Author Topic: Pseudopod 040: Wanting to Want  (Read 9724 times)

Bdoomed

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on: June 01, 2007, 08:17:39 PM
Pseudopod 040: Wanting to Want

By Eugie Foster

Read by Tabitha Smith

She was wide-awake, alert to every jangle of hyped-up nerves. Rolling to all fours made the twitches worse, like red-hot pins jabbing her insides. The pain in her neck flared hot as a match–a sharp, ragged sting that begged for scratching. It was the bad spot, the abscess next to her shoulder where it chaffed and rubbed against her shirt. She’d tried shooting up under her tongue to give that area a rest, but it wasn’t the same; the tongue hit too slow. The neck, with the vein so close to the surface, was the best place for the needle, even if the area burned, weeping blood and pus on some days, bringing fever on others.


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clichekiller

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Reply #1 on: June 02, 2007, 03:01:48 AM
Production Note: The audio quality on this one wasn't up to your usual high standards.  There was a background hiss that made it difficult to listen to, especially when the reader whispered. 

As for the story idea, I liked the idea a lot.  I wasn't quite sure where it was going at first, it seemed to meander a little.  This wasn't so much a horror story in my opinion but rather an episode of the twilight zone.



Bdoomed

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Reply #2 on: June 02, 2007, 03:24:19 AM
Production Note: The audio quality on this one wasn't up to your usual high standards.  There was a background hiss that made it difficult to listen to, especially when the reader whispered. 

As for the story idea, I liked the idea a lot.  I wasn't quite sure where it was going at first, it seemed to meander a little.  This wasn't so much a horror story in my opinion but rather an episode of the twilight zone.
i didnt find it too hard to listen to, but yea there is the constant background hiss and sometimes an echoed voice

i agree with ya on the story, not scary or horrific, i was trying to place it and i think you hit the nail on the head with twilight zone

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eytanz

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Reply #3 on: June 02, 2007, 05:11:28 AM
There a couple of cases where the reader mispronounced a word and doubled back, repeating the line - coupled with the aforementioned audio issues, I'm wondering if maybe a pre-editing version was uploaded this week.

As for the story itself, I thought it had a bit too much build-up, and then it was a bit rushed once the magic man came into play. It would have been a bit better if there was just a little more information on what exactly he did - if he combined two people into one, and at the end, the junkie gets her life back, what happened to the artist? What was it that the magicman was planning to do with the girl? How trustworthy is he that he will restore her anyway? I don't think the story necessarily needed to answer to all these questions, but it would have perhaps been a bit more compelling towards the end if it had at least answered some, either explicitly or suggestively.



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Reply #4 on: June 06, 2007, 11:06:54 PM
Yah, narration and hiss was distracting and the story lost my interest half way through.



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Reply #5 on: June 07, 2007, 12:11:27 PM
For me, the bone chilling horror wasn't the magic man, or the though of going back to the needle, it was describing the life of a junkie. It gave me chills. :)

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mommakind

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Reply #6 on: June 07, 2007, 10:55:35 PM
I really enjoyed the sound this week.  The almost far away sound, like she was narrating from a phone line overseas really sort of amplified the solitiude, the seperation that Betsy felt.  Even the delivery seemed, cold, almost mechanic.  I agree I had a hard time when she had to go back for a few words, it was hard to follow, but overall it was an interesting reading. 

The story was good as well.  Although I felt more horror at the matter-of-fact way she spoke of the addiction and prostitution. 



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Reply #7 on: June 23, 2007, 02:00:07 PM
This is the first Escape Artist production where I was really unimpressed by the sound.  The hiss didn't bother me, because I was listening to it through a set of small travel speakers.  The reading, however, was lazy, and the editing was sloppy.

It sounded like this was the first time she had read it.  There was no flow to her reading, she mispronounced words in every sentence, and she stuttered (Not the medical problem kind, the I haven't read it before kind).

The story was pretty good, but because of these problems it's not a keeper.



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Reply #8 on: March 04, 2009, 10:08:03 PM
The reading ... was lazy, and the editing was sloppy.

It sounded like this was the first time she had read it.  There was no flow to her reading, she mispronounced words in every sentence, and she stuttered (Not the medical problem kind, the I haven't read it before kind).

Worst.  EA reading.  EVER.

Got around to listening to this one the other night.  Any enjoyment I might have gotten out of the story was utterly destroyed by the reader.  Nash said it all in the quote above.

Normally I don't have a problem listening at bedtime, but this one made me absolutely soporific.  I only got about twelve minutes in on the first night; last night I finished it but couldn't remember a thing about it because I kept dozing into half-sleep.  I listened to the last fifteen minutes again this morning (from meeting Magic Man) and rate the story passable ... but again, utterly destroyed by the reader.

TRIVIA: The sound quality was the least of the problems -- but I found myself thinking that the reader was using a noise gate, since there was background hiss during the reading, and utter silence in the pauses between.

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Reply #9 on: September 24, 2009, 04:52:59 PM
I found the repeated sentences really distracting.  I kept on wondering if it was written that way, but there didn't seem to be any plot reason for it, so I'm assuming not.  Then, later on, when she's told to repeat the mantra, I had decided by that time that repeating sentences should be discarded, and that one turned out to be intentional.

The buildup was a little too slow on this one, the interesting part for me was the magic man, and once it got to him it was just so rushed.  I didn't get why he is willing to back out on the deal so easily--what's in it for him?  Unless his offering her daughter back is just metaphor for getting her hooked and he intends to keep her daughter?  I wasn't really sure.



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Reply #10 on: October 01, 2009, 11:56:58 AM
Agreed all, the reading was a bit on the sub-standard side. I know it's hard and all, but still...

Story was meh for me.


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Reply #11 on: August 17, 2010, 07:49:39 PM
I just started this one and before I go on I had to mention something about the first line: "Betty [Bitty?] figured people who said San Francisco never got cold didn't sleep on the ground..."

WHAT?!  Who on earth says San Francisco never gets cold?!  It's freezing all the time!  I lived in the Bay Area for 15 years and there is not one person I ever met who would disagree!  That line really, really threw me.

As far as the rest of the story goes: I thought it plodded along.  The beginning was much too long and the concept as a whole was not really all that interesting or engaging.  Also: what was up with the double sentences?  Was that an error in audio editing?  Or was it part of the story?  I rarely say this, but the audio also really bugged me.  Made the ending very difficult to listen to.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2010, 08:29:19 PM by Millenium_King »

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Reply #12 on: August 18, 2010, 01:51:45 PM
WHAT?!  Who on earth says San Francisco never gets cold?!  It's freezing all the time!  I lived in the Bay Area for 15 years and there is not one person I ever met who would disagree!  That line really, really threw me.

Good point.  I've never lived in SF, or even California.  But I've visited LA, and especially on the coast it can be damned cold from the constant wind off the ocean--the first time we went we visited Santa Monica in shorts, and ended up buying sweatshirts from a street vendor to keep from freezing our giblets off.



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Reply #13 on: August 19, 2010, 03:48:48 AM
Over on this end of the country, the general perception of California is of endless balmy days and sunshine, since we only go there on vacation in the summer anyway.  So tourists, at least, might well claim that San Francisco never got cold.



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Reply #14 on: November 09, 2010, 10:17:07 PM
He didn't actually say it, but an apocryphal Mark Twain quote goes: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

I won't get into the repeated sentences that should have been edited out, as that has been well covered by others, though I do wonder why it remains that way even to this day.

I actually liked this story, which is unusual for a Eugie Foster story.  Yes, it was a bit hopeless in tone, but I suppose that's what relegated it to Pseudopod rather than one of the other podcasts.  It didn't strike me as a "scary" story, as others have also stated, but I do like the "Twilight Zone" category.

The writing was very descriptive and vivid.  To squeamish effect during the early part of the story, but used nicely for beauty later, and even enough to make me sad about the death of her friend Mike, thanks to the description given when Bitty viewed his corpse in the morgue.  It was enough to justify her sudden change of mind leading to her going to see the magic man.

I enjoyed the revelations near the end of who the rich man was and how things ended up, though I could see the problem with her daughter coming.  What I didn't understand was that I thought her daughter was college-aged from her description near the beginning, but she turns out to be a child on the news.



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Reply #15 on: June 28, 2016, 06:22:45 PM
I agree with others about the editing here. Also, one last note on the reading that distracted me far more than anything else mentioned here: the narrator would often read part of a sentence in a rushed way, very fast and fluid, then stumble over a word or phrase and go slower for a bit before returning to the rushed pattern as before. My advice would be for her to slow down. Other stories read in Pseudopod by other narrators do this to prevent stumbling or mispronouncing words. It also helps us as listeners to process what's happening in more detail. This reading made the story feel less authentic and I ended it with this overall feeling that some areas were not covered well. Not because they weren't, but because I was distracted by the reading and at times lost interest while listening.