swamp ophelia

I decided to go full meta and record this post. Felt cute, audio may end up deleted later!

This is for voiceteam Mystery Box 2025's Fan in the Mirror challenge, which says: Review what you've achieved in the past 12 months and write a blog post/meta roundup of at least 500 words, discussing the fanworks you created, what you were proud of, where you'd like to be next year, and what you'd like to do next year. This can discuss any kind of fanwork created, but it should spend significant time on audio fanworks—new podficcers who don't have audio fanworks to reflect on from this year can still write about audio fanwork goals for next year!

I apparently posted 128 works during 2025, with 66 of them being podfic. Wow. Who knew I'd ever post that much podfic? Whoever predicted I would podfic?

Most, if not all, of this work was for an exchange or challenge. I really miss writing for myself. I finally updated the last piece of one of my WIPs. I was avoiding updating you came back as the underdog (Wanda/Bucky) for three years because I really loved this story and I didn't want to say goodbye to it. I posted the last bonus piece a few days ago (and now I hope to record chapters for myself so I can go back and tighten up the writing). I feel like my fannish identity is one that I'd like to reclaim again, if that makes sense. I miss writing. I miss the obsessive need to write a story. I miss how I used to feel in the honeymoon of exchanges. (I miss getting comments, but I've never been one to get a lot of comments, but I feel like it hurts less when I'm not comparing myself to Writer B who wrote the same fandom/ship as me in an exchange. This is a whole other kettle of fish, I think.)

My goals for 2026 include:

• Only participate in the exchanges/challenges I want to participate in. FOMO can get lost. While I enjoy exchanges a lot, I've felt burnt out and unmotivated over the last two years. I sometimes feel like it's not worth participating, because I can spend a lot of time on a piece and get really no traffic at all (including no acknowledgement from the recipient, which is burning me out). I know that's the life of a creative, but it's bummed me out when I'm surrounded by chatter about other stories that people enjoyed. (Yuletide remains so rough for me thanks to this!)


• I miss writing stories for myself, so I want to return to that. I want to be obsessed! I want to write self-indulgent shit for ME! I'm my best recipient and I feel like I've been neglecting her a lot. I have half-cracked ideas floating around in my head—and have had some of them for years—and I want to put more time into those because I want to see them written.


• I want to only create for fandoms/ships that I want to create for. This is more or less for podfic. There are some fandoms and ships on my profile that don't really represent my interests, but I participated in multivoices or challenges because 1) I wanted to be involved in a group thing and have fun and 2) for a friend. I suspect I'll never completely get away with only participating in projects that are of my fandoms/ships (and even fic that's more to my tastes) and I'm fine with this because what matters to me, especially when it comes to podfic, is that I have fun (especially since it's not a highly engaged with piece of fanwork, so having fun with people is my top priority and makes creating podfic worth it for me), but I'd like to be more mindful moving forward about what projects I take on. (Again, let FOMO exist.)


• I do hope I continue to make podfic. There are so many benefits to reading stories aloud and having my stories read. I want to talk about that below.

One piece of advice I've seen and heard about writing is that it's beneficial to read your work aloud. I used to scoff at this because I never wanted to read my words aloud. Ever since I started embracing podfic—and even making it—I have learned so much about writing that's been beneficial to me.

Podficcing did bring up a lot of really cruel insecurities within me. I feel like I don't say things properly. I feel like I read too fast. I feel like some words blend together and you have no idea what I'm saying. My accent is shit! (Somehow the Aussie accent was one of the most attractive in the world? What the fuck are people on? LOL.) I had an (non-Aussie) ex-friend comment about how I didn't pronounce things correctly (I'm Aussie, mate). There are words that I just suck at saying. I'm not very good (at the moment—positivity!) at accents or speaking words from other languages. It was a whole new skill, and a perfectionist like me (who is also self-conscious!) really struggled with it at first. (I won't lie, my first Voiceteam Mystery Box was really rough that I ended up crying because of all the comparisons I was making with other people who have different accents LOL.)

My inner voice that reads quietly is perfect at accents (or "accents"). The words I don't know how to pronounce sound so posh and correct in my head. There are phrases that make sense when you read them quietly that are absolutely atrocious when you read them aloud. I've learned that fragmented sentences are an absolute nightmare (please, writers, stop doing this and write proper sentences). Run on sentences are a monster that need to be put down. (Use full stops! Less commas!) I've also learned that dialogue tags need to be clear, clean and used! I've read works where I have no idea who's speaking so I make an assumption based on the information I have.

There are some words I cannot say together. "One another" sucks for me. The way words feel in my mouth is obviously so different to how they feel in my head. I've realised that some description is too much, and it doesn't allow me as a reader to really embrace the emotion that I need because it overkills it. Sometimes I find some description is too little, and I literally have no idea what's going on. When people write dialogue interruptions, having narration before the dialogue that interrupts the interrupted dialogue breaks momentum. Some writers give the character too many things to do in a second—scoff, shrug, huff. It's hard to read! I've been taking a lot of this into consideration when I write now.

I feel like I have a good approach to reading. I try to read long sentences slower, unless I feel the pace is frantic. I try to read short sentences faster. I try to look at where the big, dramatic breaks need to be. I try to break up those long run-on sentences because, honestly, they need a bloody pause sometimes. I try to embrace the emotion a character is feeling, so if someone gasps, I try to gasp. If someone mutters, well… I don't really mutter, but I try to be softer. (I'm trying to figure out character voices.) I try to get into my reading in a way that entertains me as a reader, because if I'm not entertained, then why am I reading?

When I listen to podfic about my own stories (and read them for podfic), I hear the words that are too closely used together. I remember listening to a fabulous podfic about one of my works and a comment I said aloud was "Too many people are smiling". Another one was "Why is this character shrugging so much?" One in particular that I remember listening to while walking had me muttering, "Jesus, she's furrowing her brows a lot". (I remember the exact fic, too.)

One of the greatest lessons I've learned from podfic is that you have to trust the reader to understand what you're putting down. This is something I've been told numerous times during my writing course theory. Trust the reader. Give them just enough information, but trust them to make the conclusions. I've received podfics where I've listened to the reader and gone "They got it. I did my job." There is nothing more rewarding than listening to your work and hearing someone who never existed in your head, who never spoke to you about your work, and who never knew what your intentions were actually understand what you intended. This could be how I wrote a character, how I wanted a character to say a specific line, or just a work in general. (Sometimes people pick up on what I hadn't realised I had intended, or can't articulate as an intention. Sometimes I just write shit with no intention at all!)

I've also learned that sometimes some words don't mean the same to me as they do to someone else (hahahaha HAHAHA). We all come to the written word with our own experiences and baggage (and, as I've learned from talking to some people who speak other languages, your understanding of your own language. English is so fucked). I sometimes use words that aren't correct (they sure feel correct, haha).

I've had some people read my works in a way I hadn't intended or thought about. That doesn't mean they're wrong! It could mean that I didn't do my job as the author. It could mean that I had unintentionally written something that conveyed something else entirely. It could mean that the reader has brought their own experiences and perspective to my piece that I hadn't considered. I've never really had anyone miss the point of a work, or read it in a way that's made me go "You got that from my work?" It's always been "Oo, they understood what I wanted to achieve with that piece of dialogue!" or "Ooh, I didn't think about interpreting this this way".

There are a lot of talented readers in fandom who I wish fandom would appreciate a lot more. Podficcing is a lot of work (contrary to what some people believe!). My first Voiceteam Mystery Box team in 2024 encouraged me to listen to podfic I received several years ago that I avoided listening to because I felt ✨perceived✨, and I learned so much about a story I loved so much. It's another way to participate in fandom and appreciate something you love. Podficcers don't ask me to pay them to create a comic of a work that they apparently feel so inspired by and have ideas for… so they're good eggs in my carton.

I sometimes find listening to podfic to be an uncomfortable experience, although that discomfort only lasts a few seconds. Why is it uncomfortable for me? Because I feel perceived. A podfic is evidence that a real person has read my work. A fourth wall is created when you're interacting with a username. (It's why we sometimes forget we're dealing with real people.) I'm someone who's always been private about my creative endeavours and love for writing (until 2025, whoo! Character growth!). Writing is an act of vulnerability for me, and when I publish it, it is yet another act of vulnerability. I also realised over the last two years that podficcing was also a vulnerable act, too. (That's probably why I had a whole meltdown over insecurities, lol.) No matter how someone interacts with my work, they are interacting with a piece of me that I have put out there for their hands—or voice—to touch. It's something that I hope becomes easier over time. I'm very glad that I was encouraged to listen to podfic about my work, because I got to experience the stories all over again through someone who, I hope, really enjoyed the work in the first place and that's why they podded it.

I'm really grateful to that one person who encouraged me during a Snowflake Challenge prompt to give podfic a go, because there was so much to learn from it. There is. I benefit as a writer and a reader—and I feel like I could potentially take the plunge this year to try to learn how to do accents. :)

I didn't really have any intentions for how I wanted to format this post. I wanted to end on this note, though. When I started receiving requests to approve podfic links to my works, I thought everyone got podfic. When I realised that this was not the case, I felt so overwhelmed and privileged that someone felt the desire to interact with my work. And now that I've podficced myself, to know that someone may have sat for a few hours recording and recording, soundscaping, fixing errors, rerecording (hello, my life of saying the wrong word!), etc. means a lot. I often feel greedy during Voiceteam or Battleship when I say I want podfic of my works, but I do! And now that I know a little bit more about this pocket of fandom, I hope that me saying I want podfic of my works isn't seen as me being greedy or wanting to take away from others, but me saying "Hey, I'm one of those writers who likes podfic!" I hope that the people who have podficced and will podfic my works do so because they love the works as much as I do (and love the works I fail(ed) to love, but have gotten to appreciate through someone who challenges me to be proud of it because it's something they deem is worth liking).

Anyway, to wrap up: I hope 2026 is the year where I write a lot more for myself, because I feel like if I write a lot more for myself, maybe I can attract more podficcers with honey (aka the works that I really, really love, and wrote because I wanted to write them) and I will feel happier and more fulfilled and stop worrying about how my work is performing against someone else. I like exchanges, but I miss treating me with gifts.