Escape Artists

Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on July 20, 2015, 02:26:23 PM

Title: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: eytanz on July 20, 2015, 02:26:23 PM
EP499: Sounding the Fall (http://escapepod.org/2015/07/20/ep499-sounding-the-fall/)

by Jei D. Marcade (http://postapocalypso.tumblr.com/)

Read by Amanda Ching (http://amandaching.wordpress.com/)

---

Sometimes, Narae can almost convince emself that the AI’s Voice was a dream. Some kind of minor stroke misremembered, a neurological glitch retroactively given recognizable shape.

But sometimes–less frequently of late, but still, sometimes–Narae wakes to find emself sitting up in the dark, jaw slack, a sustained, atonal note spooling from the back of eir throat.

#

Narae steps through the open archway of the southwestern gate, bare toes curling in the cool blades of real grass with which the temple grounds are seeded. The lotus-shaped lanterns hanging from the eaves go dim as the sun activates, and from its single-tiered pagoda at the top of the hill behind em, the morning bell tolls.

The alms left anonymously against the outer wall in the night include a couple bolts of inert grey fabric, some bags of rice, and a stack of real tea bricks. Upon hefting the rice, Narae’s eyebrows inch toward the shadow of eir hairline at each bag’s weight: not synthetic either, these. Something that is part bemusement, part nostalgia tugs at the corners of Narae’s mouth, and ey shakes eir head as ey piles the bags and bolts into the bottom of the wheelbarrow before turning to gather the rest.

There, on the topmost tea brick, tucked along the raised edge of an elaborate curlicue that must have gone overlooked when the temple’s faceless benefactor hastily scraped off the embossed logo, is a perfectly rolled joint.

Narae plucks the thing up by one tip and crosses the outer lawn, ready to cast it over the rail that wraps around the temple grounds and down along the winding stone staircase to the lower levels.

Steady as a heartbeat, the temple’s morning drum begins to sound out. When its reverberations subside, they leave an even deeper reservoir of silence behind them.

Narae falters at the edge of the lawn. Ey brings the roll of rice paper to eir nose, gives it a tentative sniff, and releases an explosive sigh; Narae would bet a week’s worth of chores that it’s real–none of that backstreet synth hash with its foul aftertaste. Muttering a guilty prayer, ey palms the joint.


(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP499_SoundingtheFall.mp3)
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Chairman Goodchild on July 22, 2015, 02:33:38 PM
I didn't read the author's note before listening to the podcast, and spent the first several minutes wondering who Ai was.  I belatedly figured out the pronouns, but I felt it was unnecessary and distracting and drove me out of the story, which I did not finish.  The story was difficult to parse as it was, without the added strangeness.

Made-up gender-neutral pronouns have popped up for a book I've recently read, Alasdair Reynold's On a Steel Breeze, and I didn't think they worked there, either.  But there, they weren't such a large part of the story.  Here, they're almost in every paragraph and were a constant dissonance for me.  Perhaps the effect wasn't as bad for other listeners.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Thunderscreech on July 22, 2015, 05:55:19 PM
I was unable to complete this, I was immediately lost and after several minutes felt further and further from any beacon or trail.

I suspect reading it will be the key for me.
Title: Re:
Post by: bounceswoosh on July 24, 2015, 05:44:21 AM
I enjoyed this piece. I'm not sure if it's so much a story as it is a slice of life. And I really wish I knew what sent the MC away for 15 years when 5 years is described as punishment for a severe infraction.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Zelda on July 24, 2015, 07:57:05 AM
The narration was a bit too fast for me. There were quite a few words I am unfamiliar with and I had some difficulty following the story at that speed.

I realize Domabaem only asked Narae what life was like in the monastery but wouldn't the compassionate thing to do have been also telling Domabaem what being an ox felt like? It's much more unpleasant than the popular conception of it.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on July 24, 2015, 08:14:09 AM
I listened to the first minute or so 3 times before I pulled over to the side of the road, stopped my car and checked the website for this. I thought that maybe the author was using gender neutral pronouns, but maybe there was someone else there and I couldn't be sure and it wasn't making sense.
As a general rule, I have no quarrel with anybody about whatever pronouns they choose to associate themselves with. However, since a lot of the newer pronouns are rather rare (in my section of meatspace), I've mostly encountered them in text form. There, it is easy to recognize them and they get parsed properly. The two times I've heard gender neutral pronouns spoken, each speaker was using a different pronunciation (for the same pronoun), and that was hard.
The pronouns in this story were ones I've never encountered before, so running into them in audio format was... difficult.
Once I internalized the pronouns and listened to the beginning of the story a fourth time, while reading along, I was able to handle the rest of it much better.
Might I suggest that in the future, when one of the EA podcasts decide to run a story with gender neutral pronouns, have Mat (or somebody) give a heads up before the episode begins. "Hey guys, the gender set being used for one of the characters in this story is gender neutral. So that's ey/em/eir for he/him/his or she/her/hers".

I'm gonna make a separate post about the story in a few minutes.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on July 24, 2015, 08:23:53 AM
I also thought that this story was more of a section of life episode. It was very rich with an intriguing world that left me with a lot of open questions.
What cataclysm forced all the people to live in arcologies? How did the monostary end up being the only place with natural food and AI free?
I also really liked the open-ended question at the end. Does the AI have a soul? If the AI governs every detail of human life in the arcology, including who lives and who dies (weather control), what is there to differentiate between AI and any other man-made god being worshiped? Heck, the AI might actually run a sort of after-life. If they have the technology to erase whatever it is that makes up a person's "self" and then reconstruct it, what is to prevent them from having that "self" live on in some database somewhere after the biological body has died? That's a form of afterlife.
All in all, a great speculative piece with some very rich world-building that I'd like to see in a larger piece.
Title: Re: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: bounceswoosh on July 24, 2015, 01:50:46 PM
The narration was a bit too fast for me. There were quite a few words I am unfamiliar with and I had some difficulty following the story at that speed.

I realize Domabaem only asked Narae what life was like in the monastery but wouldn't the compassionate thing to do have been also telling Domabaem what being an ox felt like? It's much more unpleasant than the popular conception of it.
I like the implications of "ox," but in the story, it's "aux." (I just checked the text - I heard it as "aux," but when I saw your post, I thought, hmm, maybe I got it wrong,)

As for pronouns several people mentioned - I found them unusual, but not difficult. Perhaps it helped me to notice early on that they were collective pronouns with the "th" lopped off. What I found more interesting was my internal reaction to them - I kept speculating about the protagonist's "real" gender, then mentally slapping myself.

Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: HeartSailor on July 25, 2015, 02:38:41 AM
I find the whole "gender neutral" pronoun thing a bit of an obstacle (or perhaps its a gimmick) when it comes to a story.

Q:  Are you a policeman or a policewoman?    A: Police Officer
Q:  Are you a man or a woman?      A: I'm Pat.

This story could have been written with gender neutral proper names/nouns and it would have felt better to me as a listener and a reader.  I'm guessing that was the point of the storyteller, though.  I suppose I assumed that these were human-based folk that had perhaps some commonalities with me.  Perhaps they were not, and did not.  

Once I was able to dodge "bein' slapped upside the head" with the pronoun thing, the story was OK.  
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: SpareInch on July 25, 2015, 02:04:08 PM
Hmm... I have to say, I didn't have any trouble with the gender neutral pronouns. I twigged them early on and just mentally penciled in They, their, them etc. I can understand why a lot of people who see themselves as gender neutral don't like the old English Language convention of using the plural pronoun as a genderless singular, as in, "If a person wants to do that, they can," but roll on the arrival of ONE definitive alternative.

As for the story... Well, you can add me to those who saw it primarily as a slice of life. There was a lot of great world building and a lot of questions posed, but at the end of the day, everything just carries on unchanged. This is the way the world is, style of thing. I really wanted there to be more conflict and soul searching before reaching a conclusion.

It was still enjoyable though, just for the world building.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: The_Hol-Man on July 25, 2015, 07:15:52 PM
I liked this one for the questions it raised, but did feel like some of them could have used more exploration.  The pronouns threw me at first, mostly because I couldn't tell how I was meant to actually picture the main character.  Eventually I guessed that, in this world, the default for everyone is the gender-neutral, with some characters specifically identifying with a given sex, but that still didn't answer for me whether every character was androgynous, hermaphroditic, maybe had no reproductive organs at all, or what.  I'm slightly concerned that it's kind of regressive of me to ask that any of these things be defined in terms of modern societal "norms," especially since the nature of gender and sex isn't actually what the story's about.  But, then again, the author did decide to include that element of the story, so I don't think it's too unfair to mention that it raised questions for me.

As a sort of aside, this story vaguely reminded me of parts of the anime Knights of Sidonia, since one of the characters there is neither male nor female.  That show also doesn't really explore what that means for the character.

 -Andy
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: SF.Fangirl on July 26, 2015, 08:07:38 PM
So ... for the first time ever, I think, I didn't finish the story.  I found it confusing and unengaging.  I listen to the first 10 minutes in the car before I got to where I was driving, and then I restarted the story because my mind had drifted but my attention drifted off again and I gave up.

The unusual pronouns tripped me up; I don't think I ever caught on that those were meant to be pronouns and not additional characters with unusual names (this is science fiction so I am used to unusual names).  It might have worked better in writing, but only two days ago I listened to a story from Lightspeed's Queers Destroy Science Fiction issue that used the zim/zer (can't recall exactly) non-gendered pronouns and had no issues because I had encountered that before.  The author's preferred gender neutral singular pronouns were distinctly non-standard didn't work for me in audio without any explanation either in story or pre-story warning.

So after drifting off on two attempts to listen I decided to log in to try to figure out what the heck was going on.  I saw a few people who made it through said it was more a slice of life piece and not a plotted story, and I decided not to make a third attempt.  That's just not my cup of tea.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on July 27, 2015, 07:06:19 AM
Oh! I nearly forgot!
Whatever happened to Nathan and episode feedback? It's been ages since we've heard from him...
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Chairman Goodchild on July 27, 2015, 12:52:20 PM
Oh! I nearly forgot!
Whatever happened to Nathan and episode feedback? It's been ages since we've heard from him...


I don't know who Scattercat is, but either Scattercat is Nathan or is close to Nathan and has this to say: (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=8573.0)
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: matweller on July 27, 2015, 11:16:06 PM
The author's preferred gender neutral singular pronouns were distinctly non-standard didn't work for me...
Part of the problem is that there is no standard yet. We're in that awkward finding-you-way time. I think it's kind of neat to have things like this be the testing ground for one over another. I knew right away while reading that the author was going for gender-neutral, but I will also agree that it's decidedly difficult to discern in audio. Maybe when the Gender Neutral Alliance gathers to vote they'll take this episode into consideration.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Windup on July 28, 2015, 06:53:13 AM
I was among the many confused by the gender-neutral pronouns in audio. At first, I thought is was some sort of sound-system glitch, so I restarted the episode and unplugged and replugged the earbuds. ("Yes, I have worked in computer support. Why do you ask?") Finally, I looked at the printed text and realized that, yup, that really was the sound the narrator meant to make.

Once I got that out of the way, I liked the story, though I continued to find the pronouns a bit distracting. I liked the wordplay with "aux" and "ox," and I was genuinely intrigued by the interplay between the protagonist and the woman. The ending was delightfully creepy, though it would have been even creepier if we'd seen some inkling of what the AI might decide to do with its supposed divinity. Or perhaps its supposed humanity? All sorts of cool ambiguity there...

On the more general subject of gender-neutral pronouns, I agree we're at that awkward figuring-it-out stage for specific individuals. It's clear to me that "their" will replace "his or her" for situations where gender and number are indeterminate, since that's happened in all but the most formal situations and carefully-edited documents. However, as responses to this story make clear, we are a long, long, way from having a standard answer for specific individuals whose gender is unknown or non-binary.

Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Devoted135 on August 04, 2015, 05:34:28 PM
I really struggled to get through this story. It had a few of my personal pet peeves (present tense, I'm just typically not a fan), plus there was the difficult time parsing the gender neutral pronouns. The ze/zim ones don't trip me up, but this set really did. I also heard it as "ox" which made perfect sense to me. :P On the whole though, I could only get glimpses of the world. What peeked through seemed very cool, with lots of interesting questions to be explored. I'm afraid I just couldn't appreciate this exploration of it.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: LucretiaBorgia on August 06, 2015, 06:47:47 PM
I couldn't finish this one, the gender neutral pronouns were just too distracting, as many above have mentioned. It felt awkward and forced and the reader seemed to stumble about in the story, so it just didn't flow and wasn't really strong enough to carry me past the clunky language.  Shame really.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: literatish on August 16, 2015, 05:02:52 AM
I seem to be a bit on my own here, but I really loved this story. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it and I would love about a million more stories set in this world. Maybe a novel or three?

I find it almost amusing that so many comments describe the gender-neutral pronouns as "unnecessary," "gimmicky," and other words that are shorthand for, "It confused me so I didn't like it." For me, the fact that the monks had no gender was critical to my understanding of the story.

Judging by the descriptions of aux appearance and the fact that it's... a computer program, I judge that the AI is genderless and probably considers its auxiliaries genderless too. Regardless of how Narae thought of emself before spending 15 years as an aux, we know that ey chose to become a monk afterward, and being a monk means being genderless, too. This connection is what gave me the idea that it was actually the remnant of the AI that compelled Narae to seek religion. In this world, gender is simply one of those affectations of materialism that is eliminated by monastic life, to better facilitate communion with the divine. So, is this religion a conception of the AI that deems gender superfluous? Or maybe the voice of the AI, which is within Narae as a former aux, but also connected to every character in the story and all around them in their indoor world, has managed to impart to the human race that gender is something that can be modified, expanded or eliminated in the search for higher purpose. It makes sense that an AI would compartmentalize gender into just another "modification" on that basic human form.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on August 16, 2015, 06:40:21 PM
Thank you literatish, I will now listen to the story again with that in mind, and I think I'll enjoy it more.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Unblinking on August 18, 2015, 03:37:08 PM
I find literatish's explanation of gender in the story very interesting.

I didn't think the ungendered pronouns were gimmicky or unnecessary, but I did find them hard to parse, more so than some other variations of ungendered pronouns.  Listening to the story, the ungendered pronouns were pretty much all that registered in my brain as I tried to figure out who they referred to, specifically.  Reading the discussion here, I have no memory of what the discussion is referring to, so I don't think I picked up any of it--I think that in text I may have been able to absorb the pronouns and actually move past them into the story, but I haven't as yet tried that.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: MooG on August 28, 2015, 08:51:41 PM
I also had a bit of trouble with the pronouns at the start - thinking about it, that was because the story itself was using them (rather than just the characters); and, without a framing device, I'm expecting the story to use modern english. I'd probably find it equally offputting if a story set in medieval times insisted in having everybody 'goeth' places 'cause 'that's how they talked back then',

It went away pretty quickly, though that wasn't because I had some great insight like literatish, but because I lost interest. With only one character of note I just assumed any word I didn't immediately recognise was referring to he/she/it.

Difficult to say how good the story was since it's a type I don't care for. I like it when the plot drives the story along and you'd have to try quite hard to make up a story where less happens, in terms of plot, than this one.



 
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Eduardo on September 26, 2015, 11:53:00 PM
Delurking and revisiting this piece on the occasion of its feedback segment in episode 504...

I'm not so sure about the characterization of the neutral pronoun discussion as "whining."  I don't think that simply bringing up a subject rises to the level of whining; really, the worst that can be said about this thread is that people repeatedly mentioned it when the initial post adequately explained the issue.

Much more negative criticism has either gone unremarked or actually been quoted on the podcast.  If pronouns are a verboten topic, fine.  Have that be the warning at the beginning of the episode (#badthink).  If not, why denigrate a simple discussion?  How are we to learn?  Not all of us wake up every morning with the latest set of acceptable opinions beamed directly into our brains.

That was perhaps excessively sarcastic, but I shan't delete, as it reflects my feelings in that moment.  But in all seriousness, none of the Escape Artists podcasts are exactly bastions of right-wing pulchritude.  If this many listeners had an issue, then might not the issue be legitimate, no matter how evil you imagine your audience to be?

I'd also point out that "I won't dignify /x/ with a response" is in fact a response, albeit an excessively passive-aggressive one that is unbecoming of the fine writer I legitimately know Nathan to be.

Just my poorly-thought-out $0.02.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Unblinking on September 28, 2015, 07:22:21 PM
Much more negative criticism has either gone unremarked or actually been quoted on the podcast.  If pronouns are a verboten topic, fine.  Have that be the warning at the beginning of the episode (#badthink).  If not, why denigrate a simple discussion?  How are we to learn?  Not all of us wake up every morning with the latest set of acceptable opinions beamed directly into our brains.

Not a staff member, but my thought on the subject is that at certain points in a discussion on certain topics, the thread becomes entirely NOT about the story at hand.  At that point the topic becomes unsuitable for a story thread because it's not really a discussion of the story anymore.  Forumites come to a story's thread to talk about the story and when it becomes about something that is not the story, then it is no longer suitable for that story's thread.

This tends to happen with two topics in general:
1.  This isn't SF! 
2.  What's with all the gay people in Escape Artists publications?

The moderator response on these is to generally move tangential threads to their own thread in the general Escape Pod discussion thread rather than allow the story thread to be dominated by it.  I generally think that's a good way to go, because long-time forumites have seen story threads go off on those tangents so many times that we really don't feel like reading it again, but the threadspace is there for those who want to talk about it.

The acceptability of ungendered personal pronouns seems to fall under the same category. It's a thing that is used in many stories that are not this story. It is a question of language that is part of this story but is not something invented by this author or this story.  To make the whole thread about the one specific thing and no other aspect of the story is a disservice to the story that is made up of more than pronouns. It's worth mentioning if it interfered with your ability to grok the story (I made mention of it myself) but is not the only thing to talk about and shouldn't dominate the thread but is acceptable in another thread as long as discussers follow the One Rule of no personal attacks. 

Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: matweller on September 29, 2015, 01:35:30 AM
We are human like anyone else, and susceptible to being angered by things we're sensitive to. Nathaniel is particularly progressive on issues of the sexually oppressed, and as gender neutrality is an issue of the trans population, and as this discussion wasn't particularly fruitful beyond "I didn't like the weird words and I stopped listening," I can understand how he may have found it especially frustrating. I was disappointed it wasn't a more positive and productive discussion, but I learned long ago to write my response and then delete it without posting for everybody's maximum happiness.

We seek to fairly represent the fun sci fi universe. We're not agenda-driven, we're just playing what the writers are writing and sharing it with people that like to take a chance on hearing new stories. Sometimes we connect. Sometimes we do not. But you can rest assured that we're not attempting to beam any opinions directly into your brain.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Chairman Goodchild on September 30, 2015, 11:42:43 AM
Delurking and revisiting this piece on the occasion of its feedback segment in episode 504...

I'm not so sure about the characterization of the neutral pronoun discussion as "whining."  I don't think that simply bringing up a subject rises to the level of whining; really, the worst that can be said about this thread is that people repeatedly mentioned it when the initial post adequately explained the issue.

Much more negative criticism has either gone unremarked or actually been quoted on the podcast.  If pronouns are a verboten topic, fine.  Have that be the warning at the beginning of the episode (#badthink).  If not, why denigrate a simple discussion?  How are we to learn?  Not all of us wake up every morning with the latest set of acceptable opinions beamed directly into our brains.

That was perhaps excessively sarcastic, but I shan't delete, as it reflects my feelings in that moment.  But in all seriousness, none of the Escape Artists podcasts are exactly bastions of right-wing pulchritude.  If this many listeners had an issue, then might not the issue be legitimate, no matter how evil you imagine your audience to be?

I'd also point out that "I won't dignify /x/ with a response" is in fact a response, albeit an excessively passive-aggressive one that is unbecoming of the fine writer I legitimately know Nathan to be.

This is really sums up my feelings on the matter.  "Drop by Escape Artists forums and let us know what you thought of the story!  Unless you didn't like arbitrarily made-up gender-neutral pronouns the author used constantly thruout the story, in which case I'll use my editorial position to call you a whiner during the endcap segment!"  On the passive-aggressive scale between Zero and My Own Mother, I'm giving this one about an eight.  

Quote from: Mattweller
We're not agenda-driven, we're just playing what the writers are writing and sharing it with people that like to take a chance on hearing new stories. Sometimes we connect. Sometimes we do not. But you can rest assured that we're not attempting to beam any opinions directly into your brain.

That certainly seemed like an agenda-driven attempt to discredit any differing opinion on the matter to me.  Or to be succinct, them're fightin' words.  If someone says something like that, it's going to provoke a pretty strong negative response in people who were just trying to express their opinions on the story.    No matter what Nathan's feelings on the subject, he could have done a much better job of handling his reactions.  This just polarizes the issue, and as Nathan feels very strongly about the issue, I'm sure that's the last thing he wanted to do.  
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: SpareInch on September 30, 2015, 12:25:15 PM
I can see a topic split coming soon here. Don't ask me how, it's just a feeling in my water.

I'll agree that Whining was probably too strong a word to use, but it is also true that a lot of those who complained said that they stopped listening because they objected to the use of the genderless pronouns in the story.

It might be nice if someone did make an official decree on gender neutral pronouns, but that isn't the way the English language works. It works by actually using new words and seeing which ones catch on. I suspect that you would find a good selection of gender neutral pronouns already in the OED, but as yet, no one convention has arisen to rival the gender unknown They.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Unblinking on September 30, 2015, 03:05:16 PM
As it happens, I do sometimes think that Nathan's feedback segments could sometimes stand to be a little more neutral from his own point of view--I mean, the reading of feedback is inherently not a neutral thing, since the feedback itself is by its nature opinionated, and the choosing of which posts to quote cannot be entirely neutral.  I like when Nathan posts his personal opinions here on the forum and I find his opinions valuable and interesting even in cases where I don't agree with him, but it feels a little out of place when he does so in the feedback segment itself--that feels like he should be a more neutral conveyer of others' opinions within that space.  (So a suggestion for that particular feedback segment might've been to either mention in passing that some did not care for the gender-neutral pronouns, or to just not mention that angle of the feedback at all)

That being said, this is all still very tangential and getting more so by the post--we have gone from talking about the story to focusing on one tiny detail of the story to talking about the feedback about that one tiny detail of the story to talking about how the feedback segment regarding that particular tiny detail was conveyed in a different episode.  Could we maybe talk about the actual story some more here, please?  Maybe these subtopic(s) could become their own thread(s)?  
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: TrishEM on October 01, 2015, 07:58:44 AM
I liked the dreamlike feeling I got from this story, semi-detached and drifting but with a few slightly jarring moments that at first didn't make much sense but then fit into the picture and made it even more interesting.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Not-a-Robot on October 01, 2015, 10:48:15 AM
I was also fairly insulted by the feedback section. 

For instance, I am not used to general neutral pronouns in English.
I have never heard them, and with no introduction or qualification, I was caught off guard and it pulled me from the story until I could make sense of them.  Maybe, part of the fault lie with the editors and the author, not just the listeners.

Politically, I hang on the side of progressivism in thing sexuality and gender, but saying that clarification was necessary to understand the story from the beginning (especially with non standardized pronouns), does not make that person a bigot, below the dignity of a response.

I know that the feedback was not directed at me, but please make it more direct and less passive aggressive next time, so as to not hit innocent bystanders with the shrapnel.

One more thing -

There are listeners here whose first language is not English.  Put yourself in their place.  Take a second language you speak, now add some pronoun that you've never heard.  Now, imagine, no one gives you a warning, just starts using them.  Wouldn't you be confused?

Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: literatish on October 12, 2015, 07:18:11 AM
Wow.

There's no sense in saying you didn't know gender neutral pronouns existed and needed fair warning. You know they exist because trans communities are becoming more visible every day.

My earnest wish is that people who are uncomfortable with this story will listen to it again, and again. Challenge yourself to understand. Isn't that why we love science fiction in the first place?
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: literatish on October 12, 2015, 07:28:11 AM
The use of gender neutral pronouns is actually explained in the story. All you had to do was pay attention. The lack of self-awareness in these responses boggles my mind. People are willing to accept a superintelligent AI that controls, governs and maintains this society's entire world (or any other science fictional situation) without blinking an eye, but a different set of pronouns derails your ability to comprehend anything going on in the story? Come on. Acknowledge your prejudices and get over them for the love of fiction. That's what it's about.

This story is subversive. The fact that it elicited more than the average number of responses, almost all of them about pronouns, just shows that it forces readers to face their feelings about a contemporary social issue. To wrestle with it, get mad about it, and hopefully understand it better. In other words, it's science fiction at its best. At its best. I really mean that. I don't know what my chances are, but I hope just one pronoun protester reads this and decides to give the story another chance.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on October 13, 2015, 06:35:01 PM
The use of gender neutral pronouns is actually explained in the story. All you had to do was pay attention. The lack of self-awareness in these responses boggles my mind. People are willing to accept a superintelligent AI that controls, governs and maintains this society's entire world (or any other science fictional situation) without blinking an eye, but a different set of pronouns derails your ability to comprehend anything going on in the story? Come on. Acknowledge your prejudices and get over them for the love of fiction. That's what it's about.

So here's the thing. Explaining gender neutral pronouns in the story is a great thing, and the story did that. I for one accepted that explanation, and others probably did as well.
The problem is that that explanation came rather late in the story. So you had to get to it. For most people it is very hard to follow along with a story for any length of time when you have no idea what is happening. And that might happen if the words that you hear are not making any sense to you. Say, for example, it's a bunch of words that you've never heard before. Or didn't know existed.
The way I understand it, most comments here about the issue weren't so much against the existence and/or acceptance of gender neutral pronouns. They were about how the use of the pronouns made the story very difficult to follow. It's true that if you did manage to follow the story they get explained and its great. But there should have been some sort of heads up.

Now, I would like to draw your attention to the general forum guidelines as well as several moderator comments in this thread. Sentences like " Come on. Acknowledge your prejudices and get over them for the love of fiction. That's what it's about." are personally offensive, disrespectful, and as I pointed out, downright wrong. So please take such comments elsewhere.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: literatish on October 14, 2015, 11:35:23 AM
I realize that this story is a bit old now, that general forum conversation has moved on, and that no one is interested in my newbie nobody opinion. I don't care. I was so excited to look at the forums after I heard Sounding the Fall. I was thrilled when I noticed that it had a large number of comments shortly after its release, which is not always common. I was completely surprised, and very disquieted, by the fact that almost every comment had something negative to say about the gender neutral pronouns, several saying they didn't finish the story or seeming to completely misunderstand it as a result of their distaste for those pronouns.

When I made my first comment on this thread, I was thinking about the author. I was horrified at the thought that Jei D. Marcade might read through the comments that were so dismissive of the work, that didn't even finish the story, that wondered why someone would bother with gender neutral pronouns. I was thinking about the crippling self-doubt that sometimes comes with being different, and how crushing it can be when a supposedly open-minded niche community confirms all the biases of society at large. I couldn't let this story get lambasted without a champion.

Sounding the Fall is a philosophical work about religion. It's about devotion in a world of perpetual (and necessary?) materialism. It's a meditation on how deeply humanity's relationship with technology might affect our minds and identities. It's a little disjointed, but it's one of those stories that feels like it should engender a novel because it is already saying so much in such a little space, because the ideas it plays with are big enough to be explored on a much larger scale.

Those forumites who protested the pronouns, and then came right on back to stand up for their right to protest the pronouns, fail to realize that they are saying nothing. This story is not about pronouns. The pronouns are legitimately not any harder to parse than the fabulous fictional world in which they appear and they should be treated as such by any reader who doesn't have something to protest about gender neutral pronouns in general.

Not only that, but anyone who deals with gender neutral pronouns is constantly told not to use them, that they're confusing or jarring. But a creative community should be able to say more.

I'm not saying you're a bigot if you struggled with it. I'm not saying that at all. Most humans have their understanding of the world around them forcibly gendered from a very young age. Colors, recreational activities, verbal expressions and shoes are just a few examples of genderless things that people tend to gender based on what's been communicated to them. Understanding the world in male/female categories is a huge part of growing up and going through life, but the truth is that most of the time those categories are imposed, not inherent.

The idea of a person without gender is painful blow to a gendered understanding of the world. For everyone. I get that. My point with all of my comments is that if you felt strongly affected by the use of genderless pronouns, so strongly affected, for example, that you felt wounded to hear Nathan dismiss your concerns, than you have work to do on your understanding of gender and your acceptance of nonbinary identities. And you have a beautiful, if challenging, story to help you do that work.

So this?

Sentences like " Come on. Acknowledge your prejudices and get over them for the love of fiction. That's what it's about." are personally offensive, disrespectful, and as I pointed out, downright wrong. So please take such comments elsewhere.

I reject that absolutely. The sentences you quoted are my way of saying that fiction has no need to attend to the comforts of a society that lies about what gender is, what is gendered, and how gender must be displayed; and more importantly, that readers can choose see beyond those lies through the power of fiction, if they are willing to do the work of moving past the prejudices that have been instilled in them since they were old enough to comprehend body language.

I can see that I was overly abrupt before. However, my comments are not a personal attack on anyone and I will not take them elsewhere. They are relevant here.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: Zelda on October 15, 2015, 09:00:34 PM
When I made my first comment on this thread, I was thinking about the author. I was horrified at the thought that Jei D. Marcade might read through the comments that were so dismissive of the work, that didn't even finish the story, that wondered why someone would bother with gender neutral pronouns. I was thinking about the crippling self-doubt that sometimes comes with being different, and how crushing it can be when a supposedly open-minded niche community confirms all the biases of society at large. I couldn't let this story get lambasted without a champion.

I don't know why everyone has avoided discussing the real problem with this episode but I'm going to say it. The reason so many people found this story confusing is that the introduction did not give listeners a heads up about the use of gender neutral pronouns in the story. Most of the so-called negative comments about this story did not criticize the use of gender-neutral prounouns per se. They said they were confused because those pronouns took them unawares. A mention in the introduction would have prevented that confusion.

Anyone who thinks that the kind of assorted listeners who make up the Escape Pod audience should not need an alert about extensive use of gender-neutral pronouns in a story is living in the future and is doing less than they could to help other people get there.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: eytanz on October 15, 2015, 09:31:41 PM
Moderator's note:

I think it's time to move on from the meta commentary on the comments here. If anyone wants to continue this conversation, please start a different thread for it somewhere more appropriate, for example in the "About Escape Pod" forum if you wish to discuss editorial policy (including the question of feedback summaries in the episodes), or "metachat" if you wish to discuss other posters' comment styles. But please keep this thread for discussion of the actual episode, not discussion of what other people said about the episode.
Title: Re: EP499: Sounding the Fall
Post by: CryptoMe on October 27, 2017, 07:32:44 PM
Warning, Threadomancy ahead!

I really enjoyed this story. It was really fun to listen to. In fact, I took a long hiatus from Escape Pod stories a while back (sad, but it happened  :() and when I returned to my list, I didn't remember that I had already listened to this story, so I started listening again and quickly remembered that I'd already heard this story, but decided to keep listening anyway, because the process was so enjoyable. The world-building was rich and lush, the details just right, the "tell me more" factor at precisely the right level. I felt like I was being enveloped in a gorgeous fabric tapestry.

My one complaint about this story is at the end. Not what happens at the end, that was actually neat. But the way the ending events were told to us was actually very confusing. I don't have a problem with holding the Aux's words back for the last line, but the total absence of queues around that made me take the MC's next words as the Aux's, completely messing me up (both times, even though I knew what the deal was the second time). This mix up threw me out of the story and marred my enjoyment of this otherwise immersive story.