Pod-O-Ween 2025 Announcement!

 Pod_O_Ween is an informal podfic event for the Spooky Season! Crafted out of a true love of this hallowed season, and podfic! This is our eighth annual Pod_O_Ween event, and we'd like to thank you all for your love and support in making this event possible! Pod_O_Ween is an event that prides itself on being completely stress free, and so we have NO SIGN UPS, NO RESPONSIBILITIES, NO PRESSURE. All you have to do is have fun, so let's turn up the juice and see what shakes loose!

THE GHOSTS OF TRICKS PAST

This year, we decided to go for a bit of a different take. If you haven't done Pod-O-Ween before, here's a breakdown. We provide you with prompts, which we call our TRICKS. 

These prompts are there to help get you inspired to make some podfic! If you are inspired by one of our prompts, please feel free to fill the prompt in whatever way takes your fancy. As always, the mods would like to mention that these prompts DO NOT need to be taken individually, and can be combined with others if you choose to do so! We'd also love to see discussion on these prompts for how they could be interpreted: stay tuned on our twitter for some examples and brainstorming.

Since we started doing prompts for Pod-O-Ween six years ago, we've had a total of sixty-six prompts (spooky). To celebrate eight years, we've decided to have a throwback year: ALL PROMPTS FROM PREVIOUS YEARS ARE FREE FOR ALL! This means you can choose any previous prompt to fill. This could be with new podfic, or something you didn't quite finish from another year - or something you saw after the fact and kicked yourself for. With such a wide variety of prompts, there should be something for everyone! You can find out trick list HERE!

The Official 2024 prompt list is alive and kicking both here on dreamwidth (HERE!) and on our twitter (HERE!), and you can fill the prompts at any time from the beginning of October! By no means are you obligated to fill all of these prompts! Please take our ghoulish little game at your own pace! However, if you would like to fill all of our prompts (a monstrous task this year), then consider it a challenge! Please feel free to retweet or share our prompts, anyone is welcome to get involved.

TREAT YOSELF

Ah yes, treat time! For treats, any person can make a request for something they would like to see in our Pod_O_Ween Collection for 2025. Please post your treat requests HERE! You can ask for anything in your treat, be it a specific fic, a trope, a fandom, the featuring of a concept, object or being, even the inclusion of specific characters. For those of you who want a bit of an extra challenge, try to combine the requests in these treats into what you're recording for our tricks! But do not fear, you can still just fill a spoopy podfic for a treat if you want without touching our main prompts. In addition, outside of the standard treat format please know that these podfics can also be gifts to others just because! This is your podfic, we're just listening to it!

There are so many ways to play, and we're happy for you to mix and match and fill as much as you'd like to! It's your candy, and you can put it where you want to! The most important guideline is to have fun! Make sure that you enjoy what you record.

TREAT YOSELF

All filled tricks must be uploaded to the Pod_O_Ween 2025 Collection (HERE!) by midnight on 31th of October Mountain Daylight Time (USA GMT-6). Previously we had weekly reveals of podfics, but following feedback we will be scrapping this! The collection will be open all of the month of October so anything in the collection can be enjoyed immediately by all those seeking spooky pod. 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

All podfic are accepted, but please also adhere to your appropriate tagging and/or warning specifics as much as you can. Feel free to run with prompts, but if you are unsure in any way about your chosen fill, our golden rule is ASK ASK ASK!

There is no set word count, minimum or maximum. Anything that you can achieve in the time would be Spooktacular, and we'd all love to hear it!

Again, please post your treat requests/challenges on this post HERE! We've included a handy template for those who need some guidance.

We are accepting of all types of podfic, including not!fic, multi-voice podfic, experimental and alternate podfic, as well as the traditional type. We don't want to limit you: if you're inspired, go for your lives!

You may fill as many prompts, and make as treat requests, as you would like!

 

Cover art is NOT MANDATORY, however if you would like to provide cover art, please go ahead! We at Pod_O_Ween are happy to assist in any way with cover art as well, and will put up a request thread closer to the release date. If anyone would like to volunteer to help with cover art, we would love the help!

We also have a sticker for those wishing to use cover art! Inspired by annapods and their lemon stickers, we have given little Podkin his own sticker! Link to download HERE!

This is an INFORMAL event. There is no obligation to fill prompts, as this is purely for the fun of the season! As such, other than our collection deadline - there are no deadlines or check-ins! We also understand that this is a rather short notice event, so please take your time and do not stress! If you would like to fill something, but are not sure what to do, we are happy to assist you in finding a fic that is right for you to the best of our ability! Please do not hesitate to message us!

Feel free to post your fic to Dreamwidth as well as Ao3 or twitter, we will be shouting out any fics that are posted publicly on twitter. Additionally, please help us with sharing around our prompts post - send it to your friends, send it to your group chats - let's get people podficcing! It should be easier than ever, think of it like Inktober but for Podfic. 

POSTING TEMPLATE 

When it comes to posting, all we ask is that you mention somewhere the challenge, what prompt it was filled for and - in the event of treats (don't think we forgot about those), that you mention the giftee!

TIMELINE :

01.10.25 : POD_O_WEEN TRICKS are posted!
26.10.25 : Final Date for TREAT REQUESTS
31.10.25 : Final Date for POSTING to AO3 Collection : follow this LINK TO POST!

And that's it! We hope you have a terrifically terrifying Halloween with us! If you have any questions or queries, please feel free to reply here, or message us both on this Dreamwidth, and at @PodWeen on twitter!.

Let's get spooky with it!
- Pod_O_Ween Mods (Cain AKA hurry_cain)

Treat Request/Challenge 2025!

 TO TREAT OR NOT TO TREAT?

That is the question! Our eternal question! (The Answer Is Yes, If You Want~) This is the post where you can pop your treat requests and challenges. Treats are requests for things YOU would like to see in our Pod_O_Ween 2025 Collection. Here's a quick posting template to help you on your way, with the questions being in italics:

<b>What would you like your treat to be?</b>     -     this could be what you would like to challenge somebody with, a fandom, concept, process, or anything you'd like!
<b>Do you have any specific preferences beside your base request?</b>     -     anything like ratings, warnings, extras. is there anything the podficcer should keep in mind while filling this prompt?
<b>Any questions or comments for us (the mods), or the podficcer?</b>     -     if you have anything to say, go ahead!

Thank you for your patience, we can't wait to see what you come up with this year! - Pod_O_Ween Mod (Cain AKA. hurry_cain)

Pod-O-Ween 2025 Tricks Announcement