Author Topic: EP259: The Lady or the Tiger  (Read 32266 times)

kibitzer

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Reply #50 on: October 07, 2010, 01:52:26 AM
The giant lizards are indeed a very nice touch. However, I found this one pretty average. The thing that threw me off the most is, why were they drinking milk? Why did they even have milk in the first place? (yeah yeah supply ship I know but still...)

I generally don't get moral dilemma stories -- what's the point? It's purely an intellectual exercise and you've no way of knowing how you'd really react in a given situation. I told one of my friends once I'd never kill someone (war, attack, etc). He posed the question: so if you had a gun and someone started killing your friends/relatives/whatever in front of you, you wouldn't shoot? Of course I said no, but how would I really know? You really, really cannot know unless you're in that situation.


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Reply #51 on: October 07, 2010, 01:43:28 PM
I still don't get how the brother was a "tiger", instead of just a terrorist, since presumably he hasn't been modified like the Tigers of the story. 

I think the idea was that the image of the tiger was forever entangled with terrorism.  It still seemed like a bit of a stretch within the story to reach the titular dilemma.



kiba

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Reply #52 on: October 10, 2010, 06:09:14 PM
I liked this story.  I am always impressed when an author can create so rich a history in such short a time.  I really felt like I had a good understanding of the world the author described.  I also don't think it was a simple choice for the protagonist. I think it was about more than just a choice between his brother and the lady.  Maybe he chose both the lady and the tiger.



kiba

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Reply #53 on: October 10, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
I liked this story.  I am always impressed when an author can create so rich a history in such short a time.  I really felt like I had a good understanding of the world the author described.  I also don't think it was a simple choice for the protagonist. I think it was about more than just a choice between his brother and the lady.  Maybe he chose both the lady and the tiger.



slic

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Reply #54 on: October 10, 2010, 08:18:30 PM
...there's a reason why photosynthetic plants don't usually walk around the earth, and it's not because they don't want to.

Can't let that one go without comment!! Plants want to walk around? I thought that was only triffids.
Maybe not all plants, but there have got to be some flowers in bed wanting to get up and see the real world, no? At least to get away from Mom's nagging for a little while.

I really didn't like this one.  I listened to it while walking the dog, and I really should get bigger headphones so that passers-by realize I'm not talking to/about them.  First I was pretty annoyed with the misinterpretation of the orginal story (nuff said - see MCWagner's comments) - for this, I venhemently expressed "You couldn't be more wrong!" And then was told to mind my own business by the nice couple in front of me.  When I popped out the earbud, all was understood (if not forgiven) :)
During the story the other comment that got me looked at questioningly - "Really, an accident? C'mon!"

Either way - can't recommend this one



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Reply #55 on: October 13, 2010, 02:33:30 AM
It's weird when a story can really make me dislike an author, but I think J.M. McDermott completely missed the point on the original story "The Lady or the Tiger." His story suffers as a result.

I'm not the first one to suggest this, but it isn't about the man's choice. It never was. It was about the semi-barbaric princess' choice. (I'll assume most people here have read the story, BTW.) It's one of the best studies in human motivation, at lest in my opinion. The person you love is going to be lost to you forever. How would you prefer to lose him? Have him die a horrible death or be forever out of your reach, married to your bitter rival? Granted, the original short story is a lot more eloquent than that, but it's essentially what "The Lady and the Tiger" boils down to. There is no answer in the story, because the answer isn't the point. The point is to have the reader ask him or herself "What would I do if I were in that situation?" Go on, read the story and try not to answer the question yourself. It's like trying to eat just one of those little pretzels.

McDermott's story, on the other hand, lacks any of the studies into humanity that made the original so compelling. There is some good world building, I will admit that, and if Apex and Escape Pod bought the story for the world-building then I think they made a good choice. Giant lizards, genetically mutated commandos, some good philosophical points about what planets lose in trade with other planets all really drew me in. But to compare the little brother's dilemma with the princess's in the original is almost blasphemy.

It's an agonizing decision to have to choose which person will live and which person will die. But it is not really comparable with the choice faced in the original "Lady or the Tiger." McDermott's little brother, Simsa, can best be compared to the princess in the story, NOT the man who must open the door. The question here is "Who shall I save?" not "What shall my lover's fate be?" As such, Simsa's dilemma is very different. The princess in the original (and by extent the reader) has to decide how self-sacrificing she is. Does she love the man enough to be happy when he is happy? Or would she rather if she can't have him, than no one can? Simsa, though, has to essentially choose who he loves best. It's a meaningful decision in the story, but it doesn't resonate with me at all. Partially this is because I think unrequited love is a universal experience, whereas saving either your brother or the woman who has been like a mother to you is much more character specific.

Secondly, McDermott's "Lady and the Tiger" dilemma fails because McDermott doesn't make the decision Simsa faces relatable to the reader. Yes, choosing between your surrogate mother and your brother would be a tough choice. But I think McDermott falls into the trap a lot of creators do when they try to do a remake that tops the original. He goes over the top, says, "You thought the original had a dilemma? No, THIS is a dilemma!" That's great, and I would hate to have to choose between saving my mom and my brother, but guess what? That's a dramatic, character-defining decision.  These kinds of impossible choices are faced often in stories, and they define the character when he or she makes them. Whether to let your lost love go gracefully or not is something universal, something the reader can relate to, and the author hammers that point home in the original "Lady or the Tiger," forcing us to put ourselves in the princess's position, over and over again. McDermott doesn't do that. He assumes that just describing the dilemma will work, and it doesn't. That was the whole point of the original "Lady and the Tiger," in fact--the thought process that went into making the choice.

That brings me to my third point. Remember how I said that decisions like this are what define a character? In the original, the characters are defined with very broad strokes and make very good cyphers for the reader (ever wonder why none of the characters in the original have names?). Here, even though Simsa is meant to be a cypher, he's too well-defined to be a good one. We've got a pretty good idea of his character and really, the story seems set up to be a defining moment in his life, not a study of the thought process that goes into his choice. By having him say, "I made my decision, but I'm not going to tell you what it was," it's cheating the reader. By the time we get to the dilemma Simsa faces, we're invested in the character. We want to know what choice he makes and how it affects him, but we don't get it. Consequently, the ending of the story feels like a cop-out.

With all this criticism I have, I feel I owe it to J.M. McDermott to suggest how the dilemma could have been improved. The first would have been to not have Simsa make a choice at all. Just end the story with him sitting, looking at the two bodies, deliberating which one he should save before the sun comes up. Heck, he could be dictating this to a sci-fi blog of some sort, asking us as the readers what we would do. He could delve into the reasons why he should save Jiri over Sheila. We've seen Jiri's dark side, so what about Sheila's? Because objectively, it seems as though you'd save the innocent who died in the crash as opposed to the would-be terrorist who caused it.

Secondly, play up the relationships between the three of them. Really twist the emotional knife. Examine how the relationships between the two survivors would change with the absence of the third. What would Simsa's parents say, for example?

Thirdly, what if Sheila had to choose between saving Simsa or Jiri? That'd be a definite dilemma, somewhat more comparable to the original. She's going to lose one of her charges, so which one would it be?

There's more criticism I have, but it's mostly superficial to the story. There's the very plot-driven way in which Jiri dies, the sudden revelation that Jiri is a "Tiger," which feels like a very forced reference, and a lot of extraneous pieces of the story like Guj Sarwar and, for that matter, even the giant lizards. Nice touches, but not really part of the story.

I have to admit, this story has soured me on reading McDermott's other works, which is kind of a shame. However, I am very fond of the original "Lady or the Tiger," and this story just can't compare.



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Reply #56 on: October 13, 2010, 01:40:32 PM
With all this criticism I have, I feel I owe it to J.M. McDermott to suggest how the dilemma could have been improved. The first would have been to not have Simsa make a choice at all. Just end the story with him sitting, looking at the two bodies, deliberating which one he should save before the sun comes up. Heck, he could be dictating this to a sci-fi blog of some sort, asking us as the readers what we would do. He could delve into the reasons why he should save Jiri over Sheila. We've seen Jiri's dark side, so what about Sheila's? Because objectively, it seems as though you'd save the innocent who died in the crash as opposed to the would-be terrorist who caused it.

You make a lot of good points, and I agree with most of them, but I don't think it would work as a blog entry at the point of decision--he has a time critical choice to make and he doesn't have time to blog about it (even if such a tech exists here), nor to wait for responses from blog readers.



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Reply #57 on: October 13, 2010, 06:10:29 PM

You make a lot of good points, and I agree with most of them, but I don't think it would work as a blog entry at the point of decision--he has a time critical choice to make and he doesn't have time to blog about it (even if such a tech exists here), nor to wait for responses from blog readers.

I was thinking more like an audio log, something that would be a mash-up of Star Trek meets Cloverfield, to connect the reader more emotionally with the narrator and give the whole thing a sense of immediacy. But I can see your point. It would be a stretch, and it would give the author some additional problems to work with.



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Reply #58 on: October 14, 2010, 03:16:01 PM
I was thinking more like an audio log, something that would be a mash-up of Star Trek meets Cloverfield, to connect the reader more emotionally with the narrator and give the whole thing a sense of immediacy. But I can see your point. It would be a stretch, and it would give the author some additional problems to work with.

To be fair, I had the same problem with Cloverfield.  The entire existence of the footage depended on one character being so immeasurably stupid that he's holding a camcorder to his face even while he is running from monsters and picking his way through unstable buildings.  It makes sense at the beginning with the party, and the first disasters, but later on it just goes beyond what even a stupid character ought to be doing.



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Reply #59 on: October 14, 2010, 05:36:25 PM
To be fair, I had the same problem with Cloverfield.  The entire existence of the footage depended on one character being so immeasurably stupid that he's holding a camcorder to his face even while he is running from monsters and picking his way through unstable buildings.  It makes sense at the beginning with the party, and the first disasters, but later on it just goes beyond what even a stupid character ought to be doing.


Wait...you're saying "stupid people" broke your willing suspension of disbelief?  ;)


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Reply #60 on: October 14, 2010, 05:44:32 PM
To be fair, I had the same problem with Cloverfield.  The entire existence of the footage depended on one character being so immeasurably stupid that he's holding a camcorder to his face even while he is running from monsters and picking his way through unstable buildings.  It makes sense at the beginning with the party, and the first disasters, but later on it just goes beyond what even a stupid character ought to be doing.


Wait...you're saying "stupid people" broke your willing suspension of disbelief?  ;)

Yup!  That and the fact that the plot hinged upon their cell phones calling through whenever they needed to--huge plausibility problems there.
Oh, and the fact that the camera jostling shown on the big screen made me want to barf.
I actually liked it for what it was, but those 3 big problems made it much less than what it could've been.



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Reply #61 on: October 23, 2010, 06:44:45 PM
Okay something else was bothering me about the story and I just figured it out. Simsa is telling the story not as it's happening or if it just happened but telling the story as a man talking about his youth. And I think he choose the Lady because this is a story on why he was justified in letting his brother die, even though he may have lied to himself. Before Simsa refers to his brother as a "Tiger", he shows how smart and caring his brother is and as other commentators have noted the brother doesn't seem to be the kind of idiot to be caught in an explosion of his own making.

But somewhere Simsa decided the girl is more important to him than his brother so he has to justify it. And I don't think it's pseudo-mommy love, I think it's his first big boy crush. Does he pine for her as a child for his mother, no he does as a lover. So he makes up the story that his brother is a "Tiger". What evidence does he have? That his brother was reading about it on his computer? That he was well informed about the Tiger rebellion as he was about most things? Does that mean if you read about serial killers you are one or want to be one? Well, not everyone. I think he even recons himself, because when he remembers talking to his brother, Simsa is more emotional, more childish, but when he refers to his brother as a "Tiger, he becomes smarter, more adult-like. Simsa even keeps repeating Sheila's name as a mantra to help justify his brother's death.

If this is what the writer was actually aiming at then it has more depth in it and I like it. It's not really a "The Lady, or the Tiger?" type story, but as many others and myself have pointed out before, if he meant what he said about the original story, then he missed the point and he couldn't write that type of story.

By the way, there was a sequel (or continuation as they called it back then) to “The Lady, or the Tiger?” , called  "Discourager of Hesitancy" http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/2006/02/discourager-of-hesitancy-by-frank-stockton/ It's cute, I wonder if he wrote it because people kept asking, "which was it?



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Reply #62 on: October 24, 2010, 09:30:17 PM
I liked this story... I would say it was ok, not great and not horrible either. The world building and fantasy elements were kind of loosely put together but I don't necessarily mind that. I really liked the ending; it was frustrating, but in a delicious sort of way.



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Reply #63 on: October 24, 2010, 09:41:50 PM
Similarly to what I just said in the commentary for episode 261 (which I'm commenting on out of order), this seemed like a story that would have been better served without the connection to an earlier piece. In this case, the connection was tenuous enough that it didn't make the story predictable, but, as several have commented above, it also doesn't really make sense - it's either a gross misinterpretation of the original story, or else it really doesn't borrow much from it but its name. Which is a real shame, in that the author created a really exciting world and a pretty good story to place in this world, and if he had just focused on that and avoided referencing his inspiration directly I would have been far more enthused about it.



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Reply #64 on: October 28, 2010, 01:50:32 AM
this story just bored me. i got really excited about people living on the backs of giant lizard, but the story was predictable and almost put me to sleep.  plus it was so cliche to just not tell which he picked. its kinda like ordering an ice cream sunday and getting just a sugar cookie instead, still good, just plain and uninteresting.

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