Chaos rules

It's time for our second check-in! You can check in over email (pod.together@gmail.com), dreamwidth comment (comments on this post are screened), or via discord message to klb, shmaylor, minnabird, or rockinhamburger. Please try to check-in within 48 hours. We will send a follow-up email to all those we haven't heard from at that time. (If you've already turned in your writing and received confirmation from the mods, you don't need to check in but you're welcome to!)

The complete writing is due in one week, on July 27th. You can find more information in our FAQ about what it means for writing to be complete. Writers can either email us a link to a shared version of their text that their podficcer has access to (for example a shared Google Doc) or post the text to the Pod_Together 2025 collection on AO3. The collection is moderated and set to "unrevealed" so the stories will show as "mystery" works until the mods reveal them on the scheduled posting day. If your podficcer is not included as a co-creator on the AO3 post, please contact a mod when you submit your writing to confirm that your podficcer has access to the completed text. You can find full posting instructions here.

The Early Writing deadline is this Wednesday, July 23rd. At the end of the challenge, mods will create a schedule for revealing completed projects, evenly distributed across a ten-day posting period. Projects that meet the Early Writing AND Early Podfic submission deadlines will be posted first, followed by projects that meet the Early Writing OR Early Podfic submission deadline, followed by all other projects.

If you're feeling confident in your ability to finish the writing on time, we look forward to hearing about it and we always love to hear about what's going well in your partnerships. If you are having problems in your partnership, we're also happy to hear about those and help suggest ideas for troubleshooting!

If you're not feeling confident in your ability to finish the writing within the next 7 days, please let us know and we can talk about:

• The possibility of an extension. Please note our extension policy: "Each participant can receive a maximum extension of 7 days past their deadline. If you request an extension, please tell us how long you would like that extension to be. Up to 3 days will be granted automatically to everyone, and extensions of up to 7 days will be granted automatically to those who used Group Sign Ups. For those who used Match Maker Sign Ups, if an extension of 4–7 days is needed, please include a plan for how you intend to finish within that time."


• The possibility of getting a beta or cheerleader.


• The possibility of getting a co-writer.


• The possibility of writing a shorter version of your original story plan for your podficcer to begin recording (which is able to stand alone in case a life emergency stops you from writing more) with the agreement that if there is time and interest by both parties, you might create additional scenes later to add on.


• The possibility of (with your partner's approval) leaving some areas of the script for podficcer ad-lib.


• The possibility of additional scheduled accountability check-ins, if that will help keep you motivated and not stressed!

Also, please remember to share what you've written so far with your partner. This means not just an update of your progress but sharing your draft itself. The minimum requirement is once per check-in!

Finally, if you're realizing that what you really need in order to take care of yourself is to drop out, that's fine. Yay self-care! Please let us know as soon as possible though, so we can offer your partner a pinch hitter.

Projects must be posted to AO3 by the Podfic Submission Deadline on Sunday August 24th. If the written component is already completed, feel free to post the text to AO3 sooner!

Post your work in the Pod Together 2025 Collection, either by following this link, or by listing Pod_Together2025 in the “Post to Collections/Challenges” field.

Be sure to hit "Post" when done; the challenge is set to unrevealed, so the project will show as a "Mystery Work" to anyone but the co-creators and mods. If you save the project as a draft, the mods will not be able to view it to confirm it meets word count and/or that the podfic links are working, and the project will automatically delete itself after a month.

You may post the text and podfic together in a single post or in two separate posts.

• If you decide to have a single post for both the text and podfic, make sure to add all your group members as co-creators, so all creators have editing access and credit for their work!


• If you decide to have the text and podfic in separate posts, the post for each part should link to the other part prominently at the top of the post, with an explanation that the two parts were created as a collaboration. This means that the text post will link to the podfic post prominently at the top, and vice versa. This should be more than using AO3's "inspired by" function to connect the two posts (although you're welcome to do that as well!). The link and explanation can be either in the body of the post or in a note at the beginning.

PODFIC-SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS

If the two parts of the project are in a single post, the completed podfic should be included at the top of the post. If the podfic and text are separate chapters, the podfic chapter should come first.

If the two parts of the project are in separate posts, see above for how to link the two posts to each other.

If you'd like additional support with how to post a podfic to AO3, this text guide or this video guide helpful.

Your podfic must be available for listening in both streaming and mp3 download formats. A streaming player directly on the AO3 post is highly recommended, but not required. If you need some help with hosting options or with streaming, you can check out this post or ask for support on the Pod-Together Discord! The mods are also happy to host your audio for you at parakaproductions.com. If you'd like us to do that, just email us your audio file and let us know you'd like to use our hosting, and we'll send you back a link to the hosted audio!