Author Topic: PC099: The Hag Queen’s Curse  (Read 17767 times)

Portrait in Flesh

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Reply #25 on: April 19, 2010, 08:49:59 PM
I thought the writing was very evocative of time and place, though I did have Warlock flashbacks a few times.

Yeah, at the point where Rogers asked Kat whether she was good or evil, I immediately thought to myself "a goodly woman does not paint herself."

I've been accused of a bad pun or two, but yowch.  They may have gone down a bit easier if, well, the characters weren't quite so shallow.  Maybe shallow isn't the right word...underdeveloped, maybe.  Just couldn't really get hooked into them. 

Kind of like that Buffy episode (I may be quoting apocryphally here; I never watched the show) where she's fighting the vampire and he loses track of time but then gets fried when she opens the curtains... or did she open the curtains, make him laugh at her, then stab him?

I just saw this recently (it's the 2nd episode, I believe).  Buffy's fighting the vamp, and then breaks a window behind him telling him he's forgotten that it's morning.  The vamp starts cowering and screaming, and then stops when he realizes it's still dark outside.  Buffy ends by saying he's forgotten that it's morning...in about 9 hours.

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danooli

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Reply #26 on: April 19, 2010, 09:57:25 PM
wow, i was pretty entertained by this story.   i laughed, i worried, i reminisced.  I do love and did live the 80's "new wave" scene though, so that colored my opinions i'm sure. 

That said, i did find it rather convenient and rather inexplicable that Kat was a "hag."  Really?  Where didthat come from?  I think I'd be able to enjoy a longer length version of this story, with more time spent in the distant past.



Talia

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Reply #27 on: April 19, 2010, 10:41:26 PM
wow, i was pretty entertained by this story.   i laughed, i worried, i reminisced.  I do love and did live the 80's "new wave" scene though, so that colored my opinions i'm sure. 

That said, i did find it rather convenient and rather inexplicable that Kat was a "hag."  Really?  Where didthat come from?  I think I'd be able to enjoy a longer length version of this story, with more time spent in the distant past.

It came from the fact that she was a Goth and was wearing a pentagram (pentacle?).



danooli

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Reply #28 on: April 20, 2010, 10:59:48 AM
wow, i was pretty entertained by this story.   i laughed, i worried, i reminisced.  I do love and did live the 80's "new wave" scene though, so that colored my opinions i'm sure. 

That said, i did find it rather convenient and rather inexplicable that Kat was a "hag."  Really?  Where didthat come from?  I think I'd be able to enjoy a longer length version of this story, with more time spent in the distant past.

It came from the fact that she was a Goth and was wearing a pentagram (pentacle?).
it was rather unclear though.  if it were simply the case of a goth girl being a witch, then I had a lot of friends who would have fit the bill back in school...



Talia

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Reply #29 on: April 20, 2010, 01:26:37 PM
wow, i was pretty entertained by this story.   i laughed, i worried, i reminisced.  I do love and did live the 80's "new wave" scene though, so that colored my opinions i'm sure. 

That said, i did find it rather convenient and rather inexplicable that Kat was a "hag."  Really?  Where didthat come from?  I think I'd be able to enjoy a longer length version of this story, with more time spent in the distant past.

It came from the fact that she was a Goth and was wearing a pentagram (pentacle?).
it was rather unclear though.  if it were simply the case of a goth girl being a witch, then I had a lot of friends who would have fit the bill back in school...

I would think most people from the 1700's (or 1800's, whichever) would consider any modern day Goth very witchlike, yeah.



Unblinking

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Reply #30 on: April 20, 2010, 01:34:20 PM
Portrait in Flesh:  I love your avatar.  Hello Cthulhu Kitty!



ridiculouslee

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Reply #31 on: April 20, 2010, 08:05:29 PM
So hanging around with gay people gives you magical blood and dominion over men's souls?

Awesome, I'll keep that in mind.

I think it's more the fact that Kat was born with the open mind, wit, creativity, and all around fierceness that most fag hags possess that makes her magical. Not just the fact that she hangs around gay people. But I'm sure you already knew that!

But hey! I really enjoy that gay men are sometimes referred to as "fairies" (even though it's supposed to be an insult) because I think the title kind of fits fact that we tend to be more stylish, well groomed, and artistically inclined than the average straight man. So I guess if you're a woman who hangs around a bunch of fairies, a little magic is bound to rub off.  ;)



alllie

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Reply #32 on: April 25, 2010, 12:15:07 AM
I thought this story was great. I'm rather shocked so many people seem to disagree.

Because indeed what's not to love about time travelling, body-stealing pirates? hehe. :)

I thought it was just a really fun story.

I too thought it was a lot of fun. I feel sorry for the people who couldn't enjoy it.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2010, 12:17:33 AM by alllie »



mbrennan

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Reply #33 on: April 25, 2010, 12:22:59 AM
Count me among those for whom this one didn't work.  I was more interested in the opening scene (though I agree with Unblinking that the prose there was too heavily embroidered -- I might have been able to skip past all the adjectives on the page, but in audio they just kept slowing down the action), and the notion of an alt-hist America where the Navy employs warlocks.  Then the leap to Ultima Thule, which seems to have been both the future *and* an alternate timeline, given that naval warlocks aren't treated as a known bit of history.  I kind of felt like that element would have been stronger if it had been just future, not also alternate.

As for the '80s part . . . maybe it's that I'm too young to have really good nostalgia for the period?  Things that might have been evocative weren't.  And the characters, while okay, were a lot less interesting to me than the original set.  It picked up again once Kat went outside and saw Jeff "beating up Mozart" (which was, admittedly, a fun description), but all the stuff prior to that felt like a detour to me, asking me to care about their plans to get away to San Francisco when I wanted to know more about the pirate and the warlock.

Finally the ending, which was definitely too pat.  I didn't like Brady being offered up as a sacrificial lamb of sorts, I didn't like Kat's obsession with the boots, and her role as "hag" missed the target of "awesome parallelism" and instead hit "well, that's convenient."  My take was that she *did* have magic powers, not just that she convinced the guys to obey her -- but where did that come from?  She's got the telepathy thing with Jeff, but that never really justified itself to me; it was just a way for her to know he was possessed.  Sure, she dresses like a goth, but she denies being a witch, so clearly she doesn't work for her power.  Then where did she get it?  Just coincidence?  Or from her identity as a "fag hag"?  It might have worked in a story about half the length of this one, where wordplay can be enough to hold the ending together, but not in this case.

Which is a shame, because time-traveling body-hopping pirates and naval warlocks and such sounded like a really fabulous premise.  But the result didn't hang together enough for me.  I enjoyed it somewhat while listening, but the more I thought about it afterward, the less satisfied I was.



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Reply #34 on: April 26, 2010, 01:57:43 PM
I guess I'm one of the few who liked this one, which surprises me a lot. I felt it was a nice time traveling mix with the right amount of magic applied. Christiana's reading was awesome as always and really helped bring the characters across, if one is going with a solo read.

I felt the puns and jokes were well played. Too much of the fantasy I've listened to and read lately is serious, or depressing, or "trying to analyze the social structure in the story which mirrors the present day". And all of that heavy thinking lightly coated with a fantasy finish grates on my nerves. While some of the puns were groan worthy, and there were a few problems with answering all of the loose ends on how and why things happened the way they did, I feel that having a lighthearted story with some humor in it gives fantasy fans a break.

It was a breath of fresh air in this genre.

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Reply #35 on: April 29, 2010, 03:19:30 PM
I'm in the middle of listening to it now. I keep stopping every few minutes because...I'm sorry...I'm just laughing too hard. I find this story hilarious--I think mainly because of Christiana's reading of it. Her depictation of Brady is so f*cking rad. And I just got to the part where Kat gushes about the boots, and when she sees the skulls and crossbones...RAPTURE!!!  I'll have to check out her other stuff now.

I think the reason why I like this is because I'm part of the 80s culture, and I've been in situations where you hang out with people you sort of care about at places that are dumps because there's no where else to go.

Okay, back to listening...as soon as I hit rewind so I can hear Kat gush over the boots again. ::giggle::

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stePH

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Reply #36 on: May 07, 2010, 03:34:02 PM
I enjoyed this story, though the haters do have valid criticisms of it.

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StopYodelingNgargling

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Reply #37 on: May 30, 2010, 03:31:59 AM
While I enjoyed this story I couldn't help thinking, "Will this be a Syfy Original Someday?"



Portrait in Flesh

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Reply #38 on: May 30, 2010, 03:46:02 AM
While I enjoyed this story I couldn't help thinking, "Will this be a Syfy Original Someday?"

Oh, man, harsh.   ;D

"Boys from the city.  Not yet caught by the whirlwind of Progress.  Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs." --The Beast of Yucca Flats


drworm

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Reply #39 on: June 03, 2010, 10:09:07 PM
While I enjoyed this story I couldn't help thinking, "Will this be a Syfy Original Someday?"

Oh, man, harsh.   ;D

Oh wow, harsh but true



Listener

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Reply #40 on: June 04, 2010, 09:08:29 PM
While I enjoyed this story I couldn't help thinking, "Will this be a Syfy Original Someday?"

Oh, man, harsh.   ;D

Oh wow, harsh but true

Hey, if it is, that means the author got paid good money for the rights. Even the people whose stories are optioned for SyFy originals probably make a nice chunk of cash.

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Unblinking

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Reply #41 on: June 17, 2010, 04:35:44 PM
While I enjoyed this story I couldn't help thinking, "Will this be a Syfy Original Someday?"

Oh, man, harsh.   ;D

Oh wow, harsh but true

Hey, if it is, that means the author got paid good money for the rights. Even the people whose stories are optioned for SyFy originals probably make a nice chunk of cash.

I doubt I'd turn down a check from SyFy, but I don't know that I'd put it on my resume if I was the one responsible for inflicting "Mega Piranha" on the general public.



Portrait in Flesh

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Reply #42 on: June 17, 2010, 04:43:29 PM
While I enjoyed this story I couldn't help thinking, "Will this be a Syfy Original Someday?"

Oh, man, harsh.   ;D

Oh wow, harsh but true

Hey, if it is, that means the author got paid good money for the rights. Even the people whose stories are optioned for SyFy originals probably make a nice chunk of cash.

I doubt I'd turn down a check from SyFy, but I don't know that I'd put it on my resume if I was the one responsible for inflicting "Mega Piranha" on the general public.

I should be ashamed to admit that Chupacabra: Dark Seas is, IMO, a crackin' good movie.

But I have no shame.

"Boys from the city.  Not yet caught by the whirlwind of Progress.  Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs." --The Beast of Yucca Flats


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Reply #43 on: June 18, 2010, 01:45:35 PM
I should be ashamed to admit that Chupacabra: Dark Seas is, IMO, a crackin' good movie.

But I have no shame.

I actually liked Tin Man, partly because I'm a rabid Ozophile, and partly because Zooey Deschanel is my Hollywood girlfriend.  Alice had some cool elements, but overall fell kind of flat, which is a shame because my love for Wonderland is on par with my love for Oz.

So I'm not saying they can't produce anything that I enjoy.  Just that they really need to stop making movies like Mega Piranha--it's embarrassing.  And they need to change their name back to Sci Fi.



Listener

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Reply #44 on: June 18, 2010, 02:50:37 PM
I should be ashamed to admit that Chupacabra: Dark Seas is, IMO, a crackin' good movie.

But I have no shame.

I actually liked Tin Man, partly because I'm a rabid Ozophile, and partly because Zooey Deschanel is my Hollywood girlfriend.  Alice had some cool elements, but overall fell kind of flat, which is a shame because my love for Wonderland is on par with my love for Oz.


I liked Caterina Scorcone (sp) as Alice. She's a good enough actress, and now she's probably going to be a regular on Private Practice. But yeah, Tin Man was better than Alice by far. Alice just didn't make enough sense.

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Unblinking

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Reply #45 on: June 21, 2010, 05:21:44 PM
I actually liked Tin Man, partly because I'm a rabid Ozophile, and partly because Zooey Deschanel is my Hollywood girlfriend.  Alice had some cool elements, but overall fell kind of flat, which is a shame because my love for Wonderland is on par with my love for Oz.


I liked Caterina Scorcone (sp) as Alice. She's a good enough actress, and now she's probably going to be a regular on Private Practice. But yeah, Tin Man was better than Alice by far. Alice just didn't make enough sense.
[/quote]

I very much liked Caterina as well.  Actually I didn't have trouble with the casting in general, I liked Hatter as well, and it's always fun to see Tim Curry drop in and Kathy Bates is born to play crazy.  The inclusion of the Walrus and the Carpenter was kind of neat, I've always enjoyed that poem, especially after the opening discussion at the beginning of the movie Dogma.

But yeah, the plot itself was pretty bleh.



Portrait in Flesh

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Reply #46 on: June 25, 2010, 02:54:27 PM
So I'm not saying they can't produce anything that I enjoy.  Just that they really need to stop making movies like Mega Piranha--it's embarrassing.

So I take it that Mega Python vs. Gatoroid won't be your cup of tea?

"Boys from the city.  Not yet caught by the whirlwind of Progress.  Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs." --The Beast of Yucca Flats