Sophinisba Solis

Hi Dreamwidth, I hope you had a nice New Year's Eve and are having a good first day of the year, and for that matter last three months since that's how long it's been since I updated um.

Anyway, I went to check last night and it looks like I did well with the fannish resolutions I'd made for each of the last few years:

Make ten Dreamwidth posts, of which

• five are not fanworks posts, and
• five are not in January or December, and

Make ten fanworks, of which

• one is a fic, and
• one is a podfic of more than an hour

I was doing pretty well at posting regularly this summer and then my job got busy but also SO BORING, I didn't feel like I had time to update or anything interesting to say.

Looking at my AO3 works page, I posted about 29 fanworks, including four MCU ficlets and one podfic that was a little over an hour. The other 24 were short podfics, and in addition there a bunch of other podfics to which I contributed some voice parts.

The fests and exchanges I participated in were Voiceteam Mystery Box in December/January, Voiceteam classic in May, Summer Podfic Swap June-August, Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology in September, Remix Revival September/October, and Voiceteam Mystery Box currently in progress. I also signed up for MCU Kink Bingo in... the summer maybe? but then didn't make anything for it.

I'm setting the same goals for 2022 and I'm confident I can make them. The slightly challenging parts are always the fic and the longer podfic, but have specific plans to finish and post a fic later this week, and to start recording a podfic that will probably come out to around six hours. I intend to participate in whatever future rounds of Voiceteam the mods are generous enough to host, and maybe some other podfic fests, but no writing exchanges because they're too stressful.

Also for 2021 I set the goal of answering all new AO3 comments as I received them, and I didn't get anywhere close. This is a very nice aspiration but I'm not setting it up as a goal this year.

I participated in voiceteam Mystery Box, which started on Dec. 26thish and ended a couple hours ago. I rejoined Team Red Out Loud, and we won! This was pretty awesome, as in May, with lots of collaboration both on multivoice podfics and on all kinds of other things. As in May, I got stressed out at times but also loved being on a team with other people who were focused on winning. These last two weeks I realized I was especially stressed out by challenges that involved making things other than podfic, so, idk, it was good that other people were up for it. ngl I really liked winning, even though I didn't contribute to the tiebreaker challenge we did the last few days.

Here are the podfics I made for the challenge, many of them in collaboration with teammates. They are all rated General Audiences or Teen and are less than 20 minutes. As in May/June, I'm not up for explaining and coding everybody else's names but you can see them on the AO3.
-she's waiting for me (just across the bar), MCU: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
-The Fear of Not Trying, MCU: Peter & Tony, written by a teammate for this challenge, with cover art by a teammate
-Tolls Paid, Elementary: Joan/Sherlock
-your quiet afternoon crush , MCU: Peter/MJ, with voices by several teammates and cover art by a rival
-Is that a cat in your pocket?, MCU: Tony & Rhodey, with another voice and cover art by teammates
-the winding path, MCU: Sam/Steve
-The Prompt Machine: IronFalcon podfics b, MCU: Tony/Sam, a set of three podficlets with covers by a teammate and two rivals, and with audio editing on one of them by a rival!

Also for Voiceteam, I wrote a Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau ficlet, Follow Your Star, that a teammate recorded.

I also contributed voice parts to these other short podfics that my teammates organized!
-'My Drunk Kitchen' is Not a DIY Show, Texts from Last Night: original female characters
-Conversations with Carpenter, Alice (Syfy): Carpenter & various
-lightheaded, The Untamed: Yanli/Wen Qing (This one's super great!)
-An Invitation, Wonder Woman 1984: Diana/Barbara
-Where in the World is "Where in the World"?, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego/Sesame Street: Elmo-centric
-The Snowstorm Variations, Leverage: Eliot/Parker/Hardison

Meanwhile, the Informal Twitter Podfic Exchange was exchanged and revealed! I decided not to participate in the exchange this year but I did make an extra treat:
-Hair is Everything , MCU: Tony & Natasha, 31 minutes.

And I tried to put a 2020 podfic year in review post in here but it is too much! I will try again soon. <3

I mentioned in a post from two weeks ago that I hadn't made podfic in a few months. However, I did have a podfic that I'd made in May go public last week, hooray!

Back at the end of the Voiceteam challenge in May my team started a game of Podfic Broken Telephone, which is where one person records a podfic and passes it on to one other person, who records a podfic inspired by the first one, then passes it on to a third person and so on. My teammate blackglass recorded a soft dad feelings Mandalorian podfic and then I recorded a soft dad feelings Tony Stark podfic and then there were some different family feelings then it veered around to courting and marriage, passing through six different fandoms! There were some delays along the way but we did wrap it up and then make everything public last week and then I forward-dated mine in hopes people would see it, though really it doesn't make much difference because who listens to podfic. But anyway here is the collection:
-WhispeRED Out Loud: A Podfic Broken Telephone Challenge
-and my contribution Improvement, written by laireshi, Tony & Morgan, 9 minutes

That was a nice bit of Voiceteam nostalgia, though I hadn't really seen that it was happening because I hadn't been on Discord.

Then a couple hours ago the Voieceteam mods announced that they would run a shorter challenge around the end of the year, and you could sign up as a group or sign up individually and have the mods assign you. Since then thirteen people have signed up: one mod, five people signing up as individuals, and SEVEN MEMBERS OF TEAM RED OUT LOUD. I love us, yay!

Anyway, you should consider signing up, as voiceteam is very newbie friendly and a nice way of meeting new people and trying new things.

Meanwhile I have asked for and been granted permission to record a few things in the last two weeks. Tonight I started recording one of them and to be honest it's been rough going. Just hard to get sentences out! And some noises in my house and my neighborhood. But still fun to be giving it a try again, and I'm really looking forward to Voiceteam Mystery Box.

While the world has continued to be awful, voiceteam has continued to be great. The competition wrapped up yesterday (my team won omg!) and will be back next year.

In the third week of May we made a lot of podfics for very small fandoms, and in the fourth week we made some multivoice stuff but mostly made plans! So I hope to have some bigger things in bigger fandoms to post soon. Also I will get to keep hanging out with other Voiceteam folks.

Podfics I Have Made since May 17th
-Just to Keep It, a six-minute podfic of a story I wrote for the book and movie The Hours back at Yuletide 2008. Editing this made me cry.

-Drabble Series, two drabbles for the series Noah's Arc, 2 minutes.

-The Dance of the Cranes, a six-minute podfic of an old Northern Exposure fic by our own trascendenza. Recorded outside!

-The Circle Game, an 11-minute podfic of another old Yuletide fic, for the 2008 movie Saved!

-Stumbling Towards Better, a 17-minute multivoice podfic for the Netflix series Russian Doll, narrated by me and featuring appearances by most of Team Red.

Don't Need No Credit Card To Ride This Train, a 7-minute multivoice Harry Potter podfic in which I don't do any speaking but which took me hours to edit so I'm claiming it as mine.

Multivoice Podfics in Which I Have Small Parts
-Special Providence, a five-minute podfic for the book Tam Lin.

-Wine and Cheese, a 20-minute Red vs. Blue podfic.

-The Little Red Yoshi, a 12-minute podfic for the video game Yoshi's Story, in which I play Birdo. (I love this one, gosh.)

-An Opening for a Sidekick, a nine-minute Disney princesses podfic.

-Whole New Worlds, another nine-minute Disney princesses podfic. Actually I have a bigger part in this one, I'm the narrator, but blackglass organized it and did the editing.

-Blanket Gift Policy, a delightful four-minute MCU Christmas podfic.

-A Study in the Soothing of Magical Hockey Babies, Conducted by Jacob Trouba, a ten-minute Hockey RPF podfic.

Another big podfic event coming up is the pod_together challenge, where writers and podficcers collaborate to make something new! Signups are open at the comm now through Saturday, June 6th.

I've been having such a great time participating in voiceteam, which started on May 1st (well April 30th really). This is a little bit similar to summerpornathon, the Merlin writing challenge I used to do, in that players are sorted into a bunch of different teams that compete for points each week. I guess more people are familiar with these kinds of challenge as "land comms". Then I was going to have a sentence about the ways voiceteam is different from pthon but ... there are too many differences.

Anyway, this is a podfic-centered comm and every week has a theme but there are always lots of different ways of participating, so it's possible to get the maximum number of points for the week just by, say, commenting on others' podfics, or doing other kinds of creative work. There are also a lot of rewards for collaboration so it's been a great chance to interact with people. We are in Discord all the time. There are not a lot of rewards for making longer works and they take a lot more time, so most of us haven't been doing that. OTOH some people, including some members of my team, have been super ambitious and organized incredible projects even when they've already maxed out on points for the week.

Oh I should say another reason I'm enjoying it is that my team, the Red team, has been winning. I don't think my team ever won at summerpornathon! Team Gluttony used to win but then once I got on it we didn't. :D

As happens every time I make podfic, I marvel at how much easier and less stressful that is when authors have posted blanket permission to podfic on their AO3 profiles. There are a lot of tight deadlines in this challenge and we're often looking for very specific things. We find lots of things that would make great podfics but we don't know if we'll have time to hear back from the author and get the thing done. Thank you so much, friends and strangers who have posted BP!!!

Some of the stuff I've made is only posted at the Voiceteam Discord server (idk if that's what you call it lol) but here are the things that have been posted to the AO3 so far! I'm ... just going to refer to everyone as my teammates because this is already a lot of coding and I can't handle cross-platform usernames this morning. But you can see their names at the AO3!

Podfics I Have Made in the Last Two-and-a-Half Weeks
- Hearth and Home, a 9-minute Leverage podfic of a story written by my old Team Gluttony teammate lady_ragnell. Three of us from Team Red podficced the same story in week one! That's called repodding or in this case simulpodding and not something I'm usually into but it was for points this time so yay!

- Friendship Bracelet, a 5-minute Babysitters Club podfic. Two of us recorded this!

- a single heartbeat between your two, an 18-minute Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian podfic for our team's week-one anthology around the theme of secrets.

- so shake apart, a 13 minute explicit MCU (Steve/Bucky/Natasha) multivoice podfic also featuring two of my teammates.

- A Very Large Location of Something, an 8-minute gen podfic centered on Maria from The Sound of Music (in week 2 you could get more points for podfic about musicals).

- Valencia Shouldn't Get in a Car with Rebecca!, a 14-minute Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Valencia/Heather podfic.

- Pretty in Mink, a five-minute explicit Princess and the Frog podfic of a story by our own Rubynye.

- gettin' bi (reprise), a five-minute Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Heather/Rebecca multivoice podfic in which I play Heather. My teammates have more lines than I do in this but I'm calling it mine because I organized and edited it. Editing multivoice podfics is harder than you might think, considering how often people do it! They are super fun to listen to though.

- If It's Sewing, She Sews, a 22-minute gen podfic centered on Maria from West Side Story. (This might be my fave of the solo podfics I've made so far this month.)

- Life Doesn't Discriminate, a 21-minute Star Wars gen podfic about Leia after the end of The Last Jedi.

- Reaping the Whirlwind, a seven-minute Joel/Marilyn Northern Exposure podfic and my first experience recording and editing on my phone.

- under your boot-soles, a seven-minute gen podfic about young Adelaide from the movie Us.

Multivoice Podfics in Which I Have Small Parts
- 5 Times Parker Slept in Matt's Bed, +1 Time Matt Slept in Hers, a 23-minute Leverage/Daredevil crossover multivoice podfic. I play Foggy!

- let us sport us while we may, a 15-minute multivoice podfic of the first chapter of a Brooklyn Nine-Nine high school AU. I play Charles!

Also We Made Filks OMG
- My teammates wrote and performed a filk about podficcing based on a song from the musical Bonnie and Clyde, and I did the editing! How 'Bout a Pod?

- My teammate took an old Tumblr post that talks about reading fic with lyrics inspired by "Let It Be" and made it into an awesome filk with lots of people singing: AO3.

- The same teammate organized and edited a Harry Potter filk based on the song "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago, with nine different voices: Spell Block Tango.

- AND she organized and edited a Mandalorian filk based on the song "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast with an incredible 23 different voices, many of them from different voiceteam teams: The Mando and the Kid.

- I sang a filk about shipping written by one of my teammates, based on the song "Kiss the Girl" from The Little Mermaid: Kiss the Girl.

FRIENDS, the Us podfic I posted last night is my 500th work on the AO3!!!!! Also last month was my 10-year anniversary of starting to post podfic, and my 15-year anniversary of starting to write fic and interact with people on LJ. I've known some of you for 15 years and I'm so grateful for you!!