Two Cyteen podfics
Title: A House in His Head
Author: jmtorres
Reader & Cover Artist: nickelmountain
Fandom: Cyteen (C.J. Cherryh)
Characters: Grant ALX-972, Justin Warrick, Jordan Warrick, Ariane Emory I
Pairing: Grant ALX-972/Justin Warrick
Rating/Warnings: Teen and Up. The fandom is the warning (seriously, it's pretty fucked up). Contains non-explicit references to canonical rape.
Length: 00:30:15
Summary: "He wasn't standing in a house with a wall of safes anymore; he was standing in front of a safe with most of a house in it, like an Escher."
Intro/Outro Music: Distortions, by Clinic
Download: mp3 || m4b
Streaming available through mp3 link.
Title: experimental procedure
Author: lindensphinx
Reader & Cover Artist: nickelmountain
Fandom: Cyteen (C.J. Cherryh)
Characters: Ariane Emory II, Justin Warrick, Grant ALX-972, Florian AF-9979 II, Catlin AC-7892 II (with references to Ari I, Florian I, & Catlin I)
Rating/Warnings: Mature. The fandom is the warning. (I told you, it's messed up.) Contains references to canonical rape.
Length: 00:18:59
Summary: "Ari hasn't thought of the right way to watch that tape. Yet."
Intro/Outro Music: Human Qualities, by Explosions in the Sky
Download: mp3 || m4b
Streaming available through mp3 link.
Note: This is a re-recording. I first podficced this story in 2011, but when I listened to it again recently I decided I wanted to do it over. This is the version I prefer.
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Reader's Notes: I read Cyteen for the first time when I was maybe 14, and it did things to my brain. The world of Cyteen is deeply fucked up - among other things, it includes a bio- and psycho-engineered servant class (slaves in all but name), the systematic and generationally cyclical manipulation of minors and adult dependents of the state by those with parental, educational, vocational, and governmental authority, consensual sexual activity between minors, (non-biological) sibling incest, and one non-explicit but profoundly disturbing incident of rape.
I love it.
What works about it is that with all of that deep, dark twistedness going on, it remains a story about people. Grant, Justin, and Ari II are each in their own ways victims of Ari I and the political world she moved in, but each of them struggle to find their own peace and claim their own power in the novel. Both of these fics are about that struggle, and that's part of what called me to record them. (The beautiful writing and the chills they both gave me is the other part.)
Also, I think these fics work really beautifully together. There's close to a 20 year gap between the events at the end of A House in His Head and the beginning of experimental procedure, but both fics are structured around the same canonical event, and they explore very similar issues. I nearly started writing an essay about that here, but perhaps I should save that for my journal.
This is a really tiny fandom, and I don't expect many downloads. If you do listen to one, though, I encourage you to listen to both. Or at least read the other. Or just read both. Whatever. Either way, if you enjoy these, please do leave feedback for the authors.