Voiceteam 2024 review

13 June 2024 12:46 pm
jocundasykes: (Default)
 

This year, I was put into Team Purple Puffapods, a team where all of us liked HP, which was fab. I love the HP positive energy. It can get me down when people aren’t encouraging of my projects, which are invariably HP.

For the 3 rounds we came joint first, and I think we were the only team do to all 3 dares (which is a bit like playing on hard mode?) we then came 3rd in the tiebreaker. For the tiebreaker, we tried to podfic all 100 double drabbles from the HP Saffics Summer Swap and this was great fun to all come together.

I’m reiterating the following for my own records as my memory is so bad. I also wanted to DM some past teammates for help and this list woulda helped me a lot!:

  •  VT20 was the first game and it passed me by. I heard about it on Discord but didn’t really understand what it was. I was still finding my feet, writing 40k for Snarry a Thon in March/April, and not in the right headspace to work on a team
  •  My first game was MB20. I was on Team Phone with AvidBkWrm, d4td, eafay, justaphage, Mist and rhythmia. Which was confusing because there was another Team Phone in a different year. This is why I totally forgot I was on Team Phone. I didn’t push myself or involve myself in projects. I was a bit overwhelmed, and didn’t really understand multifandom spaces/events (I don’t wanna get points for podding a fandom I’m not in! I want Snape-related points!), had no idea how to do a multivoice, what a filk was, and didn’t understand a lot of in-jokes/references to past games, and felt everyone knew each other. I’m glad I easedinto Voiceteam though because each time I come out my shell a bit more. I made loads of memes and posted 1 podfic. Ouch!
  • My 2nd was VT21 Once Upon a Lime with Akaihyou, Garbage, AvidBkWrm, Eafay, Rindle, Penndragon, Mist, Nrandom, cookiemom. This was the game with Superchallenge. I had a lot more fun. I posted 11 podfics. Some were long.
  • MB21 I was on Team Rock with pea, eafay, sisi, Lunatique, Cass Caelis ,Rindle, jellyfishgalaxies. I posted 10 podfics
  • VT22 I was with the Dandy Lions – Ravin, GD, pea, Blue, Parry, twtd, sophinisba, aethel, Rhi. 8 podfics! SWAK was 5 hrs, others were 2 hours. So much fun
  • MB22 I was on Cosmos with GD, kbirb, Kitt, perry and Vex. 11 podfics!
  • VT23 sadly forgot to sign up and couldn’t join late ☹ I posted a 2 hour podfic in May 2023. I think I was also working on audiobooks during this time
  •  MB23 Team Cookies with sisi, Ket, boppinrobin, CrimsonMoonn, pea, NotBatman, Yuurei, Chantress, Lena, Aether, DOA, and Garbage. 4 podfics. I’m including Fallen Marigolds, a vid that took me ages, and a nearly 7 hr pod.
  • VT24 Team Purple Puffapods with petrodobreva, sweatersinthesummer, peasina, pinklotus9, Rindle, Cailynwrites, thedramionearchives, my_lost_and_found, SerenaEW, Nymphie_Wolf, and Kittona. 32 pods this time, 25 were double drabbles. I also made significant progress on some WIPs thanks again to Rindle.

I was back with Rindle (Lime and Rock), pea (Rock, Dandy Lion and Cookies), and Kitt (Cosmos!)

I thought it was cool that the mods put me back with people I’d been on a team with before, but when listing the games I’ve played so far, I think it would be an achievement for the mods to put us on teams with all new people!

My significant projects or progress includes…:

  • The trailer for For Auld Lang Syne. Can’t believe I tried vidding. I was glad to cross ‘make a trailer’ off my list!
  • Several hours of progress for Crammer School. Thank u Rindle for your help
  •  I started love is touching souls AND Rapture
  • I wrote most of In Blood and Bloom, we went from 0 to a 5k podfic in 3 days I think? A Hogwarts era soulmate Drarry
  •  I translated a medieval AU Snarry into English. I must get round to posting this

 

For Chip In, I asked 5 authors of fics I admire for a podfic blanket permission statement, which is a bit out of my comfort zone, and 3 said yes! (oh shit) soooo I have updated my Potential Pod list with…:
  • Cayce_Morris’s Coffeehouse Jazz
  • Helenish’s A Soft Spot for Lots Causes
  • Suitesamba’s With Eyes Wide Open

 

 

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A new hobby

10 March 2024 01:40 pm
jocundasykes: (Default)
Hi guys. 

Since my SnowflakeChallenge post, I've...:
  • Finished and posted by Choose Your Own Adventure. It was great to tick it off the list! 
  • Put the podfic on hold as I've decided to save it for summer. It's Drarry, inexplicit, and not dark, so is a great contender for Voiceteam
  • Spent about 40 hours on the podfic cover (a probable underestimation)
  • Started a new hobby! Which is digital art.
  • Read 60% of all AO3 HP author profiles
I've always been crap at art. No matter how hard I tried, I'd get a C, and everything I did was a frustrating process and looked dreadful. I bought a £20 graphics tablet/pen thing off Ebay to give typography a try, thinking I could do some cool handdrawn fonts for my podfic covers, because lately I've been getting into handwriting/cursive practise and I'm not too bad at it. Previously, I'd scanned stuff in, but my scanner is terrible.

A lot of the things that sucked about art  are negated by the magic pen, because instead of using a rubber and still being able to see the faint crappy line, you can permanently erase things! not to mention, if you've drawn the cat's legs too long, you can squish them down.

It's more sociable as well because my cat can chill on my lap whilst I use the pen on the arm of the sofa.

The tent took me about 5 hours, and I somehow deleted it, so that's 10 hours of my life I won't get back. I literally only just had the idea that this could be a 'welcome to a summer fete' type of sign.

This is where I started, listening to audiobooks before going to bed, and deciding who to gift it to if I make it:


where I ended up a week later:

And this is where I am at, today. I had the distressing realisation last night that covers must be square. So everything's a lot more squished than planned.
 

I don't like the cassette where it is, but I spent too long on it to delete it. I appreciate that you should plan your ideas before polishing the different components - no different to making sure your fic makes sense before spending ages on little sections - but sometimes my sketch looks so shit I assume the idea won't work. Perhaps once you know your own skills, this becomes less of an issue.

I've also been busy reviewing all Harry Potter AO3 authors to look for podfic permission statements. Last January, I (somehow) followed some instructions online to use a script to get all AO3 authors with at least 1 public HP work. I tried to repeat it, for all new HP authors, but I have zero clue how I got the script to work last time. I don't know WHAT I was thinking, not writing down every step!

On the flip side, thousands of people have archive-locked their works as a response to AI scraping. So my old list is probably decent. There are 57,168 authors not already on fpslist.org, and about 1 in every 25 links are dead. I wonder what portion of these dead links are people changing their pseud as often as their contact lenses.

My preliminary results:
  • 103 blanket permission statements! Excellent! 
  • Sadly that is 0.3%.. ouch. Every little helps
  • 34083 profiles checked! 
  • which is 60% of my list! This felt like an Everest task, but is more manageable than I thought
  • 1 person advertising for a flatmate about a decade ago, giving away far too many identifying details
  • Several people who have had their profiles edited postmortem :(
  • Thankfully a tiny number of "never podfic my stuff and leave me alone" statements
  • A few dozen very unusual pronouns listed, the most memorable of which is 'wormself'
  • A distressing few hundred people selling merch, and just straight up asking for money. I wonder if they get much from doing this?
  • Many "What's the point, nobody reads"
  • Several translators who say they take suggestions but leave no contact details
  • 1 person who judges those who put pineapple on pizza. This is despite a YouGov poll stating that more than half of pizza loving Brits like pineapple on pizza. Funnily enough I was discussing this last night with my husband, because they removed this topping from Pizza Express, 2 weeks after he discovered it, and went back to order the same pizza again. A dreadful experience.

So... questions for you.
  1. Look at the 'S' in 'Delinquents'. Did you draw this 'special S' in primary school all over your schoolbooks? My husband doesn't recognise it! !! and roughly how long ago was this, and in what country?
  2. Have you started any new hobbies or upgraded any skills lately?
  • Current Music: podfic!
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Snowflake Challenge 8! My projects

16 January 2024 07:08 pm
jocundasykes: (Default)

 

I’m working on a bunch of things, some not very actively…!

  • I’m translating Glass Heart. I’ve done a LOT, but this is a huge fic. English has about a third more words per sentence than Russian so a 60k is in actual fact a 90k. I half regret posting it as a WIP, but it is motivating me to continue.
  • I have just started a repod of Hermione’s Hogwarts Crammer. Like Can’t Take the Sky, I am enjoying every minute, but unlike Can’t Take the Sky, I am laughing every couple of minutes. I’m trying to go with a mix of book!canon and film!canon accents. It’s very, very weird for me to be doing Evanna’s voice for Luna. SO WEIRD. If you don’t know why and want to, DM me. If you are Irish and like Drarry podfics, please please proof listen this for me
  • Faelyee and I are plotting a school era Snarry and I want to get back to this. It’s gonna be amazing
  • Then there’s my time travel Snarry trilogy, some parts of it are completely plotted. I know when I properly start writing this, I’ll want to focus on this and only this (so why did I start that podfic??) because I have subscribers for Glass Heart, and I should really do one project at a time. I still have a lot of research to do on 1977 vs 1999 slang.
  • I just checked my planning document for my Choose Your Own Adventure, Draco’s Splendid Decisions, and shockingly I have actually written all of it in 2021, 50k, haven’t touched it since, and half of it is proof read. Shocker! *Head desk*

 

Here is the summary! I'm proud of it!:

 

Stuck in the doldrums of a rubbish summer holiday, you are invited to return to Hogwarts for eighth year. Should you go, and endure another round of academia? Dive into the mundane world of work? Or escape it all with an international getaway?
 

You’re a free man. The ending depends on you.



 

Follow this multiple choice Choose Your Own Adventure game to see where life leads you.

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Voiceteam Mystery Box 2023 roundup

11 January 2024 09:36 pm
jocundasykes: (Default)

In early January, I participated in Voiceteam Mystery Box in Team Cookies. We came 3rd! I shared a team with PolynomialPandemic, Aether, Chantress, Notbatman, Yuurei, horchata, peasina, sisi_rambles, aliteralgarbageheap, CrimsonMoonn, and LenaLawlipop.

For the Finish Line challenge, I finished my podfic Endgame, and compiled the mp3s into an audiobook file for mp3. For about a year I had most chapters embedded as a stream into the fic ao3 post itself. I’m so glad to have finished it up! My stumbling block was an awful ”Error Your computer disk is unwriteable”, where I couldn’t copy and paste the audio or save. I had a bunch of files with ”USE” ”USE THIS IS THE ONE” and I was too scared to delete anything in case my files corrupted. UGH

I slightly reduced my to-pod list by doing:

  • Love’s Curse, written by Dracofiend. This is almost a sister fic to my pod Sine Qua Non, but reversed, and remaining in Harry’s POV. I recall discovering it by accident on Livejournal and being SO HAPPY! thankfully Dracofiend has since crossposted it to AO3. I hope more people will now discover it.
  • Speaking of underrated, I also podficced Can’t Take the Sky by Cluegirl. Weirdly it has 297 Kudos. WHY? I discovered it via an ancient rec list, several years ago. Since then I have seen a bunch of people rec it via Reddit, so it’s on people’s radars. WHY SO FEW KUDOS, PEOPLE. Cluegirl also has blanket permission! yay! I podficced this for the Present challenge. Occasionally on my to-pod list, I write potential giftee names. For instance, if I know they’d love it. In this column, for some reason, I wrote ”Gift for Paraka?” For those of you who don’t know Paraka, she has been around a long time in the podfic corner of fanspace, and she offers (or offered) podfic hosting via her website, so if you listen to a variety of podficcers you must have seen a lot of URLs containing her username. I must have stumbled across her requesting a Cluegirl Snarry pod, or THIS fic, in a gift exchange website, or potentially on a LJ comm like HP Podfic Fest, at a time when I was scouring it for authors who had forgotten to add their name to fplslist.org. Anyway this fic is dark, (yet GREAT! everyone should listen!) and I found out near the end that dear Scarlet1989 aka emeraldlove died, so.... probably a good pod to do after the shitty news. She was super supportive of my pods.
  • 18 months ago I asked for permission to podvid Fallen Marigolds. Luendland kindly assented and then I felt bad for 18 months. I had no idea where to start. Thankfully, Voiceteam had a challenge, The One That Got Away, where you could do a challenge from previous years that you didn’t do at the time. So I did PODVID, for a juicy 75 points, and, using Powerpoint(??), somehow managed to cobble it together. Honestly I'm still kinda shocked that it worked. Unfortunately the artwork is done in such a way that I couldn’t easily crop it, to fit the proportions of a landscape video, so I had to do some panning down, which was, errrr, interesting. That’s why I couldn’t use video editing software since they all wanted to zoom in and pan at the same time, instead of being zoomed in, and panning. Nightmare. I had to get the exact milliseconds from the audio track, and display the slide for the exact amount of time, and get the panning to that same amount too. I’ll say it again. NIGHTMARE! I’m really proud I did it, though. The comic is super. And the artwork for this one is splendid.


Those were all my HP fanworks. Not bad for 5 days of challenges!

I did a couple of other projects:

  • I'm proud of this one... within the space of 30 mins I read lyrics, heard a youtube video, and somehow produced a filk! Definitely a record for me. Written by my teammate Aether, she would get points for writing the words, so I managed to squeeze this in before the deadline. Tamlin is a Feyre/Tamlin filk.
  • Not a fanwork, but I directed Pea, who read the beginning of my fic In the Web. It was loads of fun, a highlight for me. I think I'm going to add more interiority to this fic. I like it, but it's lacking something
  • I was an outraged voice in Gummy Cooks Ramen. The editing in this is masterful
  • Somehow I ended up as Jason from the Good Place, of which his Floridian accent was an interesting test.
  • I read some poetry in the delightful Podfic: 'L'après-midi de Chapman' by houndsoflove podded by peasina.
  • And lastly, I was Tom Barnaby in A Matter of Fête, a Midsomer Murders fanwork.


Somehow I didn't end up making 50 memes as usual. It was a great way to spend a week off from work, a much-needed break.


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