! Lots of people do, but not enough of that love makes its way back to the people who create podfic. There are lots of different reasons that contribute to this, but one of them is just habit. Like a lot of people, I sometimes listen when I'm away from the computer, have lots of feelings, and then don't make my way back to the reader's journal to share those feelings with them.

But the truth is, as dodificus reminded me the other day, it's not all that hard! It is the kind of habit that I'm capable of changing.

So next month I'll be helping dodificus out with welovepodfic, a podfic feedback challenge.

Challenge yourself to leave some kind of feedback for every podfic that you listen to during April and hopefully you'll be inspired by the mini challenges that pop up through the month to stretch your feedbacking skills even further.

If you already listen to a lot of podfics and comment on them all then you are in good competitive shape for our challenge. And if you listen some but don't always comment, then you have more to gain by participating. (If you don't like listening to podfic we still love you and hope you have a great April too!) Also there will be prizes!

First of all let's talk about some podfic things!

( podfic links, mostly Merlin podfic recs )

Here are a few fics I've enjoyed reading recently!

( Arthur/Merlin, Gwaine/Merlin, Arthur/Gwen )

And here are links to some other things!

-month_of_meta is a new comm encouraging people to post meta during March. I really enjoyed lunabee34's post Fannish Trajectories: Isolation, a Sense of Disconnection from Fandom, and How We Deal and saw a lot of parallels with my own experience, though she and I are in pretty different places now.

-eruthros made an epic picspam of famous people and animals (mostly dogs and cats) that is sure to brighten your day, evening, etc. There are more pictures of cute animals and other happy-making things in the comments to thingswithwings's post sick: send help.

-The March mini-challenge at kink_bingo is to try new things, ideally "A character/pairing I've never worked on before, from a fandom I've never worked on before, doing a kink I've never done in my fanworks before, in a medium (painting/fic/vidding/podfic/etc) I've never tried to do before." This idea makes me happy! I realized there are not a lot of fandoms that I like but have never podficced in, but my current plan is to write a song for a pairing I've never worked on in a fandom I've only made a couple podfics for (never written in), and a kink where I've so far only written a drabble. I think that should be a good challenge!

Podficcing!
The Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology is coming along very well! So far people have listed 65 different podfics in...MANY different fandoms they're working on or have finished in our spreadsheet. This is not quite as many as klb managed to gather on her own last year, so if this year's team of four mods doesn't match that we will feel pretty bad about ourselves. However, there seem to be quite a few people who are planning or hoping to make something this weekend but haven't put their information in the spreadsheet yet, so I am almost certain we will beat last year's anthology.

I've made four pieces in four different fandoms so far and will probably do one or two more this weekend. Short podfics are so much fun, such a nice accomplishment from starting and finishing something within an hour or so.

I've talked to a few people who are making their first podfic for this project! Are you interested in doing that? Remember, you could read one of your own drabbles or something by someone who's given blanket permission. This is a nice project to be part of because a lot of people are likely to download it, whereas if you put out a two-minute podfic on your own you don't normally get as many listeners.

So if you are interested in joining us drop a comment at the amplificathon post and get your podfics uploaded by Sunday night. I should be around a fair amount this weekend if anybody needs help figuring out the basics on GarageBand, and other people are around for handholding on Audacity.

Fanlore!
Meanwhile, some of us will be making a Nimueh page at Fanlore this weekend to document how fandom has dealt with her character. I used to edit at Fanlore and I stopped because the lack of interaction made me lonely and anxious. HOWEVER, a small group of folks getting together for a concentrated effort can make a lot of improvements there and also be a lot fun. If you aren't into Fanlore or wiki editing but you have a link to (or even a vague recollection of) a good post about Nimueh or a vid you saw once, stop by the chatroom and say hello, drop a comment on the camelot_fleet post or add some a line to the google doc, and we will do the formatting and stuff for you.

Last weekend a few people put together a Percival page and this will probably be going on for a few more weeks. You can follow the project at the Fanlore challenge tag on camelot_fleet.

Recs!
I am in the middle of reading The Adventure of the Hopping Vampire by hradzka, a long, plotty fic starring Jenny and Vastra from Doctor Who (my icon on this Dreamwidth post). It has a nice light tough and a lovely Jenny POV, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

ETA: I re-listened to intransitive's reading of Give Me My Sin Again by viklikesfic the other day. Cate Blanchett/Miranda Otto D/s and leather fetish, an hour and 9 minutes, OMFG SO HOT. I was riding the bus and I was so turned on I thought I was going to combust. It was awesome