PC021: Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Change of Life

[DKT]

Count me in the much amused camp -- I listened to it on the road down to San Diego and really enjoyed it.  There was no one to hear me laugh, though, which made it all the better.  Hobson's reading was AMAZING, and I was also amused that her EP story "God Juice" seemed to have some of the same general themes/character issues as this one had.  Actually makes me want to listen to God Juice again.

Lots of fun. And I LOVED the narration, personally. I thought it was just perfect.

Comment on the outro: in general, I've noticed the regular board posters tend to be much, much, much more critical than those who post on the blog. Its an interesting trend. Sometimes it feels (and this is just my perception here, don't hurt me!) like people treat it like a critiquing session, like they have to find something to criticize. Or maybe I'm just way less picky than other people, I donno. I like 99.9999% of the stories posted on EP & PC (not a huge horror fan), so when any given story is given "a rousing chorus of mehs" as it were, I'm usually left very confused and having to stifle the urge to give a "well I liked it. SO THERE" type response :p

I've noticed that people here are a lot more critical, too (and I say this in the best sense of the word).   People take apart a story and think about it in ways I often did not, and that often adds to the experience of the story for me.

That said, occassionally I do see people who's critiques consist more along the lines of "This is how I would write the story."  (Note: Different from what didn't work in this story me).  Which is interesting, too, but not as thought-provoking (for me).

[JoeFitz]

Meh. I'm *sure* I read this story as a comic in the back of a Dragon magazine in 1985.

[stePH]

Meh. I'm *sure* I read this story as a comic in the back of a Dragon magazine in 1985.

Did Phil Foglio draw it? 

[Animite]

My thoughts on this story. I thought it was executed well enough, but at the same time I found the pacing of the story a little too even. I do enjoy stories of barbarians and high fantasy, but this yarn seemingly took its cue from subplots done since time immemorial. (Even the barbarian aging crisis vehicle has been covered and time and again by Terry Pratchet's Cohen the Barbarian, for example.) And we never found out why they called her Hallah "Iron-Thighs" in the first place. The title, I suppose, should have included perhaps crushing one insolent oaf with her legs while happily relieving another brute of his internals. Yet there was a lack of gore and general violence for a tale described as high fantasy.

Overall, this tale for me was like spending 23.5 minutes listening to a sit-com on the adventures of an aging though experienced barbarian woman, her impetuous sidekick, and their squeamish employer who could have been voiced by Don Knotts.

[CammoBlammo]

I found this a refreshing change from recent stories on PC. Don't get me wrong---they've been great, but they can require a bit of work from the listener to get into. This story didn't need a lot. It just was. If I got distracted for a second or two I didn't have to worry that I'd missed a subtle allusion to the prophecy uttered by the wizened old man at the beginning of the story. It was more The Bold and the Beautiful than War and Peace. Both have their place, and I'm glad the editors made room for this one.

I liked the take on the hymns. I know the more recent Christian versions quite well, and I had to wonder if the narrator knew the tunes at all. On the other hand, her less than perfect 'reading' of them suits what was going on in the story quite well.

[Heradel]

The 'Meh' discussion has been split out to here: http://forum.escapeartists.info/index.php?topic=1912.0 (in Metachat)

Apologies in advance for what probably is an imperfect split.

[izzardfan]

I've been a fan of Escape Pod since episode 97 (though I did go back and listen to all of them, in order), but I didn't start listening to Podcastle until this month.  I started with the first podcast and have listened to all of them through this one, in order.  After listening, I decided to check out the comments on the stories I'd already heard.  Imagine my surprise when I read this from back in April:

For those who may have reservations about the fact that the magazine is edited by a woman, and an avowed feminist woman -- well, sure, we're going to run stories about women, and we're probably not going to run stories about women in chainmail bikinis, however mighty their swords. (Though it could happen.)

from http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=1513.msg24568#msg24568

LOL

[Unblinking]

This one was reasonably good.  The humor had a very Terry Pratchett style to it, but not as good as Pratchett (to be fair, he does set the bar quite high).  I probably would have been more wowed by it if I hadn't already been a fan of Cohen the Barbarian, for instance.

But it was still worth listening to, and I got some good laughs out of it.  The bandits who crave confessions (even if they have to be to a hymnal salesman) was quite funny.  M.K. Hobson did a really superb job of voicing it, which enhanced the story significantly.

A few things that bugged me:
1.  When Hallah takes off her chainmail, it wasn't clear what she was wearing underneath.  The scene becomes rather different if she's got some kind of jerkin on as opposed to wearing nothing at all.
2.  The jokes of the hymn names which are alterations of modern hymns were a chuckle the first time, but got old very quickly and kept going.
3.  Hallah's fighting partner, though younger and presumably more physically able, manages to get disabled very quickly and off-camera TWICE, without even a sarcastic comment from Hallah about what an incompetent she is.  And so when her partner's ribbing her for her perceived weight gains and whatnot, it was hard to take the partner seriously when she has shown herself to be such an unskilled fighter.