a few character-centric recs

So I love many, many things and ultimately I decided that this was the best way to organize my thoughts and explain why I was reccing was I was reccing, but there will be another post (posts?) during the free-for-all

Aaaaanyway, I tend to focus on a character in a given fandom, and one of my favorite things about podfic is that each reader brings something different to the same character.
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 ) (read by sly_hostetter ) (Phil/Natasha/Clint)
full disclosure - I was one of the betas for this, but have no shame and love it dearly, and so will rec it anyway :D One of my favorite things about movie!Phil is his combination of unflappability and emotion, and sly_hostetter  *nails* it, with bonus perfect-Natasha-and-Clint. Her wonderfully precise enunciation accentuates Phil's control, but little threads of wistfulness and surprise and love come through at just the right times and are all the more evident for their scarcity earlier in the podfic and it all fits with the theme of oh-they-love-me and is just lovely lovely lovely.

Still Officially Lost (written by pollyrepeat ) (read by raiining ) (Gen)
This is a tricky one because it features not the SHIELD agent we know and love, but a younger, less-experienced Phil dealing with a teenaged Clint who is, unsurprisingly, a little pain in the ass. raiining's reading, though, lets Phil get more confident and assured as the podfic progresses while Clint is by turns obnoxious and vulnerable (the bit when they're talking about Clint joining SHIELD is almost hard to listen to because it's so pitch-perfect teenager-trying-not-to-show-he's-hurt-but-really-quite-upset).

By The Book (written by perpetualmotion ) and Pigeonville, USA (written by sheafrotherdon ) (both read by regonym ) (both Clint/Coulson)
I love these both and it's quite the disservice to combine their recs, because both are lovely podfics, but I love them for the same reason, so I'll be lazy and only write it out once. These are both slice-of-life-ish fics (-ish because they are too well-written to be categorized quite that simply), andregonym 's Phil is delightfully deadpan, with a hint of a laugh that was elusive in movie!Phil but gets teased out in these two, without losing his essential Phil-ness.


Ray Kowalski (Due South)
Saturday Clothes (written by spuffyduds ) (read by aphelant ) (RayK/Fraser)
There's a moment when aphelant reads the line "Ray hits the bathroom again" and it's ever-so-slightly desperate and so very Ray that I giggle and then have to stop and rewind (three times so far) and then I get farther in and "Fraser can never leave Ray's apartment" and Ray is so *proud* of himself and it's something I didn't get from reading the fic but I love it and it's so Ray and *explodes with feels*


Stiles Stilinski (aka the icecream scoop of our hearts) (Teen Wolf)
His Words were Pearls (written by saucery ) (read by heard_the_owl ) (Derek/Stiles)
Now, don't get me wrong, because I love (lovelovelove) this fic as written, but somehow heard_the_owl 's reading packs an emotional punch that gets me every time. I've lost track of the number of times I've listened to it, but every single time Stiles gets freaked out I'm right there with him. I'm not sure I could tell you exactly why, but it's probably somewhere in Stiles' amazingly-executed incredulity/horror at the situation and curiosity about same.

Window Sneak (written by starbeast ) (read by fire_juggler ) (Derek/Stiles)
It's hard to pin down just why I love fire_juggler 's Stiles, but I think a large part of it is the pacing. So much of Stiles' character is comic timing and emphases and pratfalls (verbal as well as physical) and fire_juggler has him down *pat* and it's simply *so much fun* to listen to :D