For your aural pleasure

Hi Everyone! We're moving into the final stretch of Pod-Together 2020 and we hope everyone has been having a wonderful time! A few announcements:

Pod-Together BIPOC Character Love Subcollection

We've created a subcollection on AO3 for Pod-Together projects featuring BIPOC characters!

This subcollection comes from continued discussions within the Pod_Together Discord, including podficcers of color, and among the mods about how to boost and celebrate works about BIPOC characters and encourage more of them within the bounds of our challenge. We know that the larger context of fandom is that stories about BIPOC characters often get overlooked in favor of stories about white characters. In affirming our commitment to stories about characters of color, our hope is that the existence of this subcollection gives participants support in thinking intentionally about BIPOC representation within their stories, gives BIPOC readers and listeners greater access to stories with characters that look like them, and allows the stories that do have this representation to have an extra spotlight and receive extra love and attention!

This new subcollection is located here.

The subcollection is opt-in, so if you feel that your project belongs, go ahead and add your work! Here are some guidelines to help you decide:
- Includes at least one BIPOC major character
- Was created with the characters' cultural identities in mind

Pod-Together projects from this year AND from all previous years are welcome and encouraged to join the collection.

To add a previously posted work to the collection:
1. Go to your work and choose "Edit"
2. Scroll down to the "Associations" section
3. Type Pod-Together BIPOC Representation into the "Post to Collections/Challenges" box.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click "Post"

(Any projects added to the BIPOC Character Love subcollection still remain in the subcollection for the year of Pod-Together it was created in. This subcollection is an additional location to find your work, not moving your project from one place to another.)


Reminder of Important Dates

- The podfic deadline is this Sunday, August 23rd. There is no timezone cut-off, so as long as it's still the 23rd anywhere in the world, you're all-set!

- If you need an extension, you must also request that extension by the 23rd. For more information on extensions, see the rules post (it's the third item down in "Basic Rules")

- After that, it's one of the most exciting parts of Pod-Together: Posting! The posting schedule will go up by Tuesday the 25th, and your projects will be revealed from August 27th through September 5th, with about 5 projects posted each day.

- Party Favors are due September 5th and will all be revealed on September 6th. For more info on Party Favors, check out the FAQ. Party Favors are submitted the same way as regular projects by adding them to the 2020 Collection (see the posting instructions)


P.S. The inaugural Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology is open and is encouraging of Pod-Together style projects. So if you loved the collaboration of Pod-Together, maybe grab a partner and create something for the anthology!

After reading discussions over the past week about racism in fandom and the harm in letting racist fanworks go unmoderated, we have workshopped some rules to reduce racist content in pod-together.

These rules will serve as a guidepost for participants as they create their collaborations, and may also motivate them to reach out to a beta reader or sensitivity reader if they are unsure whether their work falls within the rules. During the challenge, we will help signal boost any searches for beta readers or sensitivity readers.

Our plan is that once pod-together projects are revealed, we will have a system where anyone can anonymously report to us a work that they believe is in violation of one of these rules. If we receive a report about a work being in violation, we will follow up as described in rule 3.

This is the first year we have included content moderation in pod-together and we are open to continued feedback about the wording of these rules and about our process for enforcing them. If you have any concerns or suggestions, please reach out to us at pod.together@gmail.com.

2020 Content Rules:


1. Writing with Color - A tumblr focused on writing and resources centered around racial diversity. Contains Q&A-style advice, writing guides, etc.

2. White Light, Black Magic: Racism in Esoteric Thought (pdf) - Resource about the racist history of the terms black or dark and white or light when describing magic. Relevant quote: "Wherever we find ourselves using the term "white" to mean positive, socially acceptable and sacred, and black as undesirable, ugly and evil, this is a flag to re-examine our thinking and recast our terminology." This is very long, so you may or may not read it all, but check out at least the first page and the section called "Inclusive Esoteric Language" that starts on page 48.

3. Writing the Other - A small collection of resources for creating inclusive fiction. The site includes resources for many identities and has a collection specifically for writing characters of different races and ethnicities.

4. Marvel Fans 4 BLM Resource Page - Marvel Fans 4 BLM is a fanworks auction in support of Black Lives Matter causes. This page is their curated collection of resources, including links to information specifically focused on writing Black characters.

5. Writing the Margins from the Center and Other Moral Geometries - An article by writer Amal El-Mohtar about how to approach writing marginalized characters. This is less of a practical guide than some of the other linked resources, and more of a jumping off point for introspective thinking.

6. The E-Racing of The Hunger Games: Race & Cultures in Fiction - An article by Hiromi Goto on racial vagueness in The Hunger Games, and methods to indicate race in fiction besides simply descriptions of skin color.

Welcome to pod_together, a challenge where writers and podficcers create together—the writer writing something specifically to be podficced, and the podficcer recording it.

Please take a moment to check out the Rules/FAQs behind the cuts.

( Basic Rules )

( Timeline )

( Major changes from previous years of this challenge )

Frequently Asked Questions

( What’s the difference between match maker sign-ups and group sign-ups? )

( Will all groups have just one writer and one podficcer? )

( What about filk? )

( What about translations? )

( What about adding music? )

( I want to participate, but I've got a busy summer ahead and I'm not sure I can commit or, “What's a Party Favor?” )

( What's the modding style like? )

( I’ve gotten my assignment, now what? or, “What is icebreaker week?“ )

( What if I need to drop out? )

( What should I do if a deadline is approaching and I don’t think I’ll be ready? )

( How do groups hand in their finished assignments? )

( What is the Early Podfic Submission Deadline? )

( When will my group's story be posted? )

( What does a work written specifically to be podficced look like? )

( I am new to this sort of collaboration. How exactly will it go? )

pod_together is multi-platform! You can now follow us on twitter (pod_together) and tumblr (pod-together).

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask here or email us at pod.together at gmail dot com.