Author Topic: PC167: Portage  (Read 13523 times)

stickybit

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 2
Reply #25 on: August 03, 2011, 11:24:32 PM
I enjoyed this story and reading the thoughtful comments.  This story was daughter’s decision, the resulting events, and the Father not having a say in the matter.  When tragedy strikes a loved one, many say “I would trade placed if I could”.  Well, would you?



eytanz

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6109
Reply #26 on: August 21, 2011, 02:32:49 PM
Having just listened to this story, I find myself rather on the fence about it. Or, more accurately, I have a mixed reaction.

I was confused about the relationship between the retainer and the father. On the one hand, like Scattercat, I took the mother's words at the end, and the father's decision to follow in the retainer's footsteps, to mean that the two were lovers. I could reconcile that with his hatered of the women in the family, as he may well have resented them as competitors. But I could not have reconciled it with the breaking of the bowl - even if it was accidental, why did he send the daughter to do a task that (in his mind) inevitably would result in damnation for the father? He could have given her another bowl, even if that was less respectful. And it was clear he already had command of the household, regardless of the outcome of the ritual. The breaking of the bowl and the girl's ascent without it meant condemning her to death.

The only option I can see is that everyone in this thread is correct - he was the gay lover, but the father's love to him was one sided, and he was always a gold-digger. Once the father was gone, he seized the opportunity.

So then, I ended up seeing him as unmitigatingly evil. The rest of them - the mother, the father, the daughter, even the priests - seem to be far more understandable. They live in a screwed up society but are acting by its rules without deliberate malice. The daughter is a victim, but in this society, it seems women are trapped - they will be punished for obeying the rules, by being essentially slaves, and they will be punished for definace. The father, too, did not seem to me to be inherently evil - I don't think he had any choice about taking over his daughter's body, especially once the priests essentially sent her soul to the sea instead of his. He didn't seem to appreciate his daughter's sacrifice, but then he didn't seem to be able to do much about it, either.

So, basically, it seems this story is about how flawed characters in an opressive society. But I think it left too many threads too obscure to really make it relatable. I had to struggle to reconstruct the view of the story I detailed above, and it's clearly not what everyone came up with. And struggling to understand the story was a distraction from actually being able to empathize with the struggles depicted in it.



LaShawn

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 550
  • Writer Mommies Rule!
    • The Cafe in the Woods
Reply #27 on: August 30, 2011, 09:40:31 PM
I agree with eytanz. The retainer definitely had issues. I think the father was indeed gay, but he didn't have that type of relationship with the retainer, or rather, he may have used the retainer for, ahem, certain urges, but there wasn't any love there. Strangely, I found myself empathizing with the father. He probably did care for the wife, though not in a wifely way, and he still winds up losing her. And though he grows incensed by the way the retainer treats his family, he winds up going after him because he doesn't know what else to do (and that would be an interesting story in itself--how would the retainer react when the father comes looking for him? Would he try to woo him back now that the father is younger, or would he try to take some sort of sick revenge?)

I found this story pretty tragic all around. Definitely no happiness here.

--
Visit LaShawn at The Cafe in the Woods:
http://tbonecafe.wordpress.com
Another writer's antiblog: In Touch With Yours Truly


Listener

  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 3187
  • I place things in locations which later elude me.
    • Various and Sundry Items of Interest
Reply #28 on: August 31, 2011, 04:13:11 PM
I liked the concept of the story -- soul-water, drinking the soul turns you into the person, the stuff at the end between Oris-in-his-daughter's-body and Oris's widow.

But I disliked a lot of the story as well. I mean, YES, we get it, women are second-class citizens in this universe, and YES, we get it, the retainer beats the crap out of her, and YES, we get it, that's a horrible thing and no person should have to go through it. But by showing the literal beatings and dwelling so heavily on them, it went from teaching the reader a lesson to just hurting the reader for no reason.

The "yolk" scene was too allegorical.

I didn't see any of the transgender subtext that others have commented upon. I mean, she drank the water, she became her father as a young man. Fine with me.

I did not catch Scattercat's "gay lover" angle. I saw it more like the retainer was a character like Jafar in Disney's Aladdin.

Overall, I didn't really like the story, but the worldbuilding was interesting.

"Farts are a hug you can smell." -Wil Wheaton

Blog || Quote Blog ||  Written and Audio Work || Twitter: @listener42


Fenrix

  • Curmudgeonly Co-Editor of PseudoPod
  • Editor
  • *****
  • Posts: 3996
  • I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.
Reply #29 on: September 01, 2011, 03:23:09 PM
Interesting worldbuilding, but not a likeable character in the bunch. I was halfway through when I reached my destination and never bothered finishing the story. Gotta miss some times.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #30 on: November 14, 2011, 10:00:42 PM
Very interesting ideas here, with the soulwater, the rituals thereof, and the taking over of one person by another, but I didn't really dig the story itself.

I didn't see the second man as the father's gay lover.  There seemed to be something strange there, but I thought he was the mother's lover, and that the killing of the father was to remove his competition.

I didn't think the father had any choice about whether he took her body or not.  It just seemed to be a consequence of the action.  You drink water, you'll have to pee.  You drink soulwater, the soul will take over your body.

But the story didn't really make me care about any of the characters.  It seemed like it was trying to give me some kind of lesson, but I never quite fathomed that lesson, and so I just go to sit through her misery and eventual dissolution.  Depressing, certainly, but there wasn't really anything to root for.  It was pretty clear fairly early on that she was screwed, and I never really felt like she had a chance to escape it, so what can I root for then?  I guess a painless end?  I dunno, nothing that I can think of.