Escape Artists
PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Talia on September 11, 2012, 04:10:23 PM
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PodCastle 225, Giant Episode: The Cage (http://podcastle.org/2012/09/11/podcastle-225-giant-episode-the-cage/)
by Jeff VanderMeer (http://www.jeffvandermeer.com).
Read by MarBelle, of the Director’s Notes blog, audio and video podcast (http://www.directorsnotes.com).
Originally appeared in City of Saints and Madmen.
“Tell me about the cage,” Hoegbotton said suddenly, surprising himself. “The cage up there”—he pointed—“is it for sale, too?”
The boy stiffened, stared at the floor. Outside, his father, brother, and two sisters were being burned as a precaution, the bodies too mutilated to have withstood a viewing anyway..
A reflexive sadness ran through Hoegbotton, even as he noted the delicacy of the silver engravings on the legs of a nearby chair and the authentic maker’s mark stitched onto the cushioned seat.
He smiled at the boy, whose gaze remained directed at the floor. “Don’t you know you’re safe now?” The words sounded ludicrous.
The woman turned to look at Hoegbotton. Her eyes were black as an abyss; they did not blink and reflected nothing. He felt for a moment balanced precariously between the son’s alarm and the mother’s regard.
“The cage was always open,” the woman said, her voice gravelly, something stuck in her throat. “We had a bird. We always let it fly around. It was a pretty bird. It flew high through the rooms. It— No one could find the bird. After.” The terrible pressure of the word after appeared to be too much for her and she fell back into her silence.
“We’ve never had a cage,” the boy said, the dark green suitcase swaying. “We’ve never had a bird. They left it here. They left it.”
A kind of rapturous chill ran through Hoegbotton. The sleepy gaze of a pig embryo floating in a jar caught his eye. Opportunity or disaster? The value of an artifact they had left behind might be considerable. The risks, however, might be more than considerable. This was the third time in the last nine months that he had been called to a house visited by the gray caps. Each of the previous times, he had escaped unharmed. In fact, he had come to believe that late arrivals like himself, who took precautions and knew their history, were impervious to any side effects.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s PodCastle! (http://media.rawvoice.com/podcastle/media.libsyn.com/media/podcastle/PC225_TheCage.mp3)
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Thanks for the warning, Dave, but I just could NOT make myself pay attention during that list, and I never really got it back until well into the story. I restarted it...and got lost again at about the same spot.
And the end. Um. Am I the only one who thought, "I listened to 90 minutes of this story, and this is the pay-off?"
Not a huge fan of this one.
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I'd like to personally thank Podcastle for making sure that I feel absolutely no doubt about my decision to move house from the cold, wet, dark confines of San Francisco to the relatively warm environment of Oakland. Seriously - I spent most of yesterday evening staring suspiciously at the patch of black mold on our ceiling, daring it to do something shifty. I have Simple Green and I'm not afraid to use it! I got it for stripping minis, but I'm not afraid to go all fungicide on your fuzzy black ass!
I never have trusted fungus. Creepy, parasitic, scavenging, spore-growing little bastards. I mean, it's no picnic being an animal - we eat death, too; only plants are innocent - but at least most animals I know have the decency to make at least a desultory effort to kill their food first.
Ok, sure, except for parasitic animals. But screw them, anyway. I have my biases and fungi are creepy!
Anyway, I loved this story. I loved the atmosphere of Ambergris and the growing madness of the main character. I did not object to the list at the beginning - or the generally meandering style of this story - because I thought that it was actually very tightly written. The obsessive specificity, combined with the horrific and deeply wrong nature of what was being described, was the edge of the knife that pried me off of the real world and set me loose in Ambergris. Every word of The Cage was precisely the word that it needed to be; it was the world those stories described that was wrong, unnatural, off-kilter, and dangerous.
The pacing was, likewise, perfect. The way The Cage unfolded was almost Grecian in its tragedy. All Hoegbottom needed to do was realize that he had gone too far, too deep, and turn away... but we all knew that he wasn't going to do that. And by the end, he knew it, too. It's that moment that I find most delicious in a story - the moment that you realize that your worst enemy was always yourself.
And yet, like my favorite horrors, this was a story that believed in heroes. Hoegbottom couldn't save himself - he was damned from the moment he laid hand on The Cage - but he could save his wife. And damn it, he did!
On the other hand, I can't argue that this story didn't have one flaw. It's beginning to bug me when authors write things that at first glance seem terrible and atmospheric and creepy, but on further consideration don't actually mean anything. Words are supposed to mean something. I mean, seriously - "a dark light?" "Bright eyes that hinted at the memory of catastrophe?" What is that supposed to mean? The point is that it takes me out of the story when I realize that the narrator is describing something in a way inconsistent with the way people actually think of things.
Neil Gaiman is a great example of an author who almost never does this - The Cage's opening list is a good example of a story that dips into it.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that fungi have now replaced tentacled horror as my go to "something is wrong here." And my wife and are pulling up stakes and moving to Morrow, and there will be no more conversation about it.
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OK, this clearly should have been on pseudopod. I know folks say that a lot, especially when there is a lot of gore, but I think this is the first time I've said it.
I know that fantasy and horror are not mutually exclusive, but as I understand it, they are defined quite differently. Fantasy (and Science Fiction) are defined by content. That is, whether there is something fantastic in the story. And yes, there is fantastic content in this story. Horror, on the other hand, is defined by intent. That is, the story is intended to cause uneasiness or dread in the reader, generally by identifying with the feelings of the protagonist. That is also the case here, as the protagonist spends over half the story in gibbering terror, and most of the rest in stomach churning uneasiness. That is the very definition of Horror, as I understand it.
I do not go for Horror, I do not listen to pseudopod. I don't have a beef with people who do, but it's not my cup of tea.
My beef with this story is, while it is a fantasy (it has fantastic elements), you have to view them through the protagonist's muddy goggles of terror and madness, making the fantastic elements all but unviewable.
Humm... moving on...
I really tried to get interested in the mystery surrounding his memories of his father, but the crazier he got, the more I lost interest. I honestly lost track enough that I don't know what the resolution of that mystery was, and there is no way I'm going back to try and pick it up.
I am also annoyed by writers who hide something important because the viewpoint character doesn't want to think about it. It seems a cheap trick to me.
Not up for a relisten.
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OK, this clearly should have been on pseudopod.
Totally agreed.
I had a difficult time getting into this one. Maybe because it sounded very much like something written by Poe. A slowly creeping horror, a growing madness and an attention to creating the right mood.
But rather than feel the suspense, I just got depressed listening to the dreary sounding world in which the protagonist lived.
This story has put my humors off kilter and induced an acute case of melancholia. I think I need a tonic.
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I think this story is one that would be better to read on paper then to listen to. The audio and reader were excellent, but the author liked to give us large blocks of descriptive text and lists of things that often ejected me way out of the story as I just waited for the wall of data to come to an end and the story to pick up again.
About 50 minutes in we get a large block again and without the warning that it would be over soonish I found it very very hard to get through. In fact it took two tries.
As for it being on Pseudopod... I find this story is more at home in podcastle.
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Just read some of the other comments here.
I honestly didn't really get a horror vibe out of this. Especially not a Poe note.
It was very much a fantasy world to me. A world with a little fungus growing in the corner and it is that fungus that we watch, but very much a fantasy world all the same.
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Every time someone whines "this should be on Pseudopod" I have to fight the urge to reply "you should be on Pseudopod." Or Escape Pod. Or whatever. Look, people - genre is not a matter of right and wrong. Genre is fluid, mobile, and alive - like your internal organs once the greycaps have gotten to you. One man's horror is another man's fantasy. One man's science fiction - it's got space ships! - is another man's soft and squishy space fantasy.
Stop whining about it. Comment on the actual qualities of the actual story you just actually listened to.
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Aw be nice. :)
People can argue about what is isn't horror or fantasy until the cows come home; because its subjective there are times when the opinions of those choosing the story will differ from the listeners. It's just the nature of the beast if you want a story podcast to be nice and diverse.
That being said, phrasing one's objections as "this should be on PodCast XYZ!" is problematic, because it can be read either as a suggestion of action (..and the chances of someone going "Oh, you're right!" and removing it and uploading it as a PseudoPod story instead are nil) or as a statement of opinion (the more likely true meaning - a briefer way of saying "In my opinion this would be a better fit over at PodCast XYZ").
Anyway, back to the story, folks. :)
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Aw be nice. :)
Grumble grumble. In my day. Get off my lawn.
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Aw be nice. :)
Grumble grumble. In my day. Get off my lawn.
Yeah! You're stepping on the shrooms, man!
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Every time someone whines "this should be on Pseudopod" I have to fight the urge to reply "you should be on Pseudopod."
I think I'm already there.
Don't get the impression I can't get behind things that are difficult to categorize. S'why I like Drabblecast so much. As Talia mentioned, it would have been better to phrase it in the from of an opinion, but I don't think there are very many facts inside of a forum based around fantasy stories. It's nice to be nice though.
Kaa and I did give our thoughts on the story itself. What I forgot to mention is that although I was not a fan of the story/style itself, it was solidly written and the reader fit well with the atmosphere it was conveying. Not my cup of cola, though.
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Ok, so admittedly the story is Fantasy. And Horror. And Science Fiction. My problem with the story is that the fear elements effectively drowned out the fantastic elements to the degree that the fantastic parts could not be perceived very well.
What exactly were the fantastic parts? Umm..., there were fast growing mushrooms everyone was afraid of.... That's it, I'm out.
What I meant by my opinion was that this story would probably be better suited to an audience that enjoys that feeling of dread.
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Honestly, in your case, I think saying it's horror and you didn't like it because it disturbed/scared/upset you is totally valid. That's not to say I relish the "Is this really fantasy or horror or SF or whatever" debates. But I'm sorry I didn't give you more of a warning in the intro.
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I've read this story twice (because I've read through "The Weird" twice. That book is awesome.) I like it a great deal, although it isn't my favorite from that gravity-based murder weapon of a tome. High marks all around, I think; the atmosphere is delicious and awful.
I gotta disagree with Electric Pally on the description thing; as long as it's not overdone, I enjoy a good non sequitur or logically impossible descriptor. I find the tension of the nonsense highlights the emotional content. It only grates if it's clear that it is the result of incompetence rather than deliberately inappropriate use of words. (One encounters some amazingly quirky phrases in the slushpile sometimes.)
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Non-fiction has rules. Fiction does not.
Yep. Non-fiction doesn't have to make sense. But people require their fiction to make sense. Go figure. :)
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I've read "City of Saints and Madmen" and I honestly didn't enjoy it. I expected I should, given that the book was recommended by China Mieville (one of my favorite authors), but I just could not get into it, and I've had a lot of trouble getting into anything else I've read (or heard) by VanderMeer. So, in essence, I saved myself 90 minutes -- which is fortunate, given that everyone here has heard my issues with longer episodes.
Perhaps next time.
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I'm going to stick my head up and explain why it annoys me when people argue about a piece's genre.
Genre is subjective. It really is. There are some narrow bands at the extremes of the genre where it's pretty unambiguous, but everywhere else? Pure subjectivity. One man's horror is another woman's fantasy, or sci-fi, or whatever. Now, subjectivity isn't a bad thing, but no one ever seems to say "that story was great! Only, it should have been on *WHATEVER*pod." They always say "man, that sucked - why wasn't it on *THAT*pod instead of *THIS*pod?"
So, combine subjectivity and implicit value judgments and what do you get? Endless meaningless meandering!
When I read "this story was so pseudopod! How can you disagree? Look at the dread, the horror, and the bad ending!" what I see is "wow, this story was bad. Look at the badness! There was badness, badness, and at the end - badness!"
This is different from talking about almost anything else about a story. You can talk about a story's positive and negative qualities, or the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of a given narrative trick, because those topics acknowledge their subjectivity. The whole referring-to-objects-in-horrible-ways-that-don't-match-how-people-talk-thing is disruptive and pretentious to me - Scattercat likes it. We can talk about that.
However, saying "this story belongs in that other genre!" as code for "this story wasn't what I wanted!" isn't a conversation starter. It's a conversational black hole.
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I really liked the way the catalog of things being described at the beginning put me into this story. So often when stories start out with things happening in a setting I know nothing about, I feel like I'm missing something until I get far enough in that I've gathered enough information to feel immersed in what's happening. The way this cataloging of things through the eyes of Hoegbottom put me there and transformed into events taking place as he moved to the people in the room really worked for me.
I enjoyed every minute of this dank, dreary, spore filled world, especially the ending scene on the balcony which also generated vivid imagery for me. I'm left wishing for a few more plot details though, like how the great silence relates to the greycaps. Did all of those people disappearing somehow turn into the greycaps, or were they around before that? If so, why did that happen? Maybe I missed something. Maybe not. Those rivals of his were another aspect that I would have liked elucidated more, because I thought that would have been an opportunity to make the response to the cage gifting fitting to a character we knew something about. These bits I can easily fill in with my own designs, but the detailed portrayal of the setting is priceless and irreplaceable to me, so I really appreciated it.
Narrator was a perfect fit too, I thought.
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I really enjoyed this one, but not particularly for its perceived horror / fantasy / whatever elements. The fungus was an excellent creepy antagonist (I especially enjoyed the scene where Hoegbotton attempts to scrub it away for good), and the giggling, sweating solicitor was chilling, but what I mostly enjoyed about this story was the portrayal of a largely cowardly man completely and utterly out of his depth. Hoegbotton gets deeper and deeper into a horrible situation, lies to his devoted wife, allows his employee to go home and die alone, attempts to sacrifice his rival to save himself, but to me never seems evil or malicious. He is just a man struggling to keep his head above water in a situation growing more impossible by the minute. Instead of asking for help, he keeps everything to himself and suffers for it. He clearly loves his wife very much, but seems to think keeping her in blissful ignorance is the only way to protect her. I loved the portrayal of such a weak-willed, opportunistic and inadvertently dastardly man. Hoegbotton pays attention to the delicate engravings and authentic maker's mark on a potential acquisition while feeling a twinge of sadness at the burned bodies of its previous owner's family. He's not without empathy, but seems to have his priorities wrong. He has a fierce love for his wife which only slightly outweighs his fairly ruthless instinct for self-preservation. He fights hard to keep his world on an even keel at the expense of others. In other words, he is a mass of contradictions and a refreshing choice for a central protagonist. I loved him.
I agree with Scattercat about the quirky descriptions. I felt that the phrase dark light was used very deliberately, and thought it drew my attention and maybe slightly pulled me out of the story, I listened to it a couple of times and it feels right to me. I think I'm all for a bit of suspension of the instinct to scoff at "bad" writing if it fits and is done with honesty.
I thought the list that opened the story was really interesting. Lists in general just intrigue me and, like ioscode says, this one was a great way of introducing the world of the story. By the end of it, I felt immersed in a place that had some very weird stuff in it.
I was waiting for the inevitable comments that this story should have been on Pseudopod and was disappointed. Putting everything in strictly defined little boxes for the win!
Stop whining about it. Comment on the actual qualities of the actual story you just actually listened to.
Amen, brother!
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I've read this story twice (because I've read through "The Weird" twice. That book is awesome.)
Wait, you read all of The Weird? TWICE?
That's an impressive feat!
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I've read this story twice (because I've read through "The Weird" twice. That book is awesome.)
Wait, you read all of The Weird? TWICE?
That's an impressive feat!
I was on the overnight shift. I got maybe one or two calls an hour, and most of the time they were just disconnects. One finds ways to pass the time...
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Regarding the story, I would have liked the flashback in the middle to have been the place to start. Most of the back-story and world-building was in that, so a linear telling would have delivered a more organic growth. I was struggling to establish place, so much of the giant list was lost on me.
OK, this clearly should have been on pseudopod.
Totally agreed.
Too long. Never would have made it to Shawn's reading pile. However, if you dug this story, then you really should go over and listen to Tippler's Bane (http://pseudopod.org/2011/05/27/pseudopod-231-tipplers-bane/). I would recommend going with the alternate version for a more moderated sound production over the original release.
If PodCastle didn't put enough FUN in your FUNGUS with these stories, you can also check out The Voice in the Night (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=5483.0) and The Cord (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=5518.0).
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I agree with much of what Moby Click said, particularly this:
Hoegbotton gets deeper and deeper into a horrible situation, lies to his devoted wife, allows his employee to go home and die alone, attempts to sacrifice his rival to save himself, but to me never seems evil or malicious. He is just a man struggling to keep his head above water in a situation growing more impossible by the minute. Instead of asking for help, he keeps everything to himself and suffers for it.
This was a great story to usher in Autumn! Creepy fungus, morally questionable characters with good intentions, non-stop rain, mysterious creatures from underground that do horrible things...
cool.
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Every time someone whines "this should be on Pseudopod" I have to fight the urge to reply "you should be on Pseudopod." Or Escape Pod. Or whatever. Look, people - genre is not a matter of right and wrong. Genre is fluid, mobile, and alive - like your internal organs once the greycaps have gotten to you. One man's horror is another man's fantasy. One man's science fiction - it's got space ships! - is another man's soft and squishy space fantasy.
Now, suppose I was a listener to Pseudopod, but did not listen to either Escape Pod or Podcastle (I'm sure they exist. I am the inverse), because I like that feeling that horror produces. Then I get the story "Squonk and the Lake Monster" as my next story. Now it might be argued that the story clearly is horror, since it contains a monster and the main character is scared (or at least concerned) for a time. That would even be a correct assessment. However, its content might not be best suited for those who came to get scared.
For those who listen to all three EA podcasts, the bleeding over from one podcast to another is irrelevant, or it may seem that they feel that way when viewed by those who don't listen to all three podcasts.
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Every time someone whines "this should be on Pseudopod" I have to fight the urge to reply "you should be on Pseudopod." Or Escape Pod. Or whatever. Look, people - genre is not a matter of right and wrong. Genre is fluid, mobile, and alive - like your internal organs once the greycaps have gotten to you. One man's horror is another man's fantasy. One man's science fiction - it's got space ships! - is another man's soft and squishy space fantasy.
Now, suppose I was a listener to Pseudopod, but did not listen to either Escape Pod or Podcastle (I'm sure they exist. I am the inverse), because I like that feeling that horror produces. Then I get the story "Squonk and the Lake Monster" as my next story. Now it might be argued that the story clearly is horror, since it contains a monster and the main character is scared (or at least concerned) for a time. That would even be a correct assessment. However, its content might not be best suited for those who came to get scared.
For those who listen to all three EA podcasts, the bleeding over from one podcast to another is irrelevant, or it may seem that they feel that way when viewed by those who don't listen to all three podcasts.
In this case, the productive criticism would be "this story failed to scare me and that was disappointing." That's an honestly subjective comment that we can have a conversation about, not an attempt to take something subjective (genre) and make it objective (where something belongs).
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For me, this was definitely a fantasy-horror piece and given Fenrix's point about it being too long for Pseudopod, I would much rather that Podcastle run it than for it to not run at all.
I agree with, and will refer you to the much more eloquent comments of isocode and Moby Click, because it's been a long day and my wrist hurts. To sum up, I loved the reading, thought the atmosphere of the story was fantastic, and the main character was impressively three-dimensional in all of his strengths and weaknesses. I do wish that it had been told in chronological order because I'm still not sure how the flashbacks related to the main story arc, but that's a small negative next to all of the many positives.
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I've read this story twice (because I've read through "The Weird" twice. That book is awesome.)
Wait, you read all of The Weird? TWICE?
That's an impressive feat!
I was on the overnight shift. I got maybe one or two calls an hour, and most of the time they were just disconnects. One finds ways to pass the time...
Wow. I bet that made for some creepy overnight shifts!
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Have to say, this didn't work for me at all. Reading/audio quality was good, no issues there, and I have no issues with it being presented on Podcastle versus some other venue. This may be one of those stories that would work better for me in print, where I could move through the ornate language and shifts in time at my own pace. I get that the author was going for a textured, atmosphere-heavy feel, but this story ended up mostly being tedious for me, really had to work to listen to the end, then had a "meh" moment from that.
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I almost didn't make it thought the opening it took 3 tries and for me the payoff never came. Once the lady exploded in a cloud of spores I knew where the story was going.After that there really weren't any big surprises. I am sure that this story would have been much better received over on pseudopod.
Horror lends itself more to stories where the protagonist fails an everything ends in doom and gloom. You can have a fantasy story where the hero fails to save the day but the writer has to be top notch to pull it off.
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I really liked this - more than I assumed when I saw it was another Giant - but for a reason no one else mentioned. See, I read the novel Finch by the same author, in the same setting (just a little farther along in time), so I really liked getting more of the backstory, and I was already familiar with the setting and the author's style.
If you liked this story, I would highly recommend the novel. Oh, and by the way, my book club couldn't quite decide where that novel fell either - fantasy? alt-universe SF? - but we didn't really get worked up about it.
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Fantastically written story. At first I thought "why were the people still living in that lethal environment. But then I realized that people live in all kinds of dangerous areas in the real world. He really didn't have anyplace to go.
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I remember being very disturbed by this story when I read it in City of Saints and Madmen, and I was equally disturbed listening to it now. I don't remember my first reading well enough to know how it was revised, but this story encompasses everything I both like and dislike about Vandermeer's writing - wonderful mastery of atmosphere and the ability to make a bizzare world feel real (I have to say I totally disagree with Electric Paladin about the un-understandable descriptions. I don't think this story would have worked at all without them), but at the same time, the characters feel entirely psychologically opaque to me. There's an air of detachment between the narration and Hoegbotton that was very hard for me to penetrate.
I also have to say I somewhat understand the point of people who say this should have been on pseudopod. While I agree that the genre boundaries are essentially meaningless, the podcast boundary is not. I listen to PP when I'm in certain frames of mind, and to PC in others. There's no objective quality to this story that makes it not fit into Podcastle, but I think that if I had just listened to it when it came up on my PC stream without foreknowledge, I would have found it impenetrable. As it was, as I was familiar with the story, I knew what to expect and listened to it at a time when normally I would have gone for a PP episode, so it worked well for me.
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I'm sure this is coming way too late, but I often have to catch up on older 'casts.
I don't like horror. I don't judge it to be bad; I simply don't like to read or listen to horror, except on rare occasions when the mood strikes me. It puts me in a terrible mood, that I often can't shake. I ESPECIALLY don't like having horror thrust upon me unexpectedly, when I'm expecting vanilla fantasy. It's kind of like eating a chocolate chip cookie (which I LOVE) and biting down on a raspberry partway through. Yuck!
Listening to this story was like that. I really should have skipped it at the first inklings of horror, but I thought there might just possibly be a worthwhile payoff. Nope. Now, I'm in a funk that'll last all morning.
Some sort of warning up front would be lovely,
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You should NEVER expect "vanilla" fantasy from podcastle.
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I'm sure this is coming way too late, but I often have to catch up on older 'casts.
I don't like horror. I don't judge it to be bad; I simply don't like to read or listen to horror, except on rare occasions when the mood strikes me. It puts me in a terrible mood, that I often can't shake. I ESPECIALLY don't like having horror thrust upon me unexpectedly, when I'm expecting vanilla fantasy. It's kind of like eating a chocolate chip cookie (which I LOVE) and biting down on a raspberry partway through. Yuck!
Listening to this story was like that. I really should have skipped it at the first inklings of horror, but I thought there might just possibly be a worthwhile payoff. Nope. Now, I'm in a funk that'll last all morning.
Some sort of warning up front would be lovely,
FWIW, I do wish I had emphasized that aspect of the story more in the intro. Thanks for mentioning it - I'll try and catch it next time.
You should NEVER expect "vanilla" fantasy from podcastle.
;D ;D ;D
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This is coming late, but I want to chime in still. I never was a fan of the horror genre as such. Pseudopod, in general, is just a little too dark for me. I don't like to revel in dread or moral ambiguity, either. BUT that doesn't mean that good stories can't be dark and that I want my fantasy to be light and fluffy *always*.
I really loved this story, and I'm glad that Podcastle, on occasion, runs something like this piece. So as far as I'm concerned, by all means warn ahead, but continue to consider this type of story.
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I really liked part of the story. Unfortunately, this part was short-lived and embedded about 20 minutes into the 60+ minute tale so that it neither made a good hook nor a satisfying end and just sort of lived in the no-man's-land in between.
Seriously, you know a beginning is badly written if the editor writes an introduction wherein he says "Just stick through the beginning, thing's will start happening sooner or later". The warning was helpful in that I was sure to keep listening at that point, but it also set my brain to "skeptical" right at the beginning, and except for that one short part, that skepticality never lifted, though I did keep listening to the end to make sure I wasn't missing anything awesome by jumping the gun on the Next button.
I don't know what that beginning was going for, but if it was meant to be anything but a sleep aid, it failed utterly with me. The nature of the listing might've been enough to lull me just by itself, but I found the reading a bit flat throughout the whole story so that I rose from a stupor a few minutes after the beginning list had ended and I hadn't noticed because the narration sounded the same to my ears. I'm not sure that was the reader's fault at all, the writing itself just struck me as very flat and I'm not sure that life could've been injected into it by the best reader.
The scene that I liked was the sudden and aggressive outbreak of fungus at the house and his escape. Other than that it was mostly about him thinkign about his work, which I didn't really care about in the slightest. I did like the details of his girlfriend's condition, having gone blind and having lightning in her eyes.
From the moment he was present for the guy exploding into spores, I assumed that he would get it, so that was just waiting for the inevitable, while listening to this irritating person talk about his dull work.
You should NEVER expect "vanilla" fantasy from podcastle.
I hate when "vanilla" is used as a derogatory term to mean dull or common. I like the flavor of vanilla, and I don't find it dull at all. Maybe I'm just a "vanilla" person, which, since I like vanilla, sounds like a compliment to me, however others might take it.
(Also, and I assume that this wasn't at all intended, but especially when I first started hearing that term, it strikes me as having racist undertones, especially when used in combination with chocolate.)
So, if I should never expect vanilla from podcastle, this makes me sad.
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I am also annoyed by writers who hide something important because the viewpoint character doesn't want to think about it. It seems a cheap trick to me.
Interesting. I am usually among the first to complain about withholding POV information from the reader. But I think that not telling the reader something which the viewpoint character doesn't want to think about is actually a good usage of POV. If they're trying so hard not to think of it, it's not going to float to the top of their consciousness for the reader to see. An astute reader, coupled with a well-written POV of this type, should still be able to discern some shape of what is being withheld because there should be some clues in the text here and there.
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You should NEVER expect "vanilla" fantasy from podcastle.
I hate when "vanilla" is used as a derogatory term to mean dull or common. I like the flavor of vanilla, and I don't find it dull at all. Maybe I'm just a "vanilla" person, which, since I like vanilla, sounds like a compliment to me, however others might take it.
(Also, and I assume that this wasn't at all intended, but especially when I first started hearing that term, it strikes me as having racist undertones, especially when used in combination with chocolate.)
So, if I should never expect vanilla from podcastle, this makes me sad.
I think the thing with vanilla is, you know exactly what you're getting.
At PodCastle, one of our goals is to not be predictable, and present to our audience all different flavors of fantasy. Sure, longtime listeners might recognize an author's name, or the genre, but in general, we hope the stories themselves (and the variety they represent) are surprising. Even if you give it a taste and don't like them, you might make a face and say, "That was...interesting." Which is why you don't hear S&S every week, or adventure fantasy, or steampunk, or urban fantasy, or fungal fantastika, or whatever.
So, you might get a vanilla. But you might also get salted caramel or pomegranate or brown sugar with caramel swirl or honey lavender or toasted coconut. The options are plentiful! And when that vanilla story does drop (as they have, and will), it'll be unexpected, and - hopefully - delightful.
(ALSO: Bi-Rite Creamery (http://biritecreamery.com/icecream) FTW!)
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Reading these last couple comments made me realize that I am totally confusing the titles of this story and "Fable from a Cage." Interesting given that both have horror-esque undertones, though the similarity stops there.
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I think the thing with vanilla is, you know exactly what you're getting.
At PodCastle, one of our goals is to not be predictable, and present to our audience all different flavors of fantasy. Sure, longtime listeners might recognize an author's name, or the genre, but in general, we hope the stories themselves (and the variety they represent) are surprising. Even if you give it a taste and don't like them, you might make a face and say, "That was...interesting." Which is why you don't hear S&S every week, or adventure fantasy, or steampunk, or urban fantasy, or fungal fantastika, or whatever.
So, you might get a vanilla. But you might also get salted caramel or pomegranate or brown sugar with caramel swirl or honey lavender or toasted coconut. The options are plentiful! And when that vanilla story does drop (as they have, and will), it'll be unexpected, and - hopefully - delightful.
(ALSO: Bi-Rite Creamery (http://biritecreamery.com/icecream) FTW!)
Another thing about vanilla is that it's the best selling flavor. It doesn't accomplish this because people don't like vanilla. Pomegranate is good but you can't beat vanilla for accompaniment to apple pie.
My favorite weird flavor is feta, pine nuts, and honey. Sadly the local place that made it closed.
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Another thing about vanilla is that it's the best selling flavor. It doesn't accomplish this because people don't like vanilla. Pomegranate is good but you can't beat vanilla for accompaniment to apple pie.
My favorite weird flavor is feta, pine nuts, and honey. Sadly the local place that made it closed.
It is a best selling flavor, and I don't mind it every once in a while. But the thing about best-selling is you can get it anywhere. Grocery stores, drug stores, fast food dives, restaurants, and, of course, ice cream parlors.
I'd rather go to the ice cream parlor, and have all the different options.
(Doing the feedback segment for this thread, and thinking: Somebody needs to do a fungus ice cream now! ;D )
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(ALSO: Bi-Rite Creamery (http://biritecreamery.com/icecream) FTW!)
Bi-Rite is pretty good I suppose. I'm more of a Humphry Slocombe (http://www.humphryslocombe.com/Flavor_List.html) guy. Sorry, I don't have much to say about this story at this time (other than it is too long, and I still haven't managed to listen to it because I can't fit it on a CD, even after editing out the Intro and Outro), but I felt the need to jump in with my ice cream opinions. So :P
I love fungus though, so I predict my rating for this story will be 4/5.
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Bi-Rite is pretty good I suppose. I'm more of a Humphry Slocombe (http://www.humphryslocombe.com/Flavor_List.html) guy.
Oooooooh. Will have to check that place out next time I'm in SF. Thanks!
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The pairing of "Humphrey" with "Slocombe" has caused me to enter a fugue in which all I can say is "Menswear" in my manly voice.
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The pairing of "Humphrey" with "Slocombe" has caused me to enter a fugue in which all I can say is "Menswear" in my manly voice.
Nice. I had managed to completely purge memories of that show from my mind until this post freed them to run, barefoot, giggling, and making bad puns, through my memory.
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So, you might get a vanilla. But you might also get salted caramel or pomegranate or brown sugar with caramel swirl or honey lavender or toasted coconut. The options are plentiful! And when that vanilla story does drop (as they have, and will), it'll be unexpected, and - hopefully - delightful.
Now THAT is a much better flavor description. I like variety. I like lots of different foods, some for textures, some for consistencies, some for sweet or salty or bitter flavors. Vanilla sometimes, with many other flavors other times is much more appealing to me. :)
It is a best selling flavor, and I don't mind it every once in a while. But the thing about best-selling is you can get it anywhere. Grocery stores, drug stores, fast food dives, restaurants, and, of course, ice cream parlors.
True enough. I can't argue with that. I like novelty, so if given the choice between something I can buy anywhere, and something new, I will generally pick the latter. But I still don't get why vanilla is always the butt of the line. Chocolate is more available than vanilla, but I never heard "chocolate" being used as synonymous for "commonplace" or "dull". *shrug*. The same for caramel.
When I was in Killarney, Ireland in June for vacation, there was an ice cream parlor that had awesome variety. We ate there at least once a day. I think the favorite that I found was a scoop of sea salt ice cream with a scoop of honeycomb ice cream.
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It's too cold to talk about ice cream. Brrr...
Anyway I like this story. I love stories about weird cities. Found the fungus and mushrooms creepy, but I was more intrigued by the history of "The Silence", and the main character's need to recreate the dining room of his missing relatives and use that as an office. I would love to read it for a fuller effect, but this was nice and creepy.
It sort of reminded me of a Sailor Moon/Ranma 1/2 fanfic I read a long time ago called "The Shadow Chronicles", which has the Sailor Soldiers living in this dark, wild city that has a haunting history and all these artifacts. The fanfic was never finished...but the world the writer created was amazing. I would pay him to finish it, but it's a fanfic, so... ::shrug::
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Sorry, I don't have much to say about this story at this time (other than it is too long, and I still haven't managed to listen to it because I can't fit it on a CD, even after editing out the Intro and Outro), but I felt the need to jump in with my ice cream opinions. So :P
I love fungus though, so I predict my rating for this story will be 4/5.
Oh! LaShawn's post brought this up on my "new replies" and I remembered I wanted to comment on it after eventually listening to it.
I quite enjoyed the story, the fungusy fantasy world was really neat, and while I wouldn't want a sequel, I'd love to see another story exploring this world. And I'm usually the "eh, don't wear it out" guy.
I'm really glad the blindness of the wife came into play at the end, and it was used to great horror effect. Loved the mystery of the sounds from the cage, loved the fungus people that just appeared. I wonder if the cage was a trap, or just a pet left behind. I wonder if they're at war with humanity, or just good at what they do? Anyway, this was my third favourite Podcastle for the four months or so around it. I'll be more specific when I organize my votes for the end of the year, but I really dug this one.
My too long comment is merely for the logistics of me listening to it, I did not think the story needed anything cut. Unlike many modern fantasy stories.