Author Topic: EP488: In Another Life  (Read 15464 times)

raetsel

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Reply #25 on: April 14, 2015, 07:35:18 AM
I really liked the way this story unfolded. At the start I wondering if Louisa had died and Clara was grieving. Then slowly the whole restraining order situation comes into view but we see it tempered through the eyes of Clara so of course it is "Hybrid's idea" and Louisa is just going along with it. The ending was really good. It was heavily signposted Clara would slip for good but the fact that "she" then ends up in therapy for slipping somewhere else was handled really well. The best part of this for me is what Alasdair mentioned in the Outtro about only re-living the good parts of your life. The faults that "Clara II" find in "Louisa II" were probably there in the original timeline but Clara ignored them because of whatever bigger issue it was that caused them to split and that she wants to fix.

I want to echo the comments above about the quality of narration. It really was first class and added so much to the story. It was true story telling.

Circling back to my first point about grieving, I can imagine that in a world where "slipping" is possible grief would be the major reason people slip away for good with relationship break ups being second.



Bruce Arthurs

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Reply #26 on: April 17, 2015, 08:47:18 PM
Full Metal Attorney, #13: "not based on science (though I'm no expert in that), even though it was in a Star Trek: TNG episode."

That was tongue-in-cheek, right? 'Cause ST is well known for its technobabble and for taking place in a universe filled with makeupanameon particles. (At least most of the time, TOS and TNG sounded like the technobabble might actually mean something. I could never get fully into later series; their "technobabble" got more and more into "technogibberish" territory.)

As it happens... I actually wrote a ST:TNG episode, "Clues". (I may be "The Most Famous Star Trek Writer You've Never Heard of"; though I've sold about a dozen short stories over the years, that script sale was not only an outlier, but a way-y-y-y-out-there outlier. A bit of talent, some serendipitous timing, and a lot of luck; never managed to sell a second script, though I went in for pitch sessions several times.)

The story for "Clues" involved a mysterious planet hidden in a bubble of clear space inside a dust cloud. No astronomer me, I blue-skied that idea out of thin air. But I knew an astronomer, Pete Manly, and I ran that scene by him to try to keep myself from looking too stupid.

As it turned out, such clear spaces can actually exist inside dust clouds. They're called t-Tauri systems, and I edited that information into my first draft before sending it off.

So that episode of ST:TNG actually has real science in it.

But it was an accident. I didn't mean to.



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Reply #27 on: April 17, 2015, 08:51:48 PM
I liked this well enough.  Are parallel worlds implausible?  I don't know.  I find them intriguing at the very least for a variety of hypothetical discussions.  Is it too implausible for these two timelines to mesh together like this?  For me, I'll generally give any short story one big plausibility pass, especially if established as part of the speculative element early in the story.  If I didn't do this, I'd have very few stories to enjoy.  I don't want that kind of plausibility issue to suddenly arise in the resolution of the story, but if its laid right into the foundation I am 100% cool with it.  I didn't have an issue with it because the story laid the cards on the table right at the beginning--very early on it said that there are parallel worlds and that some people are able to shift their perceptions into another for a time.  It would've been more difficult to swallow if, say, the story seemed to have nothing to do with parallel worlds and then at the end BAM TWIST.  

I enjoyed it.  Could I have predicted the ending?  Probably, but I thought I was so wrapped up in the character that I wasn't trying to predict.  The voice acting on this story was amazing.  Incredibly amazing.  Even when she was being a creepy stalker, and I was afraid she was going to hurt someone, I still felt bad for her because that edge in her voice felt so raw, so real (I'm not saying that excuses creepy stalker behavior, mind you).  It was a solid story, based around a very interesting speculative element, with very real-seeming while flawed and interesting characters, but the voice acting just multiplied the effect of everything.  wow.



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Reply #28 on: April 18, 2015, 02:26:28 PM
Full Metal Attorney, #13: "not based on science (though I'm no expert in that), even though it was in a Star Trek: TNG episode."

I haven't watched it since the original run, so I would have been 12 or younger when I saw that. So honestly I didn't remember much about it, and certainly wasn't old enough to watch it critically.



Devoted135

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Reply #29 on: April 20, 2015, 12:15:54 AM
Agreed on the praise of this narration, it brought the story to life.

Wow. Clara is a super creepy stalker ex who evidently has some pretty deep-rooted issues. I would think that the psychiatrist she sees would try to more effectively counsel her in addition to making sure she's on her meds... Granted we only saw a snippet of her treatment, but it didn't appear to be helpful. Anyway, I thought the ending really wrapped it up perfectly showing how the issue was always within Clara, regardless of who else is in her life.



Moon_Goddess

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Reply #30 on: April 22, 2015, 01:30:50 PM

So that episode of ST:TNG actually has real science in it.

But it was an accident. I didn't mean to.

You should be ashamed of yourself :P    But hey, seriously I really enjoyed that episode, even if as someone who's all about learning and sharing information it's always been frustrating.


As for this story....

It was scary, how normal and tragic the main character seemed at the beginning, how I felt of her and sympathized with her, and then how creepy she became.     It's like, in what situation could any of us become creepy.

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reverendshoebox

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Reply #31 on: April 22, 2015, 04:51:49 PM
This was really fantastic.  I saw the turnaround coming, but not the way it happened, so it still hit hard.

One wonders if the stalky nature of the protagonist would have been quite as severe if "slipping" didn't make it so easy to put off dealing with loss.  Granted there's plenty of ways to delude oneself without whatever technology/divine intervention/magic koala-derived suppository provides slipping, but it just seems like such an easy thing to succumb to in the wake of dealing with something like this.  Of course, that way lies gun control and drug legalization debates, so I'll digress and add that the narration was dead-on perfect for this.

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Reply #32 on: April 24, 2015, 03:54:13 PM
One wonders if the stalky nature of the protagonist would have been quite as severe if "slipping" didn't make it so easy to put off dealing with loss. 

Oh, absolutely.  And I think that was intended from the start.  If slipping were impossible I think she'd deal with the loss as most people would, get angry, maybe go through some tough sad times, eventually get over it and move on.  But the constant temptation of having exactly what you think you want just around that mental corner and slipping into it whenever you want.  I think anyone would have trouble really grieving and healing from any loss if they could roll it back with a thought.  Grieving sucks and it's hard, but it's important if you want to regain your life again.



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Reply #33 on: April 24, 2015, 06:28:36 PM
Something I found with the gender roles is that it allowed me to review the people and relationships and take them as they are. For example, if it was a hetero relationship, and all we did was gender swap characters that gives us two possible options. If our protagonist was a male, would her stalker creepiness and her pounding on the door take a much darker and more predatory tinge? If Louisa became Louis, what damage would be done by the societal disposition towards dismissing the psycho ex-gf? The author's choices allowed me to consider the mental illness and addiction without any external baggage.

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SpareInch

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Reply #34 on: April 24, 2015, 06:51:47 PM
Something I found with the gender roles is that it allowed me to review the people and relationships and take them as they are. For example, if it was a hetero relationship, and all we did was gender swap characters that gives us two possible options. If our protagonist was a male, would her stalker creepiness and her pounding on the door take a much darker and more predatory tinge? If Louisa became Louis, what damage would be done by the societal disposition towards dismissing the psycho ex-gf? The author's choices allowed me to consider the mental illness and addiction without any external baggage.

Umm... Yeah...

 :-[

That's what I would have said if I hadn't let myself get dragged into a stupid argument about whether or not it counts as a political statement if the editors don't vet every episode against The Big Book Of Population Statistics.

But yes. If either, or indeed both, characters had been male, then the differences in psychology between the two genders would have meant that this story couldn't be told. Making it a lesbian relationship let the author turn the Testosterone index down to Minimum and develop a more emotional, less violent interaction.

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Reply #35 on: April 27, 2015, 01:55:54 PM
Something I found with the gender roles is that it allowed me to review the people and relationships and take them as they are. For example, if it was a hetero relationship, and all we did was gender swap characters that gives us two possible options. If our protagonist was a male, would her stalker creepiness and her pounding on the door take a much darker and more predatory tinge? If Louisa became Louis, what damage would be done by the societal disposition towards dismissing the psycho ex-gf? The author's choices allowed me to consider the mental illness and addiction without any external baggage.

Yes, I think that's true.  Good point!



FireTurtle

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Reply #36 on: April 29, 2015, 02:22:21 AM
I think everything that needs to be said, has been said.

Chiming in to add more nonsense onto the heap.  ;D

On science- I think that there was a "scientifically plausible" argument in that in this world there is a drug that prevents slipping. If there is a drug to prevent it, then it is a known phenomenon with a well-understood (if not explicitly stated- I figured some form of quantum entanglement but I was just reaching for a random label) mechanism and that's all I need to claim "science!". Sometimes it's fun to get the info dump, but that IMHO would have greatly detracted from the very personal nature of this narrative.

I personally would probably slip to a world where I was an intelligent, predatory dinosaur and my enemies were all very small and squishable, but that's just me.  ;)

On narration- PHENOMENAL. Just phenomenal. Wow.


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HeartSailor

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Reply #37 on: May 09, 2015, 08:54:55 PM
Just listened to this.  I'm a bit behind, as I have been Pod-Binging on Lightspeed, Pseudo pod, PodCastle and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.  Seems almost impossible to keep current with all podcasts at all times.  Surely, there must be a mathematical formula that proves this...

Back to the topic at hand. 

I agree that the reading was awesome.

Also agree that the stalking thing was very creepy.  I started thinking about what is it that makes someone's frame of reference shift to the point that they lose self-realization and self awareness of their inappropriate behavior?   Is the loss of the ability to self regulate (meaning both self-realization as well as self-actualization)  behavior a key element for mental illness?  Whatever the behavior is, if one does not have self awareness of the inappropriateness and harm of the behavior then the behavior is likely unregulated and potentially destructive.  The scary part is once the self-regulation comes off, then truly anything is possible.

This is somewhat analogous to cancer, in a way.   Cancer cells start out as normal cells but lose the ability to self regulate, and just start doing their own thing, living their own little reality, even if in the end it is destructive to their own body.  You definitely get the impression that Clara's behavior, in a way, is almost cancerous.

At any rate, I'm late to the party, but there's my two cents.

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Windup

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Reply #38 on: May 10, 2015, 04:47:13 AM

This is somewhat analogous to cancer, in a way.   Cancer cells start out as normal cells but lose the ability to self regulate, and just start doing their own thing, living their own little reality, even if in the end it is destructive to their own body.  You definitely get the impression that Clara's behavior, in a way, is almost cancerous.


That is a brilliant analogy, and I can see it applying at a lot of different levels. When any component of a system -- political, social, biological, whatever -- loses the ability to self-regulate in a given area, the results are potentially disastrous for both the individual component and the entire system.

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hardware

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Reply #39 on: June 03, 2015, 08:11:48 AM
Good story , great reading - although like some I also start to move towards being a bit suspicious against parallel universe stories. Not because of science - as I understood it's not yet a testable theory, and so SF should feel free to speculate. No, my problem is that (much like time-travel) it is a little bit too convenient tool for storytelling, letting the author having the cake and eat it, which makes it easy to make your point, but takes a lot of dicipline to keep your narrative credible and tight. This one went to close to that border of using it as a device for lazy storytelling, but got away with it in the end because of the compelling voice of the obsessive stalker.



CryptoMe

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Reply #40 on: March 14, 2016, 08:21:35 PM
Very much enjoyed the story.
Excellent point by Fenrix regarding how the gender selection allowed for a very specific aspect of the downward slide to be highlighted.
And I agree completely with Raetsel that grief would be the major driver for slipping. Imagine slipping to a reality where your loved one did not die and seeing how your life would have continued with them instead of without them. That is one very powerful (and thus scary!!) motivator.