Author Topic: PseudoPod 594-595-596: Mysterium Tremendum -- in three parts  (Read 4500 times)

Bdoomed

  • Pseudopod Tiger
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 5891
  • Mmm. Tiger.
PseudoPod 594: Mysterium Tremendum – Part 1
PseudoPod 595: Mysterium Tremendum – Part 2
PseudoPod 596: Mysterium Tremendum – Part 3

by Laird Barron
Narrated by Jon Padgett
Hosted by Alasdair Stuart

Show Notes

“Mysterium Tremendum” was originally published in Occultation and Other Stories in 2010.

Parts 1 through 3



More information on Blood Standard here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35464016-blood-standard





1.

We bought supplies for our road trip  at an obscure general goods store in Seattle—a multi-generational emporium where you could purchase anything from space-age tents to snowshoes once worn by Antarctic explorers. That’s where we came across the guidebook.





Listen to this week's PseudoPod.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2018, 10:24:57 PM by Fenrix »

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


ElectroSquid

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 14
Reply #1 on: May 12, 2018, 10:41:26 AM
I'm finding this a bit hard to listen to. Shame because I love Laird Barron and the narrator is good. But there seems to be something weird going on with the audio, where the first split second of words gets cut off... am I imagining it??



Jon Padgett

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 36
Reply #2 on: May 12, 2018, 01:32:11 PM
Hi, Electrosquid.  I just listened to the streaming audio and wasn't able to replicate the problem you mentioned.  Can you give me a specific for instance of the issue -- a particular line?

Many thanks,
Jon



ElectroSquid

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 14
Reply #3 on: May 12, 2018, 06:13:15 PM
I often listen to the podcast using bluetooth speaker in my shower and it's normally great, but this time I reckon it must have been the speaker at fault. How weird. I just relistened to the section with headphones to pick out an example and it sounds fine. Really odd. It was missing out the very beginning of every sentence - so instead of saying "I'd wear..." it would sound like "d wear..."
I'm glad I will be able to enjoy this after all - just not in the shower!!



grisgris444

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 1
Reply #4 on: May 15, 2018, 03:47:15 AM
Great author and narrator but Laird might tutor Jon on how Washington place names are pronounced:  Sequim is pronounced "skwim", for example.  That said, I'm looking forward to the next two episodes.  Need to hear more stuff from both these authors.



Jon Padgett

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 36
Reply #5 on: May 15, 2018, 11:21:11 AM
Ah, but Wilum points out in the story that "the locals pronounce it skwim." Wilum is a tourist to that area and identifies himself as an outsider, noting the small town clannishness that he dislikes.

Thanks for listening and for the continuing feedback!
« Last Edit: May 22, 2018, 01:07:19 PM by Jon Padgett »



Fenrix

  • Curmudgeonly Co-Editor of PseudoPod
  • Editor
  • *****
  • Posts: 3996
  • I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.
Reply #6 on: May 15, 2018, 02:28:40 PM
If memory serves me correctly, the next episode will open on exactly this "Sequim" issue. POV is important, particularly considering how these tourists are unwelcome outsiders. Local pronunciations are a simple and subtle way to identify the Other in those communities. The proper local pronunciation of the multitude of counties in Georgia springs to mind.  Pronouncing "Barrow" like a British scholar will peg you as city folk, whereas "Bare-a" will signal that at least you know enough to be under consideration for trust.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


Metalsludge

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 76
Reply #7 on: May 16, 2018, 06:31:04 PM
Nice to get some Laird Barron and, perhaps more importantly, it's good to see Psuedopod expanding into presenting somewhat longer works, as it has been something I have been hoping to see someday.

One thing that sometimes bugs me about Barron's stories is the tendency to rely too heavily on the "Was it real, or just an illusory moment caused by how the protagonist is yet another drunken Laird Barron character?" effect. Too many strung together dream sequences that may or may not reflect something real in the story can get as tiresome as they do in films that rely on that sort of thing.

But what works better for me in stories like this one is how it instead seems to imply that your paranoid moments and noticed coincidences do in fact add up to something, which can be a scarier idea than uncertainty alone. It's almost as if the twist is that...there is no twist, which is part of what I always liked about this one. Are you paranoid if events really are out to get you? Well, that, and dusty guidebooks of the occult can be fun.



Samanthropologist

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Reply #8 on: May 22, 2018, 05:36:56 PM
Coming out of the shadows here, it's been a few years since I've posted.

I don't really have an analysis prepared to explain why I do or don't like the story - that will come later perhaps.

What I do have now is an audio copy of Occultation - this reading was compelling enough for me to go find Laird Barron on Audible.

I'm hoping to find Jon Padgett on there too (I haven't searched narrators yet). Jon's reading of this short is so excellent to me that while binge listening to the whole collection of short stories, I skipped Mysterium Tremendum even though I'm super eager to hear the rest of it.

Excellent choices for a 3 parter, Pseudopod Crew!



Lisa3737

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 38
Reply #9 on: May 25, 2018, 08:29:03 PM
I just finished listening Part 3.  Great story and fabulous narration!!!  I hope you will do more long episodes like this in the future.



Scuba Man

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 353
  • Drabblecast, Pseudopod, Escapepod, Podcastle
    • Black Cat Bed And Breakfast (proposed start up 2024)
Strong, strong 2 and 2/3 episodes. I was hooked. Aaaaaaaand then IT appears and they all went scampering out of the dolomite. As one would used to say at the Drabblecast (...the following is NSFW...),
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
  ???

And they all lived unhappily ever after. Now, THAT was an interesting touch at the end.

I'm a stand-up philosopher until 2024. Then, I move onto my next gig. I'm a gentleman forester and farmer. I also enjoy jumping into Lake Huron and panicking the fish.


TrishEM

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 208
I enjoyed this and I would be just fine with some more multi-parters, as long as they're like this and they include some uncanniness fairly early on, or at least in the first part, so that it's not part 1 Normal, part 2 Uneasy, part 3 AGH! This was weaving and building the dread throughout in a way that I appreciated.

I also enjoyed the unexpected elements, like the protagonist's relationships with his lover and the lover's old friends, and the matter-of-fact creepiness of the personality at the end...

But if I'd been through that, I wouldn't be moving to somewhere even as near to suburban as Kingston is (bears maybe, cougars hardly!). I'd make my life in a high-rise nowhere near nature. Although I guess i'd still have to worry about ... altered ... humans then.



Moritz

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 512
Reply #12 on: June 05, 2018, 08:05:09 AM
I really liked the narration and the story in general. In the beginning, the long "tales around a fireside" (stories within stories) annoyed me a bit though. I really like the particular kind of horror used in this story.



South of No North

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 241
  • Oneironaut and Alchymist
Reply #13 on: June 10, 2018, 01:26:22 AM
Enjoyed thouroughly. Jon did a great job with the voices to keep them distinct, along with the characterization of the writting, and know who was speaking when; which can get muddled in audio stories with numerous characters...(I wonder if any of the voices used were that of a Greater Ventriloquism?)

Enjoyed the part with the Frat Boys who expected to be dealing with a certain stereotype they had projected and then found that just because they think a certain way about others doesn't mean those people have to leave up (or down) to it.

As someone already said, "And they all lived unhappily ever after." Usually with a first person story there is a little bit of a give away in that the narrator survives to tell the tale. But in this the MC still has a door to face and an uncomfortable desire to open it. Excellent.

Also Our Host's enjoyment of "Previously on..." and "...and now the conclusion." was palpable. Which made the multipart that much more enjoyable.

"Yes, of course I can blame you. Without them, where would all of us outlaws be? What would we have? Only a lawless paradise...and paradise is a bore. Violence without violation is only noise heard by no one, the most horrendous sound in the universe." --The Chymist by Thomas Ligotti


Katzentatzen

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 212
Reply #14 on: June 20, 2018, 10:26:01 PM
This was cool in a Lovecraftian way, and I know we weren't supposed to like the protagonists, but I couldn't bring myself to care for them at all and wished the story would hurry them to their blood-soaked ends.

"To understand a cat you must realize that he has his own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality."
--LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN


spacebeam

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 1
Reply #15 on: June 30, 2018, 05:36:19 PM
Just started listening to it and Lordy....as a Washingtonian the pronunciation of all things Washington is making me cringe!



Fenrix

  • Curmudgeonly Co-Editor of PseudoPod
  • Editor
  • *****
  • Posts: 3996
  • I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.
Reply #16 on: June 30, 2018, 07:12:50 PM

Just started listening to it and Lordy....as a Washingtonian the pronunciation of all things Washington is making me cringe!


As noted above:

Quote

If memory serves me correctly, the next episode will open on exactly this "Sequim" issue. POV is important, particularly considering how these tourists are unwelcome outsiders. Local pronunciations are a simple and subtle way to identify the Other in those communities. The proper local pronunciation of the multitude of counties in Georgia springs to mind.  Pronouncing "Barrow" like a British scholar will peg you as city folk, whereas "Bare-a" will signal that at least you know enough to be under consideration for trust.


All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”