Pseudopod 242: The 7 Garages of Kevin Simpson

[eytanz]

What made her change from a loving, if damaged, mother and wife, to a murderer and cannibal who will inflict the same pain of her son that her father inflicted upon her? Apparently, it was just sudden personality-altering magic.

I took it to be some property of the sigils, some kind of connecting and building force, probably augmented by being, it seems, hereditary. Blood will out?

Well, yes, me too. But the thing is - we were presented with her internal thoughts. We know that at least until the perspective shift before they reached the last garage, that the sigils remained a vague, subconcious pull on her. We don't see them affecting her thoughts directly except to make her uneasy and the specific issue of not allowing her to talk about the sigils themselves.

I didn't get a feeling that the sigils were waking something inside her. I got the feeling that the sigils basically allowed her personality to get overwritten by something alien. That's my main issue. If the story were about how each sigil incrementally made her change her priorities, then the ending would have made sense. If, as I suggested above, the story was told from an external perspective to her, thus leaving the exact nature of the change ambiguous, that would have also worked. But as it is, we know that there was nothing tempting to her about the situation, because that was hammered into us. And it really feels like the change that came over her at the end wasn't a temptation or corruption but just a flipped switch - one moment she's a woman with a bad childhood whose top priority is making sure her kid doesn't have the same fate, the next moment she's an evil occultist who's repeating the actions of her father. It's the abruptness of the switch, not where she ended up, that is my concern.

[Marguerite]

Well, yes, me too. But the thing is - we were presented with her internal thoughts. We know that at least until the perspective shift before they reached the last garage, that the sigils remained a vague, subconcious pull on her. We don't see them affecting her thoughts directly except to make her uneasy and the specific issue of not allowing her to talk about the sigils themselves.

By the same token, we don't actually KNOW whether or not she went through with it.  Four generations of precedent reinforced by magic, sure.  A terrified husband seeing a very physical change come over his wife, yes.  Means, motive and opportunity are all there - but is there an act?  

That's MY favorite part of this story - the true ending is left up to us.  Does she carry through with what she's been sculpted to do since 4 years old?  Does she break the cycle?  Does the husband escape and go underground, joining a secret society of mage hunters?  All possibilities are equal.

[Scattercat]

Ehh, I'm solidly with Eytanz on this one.  The sudden POV shift to Ben felt particularly egregious and just made the change in Claire all the more unsatisfying.  A more gradual process would have been preferable, I think, rather than skipping four of the garages entirely.  I would also have enjoyed a story that employed Eytanz' suggestion of having Ben be the POV character the whole time.  Overall, this felt like a Call of Cthulhu game module more than a really good story to me.  It functioned, it wasn't bad or unreadable (unlistenable), but it didn't do much to fire me up.  Been here, done this, oh, so very many times, and nothing particularly new to see in this iteration.  The characters were rather flat, and the dialogue wasn't particularly evocative for me.  (That final scene just had some real clunkers in it, especially Ben.  Fear in dialogue is a potentially powerful tool, but this seemed like more of a placeholder, like, "Oh, Ben's got to say something here to break up the monologue.  Eh, it doesn't matter much.  He'll just babble a bit.")  Claire's memories of her childhood and the trauma of her mother's death felt pasted-on rather than an integral part of her character.  

I think the story would have been stronger if her father actually HAD been sculpting her from a very young age, if we could have seen glimpses of odd instructions and strange events that she'd dismissed as childish misunderstandings and poor recollection taking on new and more disturbing shapes as she progresses down the path, if we could have heard some echoes of the moral instruction he gave her and watched it gradually grow more and more perverted and excessive.  (Start with some normal warnings to a small child about being careful to always stay safe, even if others are in danger, because "you're so important to me," and then ratcheting that up and up until we get to something like, "No one has the right to stop you from taking what you want.  Be a wolf among men," etc.)  I dunno.  This one was just a total whiff for me.  An old idea executed with a businesslike and straightforward approach, no nonsense and no twists.  I can see the appeal, the nod to the stories of yore, but for me, I like a bit more meat to chew over.

[Kaa]

I actually went back and listened to this one again on the drive to work this morning. Several of you apparently got more out of it than I did. I DID pick up a lot more the second time around. And I liked it better. The first time, I listened to it in two pieces: most of it on the drive IN to work and the last part on my drive HOME from work. I therefore had forgotten/missed that they had a kid. I forgot/missed that Claire's mother had died when she was 4, about a year after her paternal grandfather.

I do wish Ben had "told us" what was in the fridge, though. What could it possibly be that's worse than what Claire's about to do to him?

Anyway, the second time, I got a lot more out of it.

[Fenrix]

I think in maps, so I saw the arc of the garages geograpically in the same shape as the same swooping sigil on a massive scale. I thought there were hints of her slowly growing more attracted to the sigils as they progressed, as she was tracing them with her journey.

This one pleasantly reminded me of the story "Residents" at the front of the World of Darkness _Mysterious Places_ sourcebook. I'd love to hear that one read here.

[justenjoying]

It is very much a Lovecraftian story. It is almost a cuthulhu game in it's own right except that they follow the specific path and don't reasearch anything. That being said, it was very well done. Not over zealous and vague enough with out pointing to the big bad evil thing and calling it by it's name. I really enjoyed every twist and turn, or should I say every door going up.