Author Topic: PC087: Narrative Of A Beast’s Life  (Read 15432 times)

Heradel

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on: January 19, 2010, 12:43:33 PM
PodCastle 87: Narrative Of A Beast’s Life

by Cat Rambo

Read by Paul Jenkins (of the Rev Up Review)

We were taken to a market in a city. None of us had ever seen such a place before and there were sights and sounds and smells such as I had never witnessed. The buildings were made of clay brick, laid together so snugly that no mortar or cement was necessary. Some buildings were built on top of each other, and stairs meant for no Centaur led up and down the outside.

Here we were sold, each to separate masters. Mine fastened me in a coffle with other beings: a Sphinx of that city that had committed murder, two Djinni, and a snake-headed woman. Oxen drew the cart to which we were shackled, and chained on it was a Dragon, not a large one, but some eight feet in length. A small herd of goats marched behind us in turn, intended for the Dragon’s sustenance.

Rated PG: Contains the Enslavement of Magical Creatures
« Last Edit: February 02, 2010, 05:43:59 AM by Heradel »

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Reply #1 on: January 20, 2010, 05:29:47 PM
Regarding the intro:
Did I miss something?  Which story was it that people said was a historical with no fantasy elements?  For my part, I think the only story I'm on record saying didn't belong on Podcastle was "It Takes a Town", which some of us agreed was more of a sci-fi tale written by somebody devoid of the most rudimentary knowledge of science...



So which one was the pure historical?

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Reply #2 on: January 21, 2010, 03:09:48 AM
Really? Wow, I know I was playing it straight, but I thought my sarcasm was turned up to 11. :-\


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Reply #3 on: January 21, 2010, 03:43:16 AM
Really? Wow, I know I was playing it straight, but I thought my sarcasm was turned up to 11. :-\

I thought you might be exaggerating actual feedback, not fabricating it entirely. :)

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Reply #4 on: January 21, 2010, 06:21:45 AM
I certainly caught the sarcasm in the intro, but still... you were more or less right - it was just a history story.  In my opinion the allegory was pretty transparent and ultimately didn't add much.  Don't get me wrong, yes, it was fantasy - and it was also a good solid story.  But it was a story about a slave, not a centaur.  I sometimes forgot to visualize the protagonist as a centaur at all, and just pictured - well, a black guy.  Story didn't change much at all.  His centaur-ness didn't add much to it.

Now, if you want a real fantasy alternate history of slavery in America, pick up Steven Barnes' excelent novel Lion's Blood.  There, instead of "magical creatures" (who's magical nature is irrelevant to the story) being the slaves, it's Europeans.  Being enslaved by the dominant African nations that are colonizing the new world.  It's a straightforward role reversal, but the differences in the cultures is throughly explored and the world looks very different than our actual history.  Great stuff.

But back to this story... as I said, it was good.  Put you in the shoes of the slave very well.  I just kind of wish the fact that they were horseshoes was a little more explored.



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Reply #5 on: January 21, 2010, 05:04:45 PM
Really? Wow, I know I was playing it straight, but I thought my sarcasm was turned up to 11. :-\

I thought you might be exaggerating actual feedback, not fabricating it entirely. :)

Well, to some degree, I was exaggerating and fabricating. I like to bullshit!  :D 

There actually have been a couple stories that have been criticized for being more historical fiction than fantasy, but the intro was more a reaction to the "This isn't fantasy" theme that occasionally pops up here.


Peter Tupper

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Reply #6 on: January 23, 2010, 06:09:23 AM
This story was a pastiche of the works of Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs and other slave narratives and abolitionist works, just with a thin layer of fantasy on the outside. I honestly forget that the narrator was supposed to be a centaur. This puts it on the same level as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: a cute variation on classic material that adds nothing and detracts from the source.

If you want to put this story on trial for not being fantasy, I say, "Not guilty on a technicality."

Now, compare this to Cat Rambo's "'I’ll Gnaw Your Bones,' the Manticore Said". That took familiar fantasy tropes, applied lessons learned from real world history about treatment of animals and supposed "inferior" races, and raised some very disturbing questions about how this would work. That was a memorable and meaningful story.

This story is putting Roots in a pantomime centaur suit.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2010, 06:19:15 AM by Peter Tupper »



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Reply #7 on: January 23, 2010, 06:24:31 AM
Now, compare this to Cat Rambo's "'I’ll Gnaw Your Bones,' the Manticore Said". That took familiar fantasy tropes, applied lessons learned from real world history about treatment of animals and supposed "inferior" races, and raised some very disturbing questions about how this would work. That was a memorable and meaningful story.

Looking back at the list of Cat Rambo stories that EA has run, I've been lukewarm on most of them (and I've just plain disliked a couple).  But "Manticore" was a notable exception.

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Reply #8 on: January 24, 2010, 07:49:15 AM
I enjoyed the story quite a bit.  I get what others are saying about the similarities to real historical slave narratives, but I never really forgot that he was a centaur.  Or that he was transported with griffins, dragons, and ghouls (oh my).  I think the story paid homage to the works mentioned above and effectively brought them to remembrance (and they should be remembered).  However, I also feel the fantasy elements brought attention to it with a new, fresh perspective.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2010, 08:57:49 PM by Swamp »

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Reply #9 on: January 25, 2010, 04:06:50 PM
I kept forgetting he was a centaur as well, because it wasn't really relevant to anything that happened.  And the story was just overly long for its content.  Each numbered section wasn't particularly different than the one that came before it.

For the human vs. beast philosophical question, I thought Cat Rambo did much better with "I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said"



eytanz

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Reply #10 on: January 25, 2010, 08:19:14 PM
Is this story fantasy? Only in the shallowest, least interesting of senses. The fact is, as others pointed out above me, the fantasy elements played no role beyond the cosmetic, and the end result is a by-the-numbers account of a slave's life, a pale immitation of more powerful literature, with a thin veneer of fantasy painted above.

Slavery is a true horror of human history (and present), and there is a lot more that can and should be said about it. But this story made no attempt at that. 
« Last Edit: January 25, 2010, 08:22:49 PM by eytanz »



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Reply #11 on: January 25, 2010, 10:29:43 PM
This was mostly a downer for me, not redeeming in my mind. It went along sadly then stopped. On the long side too as someone else commented.



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Reply #12 on: January 28, 2010, 05:47:10 AM
I enjoyed the story a bit, but I do have to agree that the fantasy elements added almost nothing to a very straightforward slave's narrative.  I've read at least one of that genre (though it didn't stick with me very well) and this, while a nice example of that genre (which was, indeed, often fictionalized in order to sell more readily) didn't really need the fantasy creatures.  It's not much good to do an allegory that isn't... well, allegorical in any meaningful way.

This is obviously set in the same "world" as the Manticore story with the long title, but I have to say that it hardly feels like the same author writing it.  Manticore was resonant with interesting themes and complex interactions.  This was a straightforward bid for pathos, as subtle as a sledgehammer.  Manticore's resolution relied on the fantasy elements and on the crucial distinction between beast and man.  This story might as well have just replaced all the fantasy creature names with African tribes and it would have been a story of the early US. 



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Reply #13 on: January 28, 2010, 12:13:50 PM
I didn't forget that the centaur was a centaur.  Wasn't too hard.

I did like the Neil Gaiman quote regarding what makes fantasy.

I'm not particularly OCD about whether or not "fantasy" elements were more important than "real" elements or vice vice-versa.  Genre's are so you can organize books on a shelf.  The story is the thing, for me, and I enjoyed this one well enough.

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Reply #14 on: January 29, 2010, 09:42:12 PM
I was constantly distracted with the section titles.  Giving a summary at the start of each section simply made me look for each of the elements in the section, sometimes missing part of the story.  "The person said X, Y, and Z.  We hard about X and Y, now we are looking for event Z to happen", instead of just enjoying the story.

I also agree that the centaur portion had little to do with the story.  It did make it fantasy, but there was nothing really fantastical.  If he had been taught how to cast healing spells, that would at least have been something outside of our own world.

Who knows, maybe "centaur", "dragon", and the other names were just code words the article writer used in order to protect his location and situation.  I think, given the lack of any other fantastical elements, that a simple substitution of "new species" for "nationality" to protect the innocent could be claimed.  "I'm not African, I'm 'centaur', yeah, that's it."

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Reply #15 on: January 29, 2010, 09:53:38 PM
Who knows, maybe "centaur", "dragon", and the other names were just code words the article writer used in order to protect his location and situation.  I think, given the lack of any other fantastical elements, that a simple substitution of "new species" for "nationality" to protect the innocent could be claimed.  "I'm not African, I'm 'centaur', yeah, that's it."

In which case, I wonder who the article writer knew who needed to eat dead bodies to survive, or who died because they were too far away from their tree :P



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Reply #16 on: January 30, 2010, 12:55:27 AM
I was constantly distracted with the section titles.  Giving a summary at the start of each section simply made me look for each of the elements in the section, sometimes missing part of the story.  "The person said X, Y, and Z.  We hard about X and Y, now we are looking for event Z to happen", instead of just enjoying the story.

Such a style is better left to the printed page; I've read some old novels that have such summaries at the beginning of each chapter.  But it was clunky in audio form.

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Reply #17 on: January 30, 2010, 02:45:05 AM
Who knows, maybe "centaur", "dragon", and the other names were just code words the article writer used in order to protect his location and situation.  I think, given the lack of any other fantastical elements, that a simple substitution of "new species" for "nationality" to protect the innocent could be claimed.  "I'm not African, I'm 'centaur', yeah, that's it."

In which case, I wonder who the article writer knew who needed to eat dead bodies to survive, or who died because they were too far away from their tree :P

There are cannibalistic societies out there, and some people who have intense, crippling psychological attachments to a particular location.  I'm not saying that is how i feel about the story.  With a longer format, i expect the world could be fleshed out more.  I was just postulating different ideas.

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Reply #18 on: January 30, 2010, 03:09:22 AM
OK, this one was fantasy. Good.
The quote about defining fantasy. Loved it.
The narration. Great.
OH MY GOD IT'S A STORY ABOUT SLAVES WITH SOME CLEVER TWISTS ON THE PEOPLE!!! Who cares? 99% of the stories you will ever read/hear is some kind of lesson, or example, or whatever, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent/guilty. So, you gonna complain about every one of those? "Oooo, it was a thinly veiled retelling of X." They're ALL thinly veiled retellings. OK, not all, but most.

As to the story itself, I just wanted to go hang myself by the time it was over. Not enjoyable. Well written, well delivered, but not something I will revisit.

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Reply #19 on: January 30, 2010, 03:59:47 AM
OH MY GOD IT'S A STORY ABOUT SLAVES WITH SOME CLEVER TWISTS ON THE PEOPLE!!! Who cares? 99% of the stories you will ever read/hear is some kind of lesson, or example, or whatever, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent/guilty.

For me, it becomes a question of "Why bother?"  I'd quite honestly rather have heard a straight-up recounting of a slave's narrative than have the constant distraction of the fantasy elements that were never utilized for much of anything.



Talia

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Reply #20 on: January 30, 2010, 04:36:10 AM
I didn't find the fantasy elements distracting at all, personally.. I enjoyed them.



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Reply #21 on: January 30, 2010, 05:05:31 AM
I didn't find the fantasy elements distracting at all, personally.. I enjoyed them.

Let me clarify further and unnecessarily: The fantasy elements on their own were not distracting per se.  What I found distracting was the wondering of why the fantasy elements were there and what they added to the story. 



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Reply #22 on: January 30, 2010, 11:16:09 AM
So how many heal spells and lightning bolts from fingertips would make this better fantasy?

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eytanz

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Reply #23 on: January 30, 2010, 11:39:09 AM
So how many heal spells and lightning bolts from fingertips would make this better fantasy?

None.

It doesn't matter how many fantasy tokens the story contains; what matters is what use they are put to. Compare this to "Superhero Girl" - that story had nothing in it that was obviously fantasy, and everything that could have been fantasy had a non-fantasy explanation. But, this ambiguity - whether or not it is fantasy - was at the heart of the story. This story is full to the brim of obviously fantastic creatures, but, for me at least, it didn't feel like this was anything more than window dressing. Yeah, sure, the tree spirit on the boat would not have been possible in a realistic setting, but that was a minor story point, just one of a list of cruelties than were mostly all-too-realistic.

You know how, when little kids play with dolls and action figures, they often create stories that are totally unrelated to the nature of the figures? I remember being around 6 or 7, playing with the girl next door, with my lego figures, her barbie, and my brother's stuffed animals. Sometimes the lego guy and barbie were husband and wife and the purple bunny was their son, once I remember barbie being a doctor and the legos and animals her patients, and so forth. The stories we acted out and the characters acting them out were not particularly related to each other. That's sort of the vibe I got from this story. "Centaur" and "sphinx" were just random character traits. The only species that realy mattered was the humans, since this was a story about human cruelty.

To make this better fantasy, it doesn't matter how many fantasy elements are added, what would need to be added is a non-cosmetic function for them in the story. As has been pointed out several time in this thread, the same author, in the same (or very similar) setting, has succeeded in doing exactly that in the story "'I'll Gnaw Your Bones' said the manticore" (or whatever the accurate title was, I'm typing this from memory). Here, in my opinion at least, she failed at doing so.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2010, 11:41:15 AM by eytanz »



Talia

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Reply #24 on: January 30, 2010, 05:19:59 PM
I didn't find the fantasy elements distracting at all, personally.. I enjoyed them.

Let me clarify further and unnecessarily: The fantasy elements on their own were not distracting per se.  What I found distracting was the wondering of why the fantasy elements were there and what they added to the story. 

I guess it must just be a difference in how we read it or our preferences as readers, because those thoughts never occurred to me.. I thought the little details, regarding the tree nymphs or the ghouls for example, added plenty. As for the main protagonist, maybe not so much, but, IMHO, so what. :)



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Reply #25 on: January 30, 2010, 07:25:36 PM
*Points at what eytanz said

@Talia

Part of it is just how I read.  I like to examine the thematic and structural underpinnings of a story, and my favorite stories are the ones that use thematic and symbolic elements elegantly, where they are both part of the story AND working on a deeper level.  Here, the fantasy didn't go below the surface, hence my distraction as I dug deeper and deeper, looking for connections or layers and just not finding them.



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Reply #26 on: January 30, 2010, 11:17:24 PM
As to the story itself, I just wanted to go hang myself by the time it was over. Not enjoyable. Well written, well delivered, but not something I will revisit.

Perfectly sums up my feelings about the anime feature Grave of the Fireflies.  I don't think I care to have my heart stomped on in that way, a second time.

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Reply #27 on: February 01, 2010, 02:27:38 PM
For me, it becomes a question of "Why bother?"  I'd quite honestly rather have heard a straight-up recounting of a slave's narrative than have the constant distraction of the fantasy elements that were never utilized for much of anything.

That's pretty much how I felt.  Even though I tend to not be very interested in historical fiction, a story of a historically set slave's narrative would've followed pretty much the same path but would've been more powerful for having been set in a real time and place.  By simply changing species of the slaves, it made the story less compelling to me, which could've been remedied if the fantasy elements had had more impact (like in "I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said").  Also, since I heard that one first, it was written by the same author, and it tackled many of the same themes, this one suffered from the comparison.



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Reply #28 on: February 02, 2010, 10:24:47 PM
I appreciate the story's intentions, but I really think the author didn't go far enough for this not to be a gimmick.  A slave story with fantasy elements, so obviously a parable about European/American slavery in the 1800's, just felt really really preachy, and (to be honest) is teetering on the edge of being an insulting parody.  The felt like the author just played it safe and went with the "slavery is bad, really really bad, did I tell you how bad it was?", which pretty much no one would disagree with.  For most of human history, people have been in the business of enslaving, or forcing by military, economic, or social means others to undesirable work for them.  In fact, a lot of human slavery (human trafficking, sweatshops, etc) is happening right now.  Why not talk about one of those stories instead of ripping off Roots?  I mean, really?

The story itself was structurally sound.  The character was engaging, and the reading was entertaining enough.  I just wish it actually took some chances instead of being an After-school Special.



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Reply #29 on: February 04, 2010, 02:42:59 AM
The part headers should not have existed, they simply did not fit, and were at best, clunky, as was said earlier.  All in all, this story was the equivalent of a peanut butter sandwich.  Okay, filling, but it really didn't matter that it was on wheat bread instead of white bread.  Not very memorable.  As others have said, its Roots with a veneer of fantasy. 

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Reply #30 on: February 04, 2010, 11:18:19 PM
This story was a pastiche of the works of Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs and other slave narratives and abolitionist works, just with a thin layer of fantasy on the outside. I honestly forget that the narrator was supposed to be a centaur. This puts it on the same level as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: a cute variation on classic material that adds nothing and detracts from the source.

(snip)

This story is putting Roots in a pantomime centaur suit.

Well, I was going to make some sort of similar comparison, but much less educated-ly. Now I don't have to.

Look, I totally get that this is a fantasy story. It has mythical beings in it, see? Except that it didn't bring anything new to the genre, or anything new to the "slavery really sucked, and Europeans and Americans were great big douchebags for engaging in it" argument, either. The only thing I really got out of this story was a way to pass an hour of my 90-minute wait at the doctor's office today. (I think that last sentence belongs in the Pseudopod forums. I was on the hospital property for literally 2.5 hours, if you include the time in the parking garage.)

The reading was extremely dry. I realize that this is supposed to be some sort of newspaper account of the slave's... I mean, the beast's life. But I didn't really care about the beast at all. I did in the beginning, before I realized this was, as Peter Tupper said above, "Roots in a centaur suit". Once I figured it out, though, I stopped caring. I think a good telling of the story could have made this one better. Every actor brings something different to a role -- what if Sydney Pointier or Dennis Haysbert or Tracy Morgan or Kel Mitchell had played Kunta Kinte, instead of LeVar Burton? Similarly, I think with a different narrator, this story could have at least held my interest a little better and kept me from thinking "Oh, I get it now, it's one great big allusion to slavery in the American South" over and over again.

I got Dave's sarcasm right off, though as the story progressed, it was surprisingly spot-on.

Genre fiction has the power to make us look at bad things in new ways, and draw new conclusions we hadn't before about why or how they're bad. This story, however, made us look at a bad thing, squint at it a bit, and realize we already knew it was bad because we learned about it all through grade school.

(Note: non-American readers might have a different take on the allusion-to-slavery because they grew up without the experiences Americans had in the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent reparatory and educational efforts. But I think even they would have figured it out.)

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Reply #31 on: February 05, 2010, 12:19:32 AM
I rather liked the reading myself...



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Reply #32 on: February 11, 2010, 04:19:40 AM
Man. I shouldn't have listened to this story in the same weekend I decided to go to see Avatar to see what all the fuss was about.

Okay! I get it! Humans suck! Geez....

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Reply #33 on: February 11, 2010, 07:12:20 PM
I just didn't get into it at all... I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that I simply don't enjoy Cat Rambo's work; it's sad, but it happens, I suppose, that there will be writers that are repeatedly recommended to me whose output I just don't enjoy.



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Reply #34 on: February 25, 2010, 06:11:36 PM
Chalk me up as another listener who felt Rambo did a much better job of this topic with "I'll gnaw your bones, the manticore said".

With this story, all it really did was make me mad. I couldn't even finish it. Which, being a black person, isn't all that good, because while it's part of my own history, it all took place in the past. So what am I to do? Blame all white people now for what took place then? Shake my fist and demand restitution?

The problem with these "let's base a story on historical slavery" is that while it gets up one's dander, that's all it really does. I can promise myself to live a life that's better what my ancestors had, but that's pretty much it.

Now, if this story had been an allegory for the slavery that takes places today, I think it would have more of an impact. There would be discussion on how to advocate, what to do, how to channel all that anger into doing something. And maybe that was Rambo's point--to start thinking how slavery is done in today's times. But it wasn't done as effectively as it could.

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Reply #35 on: March 08, 2010, 12:52:17 AM
Out comes the sword of analysis again. Ugh... now there's story blood and guts all over the ground. Gross! Thanks people!

Similar chapter introductions were used by Jerome K Jerome in Three Men In A Boat and also by Connie Willis in To Say Nothing Of The Dog paying homage to Jerome. Is there some profound meaning to be gleaned from this?

I liked this one well enough and I thought Paul's narration was excellent as usual.

I have a deep fondness for sarcasm.

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  In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
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Reply #36 on: March 18, 2010, 02:20:12 PM
Hobart -- I think the headers are just a nineteenth-century literary convention, so their use here was a way of stylistically flagging the period.  I agree that they didn't work as well in audio format, though.

Compelling enough story, but I do think the compulsion of it arose from the historical basis: it's a slave narrative, slavery is bad, you'd need a heart of stone not to care.  As others have said, the fantastical elements didn't really affect the shape of the story.  There was a chance here to do something much riskier, I think -- to treat the various creatures as genuinely not human, a la the rhetoric used in historical 19c slavery, but not exactly beasts either, and then use that difference to explore some really uncomfortable ethical questions.  (I don't remember "Manticore" well enough to know if that story did what I'm talking about.)  Or if not that, something else that would make me think.  This story didn't tell me anything I didn't already know; it just used fantasy to tell me what I already did know.



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Reply #37 on: March 18, 2010, 08:13:38 PM
mbrennan --  ;D That's intersting. Thanks! Not especially profound though.  ;)

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
  In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
  For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.


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Reply #38 on: March 19, 2010, 01:17:03 PM
(I don't remember "Manticore" well enough to know if that story did what I'm talking about.) 

It did cover that ground a little more clearly.  The manticore was smart enough to be able to converse with people, but its handler still considered it a beast.  The discussion of frontal lobotomies to tame the fiercer beasts was downright chilling.



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Reply #39 on: March 19, 2010, 04:24:32 PM
I think the strength of "Manticore" compared to this also rests in part on the fact that in "Manticore," we were given a likeable, relatable protagonist who still holds the prevailing beliefs of her time and place(i.e. 'beasts' are not 'human,' and thus can be treated like animals.)  It's all the more horrifying when we see a kind person striving to be kind to the 'beasts' in her care and yet still taking these (to us) horrific actions in enslaving them and lobotomizing "troublesome" ones.  That and the complicated relationship between the old man and the elf woman made the problems seem very complex, with no easy answers.  The kindness/cruelty dynamic was much more mixed up and harder to sift into clear "right" and "wrong," whereas in "Narrative," the closest we get to a moral gray area is the protagonist's propensity for knocking up hot horse chicks and being kind of a deadbeat dad.  Otherwise, it's all stark black and white, with a sadistic master, downtrodden slaves, a loathsome "Uncle Tom" figure, etc.