Life in Imagination

Image credit: Vecteezy

Hello and welcome to the sixth round of the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology! As always, we’re collecting short podfics that center characters of color in different fandoms to release as an anthology and as a collection of individual files.

The Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology aims to spotlight podfics that portray characters of color as full, multifaceted beings. We welcome podfics that are positive, happy, and fluffy as much as we do podfics where characters of color grapple with heavier themes. We value the beautiful complexity and diversity of people, identities, cultures, and experiences. We hope to promote the creation of more creative works (fannish or otherwise) that reflect these values.

This year's submission deadline is September 12th, and we will post on September 30th.

Our theme for this year's anthology is persistence. 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 and to interpret it as broadly as you'd like.

If you’d like to get a sense of this project, you can see the previous CCPA anthologies 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 characters of color:
-The Character(s) of Color, Female Character of Color, LGBTQ Character of Color, or Male Character of Color tags at the AO3, limited to word counts of 1500 or less.
-The Dark Agenda Collection on AO3 (includes fanworks from Chromatic Yuletide, Chromatic Remix Redux, Kaleidoscope Fanwork Exchange, Kaleidoscope Treats, and Racebending Revenge)
-chromatic_fanfic
-The Chamber collection
-Chromaticvision drabble collection
-Seeing Color collection
-Marvel POC Characters Fanworks Exchange
-Awesome People of Colour are Awesome: Comment-a-thon on DW and the AO3 collection
-No White Saviors Allowed-- Challenges for The 100 Characters of Color
-Not Green or Blue ficathon for characters of color in comics

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 and/or install this browser extension that highlights all blanket permission authors from that database in green.

As an aid to encourage mindfulness when selecting stories for the anthology, we strongly recommend you to check out this resource from Writing With Color about common stereotypes and tropes in stories about characters of color. We would like to encourage thoughtful representation in the stories included in this anthology as much as possible.

To the Podcurious: A number of prolific podficcers have gotten their start by contributing to the Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology, which this anthology is based on. If you have ever thought you might like to create podfic, this could be 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 characters of color, 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 technical beta listeners who can absolutely commit to at LEAST two hours of beta listening between September 13th and 20th to check for volume issues, errors and inconsistencies, metadata, etc. In addition, if you are a person of color who would be willing to lend their services as a contextual content beta (formerly known as cultural sensitivity listeners in previous years), please let us know if you'd be available and interested; we'd be very grateful!

To Participants and Contextual Content Betas: This year we'll be implementing the same matching process for contextual content betas as last year. If you're willing to provide your services as a contextual content beta, we'll ask you to provide a brief description of your background and what you feel confident in providing input on. We'll provide you access to the submission spreadsheet and you can let us know if there are any fandoms/characters/submissions you know you'll be comfortable beta-ing.

When the submission window closes, participants will also be asked to look over the briefs provided and let the mods know which content beta sounds like the best match for their submissions. As mods, we are not familiar with every character and fandom submitted and will be relying on participants to help us connect your submissions with the closest possible match. Contextual content betas check that submissions reflect the mission of the anthology. They are our "sniff tests." They help us by letting us know if there's anything about a submission that would give them pause about including it in an anthology celebrating characters of color. They are also a second set of eyes for content warnings. It's possible that your content beta won't be familiar with something in your submission. As the CCPA mod team values lived experience as the best source of knowledge, content betas may, at their discretion, offer additional cultural insight and guidance to the best of their ability.

To Authors: We've had some awesome authors get involved in the past, in pod_together style, to create short pieces for CCPA in collaboration with podficcers. If you’re an author who’s interested in writing for characters of color 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 of color, including racebent characters.
• 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! In addition, if you'd like to include a podficcer freetalk about why you chose to record a particular story for the anthology, please feel free to include those on your individual AO3 posts!
• 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]." Then, if applicable, provide a content warning if oppression is thematic to the work. Please also specifically warn for slurs, depictions of hate crimes; and racist microaggressions. We also suggest including appropriate warnings or content notes for common triggers such as sexual assault, graphic violence, and major character death. (This is not to say that we discourage stories in which characters engage with the lived realities of racism and colonialism; rather that we recognize that some listeners may not be in a space where they want to engage with those kinds of themes and should have a choice to opt in or out of listening.) Please refer to this document for suggested guidelines about when and what to warn for, as well as resources for defining and identifying microaggressions.

-Each reading should end with "The End".

-The metadata should follow this format:

-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; thanks to klb for letting us use the benchmark volume from ALPA). ALTERNATIVELY, you may use the volume normalization feature on auphonic, which levels audio at a consistent volume. You can create a free account which allows you to process up to 2 hours of audio per month. If you would prefer not to sign up for an account, you may contact a mod who can process your audio for you.

New this year!: As we did last year, we are opening a bonus collection where you can submit podfic of those stories you found and loved but were too long for the anthology. Consider this permission/motivation to record and share those stories! This is completely optional--these submissions do not need to be submitted via the google spreadsheet or beta'd, nor do they need to follow any kind of standardized header format/volume guidelines. This collection will be revealed at the same time as the anthology on September 30th, so you'll have until the 29th to submit your podfics.

Your mods for this event are blackglass and miss_marina95. We can be contacted at ccpamods or at ccpamods at gmail.