Escape Artists
PseudoPod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Bdoomed on November 30, 2007, 09:35:25 PM
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Pseudopod 066: Finding Allison (http://pseudopod.org/2007/11/30/pseudopod-066-finding-allison/)
By Glen Krisch (http://www.myspace.com/34289295)
Read by Alasdair Stuart (http://www.tangentonline.com/index.php?option=com_contact&task=view&contact_id=44&Itemid=98)
Disarming and cruel. Two words could sum up Allison’s smile, and that’s all he had left of her. Her smile hid right behind his eyes, pushing at his brain like a tumor — that angled, curt, and thick-lipped smile. Even the day before she left, they seemed collectively twined together, a seamless mass of flesh, two shadows of one body. Now he was alone with a gun in his lap.
Links mentioned: The Fix (http://thefix-online.com/)
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week's Pseudopod. (http://pseudopod.org/podpress_trac/web/95/0/Pseudo066_FindingAllison.mp3)
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Um.
Yeah.
I don't know what to say.
The narrator wasn't terribly sympathetic. The story was too short to really appreciate what was going on. And the intro of "get your tabs of X" or whatever Ben said... I don't think it was in enough of the story to warrant that intro. *shrug* The story was vivid, and I kind of figured it out about 2 minutes before the climax, but I don't think I actually liked it.
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You know, I can see how this would be disturbing in some sense, either to someone who has very rigid views of gender, or to someone living a lifestyle similar to the characters who may be disturbed by the view of it gone wrong. But for me, this was just a somewhat sordid glimpse into a world that neither bothers me nor relates to me much.
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Um.
Yeah.
I don't know what to say.
I couldn't have put it better. The murders that Adam/Allison was comitting seemed tacked on, almost an after-thought.
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I dug this one. The plot twist threw me -- mostly because I thought I saw what was coming: that Adam and Frankie were doing a Fight Club thing, so the twist surprised and worked for me. It also reminded me a bit of the X-Files episode Gender Bender (except without all the creepy Amish-like people that terrify Scott Sigler). I liked it, thought it had a strong ending, although I can see the complaints about it being too short.
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I liked this one. A. Lot. In fact, I found it quite sexy in a nice, disturbing way. I'm not at all convined that any of the characters were committing murder, though. I think that was left up to the listener's imagination. They seemed more of the self-destructive types to me.
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I must have missed the part about murder. It just seemed to be a story about a multiple personality cross-dresser living with a woman who likes cross dressing men with multiple personalities. But only when they cross dress. Bizarre. Certainly not horrifying though. I didn't really feel a connection with any of the characters, and saw the twist coming. The reading was good. That's about the only positive from me in this story.
Where does the murder come in?
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I missed the murder part too... unless your talking about murdering Adam?
I'd ask for further explanation but I don't really care, I only made it through the story because it was so short.
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I think there was more than cross-dressing going on in the end - I think Adam/Allison ended up castrating himself/herself.
What I'm not sure about is whether Frankie was deliberately trying to make Allison re-emerge, or whether she was just acting in a way that was natural to her and Allison was arising as a result of Adam feeling better. Frankie is not quite reliable enough for me to take her at face value when she tells Allison she disliked Adam.
Also, I have no idea why Allison had gone away to begin with.
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I think "Allison" was comitting the murders. I'll listen again, but didn't Adam wake up at one point with blood all over the place? There was also a comment about bodies frequently being found near Adam's apartment.
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I think "Allison" was comitting the murders. I'll listen again, but didn't Adam wake up at one point with blood all over the place? There was also a comment about bodies frequently being found near Adam's apartment.
I thought the blood part was only at the end, where it seemed to me to be quite clearly his own blood. As for the bodies, I do remember that, but there wasn't an implication of a serial killer/unknown murderer, but rather that the area the story takes place is a dangerous part of town. That said, if anyone was the murderer it would be Frankie, who comes home with money whose origins she is cagey about.
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That said, if anyone was the murderer it would be Frankie, who comes home with money whose origins she is cagey about.
That crossed my mind too. I'll be giving this a second listen.
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the story was so-so. The twisting around with split personalities/cross dressing/flashback was just a hard to follow after all.
I like the concept somehow, Allison winning over, that kinda crepped me out - but the story for most of it wasn't really that strong - more some wild noise of characters.
On a technical side there seems to have been some errors in the cutting, listening to it with headphones, there was a short silence every time a take seems to have been cut - since the noise of the actual recording wasn't cut out it was pretty noticeable.
Good narrator and some good dialogs nevertheless - the setting was pretty well done.
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Just wanted to compliment Alasdair on his improved pacing.
The story: It helped pass the time riding on the S-Bahn.
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I tried to listen to this one, but after several minutes of the narrator moping about his breakup I just turned it off. At that point there didn't seem to be anything about him except self-pity and I just got bored.
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Is it wrong if the part I liked best about this story was Ben's comment about Blur in the outro?
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Honestly, I think Ben's intro provided more characterization than this whole story offered up. Great reading by Al.
The story itself: eh. It gets a negative reaction from me. Far too vague and lacking in characterization for me to get into. I couldn't really make out what happened (Allison's ghost came back to possess Adam? Split personality? Maybe I'm waaaaay off base, but I just couldn't figure it out).
Also: where the heck was this supposed to be set? I couldn't tell. I think Al's voice made me keep thinking the UK, but it's not legal for people to own handguns there so I was never quite sure (unless the gun was illegal? who knows?).
All in all, too vague to make much of an impression.