Author Topic: EP184: As Dry Leaves That Before the Wild Hurricane Fly  (Read 22346 times)

TristanPEJ

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Reply #25 on: January 03, 2009, 07:41:28 PM
Santa. Jet Packs. Nuff Said

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rowshack

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Reply #26 on: January 03, 2009, 09:33:22 PM
Tesla Versus The Big Guy  and the Big Guy hands him his asterisk.



eytanz

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Reply #27 on: January 04, 2009, 04:48:52 PM
I really loved this one - it was light, and full of delightful imagery and fun characters.

Two minor nitpicks:

- I think that Dancer started out younger than Dasher, and later it was stated that they are twins (yes, I know that the two aren't strictly contradictory, but it seemed like a slip)

- At the final confrontation between Tesla and Santa, it is said that Tesla fired something "between a laser and a rocket". But the technology up to that point has been described entirely from the POV of Santa and his kids - and if they don't know about electricty, I can't believe that they know what a laser is. This broke the narrative at that point for me, and needlessly so, as the problem could go away if it just said "raygun" instead of "laser".

Also, I agree with the person who commented earlier and said that the conflict seemed a bit arbitrary. Why did Tesla come early? Was there a spy in the household that made him aware of the Claus's plans?

And one thing that just occured to me - if Santa trusts Comet enough to have her build his zeppelin, why did he never think to tell her how much helium they have? Cupid seems to manage his own resources as far as jetpack fuel goes. It didn't bother me while I heard this story, but now this seems like a plot hole.

Oh well. These are all minor issues compared to how outright fun the story was.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2009, 09:53:22 PM by eytanz »



Sandikal

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Reply #28 on: January 04, 2009, 08:24:52 PM
I listened to this story as I was undecorating my Christmas tree.  I really wish I had listened to it BEFORE Christmas.  It was a wonderful story and it made me smile while listening.  I needed the upper.  Thanks!



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Reply #29 on: January 05, 2009, 05:15:00 PM
Steampunk Santa Claus. This has got to be the quintessential Mur Lafferty Christmas story. Much fun.


Roney

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Reply #30 on: January 07, 2009, 11:57:03 PM
Unusually for a Mur Lafferty story -- particulary a Mur Christmas story -- I found myself warming to this one.  Although there were too many orphans to get to know properly (even with the very long time the story took to get going), it was impossible not to be on their side when they were making their break for the pole.  But

Two minor nitpicks:

- At the final confrontation between Tesla and Santa, it is said that Tesla fired something "between a laser and a rocket". But the technology up to that point has been described entirely from the POV of Santa and his kids - and if they don't know about electricty, I can't believe that they know what a laser is. This broke the narrative at that point for me, and needlessly so, as the problem could go away if it just said "raygun" instead of "laser".

This was one of several little details that kept jarring me out of the story.  The biggest was that I just couldn't quite get a feel for what the steampunk tech level was meant to be (clockwork devices vs helium Zeppelins vs personal helicopters vs rocket-fuel jetpacks vs lasers).  This is my fault for trying to read it as alternative-history steampunk, when clearly the deciding principle for what tech was appropriate was whatever Mur thought was cool for the story.  I know it's wrong to expect rigour from a fantasy Christmas myth, but the arbitrariness seemed to sit uncomfortably with the steampunk, and the gadgets were never quite cool enough to make it work.  (Contrast with the Christmas episode of Dr Who, where the steampunk was similarly implausible but simply awesome.)

Then there were some really small niggles: Queen Victoria should have been Her Majesty, not Her Royal Highness; how high did their prototype airship manage to fly such that Comet could unstrap herself, jump over the side, fly around a bit, manoeuvre herself over to Rudolph, catch him and slow their combined descent before he hit the ground?; was I right to get the impression that Claus had invented the airship, and if so why was it named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin?; etc.

They're all things that could be explained away with additional infodumps, but would probably have been better smoothed over in a final redraft.  I wonder if Escape Artists would benefit from a more interventionist editor for original stories.

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Oh well. These are all minor issues compared to how outright fun the story was.

Kind of.  But I'd have preferred to be able to enjoy it without constantly going "wait a minute..."



DarkKnightJRK

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Reply #31 on: January 08, 2009, 02:00:09 AM
Jet packs and zeppelins make ANYTHING awesome. ANYTHING! :p

  Too true. If you doubt this think about your least favourite EP, the one you barely made it all the way through, the one you did not turn off just on principles. Now give the characters jetpacks and a zeppelin, and tell me truly that the story is not at least a bit more awesome.

Hmm...now that you mention it--Lenin with a jet-pack would have been pretty funny.

Yeah, this was pretty damn keen--making a Steampunk Santa was genius. I think the sheer amount of children made it somewhat difficult to keep track of who is who, but it was otherwise awesome. :D



eytanz

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Reply #32 on: January 08, 2009, 04:49:21 AM
Then there were some really small niggles: Queen Victoria should have been Her Majesty, not Her Royal Highness;

Good catch.

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how high did their prototype airship manage to fly such that Comet could unstrap herself, jump over the side, fly around a bit, manoeuvre herself over to Rudolph, catch him and slow their combined descent before he hit the ground?;

That one occured to me, but then I decided that Rudolph wasn't actually in freefall or anything like that; he lost control of his jetpack, but he was stil being held aloft by it; if I get the events right, then the jetpack stalled for a second or two (enough to drop him below the airship, but not long enoug for him to reach the ground), then restarted, but presumably moving up or down in a controlled fashion takes more fuel than just maintaining altitude, so he was forced to do the latter and wait while the fuel ran out. Or something like that.

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was I right to get the impression that Claus had invented the airship, and if so why was it named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin?

It never said he invented it, just that Claus and Comet wanted to build one. Perhaps he had merely improved on the design.

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They're all things that could be explained away with additional infodumps, but would probably have been better smoothed over in a final redraft.  I wonder if Escape Artists would benefit from a more interventionist editor for original stories.

I don't believe I've ever listened to anything by Mur Lafferty and didn't think "this could be improved on a redraft". Tight writing, where every detail is paid attention to, is simply not her style - she's all about the "Gee whiz!" effect of taking really cool concepts and implementing them in novel ways. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work quite as well - for me, this time it worked.



Windup

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Reply #33 on: January 12, 2009, 07:11:52 AM
Catcthing up on a holiday-travel-induced podcast backlog, so most of my thoughts on this one have already been expressed.  But, I do want to add my "Welcome back, Steve!!" to the chorus. 

I also agree with those who felt the conflict with Tesla was a little arbitrary -- more of an excuse for an (admittedly cool) steampunk air battle than something that reasonably emerged from the logic of the plot or characters.  The story would have worked just fine for me without it, but I'm not a big fan of action scenes in general.

Eytanz, I think you've articulated what bothers me about Mur's writing.  She's great with the big, brilliant idea but like a lot of big idea people, a little loose and sloppy about follow-up and details.  She needs somebody to play Pepper Potts to her Tony Stark....  :D

"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


wakela

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Reply #34 on: January 30, 2009, 01:37:17 PM
I like the re-imagining of myths as much as the next guy, but this one did not sit well with me.  It seemed like a plot device that Santa didn't give a reason for not allowing the kids to test the zepplin.  And as a Tesla buff, I was annoyed that he was painted as the bad guy.  It felt like Alexander Graham Bell or Marconi being evil.  And while Tesla was the villain, if you look at the story objectively instead of through the kid's eyes, Santa doesn't exactly come out smelling like a rose.  I'm sorry that your patronage got swiped, but that's the risk you take.  It doesn't give you the right to steal, kill someone making your getaway, and then risk the lives of ORPHANS by giving them the secret plans.  What are they going to do later?  Steal the toys back?  If they are just a pack of geniuses, why couldn't they sell inventions?  Like the real Tesla did.



stePH

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Reply #35 on: February 05, 2009, 01:16:03 AM
And as a Tesla buff, I was annoyed that he was painted as the bad guy. 

Thank you!  I was wondering if I was alone in this.

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Reply #36 on: May 20, 2010, 05:07:54 PM
Cool idea, but this as a whole didn't do much for me.  I think it's part of my general tendency to resist things that everyone insists are irrevocably cool.  Yes, jetpacks are cool.  Yes, I'm going to buy one when they become commercially available.  But a story with jetpacks has to be BETTER than just a regular story to overcome its own hype and this one didn't reach that higher threshold.

Like others, I didn't like Tesla being painted as a villain.  I didn't like that, just because Santa got canned, he was willing to steal, kill, and endanger his children.  I didn't like that a major plot point was Santa withholding information from his kids about how much helium they had when he'd shared every important detail with them up to that point.  And, though I suppose it was necessary to include all 9 kids, with 10 characters onscreen almost all the time I tended to forget which was which.

Also, it was quite a while before I figured out that the kids weren't reindeer.  Santa with jetpacks, why not reindeer with jetpacks.

On a sidenote I was surprised that they didn't use the jetpacks to propel the zeppelin, much like the reindeer propel the sleigh.



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Reply #37 on: May 20, 2010, 05:14:17 PM
Random sidenote about Tesla:

Before I was really familiar with Tesla as historical figure, I knew his name from a war sim from the previous decade:  Command & Conquer:  Red Alert.  It's an alternate history SF WWII.  Hitler's been removed from the equation before the war starts, so it's the Soviets vs. the Allies.  By far the best structure in the game is the Tesla Coil, a defensive tower that can shoot bolts of electricity over an extremely long range and is pinpoint accurate.  It doesn't do much against vehicles, but it's an instant kill against any kind of human unit.

Once, for fan, I fiddled around with the mission.ini file which, among other things, defines all the attributes of each unit in the game.  I replaced the Grenadier's standard grenade weapon with a Tesla zap for a while, and it kept all of the Tesla zap's attributes including pinpoint accuracy and long range.  He's still perform the same motions when he attacked, so he'd mime pulling out a grenade and throwing it, but a lightning bolt would fire out instead, and zap whatever he was targeting.  That was one nasty unit, mobile lightning requiring no power station, one shot kill against humans.  So much fun!