Transcript: Track 34: Podfics

Episode 34 posted July 9, 2022
Transcript by EllenofOz
Links to all fics mentioned can be found on the main episode post.

[Intro music]

Ellen: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the 34th episode of Mixtape book club podcast. My name’s Ellen,

Mal: and my name is Mal.

Ellen: In each episode, we take an in-depth look at a different trope or sub genre in Destiel fan fiction. And this episode’s gonna be a little different to normal. We’re not looking at a specific trope this time. We’re gonna talk about Destiel podfics instead.

Mal: So to discuss her podfics and her podcast, we would like to welcome fellow author and narrator NerdyNerdenstein, also known as Katie.

Katie: Hi.

Ellen: Hi, how are you today?

Katie: I’m doing okay. How are you all?

Ellen: Excellent. Very good. Yes. Pumped to talk about podfics.

Katie: yeah.

Ellen: And having a bit of a freak out because I’ve been listening to your voice all week and now I’m speaking to you in person (laughs)  it’s all quite weird…

Katie: Would you like for me to moan for you?

Ellen: that would… no. No.

Katie: No? (laughter)

Ellen: Okay. So rather than listing all the podfics that we, we are planning to talk about today, we’ve got like a bunch of different ones. Shall we start by just… well, we should, Katie, would you mind introducing your podcast and your podfics?

Katie: sure. For sure. So a podfic is an audio book for fan fiction. And typically you find these on ao3. Usually on the actual fanfic itself at the bottom, it’ll say “works inspired by”, it’s considered a transformative work of the transformative work of the fan fiction. And these are people who decided to make free audio books of this free fan fiction, just as a different way to enjoy it for accessibility, other things like that.

So it’s a little bit, it’s an alternative to screen readers. So there’s a little bit more style to it. Some people just do a straight read and other people like myself will try to do character voices. And some people add music, some people add sound effects and you know, there’s varying levels of production.

And I really got into podfics and listened to as many as I could find. And when I hit the bottom of the barrel, I was like, Hmm, maybe I could do that. and I’ve always really liked voice acting. I’ve always loved foley work. Like it’s always fascinated me and I just thought I’d give it a shot. My husband is a musician, so I stole some of his equipment and tried it out and I really, really, really enjoyed it. So I just started making a whole bunch of them.

Mal: Yeah. Yeah. And what made you make the decision to move from just recording podfics that you would post on ao3 to turning that into a podcast, which is kind of what you do now?

Katie: Yeah, so really that was Jeremy from monster of the week podcast and he just messaged me and was like, why don’t you put these on a podcast instead of ao3? Like, they seem really inaccessible. And I was like, well, because fanfic authors can get a little jumpy and want them, they want them to stay within the confines of ao3. Like once you allow someone to make a transformative work of your work, you kind of lose control over it. and putting it out there in a podcast format’s a little bit looser than staying on ao3.

And so now I have to have an extra level of permission. I always ask the authors for permission to do a podcast and I have to add an extra level of, “okay, but it’s also going to be on a podcast” so that they understand that that that’s where it’s gonna be. But I promise them that I never run ads. I’ll never make money off of it because this is free for everyone. And for the most part, everyone’s totally cool with it. And if they’re not, I’m totally fine with that uneasy feeling that they have. So, yeah. It’s all good, but it’s really just for accessibility because on ao3, even if you have like an embedded player or if you download the MP3, if you stop, you have to remember where you stopped. Like it’s not really easy to stop and start, and on pod catchers, it’s so much easier. So that’s kind of,

Ellen: yes, definitely. Thank you, Jeremy, for suggesting such a thing.

Katie: Yeah, excellent idea.

Ellen: Because I find the You know, I can just listen, listen through Spotify. It’s so much easier than…

Katie: Yeah!

Ellen: Because a lot of the time on ao3, you either have to download a file and play it in a player which you may or may already have on your device. Or, or if the embedded player. Yeah. Like you said, stopping and starting can be difficult.

Mal: yeah, I think more recent podfics are getting kind of easier to listen to. ‘Cause now there are a lot of options for embedding things directly into ao3. You still have the, the problem of not necessarily always knowing where you started or stopped, but at least some of the older ones, there’s a case of you having to like download it and unzip it and stuff like that. And if you’re on a phone, particularly, that’s really awkward to do.

So, but it is possible. And there are some that, you know, more kind of recent pod more recently recorded or recently posted. I have seen a lot of them with like embedded players or YouTube links or whatever it might be. They’re working out some way to make it work. So that’s pretty cool.

Katie: And some of those older ones are really worth cracking that walnut though, because they’re so good. So, if you want it, you’re gonna work hard enough to get it yeah.

Mal: Yeah. We, we listened to a few of them for this

Ellen: so I guess we also should say how you find podfics on ao3. If you’re looking for them.

Katie: there are two main tags. One of them is just podfics and the other one is podfic and podficced works. Okay. And some, sometimes people change, you know, put that interchangeably.

Ellen: There’s also ones like audio format is, is another tag I’ve seen, like, it’ll tell you the format that the file is in and the length of the podfics is often tagged as well.

So podfic length: one to one and a half hours, whatever. So you can find short ones or long ones.

Mal: I will say as well, much like they are pretty good at finding lost fics. There are also a bunch of people on the Profound Bond discord server who are really good at just having an encyclopedia brain when it comes to podfics and what has a podfic and how to find it and that kind of stuff. So, they’re always really useful for that kind of thing over on that server.

Katie: Yeah. It’s an extremely niche genre, but the people who do listen to podfics are extremely passionate about them so…

Mal: much like most things in fandom, I think like yeah, we are nothing. If not passionate personalities around here.

Katie: right.

Ellen: Yep. So all of the, all of the podfics and their associated fics that we’re gonna talk about today will be listed in this episode’s post on mixtapebookclub.com. I’m not sure if we’re gonna add the podfics themselves to our, our collection, which is getting quite large now or how we’re gonna do that.

But, you know, you’ll find the, the, all the little links on our website.

Katie: So I have a collection that I started and I think everything I’ve listed is in the collection if they’ve allowed it. But I have a, actually an, a Destiel podfic collection.

Mal: Okay. We can link that on the blog for sure. I will probably request to add the, the specific ones that we cover to our collection, but obviously you never know if people are gonna agree to have them in there or not.

But we will, we can go ahead and link your entire collection of Destiel podfics that you’ve uncovered. Yeah.

Katie: Yes. That’s, it’s always nice to have ’em all in one spot.

Ellen: All right. Before we get into podfics themselves we just have to quickly mention that we had a, a giveaway in our last episode that was during June for pride. And thank you to everyone who entered and shared the giveaway. We had lots of lovely people enter and congratulations to the winners who were Mandy, Morgan, Carla, and Jen, your goodies on your way to you. And we we’re always happy to look for new you know, creators of Destiel merch or  artwork or whatever.

So please, you can send us all of the links to those and we can share them very happy, especially during June and all year, because you know, gay people don’t go back in their cocoons at the end of June. So to, to like promote queer creators as well. So let us know.

Mal: Yes, thank you to everybody who participated and if anybody has not received their goodies, by the time they hear this please do message me.

I did the mailing, so come yell at me and I’ll sort it out.

Ellen: Awesome. All right. Which podfic shall we start with? Should we start with one of yours,

Mal: Katie since sure. Yeah, let’s go straight out the door with trenchcoat fucking. Let’s do it. (laughter)

Katie: okay. Yeah, I’m down.

Ellen: Okay. All right. You wanna read us the, the summary for this since it’s yours?

Katie: Sure.This one’s called You, Me, and Your Cursed Trench Coat Makes Three. And the summary is:

Dean misses Cas so much during the Leviathan era that he uses his trench for…comfort.
That shit doesn’t just wash out.
When a witch slips a hex bag into Castiel’s trench coat pocket, she expects it to turn Castiel into a feverish lover, keeping Dean stuck in the motel room and off her tail. Little does she know that there’s enough, ahem, organic material that was loaded into that coat for months that the spell latches onto it instead. The coat becomes consumed with providing pleasure for anyone it is near.

Ellen: The whole premise of this is just so, so funny. Like

Mal: I love it.

Katie: Yeah. So yeah, I was going through my writing folder one day and literally have no recollection of this prompt, but I have a vague recollection of, of talking with someone about a trench coat fic.

And so the prompt was just, you know, trench coat comes to life and has sex with Dean and Cas. And I was like, okay, how am I gonna achieve that?

Ellen: Yeah, well, you, you definitely achieved it. This is so it’s only 5,700 words, so it’s not, sort of a medium length shorty. And it does have the non-con warning on it, but that’s just because, you know, for a while there, they’re not really sure what the trench coat is doing when it’s trying to. Get it on with them.

Katie: But yeah, I tried to keep the non-con out of it ‘cause I wanted it to be a real fun romp and I didn’t want anyone to be like, oh non-con okay. No I can’t.

But it just, it is what it is. Yep.

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, you gotta warn for those things.

Katie: They had to be surprised. Yeah.

Mal: Yeah. So definitely understand why it’s tagged, though I would say, you know, kind of take it, take it with a pinch of salt. It is not, you know, graphic non-con in that sense. It’s just a frisky trench coat who tries to stick a few folds in a few places. (laughter)

Katie: yeah. And I mean, yeah. I managed to throw some feelings in there too. They’re like trapped by the trench coat and there’s like, love confessions going on. So

Ellen: yes, actually I was gonna say that they’re surprisingly… you know, you think like at the start is like, oh my God, where are we going with this?

But there’s, you know, you managed to squeeze some actual, full on feelings in there too. They actually use their words while they’re both being fucked by this trench coat, which is a strange thing to… like words that I never thought I would say in that order, but, you know.

Mal:I have to, to say about this one that I was listening to this particular fic.

I think it was one, I was listening to it as the podcast episode. When somebody that I live with just wandered into the room just as Dean was prodding Cas in the navel and just, just, just kind of went pale and backed out slowly. They were just like, Nope, Nope, Nope. Nope. just, so

Katie: that makes me so proud.

Mal: Yeah, you should be,

Ellen: this is the, kind of, this is a, the kind of one where you don’t want your your Bluetooth speaker to be accidentally connected and blasting all over your backyard

Mal: Oh, I’ve done that so many times, so many times

Ellen: or like actually, while I was listening to this… random aside… listening to these this week I had to make sure that I didn’t leave like Spotify or whatever, running in the background on my phone, because when I get in the car and plug my phone in, it will just start playing. And I didn’t wanna be like in the car with the kids and all of a sudden this is like, yeah.

Katie: Oh no

Ellen: I was careful. I loved actually at the at the end of this one, how you apologize, you’re like, I’m so sorry. I’m talking back to my phone going don’t apologize!

Mal: My favorite thing about this one, and I guess this is compliment as much to your writing of it as your reading of it, but was Dean’s attempts to put himself off for a while. How polite are we being here people? (laughter)

Ellen: oh, just, just go on.

Mal: So obviously at a certain point, they decide that they need to try and get this coat off them. They come up with a plan to deal with the coat and they decide that Cas needs to come first so that he can get outta there and help him. And so Dean is trying to distract himself and that is literally my favorite part of the entire thing is the different things he’s thinking about like Bobby and Rufus and pink Speedos and like Yeah. Favorite part of the whole thing.

Katie: Good. I like Sam at the end. That’s my favorite part. Right? I actually wrote that one. That was what I wrote first. I was like, I knew that was gonna end like that. And then I went and wrote the rest of the fic.

Mal: Yeah. We won’t spoil that bit. We’ll leave that for everybody.

But yes. Necessary epilogue of sorts.

Ellen: I, I may have laughed out loud. Definitely.

Katie: Yeah. At that one. I actually not to spoil it, but I had, I think I had someone ask me what I meant by that. Like I had to like explain it. I was like, oh yeah. Okay.

Mal: Oh, they’ve clearly. They’ve not been in fandom long enough if they’re still that innocent.

Ellen: I’m not sure what else to say about this one. Since it, it’s not very long so to talk about it..

Mal:, Yeah, don’t want to spoil it for everybody, but it’s really good fun if you like. If you enjoyed all stuff from our crack fic episode, like this should a hundred percent be the first podfic that you start with and Katie has a bunch of other crack fics and

Katie: it’s only 44 minutes.

Mal: do you have a list of just your crack fic ones? Or we can just link a few,

Katie: I do. I have, I have a collection. I have a collection of just crack fics too.

Mal: Yes. Amazing.

Ellen: Perfect. Because you did them for a month didn’t you? You had like a crack fic month, right?

Mal: Was it April or something?

Katie: I did. It started with Secret Garden.

Ellen: It was, it was when we did our crack fic episode. Right? It was perfectly timed.

Katie: I think so. Yes. I will share that. In and FYI, there are some podfics that are on ao3 and not on the podcast feed. And that was simply because I went through, you know, everyone has imposter syndrome. Right? And like, even though everyone’s been nothing but lovely to me, I always get in my head that authors are gonna be like, “no, I don’t want you to podfic my story, weirdo.” Right. Yeah. And I get up in my head and I get weird about it. So I went through a really long period where I would just go look for blanket permissions.

Yeah. So people would go and put it on their profile. Like I give anyone permission to podfic my stories. And so I did a whole bunch of those. And then when I decided to do the podcast and I needed further permission there’s some people that were just unreachable. So you will find some podfics, like Secret Garden that are on ao3, but they’re not on the podcast feed.

Mal: Okay. That makes sense. Well this one, thanks to your helpful tagging system. I’m pretty sure is episode 34 of the podcast.

Ellen: yeah, I dunno. I was actually gonna go through and find Secret Garden ‘cause I knew you’d done that one. But that’s why I couldn’t find it in the thing, but yeah, I wasn’t sure.

Then I was like, oh, do I really… like when I read that one, it mentally scarred me. (laughter) No, it was great. Like, that was the funny thing with it. Like I enjoyed reading the fic. It was just later, every time I see potatoes, like

Mal: that fic leaves lasting damage and not just to Dean’s asshole.

Ellen: So then I was like, oh, do I really wanna listen to Katie reading this?

Mal: Yes.

Ellen: Which is like a whole other level.

Katie: Yeah, it was a dare. They were like, I bet you won’t do this. Some friends were, they were like, I bet you wouldn’t podfic that. And I’m like, I will. Oh, but it was, it was, it was a lot. That one’s interesting.

Mal: I weirdly I don’t get that feeling from that one.

Like sometimes. Like, there are certain podfics where they’re doing like smutty parts or whatever. And it’s like hearing it out loud is weird. But for some reason that one, I guess, because it’s so cracky and I’m already in my head, like half laughing at like potatoes and carrots and eggplants and whatever else is going on there that like, it doesn’t get me in that way. I’m just like, oh!

Katie: I feel the same way about the Melonfucker and the Peanut Butter Bandit. I did a podfic of that one too.

Mal: I love that podfic and fic in general. Which again, like, it’s one of those things you wouldn’t think you would want to hear out loud, but I just get, I’m just very entertained by it.

Katie: Hey that one’s hot. that’s a hot fic.

Ellen: I don’t even, I, I must have read it, but I don’t remember. Maybe I blocked it from my mind.

Mal: If you can still open a jar of peanut butter without at least considering plunging your fingers into it, just to see then no, you have not read that fic. (laughter) 

Katie: They eat the melon afterwards. Spoilers.

Mal: They, they do eat the melon. It’s like waste not, want not, but they do wash it first. Like Dean stands there and washes all of this melon. (laughter)

Katie: It’s so bad. We veered down a path, haven’t we?

Ellen: It’sokay. These paths happen

Mal: While we’re talking specifically about Katie’s fics though. I do have to give a shout out to the podfic that you did of one of my fics. Not just because you took the time to do my bat-Dean fic, Love Bites, but. like this, I, this is impressive.

She did like the entire series. like, not just the first series you did, like all of the, the timestamps and everything that followed on as well. And I was quite impressed by that.

Katie: I’m a completionist. I have to.

Mal: It’s lovely. That’s one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. Yeah. ‘Cause I cannot read my own work to save my life, but the loophole is I can listen to someone else read it.

Katie: yeah. Oh good. I’m gonna have to do more Mal fics!

Mal: No, no, no, that wasn’t an invitation. (laughter)

Katie: I really try to spread it out because you know, as, as a fic reader, like, and I know you all probably run into this problem, when you find an author, you really like, like you just wanna read everything that they do and I really try to spread it out. So I’m not like there’s 14 MalMuses podfics, you know, it’s like, especially because I do, I like to do short one shots that are like 45 minutes to an hour long and some people who are just getting their start on ao3 and like just getting their start writing fanfic I really love to be like, Hey, I wanna do this fic and they’re just like, oh my gosh. And they’re just so delightful about it. And so I’ll go and just kind of troll social media and find people’s ao3 profiles and like read through their fics and stuff.

So I try to spread it out and not that like, it’s this huge honor or whatever, but like, just to keep everything spicy and not to do one the same author over and over again, ‘cause I could, you know, I could fall in love with MandalaRose’s fics and just do all of her fics. But you know,

Ellen: yes, you should

Katie: I should!

Mal: Highly recommend. Yes.

Katie: I love her stuff. I’ve done like three of hers though. I think. ‘cause I love it. I did the Cupcakes and Kittens and then the Hot Gym Guy series.

Mal: Yes. I love that one.

Katie: I think I’m closing in on like a hundred published hours.

Mal: Oh, wow. That is impressive. Good job.

Katie: It’s a lot. it’s a lot.

Ellen: So when you… let’s go into like a process question.

Okay. Do you, do you have like a space set up in your house for recording? Like how, how do you hide from your children? (laughter)

Katie: I do it in my bedroom closet. It’s like a small walk in closet. Yeah. So it’s just it. And it’s got, you know, a rack of clothes in here that really just kind of dampens the sound and worked out really well. And I hide from my children in here. My daughter is a heel walker, and so no matter what, when she’s walking around the house, you can hear like these base thumps, but I’ve kind of managed to tinker with my microphone and stuff like that to kind of get that out of there.

So, yeah. Yeah.

Ellen: and then they’re just like “Mom’s hiding in the closet again.” Yeah.

Katie: yeah. I’m just like, oh, I’m recording. And they just kinda like, okay. They never really asked questions about it. they’re like, okay, whatever. And they know that like, I eventually want to do audio book narrating. Like, I, I really… I’ve found like the process to get into it and I just need to like do it.

And this has been really good practice and just kind of, so I, you know, I was telling my spouse and everything and I’m like, well, I’m gonna keep doing these and get good practice. And then maybe one day I’ll make money off of them doing actual books.

Mal: That would be awesome. ‘Cause your voice is awesome to listen to. I love listening to your stuff, but I have definitely, you know, read actual published audio books where I have just been like, I’m gonna have to drop this ‘cause I just can’t. Just can’t take the voice yeah, like

Katie: I, I am a huge lover of audio books and, and I’m probably much more forgiving than anyone else, because I just really want to consume the content that way. So instead of going, ah, that’s not, for me, I’m like, no, no, no. I want to listen to this. but it, it takes me 10 to 20 minutes to get used to a narrator. And sometimes the first 10 to 20 minutes, I’m like, this is awful. And then when I’m two or three hours in, I’m like, oh my God, I love their voice.

So I just kind of stick with it and get used to it. And it works out for me.

Mal: Yeah

Ellen: well, very best of luck with that. And you’re great at it. So I think you’re gonna do great.

Katie: Good. I hope so. I just need to actually do it.

Mal: tell you what you can… You can do audio books for anything we publish. How about that?

Katie: yay! Oh, I’d love to.

Ellen: the pressure is on. Hurry up and write something! No, I’m, I’m stuck with these two forever.

Katie: You just control F Dean and change it to a different name. Control F Cas. Change it like all you have to do. Gosh. control F Impala and change it to Mustang or something.

Mal: Yeah,Dustin and Cal…

Ellen: Sad and Dead.

Mal: Change it to a sexy Ford focus. I dare you. Like, yeah.

Or Dean in his like Kia obsession or something. That would be wonderful.

(laughter)

So what’s next. Yeah, we love your podfics and your podcast, but there are lots of different people out there creating these amazing podfics. So let’s have a quick chat about some of the other ones that we have all listened to recently, who do we wanna start with?

<up to here>

Katie: I will start with Tenoko1. Tenoko1 is kind of the one that I kind of I fell in love with her podfics and was like, I could do this, like, oh my gosh, like, I really love this. So they’ve done a lot of podfics, but the particular one that really made me fall in love with it was 300 Things. And then there was another cute one called What Has Eight Tentacles and Isn’t Allowed To Eat Pie where she makes the cutest little blorp sound for, for the octopus.

Ellen: I love that one because it’s like… I think it’s gotta be like one of my favorite fics. It’s on the top ten list I think.

Mal: Yeah. One of my favorite fics one of my favorite authors, one of my favorite podficcers. It’s just right up there. So, yeah

Ellen: it’s like it’s cracked basically, but treated seriously.

So it’s a, it’s a curse where Dean gets turned into an octopus. I think we’ve talked about this before. I don’t think we’ve, we’ve done it as a main fic, but we’ve, we’ve spoken about it before, but it’s just that the story itself is so funny and the way that Tenoko has narrated, it is also very funny.

Like they have a great voice for… kind of the comedic timing and the, when the punchline comes, you, you know, I, I found myself laughing out loud the whole way through it was great. I really enjoyed that.

Mal: Yes. It’s a really cute one. There’s a lot to be said for comedic timing in podfic, I think because, you know, luckily we’ve got a bunch of really good pod figures in this fandom and that it really hits and the parts that are meant to be funny are funny. But I feel like it would be really easy to mess that up,

Katie: oh yeah. When I did Funny Bone by… oh gosh, their name escape escaped me. Pallasperilous. Oh yeah. Pallas is hilarious. And I was like, okay, I have to do their fic justice. Like, yes, there were so many jokes in it.

Mal: Shout out to Pallas who we have also had on the podcast.

Katie: oh yeah, yeah. That was a good episode.

Mal: but they are hilarious.

Ellen: Tenoko has a very engaging speaking voice too, like I find sometimes when you listen to a longer podfic you can kind of tune out a little bit, sometimes, usually when I’m doing something else at the same time I’m tuning out.

But yeah. Tenoko’s voice is very engaging as well when you listen.

So What Has Eight Tentacles and Isn’t Allowed To Eat Pie is by Annie D. We did mention that before it’s like. It’s it was originally published in, in 2013. Did you know that it’s like, nearly 10 years old. Amazing.

Katie: it was podficced in 2014. Yeah. So that’s, that’s getting up there too.

Mal: I think, Tenoko was one of the very first, I think I listened to my first Tenoko podfic back in 2018, maybe. So yeah. Been around a while.

Ellen: Yeah. So this fic is, is rated Teen. So it’s like, even though the summary says, Dean watched an anime porn about this once, but real life turns out to be way less interesting.

That’s the whole summary apart from The one where Dean gets turned into an octopus, but there is no like one of the tags is non-sexual tentacles. Yeah. So there’s no, there’s no actual sex

Mal: this isn’t the monster fucking ep

Ellen: no, no, no. It’s just really cute.

Katie:. it’s it is very cute.

Ellen: This is Dean being a cute octopus

Mal: has anyone podficced monster fucking? Now that is a question I’m gonna dig around in here.

Katie: I have!

Mal: Oh, you have? Yes, you have, of course you have.

Katie: I did the friends with tentacles… Friends with Tentacles with Benefits? Friends With Benefits With Tentacles?

Mal: Yes. By andimeantittosting. Great fic

Katie: yes, that was good.

Ellen: I love that one.

Katie: it was, I posted like, it was the first podfic of 2022, I believe so. I was like, let’s start the year off right.

Mal: consentacles!

Katie: So it should be on the podcast feed. There are some other podfics that are a little bit more… I know badfinch, I think, did maybe intothesilentland or, or, oh, what is that? The Inexhaustible Silence of Houses or something like that.

Mal: Yeah, the really creepy one?

Katie: no, intothesilentland is an author, right? But. Yeah. The Inexhaustible Silence of Houses badfinch did those. And I’m just not really a lover of like horror or angst or anything like that. So like a lot of my recs are really fluffy so I haven’t listened to that. I need to listen to that now.

Mal: I haven’t listened to that as a podfic, but I I’ve read the fic multiple times cause I do love a good horror fic, and that is a great one. I think we talked about that a little bit more in depth. We did a horror episode. It’s like one of our, I think it was one of our first episodes, like back a couple years ago now.

Ellen: Yeah, it was early on.

Yeah. So yeah, I love that fic and now that I know there’s a podfic of it, I’m gonna go and hunt that down. Yeah.

Katie: Yes. I’m pretty sure it’s badfinch. So if that helps,

Ellen: it must be hard to do that kind of horror audiobook in general, because you gotta keep the tension up, like.

Katie: Yeah,

Ellen: you gotta have like a spooky voice and, you know?

Mal: Yeah. Well, that’s where your like atmospheric music and background noise and stuff is really gonna help out. I think. Yeah,

Katie: I did a, I did a case fic where they had ghosts (The Tunnel of Love) and it was really fun, layering my voice to do the ghosts, especially because there were elements to it where it was multiple voices in the story and like the way they described it.

And I was like, okay. So I had to like say the line several different ways and then layer them together and then put like effects on it. And it was really fun..

Mal: Nice Okay.

Ellen: Well, while we’re talking about effects, could we talk about your podfic of Jacob’s Ladder?

Katie: Sure.

Mal: So Jacob’s Ladder is by Cass, who’s also been on the podcast, imogenbynight, apparently it’s just like, this is our greatest hits.

Katie:. Can you tell Honestly, I don’t know if you can tell, but I sometimes use mixtapebookclub.com to troll for fics, so (laughter)

Ellen: oh, sweet.

Mal: Glad to be of service.

Ellen: yes.

Katie: There’s just so many. I have to pare it down somehow.

Ellen: well, that’s what they’re we are there for, so all good. Yeah. Glad we can help.

Mal: Yes. So I love this fic. Jacob’s Ladder is, is a great fic to start with

Katie: Let me…it’s general audiences. It’s 8200 words. And then let’s see, it was published in 2016 and then the podfic is right at one hour long.

Ellen: Yeah. I was surprised. I, I thought that I’d read this one, but I, when I listened to it I realized I hadn’t. And I’m so glad that I did did listen to it ‘cause it’s great. Great little fic.

Katie:. Yeah, it’s really nice. I, so I decided to do this one. I’m really proud of it. Like this is the one I spent the most editing on per like finished minute because I did this as an entire sound scape. So yeah, because music was so heavily featured in here I was like, how am I gonna… I love to add a song. If you talk about a song, I’m gonna put a song in there and how am I gonna pop those songs in and out? And I did a first edit where it just had the songs in there, like I normally do. And it was just a little jarring. And my whole thing about making, putting sound effects in there is like you know, how, if you’re reading a fic, and something, a word is flipped or anything. And it kind of pulls you out of the story and you’re like, oh, the author didn’t catch that or something. You know what I mean? When I’m podficcing, I don’t, I don’t ever want the audience to go, oh, Katie made that decision, you know, and sometimes if you add too many sound effects or the wrong sound effect, it pulls you out of the story.

Like, I just want you to be in the story. And when I listened to it and I was popping the songs in and out, it just, it didn’t really feel it was a little jarring, but I was like, you know what? I could put like ambient noise behind this. And so I decided to just shove ambient noise and sound effects into every minute of this.

So it’s like an entire soundscape. So when he’s in his mechanic shop, you will hear sounds of a car being worked on. When he’s at night at home, you’ll still hear like a faint sound of crickets and stuff like that. So yeah, it just kind of made it a very rich sounds scape to listen to.

Ellen: Yeah. I think there’s, there’s one point when they’re in the rain and you hear the rain, right?

Katie: Like, yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Mal: Lots of Impala driving

Ellen: yeah. The car.

Katie: yeah, the sound of the Impala… I had to go like crib that out of Supernatural episodes.

Mal: excellent. It’s such a distinctive sound. And this fandom is so obsessed with the Impala. You know, someone would be like, that’s not how the Impala actually sounds if you used a different one.

Katie: yeah, it was when Steve Cas was going on a date and Dean pulls up to the woman’s house and he’s like giving him a pep talk like that sound of him pulling up. That’s where I stole it from.

Mal: Nice.

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, we didn’t mention before that this one is about… Cas is a DJ on the radio and Dean calls in to the station and requests songs, and, you know, he gets to know Cas that way.

So yeah, there are a lot of songs involved as well. That Cas mentions in the, in the fic that you’ve added in the background, but I, like you said, like you tried to make them not be distracting. And I think that’s, that worked really well. It was effective to have the songs in there a little bit, like in the, you know, in the background while the story was going on and it just added to the overall experience.

Katie: good. yeah, I really liked that one. I’m really proud of that one.

Mal: Yeah. I think experience is a good word. Like this isn’t just a podfic. It’s a multimedia experience. so

Katie: yeah, I kind of warn people. I’m like, listen with headphones, listen in a quiet place. If you can. Yeah, because there’s a lot to hear. That’s kind of quiet, but yeah.

Mal: Yes, it’s really well with it. This one is a very good display of your talents. So

Katie: thank you

Mal: everybody should listen to this one. And even if you’re, you know, just one of those people who can’t process audio very well and at least please do go read the fic by imogenbynight because, oh, it’s so good.

And just, just imagine that Katie here is talking in your ear while you’re doing it.

Katie: that’s right.

Ellen: And go and put on the songs in the background while you listen, while you’re reading,

Katie: see. And that’s, you know, people make playlists for their fics and I’m like, I’m just gonna put the songs in there. So it works out perfectly.

You don’t have to go find, find the song. Nice. Yeah.

Ellen: well, if you ever feel the need to do like a, an emo Cas

Mal: got one for you.

Ellen: I’ve got one for you. yeah, it’s got a playlist.

Mal: It is one of my favorite fics that Ellen has ever written. Okay. And it. Criminally underrated how amazing. I think it is. So .

Katie: Oh, and which one is it?

Mal: It’s called Dark Blue, Dark Blue. I will send you a link

Katie: yes. Send me the link. Definitely.

Ellen: No, whenever anyone says anything about playlists I always remember that one because I actually listen to that playlist all the time, because it’s like you know, mid two thousands emo kind of, you know, My Chemical Romance and all that kind of thing.

Katie: perfect. I’m really weird about the songs I choose. Like I, every one of my podfics has a song if not more than one, and sometimes it is nice because if the fic already has a song attached to it, or like the title of the fic is a song, I’ll typically pick that song to play. But regardless I kind of try to choose a song that works with the fic and sometimes that takes me longer to choose a song than it does to like edit the podfic. I’m like, no, it has to be, be perfect.

Ellen: it’s like choosing a title. Sometimes you sit there for a, just going, oh, I don’t know. I’ve just been calling it my, my pinefest for like, you know, months, now I have to give it a name?

Mal: Like what that’s, why so many of my fics have dumb titles.

It’s either the first pun that comes to mind that I want to inflict upon people. or it ends up being pretty much the, like, I dunno if everyone else does this, but I have like dumb working titles, which aren’t ever really meant to be the title. It’s just what I’ve been calling it in my head for a long time. And yet somehow they make it onto ao3.

Katie: I’ve only published three stories myself and I really, I like the titles, but mine, my titles can get a little weirdly specific, like one of them’s Cat Up Your Chimney (and other things that aren’t euphemisms). And then The Dean Winchester Drying Technique is my second one.

And then of course the trench coat one. So, yep.

Mal: titles are hard. Yeah. Some of them are, are super long, especially the ones that like have a long title and then another long section in brackets after it.

Katie: yes. Yeah. That was my chimney one. Yep. Cat Up Your Chimney (and other things that aren’t euphemisms).

Ellen: Well, What Has Eight Tentacles And Isn’t Allowed To Eat Pie is quite a long one too

Katie: That’s pretty long.

Mal: Yeah, that one’s pretty long. Yeah. For some reason I seem to go towards shorter titles, but I don’t know why it’s not really deliberate, but just thinking about it got a lot of short titles.

All right. Once again, that was a bit of a tangent there, but

Katie: yeah,

Ellen: this episode’s all over the place, but that’s okay.

Katie: Well, let me bring up a, a newer podficcer. Let’s see. This podficcer is named gravelly and they first started doing podfics in late 2021. And they have done a couple of really cute ones. And the one I want to highlight is called 25 cent pocket guardian angels, and it was written by hopeless_heathen originally it’s Teen and up it’s about 13,000 words and the pod is an hour and 30 minutes. And the reason I love this one is because of the little tiny Cas voices that gravelly makes. So cute.

Mal: Love it. I love this fic. Anyway. Even though they’ve only written like a small handful of supernatural fics, the writer is one of my favorites in the fandom.

I dunno if they changed their name, I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure they used to be called Elspeth McGillycuddy?

Katie: Yeah. It’s in parentheses now in their name.

Mal: Ha. Okay. But yeah, they’ve done this one. They’ve also done another story, which is like a DNA cast as caveman, like a paleolithic story. And it, it sounds so weird, but it’s so good.

It’s really, really good. Check that out. Yeah, no, it’s amazing. Yeah, it’s really good. It’s not like super long or I think it’s only like 15,000 words, but it’s super good. So when I saw that there was a podfic of 25 cent guardian angels. I was so excited and I was not let down in the slightest,

Katie: oh, it’s amazing.

Let me read the summary.

Dean walks into his local bank one day and notices that someone has filled the old gumball machine with these tiny wiggling sentient angels in individual plastic packaging, deeply concerned about their air supply and the fact that they’re trapped in the sun. He starts pumping in quarters to rescue them.

This is worse than leaving a dog in an overheating car. Now he’s got 40 of the little guys running all over his house, and God knows how many others might be trapped and dying all over the city.

Oh, it’s amazing.

Ellen: I haven’t actually read this one, I need to get on with that. It sounds adorable!

Katie: It’s so cute. Let gravelly read it to you because the little voices that they make for Cas is just the cutest thing ever. Like they, they learn to say Dean’s name and they’re all going “Dean, Dean”. It’s so cute.

Mal: Adorable. Yep.

There are certain fics that are just elevated by having a podfic. And this is, this is one of them

Katie: definitely.

Ellen: Okay. I’m gonna have to add this to my list

Mal: Do it, and then go and read the paleolithic one while you’re at it.

Katie: yeah, I’m gonna have to do that one.

Ellen: So are the little angels okay at the end? I’m a bit worried about them now. I’ll have to read it to find out!

Katie: Yeah, it is a happy ending. That’s all I’ll confirm. Yes,

Mal: good. Okay. So gravelly did another pod that I just wanna briefly mention. We won’t talk about it a ton because it is much longer, but they did a podfic version of Everyone’s a Critic, which is a really fun AU where Cas is kind of a, like a restaurant reviewer type deal and Dean is a chef and, those are kind like one night stand situation.

Ellen: Didn’t we do this one?

Mal: I, I can’t remember. I don’t think we have, cuz this one is over a hundred thousand and we talked about a similar concept, but I remember it being a one shot, so, okay. I think we’ve covered these …

Yeah. We’ve covered these tropes before. But this particular fic is pretty long, but they have podficced the whole thing. They grouped kind of a few chapters together to make it kind of like you can listen episodically like, like those old like radio plays and stuff that you used to get.

It’s kind of fun. and they did a really good job. Just like the details of like the songs and all the like ambient noise and stuff. This is one of those where it’s kind of more like a radio play rather than just a straight read of the fic, which wonderful. Yeah. I, I love the, the detail that gravelly puts into their podfics. So I’ve only listened to these two, so I need to go track down some more.

Katie: it’s really good. Gravelly does a great job and it’s only Teen and up just because it, it doesn’t you basically, you don’t go into the bedroom, like they’re doing things they’re in there. You just don’t go in the bedroom with them basically. It’s just like, oh. And in scene to the next day, but it’s, it’s such a rich story.

Ellen: Fade to black kind of thing?

Katie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is nice. I, I probably wouldn’t have chosen it to read cuz I’m like, oh, Teen and up. But like yeah, just sometimes I don’t know. Sometimes when it’s not explicitly rated it doesn’t delve into the relationship as far, you know, but this one is just like a little fade to black and they still cover all of the elements of the angst and everything.

Mal: yeah, this one does have a decent amount of, kind of. Like gay panic or bi panic in this. So there is that, there is that in this, but it’s, it’s done in like a romcom kind of style. It’s not super heavy or anything like that.

Katie: Yeah, it’s good. Well, if anyone, this is a good time for me to mention that if anyone is interested in podficcing there is a wonderful guide.

It’s called A Newbies Guide to Podficcing that someone actually put on ao3 and it’s 22 chapters. And it goes from just, you know, what you need the equipment you need, how you would post it, the etiquette of asking for permission, how to edit, how to add sound effects if you want, all kinds of things.

Like it, it is a really invaluable guide. And if anybody asks me like, oh, well, I would, I kind of wanted to get into that. This is what I send them. I’m like, oh, read this. Read this and come back to me with any questions.

Ellen: That’s awesome.

Katie: Yeah, it really is an invaluable resource that I send everybody who asks about it.

Ellen: So, all right. We’ll, we’ll put a link in the notes for that as well. 

Katie: I’m always advocating more podfics. more for me to listen to.

Mal: Yes. Well, I’m gonna move on to shouting out another podficcer that I actually hadn’t heard of at all until we started doing research for this episode. So very grateful for that.

And that is litrapod. Mm. So they… The one that I listened to for this episode is a wonderful fit to start with. So please go and read it. It is Found Naked in his Azaleas by MNwood. And. The summary of this one is:

Cas doesn’t mind working a graveyard shift as a security guard. An owl accompanies him to work at night and he gets to talk to the food truck guy, Dean, when he’s going home in the morning.

And yeah, maybe he likes Dean, but relationships never really work out for him anyway. So why bother?

So this is one of those things where the summary doesn’t really give you much so going into the podfic, I didn’t quite know what to expect. And I was so delighted by this one, like something about like the voice and the atmosphere of this one just really pulled me in. I loved it.

Katie: Litra has also done like a, like a Cinderella one. What is it like? It’s like an enchanted one where they like time jump. It’s pretty, pretty popular. I can’t remember what it’s called.

Mal: Nice. Well, it looks as if they have a whole series on ao3 of like little… they call it Podfic Bingo, where they have like… So. that’s very cool. There’s a whole collection there, but it seems like they do enjoy some of these like slightly more magical fics, which I guess is a spoiler for this story. So I’ll have to put a big warning up here. There is this isn’t just a straight, like normal, modern day AU.

There are some twists here. which I loved

Ellen: none of these are straight.

Mal: No, none of them . But yeah, this one is just a little twisty as well as being very, not straight. So it’s, it’s great. It’s adorable. I love it. There, I guess probably should be some warnings in this one. Like there is a lot of, kind of depressed Cas in this one. He does have a, a previous injury that he is dealing with. And but it’s done in such a way that it doesn’t feel like there’s no, like heavy… It doesn’t even feel angsty even when it is angsty. It’s just, it’s lovely. So. Please go and read. I realize I’m not selling this well, ‘cause I don’t wanna spoil the like main thing that I love about it.

But, okay. Yeah, that’s good. It’s really good. Please go listen to it and read it and give kudos to both. That’s another thing I wanna say, remember to go kudos your podfic posts people because it’s very easy to remember the fic and go and give your kudos to the fic and leave comments there, but think about your podficcers too, and go and give them their kudos and comments too.

Katie: that’s an important chapter in the newbies guide to podficcing is to realign your expectations because typically when people listen to podfics and they download it, mm-hmm , they’re not in ao3 to give that kudos really quickly.

And so, yeah, they kind of point out like, Hey, here’s a bunch of I just sorted by the tag podfic. And I. I had it sort by kudo count basically. And I went to the middle page and like the average number of kudos is like 45. So just so you know, you’re not gonna get a lot of kudos. Like, you know, fanfic in itself is niche, Destiel fanfic in itself while prolific is still niche and podfics are even more niche.

And so you just kind of have to realign your expectations that you’re not gonna get the same amount of kudos and hits as a text work. It just, it just is what it is. Yeah. So it there’s a good chapter on there. That’s just like, Hey, please, don’t get upset about this ‘cause that’s just the nature of it. So

Ellen: yeah, it’s a similar thing to like publishing actual podcasts.

Like, people listen to it in their, their, their app or whatever. And there’s no way to give feedback. Yeah. So we’re used to getting on ao3, we get. You know, comments, kudos, whatever. But when you… like for the podcast, we barely get any feedback at all. So if you wanna send us some feedback, please do we’d to hear it,

Mal: Please do that!

Ellen: Tell us you enjoyed it.

Katie: I’m the same way. When I decided to put it onto a podcast format, someone warned me, they were like, you’re, you know, your stats on ao3 are gonna be all are, are not gonna reflect the actual number of listeners. And I kind of had to make sure internally if I was okay with that kind of disappearing and getting split between like podcast downloads and ao3, and the fact that people won’t come and comment, but there are some really, really sweet people who come and comment and they’re like, oh, I’m so sorry, I’ve been listening to all the podcast feed. And now I need to come and comment and kudos all these. And they’re really sweet to. To make go out of their way for me. Yeah.

Mal: We are kind of lucky in the way that we have the blog and very occasionally you will get somebody who will come and leave comments on our blog for the podcast.

Oh, that’s cool. So occasionally people do that. Which is nice, but otherwise it’s kinda like you put it out there and you don’t necessarily, you can look at like certain stats and things to in theory, get an idea if people are listening or not, but it’s not, it’s not that same level of engagement.

And so then occasionally you get somebody who, you know, says something on social media or something like that. I don’t know gives you, gives you all the warm fuzzies inside. You’re like, oh, where there are people,

Katie: you know, I got one comment on a fic one time that really, really stuck with me, you know, ‘cause you always wanna make you, you’re making stuff for entertainment. You’re doing it for fun. But someone actually commented that they were so engrossed in fan fiction that they were reading while they were driving. And they were like, you’ve literally probably saved my life because I can get in my car and turn on one of your podfics instead of reading while I drive.

And I was like, okay, please, don’t read while you drive. Yeah.

Mal: PSA for this episode, please do not read while driving!

Katie: but I was like,

Ellen: that sounds terrifying.

Katie: Yeah. I was like, I’m so glad. And, and don’t get me wrong. I’ve had times where I’m so engrossed in a thick that I’m like, I must drive somewhere and I’m like, dang it. I wish I could just sit here and read, but you know, don’t read while you drive. But I was like, yeah, that’s something you can put on while you’re going about your day. Like that podfics for me are I can get chores done or I can get work done or I can get something else done while I’m doing it. So yeah.

Mal: So don’t read and drive, but do podfic and drive.

Katie: Yeah. I get a lot of comments about you’ve gotten me through a work day and I’ve caught up on all your stuff and my work day’s going a lot slower now. yeah. So,

Ellen: Do you get… do you get like sort of critical comments? Like, I don’t know.

Katie: Every now and again, yes.

Ellen: Do you welcome constructive criticism or how do you feel about that sort of comment?

Katie: I mean, here’s the thing. If, if I have messed up in editing because what I do is I, if I mess up a line, I’ll snap my fingers and I know in editing to go back and take that out.

And there’s sometimes when I’m just sitting in a certain way that I don’t feel like snapping and I, when I go to edit, I miss it. And I listen, but sometimes you zone out on your editing and you’re like, And you don’t pay attention that you’ve missed it. So like if someone said, Hey, like on minute, hour 40, you said this line twice.

I am totally fine with going back and like cutting that out. I’ve had a few people not really like my character voices, especially Cas and like… (sigh)

Mal: What do they expect you to do, get a new voice? like

Katie: right. And well, they’re asking me to just straight read it, you know? And so, and I’m like, well, I’m not gonna do that ‘cause I like, I like doing the voices and you know, and they kept pushing back like, well, if you’re ever gonna be a professional, like you’re so good, you could be a professional audiobook narrator, but not with that.

And I’m like, well, with that, I would be reading probably more like the narrator would be a woman and I wouldn’t be doing these voices, you know? So thank you. But this is for fun. you know? We’re doing this just for fun.

Mal: Yeah. This is just going back to the normal issue of some people not knowing the difference between actual constructive criticism and just criticism.

Right, right. So I think that just kind of feeds back into that, unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately for everybody

Katie: and you know, it’s only been a couple of times where I’ve gotten like backhanded compliments, like, well, you’re so good if you would do this. And I’m like, well, I bet I’m not going to, so as far as like critique constructive,  quote, unquote constructive criticism of my style? nah, like I don’t need to hear that. That’s fine. But if there’s like truly like, Hey, you repeated this line, you know, FYI, you didn’t notice that. Yeah. Technical stuff.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. I guess it’s just a, a I don’t know how you would say like a PSA for people. Have a think about what you’re gonna say before you say it.

Katie: If it’s a preference…

Ellen: Yeah. If, if you wouldn’t be welcome to hear that yourself, right? Then don’t say anything to them

Katie:. Yeah. I have pretty thick skin, I’m alright.

Mal: It’s just like with fanfic writing really, like it’s perfectly valid to contact someone and be like, Hey, on this page, you accidentally spelled Dean’s name wrong and he’s suddenly dead.

But it’s entirely different to say, I don’t like the way you wrote this. Right. You didn’t write it. So

Katie: yeah. Yeah. I think the biggest thing is, you know, you can only take criticism from someone you trust. And so if you want to offer a suggestion, you need to first ask permission, like, Hey, are you in the head space to receive some, some ideas of mine?

And second, you need to have some sort of relationship of trust with the person, because you don’t know their credentials, you don’t know their background or experiences. And so, you know, you really have to trust the person you’re accepting criticism from knows what they’re talking about. And when it’s just a random comment from someone you’ve never heard of, you’re kind of loathe to trust that you’re like, wait a minute.

I don’t know you so, yeah. So, but if it’s a preference, like it’s just like, eh,

Mal: yeah, this is why beta readers are so fantastic in the fanfic world. Yes. And I’m sure that you have, you know, if you had something you were not sure about, you probably have trusted people you would go to as well and just be like, Hey, can you just listen, tell me if you think this works.

Katie: Yeah. I, I actually had like a beta listener for the first time I did Eileen’s voice because I did not want to offend anybody. You know, I definitely didn’t wanna do a deaf accent, which is just, you know, that would just be extremely offensive, but I also didn’t want to remove the voice of her character.

And like, people kind of gave me advice like, well, maybe you should just straight read hers and maybe you should just straight read the entire fic you know so, yeah, that was interesting, but yeah, there are definitely like sensitivity listeners that will help you out with that.

Mal: All that said don’t be afraid to do podfic and I mean, you can, there’s no reason to like, just like, there’s no reason to be afraid of writing fic because the majority people are wonderful. There’s no reason to be afraid of doing podfic either. Cuz the majority of people are awesome.

Katie: Oh and I’ve, I’ve probably gotten, I’m talking about three comments of all of them. That’s been kind of like, eh, I didn’t need to hear that. so, yep. Let’s see. Do you want to talk about Unforth? Unforth does podfics.

Mal: Unforth does podfics. The podfic I’m gonna bring up is actually a podfic they did of one of their own stories called Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.

Katie: Did you all listen to this? I love this fic yes. Now so much. The twist is amazing.

Mal: Anybody who knows me knows that I am a Russian Cas obsessive, I mean, it’s Misha’s fault. Come on. Yeah, but this is a, a one shot that I loved. And then to find out that, you know, it was also podficced is brilliant. There is a great twist in this don’t wanna go into the twist too much but you have a Russian Cas and Dean applying for a job, which is interesting. Dean is a lifeguard in this story, which is pretty cool.

 But the summary of this story is:

Seasonal work is a bitch. Unemployed, crashing on Sam’s couch, Dean gets an interview for a lifeguard position at Angel Enterprises. The only questions are, where is the fucking pool, and why is the Russian guy so damn hot?

Katie: that is the question. Isn’t it?

Mal: Yes.

Katie: yeah, this was, this was so good. And I totally didn’t see the twist coming and was just like, and then once you see the twist, you’re like, oh, I should have caught that.

Mal: yes, very much.

Katie: Yeah.

Mal: I was just so excited I was getting some Russian Cas and then I was like, wait, wait. (laughs)

Oh yeah. so good. So yeah, it’s not a long, not gonna spoil it,

Katie: but yeah, it’s only 25 minutes long, so it’s a good little. A little tiny topic.

Mal: Yes. And, and accent wise and stuff, Unforth reads this fairly straight accent wise, but yes, at the same time, because of the sentence construction in the way that Cas speaks, you still very much kind of pick up on there being an accent there, if that makes any sense. Mm-hmm

Katie: yeah. I, I can never do a Russian Cas because I just literally would want to do the accent. I typically do accents when I, when I record other characters, as long as I, and I, I have actually declined doing fics that had certain characters in them cuz I’m like, Nope, can’t do that.

Ellen: I love your Rowena.

Katie: oh, I’m so I’m so glad. I, I was forced into that. No, I, I signed up for Fic facers and Kashero chose a fic that followyourenergy had done for them. And Rowena was not heavily featured, but Rowena was a character in there. And up until that point, I hadn’t done a Rowena voice, cuz I was like, no, I cannot do a Scottish accent.

Like I’m I’m from Louisville, Kentucky. Like I can don’t think I can do that. and, but because it was for charity, it was for Fic facers, I was like, I will figure it out. So I watched a whole bunch of Ruthie and I went on YouTube and found like dialect coaches and accent coaches like tutorials and stuff and listened.

So yeah. So my process is usually I read everything in line. Like if I will read the narration and then I will drop down into the… I’ll drop down into my Cas voice. And then if Dean has to talk, then Dean’s gonna talk like this, you know? And so I just kind of go in and out, but when it comes to certain characters with accents, I will… I’ll I’ll still read theirs with the best accent I can in line, and then at the end of the chapter or the end of whenever they are featured, I’ll take just their dialogue because sometimes if you get into the accent and you stay in the accent, it’s easier and I’ll read just their dialogue. And so when I go to edit, then I’ll chop it up and stick it in, in with it. so

Mal: interesting. Okay. That makes sense. Cause I guess once, like you said, when she gets settled into an accent, it’s hard to stop sometimes.

Katie: yeah. Yeah. But most everybody else that can pop into like Bobby or… Missouri, Missouri Mosley is someone I have to do separate cuz you kind get into that lilt and don’t wanna get out of it.

Mal: Yeah, she has a very distinctive voice, yeah.

Katie: Yeah. I worked really hard on that one too. And especially I didn’t wanna be, I didn’t wanna go too hard on it. I don’t wanna be offensive. I don’t wanna be like mimicking someone. You know what I mean? Like I just kind of want the essence of their voice. I, I, and like how they feel.

I don’t want it to be too harsh or too, you know, whatever. I work really hard on it. I think, I think I overthink it.

Ellen: so you don’t wanna try Russian?

Katie: I don’t think I can. I there’s been, you know, there’s something about that, like Eastern European that I just can’t get in and stay in. And I just did. And especially because Cas would be like one of the main characters. It’s one thing if like Rowena pops in for like a chapter and then she pops back out, but like having all of that dialogue, I, I just couldn’t do. I don’t, I don’t think.

Mal: I’m sad I can’t tempt you to do, to do Russian for me, but I understand

Ellen: there’s a lot of Russian in Russian

Mal: yeah. There is a lot of Russian in Russian, you’re right.

Ellen: so you’d have to learn how to pronounce it correctly.

Katie: Right.

Ellen: That will be an extra step. Yeah. It’s a challenge. You’re up for it though. You can do it.

Katie: one day. One day.

Mal: Russian is very distinct accent though, as well. Like it’s, it’s very, very… how to put this without sounding utterly insane. Like there are a lot of accents, which to kind of more Western people kind of all sound very similar to us, but if you are from that part of the world, it’s so distinctive all these different accents and how different they sound.

Like even the, the limited Russian that I know my old Russian friends used to laugh at me because I would speak Russian with a Polish accent. (laugh)

Katie: So, and meanwhile, I’m over here going? Nope, that sounds great to me.

Ellen: It’s hard to know the difference.

Mal: I mean, yeah. Yeah. So I love accents in general, but yeah,

Ellen: when we were, when we were living in the, in the UK, everyone used to ask us if we were from South Africa.

Katie: Oh, okay.

Ellen: The South African accent is completely different to mine.

Mal: That’s okay. But I get, I get asked a lot living here in the south if I’m Australian, so

Katie: right.

Ellen: I mean, if you’re not used to hearing it, you, you know, it’s just a thing that people do… if they guess.

Katie: yeah. Yep. Well, and I never, some people tell me, I sound like I have a Southern accent and some people tell me I don’t someone always

Ellen: it’s kind of mild, but yeah.

Katie: Yeah. They say I have like a soft accent where like the word “eyes”?

Like, or “side”, “Dean’s side”, you know, he looked in his blue eyes and like, instead of eyes and someone told me that the way I say eyes and stuff like that. And so, yeah. Is, is a little bit factor.

Mal: Those slightly, slightly stretched Southern vowels, but not too much.

Katie: yeah, Or like five, five miles down the road miles instead of miles.

Mal: yeah. Living, living in the south. I don’t think you sound Southern. But you definitely don’t sound Northern

Katie: right, right. Yeah. I think, I think I hit a sweet spot of being in the middle because there definitely, if I go up north that, you know, I sound like, like I have a Southern accent and then if I go just like two, two hours south, it’s like, whoa, okay.

I have family down south who, my, my brother’s name is Matt and it had two syllables to them. They’d go, “hi. May-att” I’m like, oh man,

Mal: that that’s where I live.

Ellen: Adorable. I’m sorry to Southern people. But that is adorable

Katie: We’re like, how does this…? Yeah. Isn’t it cute? So I can pretty easily slip into Bobby or Garth, because that Southern accent is really close. Really close to the tip of my tongue.

Ellen: Oh. When I, I did a oh one of my short ones. I recorded it as a podfic actually, Ill have to link it in the thing. Yeah. And I was really worried about the accent thing because I’m like, well, I don’t really wanna do, I don’t wanna try. Like, I nearly didn’t do it at all because I thought no one wants to listen to an Australian reading an American story. But in the end I decided, I was like, could I do an American accent? And then I’m like, no, I’m not, it’s just not gonna work. I’m gonna sound like an idiot. so I just read it. I just read it with an Australian accent. So yeah, if you happen to listen to the one about the climbing the wall and the rose, what is it called I can’t remember the name of my own fic?

Mal: Oh gosh. I can’t remember the name of it either, but it’s, that’s a sign that you’ve done too many. That’s something stable, boy. Something, the word stable is in there, right? The stable,

Ellen: the stable boy, The Stable Boy and the Rose.

Katie: There we go. Okay I’ll have to listen to that. Now I will say that’s what kept me from doing any BBC Merlin podfics is because could not do the accents.

I actually did dialogue for someone who is British and was wanting to do a Destiel fic. And they were like, I can’t do the voices. And I was like, how about we team up? And I’ll do the dialogue. And then you can do the narration. And I, I think this is their first crack at doing a podfic and they’re a little bit timid to actually post it. And they were like, I’m so sorry. And I’m like, Hey, no, I want you to learn, like, you know, it, it took me 15 minutes. It was a short fic. Like I just did the dialogue and they, and sent it to ’em and they can chop it up and use it, however they wish. So, so there’s always the collaborations that could happen like that. So,

Ellen: yeah. Oh, the possibilities are endless!

Katie: radio plays, collaborations, everything. Yeah.

Mal: And don’t be worried about accents ‘cause I love hearing accents. We have another podficcer on our list here. I believe they pronounce their name  Darynidia?

Ellen: Yes, let’s talk about Dary

Mal: Yeah. We call then Dary most of the time. but they have done numerous fics, so yes. I know them because one of the first, I think it was one of the first podfics they did. Cause they did the whole thing before posting any of it was an 80,000 word fic of mine (Under the Nothing Sky), which I think is incredibly impressive to buckle down to podfic that amount of fic especially without any feedback in between like no posting or anything like that.

That is a lot of podfic to do. But they did a wonderful version of one of Ellen’s fics, Baby Whispering 101.

Ellen: Oh no, let’s talk about yours.

Mal: No, no, no, no. we are going to talk about Baby Whispering, okay? (laughs)

Katie: I love this one so much.

Mal: It’s so cute. It’s a great fic and now you can listen to it as well. But the reason why I bring that up at this particular juncture is that this podficcer is German so don’t think that just because you are not American means that you’re somehow excluded from the world of podfics, cuz it’s just not true. If you wanna do it, just do it. Yeah. Like it’s, it’s an international fandom. Okay. so

Katie: yes, I am down for listening to whatever fic I can get my hands on. Even if it’s accented, I don’t even care.

Like I just love podfics so much, so.

Mal: Yeah. And I love listening to accent a wonderful job. Yeah. I, I just love listening to it, so

Katie: yes, it’s amazing. And they did Baby Whispering 101 and they also did the follow up Baby Whispering 201.

Mal: Yeah. So if you want a really adorable fic where Cas is an adult student, like a single parent and his babysitter falls through, and he has to take baby Claire to class with him then go ahead and listen to that one because , it’s incredibly cute. I’m in love with this fic I’ve read it so many times.

Katie: Mm-hmm , it’s very cute. So I’ve had it read to me several times. Dary’s great.

Ellen: Thank you. thank you Dary!

Katie: I was a baby and I was too afraid to podfics someone else’s fic as my very first one. So I was like, now I have to write a fic and then podfic it. So the very first podfics I ever posted was the very first fic I ever wrote was the Dean Winchester Drying Technique. So

Mal: that’s really smart though. Actually, like that’s kind of a good way to get past nerves. Yeah. Like if somebody is anxious about approaching somebody or taking on someone else’s fic then yeah. Just write a little something and record that

Katie: Yeah. Yeah. I figured if it was awful, I, you know, I’m not gonna disappoint cuz you have to ask permission first, before you even start, like I wouldn’t record something and then ask you and you’d be like, no thanks. And I’d be like, oh, I guess I’ll throw this away.

You know? So you, you don’t wanna get someone’s hopes up that they’re you’re gonna do something and then not do it and think it’s awful or whatever. So I was just like, no, I’m gonna, the only person I’ll disappoint is myself.

Ellen: all right. I’m gonna have to give a shout out to one more: A Date For the Holidays by WaywardAF67. This one… is it’s a little longer than the other ones. It’s the fic itself is 37,000 words, but the podfic… so she wrote this and, and podficced it herself. So the podfic says it is three to three and a half hours, so it’s a little bit longer.

But so this is… Cas is like a, his family owns like a, a company. And he and his brothers basically have the high positions in the company, you know, so they’re all rich. But he has to take a date home for the holidays. So he’s gotta take someone. He, he wants to take someone to Thanksgiving at his, at his parents’ place. And then for Christmas, I guess, for the holidays and he ends up, his best friend, Charlie, who also works for him suggests that he hire an escort and he ends up with Dean. So then you’ve got that kind of tension with, does he really like me or is, is it just because I’m paying him to be here, you know, that kind of tension that’s going on and is just… It sounds like it could be really angsty, but it’s not that it’s just a minor kind of angst and it’s just soft and, and warm and lovely. And it’s and WaywardAF67 has like a really lovely voice to listen to when reading it as well. So I recommend getting into that one. So this one was because it was, it was only 2019, but but you do need to download the file to listen to it. It doesn’t have an embedded player. So, you know, sometimes ones like that can be more difficult to actually listen to, but I encourage you to go and do it.

Katie: They’re well worth cracking into that walnut to figure it out, cuz this one’s really good. I want to go to that gumbo shack that Benny runs in this fic

Ellen: yeah.

Katie: Sounds good. With, with Cain’s mead, like so…

Ellen: and Dean’s beer. Yeah.

Katie: Oh yeah. Yeah!

Ellen: But she’s done a few other podfics as well. There’s. She’s got a list of them. some of them are fair bit shorter than that one, but yeah, always worth a listen and read.

Any others that we wanted to shout out?

Mal: One more of Katie’s fics that. I, well, not Katie’s fit Katie’s podfics that I want to bring up. Yes. So I think a lot of people in the fandom, this is a very popular, thick have read Real Slick Dean by trilliath. It’s a very popular fic, I think this thick has like 11,000 kudos or something it’s been around a long time. It was published in 2013. So this is an omegaverse fic with kind of quite a bit of plot happening in it, but it’s very smutty plot but it is plot, importantly, like there is a purpose to all of the smut in this fic. I have read this fic several times. I think we’ve mentioned it on the podcast before. At some point, I don’t think it was a main fic, but we have mentioned it at least. This is wonderful to listen to as a podfic because omegaverse is a very specific trope with specific language and abbreviations and all kinds of things that on a day to day basis, we don’t hear out loud

Katie: yes.

Mal: So like I have never, in my life, heard someone out loud other than, maybe on this podcast when we’re just, you know, talking shit here. I’ve never heard someone say “slickery” out loud before and it delighted me to just have this, like coming out of the speakers of my car as we were going to work. It was amazing. I had this like little thing in the back of my head. Like if someone pulls me over right now… (laughter)

Katie: that would be not good. That that’s a, it’s a fuck die fic. So there is a lot, a lot of sex in that. A lot of fluids,

Ellen: like you pull up to the, the drive through window and…What is going on there?

Katie: Yes. “Castiel buries his face in Dean’s…” (laughter)

Mal: I did see on Twitter once. I don’t know if this was one of yours, Katie or somebody else’s, but I did see on Twitter once somebody saying that they actually got recognized as a Destiel fan because they were in a drive through and they were playing a podfic.

Katie: Oh yeah, that was me. Yeah. That was you posted that. But yes, it was one of mine and someone was like, are you listening to NerdyNerdenstein? And I’m like, that did not happen. No. And that can’t happen. That’s crazy. I was like, that’s how I would meet my best friend. I think it did happen.

Mal: Amazing.

Katie: Yeah. Amazing. No. Yeah, I think I’ve only, I think this is the only, the only omegaverse fic that I’ve done. I’m actually waiting on an author to get back to me about another one to get permission to do that one, but I really liked this one and trilliath was very nice to let me podfic it. So it was very good.

Mal: Mm-hmm and it’s very nicely done. So thank you. Thank you. Very good. but yeah, it’s, it’s just, I don’t know.

I was very entertained by hearing all this stuff out loud that you don’t usually Don’t usually hear out loud. Cause I’m one of those people where like I was such an avid reader, especially as a kid, there are so many words that I don’t think I’ve ever heard out loud. And so I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing them right. ‘cause I just I’ve just read them. So yeah, it kind of triggered that part of me. just so I was like, oh my gosh. Omegaverse words out loud. Yay.

Katie: Right. Well, with, with fake words like that, you can kind of choose your pronunciation. The amount of times that I pause my recording and go Google, how to pronounce something like… one thing that sticks out in my mind, “petrichor” is a word that you find in, in fanfic all the time is the smell of petrichor. And I was like, am I pronouncing that? Right? So I’m always Googling it. Yeah. To make sure I’m doing it right. Wendigo is another one that I always screw up. I wanna say Wendigo yeah.

Mal: I think that’s how I pronounce it actually

Katie: I think it’s, Wendigo like indigo, I think, you know, I think you could do either way though. Another word…something that gets me. There’s always words that get me when it says “Cas gasps”. So the word gasp always screws me up. like, I’m like “Cas gasps” and like my, my mouth literally won’t make that sound.

So like, when I do the voices, I try to assign different like pronunciations to them as well. Like if you notice, if I say the word uncomfortable when I narrate I say the word uncomfortable. When Dean says that he says uncomfortable, and when Cas says that he says uncomfortable. And so I try to keep that across the board. So it’s just a little bit, just a little bit different. So you can tell that I’m saying it different in, from a different voice.

Ellen: Oh, that’s so cool.

Mal: See, the details.

Katie: Ugh. Yeah, I think about that stuff in detail. Nobody notices, but I think about it!

Mal: This is the worship Katie episode. Thank you for tuning in… Love it.  

Ellen: I think we should talk about Shiver My Bones. Which is a wip, a work in progress from you, MalMuses. Tell us about the podfic. So he’s come bringing out episodes with each chapter published. Is that how it’s working?

Mal: That’s the plan? He’s gonna do. Okay. Instead of, you know, one long podfic, it’s gonna be a case of per chapter, and then I guess we’ll put ’em together at the end or something like that. But yeah, you can listen to it on like a chapter by chapter basis, ‘cause it is a pretty long fic. I only have three probably by the time this is posted four chapters I think out at the moment and they’ve already done the podfic of the first one, but I think he deserves some, a special shout out for this one because Shiver My Bones is a pirate AU for anybody who probably most people are not familiar but it’s a thick that I wrote during my, Our Flag Meets Death brain rot.

It it’s in no way really related to Our Flag Meets Death, but it, you know, I did take some inspiration for various characters and things from it, but like plot-wise nothing, nothing to do with it whatsoever. Just a pirate AU, but. In this fic, because Dean can’t have his classic rock that we’re used to him having all the time as basically like a personality trait in this, he sings a lot of sea shanties.

Like there are only a couple of chapters that don’t have sea shanties in them. So like he sings when he’s happy. He sings when he’s pissed, he sings just to annoy people. He, he sings all the time, just various different sea shanties. Plus they also sing, you know, when they’re working on the ship in the way that sea shanties kind of would’ve been used.

So when roadtonowhere, Aaron, asked if they could do this, this particular story, I was like, oh, well, that would be awesome. And in the back of my head, I was like, I wonder how they’re gonna do the singing parts because it’s not like, you know, you can kind of just go and include a song, you know, like from YouTube a lot of the time, But no, he went out there and. Not only did them himself, but recruited other people. Like there is a full on like layered choir of people, multiple voices doing these sea shanties. And it’s so good. like, I, I have listened to the song parts of this, like on a loop an embarrassing number of times. Mm so good.

Ellen: That’s so good.

Katie: Roadtonowhere. He is a little bit of an outlier on pot picking because he has a masculine voice and it’s kind of nice to hear Dean and Cas in, you know, in more masculine voices than, than we can do, you know?

Mal: Yeah. And he just has a really nice voice as well in that he’s very, enunciates very clearly. Yeah. It’s really nice to listen to

Katie: he has done a podfic called Tipping the Scales. That was a shorter one. That’s complete. Yeah. So it’s about. It says the length is 10 to 20 minutes and that one’s good too.

Mal: And I think we should probably also mention that he does have another in progress podfic, and that he got permission from Ben to do Four Letter Word, which, cause I think Ben probably wanted like a male voice to do that.

Cause he, for a long time, didn’t have a podfic of that fic. Despite its like massive popularity. So I’m really glad that we get to listen to some of that. I hope that someday we’ll get to listen to all of it. On the edge of my seat, we will see . Yeah. So yes please. But yes, that is a roadtonowhere on ao3 something else on other social media, which has escaped my brain.

But I will put in the…

Ellen: lastoryx

Mal: there we go. Thank you.

Katie: I actually just think, I think he just changed his at on Twitter. So. It might not be that anymore. Might not be

Mal: anymore. Okay. We’ll see. But yeah, he is awesome. I am immensely grateful and excited for him for doing what he’s done with Shiver my Bones, especially, especially going that extra mile to not only put in like ambient sound, but like perform an entire sea shanty choir for me. Amazing.

Katie: See, he’s so good doing better than I am. Cuz I would’ve read that and be like, well I can’t podfic this one. onto the next.

Mal: You could totally do it. I want to hear you, you sing some sea shanties. Okay.

Katie: Okay. All right. That’ll be next on the other podcast. I’ll instead of doing jokes, I’ll do sea shanties.

Mal: Excellent.

Ellen: all right. While we’re talking about pirates, Katie, we have to mention you did, you’ve just recently wrapped up the season for Gentleman Pirate’s Library. With Mary?

Katie: Yeah. Yeah, with Mary, we do an Our Flag Meets Death podcast. So we did 10 episodes for the 10… 10 episodes for the 10 episodes. And then we’re here in a couple of weeks.

We’re gonna record a wrap up of kind of things we missed or things we wanted to go in depth about.

Mal: Amazing. And do you have plans to do season two when it comes out as well?

Katie: Yes. Yes. And this time we won’t be halfway spoiled on it because we’ll just do it week to week and record. Yeah. So

Mal: amazing Okay.

Ellen: Actually, I have to say listening to listening through your watch of it. Having seen the entire series are like listening to when you’re like, oh, I hope this happens next time. I’m like, oh, oh no,

Katie: yeah, we were, we were so optimistic about certain things. It just didn’t happen. That’s okay. Even even being halfway spoiled, it was so unpredictable.

I would, I would watch the episode and be like, that is not at all what I thought it was gonna be. So it was interesting.

Ellen: No, you just never know what’s coming with that show. Like it could go in any direction

Katie: yeah, I kept going, it’s only 30 minutes. Like there’s only so much they can do good Lord.

Mal: yeah. They pack a lot into 30 minutes on that show. Yeah, they do. They do

Ellen: absolutely. Well. I enjoyed the, I think the thing I enjoy most about you guys talking about it was the extra kind of like when you just watch it and enjoy the, the, the hilarious, you know, comedy, whatever you don’t sort of look closer in the actual symbolism and, you know, the, the way that you’ve connected different things with, you know, the fact that he’s an indigenous guy and all these different things. I really appreciated that deeper look to it.

Katie: Mary’s brilliant with all that. She’s so great. And just, yeah, I really. Podcasting with her because she has such brilliant insights and has really tied all that together. So, yeah, it’s really cool.

Mal: I wish there were podcasts like that for all of my favorite shows, but at least I have it for Our Flag Meets Death.

If someone wants to do an Arcane podcast, hit me up.

Ellen: we’ll just have to go and make them. Don’t have enough time with reading all these fics, for an in depth analysis of Arcane.

Mal: No, a few extra days per week, please.

Ellen: All right. Anything, any other fics we’ve got left? Actually let’s go… Katie, what, what have you got coming up?

Like you’ve just released a new, a new episode of your podcast, this in the last couple of days, right?

Katie: Yeah, I did. What did I do? I. I know what I have in my drafts in my head, it will

Mal: be in, in my, it will be in my queue in apple podcasts. One sec. Let me have a look.

Katie: There it is. I, I did the, Have You Ever series by jezapoof?

That was fun. It’s a very, very smutty kind of cracky. But coming up, I can tell you this coming up, I did Pacific Flirt Fish by Lizlee Nimbus. Yay. So that’s gonna be out on the seventh and I think this comes out on the seventh. So yeah, so Pacific Flirt Fish will be out. And then after that in a, in the, in the week after Pacific Flirt Fish, I will start posting Window of Opportunity by trisha_16.

That’ll be fun. I have permission for a super popular fic. That’s gonna take me a while and I’m not gonna tell you what it is, but I have permission for a very, very popular fandom fic. I’m gonna have to work on that. so that’s what I, that’s the long, a longer fic that now that I’m posting Window of Opportunity, I can start on that one. So

Ellen: yeah, I guess we can just I mean, we I’ll link everything that we’ve talked about in the notes, but if encourage people to go and check out the pod, fic tags and just give as much support as you can to those podficcers out there, because we love hearing their, their words and we wanna encourage more, you know, more people to get into podfics. So yeah. Please go and check ’em out.

Katie: Yeah. Very niche. And not every, it’s not for everyone and it’s fine. Like people apologize all the time. They’re like, I’m so sorry. I just can’t get into audio books and I’m like, it’s fine. I, that doesn’t upset me. Like, don’t force yourself. I want people to enjoy it. Not it not be a chore.

So, but yeah, there are some people who really, really, really love it and are super passionate about it. And yeah. If anyone wants to join me making more, I’m all for it. It’s so much fun. I love, I love retweeting and, you know, supporting other people and sharing other people’s stuff. So that’s always fun.

Ellen: Yes. Speaking of tweeting where, where can everyone find you? Tell, tell us about your…

Katie: so on Twitter. My, my personal fandom account is @DustyLCanon. The podcast account is @making_it_up_, which is awful, but it was the only one that was available. And then the, our flag means death Twitter is @gentlemanpir8, the word gentleman PI R and the number eight.

Ellen: I’m not sure if we actually mentioned at the beginning that your podcast is actually called making it up as we go

Katie: have we not? (laughs)

Ellen: I’m hoping, I’m hoping that everyone gets that anyway. Yeah.

Mal: There’s some poor person out there who I, to listen to the entire episode, like what is the name of the damn podcast?

Katie: I’m so sorry. It’s called Making It Up As We Go: A Destiel fanfic anthology podcast. And I’d also like to shout out another anthology podcast called Angel Radio. They also do Destiel fan fics, and I don’t think that they put theirs on ao3. I think it’s just the podcast. So if you are interested in that, you can go subscribe to Angel Radio.

Ellen: Before we actually do sign up, speaking of discord we’ve gotta give a shout out. Firstly to our, our discord server for our podcast, we. Our our ko-fi. If you subscribe to our coffee membership, we haven’t worked out what the correct way to say that is, but yeah, if you’re a subscriber to us on ko-fi, you get access to our discord.

And we have some lovely friends in there, supporters who you know, help us to decide what we’re gonna talk about next and all that kind of thing. So shout out to you. Thank you for your support. The other discord server, I was gonna shout out apart from Profound Bond, which we, we always shout out cuz we love them.

At the people who I met the other week in Sydney for All Hell Breaks Loose con and the other people in our disc who went to the Melbourne con shout out to all you guys, you are lovely people. And it was so nice to meet some people in person who actually listened to the podcast because, oh my God, that is a freaky thing to do. Like you’re actually speaking to someone face to face about things that you created is like, really scary.

Mal: Well, hear that they were probably thinking, oh my God, she has a face.

like, Cause I know I would be so weird.

Ellen: I know, I know. So no, I did catch up with them and we had some drinks and we got to hug Misha and it was just nice. It was lovely. The whole weekend was lovely.

Mal: Yay. Well-deserved Misha hugs!

Ellen: You know how we were saying before about how we don’t get… people listen to it, but we don’t sort of know about it.

Like people don’t don’t like apart from on Twitter, we don’t get a lot of sort of people telling us they’ve listened. But, but that was like, oh my God, people actually actually listen. And they actually read the stuff that we recommend. It’s like, wow. Yeah.

Katie: That’s pretty cool.

Mal: Yep. So shout out to, to every listener, you are awesome. Thank you.

Ellen: Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. I’ll I’ll stop gushing now. So, if you wanna get in touch with us, you can do that on our social platforms. We’re @mixtapebookclub on all of those, or you can email us: contact at mixtapebookclub.com, or you can find us on discord.

Next episode, we’ve just decided earlier that we are gonna talk about Russian Cas AUs.

Katie: Woo, woo.

Ellen: Very exciting. We’re gonna yank Mal out from behind her cushions and maybe get a peek into Russian to the Altar, maybe.

Mal: Maybe, maybe. But definitely some other awesome Russian Aus cuz I have read a lot of them. So now is my, now is my time.

Ellen: ha excellent. Katie, thank you so much for coming to talk to us today.

Katie: Yeah, thanks for having me. This was so much fun!

Mal: Yeah. Was awesome to chat to you. This might be the first time I’ve chatted to you where you can talk back instead of just me, like yelling at you. Yeah, yeah. To the void.

Katie: I know, you know, I don’t get the experience that other people get.

When I hear, and, and with you all, I’ve heard your voices obviously, but sometimes I’ll chat with people and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m hearing their voices. And then I’m like, I wonder if they feel the same about me and I’m like, wait, they’ve heard my voice a lot. Yeah. Nevermind.

Ellen: That’s right. Yeah.

Katie: But no, it’s so much fun. Thank you for having me on, this was a lot of fun. Let me gush about my favorite things in the whole world.

Mal: Yeah. We did a lot of gushing here, so thank you for gushing with us.

Ellen: It is nice to gush now and then. That sounds dirtier than it should be…

Mal: Yeah, that’s a different episode.

Katie: if you ever do cat up chimney trope, then you can have me on again.

Ellen: okay. We’ll add it to the list. It’s very specific!

Katie: A very specific, one fic ever

Ellen: I’m. Sure. No, there’s gotta be more than one fic out there. Surely

Mal: those are the rules, there probably is.

Katie: It happened to me. So, you know, I don’t know. I literally had a cat climb up my chimney, so I just made the whole story as it happened to Cas and Dean was the animal control guy who came. So that was fun.

Mal: Fantastic. There is one where Dean’s an animal control guy and there’s a raccoon in Cas’s house? Which fic was that?

Katie: I need to read that.

Mal: That was… sorry. We’re going really off tangent, but yeah. Thanks for talking to us. Awesome. Great.

Katie: we can just go on forever talking about different fics. It’s not our fault. There are so many, yeah.

Ellen: Oh we do. We do do that.

Katie: You’ll just have to edit it down.

Ellen: Yeah, I, I sometimes I think maybe we should include stuff at the end, like Monster of the Week kind of, you know? Add the extra stuff at the end and then I’m like, no one wants to listen to us babbling about random shit.

Mal: It’s babbling about random shit and like my cat interrupting or like all kinds of stuff. Right.

Ellen: sometimes if it’s funny, I have put things at the end, but most of the time it’s just like, eh

Katie: Yeah, I do that with outtakes. Like I try not to force it. Like, if it’s truly funny, I’ll put it in there. But if it’s, if it’s just me tripping over the same word 10 times, then I don’t. If it’s a funny trip

Ellen: yeah, you did at the end of one of them that I just listened to. It must have been the trench coat fic?

Mal: The trench coat one there’s a little bit.

Katie: Possibly.

Ellen: Yeah. Anyway. Anyway, where were we?

Katie: Leaving!

Mal: you need to say your line so I can say mine.

Ellen: I need to say thank you to everyone for listening. And we’ll talk to you again soon.

Mal: And as always remember that the story isn’t over until we say it is.

[outro music]

Ellen: yes, you can proceed with adult content. Jesus. (laughter) Why do you think I’m here?