Sophinisba Solis

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!!

-Look you guys, themadlurker wrote me a Leverage ficlet! It has Hardison and Sophie and nerdiness! What more could you want?! "I Was an Alien Babe of the Week and All I Got Was This Avery Brooks T-Shirt" on Dreamwidth and on LJ. :D :D

-aiw_big_bang is a Big Bang for all (or at least most?) versions of Alice in Wonderland!

-femslash_land looks neat. I don't really, like, understand what land comms are, but people who join them seem to have a lot of fun, plus this one has femslash, so yay!

-I've been watching Buffy season 2! It's sort of a rewatch and sort of not. I started watching Buffy when the third or fourth season was airing and eventually caught most of the episodes in syndication but not quite all of them, and I've never watched the whole series in order, so I'm enjoying making my slow way through it now.

( I have different favorite characters now than I did when I was in college )

-I went and got a second kink_bingo card, even though I know I'm not going to get any more points, just 'cause I figure it's nice to have extra prompts, and I guess you can only request them until the 31st (and if you've finished a bingo already).

( kink-bingo card (with small sexy picture) and ideas )

Yuletide has moved to the Archive of Our Own this year and that's taking some adjustment but is mostly awesome. The thing I love most personally is that it's now possible for us authors to edit our own stories whenever we need, and that doesn't affect the anonymity or give the mods extra work. It also makes me happy to know that lots of people are helping out with technical stuff at the archive so not all the work is on astolat and elynross.

And it means that anyone with an AO3 account can upload Yuletide stories, even if they didn't sign up for the original challenge. If you're interested in participating and don't have an account, you can request one! You can look at Yuletide requests from people who don't have a full-length story posted for them yet to see if there's something you'd like to write, even if it's just a drabble. Once those are all filled everyone's requests will open up. (Um, I'm still not actually writing, but I'm excited about it in my own way.)

Another thing that's neat about the archive is that people can put whatever tags they want on their stories. It's possible to see the fandom tags for the challenge so some people are looking at that to try to figure out which of their requests got written. I'm not doing that because I want to be surprised, but I have been looking at some of the other tags, including the Character of Color one where you can see a ton of new Mystery Works uploaded in the last few days.

I have a question for Leverage fans, since there will probably be a bunch of Leverage fics for Yuletide. I like Leverage pretty well but I've only seen the first season and the first six episodes of the second. But most of the episodes are pretty, you know, episodic, so I'd be fine reading fics without having seen the end, right? Or does something big and dramatic happen at the end of season two that will be ruined for me if I find out the wrong way? Is there an episode or two I should try to watch before I read fics, so that things will make sense, and that will be okay to watch without having seen all the other episodes?