Author Topic: EP283: Grandfather Paradox  (Read 23692 times)

Listener

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Reply #25 on: March 16, 2011, 02:17:51 PM
How has no one commented on the author's awesome last name. I mean, come on... MANKILLER! I bet it was wicked cool to grow up with that last name.

I found the story pretty enjoyable up until we started swapping between Anns in 1955 -- I might have needed more differentiation between their voices. I also had difficulty with the ending; I needed more about WHY she and Martin ended up so happy together. Or maybe even a third Ann who went back yet again and screwed everything up. I don't think this story benefited from having a happy ending.

Regarding the differentiation between Anns, I do and don't agree with you.  Yes, it was hard to keep track of, and normally that might be a criticism of the reader as giving some kind of distinctness to each character makes everything easier to understand.  But how in the world would a reader differentiate between those two--they're the same person, I think they were a similar age even.  If their voices were differentiated then one might complain that they didn't sound similar enough to be the same person.  I don't think there was a better choice for the reader to make regarding their voices--that might just be a way that this story is not ideal for audio.


Dani Cutler pulled it off pretty well on the Dunesteef.

I kind of heard the difference -- angry Ann was a little faster, a little sharper. I just needed a little more differentiation, myself.

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Reply #26 on: March 16, 2011, 02:42:21 PM
I was thinking about that while listening. Different versions of the same person would, I think, have slightly different voices -- maybe one is rougher due to a hard life; maybe one is more aggressive in general outlook and so is louder; maybe one is pitched slightly higher. But such subtleties would be extremely difficult to pull off, and maybe harder to notice. The only other thing I can think of is left-channel right-channel stuff which might get annoying pretty quickly. Or maybe some light audio effects -- which might also get annoying.

That's true, the left-right might be a good trick.  Although it would have befuddled my listening before I got my car stereo iPod adapter.  Prior to that, I would listen with one earbud in and one out...  so trickery like that would be extremely confusing, as I'd only hear one end of the conversation and it might take me a while to realize that there was another thread going on in the other earbud.


It doesn't have to be channel-exclusive; it can be balanced so that the "left" is also present in the right channel but at a lower level, and vice-versa. Sounds that are all in one channel annoy the piss out of me. I dumped the Adultspace Childfree Podcast because every interview had Chris hard left and the interview subject hard right... I emailed her about the problem but it went uncorrected too long (I don't know if she ever worked it out... actually I think she got it right for one show, then went back to the old way.)

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Listener

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Reply #27 on: March 16, 2011, 06:42:41 PM
I dumped the Adultspace Childfree Podcast because every interview had Chris hard left and the interview subject hard right... I emailed her about the problem but it went uncorrected too long (I don't know if she ever worked it out... actually I think she got it right for one show, then went back to the old way.)

TV news producers usually do it that way -- VO track on the left, NAT/SOT on the right. Kind of a pain when, like me, you have a radio background and often listen to spoken word in the left ear only so you can hear what else is going on around you.

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Wilson Fowlie

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Reply #28 on: March 17, 2011, 01:51:27 PM
TV news producers usually do it that way -- VO track on the left, NAT/SOT on the right. Kind of a pain when, like me, you have a radio background and often listen to spoken word in the left ear only so you can hear what else is going on around you.

Mind expanding those acronyms for those of us not in The Biz? I'm guessing VO is Voice Over, but the others aren't as amenable...

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Listener

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Reply #29 on: March 17, 2011, 02:53:20 PM
TV news producers usually do it that way -- VO track on the left, NAT/SOT on the right. Kind of a pain when, like me, you have a radio background and often listen to spoken word in the left ear only so you can hear what else is going on around you.

Mind expanding those acronyms for those of us not in The Biz? I'm guessing VO is Voice Over, but the others aren't as amenable...

VO = voiceover
NAT = natural "nat" sound -- ambient noise
SOT = sound on tape -- this one's kind of weird, because to say "I have a SOT", means you have video with audio on it, but that audio may not be used. When an anchor is talking about, say, high gas prices, and there's images of people pumping gas, that's written into the script as a SOT. But it also means when you have, say, average consumer Mike Litoris* saying "damn, those gas prices are high!"

* Actually seen on a TV station in the midwest. Google it.

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acpracht

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Reply #30 on: March 17, 2011, 05:10:07 PM
What exactly, uh, happened?

I'll admit I was a little too distracted while listening to this one for a detailed listen, but I didn't find myself engaged enough to go back for a closer redo.

Did I catch on, though, that the concept was basically the grandfather paradox in reverse? Rather than the paradox being set up by going back into the past and killing your grandfather; the paradox is created by NOT going into the past and killing your grandfather?

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Wilson Fowlie

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Reply #31 on: March 17, 2011, 05:46:35 PM
VO = voiceover
NAT = natural "nat" sound -- ambient noise
SOT = sound on tape -- this one's kind of weird, because to say "I have a SOT", means you have video with audio on it, but that audio may not be used. When an anchor is talking about, say, high gas prices, and there's images of people pumping gas, that's written into the script as a SOT. But it also means when you have, say, average consumer Mike Litoris* saying "damn, those gas prices are high!"

Thanks!  And yes, that is rather weird.

* Actually seen on a TV station in the midwest. Google it.

"Jury’s still out on whether Mike punk’d the reporter, or if that’s really his name." I'm betting the former. <smirk>

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ahutson

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Reply #32 on: March 20, 2011, 10:25:20 AM
Coming in late on this one.. but after a few tries I just had to turn the story off.  The changes in dialouge and narration were too much for my pea-brain to handle.  I couldn't follow what was going on.  The narrator was great though.  I hope she does more recordings.



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Reply #33 on: March 21, 2011, 08:02:16 PM
The narration ruined this story for me - I felt like I was being read to by a kindergarten teacher. I found the narration so distracting I couldn't actually pay attention to the story being told. Perhaps someone should travel back in time and redo the narration...
I have to say i agree with this assessment. I love time travel stories, but kept getting distracted by the patronizing tone. Part of that is MY issue, though—i've never responded well to that tone (i couldn't stand Mr. Rogers).

There were definitely good things about Kim's narration (some mentioned by others) that I should have noted as well, except that I allowed the slow delivery to distract me from them: good, clear enunciation (the up side of a slow delivery! :) ), excellent audio quality and definite emoting.  I didn't always agree with her choices of emphasis, but at least there were choices to disagree with - a monotonic delivery would have been much worse.
And i have to agree with this one, too.

It also has to be taken into account that it was her first time out here, and on short notice.

It's hard for me to comment on the story, because i sorta lost the thread here and there. WAS the paradox that she DIDN'T kill her grandfather?



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Reply #34 on: March 22, 2011, 08:03:50 PM
And the discussion of Mr Rogers gets its very own thread.



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Reply #35 on: March 22, 2011, 08:09:10 PM
I liked this story, but it felt a bit too easy at points; specifically, the non-reaction of the grandmother to the two Anns. You'd figure there'd be more to that. Also, Ann2 killed herself (I think), but Ann1 got life in prison; did the grandmother never think to interact with her, or tell her son "your future daughter is in prison now if you want to meet her"?



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Reply #36 on: March 23, 2011, 09:30:40 PM
I was expecting The Girl Who Folded Herself to be a little different, specifically the grandmother's lack of any real surprise signaled (to me) the future discovery that she actually WAS her own grandmother somehow and had been expecting this, and that the motivations and causes behind her abuse as a child were far more complicated and interesting than we had initially been led to believe.



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Reply #37 on: March 23, 2011, 09:51:13 PM
this one did nothing for me. I found it really hard to pay attention to the narration and the story was actually pretty confusing. The repeated jumps in time made it tricky for me to follow who was what and what was happening. I agree with what a lot of people have said - the story wasn't suited to audio and the narrator wasn't suited to the story. I wouldn't mind hearing this narrator again some time, but I think she would be better suited to a very different type of story.


SF.Fangirl

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Reply #38 on: March 25, 2011, 03:45:26 AM
I really enjoyed this story and no problem with the narration.  However I did think it was very close to being unsuitable for audio.  It was just on the right side, but the scene jumps with date stamping would have been easier to track if I had been reading it and been able to flip back a page or simply stop and think for a moment as would the keeping track of which iteration of the main character was in the scene.  I am still no sure I got it all though and I enjoyed this story enough that I will read the print version just to make sure I'm tracking.

I enjoyed the paradox especially when the various iterations encountered each other and the realization that "Grandma" was a part of the problem.  There was some interesting causel effects; although, not all abused people grow up to become abusers.  Ann is an example since she didn't perpetuate the abuse; she just went back in time and tried to prevent it.  But she's also exactly revenge because version 1 was a very damaged and not really a good person; although, I do wonder how she managed to end up as a programmer on an experimental physics project job given how damaged she seemed.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2011, 04:24:23 AM by SF.Fangirl »



SF.Fangirl

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Reply #39 on: March 25, 2011, 04:05:16 AM
Ann Mk 1 was abused.  At 15/16 she killed her father, was arrested, presumably went to  juvenile detention/jail (?), got out, became a programmer on a time travel project, broke up with Martin, then decided to go back in time to kill her grandfather in order hopefully prevent own abuse from never happening.  She killed her grandfather and go to jail for that murder in 1955. She hoped to fade out of existance when her grandfather was killed so she was at least partially suicidal.   She was a criminal (ie committed numerous crimes in addtion to murder like robbery) and was not a very nice person.

Ann Mk 2 had a sad childhood because her father was a damaged drunk who died when she was 10.  She became a programmer on a time travel project, got married to Martin, had an abortion, and started divorce proceedings.  She blamed her father's abusive step-father for his premature death and decided go back in time try to convince her grandmother not to marry the abusive guy so that she could have a happy childhood.  She was not a criminal except through inaction, but she must have been suicidal too because she apparently drunk herself to death in a snow drift in the past after deciding raising her father herself was a bad idea.

Mk 1 and Mk 2 create Mk 3's life.  She happy enough that she's married to Martin and pregnant.

Reading helped my understanding of the story a lot, but I still couldn't track which Ann was speaking during the exitensial conversation they had on Nov 11, 1955.  I don't know what the narrator could have done to make that clearer in audio.



SF.Fangirl

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Reply #40 on: March 25, 2011, 04:09:09 AM
I thought it was really interesting that the first Anne had no patience for the second iteration of Anne that she herself had created. Far from being happy that she had created a more stable version of herself (though clearly it was still not "perfect"), she resented Anne 2.0 for not being just like her.

I figured that was jealousy and not resentment.  Ann 2.0 was not abused by her father.  Ann 2.0 was not perfect, but to Ann 1.0 she probably looked like she had a near perfect, easy life.



SF.Fangirl

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Reply #41 on: March 25, 2011, 04:17:07 AM
I enjoyed the story up to the point that Ann (which one?  I wasn't sure) realized that her Grandfather was perpetuating behaviour from his own childhood.  When that happened, I wondered why she didn't go back even further, as many generations as she needed to, and find the starting point (or at least a reasonable one)?

Also, I was unhappy that with all the research done on the origins of abusive behaviour, that the character felt that the only recourse was killing. And so it felt more like simple revenge than trying to really solve the problem.

I think it was revenge.  And Ann 1.0 was quite the criminal stealing food and cars in addition to two murders.  After Ann 1.0 killed her father and before being arrested, she thought "It had happened to him, too. What her father had done to her, his father had done to him. Which, in her opinion, just made it worse. He knew what it was like."  Far from absolving her father and grandfather, the fact that they perpetuated the abuse made their crime worse in her mind.  Ann 1.0's actions were vengeful, but her driving factor was that she hoped killing her grandfather would change her own personal history and make the abuse never happen to her, but it didn't.  As soon as she killed her grandfather, and she lived on with the memory of abuse, she knew going back in time further wouldn't have made her own pain go away.




SF.Fangirl

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Reply #42 on: March 25, 2011, 04:20:28 AM
Still, I worked it all out by the end.  Anne 1.0 goes back to kill abusive grandfather who has abused Anne's father who in turn abused her; Anne 2.0 comes back to prevent grandmother from marrying abusive second husband.  Anne 2.0 is convicted of the murder and gets the death penalty, Anne 1.0 emulates her father and drinks herself into a stupor and dies in a show drift, leaving their combined creation, Anne 3.0, to live a happy & fulfilled life, oblivious to the efforts of her other selves.

hmmm  .. I am pretty sure that Ann 1.0 goes to jail and Ann 2.0 drinks herself to death in a snow drift, but I honestly be sure.



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Reply #43 on: March 26, 2011, 05:48:27 PM
Ann Mk 1 was abused.  At 15/16 she killed her father, was arrested, presumably went to  juvenile detention/jail (?), got out, became a programmer on a time travel project, broke up with Martin, then decided to go back in time to kill her grandfather in order hopefully prevent own abuse from never happening.  She killed her grandfather and go to jail for that murder in 1955. She hoped to fade out of existance when her grandfather was killed so she was at least partially suicidal.   She was a criminal (ie committed numerous crimes in addtion to murder like robbery) and was not a very nice person.

Ann Mk 2 had a sad childhood because her father was a damaged drunk who died when she was 10.  She became a programmer on a time travel project, got married to Martin, had an abortion, and started divorce proceedings.  She blamed her father's abusive step-father for his premature death and decided go back in time try to convince her grandmother not to marry the abusive guy so that she could have a happy childhood.  She was not a criminal except through inaction, but she must have been suicidal too because she apparently drunk herself to death in a snow drift in the past after deciding raising her father herself was a bad idea.

Mk 1 and Mk 2 create Mk 3's life.  She happy enough that she's married to Martin and pregnant.

Reading helped my understanding of the story a lot, but I still couldn't track which Ann was speaking during the exitensial conversation they had on Nov 11, 1955.  I don't know what the narrator could have done to make that clearer in audio.

Thank you so much! I came to the forum thread hoping to find out what happened...and I did! Thanks for this answer!

I was particularly confused about how Ann Mk 2's father died.  I initially thought that he was killed by Ann Mk 1, but I guess he just drank himself to death.

I am actually somewhat surprised that Ann Mk 1 & Ann Mk 2's intervention with Grandmother actually worked. As was noted in the story, the cycle of abuse almost always continues itself. I guess in this case, seeing two versions of her time-traveling granddaughter was enough to shock some sense into the Grandmother. I wonder what she decided to do that ended up making Ann Mk 3's life so much better. That would have been a nice addition to the story.



Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #44 on: March 26, 2011, 06:00:23 PM
I just want to say that the narration totally ruined this one for me.
It looks like it might have been a very nice and intricate piece about time travel and the favorite time travel trope, but I couldn't enjoy it at all. I couldn't get around the way Kim was reading. I felt like I was 5 years old again and it was story hour at the public library.
I'm sure she was doing her best to enunciate clearly and make sure that everything was well-heard and well-understood. But it came off sounding pedantic and demeaning. I felt that my intelligence was brought into question (probably not justly so).
The contrast of the mature and high level content of the story with the way it was read was just too much for me. Maybe I'll enjoy it more in print.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2011, 06:06:29 PM by Max e^{i pi} »

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Reply #45 on: March 26, 2011, 06:08:28 PM
I am actually somewhat surprised that Ann Mk 1 & Ann Mk 2's intervention with Grandmother actually worked. As was noted in the story, the cycle of abuse almost always continues itself. I guess in this case, seeing two versions of her time-traveling granddaughter was enough to shock some sense into the Grandmother. I wonder what she decided to do that ended up making Ann Mk 3's life so much better. That would have been a nice addition to the story.

This is the part that seemed actually kind of pollyannaish - which is odd for such a dark story. People caught in a cycle of abuse and dependency are rarely able to pull out of it themselves. There's no switch that could flip in Grandma's head "oh, I shouldn't marry an abusive jerk." Instead, she needs to learn how to recognize abusive jerks, how she's worth better, how to spot nice guys instead, how to be attracted to nice guys instead... it's a very long process. No matter how shocked she was by the appearance of her two screwed up future grandchildren, I can't see it being enough by itself to fix her.

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SF.Fangirl

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Reply #46 on: March 28, 2011, 11:38:36 PM
I am actually somewhat surprised that Ann Mk 1 & Ann Mk 2's intervention with Grandmother actually worked. As was noted in the story, the cycle of abuse almost always continues itself. I guess in this case, seeing two versions of her time-traveling granddaughter was enough to shock some sense into the Grandmother. I wonder what she decided to do that ended up making Ann Mk 3's life so much better. That would have been a nice addition to the story.

This is the part that seemed actually kind of pollyannaish - which is odd for such a dark story. People caught in a cycle of abuse and dependency are rarely able to pull out of it themselves. There's no switch that could flip in Grandma's head "oh, I shouldn't marry an abusive jerk." Instead, she needs to learn how to recognize abusive jerks, how she's worth better, how to spot nice guys instead, how to be attracted to nice guys instead... it's a very long process. No matter how shocked she was by the appearance of her two screwed up future grandchildren, I can't see it being enough by itself to fix her.

While true, every abused person does not become an abuser.  Dad Mk2 was definitely damaged in a different way than Dad Mk1 and it had an entirely different effect on what kind of father he was to Ann.  Anne Mk2 noticed that Grandma's new second husband seemed rich and possessive so that didn't bode well, but apparently it was different enough.  Maybe he abused her, but kept his hands off the his step-son.  Or he could have been emotionally abusive rather than physically.  In the first time stream Dad was sexually abused.  In the second he was physically abused (cigarettes put out on him).  Perhaps he was still abused, but just not as badly by the rich dude.  Or the rich dude died, and Grandma didn't have to remarry this time because she got his money.  Grandma's taste in men may not have improved, but he was different enough to make a happy ending of a sort.  Ann Mk1 and Mk2 did not end up very well.



El Barto

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Reply #47 on: April 02, 2011, 04:17:27 PM
I could barely listen to this one because of the narration, which would be perfect for little kids but was a frustrating mismatch for this story.




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Reply #48 on: April 04, 2011, 01:02:33 AM
I didn't care much for this story, until I got to the part where the two Anns started interacting. I really enjoyed that part. Then the rest, not so much.

I agree with many previous posts that the story wasn't particularly suited to audio and it was hard to follow.
I had no problem with the narration though.



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Reply #49 on: May 16, 2011, 02:47:14 PM
I, too, have to weigh in on the side of the voice being unsuited to the subject matter. I felt like I was being talked to by someone who thought I was in kindergarten. It was VERY distracting, and it caused me to have to restart the story several times because I got distracted at being annoyed by the tone.

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