How Fanfic Sounds

[tinturtle]

As I discussed in a post a year ago today, I usually use text-to-speech software to read fanfic.

Recently, I acquired a new piece of text-to-speech software called Speechify that I'm very pleased with. (I made a post about it a while ago, but deleted it because I wasn't happy with the included videos.) Speechify comes with a wider variety of high quality voices than I had previously, and one of the things I've been doing since switching to it is using US voices for fanfic based on US media (such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and UK voices for fanfic based on UK media (such as The Professionals).

It's taken me a while to settle on my favorite voices, but my choices have largely stabilized now. My favorite UK voice is called Tanner. You can hear him below reading the first paragraph of the Pros fic Angels Unware by bardicvoice (which I highly recommend).

Tanner

I'm curious to hear what UK fans make of him. Is his accent regional? If so, where does it come from?

(The ugly font is called Open Dyslexic. It's supposed to help people with dyslexia read more fluently. My understanding is that research doesn't support this. Of the fonts available in Speechify, though, it is the one with the widest line spacing, which definitely does help me. I almost always track the text with my eyes while using TTS to read.)

I have two favorite US voices, neither of which is quite perfect. For quite a while I was using Henry, whom you can hear below, but I found his slightly twangy delivery could get annoying after a while and it didn't sound right for Illya's dialog when reading MFU fic. Lately I've switched to Oliver. I find his voice a little too bassy, but I like the inflection. Both voices are reading the opening paragraph of the MFU fic Oubliette by leethet (which I also highly recommend).

Henry
Oliver

Which one do you like better?

For comparison, you can check out a recording of Tom, my favorite of the American voices I previously had available. He is reading the summary of The Long St. Crispin's Day by st_crispins, another very good MFU fic.

Tom

Comments

[timemidae]

Wow, I’m impressed by how natural they sound. My brother uses the text to speech function on his old Kindle and she sounds very robotic in comparison.

[tinturtle]

They are a big step forward for me. Tom, the one I was using before, wasn't bad. He was amazing compared to the voices I used occasionally as a kid and even a step up from the ones built into the very expensive program I was allowed to use with my textbooks in college. He did still sound like a computer, though. These you can sometimes forget aren't real people.

That actually took a little getting used to when reading explicit fic. It's different to have a voice that is clearly that of an electronic tool reading sex scenes to you than to have one that sounds like another human. Blush.

[timemidae]

🫣oh no

[timemidae]

I really struggle with podfics for that reason; when some actual creator is reading to you it feels, ah, very intimate.

[tinturtle]

All podfics or only ones with sex in them? I've never tried the latter. I think I would definitely find it uncomfortable.