Aless Nox

Quote: "I created a website while you were talking in your sleep about cake."

First let it be said that I hate incest fics. Incest sets off all of my squick warnings. The closest to an incest fic that I can usually get to is something like Fruitsbasket where the incest or implied incest gives a creepy, malevolent background story. This being said...

The Physics of Present Tense

is the closest thing that I have ever seen to a incest!yeah fic. I downloaded this podfic and was surprised to find that it was in 10 parts. Going back, I found that it is four hours and forty one minutes long! Nevertheless, since I enjoy long form podfics, and I was in a good mood, I banished my husband from the room and began to listen to it.

Summary:
It happens instantaneously, but it takes years. It’s like looking up at the stars and spinning around with your arms out and letting gravity take you.

STORY
The story is seductive and interesting starting before Sherlock is born and passing year by year until we get to the series. A complete backstory for the Sherlock Mycroft relationship which informs us about things such as the skull, Victor Trevor, Mycroft and Lestrade, Sally Donovan, and the brothers' verbal sparring. Sometimes it seems like voyeurism. Sometimes it is immersive, thrusting us into a forbidden relationship that seems so very all-enveloping and intense.

The language is poetic. A susurrus of words that pool and form a story of an affection that grows, perhaps, a bit too narcissistic. Time passes quickly at first with little glimpses of their lives. Mycroft is the main character, but we jump from his point of view to that of his brother between chapters to show that this is more of an equal relationship than it may appear at first.

Mycroft is a believable character, in temperament he appears much as he is in the show. Sherlock borders on insanity. I'd say that he's the closest to being OOC although there isn't anything that I can point to off the top of my head to show this fact. This can be used to explain Mycroft's obsessive protectiveness of his brother which includes using spy cameras and paying off his friends. It explains the cake barbs and why Mycroft must be present after Sherlock almost gets himself killed. A very well thought out and complete world view that just serves to point out how curved-in their world is on itself. Besides being "men of the world", it seems as if the two of them only really see each other most of the time which also serves to explain why neither brother dates.

Although it doesn't look it, they form a united front. Sherlock's wildness serves as a release for Mycroft preventing his boredom. Mycroft's solidity and power protects Sherlock and allows him to do what he wants. As a character study it is an intoxicating work and I salute paxlux for such a well realized work.

PODFIC

It's hard to believe that this is zwischendenstuehlen's first podfic. The production values on this work are just excellent. As someone who struggles to make halfway decent podfics myself, I can appreciate the clear quality of the sound, the interweaving of the story with music and sound effects, and the clear separation of voices required to make this work. zwischendenstuehlen has a beautiful voice. She reads very well. The fact that this is not her native language may be one reason that she speaks slowly and with good intonation, making this an enjoyable story to listen to. The only problems were the mispronunciation of some words that made me silently re-say the words properly in my head, and one verbal glitch that is less than is found in most works that I have listened to. Overall, it has a very good sound, and I will probably listen to this more than once, which considering the subject is saying something.