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swirlingflightOne of the challenges for Voiceteam Mysterybox 2025 asks us to do a roundup of what we've been creating the last 12 months or so, and what we're looking to do this next year, with a focus on audio fanworks.
That's an easy focus for me to write on - I've definitely been focusing more on podfic than visual fanart this past year, thanks in part to wanting to give my wrist a break.
Let me start with: I'm a podfic newbie! I only just started practicing recording podfic back in spring 2023, and over ~18 months accumulated about 40 podfics that are accomplishments in that they exist, but were not up to the sort of quality I wanted to share. Those files are full of all sorts of newbie mistakes - sitting in a way that jostled the table, squeaked the chair, made it too easy to bump the microphone, and picked up keyboard or mouse sounds in the middle of sentences when I was scrolling to the next paragraphs. I was starting to attempt character voices, but those were pretty inconsistent, too.
But all this was useful practice - it got me figuring out how to position things to avoid that sort of thing, and to make my movements in pauses between sentences so I could more easily edit sounds out. I got better at knowing how often I needed to pause, hydrate, stretch, and do something else. I decided to focus on Undertale for the time being, started getting character voices down, and relistening to those recordings to figure out what I thought worked and didn't work.
So, stretching the 12 months timeline a bit:
Fall 2024 into Spring 2025, I decided to really focus on getting voices and quality down. I recorded a bunch of the supplementary Undertale conversations, from the newsletters and so on, to better listen to the different characters back to back to make sure I was distinguishing them well enough. (I only recently uploaded these to Archive.org, on the assumption that some fic writers might want to hear my voices before giving the yes/no to whether I could pod their fics. So far, no one's asked for a sample, but I'll let these sit there.)
December 2024, I got permission and shared my first two podfics:
Cleaning Day is about Papyrus stress cleaning in an attempt to fix the things he can't fix, with Sans trying to intervene before Papyrus unshingles the roof or something. I had a lot of fun with having the narration sound a bit like Sans, and the way he tries nudging Papyrus into talking, and the increasing strain in Papyrus's voice as he resists opening up. Enough is more about Papyrus feeling incapable of achieving the things he strives for or getting the approval he wants, and Sans trying to help by making unsettlingly accurate guesses about some of it. I'm still very fond of my delivery on the termite metaphor.
Both of these fics feature a somewhat depressed pre-canon Papyrus, going through things he's struggling to articulate or deal with, in short fics of Sans checking on him, but with somewhat different focuses. Both are about moods we don't see much of in canon, but Sans alludes to by saying his brother has "been down lately."
March 2025, I also dabbled in visual art a bit, participating in the Outer Wilds Campfire Fest 2025 with three acrylic paintings. With varying levels of spoilers for the game, I contributed paintings for prompts on Day 1 (Sap wine), Day 2 (Vision), and Day 6 (Supernova)
April 2025, I added two more podfics to my AO3, both also pre-canon fics, but fairly different tonally: Unpolished is about a "training" session turned slumber party with drinks between Papyrus and Undyne, featuring ways they encourage each other for the better, lie to each other, and goad each other into making messes - getting along like a house on fire. I don't drink as a habit, but it was very fun to try to adapt my Papyrus and Undyne voices to sound like they had been drinking, wavering in and out of being silly and trying to focus. I also did my first experimenting with audio effects, trying to make the phone call to Sans at the end sound like it would have on Sans's end. Puzzles to Cope is more about Papyrus struggling for a sense of belonging after [redacted events] messed with his and his brother's living situation, and turning to the puzzles along the Snowdin Forest road as something he could have an impact on.
Over the summer I switched jobs, and struggled with changes in routine and some financial uncertainty that stressed me out too much to do much along these lines. I continued joining in some Dreamwidth panfandom roleplaying with my Papyrus account,spaghettimonster, on and off as my time and attention span allowed. I continued listening to a lot of others' podfics during drives and the like, thinking about things I wanted to do something like.
Late this fall, I started wanting to make things again, and thought it'd be easier and more fun in the context of a bunch of people actively working on things and encouraging each other together. Didn't hesitate to sign up, when I saw the latest gift exchange in the Outer Wilds Events server (gift still in progress), and Fanart Frenzy, and this Voiceteam challenge. With the yearning to make numbers go up, I worked through a good portion of my immediate wishlist of short stories I wanted to pod.
Another fun change in tone, this is the first post-canon Undertale fic, featuring a mix of familiar skelebros banter and the things that are changing in their lives on the surface. Very fun energy, with a few lines from canon used again (in such a way that feels like they're rote lines to arguments), more fun with headcanons about a [redacted skelebros background], and of course, shenanigans with the new car. The first mature-rated fic I've brought voice to, though the author points out it was right on the edge between a Teen or Mature rating, featuring one of the neutral endings in which things in the Undertale's underground kingdom are going not well. Specifically, features King Mettaton and his agent Papyrus's ongoing flirtations and romance, in part for the happiness they try to get from it, and in significant part for the way they're using the relationship to (generally) hide from many of the unhappy things about their lives. Very fun, voicing the flirting back and forth, trying to recreate the cadence of Mettaton's canon OH YES line, and applying a mild robotic effect to the robot's voice. I'm not a big shipper, but I am definitely a sucker for this particular take on Papyrus/Mettaton, all full of lies and hopes and the calculations about whether they'll fight in a serious way. A pair of fics where I couldn't just voice one of them, as I'm too fond of these stories in conjunction with each other, as short story of Papyrus wanting to intervene in Sans's depressive slump. They explore the ways all the monsters are living with various forms of grief and trauma, and how the happy ending of being on the surface doesn't necessarily fix those things, and in some ways has added to their worries. I love the way it explores Toriel's grief and the way her attempts to help sometimes just add to the grief, and Papyrus's antsy approach to life (trying to stay too busy to even sleep more than he must) of pursuing various goals and dreams all the time, and Sans's depressive existential preoccupation now that they're in a happy ending he can't trust won't abruptly reset any day. I especially loved voicing the catharsis of Papyrus's angry rant in Moths and Fireflies, though I ended up having to re-record the entire thing, because the audio was peaking on it. A fun one in multiple ways, from it being a mid-canon point (sometime after Frisk heads into the CORE, but before everyone gathers for the true pacifist ending), to it being another of Papyrus and Undyne egging each other on to doing dangerous things that go awry, to the ways it also explores some of the meta weirdness that Papyrus in particular of the Undertale cast seems to have (odd ways of moving around on the screen, the construction of the Gauntlet itself...) It was very fun voicing Undyne's uneasy (but sounding intense to try to cover her unease) and Papyrus's almost bland friendliness of not acknowledging anything being weird about the things he's been doing. My first In Stars and Time podfic, though not the first time I've voiced those characters - I've been contributing voices to a group's playthrough on some weekends. That said, while I offered this for a BINGO challenge, it was already on my list of fics I wanted to voice sometime, preferably early on for being low on dialogue and high on Siffrin's varyingly spiraling thoughts in a possible post-canon path. I love the visuals of red lingering in the world after the game's events, and the ways this story in particular uses the imagery of bloody scabs and applies it to Siffrin's feelings about himself and what he did to the world, and the slow change to those feelings through the short story. It was very fun trying to differentiate the different intensities of his spiraling, and to try to make the narration overall sound like the voice I was giving him.
Coming this year, I have an Outer Wilds visual piece to finish for an exchange, but for podfic my main starting goal is to start podding the Undertale series Theoretical Battle Scenarios and other secrets, by Lethotep. It's a series that plays a lot with the strange lack of background that the skeleton brothers have in Undertale and uses a mix of headcanons to fill it in, but filling it in slowly, piecemeal, and showcasing the ways even the characters themselves have different ideas of what their pasts were like. And while the skelebros are the focus, it absolutely spends time with others of the main cast, with different perspectives as they move through canon events into a post-canon on the surface still haunted by that past.
Longer term, there's a few more long podfics I'd like to do at some point:
I also enjoyed contributing to a few multi-voice pods in various fandoms, and I'd enjoy doing that more!
That's an easy focus for me to write on - I've definitely been focusing more on podfic than visual fanart this past year, thanks in part to wanting to give my wrist a break.
Let me start with: I'm a podfic newbie! I only just started practicing recording podfic back in spring 2023, and over ~18 months accumulated about 40 podfics that are accomplishments in that they exist, but were not up to the sort of quality I wanted to share. Those files are full of all sorts of newbie mistakes - sitting in a way that jostled the table, squeaked the chair, made it too easy to bump the microphone, and picked up keyboard or mouse sounds in the middle of sentences when I was scrolling to the next paragraphs. I was starting to attempt character voices, but those were pretty inconsistent, too.
But all this was useful practice - it got me figuring out how to position things to avoid that sort of thing, and to make my movements in pauses between sentences so I could more easily edit sounds out. I got better at knowing how often I needed to pause, hydrate, stretch, and do something else. I decided to focus on Undertale for the time being, started getting character voices down, and relistening to those recordings to figure out what I thought worked and didn't work.
So, stretching the 12 months timeline a bit:
Fall 2024 into Spring 2025, I decided to really focus on getting voices and quality down. I recorded a bunch of the supplementary Undertale conversations, from the newsletters and so on, to better listen to the different characters back to back to make sure I was distinguishing them well enough. (I only recently uploaded these to Archive.org, on the assumption that some fic writers might want to hear my voices before giving the yes/no to whether I could pod their fics. So far, no one's asked for a sample, but I'll let these sit there.)
December 2024, I got permission and shared my first two podfics:
Cleaning Day is about Papyrus stress cleaning in an attempt to fix the things he can't fix, with Sans trying to intervene before Papyrus unshingles the roof or something. I had a lot of fun with having the narration sound a bit like Sans, and the way he tries nudging Papyrus into talking, and the increasing strain in Papyrus's voice as he resists opening up. Enough is more about Papyrus feeling incapable of achieving the things he strives for or getting the approval he wants, and Sans trying to help by making unsettlingly accurate guesses about some of it. I'm still very fond of my delivery on the termite metaphor.
Both of these fics feature a somewhat depressed pre-canon Papyrus, going through things he's struggling to articulate or deal with, in short fics of Sans checking on him, but with somewhat different focuses. Both are about moods we don't see much of in canon, but Sans alludes to by saying his brother has "been down lately."
March 2025, I also dabbled in visual art a bit, participating in the Outer Wilds Campfire Fest 2025 with three acrylic paintings. With varying levels of spoilers for the game, I contributed paintings for prompts on Day 1 (Sap wine), Day 2 (Vision), and Day 6 (Supernova)
April 2025, I added two more podfics to my AO3, both also pre-canon fics, but fairly different tonally: Unpolished is about a "training" session turned slumber party with drinks between Papyrus and Undyne, featuring ways they encourage each other for the better, lie to each other, and goad each other into making messes - getting along like a house on fire. I don't drink as a habit, but it was very fun to try to adapt my Papyrus and Undyne voices to sound like they had been drinking, wavering in and out of being silly and trying to focus. I also did my first experimenting with audio effects, trying to make the phone call to Sans at the end sound like it would have on Sans's end. Puzzles to Cope is more about Papyrus struggling for a sense of belonging after [redacted events] messed with his and his brother's living situation, and turning to the puzzles along the Snowdin Forest road as something he could have an impact on.
Over the summer I switched jobs, and struggled with changes in routine and some financial uncertainty that stressed me out too much to do much along these lines. I continued joining in some Dreamwidth panfandom roleplaying with my Papyrus account,
spaghettimonster, on and off as my time and attention span allowed. I continued listening to a lot of others' podfics during drives and the like, thinking about things I wanted to do something like.
Late this fall, I started wanting to make things again, and thought it'd be easier and more fun in the context of a bunch of people actively working on things and encouraging each other together. Didn't hesitate to sign up, when I saw the latest gift exchange in the Outer Wilds Events server (gift still in progress), and Fanart Frenzy, and this Voiceteam challenge. With the yearning to make numbers go up, I worked through a good portion of my immediate wishlist of short stories I wanted to pod.
Another fun change in tone, this is the first post-canon Undertale fic, featuring a mix of familiar skelebros banter and the things that are changing in their lives on the surface. Very fun energy, with a few lines from canon used again (in such a way that feels like they're rote lines to arguments), more fun with headcanons about a [redacted skelebros background], and of course, shenanigans with the new car. The first mature-rated fic I've brought voice to, though the author points out it was right on the edge between a Teen or Mature rating, featuring one of the neutral endings in which things in the Undertale's underground kingdom are going not well. Specifically, features King Mettaton and his agent Papyrus's ongoing flirtations and romance, in part for the happiness they try to get from it, and in significant part for the way they're using the relationship to (generally) hide from many of the unhappy things about their lives. Very fun, voicing the flirting back and forth, trying to recreate the cadence of Mettaton's canon OH YES line, and applying a mild robotic effect to the robot's voice. I'm not a big shipper, but I am definitely a sucker for this particular take on Papyrus/Mettaton, all full of lies and hopes and the calculations about whether they'll fight in a serious way. A pair of fics where I couldn't just voice one of them, as I'm too fond of these stories in conjunction with each other, as short story of Papyrus wanting to intervene in Sans's depressive slump. They explore the ways all the monsters are living with various forms of grief and trauma, and how the happy ending of being on the surface doesn't necessarily fix those things, and in some ways has added to their worries. I love the way it explores Toriel's grief and the way her attempts to help sometimes just add to the grief, and Papyrus's antsy approach to life (trying to stay too busy to even sleep more than he must) of pursuing various goals and dreams all the time, and Sans's depressive existential preoccupation now that they're in a happy ending he can't trust won't abruptly reset any day. I especially loved voicing the catharsis of Papyrus's angry rant in Moths and Fireflies, though I ended up having to re-record the entire thing, because the audio was peaking on it. A fun one in multiple ways, from it being a mid-canon point (sometime after Frisk heads into the CORE, but before everyone gathers for the true pacifist ending), to it being another of Papyrus and Undyne egging each other on to doing dangerous things that go awry, to the ways it also explores some of the meta weirdness that Papyrus in particular of the Undertale cast seems to have (odd ways of moving around on the screen, the construction of the Gauntlet itself...) It was very fun voicing Undyne's uneasy (but sounding intense to try to cover her unease) and Papyrus's almost bland friendliness of not acknowledging anything being weird about the things he's been doing. My first In Stars and Time podfic, though not the first time I've voiced those characters - I've been contributing voices to a group's playthrough on some weekends. That said, while I offered this for a BINGO challenge, it was already on my list of fics I wanted to voice sometime, preferably early on for being low on dialogue and high on Siffrin's varyingly spiraling thoughts in a possible post-canon path. I love the visuals of red lingering in the world after the game's events, and the ways this story in particular uses the imagery of bloody scabs and applies it to Siffrin's feelings about himself and what he did to the world, and the slow change to those feelings through the short story. It was very fun trying to differentiate the different intensities of his spiraling, and to try to make the narration overall sound like the voice I was giving him.
Coming this year, I have an Outer Wilds visual piece to finish for an exchange, but for podfic my main starting goal is to start podding the Undertale series Theoretical Battle Scenarios and other secrets, by Lethotep. It's a series that plays a lot with the strange lack of background that the skeleton brothers have in Undertale and uses a mix of headcanons to fill it in, but filling it in slowly, piecemeal, and showcasing the ways even the characters themselves have different ideas of what their pasts were like. And while the skelebros are the focus, it absolutely spends time with others of the main cast, with different perspectives as they move through canon events into a post-canon on the surface still haunted by that past.
Longer term, there's a few more long podfics I'd like to do at some point:
- Stars Stones and Stellar Remnants by ReaderRose
- Unexpected Guests by UndertaleThingem
- Forgettable-AU by Sunsestart
- Papyrus W.D. Gaster by khilari
I also enjoyed contributing to a few multi-voice pods in various fandoms, and I'd enjoy doing that more!