Before Cthulhu came about did I miss hear something or did the narrator shoot divine lighting from his hands?
Also, minor note--Alasdair refers to Nate's Nightmare Lights of Mars feedback when it was actually the Big-Fisted Circuit feedback. :)Not the first time he's done that, I remember at least one other time when Alasdair's schedule was different from the one in our universe.
As for the bit at the end...For the record, the movie was a spoof, but that bit of the movie was a pop-culture spoof of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJmqCKtJnxMSpoiler (click to show/hide)
As for the bit at the end...For the record, the movie was a spoof, but that bit of the movie was a pop-culture spoof of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJmqCKtJnxMSpoiler (click to show/hide)
The question is, why was this scene from Scary Movie appended to the end of the episode? The answer lies in your ID3 tags.
And, hey, if this story can get accepted at Escape Pod, then mayhaps I have been too self-restrictive on what I submit. I should submit that bogeyman love story, that story with the Fey sword inheritance, the story about the undead grandma, and the one about the talking pig.
I can't take credit for the random XML, but thanks for the tip, I'll look into it. I am annoyed the message got cut off. Both issues are most likely a gift from either Podpress, which generates the feed or (more likely) Libsyn, who houses the file.As for the bit at the end...For the record, the movie was a spoof, but that bit of the movie was a pop-culture spoof of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJmqCKtJnxMSpoiler (click to show/hide)
The question is, why was this scene from Scary Movie appended to the end of the episode? The answer lies in your ID3 tags.
I don't need them, Robot Lady gave away the answer.
But for those of you who didn't get it:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
If he had this power all along, why didn't he use it earlier? And why is he so put out by all of these crazy, cultist, magical events when he KNOWS he has some mystical powers, too? I mean, the whole thing was just completely out of character and completely unnecessary in my opinion. All he used that power for was to scare off the locals so he could have his one-on-one time with Cthulhu. There's no reason he couldn't have found a non-magical and completely plausible way to scare them off without this mysterious and unexplained power. [/rant]
I also like it as worldbuilding. In a world where there's Miskatonic University and priests of Cthulhu to to Yale Divinity, how cool do the magic powers have to be at Harvard?
I also like it as worldbuilding. In a world where there's Miskatonic University and priests of Cthulhu to to Yale Divinity, how cool do the magic powers have to be at Harvard?
That was my take on it too. I didn't think it was out of character for him at all to have superpowers. He is a Harvard man, after all, and if he is to be believed there is no greater pedigree of humanity under the sun than a Harvard man.
I also like it as worldbuilding. In a world where there's Miskatonic University and priests of Cthulhu to to Yale Divinity, how cool do the magic powers have to be at Harvard?
That was my take on it too. I didn't think it was out of character for him at all to have superpowers. He is a Harvard man, after all, and if he is to be believed there is no greater pedigree of humanity under the sun than a Harvard man.
I also like it as worldbuilding. In a world where there's Miskatonic University and priests of Cthulhu to to Yale Divinity, how cool do the magic powers have to be at Harvard?
That was my take on it too. I didn't think it was out of character for him at all to have superpowers. He is a Harvard man, after all, and if he is to be believed there is no greater pedigree of humanity under the sun than a Harvard man.
The enticing question is, what are other schools like? We get mention of Radcliffe and (the author's alma mater) Vassar. As a westerner, I have to wonder how MIT and Harvard's western rivals Caltech and Stanford compare. And whether people to to the University of Iowa to get their MFA in Unspeakable Text Writing, to CalArts for Idol Sculpting, or to Cornell for Horrifying Non-Eclidean Archictecture.
I also like it as worldbuilding. In a world where there's Miskatonic University and priests of Cthulhu to to Yale Divinity, how cool do the magic powers have to be at Harvard?
That was my take on it too. I didn't think it was out of character for him at all to have superpowers. He is a Harvard man, after all, and if he is to be believed there is no greater pedigree of humanity under the sun than a Harvard man.
Some movies, some comics, a little TV. There'll be a complete rundown of both this and the Pseudopod parade going up shortly:)
The writing and narration were excellent, but the concept is problematic. The story is comparing poor religious people who live in trailers with hideous creatures that worship the Elder Gods. Classism is a prejudice like any other, and it's something I'd like to see less of in fiction.
The writing and narration were excellent, but the concept is problematic. The story is comparing poor religious people who live in trailers with hideous creatures that worship the Elder Gods. Classism is a prejudice like any other, and it's something I'd like to see less of in fiction.
Fear of The Other is a frequent theme in Lovecraft, both in terms of race and class.
Didn't want to necessarily derail the conversation about this story (which is very much not saying that low-income folk are like Cthuhlu-worshipers since it outright says that lots of privileged folks are also Cthuhlu-worshipers, but whose trailer park portrayal is not unproblematic) with a discussion of problematic things about Lovecraft, but yeah. I would go further than the above and say Lovecraft was a capital-R Racist. You know how we say that some people are racist by today's standards but reasonable by the standards of their time? Lovecraft was pretty racist by the standards of his time. It's pretty hard to read some of his stories aloud without constantly cringing.
The interesting question that I've never seen addressed and I'm not sure how I feel about is whether the genre of cosmic horror itself (which I do quite like) can be fully divorced from the racism of its origins (which is not just Lovecraft's). That Fear of the Other you mention is the emotional core of the genre. That Other in more contempiorary pieces is a lot more "alien" than different races or classes of human beings. Yet there is something uncomfortable, when you think about it, about a genre that roots itself in the same fears that have given rise to the worst human atrocities and treats those fears as reasonable. That aspect of the genre is very resonant and maybe that's the real, secret, uncosmic horror.
No, no wiser. At least from reading the comments I can see it's because I don't read Lovecraft, have no idea what Cthulu is (or are. Ok, now I do) and don't have much idea about Ivy League universities because ours are Oxbridge (Ancient), red brick (modern and sniffed at by the Ancients), or 'jumped up polytechnics' (very modern and sniffed at by both Ancient and Modern but at least you can do media studies there and who needs Latin?). That and we don't have trailer parks so I was thinking about the ones that precede new films. Ah well, can't win 'em all!
No, no wiser. At least from reading the comments I can see it's because I don't read Lovecraft, have no idea what Cthulu is (or are. Ok, now I do) and don't have much idea about Ivy League universities because ours are Oxbridge (Ancient), red brick (modern and sniffed at by the Ancients), or 'jumped up polytechnics' (very modern and sniffed at by both Ancient and Modern but at least you can do media studies there and who needs Latin?). That and we don't have trailer parks so I was thinking about the ones that precede new films. Ah well, can't win 'em all!
No, no wiser. At least from reading the comments I can see it's because I don't read Lovecraft, have no idea what Cthulu is (or are. Ok, now I do) and don't have much idea about Ivy League universities because ours are Oxbridge (Ancient), red brick (modern and sniffed at by the Ancients), or 'jumped up polytechnics' (very modern and sniffed at by both Ancient and Modern but at least you can do media studies there and who needs Latin?). That and we don't have trailer parks so I was thinking about the ones that precede new films. Ah well, can't win 'em all!
Well, the cultural bases for this story probably run too deep for any "translation" to bring this story back for you (the pastiche of Lovecraft's prose style is a big part of what I liked about this one) and it seems you've got the gist, but here's my effort:
The Ivy League is the US's equivalent to the "Ancients," though not as ancient. Harvard and Yale are the ancient-est (literally in the case of Harvard, though I think there are other US universites older than Yale though newer than Harvard). They are steeped in tradition and use things like latin mottoes and look like the old European universities they were modeled on. Vassar and Radcliffe were part of the "Seven Sisters"--the women's college equivalent of the Ivy League back in the day. Radcliffe has now been incorporatated in to Harvard and Vassar is no longer a women-only college.
Do this. Do this and I swear we will find readers for it. Many of which may be me.Don't tempt me ...
I thought this was hilarious. Simultaneously skewering Lovecraft, Southern Evangelicals and the Ivy League is no mean feat, and it was done with panache. And could anyone have possibly been a more perfect narrator for that than Norm Sherman? No, definitely not…
I am so late to the party as to be completely irrelevant but I just have to say I loved this. I listened to it while taking my dogs in a long walk around the neighborhood. I received numerous concerned looks as stares as I helplessly giggled at thin air and occaisionally had to wipe a tear from my eye. I'm amazed I had the strength to hold onto the leashes. The tattoo, the Mick Jagger lips, the Yale fury, the Vassar girls, the fish-stick Cthulu, I could go on and on.
Thank you, Escapepod for making it quite a happy new year for this listener.