Escape Artists
PseudoPod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Bdoomed on March 25, 2011, 02:38:07 PM
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Pseudopod 222: Terrible Lizard King (http://pseudopod.org/2011/03/25/pseudopod-222-terrible-lizard-king/)
By Nathaniel Lee (http://www.mirrorshards.org/)
Read by Steve Anderson, an Escape Artists jack-of-all-trades
“That night, Patrick’s dreams were troubled, full of rumbling sounds like drums or distant guns. Patrick woke up several times in the darkness and lay frozen beneath his blanket, unwilling to peep out because he knew what would be at the window.
He could hear it breathing.”
Please check out http://genreforjapan.wordpress.com/ to bid on awesome things and support relief efforts in Japan.
(http://pseudopod.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png)
Listen to this week's Pseudopod. (http://media.libsyn.com/media/pseudopod/Pseudo222_TerribleLizardKing.mp3)
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Is Jim Morrison a character in this?
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Wow I thought the exact same thing.
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Wow I thought the exact same thing.
I see you're a tiger now.
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I recognize this author! Won some flash contest with a cat story. Time to download...
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Hmm... Nathaniel Lee... cat story...
Nathaniel Lee... cat...
Nathaniel Lee... cat...
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nope, doesn't ring a bell. I guess I'm just scatterbrained.
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Hey, everybody!
So for anyone who doesn't know, I am Nathaniel Lee and Nathaniel Lee is me. I figured that, given my relatively active status on the forums, it would be weird for me to play hooky from this thread without saying anything. I'm jumping in here at the beginning to say that I'll be around, but I won't be reading this thread or responding for at least a couple of weeks to let the conversation develop naturally. A few points first:
- If you have any specific questions or things you want me to address, just say so. If the need arises, I will post an omnibus response when I come back after the thread has concluded.
- Any forum regulars will know that I do not shy away from criticism (and will likely have argued with me on at least one occasion), so feel free to speak openly if you think something wasn't good. I can take it as well as I dish it out, I assure you. And no, I will not be responding to criticisms; only to questions.
- Issue One: Octopuses are scary. Addendum: So is any water I can't see the bottom of. This is not up for debate, and you're all wrong. /JohnMcLaughlin
- Thanks in advance for listening! Additionally: Wooo, Pseudopod! (Kickass reading, I thought; how come he's not around more often?)
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I must admit I love the recent turn on the pod toward more stories with less cheap blood and gore and more psychological struggles is great. Lives and the Terrible Lizard King are the kinds of stories I want to hear and I am loving it.
I miss Ben's voice but Steve is becoming a favorite of mine. I loved how he mimicked the kids voices during the taunts.
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I remember liking this story in the crit group. I liked it even better read to me. Good job, 'Cat!
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That was a solid and engaging story with a very good depiction of bullying. I really liked the "Toby surrounded him"-bit.
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Congratulations on your Pseudopod debut, Nathan!! That's awesome. Now if you can crack Escape Pod you will have the Unholy Trifecta. :)
Most of the story I liked very much. The child's point of view seemed very authentic, reminded me of being a kid myself (which many supposed child POVs do not evoke). I liked the developing friendship between the boy with the T-Rex phobia and the girl with the octopus phobia. I expected the T-Rex to eat the bully, so there's some extra points for subverting expectations.
What I didn't care for as much:
-Patrick's rant about dinosaurs being everywhere, but hiding as fossil fuels and recycled organic matter seemed to fall out of the kid's point of view. It seemed to be there to foreshadow the ending, where Patrick becomes the T-Rex, but it seemed that the author's voice took over the kid's story to provide this foreshadowing.
-I'm not sure if I'm reading the ending right, but the way I read it, the dinosaur is entirely imaginary. Because, in Patrick's mind, the T-Rex has bowed down to him, he feels that he is more worthy than the tyrant king himself and will now become the dominant one. However, I didn't think he actually changed to a sharp-toothed monster, he just became another bully like his tormentor. That tyrant bully will be replaced by Patrick, and this is a tale of a rise of a bully. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's hard to compare with actual dinosaurs, and I have trouble having much compassion for Patrick when I think about what it seems he is choosing to become.
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I, too, was confused about the ending. I don't think there was a clear enough sense as to whether the dinosaur was supposed to be taken to be an actual entity, a delusion, or whether the story was supposed to be understood metaphorically rather than literally. And it was really not clear to me what the status of the change in the ending was - did anything change other than his attitude? Was that going to be enough? It's not just a question of whether he's now going to become a new bully - it's a question of whether it's too late. If there isn't any physical change involved, if the dinosaur is a delusion or a metaphor, Patrick may now have the will to overcome his tormentors but does he have the way? Will he still see himself as top predator if he attempts to fight back and is beaten easily?
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I, too, was confused about the ending. I don't think there was a clear enough sense as to whether the dinosaur was supposed to be taken to be an actual entity, a delusion, or whether the story was supposed to be understood metaphorically rather than literally. And it was really not clear to me what the status of the change in the ending was - did anything change other than his attitude? Was that going to be enough? It's not just a question of whether he's now going to become a new bully - it's a question of whether it's too late. If there isn't any physical change involved, if the dinosaur is a delusion or a metaphor, Patrick may now have the will to overcome his tormentors but does he have the way? Will he still see himself as top predator if he attempts to fight back and is beaten easily?
I had no doubt about Patrick's ability to win. The other kid's a pain in the ass, but strikes me more as a scavenger than a predator. I don't think that the new T-Rex Patrick will hold anything back. Patrick may end up being tried as an adult for ripping out a kid's throat with his teeth, but I believe that he will win that fight.
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Interesting story. I liked the way in which childhood was related in an engaging and realistic way, although, as mentioned, the fossil fuels and plastic stuff seemed a little too sophisticated for Paddy. The bit about having the same particles as dinosaurs sounded more childlike in its rather simplistic understanding of a concept that is far more complex than he makes it seem (although he is, obviously, right in his assertions)
Quick question about the post story stuff. Al, is that how your outros usually sound pre-edit? Does the bashful umming and erring get tactfully edited out in post? Is the free-flowing verbosity and rhetoric all a sham? Or where you just not working from a script for the last bit?
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Slightl nervous, not working from a script for that bit.
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Speaking of the post-story, can we get links in the title section for the Japanese relief charity?
As far as the pre-post-story, I enjoyed this one. I always seem to dig the stories run here with young children at the protagonists, and we've been long overdue for more. This fits nicely on the shelf with Little Boy Leg Bone (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=2866.0), Fever (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=1122.0), and Big Boy (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=987.0). You lost me in the middle as well, but the sidetrack didn't last long.
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It's in. Sorry, haven't had my computer since Friday evening....
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Here you go:)
http://genreforjapan.wordpress.com/
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It's weird, we have a story that's milder than the usual Pseudopod fare and a fairly grisly Podcastle tale. Funny how these things even out.
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April Fool's Day episode coming Friday.....
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I won't clog the thread by listing everything I dug about this episode, since so much of it has been mentioned already. One thing that really made me smile, though, when listening, was the echo that was added with each successive repetition of the "Kiss your girlfriend!" taunt. It was just a little production touch, but it was marvelously effective.
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I seem to be the only one not to like this.
Partly it was because of the medium. If I'd been reading this I could have skipped passed all the tedious angsty stuff and got to the meat of the story. As it was it seemed to drag on forever without getting anywhere much.
Partly it was because the title totally oversold it. If I download a story about a Terrible Lizard King then I want to hear a story about a Terrible Lizard King. And nobody mention metaphor. Metaphor is no excuse.
Partly it's because I just listened to 'The Colour of a Brontosaurus' in the EP back catalogue and that was really good. It set the expectation bar high for whatever I listened to next, which happened to be this.
Apart from that the only problem was the lack of lesbians.
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Never let it be said that I do not listen to requests. (http://www.mirrorshards.org/2011/04/tyrannosaurus-rex.html)
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Never let it be said that I do not listen to requests. (http://www.mirrorshards.org/2011/04/tyrannosaurus-rex.html)
That is a pretty terrible lizard king.
Though it's misspelt as "kin" in the fourth paragraph.
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I have mixed feelings about this story: On the one hand I sincerely enjoyed the, at times frighteningly, accurate depiction of childhood and its various pitfalls. The overactive imagination, the bully who just won't let you get away with anything, the distant and disinterested adults. The dialog was pretty good too.
I also enjoyed the T. Rex as a monster - a creature which is both mundane and ultramundane all at once. Patrick's fears certainly felt childlike and moved with the logic of children ie. he finds it totally reasonable that such a creature could (a) exist and (b) remain unseen.
But I found the ending both vague and unfulfilling. The reality of the monster never really came into play and Patrick's abrupt change (presumably into confidence) felt unbelievable. The story felt unresolved and the horror, never fully manifests.
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Never let it be said that I do not listen to requests. (http://www.mirrorshards.org/2011/04/tyrannosaurus-rex.html)
Now THAT is what I'm talking about.
Nice to see modern history reflected in a story too.
(http://bootnewt.envy.nu/readmypetgoat.jpg)
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(http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/calvinandhobbes_popcorn_2571.png)
I was thinking about this one through most of the story. :)
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Always with the Calvin and Hobbes. :-)
And why not?
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A truly great, fun story, perfectly introduced and closed in true Alasdare fashion.
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It really had a childhood feel about it. When I was a kid I was afraid of something coming up the toilet and getting me. Funny I forgot about that until the story. Well done!
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It really had a childhood feel about it. When I was a kid I was afraid of something coming up the toilet and getting me.
Mostly I was afraid of the water splashing me when a toilet was flushed. It clashed with my desire to be an amateur ablutionologist -- which is a nice way of saying "I made my grandma take me to the bathroom everywhere I went because I wanted to see what kind of toilet they had".
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It really had a childhood feel about it. When I was a kid I was afraid of something coming up the toilet and getting me. Funny I forgot about that until the story. Well done!
I didn't have that fear as a child. But I did for a long time after reading Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher".
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Always with the Calvin and Hobbes. :-)
And why not?
Calvin and Hobbes has long been an undue influence on my mind...
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It really had a childhood feel about it. When I was a kid I was afraid of something coming up the toilet and getting me.
Mostly I was afraid of the water splashing me when a toilet was flushed. It clashed with my desire to be an amateur ablutionologist -- which is a nice way of saying "I made my grandma take me to the bathroom everywhere I went because I wanted to see what kind of toilet they had".
I can't blame you for being afraid of toilet water! My mother use to say that I always had to use the bathroom where ever I went. I think I just wanted to check the bathrooms out as well!
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Just resurrecting the thread for my own story to note that this tale is now available in print at Allegory E-zine (http://www.allegoryezine.com/)! Now you can really soak up all the nuances of the writing at your leisure. I'm sure I put some nuances in there somewhere.
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Let me just say I'm a Preschool teacher and in love with dinosaurs. This was a great story fo the kid in all of us. I especially enjoyed the tie in to the real world to show us it is truly all about preseption. I would love to read this to my class.