*taps mic* Is this thing on?

[obstinatecondolement]

Shortly after reading my Yuletide gifts today (25/12/23 or 12/25/23 if you are that way inclined), feeling very warm and fuzzy about Yuletide and fandom in general, I went over to the yuletide comm and saw the Yuletide Reading Bingo 2023 post by dianafortyseven and eagerly nabbed a card for myself.

Soon after that, eagerly anticipating the start of voiceteam's Mystery Box event, which kicks off on the 27th, and still awash in the glow of fuzzy podfic fandom feelings from receiving my ITPE gifts the the night before in addition to my other warm and fuzzy Yuletide and more general fandom feelings, I thought that maybe it would be a fun challenge to try and pod all the fics on my bingo card post-author reveals, providing the authors had blanket permission statements or gave me permission to pod their work.

At first, I intended to just do this as a personal challenge, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like something that might have legs as something other people would be interested in, particularly once the name Tide Pod came to me.

The rules and format are currently under construction, as well as a potential list of prompts, in this document which anyone who is curious about participating is more than welcome to read and comment on, either on the GDoc itself (the link above has commenting privileges enabled) or in the comments on this post. If you would like editing permissions then send me a private message and I will add you as an editor. You do not have to commit to modding if you'd just like to edit the document, but I am also very happy to work with anyone who wants to help organise the challenge with me!

I'd like to have this all more or less ready to go for Jan 1st, to coincide with Yuletide's author reveals and the second week of Mystery Box (my sources have told me that there are upcoming challenges that would overlap with the concept of this challenge), and I imagine it will be pretty low-key and casual, but we can play it by ear!

Updates to follow!

N.B. Neither I, nor this challenge, are affiliated with yuletide_admin beyond having participated in the exchange, and this is not an official Yuletide tie-in event.

Update 26/12/23: Having discussed this a little on the podfichat Discord, I might push the start of the challenge out til after the end of the Mystery Box event, so that people don't get too overwhelmed keeping multiple balls in the air at once. My thinking currently is that, usually, you can only include new pods that you created after receiving a bingo card as fills, but as a one-time signing bonus for this first round, any works that you have created for Mystery Box 2023 that fit squares of your bingo card can be used as fills retroactively.

In the meantime

Please continue to read the document, which is still being updated and refined, and add your suggestions either directly on it as comments, or in the comments of this post, or in one-on-one conversations with me elsewhere. I am still more than happy to give editing access to people who request it.

If anyone would like to co-mod, please let me know! I would love to hear from people with previous modding experience, people who have been involved with the podfic community longer than I have (which is not a high bar to clear, since I only got my toes wet in mid-2022), people with other areas of expertise and experience that I don't with regards fostering a diverse and inclusive fandom space, or anyone else who wants to help out!

Please note that the comments on this post are not screened. Do not include a personal email you do not want to be publicly viewable in a comment. If you would like to get in touch with me privately regarding editing access or to express interest in co-modding, feel free to send me a message on Dreamwidth or on Discord (my handle there is unmanlygrief), or email me at obstinatecondolement[at]gmail[dot]com.

Update 10/01/24: I think that we should be good to go in the not too distant future. I have drafted a version of the FAQ and rules, which is based on stuff in the planning document linked above, but is not itself, because I'm doing it in Notepad to do the HTML formatting, but if anyone is interested in giving it a once-over before we're officially off to the races to give any last minute feedback, then just say the word.

I've also looked into how to do very technical bits and pieces that I was unsure of that I'll need to know to generate bingo cards, etc., but everything seems fairly approachable at the moment. And I think we are on track to get started in the next 1-2 weeks, at a conservative estimate.

I am keeping the bat signal for a co-mod on for the time being, so if anyone wants to be the hero that Tide Pod needs please do get in touch. I think that most of the day-to-day moderation will not be very involved once sign ups for Round One wind down, so if someone wanted to just join me for the first little bit to get me over the hump and then go off on their merry way then that's definitely something I'm open to! I'm not in dire straits or anything, but I think it's probably generally better to have more than one person steering the ship, ideally, if possible.

Update 11/01/24: flowerparrish has joined the mod team, so the bat signal has been turned off for now :D