Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology X Planning

[klb]

Hooray, we've made it to the TENTH year of Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology! As before, we'll be collecting short lady-centric podfics by different readers in different fandoms to release as an anthology and as a collection of individual files.

This year's submission deadline is February 9th, and we will post on February 29th.

In honor of our ten year milestone, the theme for this year's anthology is milestones. It's optional—all podfics are welcome as long as they follow the rules laid out in the Submission Guidelines—but feel free to let it inspire you if you'd like.

If you are not familiar with this project, you can see the previous nine anthologies here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

To Podficcers: Interested in participating? We'd love to have you. This should be a low-stress project, even for people who are new to podficcing, due to the word-count: 1500 words or less (with many being as short as 1-2 minutes). If you'd like to record something for this anthology, please fill out this quick google form and we'll send you the link to the spreadsheet where we'll be keeping track of all the podfics.

Here are some good places for finding short fics about female characters:
-The Women Being Awesome, Female Characters, POV Female Character, and Female Relationships tags at the AO3, limited to word counts of 1500 or less.
-The Misses Clause Challenge from Yuletide
-Femslash Minis
-Awesome Ladies Ficathon (original LJ ficathon deleted, but these works crossposted to AO3 remain)
-Real Women Fest
-Female Character Trope Fest
-The Bechdel Test Comment Ficathon
-The Bechdel Test Comment Ficathon II
-I am the Plot, Babe: A Villainess Ficathon
-Where No Woman: Un-erasing the women of Star Trek
-Femslash Kinkmeme
-The Femslash February Collection

Since this project has a relatively quick turnaround time, you may want to refer to this database of authors who have posted blanket permission statements.

To the Podcurious: A number of prolific podficcers have gotten their start by contributing to previous years of this anthology. If you have ever thought you might like to create podfic, this is a really great starting place. It's low pressure, you'll get a lot of listeners, you're contributing to a cool fanwork that celebrates our love for female characters, and it's not too intense of a spotlight, because your piece is in the company of many other voices.

To Everyone: Feel free to comment with links to other fests or specific works that you think would be a good fit for this anthology. Additionally, we are looking for beta listeners who can absolutely commit to at LEAST two hours of beta listening between February 11th and 18th. Please let us know if you'd be available and interested; we'd be very grateful!

To Authors: We've had some awesome authors get involved in the past, in pod_together style, to create short female-centric pieces for the anthology in collaboration with podficcers. If you’re an author who’s interested and is seeking podficcers to work with, feel free to comment below. Podficcers who would like this sort of collaboration, please reply directly to the authors.

Below you will find our rules and submission guidelines. If you have any additional questions, please let us know!

Basic Rules

• Each reader can make up to 5 podfics to include in the anthology (though an unlimited number may be included in the spreadsheet/AO3 collection), and each story should be no more than 1500 words.


• All stories should focus on characters who identify as women within the story.


• All fandoms, including rpf fandoms, are eligible.


• All podfics should be submitted in mp3 format.


• As long as it is still the day of the deadline anywhere on Earth, you are allowed to submit podfics.


• Effects are fine, but please do not use intro or outro music in the version of the podfic you submit for the Anthology (just for the sake of time—it's usually hours long, so we'd like to keep each podficlet within it to the header info we requested, the words of the story, and "the end" in order to not expand the time further. If you'd like to add in music to the version that you crosspost or that goes into the excel spreadsheet of individual podficlets, that's totally fine!


• Important note: Please make sure you read and follow the Submission Guidelines. It helps everything flow together much better, and it makes the mods' jobs so much easier!

Submission Guidelines
For the sake of consistency within the anthology, we'd like to ask that everyone follow these guidelines for eligible fics and the metadata you include in the podfic:

-All recordings should begin and end with two seconds of silence.
-Each reading should begin, "[Title], written by [author], read by [reader]. Fandom: [Fandom]." We also suggest including appropriate warnings or content notes for common triggers such as sexual assault and major character death.
-Each reading should end with "The End".
-The metadata should follow this format:

Name: [Fandom] Title
Artist: readername (reader)
Album Artist: authorname (author)
Year: 2020
Album: Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology X
Comments: Text at: http://link
Genre: Podfic
(Note that usernames should be all-lowercase, with fandom and title given title capitalization.)

-To help make sure the volume across the anthology is consistent, we are providing a benchmark volume file to use for volume-matching. Please make sure that your own podfics are approximately matched to this volume. One way is to listen to the benchmark at a comfortable volume, then listen to your file, and if you don't find the transition jarring or feel a need to turn the volume up or down when the file switches, you're good! If you aren't sure how to adjust volume, in Audacity it's Amplify under the Effects menu, and in Garageband it's track volume (the blue line here). If you have more questions, feel free to ask in the comments! The benchmark volume file is here (right-click save to download).

Comments

[soc_puppet]

Author volunteer reporting in! You can check out my work on AO3 at socchan, or my fanfic tag to see if you like my style and would be interested in teaming up and/or recording something I've already written. My current primary fandom is Miraculous Ladybug, but if I've written for a fandom before, there's a high probability I'd write for it again.

I'm looking forward to this year's podfics!

author!

[eafay70]

Hi! I haven't written a lot of female characters in the past, but I want to try new fannish things this year, so this is one of them!
My AO3 is eafay70. I write hockey RPF and football/soccer RPF, but would be willing to try other fandoms.
And, for what it's worth, I myself am a podficcer! :)

Author interested in collaborating

[bluegeek]

I’d love to participate by offering writing services if anyone is interesting in a pod-together style collaboration.

Feel free to check out bluegeekem for samples of my work and fandoms I’ve written in before, or ask me here if you have other ideas and want to know if I might be able to accommodate.

Re: Author interested in collaborating

[cat_i_th_adage]

Hi, bluegeek. If you're interested in writing something fun and sweet for Rose Tico, preferably with mechanical stuff involved (or possibly riding an improbable beast), I would be glad to give it a go. I'm fine with any other characters or relationships you'd like to include, so long as they're female (and it doesn't go over a T rating).

Cheers.

Re: Author interested in collaborating

[bluegeek]

I'd love to!

I often work and collaborate using Google Docs, which can allow you to see what I'm toying with and add your thoughts, comment on sections, etc. If that is something you'd be interested in, please feel free to send me an email address (either here or in a direct message) to use to add you to the document.

Re: Author interested in collaborating

[cat_i_th_adage]

Oh, that sounds lovely.

EDITED: removed private info

[justaphage]

Just noticed the Album in the metadata format still says Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology IX rather than X. Almost slipped up going on autopilot copying the metadata over so just a heads up in case anyone else missed it.

[klb]

Thank you for catching that! Fixed it now.

[cat_i_th_adage]

Hey, does anyone have recs for qualifying fic about Michael Burnham (Star Trek Discovery) or Rose Tico (Star Wars)?

[klb]

For the former, you may have already done this search on AO3, but if not it might be helpful to look through?

For the latter, you could check with Bluegeekem, who commented on this post as well, if they are interested in writing anything, since I see on their AO3 they've written for Star Wars Sequels fandom before.

[cat_i_th_adage]

I'd been searching AO3 under wordcount, yes, but crosschecking for permissions takes a while and gets frustrating. Did find one I liked, though!

I might talk to Bluegeekem when that one's finished.

[desireearmfeldt]

First time participant here -- apologies if the answer to this question is written somewhere, I haven't been able to find it. I understand that submitting to the anthology works via posting a link into the spreadsheet, but what about posting on AO3/to the collection? Do we do that only after the anthology comes out? Thanks!

(Also, probably not relevant to my case, but if one can put more podfics in the spreadsheet than allowed in the anthology, how does that work? Just not supply links for any but the 5 going into the anthology?)

[klb]

Yes, please only post to the collection after the anthology comes out. We may make the collection early but have it as unrevealed, so that people can make the post at their leisure but not have it available until the anthology comes out.

If one puts more podfics in the spreadsheet than go in the anthology, they'd put links for everything (so it could be in the zipped collection and linked from the spreadsheet, but they'd just let the mods know, either on the spreadsheet or via email, which 5 to include in the anthology. I went ahead and made a "notes for mods (optional)" column on the spreadsheet just now, so that people could use it if they wanted for that purpose or for any other purpose they might wish!

[carboncopies]

Is fic centered on an Original Female Character (outsider POV of main characters in fandom) within the guidelines?

[klb]

Yes, that’s fine

[cat_i_th_adage]

Just uploaded and linked the last one! Feeling very accomplished... ^_^

[hopelesse]

Hopefully not too last-minute of a question, but -- what's the stance on genderswap? I have a couple of other stories I've already recorded, but there's a genderswap fic that I've got my eye on. In the story, the two main characters have been switched from cis men to cis women. Is that okay?

[klb]

Yep, that’s fine!

Beta

[godoflaundrybaskets]

I should be available for beta help when the call goes out!

Re: Beta

[klb]

Thank you!

Re: Beta

[klb]

I know this is later than the time window we'd hoped to be doing beta, but are you still available to do some?