EP355: Grandmother

[ThomasTheAttoney]

A very poor episode. 

As to how the story was slow and I gave up, and the mellow voice of the word whore was too mellow for a slow story, I say, "Unblinking, get out of my head!"   

SF Fan Girls comment of " I endured more than enjoyed" is apt. 

Did we really need to get the color of every trivial thing? 

At one point, the cost of sand blasting a building to restore its color was discussed like it was an important character point. 

That was as far as I got.   

[jwbjerk]

Phoenix was cunning, and calm, and intelligent, and logical. There was no way she was going to lose.

I felt like Phoenix was set up too strongly as the ultimate protagonist, whom all must adore.  As unblinking said, it seemed like it was too much telling the reader that phoenix was ultimate, and not so much showing it.  But i also felt no suspense -- for the reason that it seemed the author loved Phoenix too much to ever let her suffer more than a temporary reverse.

I did expect Ruby's betrayal long before Phoenix did.

Still there were some twists and turns, and i listened all the way through without regretting it.  But it would have been much more compelling if i had reason to care about one or more of the characters.

[Talia]

Really enjoyed this one, particularly the twisty ending that implied maybe, just maybe, Ruby was kind of right about her mom after all. Didn't leave me feeling good, but made the story weightier and more interesting for me.

Thought the narration was good.

[Ethereon]

Phoenix was cunning, and calm, and intelligent, and logical. There was no way she was going to lose.
I felt like Phoenix was set up too strongly as the ultimate protagonist, whom all must adore.

Maybe who all must respect, rather than adore. She is extremely *effective* in carrying out whatever action she chooses, but this doesn`t mean she's without flaws. From my point of view, her singleminded ability to execute her own will, whatever the cost, *is* a flaw. I think she was a very interesting character and I like that there was no archetypical good folks/bad folks divide in this story.

I didn`t listen to the story, so I can`t comment on the narration and how that might have affected pacing. The story definitely did draw me in and grip my attention. I linked to it just to take a look and leave the tab open to listen later, and then ended up reading the whole thing without stopping to refill my coffee. (and I really love my coffee, so that`s saying something).

[Balu]

Seemed like a waste of the Word Whore, who really should be reading the Kama Sutra.

Go on. Do it for Podcastle. You know you want to.

[Unblinking]

I did like the character introduction at the beginning, describing Phoenix by what others have said about her. We, the readers, can't take this information at face value because it's all hearsay and rumormill. Did she do all those things? Or has her character been blown out of proportion over the years? It may have bee a bit on the long side, but it starts me off paying close attention to the character to see if she really fits these rather large britches.

To me the fact that those early sections were products of the rumor mill made them even weaker than they otherwise would have been.  It's clear that these are rumors.  Rumors often have a grain of truth but also plenty of BS.  If it were clear that these statements were true they would convey information about the character at least.  If it were clear that these statements were bald-faced lies, then that too would convey information by negation.  But their level of truth is so completely unclear that it's almost equivalent to having no information at all.

Rumors are fine, and something LIKE this could be very effective in some circumstances, but I'd prefer if there were actual characters speaking about the rumors instead of just narration telling me them.  And to start a story with them when I have not yet seen the characters do anything is a bit much for me.

[CryptoMe]

I actually think this is a really good story, interesting and thougth-provoking.

However, I don't think it was told well. The telling (the author's, not the narrator's) suffers from pacing issues, being far too slow-moving and long-winded when it doesn't need to be. If these issues could be addressed, then the good story would be able to shine through. I would strongly encourage a re-write, with some severe editing.

[Unblinking]

I would strongly encourage a re-write, with some severe editing.

It's been published, so I kind of doubt that's gonna happen.   

[ElectricPaladin]

I really, really didn't like this one.

So, here's the problem: I don't give three shits about the brutal meanderings of the aristocracy. Ruby was a heartless bitch. Phoenix was a heartless bitch. I'm sure Phoenix-clone-grandkid will grow up to be a heartless bitch, too. I'm able to engage in a little suspension-of-political-outrage in stories where the despots have some redeeming qualities, but if these people had any, I missed it. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest let down was that the entire clan didn't go up in a ball of atomic flame so the poor bastards on the planet could elect a representative government.

*Ahem*

Anyway, I will laud the story for not letting gender get in the way. I did appreciate that the heartless, ruthless, sybarites were female. It's a nice change of pace. Unfortunately, their gender also didn't make them any more sympathetic, and the story failed to touch me.

What's particularly frustrating for me is that it wouldn't have taken much. Just a little more of a humanizing touch, a sense that Phoenix wasn't just an appallingly controlling, selfish, brutal waste of humanity, or that Ruby was actually struggling to create a better place to live than her mother had created... just something to hang my heart on.

I suppose I should add that Phoenix really reminded me of my mother. That probably tells everything about my childhood than you need to know to understand why, perhaps, this story engendered more than a little rancor from me.

[eytanz]

I thought the story was ok. Not bad, but not particularly great or memorable. It's probably one of the ones I'll not recollect at all when the "best of" voting thread comes up at the end of the year (though I hope I at least remember to include it in the poll )

What's particularly frustrating for me is that it wouldn't have taken much. Just a little more of a humanizing touch, a sense that Phoenix wasn't just an appallingly controlling, selfish, brutal waste of humanity, or that Ruby was actually struggling to create a better place to live than her mother had created... just something to hang my heart on.

I think that was what the clone boyfriend was supposed to be for, at least as far as Phoenix goes (though I don't think it was entirely succesful). Ruby was a spoiled brat; I think there was never any suggestion that she wanted to be a better ruler than her mother, she just wanted what her mother had.

And note that there was not real suggestion that Phoenix was a bad ruler - at least not while things were going well for her. We know very little about the world she ruled or the lives of anyone else on it.

And therein lies my main criticism of this story - the stakes were never really clear. I never really got a sense of what it is Phoenix actually did, or what the world was like. When Phoenix released biological weapons on her former subjects without caring about them, it felt like a low-stakes gambit because the story didn't care about those people either. Being the autocratic ruler of the planet was just a job, a position to be squabbled over, not something that actually seemed to have much substance.

[Myrealana]

Like others, I nearly hit the "Stop" button on this story before the meat of the story even started. As it was, I was driving, and just let it ramble on in the background for a while. I'm not sure if I missed anything important, as I tuned in and out until the attackers came in the night, and then I wanted to see where it was going.

I saw Phoenix grow and change a bit through her relationship with the Gareth-clone, and that served to make her feel more sympathetic than her spoiled brat of a daughter, but I still didn't really get who I was supposed to be cheering for. Was Phoenix a good ruler? Was Ruby bad? Hadn't the thing with Gareth proven that clones AREN'T exactly like the originals, and therefore Ada was certainly not going to live up to her grandmother's expectations? So, did she really learn anything, or is she going to spend the next fifty years wiping and re-creating Ada in order to get the perfect replacement?

It was pretty, and it had space pirates, so I didn't hate it. I looked under the surface and found a deeper meaning, but then, I found a third, even deeper level, that's the same as the surface one. Like with pie.

[Special Ed]

I loved this one- the story and the narration.

I want to hear more of the earlier adventures of Phoenix and Mukopadhyay or Phoenix and Gareth or Phoenix and whoever/whatever. 

I know some people hate Robert Heinlein for being a misogynistic pig but I still love him.  Phoenix's strong character coupled with The Word Whore's voice made me think of some of Heinlein's wonderful female characters.

Please, sir, may I have some more?

[ElectricPaladin]

It was pretty, and it had space pirates, so I didn't hate it. I looked under the surface and found a deeper meaning, but then, I found a third, even deeper level, that's the same as the surface one. Like with pie.

You just said what I was thinking, only with more cleverness and less rancor. Good job, sir/ma'am/thing.

[hardware]

Oh, but it's Tudors in space. Once I saw it that way I could enjoy the scheming and unlikable characters with their respective little SF twist. Not too much moral pushed on me, and actually I think the narration (although it took me a few minutes to get into) helped push the kind of decadent atmosphere this kind of story needed.

[Fenrix]

Call me a vocabuwhore, but I dig it when there's proper use of archaic words like "sybaritic" and "atavistic".

I really don't get why folks didn't find TWW's narration fitting. Peacock was a very sensual creature, and it was made clear that sex was something that carried priority in her life.