2010 Podfic Critique Fest: 'Method Acting', written and read by Malnpudl, reviewed by Fish Echo
Here's my entry in the 2010 Podfic Critical Feedback Exchange! :)
Podfic: [Method Acting (mp3)] and [audiobook (m4b)]
Read and written by: malnpudl
Etc: NCIS, Tony DiNozzo/Leroy Jethro Gibbs, NC-17, 22:37, mp3: 7.7 MB, m4b: 10.7 MB, ~3900 words
Contains: [ skip] Dubious consent and forced voyeurism of the the bad guys make them have sex to prove their cover sort.
Author Summary: Porny "fuck or die" undercover-in-a-gay-nightclub cliché!fic, with only the vaguest semblance of plot.
My Notes (story): The story does what it says on the tin. I actually would really love follow-up story(ies), both for the case and the relationship, which IMO says that there must have been some plot along with the porn here :)
And now onto the feedback for the podfic itself:
I feel like I should start with a disclaimer: I've watched the odd episode of NCIS and read the occasional fic, but I don't really know the canon or the fandom, so I can't measure this story and this reading against that-- I can only measure it against 'is it a good story? is it told well?'
And a note about this critique: I crave your pardon for my complete and utter lack of transitions. I'm sure someone better than I could have made this a nicely written essay, but I've had to make do with headings.
On malnpudl's voice
I've decided I like the slow, methodical pace malnpudl took for this. It lets the story evolve well and I think compliments the fact that there's some serious danger-zone-maybe-we're-gonna-die-soon and also some oh-shit-maybe-I'm-not-quite-straight angsting. (My default is always to do things dramatically so I'm always interested when I run across something which isn't dramatic that works.) She reads the sex in the same way as she reads everything else, again, another choice I liked. I think it works well with the story-- because the sex, much as Gibbs tries to keep Tony's focus on him, is performed as part of their undercover duties in front of an audience, so it's about duty even while it is also about two guys who are apparently really enjoying the sex. Plus, I don't like listening to scenes which seem like I'm supposed to get aroused by because it feels voyeuristic to me (in a sadly non-sexy fashion). And because she didn't sex up the sex scene I could listen to as descriptions rather than as erotic material. (And for those of you who like listening to sex scenes, my guess is you'll like this one-- there's lovely description.)
I put this on loop whilst writing up my feedback, and I've got to say that I can happily have malnpudl's voice running past my ears for a while! :) If I were the sort to listen to things as I fell asleep, I think I'd probably download her entire oeuvre (assuming other fics are done in this similar style). As it is, I need to scan her catalogue and see where we overlap in fandoms/stories.
Music
There wasn't any music or sound effects in this story and I didn't feel the lack of them. (For the record, my default is to not use these in podfics. Some day I mean to write up a bit of meta on that but this isn't the place for it.)
Formatting
The podfic is prefaced with the vaguely-standard short-form header, giving the title, fandom, author and reader and then going straight into the story. This is the way I prefer it as I find a full header before the story to be distracting/confusing. After the story is over, she says 'the end'! I love it when readers say 'the end' at the end! (No, my love of this isn't entirely rational. I mean, yes, it is functional in that it alerts the listeners that that story is over, but I love it beyond that.) Following the 'the end', she says 'This has been a reading of [repeat the short header info].' I don't really have an opinion on that. I mean, on a longer fic, it can be kind of handy, I suppose. On a short fic, it's redundant. But mostly what I think of that is that it is different than what I am used to, which is nothing. FWIW, I think this fic is just long enough that it's not redundant to have that info restated at the end. (I've just started to think that perhaps the way I prefer things is to read aloud the full headers at the end (so that the listener has all of the info, in case they don't have the text in front of them), which is different still from what was done here and what I'm used to. But again, that's a topic for a different time.)
On the suitability of this piece to being read out loud
I listened to this piece before I read the text version and found that I could follow along completely well without having read the story first (this is somewhat rare and I really appreciate the readers who can do that). It clearly works as a podfic, and yet having read the story I would not have said that there was anything about it that cried 'make me into a podfic!' Which just goes to show, I suppose, that not all stories which make good podfics are evidenced from the textual version. Interestingly, when I read the text, I noticed and was annoyed by descriptors which seemed a bit over the top (things like: self-appointed sheepdogs) that hadn't registered as objectionable when I listened to it-- evidently I have different thresholds for auditory and textual stories?
Misc other things
Excellent voice used for Gibbs, especially his growly orders.
There was some distinction between speech and thought and description but I think it was more context and the convenient situation of dialogue tags which made those obvious, but since the distinction was evident it's all good. (The exception being Gibbs-- even if I had tuned out for a bit I could almost always tell if it was a bit of Gibbs dialogue.)
The pacing was fine.
The volume of the podfic was fine.
The quality of the recording was fine.
Overall, I liked this podfic. :)
Specific lines I liked include the following:
0:40
"Well, spit it out, DiNozzo." Gibbs's first line, nicely done!
1:17
' "That'll be me," Gibbs said.' Nicely matter-of-fact.
3:33
'Shit. They were so dead.' Nicely spoken but since this is a happy fluffly fannish PWP, I know things Tony doesn't and so I just have to chuckle at this :)
7:02
I really love, for some reason, the way she says the "should've"s in this line here: "It smelled a lot better than it should've. And that didn't bother him as much as it should've."
9:53
"a wolfish slash of teeth" This is well-said. There's just enough of the drawl on the sibilants that the listener hears the anger that Gibbs has right here, but isn't too overly done in a hissy-snake fashion.
19:21
'wanted to stay on his knees all night' I like the enunciation here, how she reads it firmly and strong, almost swiftly. This works really well. (In my head, I hear it with a slow drawl, with the slowness emphasising the want. So this reading, which is very different from how I would think of it, is interesting to me. And it works! Even though, before hearing this, I wouldn't have thought it would.)
20:00
'things that should scare the crap out of him. But they didn't.' Oh, excellent reading. This actually sort of is a continuation of the previous comment-- the area right here, where we're really getting into Tony's head and he's getting into his head that maybe he really does want to make this something other than an undercover act, is well done-- it seems like I am hearing inside Tony's head nicely.
Things which I didn't like:
14:15-14:34
In these lines here, Gibbs changes his mind (well, right, they're undercover, so he pretended to change his mind, but whatever):
begin quote "Yeah, babe," Gibbs muttered, his voice husky. "Damn, you look hot. I can't wait to feel you suck my dick."
Tony's gut did a back flip. "Gibbs..."
"Nope," Gibbs said, shaking his head. He palmed Tony's erection through his pants and rubbed it hard. "I know you love it, but I changed my mind. I want to blow you. Think these boys'll like seeing your pretty cock in my mouth?" end quote
So the progress of things-- especially how in control of things Gibbs is and how much he's looking out for Tony here-- is clear in the text. However, in malnpudl's reading of it, it is very unclear to me. (Basically, I had to stop and think about the words and process what they meant in order to know what was going on, rather than being able to just hear it and understand.) I think this was likely due to her calm reading-- I think I needed some more emotion in this passage to hang the meaning on.
And actually, I think I'm going to go on a digression here and say how very much I love that Gibbs is very smooth about taking care of/protecting/looking out for Tony. I'm not even sure Tony realised at the time just how much of a buffer Gibbs was putting up (I kept thinking that it could have ended far differently-- either with the baddies getting suspicious and them ending up dead or 'just' with Tony much more cognizant of the coercive nature of the situation). Anyway, yay to Gibbs for being awesome.
21:30-21:41
These lines here have a time-break between them which is apparent from context:
begin quote He turned on his heel and left the room, the rest of the men trailing behind him, leaving Gibbs and Tony to finish sorting themselves out.
"'Babe'?" Tony said as they walked out of the club a few minutes later. end quote
The time-break is sort of apparent when reading, because although the time indicator (the 'a few minutes later') is at the end of the sentence, there is the paragraph break which you can see on the page, which means that by the time that you make it to the end of the sentence, you know when 'a few minutes' occurred. But when listening to the podfic, I was always confused at this point, since there wasn't a longer-than-normal pause, which is a custom to indicate time passing that I have evidently internalised. I would have found just a bit longer of a pause there quite useful as it would have provided some indicator of where within the story the time had passed. Either that or switching up the order of the sentence so that the first thing that was said was an indicator of time passing and/or location changing. (I think this particular confusion for me might come down to the fact that I am better/swifter at processing visual information than I am at auditory so I appreciate a few more clues in the spoken version.)
And if you have feedback on how I do my feedback, I am interested in that too! Or maybe you also have thoughts on this podfic which you'd like to share? :)
Posted to
fish_echo and fish-echo.
Linked at fish-recs,
podficmeta,
amplificathon and amplificathon. Sorry if you get this multiple times!
This entry was originally posted at http://fish-echo.dreamwidth.org/45385.html.
Podfic: [Method Acting (mp3)] and [audiobook (m4b)]
Read and written by: malnpudl
Etc: NCIS, Tony DiNozzo/Leroy Jethro Gibbs, NC-17, 22:37, mp3: 7.7 MB, m4b: 10.7 MB, ~3900 words
Contains: [ skip] Dubious consent and forced voyeurism of the the bad guys make them have sex to prove their cover sort.
Author Summary: Porny "fuck or die" undercover-in-a-gay-nightclub cliché!fic, with only the vaguest semblance of plot.
My Notes (story): The story does what it says on the tin. I actually would really love follow-up story(ies), both for the case and the relationship, which IMO says that there must have been some plot along with the porn here :)
And now onto the feedback for the podfic itself:
I feel like I should start with a disclaimer: I've watched the odd episode of NCIS and read the occasional fic, but I don't really know the canon or the fandom, so I can't measure this story and this reading against that-- I can only measure it against 'is it a good story? is it told well?'
And a note about this critique: I crave your pardon for my complete and utter lack of transitions. I'm sure someone better than I could have made this a nicely written essay, but I've had to make do with headings.
On malnpudl's voice
I've decided I like the slow, methodical pace malnpudl took for this. It lets the story evolve well and I think compliments the fact that there's some serious danger-zone-maybe-we're-gonna-die-soon and also some oh-shit-maybe-I'm-not-quite-straight angsting. (My default is always to do things dramatically so I'm always interested when I run across something which isn't dramatic that works.) She reads the sex in the same way as she reads everything else, again, another choice I liked. I think it works well with the story-- because the sex, much as Gibbs tries to keep Tony's focus on him, is performed as part of their undercover duties in front of an audience, so it's about duty even while it is also about two guys who are apparently really enjoying the sex. Plus, I don't like listening to scenes which seem like I'm supposed to get aroused by because it feels voyeuristic to me (in a sadly non-sexy fashion). And because she didn't sex up the sex scene I could listen to as descriptions rather than as erotic material. (And for those of you who like listening to sex scenes, my guess is you'll like this one-- there's lovely description.)
I put this on loop whilst writing up my feedback, and I've got to say that I can happily have malnpudl's voice running past my ears for a while! :) If I were the sort to listen to things as I fell asleep, I think I'd probably download her entire oeuvre (assuming other fics are done in this similar style). As it is, I need to scan her catalogue and see where we overlap in fandoms/stories.
Music
There wasn't any music or sound effects in this story and I didn't feel the lack of them. (For the record, my default is to not use these in podfics. Some day I mean to write up a bit of meta on that but this isn't the place for it.)
Formatting
The podfic is prefaced with the vaguely-standard short-form header, giving the title, fandom, author and reader and then going straight into the story. This is the way I prefer it as I find a full header before the story to be distracting/confusing. After the story is over, she says 'the end'! I love it when readers say 'the end' at the end! (No, my love of this isn't entirely rational. I mean, yes, it is functional in that it alerts the listeners that that story is over, but I love it beyond that.) Following the 'the end', she says 'This has been a reading of [repeat the short header info].' I don't really have an opinion on that. I mean, on a longer fic, it can be kind of handy, I suppose. On a short fic, it's redundant. But mostly what I think of that is that it is different than what I am used to, which is nothing. FWIW, I think this fic is just long enough that it's not redundant to have that info restated at the end. (I've just started to think that perhaps the way I prefer things is to read aloud the full headers at the end (so that the listener has all of the info, in case they don't have the text in front of them), which is different still from what was done here and what I'm used to. But again, that's a topic for a different time.)
On the suitability of this piece to being read out loud
I listened to this piece before I read the text version and found that I could follow along completely well without having read the story first (this is somewhat rare and I really appreciate the readers who can do that). It clearly works as a podfic, and yet having read the story I would not have said that there was anything about it that cried 'make me into a podfic!' Which just goes to show, I suppose, that not all stories which make good podfics are evidenced from the textual version. Interestingly, when I read the text, I noticed and was annoyed by descriptors which seemed a bit over the top (things like: self-appointed sheepdogs) that hadn't registered as objectionable when I listened to it-- evidently I have different thresholds for auditory and textual stories?
Misc other things
Excellent voice used for Gibbs, especially his growly orders.
There was some distinction between speech and thought and description but I think it was more context and the convenient situation of dialogue tags which made those obvious, but since the distinction was evident it's all good. (The exception being Gibbs-- even if I had tuned out for a bit I could almost always tell if it was a bit of Gibbs dialogue.)
The pacing was fine.
The volume of the podfic was fine.
The quality of the recording was fine.
Overall, I liked this podfic. :)
Specific lines I liked include the following:
0:40
"Well, spit it out, DiNozzo." Gibbs's first line, nicely done!
1:17
' "That'll be me," Gibbs said.' Nicely matter-of-fact.
3:33
'Shit. They were so dead.' Nicely spoken but since this is a happy fluffly fannish PWP, I know things Tony doesn't and so I just have to chuckle at this :)
7:02
I really love, for some reason, the way she says the "should've"s in this line here: "It smelled a lot better than it should've. And that didn't bother him as much as it should've."
9:53
"a wolfish slash of teeth" This is well-said. There's just enough of the drawl on the sibilants that the listener hears the anger that Gibbs has right here, but isn't too overly done in a hissy-snake fashion.
19:21
'wanted to stay on his knees all night' I like the enunciation here, how she reads it firmly and strong, almost swiftly. This works really well. (In my head, I hear it with a slow drawl, with the slowness emphasising the want. So this reading, which is very different from how I would think of it, is interesting to me. And it works! Even though, before hearing this, I wouldn't have thought it would.)
20:00
'things that should scare the crap out of him. But they didn't.' Oh, excellent reading. This actually sort of is a continuation of the previous comment-- the area right here, where we're really getting into Tony's head and he's getting into his head that maybe he really does want to make this something other than an undercover act, is well done-- it seems like I am hearing inside Tony's head nicely.
Things which I didn't like:
14:15-14:34
In these lines here, Gibbs changes his mind (well, right, they're undercover, so he pretended to change his mind, but whatever):
begin quote "Yeah, babe," Gibbs muttered, his voice husky. "Damn, you look hot. I can't wait to feel you suck my dick."
Tony's gut did a back flip. "Gibbs..."
"Nope," Gibbs said, shaking his head. He palmed Tony's erection through his pants and rubbed it hard. "I know you love it, but I changed my mind. I want to blow you. Think these boys'll like seeing your pretty cock in my mouth?" end quote
So the progress of things-- especially how in control of things Gibbs is and how much he's looking out for Tony here-- is clear in the text. However, in malnpudl's reading of it, it is very unclear to me. (Basically, I had to stop and think about the words and process what they meant in order to know what was going on, rather than being able to just hear it and understand.) I think this was likely due to her calm reading-- I think I needed some more emotion in this passage to hang the meaning on.
And actually, I think I'm going to go on a digression here and say how very much I love that Gibbs is very smooth about taking care of/protecting/looking out for Tony. I'm not even sure Tony realised at the time just how much of a buffer Gibbs was putting up (I kept thinking that it could have ended far differently-- either with the baddies getting suspicious and them ending up dead or 'just' with Tony much more cognizant of the coercive nature of the situation). Anyway, yay to Gibbs for being awesome.
21:30-21:41
These lines here have a time-break between them which is apparent from context:
begin quote He turned on his heel and left the room, the rest of the men trailing behind him, leaving Gibbs and Tony to finish sorting themselves out.
"'Babe'?" Tony said as they walked out of the club a few minutes later. end quote
The time-break is sort of apparent when reading, because although the time indicator (the 'a few minutes later') is at the end of the sentence, there is the paragraph break which you can see on the page, which means that by the time that you make it to the end of the sentence, you know when 'a few minutes' occurred. But when listening to the podfic, I was always confused at this point, since there wasn't a longer-than-normal pause, which is a custom to indicate time passing that I have evidently internalised. I would have found just a bit longer of a pause there quite useful as it would have provided some indicator of where within the story the time had passed. Either that or switching up the order of the sentence so that the first thing that was said was an indicator of time passing and/or location changing. (I think this particular confusion for me might come down to the fact that I am better/swifter at processing visual information than I am at auditory so I appreciate a few more clues in the spoken version.)
And if you have feedback on how I do my feedback, I am interested in that too! Or maybe you also have thoughts on this podfic which you'd like to share? :)
Posted to
fish_echo and fish-echo.
Linked at fish-recs,
podficmeta,
amplificathon and amplificathon. Sorry if you get this multiple times!
This entry was originally posted at http://fish-echo.dreamwidth.org/45385.html.