Author Topic: EP261: Only Springtime When She’s Gone  (Read 29232 times)

Dave

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Reply #50 on: October 24, 2010, 10:49:09 PM
Look, I don't want to be cranky here, but...

Can we please be done with Persephone now?

Please?

have there been a lot of Persephone retellings lately?  No other obvious ones come to mind, but I've been mostly sticking to a few podcasts for fiction recently so it's entirely possible that I've missed them all.

Not recently, no, but there seem to be an awful lot of them overall.  Maybe I'm just oversensitive to the phenomenon because my reaction on first exposure to the myth was "What's a pomegranate?" rather than "Gee I hope lots of people decide to retell this with the details subtly changed so I can feel all clever when I figure out that it's really the story of Persephone again!"  I think I was especially annoyed by it this time because I had the great misfortune of getting the gimmick from the title alone.  The railroaded character actions and worldbuilding details were not enough to compensate for all the "H.D."s and "Miss. Sephone"s, and "Have Charon bring the car around"s.  For me.  Your mileage clearly may vary.

See, I missed all of those because of the audio format. The "Charon" that would have been a dead giveaway, I heard as "Sharon", and it just sailed right past me. =\

-Dave (aka Nev the Deranged)


gateaux

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Reply #51 on: October 25, 2010, 02:17:25 PM
On a side note; not sure why, but I pictured the setting to be like in Final Fantasy X.

Wow-  being a fan of FFX I have to listen to the story all over again.  :)


Haha awesome! I actually never beat it. Video games are my anti-talent or something



Unblinking

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Reply #52 on: October 25, 2010, 06:13:30 PM
On a side note; not sure why, but I pictured the setting to be like in Final Fantasy X.

Wow-  being a fan of FFX I have to listen to the story all over again.  :)


Haha awesome! I actually never beat it. Video games are my anti-talent or something

I think that's still my favorite in the series.  I loved the plot!  The final resolution had some weak points, but overall it was great.  :)



Maplesugar

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Reply #53 on: October 25, 2010, 07:29:47 PM
I used to sing "The Hymn of the Faith" in the shower for over a year....



Unblinking

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Reply #54 on: October 26, 2010, 01:58:18 PM
I used to sing "The Hymn of the Faith" in the shower for over a year....

Wow, that's a long shower!   :D



yicheng

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Reply #55 on: October 26, 2010, 04:23:11 PM
The story was fluffy and cute.  I enjoyed the reinvention of the old Greek Myth. The plot was predictable about half-way through, but it was still quite enjoyable.  It was a simple story, told me. I loved it for what it was.



Scattercat

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Reply #56 on: October 26, 2010, 05:30:52 PM
I used to sing "The Hymn of the Faith" in the shower for over a year....

Wow, that's a long shower!   :D

Yeah, well I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.



Gamercow

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Reply #57 on: October 28, 2010, 02:58:09 AM
I must be a dummard, because the myth references sailed right over my head, and even after the reveal, my opinion of the story did not change much, because that myth is not one that I remember fully.  :-\ I think, given 3 times the space, Eugie could have flexed the story muscles that we all know she has, and expanded upon the basics that this story puts forward.  Maybe she could have given the characters more depth, make them more likable, expanded on the world, etc.  As it is, I thought the story was okay, but not great, for all the reasons I list above. 

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Unblinking

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Reply #58 on: October 28, 2010, 01:37:44 PM
I used to sing "The Hymn of the Faith" in the shower for over a year....

Wow, that's a long shower!   :D

Yeah, well I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.

That's sound reasoning.  I suppose few people have, unless they experienced a coma, or happened to be Rip Van Winkle.



Talia

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Reply #59 on: October 28, 2010, 02:41:46 PM
Slightly off topic, but that's the third Rip Van Winkle reference Ive seen/heard/come across within the last 15 minutes. Completely separately of each other, in entirely different places.

That's just weird.



Unblinking

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Reply #60 on: October 28, 2010, 05:28:37 PM
Slightly off topic, but that's the third Rip Van Winkle reference Ive seen/heard/come across within the last 15 minutes. Completely separately of each other, in entirely different places.

That's just weird.

I like when that happens, so strange!  And I haven't seen any other references recently, so it's not that I just happened to be echoing the same references you saw.  :)



Dem

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Reply #61 on: October 28, 2010, 06:44:16 PM
Slightly off topic, but that's the third Rip Van Winkle reference Ive seen/heard/come across within the last 15 minutes. Completely separately of each other, in entirely different places.

That's just weird.

I like when that happens, so strange!  And I haven't seen any other references recently, so it's not that I just happened to be echoing the same references you saw.  :)
Keep quiet about that would you? Facebook is up for integrating your entire world and posting what it knows about your bowel habits on a 'Friends' wall somewhere you've never heard of  >:(

Science is what you do when the funding panel thinks you know what you're doing. Fiction is the same only without the funding.


eytanz

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Reply #62 on: October 28, 2010, 06:53:59 PM
Slightly off topic, but that's the third Rip Van Winkle reference Ive seen/heard/come across within the last 15 minutes. Completely separately of each other, in entirely different places.

That's just weird.

I like when that happens, so strange!  And I haven't seen any other references recently, so it's not that I just happened to be echoing the same references you saw.  :)
Keep quiet about that would you? Facebook is up for integrating your entire world and posting what it knows about your bowel habits on a 'Friends' wall somewhere you've never heard of  >:(

Are you sure you posted this at the right place? I'm not sure I see the relevance of your response to Unblinking's post.



Unblinking

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Reply #63 on: October 29, 2010, 02:18:34 PM
Slightly off topic, but that's the third Rip Van Winkle reference Ive seen/heard/come across within the last 15 minutes. Completely separately of each other, in entirely different places.

That's just weird.

I like when that happens, so strange!  And I haven't seen any other references recently, so it's not that I just happened to be echoing the same references you saw.  :)
Keep quiet about that would you? Facebook is up for integrating your entire world and posting what it knows about your bowel habits on a 'Friends' wall somewhere you've never heard of  >:(

Are you sure you posted this at the right place? I'm not sure I see the relevance of your response to Unblinking's post.

Me neither.  I thought it might be a joke, but if it is, I don't think I get it.



mbrennan

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Reply #64 on: November 13, 2010, 08:49:52 AM
The only reason I didn't immediately know it was a Hades/Persephone story was that I was distracted by HD's real name being "Haru," which is Japanese for "spring."  Probably not an accident, given the other things Eugie Foster has written, but it meant I kept watching to see if this was going to go a different direction.

Once I knew it wasn't, then what distracted me was trying to map things to the myth, and only sporadically succeeding.  As others have pointed out, the corporate strand of the plot -- buying Renewal, etc -- didn't ever, um, come to fruition (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun).  And if Soaces was supposed to be a mythical reference, it's obscure enough, or the name has been altered enough, that I couldn't recognize it -- and I'm the sort of Greek mythology geek who used to be able to name all of the Seven Against Thebes.  Trying to figure him out, and the Renewal thing, was again a distraction, and the story's own structure wasn't compelling enough to pull me back in.  A retelling doesn't have to match the myth precisely, but where it diverges, I need a clear sense of what Other Thing the story is trying to do, and that didn't happen here.



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Reply #65 on: December 14, 2010, 04:17:36 PM
Sharon = Charon ... I totally missed that one.

my reaction on first exposure to the myth was "What's a pomegranate?"

Answer: Delicious.
- a lot of work to enjoy.
- the original main ingredient of Grenadine syrup.
- a better candidate for being the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Book of Genesis than an apple.

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