Day 3: Long love the long podfic!
For my policy on things such as spoilers, warning, and ratings, please [ see my policy post].
Last post I recced really short podfic so it seems fitting to discuss really long podfic today. There's a sharp drop-off in number of submissions at the [audiofic archive] that are >2hours long, so I'm going to use that as my criterion for 'long'.
I like to listen to podfics mostly in one go, so it is much more difficult for me to find the time to listen to long podfics than really short ones. (Especially now that I've no longer got huge chunks of time full of mindless tasks on my hands. This is good for my brain not petrifying, but not so great from the point of view of having hours at a single go to listen to podfic.) So I've listened to less of the really long fics than I might like, especially recent ones. But I have managed to listen to some long fics, so here's some recs!
Podfic: [Aegis, (mp3)] and [audiobook (m4b)]
Read by: rhea314
Written by: [Leah] and springwoof (joint writing LJ: leahwoof)
Etc: SGA AU, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, rated NC-17, 8:27:37, 93K words
Contains: None given by the authors. From my memory (I haven't had time to relisten/reread all of this), not that is more extreme than the show.
Author Summary: The Ancients' genes didn't just confer the power to activate their technology. For ten percent of Earth's population, like John Sheppard, the ATA gene also gave them Gifts: special abilities that made them admired, envied, and feared. // Sheppard was a Charmer, one of the feared ones, whose particular Gift let him create faith whenever he needed to be trusted or believed. But Sheppard didn't trust himself not to destroy what he loved most. And somewhere along the line, amid the terror and chaos of the Expedition's first year in the Pegasus Galaxy, what Sheppard loved most had become Rodney McKay. // McKay didn't trust anyone. As soon as you started trusting people, you started counting on them, depending on them, and that was when you became vulnerable. And vulnerable things didn't survive. So just when, exactly, had he started trusting Sheppard? // And what was going to happen, now that he did?
My Notes (podfic): I'm only about two hours into listening to this story (it's over 8 hours long!), but I feel confident reccing it based on what I've heard so far. Rhea does slightly different voices for each character in a way that sounds in-character without being overdone, she even does McKay's words-tumbling-out-fast-without-a-breath and manages to make it understandable! She also has a good handle on pacing. There are two things about this recording which I do not like: The mp3 is only two files, so each is several hours long. My mp3 player only remembers the position of the most recently played track, so if I switch between music and podfic, I have to scan forever to find where I left off. The second thing is that the file starts with a few minutes of music, rather than announcing that it is a podfic and then playing the music. But at least the music is at a similar volume to the reading.
My Notes (story): This is a wonderful story to get lost in: it is long and has a great grasp on characterisation. I love the relationships in this story-- I don't mean 'ships here, I mean proper relationships-- how people interact with other people. The world-building is also great.
Sequel: [Series link at Wraithbait.]
Podfic: [Drop Dead Gorgeous, (mp3)]
Read by: mcollinknight
Written by: Maya/mistful
Etc: Harry Potter fandom, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Katie Bell/Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter/OMCs (no infidelity), rated teen.
Time: 11:09:56 so far. The fic is 14 chapters and an epilogue. The first eleven have been recorded. The reader is currently on hiatus.
Contains: nothing given by the author, from my memory (I haven't had time to relisten/reread all of this), teen-level discussion of Auror cases. Also, character death (Lucius Malfoy).
My Summary: Harry is diagnosed to be part-Veela, which means that he exudes sex appeal if he has 'reckless bouts of chastity' and he rather doesn't like meaningless flings. To make things even more fun, he's also been paired with Draco Malfoy (since Kingsley Shacklebolt has had equally as much trouble with both of them as Aurors). And then there's the rest of life. (Author summary not given.)
My Notes (podfic): these were the first podfics I ever listened to and they got me interested in podfics as a genre, so they hold a fondness in my heart. But a good portion of the reason that this series converted me to podfic is that these are awesome. I love her voices (she does different ones for each person, which is quite a feat given the ensemble cast) and she has very good pacing. The story is a bit difficult to podfic because there are regular scene changes as well as time-jumps, but she uses pauses for the regular scene changes and little music snippets for the time-jumps, which works well. I can happily listen to her read stories to me for hours. This is good, as I have over fifteen hours of her voice saved to my computer/mp3 player.
My Notes (story): I quite like Maya's writing and this story is no exception. She creates fun characters who are logical extensions of who they were in the books but with added years (and greater and lesser maturity, depending on the person) and fleshed out with quirks. I've tried to summarise it quickly above, but I haven't done it justice, there's so much more than that. One of the things I like about this story (and her 'Quality of Mercy') is that people go through multiple relationships before finding and settling down with 'the one'. She also has a very clever way of writing, witty and amusing. The first half-ish of the fic jumps about in time, which I quite liked even though many found it harder to follow, while the second half is told linearly. And by the way, there's lovely UST/cluelessness between Harry and Draco that does finally resolve itself, but via lots of complexity (it feels realistic, for all that Harry has come out Veela).
Fic Availability Note: Note that Maya has taken down all her fanfic from the web and prefers that the electronic copies not be disseminated to those who don't already have them. If you'd like to read her fic but haven't yet, I can lend you my printed copy via post, which I believe to be within the spirit of Maya's request.
Podfic: [The Way We Get By, (mp3)]
Read by: mcollinknight
Written by: Maya/mistful
Etc: Harry Potter fandom, gen, rating teen, 4:47:35, 42K words
Contains: nothing given by the author, from my memory (I haven't had time to relisten/reread all of this), teen-level discussion of Auror cases. Also, character death (Lucius Malfoy).
My Summary: Draco Malfoy POV on early portions of Drop Dead Gorgeous. (Author summary not given.)
My Notes (podfic): (Ditto to what I said above about mcollinknight's reading.) In part 2B at 20:10, Draco sings along to the radio and I have to admire mcollinknight for singing-along on those lines, although I think I prefer 21:19 when Draco is singing from Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' to mock Harry, because she manages to inject just the right bit of mocking in whilst singing the lines. In part 4B, at 13:08, there's this bit of dialogue: "Go back to your table, Draco, someone's trying to steal your beautiful boyfriend." [says the bartender.] // "My who?" Draco said. "My what?" and she does Draco's dialogue here so wonderfully, you can just hear the whaaaaaat? that is going through his head right then.
My Notes (story): This was written as a Draco Malfoy POV on the early portions of Drop Dead Gorgeous (it starts with Draco and Harry being assigned as partners), so I tend to think of these as really the same story, just in different parts. I'm breaking them apart mostly for legibility of the commenting.
Fic Availability Note: Note that Maya has taken down all her fanfic from the web and prefers that the electronic copies not be disseminated to those who don't already have them. If you'd like to read her fic but haven't yet, I can lend you my printed copy via post, which I believe to be within the spirit of Maya's request.
Oooof, that took quite a while, but I suppose that only makes sense, given that there's more than a day's worth of podfic reviewed here. Wow.
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.
FYI: It looks like I'll be doing five days of podfic recs, so this is mid-meme! :)
[Originally posted] at
fish-echo on 26 August 2009
Last post I recced really short podfic so it seems fitting to discuss really long podfic today. There's a sharp drop-off in number of submissions at the [audiofic archive] that are >2hours long, so I'm going to use that as my criterion for 'long'.
I like to listen to podfics mostly in one go, so it is much more difficult for me to find the time to listen to long podfics than really short ones. (Especially now that I've no longer got huge chunks of time full of mindless tasks on my hands. This is good for my brain not petrifying, but not so great from the point of view of having hours at a single go to listen to podfic.) So I've listened to less of the really long fics than I might like, especially recent ones. But I have managed to listen to some long fics, so here's some recs!
Podfic: [Aegis, (mp3)] and [audiobook (m4b)]
Read by: rhea314
Written by: [Leah] and springwoof (joint writing LJ: leahwoof)
Etc: SGA AU, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, rated NC-17, 8:27:37, 93K words
Contains: None given by the authors. From my memory (I haven't had time to relisten/reread all of this), not that is more extreme than the show.
Author Summary: The Ancients' genes didn't just confer the power to activate their technology. For ten percent of Earth's population, like John Sheppard, the ATA gene also gave them Gifts: special abilities that made them admired, envied, and feared. // Sheppard was a Charmer, one of the feared ones, whose particular Gift let him create faith whenever he needed to be trusted or believed. But Sheppard didn't trust himself not to destroy what he loved most. And somewhere along the line, amid the terror and chaos of the Expedition's first year in the Pegasus Galaxy, what Sheppard loved most had become Rodney McKay. // McKay didn't trust anyone. As soon as you started trusting people, you started counting on them, depending on them, and that was when you became vulnerable. And vulnerable things didn't survive. So just when, exactly, had he started trusting Sheppard? // And what was going to happen, now that he did?
My Notes (podfic): I'm only about two hours into listening to this story (it's over 8 hours long!), but I feel confident reccing it based on what I've heard so far. Rhea does slightly different voices for each character in a way that sounds in-character without being overdone, she even does McKay's words-tumbling-out-fast-without-a-breath and manages to make it understandable! She also has a good handle on pacing. There are two things about this recording which I do not like: The mp3 is only two files, so each is several hours long. My mp3 player only remembers the position of the most recently played track, so if I switch between music and podfic, I have to scan forever to find where I left off. The second thing is that the file starts with a few minutes of music, rather than announcing that it is a podfic and then playing the music. But at least the music is at a similar volume to the reading.
My Notes (story): This is a wonderful story to get lost in: it is long and has a great grasp on characterisation. I love the relationships in this story-- I don't mean 'ships here, I mean proper relationships-- how people interact with other people. The world-building is also great.
Sequel: [Series link at Wraithbait.]
Podfic: [Drop Dead Gorgeous, (mp3)]
Read by: mcollinknight
Written by: Maya/mistful
Etc: Harry Potter fandom, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Katie Bell/Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter/OMCs (no infidelity), rated teen.
Time: 11:09:56 so far. The fic is 14 chapters and an epilogue. The first eleven have been recorded. The reader is currently on hiatus.
Contains: nothing given by the author, from my memory (I haven't had time to relisten/reread all of this), teen-level discussion of Auror cases. Also, character death (Lucius Malfoy).
My Summary: Harry is diagnosed to be part-Veela, which means that he exudes sex appeal if he has 'reckless bouts of chastity' and he rather doesn't like meaningless flings. To make things even more fun, he's also been paired with Draco Malfoy (since Kingsley Shacklebolt has had equally as much trouble with both of them as Aurors). And then there's the rest of life. (Author summary not given.)
My Notes (podfic): these were the first podfics I ever listened to and they got me interested in podfics as a genre, so they hold a fondness in my heart. But a good portion of the reason that this series converted me to podfic is that these are awesome. I love her voices (she does different ones for each person, which is quite a feat given the ensemble cast) and she has very good pacing. The story is a bit difficult to podfic because there are regular scene changes as well as time-jumps, but she uses pauses for the regular scene changes and little music snippets for the time-jumps, which works well. I can happily listen to her read stories to me for hours. This is good, as I have over fifteen hours of her voice saved to my computer/mp3 player.
My Notes (story): I quite like Maya's writing and this story is no exception. She creates fun characters who are logical extensions of who they were in the books but with added years (and greater and lesser maturity, depending on the person) and fleshed out with quirks. I've tried to summarise it quickly above, but I haven't done it justice, there's so much more than that. One of the things I like about this story (and her 'Quality of Mercy') is that people go through multiple relationships before finding and settling down with 'the one'. She also has a very clever way of writing, witty and amusing. The first half-ish of the fic jumps about in time, which I quite liked even though many found it harder to follow, while the second half is told linearly. And by the way, there's lovely UST/cluelessness between Harry and Draco that does finally resolve itself, but via lots of complexity (it feels realistic, for all that Harry has come out Veela).
Fic Availability Note: Note that Maya has taken down all her fanfic from the web and prefers that the electronic copies not be disseminated to those who don't already have them. If you'd like to read her fic but haven't yet, I can lend you my printed copy via post, which I believe to be within the spirit of Maya's request.
Podfic: [The Way We Get By, (mp3)]
Read by: mcollinknight
Written by: Maya/mistful
Etc: Harry Potter fandom, gen, rating teen, 4:47:35, 42K words
Contains: nothing given by the author, from my memory (I haven't had time to relisten/reread all of this), teen-level discussion of Auror cases. Also, character death (Lucius Malfoy).
My Summary: Draco Malfoy POV on early portions of Drop Dead Gorgeous. (Author summary not given.)
My Notes (podfic): (Ditto to what I said above about mcollinknight's reading.) In part 2B at 20:10, Draco sings along to the radio and I have to admire mcollinknight for singing-along on those lines, although I think I prefer 21:19 when Draco is singing from Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' to mock Harry, because she manages to inject just the right bit of mocking in whilst singing the lines. In part 4B, at 13:08, there's this bit of dialogue: "Go back to your table, Draco, someone's trying to steal your beautiful boyfriend." [says the bartender.] // "My who?" Draco said. "My what?" and she does Draco's dialogue here so wonderfully, you can just hear the whaaaaaat? that is going through his head right then.
My Notes (story): This was written as a Draco Malfoy POV on the early portions of Drop Dead Gorgeous (it starts with Draco and Harry being assigned as partners), so I tend to think of these as really the same story, just in different parts. I'm breaking them apart mostly for legibility of the commenting.
Fic Availability Note: Note that Maya has taken down all her fanfic from the web and prefers that the electronic copies not be disseminated to those who don't already have them. If you'd like to read her fic but haven't yet, I can lend you my printed copy via post, which I believe to be within the spirit of Maya's request.
Oooof, that took quite a while, but I suppose that only makes sense, given that there's more than a day's worth of podfic reviewed here. Wow.
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.
FYI: It looks like I'll be doing five days of podfic recs, so this is mid-meme! :)
[Originally posted] at
fish-echo on 26 August 2009