Day 1 of podfic reccing meme!

[fish-echo.livejournal.com]

For my policy on things such as spoilers, warning, and ratings, please [see my policy post].

tl;dr ramblings

[Once upon a time], thingswithwings decided to start a meme of reccing podfic since there are far too few recs of podfic out there. She recced five podfics a day for five days. I am not very good at following along, so I shall be reccing an intermediate number of podfics ever other day for four or five posts, depending on how I decide to break down the last few days.

In case you want more podfic recs in the meantime, these people also rec podfics: [dodificus] and [twasadark]. I feel like I'm maybe missing someone, so if you've got more links, let me know!

I feel like I should mention that I am a very visual person. Yes, this is a post about podfic. Contradiction? Not quiiiiiite. I am a very visual person and yet I really love storytelling. I also really hate being bored. Somehow these get all mixed up and become: I love podfics. (But I do tend to regard the printed version as primary and sometimes I need to read the story myself first in order to understand the podfic. I don't know why, just, my brain is weird. The point being: if I ever say that the podfic version has become 'my' version of the story, that's a huge complement to the reader.)

I can't quite remember how I found out about podfics, I assume that it was via Maya posting about mcollinknight reading aloud her fanfic at longcarrides. At the time, I had to do a lot of really boring and mostly mindless tasks at work. It was driving me absolutely batty and I had already played my own music to the point of annoyance and internet radio wasn't much better. So I thought 'why not? The worst that happens is I don't like it' and downloaded everything she'd read to that point. And the rest is history.

I quickly found general_jinjur's [audiofic archive for fanworks] and proceeded to download an amazing amount of podfic. (By the way, if you want audiofic of pro fic, [libriVox] contains amateur-readings of work that is in the public domain. I do believe that there is a large amount of Sherlock Holmes archived there, for those of you *ahemthingswithwings&toftahem* who are on a big Holmes kick right now.)

I listen to podfic a number of ways for a number of reasons. My favourite may be lying on my bed with my eyes closed immersed in the words and the story. I don't to that nearly as often as I might like, as it takes time and I constantly feel like the White Rabbit. More frequently I listen to it when I am in transit or doing things which require the body but not the mind-- that makes for less intense listening but allows me to have much more time to listen. And sometimes, when I really don't want to sit still and do whatever it is that in theory ought to be holding my mind's focus, I'll put a podfic on and be half in the world of aliens or thieves or whomever and half in the real world focusing on things.

A few quirks that you might want to know about me as you read my podfic recs: (a) I don't like listening to sex scenes read aloud. I'll read them fine, but listening to them makes me feel weird for some reason. So I vastly prefer podfics with no explicit sex, but if the scenes are short I'm willing to fast-forward through them. (b) I won't rec a podfic if I don't like the story that's being read aloud. But sometimes, if there's a story that I've read before but only liked somewhat, I'll listen to the podfic to see if I'll like the story more when I listen to it than when I simply read it, with the podficcer giving a slightly different to the story than I bought on my own. (c) I have no background in talking about/analysing/reccing spoken-word stuff. So my recs are liable to be even more full of flailing than normal. Ooops? (Any suggestions &/ feedback on this point are, as always, appreciated.)

Wow, this got amazingly tl;dr and I'm not sure whither or not anyone will actually care. But I bothered to write it so I suppose I'll simply warn for nonsense and hide it behind a cut. If you actually do read-- or even skim!-- this all, well, I'd offer you a ficlet but I still owe about five already. So have an internet-cookie. But I suppose if you still remember this in a few months (or longer, whatever), you can drop me a prompt (either here or whatever my current post is) and then I'll write you a ficlet eventually. The prompt can include a square off of my [cliche_bingo card] if you like, but make sure to give me an actual prompt (more details help! Really!). Oh! Or I could put together a rec set for you! Either way. :)

Anyways, here's the part that you actually care about, the recs!



I am eliminating from this meme the podfics I have already recced. You can find those under [my handy dandy podfic tag].

Also, I am not giving a direct link to the text, as I couldn't figure out a neat way of doing that which still emphasized the podfic link. I am linking to the audiofic archive pages (specifically, the mp3 format), which do contain a link to the text.

The Podfic Recs! Day 1: The Ones Which I Listen To Just For Fun, Repeatedly

These are the podfics that I pull up when I say to myself, 'Fish, let's listen to podfic!' and don't feel like checking for what's newly posted. These are perhaps my comfort-podfics, if you will.

Podfic: [Wide Open Ocean (mp3)] and [m4b]
Read by: winkingstar
Written by: setissma
Etc: SGA AU (the Aquarium AU), Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, rated R, 1:02:51
Contains: OC character death off-screen before start of story.
Author Summary: He went home with two slices of leftover pizza and the strange impression that McKay could almost have been a nice guy, if he hadn’t been an asshole.
My notes: This was one of the podfics I downloaded in a massive downloading fit to offset boredom at work, so I listened to it before I ever read it, I'm not sure I've ever read the story myself, and I have no desire to ever read it, I'm just that happy with winkingstar's reading. Setissma's love of the ocean and of the Shedd Aquarium in specific and aquariums at large shines through an amazing amount. I think it is one of the reasons I love this story. Aquariums/oceans/fish are, oddly enough, not my passion (although I do love them lots), but when I listen to this story I am reminded of the love I feel for my passions, past and current. Also, I tend to listen to this a lot when walking to the post office, I have no idea why.

Podfic: [MERLIN (An Exercise in Script Writing by Two People Who Really Shouldn't Even Be Trying), (mp3)]
Read by: [Jo] (emptybackpack)
Written by: moonythestrals
Etc: Merlin (BBC), Merlin/Arthur, rated R, 1:06:25
Contains: Just look at the summary, and come to your own conclusion. (Hint, it should be one word, i.e., OMGCRACK.) Spoilers for the first few episodes.
Author Summary: Arthur, Merlin, frat brothers, the Dragon, Arthur's BlackBerry, script writing, shitty hip-hop music, Dogma, FATE & DESTINY - oh God I wish I were joking.
My notes: Jo does well on phrasing and emotion (without doing different 'voices' for the characters), which is important in a dialogue-rich fic. (Though she's also really strong on the non-dialogue as well.) She does 'confused Merlin' and 'frat-boy Arthur' (who really is just prattish!Arthur) reaaally well. This podfic may give you flashbacks to those crazy-big projects and evil problem sets of your uni days, so beware :) The story provides a convenient explanation of how the BBC came up with their programme (in my head I have decided that this is how it happened. We'll ignore that the show had to come first so this fic could be written). Also, how the dragon is incorporated is awesome. Basically, brilliant AU.
Sequel: There is a sequel-thing called [A Random Collection of Firsts], but it's rated NC-17 so I don't listen to it. There is a [podbook] of it and 'MERLIN', which has nice art.

Podfic: [The Summer House Trilogy (mp3)] and [m4b]
Read by: podfic_lover
Written by: rageprufrock
Etc: SGA/Eureka, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard (even if Rodney is clueless about it for a while), rated R, three stories with a total of 1:13:42
Author Summaries: Among the citizens of Eureka, Rodney McKay has a completely different sort of reputation. || Whipped, Jack thought, totally, totally whipped. || "I've been watching a lot of CSI," John says, eyes crazy.
My notes: I'm actually not sure what to say about the podfic, because I've listened to it so many times that I don't actually hear it anymore, I just see the story in my mind. (The story is basically John & Rodney in Eureka, occasional hijinks, and Sheriff Jack Carter--no relation to SG1-- finally has someone to bond over non-geeky things.) When I saw about three seconds of Eureka when I was flipping channels I was able to make a decent stab at identifying characters without ever having seen the show. *fails at reccing things* Go listen!

As always, if you've found any errors or additional info (this is normally where I would ask for podfic versions, but ha! these are all podfics!), let me know.



[Originally posted] at fish-echo on 20 August 2009