Review: New Rule by bexless, read by shiningartifact

[brimtoast]

Podfic information and download link at shiningartifact's post

1) What worked

There's a lot that worked for me about this podfic. The tone of the narration fits the words well, and it's expressive without sounding overdone or unnatural. I know that we've discussed in previous posts that different people have different preferences for level of expressiveness, but this one falls in the just-right sweet spot for me.

Also, I really love the voice shiningartifact uses for Frank, who is one of the two speaking characters in the story. It evokes Frank Iero's real voice while still sounding natural and comfortable for the reader's voice. Not just the tone and pitch, but also the rhythm and prosody, feel really in-character to me. The dialogue also follows the stage directions well, for both characters.

The narration in the sex scene worked for me. Some readings of sex scenes can make me a bit uncomfortable, but here it sounded like the reader was comfortable and happy with what she was saying, so I felt comfortable and happy listening to it.

Overall, I really really like this recording. Which is why I picked it to review—I knew I wouldn't mind listening to it a bunch of times while figuring out what to write.

2) What didn't work

There are two things that didn't work as well as the rest for me. The first has to do with the voice of the other speaking character, Gerard. I think that her readings of his lines sound good and make sense, and if this were a book fandom where the character didn't have a canonical voice, I would have loved this interpretation. However, this character does have a canonical voice, and there were times when the reader said Gerard's lines in a way that I couldn't picture Gerard Way saying them. Specifically, she sometimes used a sing-song prosody that evokes the "valley girl" concept to me. I think this prosody is more common in female speech than male speech (though I could be wrong. I haven't spent a lot of time with this theory yet.), and I don't recall ever hearing Gerard use it. So it felt a bit out of place. A couple lines that are examples of this: "If you kill me, there'll be no one to rescue you from the spiders" and "if you weren't naked, it wouldn't be a problem."

The other thing is right at the beginning of the sex scene. Frank says "That’s – that’s a word, I guess," and the stage directions say that he sounds weird and is breathing really fast. The line reading follows these stage directions, but I feel like it follows them so much that it sounds unnatural. People aren't usually just panting all of a sudden. I think in this case, it would have been better to leave most of the information about breathing fast and sounding weird to be conveyed by the stage directions themselves, and just gesture towards it more subtly in the dialogue.

3) a podfic-metaish thing that the podfic made you think of.

How important is it to you that the character voice in the reading evokes the character's canon voice? Is it a big deal if it doesn't? Or are you happy as long as the voice in the reading is consistent and follows the stage directions well?

At one point in the podfic, it says that a character sighs, and then the reader adds a sigh at the beginning of the dialogue. Do you like it when sighs, yawns, etc. that are mentioned in the text are added to the dialogue, or does it seem redundant, since we are both being told that it happens and being shown that it happens?

Comments

[zvi]

I think that there's a lot of room for fudging in the question of "reading evokes the character's canon voice." Rachael Sabotini wrote about three point characterization a long while ago, and I think that something similar is true of vocalization. There's a bunch of things one can pick to mimic—intonation, timbre, prosody, inflection, excitement, accent, breathing patterns, acting/emotional interpretation. For me, particularly since podfic is an amateur thing, if you hit one of those really well, and you don't hit any of the others terribly badly, that's usually good enough. (Honestly, the most important thing for me in fanfiction is getting a consistent voice, so I can tell who is speaking in the context of a particular podfic.)

One thing about following stage directions, with respect to the instance where Frank's line is suddenly breathless and weird. What I think works best (although it requires pre-reading and perhaps even marking up a script, so I don't expect it) is if the narration changes in tone to anticipate the change in the dialogue. (I mean, of course, if the scene is from someone else's point of view, and their position in the scene doesn't lend themselves to breathiness, it doesn't work, but when one can.)

As for your second question, I like those sorts of vocal tics when they are part of how the dialogue is spoken, but not when they're made outside the scope of the words used. For instance, I'm listening to Laurel K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry books (don't judge me!) and characters laugh from time to time. What the reader, Laura Merlington does, and it drives me crazy, is she'll start the next line of dialogue with a laugh, and it's the same damn laugh every time. That is to say, the laugh will be in the timbre she's adopted for the character in question, but no matter whether the laugh is to be cruel or seductive or breathlessly pleased, it's the same damn Heh heh. Makes me crazy. I'd rather she spoke those sentences with laughter (or gleeful cruelty or cheerful lechery, as appropriate) in her voice.

[brimtoast]

I like those sorts of vocal tics when they are part of how the dialogue is spoken, but not when they're made outside the scope of the words used.

Yeah, that's well-stated, and I think it's where I stand on those, too. I want the sentence to have a yawn or sigh or laugh in the words, rather than to pause for the sound effect and then have the words separately.

That's a good point, too, that a reader can amp up the narration to match the speech in intense moments, rather than just toning down the speech. That wouldn't have worked in this one, because the tone change caught the POV character by surprise, but it does work in a lot of readings, and I like it when the reader makes that choice. I can think of one reader who doesn't seem to do that with the narration, and it made for somewhat abrupt-feeling sex scenes, switching back and forth between calm narration and super-turned-on dialogue.

[lunate8]

3b) For stories I've previously recorded, I included full sighs, snorts, and coughs. In my mind it got me more into the story and helped me deliver the characters' dialog better. Listening to them now, I'd probably dial down my "sound effect" delivery a bit but still use them.

[brimtoast]

I sometimes like them and sometimes don't, and I think it mostly has to do with the rhythm of the reading. If they can be slipped in quickly, or actually *during* the speaking of line, so that it doesn't break up the rhythm, I like them. If it feels like there should be words next, pacing-wise, but a yawn or cough or whatever is inserted instead and delays the words, then I tend to slightly wish it hadn't been there.

[ama_nesciri]

I actually don't really like it when people 'do the character voices' -- personally I like the story reading to be like 'their interpretation of the text', so I want their voice to ~tell me [somehow LOL!] their interpretation. When people start doing very distinct 'voices' I get turned off. It makes me think of when parents read pictures books to their kids - I had a nanny who did this =) LOL! And I don't want any sighs etc - in opera I'm ok with the old school dramatic and emotional voicing actually, but not in spoken word stuff. =)