Escape Artists
PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Heradel on November 20, 2009, 02:12:35 PM
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Podcastle Miniature 42: Change
(http://podcastle.org/2009/11/20/podcastle-miniature-42-change/)
by Greg van Eekhout (http://gregvaneekhout.livejournal.com/)
Read by Dave Thompson (http://krylyr.livejournal.com/)
My ex-wife tells me on the phone that she thinks she saw a kid in her yard last night. She’s got a lot of stuff in the shed that’s worth money, like her boyfriend’s tools and some nice bikes, and she’s always going on about how her neighbors are coming over to steal stuff.
“It couldn’t have been a kid,” I say. “Maybe that old guy from across the street? He’s pretty small.” I’m encouraging her, I know, but it’s possible it was that old guy. I once caught him peeping into the dining room window, and when I confronted him, he said he thought he smelled gas. That was when Steph and I were still together.
“I know how an old man moves,” Steph says. “I know how a kid moves. This was a kid.”
Rated PG: For the Kids in the Yard
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Oh. Wow. van Eekhout's stories range from very good to exceptionally great, and this was certainly among the latter.
So much conveyed, and almost all of it subtext. Exceptionally disturbing, without anything explicitly disturbing within it. Just masterful.
Oh, and a great reading by DKT.
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That was... odd. Very odd. I understand this is part of a suite of stories -- like the Sanctuary series or something -- but it just... ended. Right in the middle. Not a good audio experience. I'd like something self-contained and self-consistent.
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Wait... What? Where's the rest of it?
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Well, personally I don't feel this story is lacking anything, but if you do feel that way, I'm afraid reading the rest of the story sequence won't help - they are interconnected in that they contain hyperlinks to each other, but they are not related to each other content-wise.
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Was that the whole story? The ending was very abrupt. It seemed like a good start to a story.
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Now THIS I really, really like. My favorite stories are the ones that show you juuuuust enough. That was awesome, and so nicely done. I so rarely find stories that end at the proper moment.
I need to give Mr. van Eekhout some money in exchange for his intellectual property, I think. So far he's been consistently rad, in my opinion.
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abrubt- but interesting.
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listened to it based on the PP thread. It seemed like the good first few pages or chapter to a book, but it ended too abruptly for my tastes. would love to see this fleshed out into a longer story.
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But the story is finished. This is the very last scene, and the entire story is laid out behind it like a shadow thrown by a spotlight. We see where the character started, his trials, and how he overcomes them and, well, successfully changes. It's a snapshot of the place the story ends and the next begins.
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So much conveyed, and almost all of it subtext. Exceptionally disturbing, without anything explicitly disturbing within it. Just masterful.
Oh, and a great reading by DKT.
Thanks, eytanz :) Glad the reading worked for you. It was loads of fun to narrate!
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Great reading, great little story. It was like a piece of pie. Just a little bite of something happily enjoyed after a big meal.
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Spooky, chilly, disturbing. An excellent story.
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I don't have much to add, just want to say holy crap I liked this. I especially liked the implication that the characters emotionally came to terms with the situation long ago.
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OK, it's a FLASH piece! It's supposed to be short.
I like this one more than most of the PC Flash stories.
BUT, I do have to admit that it was rather like hitting a brick wall with the ending. The story was complete, but I would love to see, or hear, much more of that world.
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Nope. Listened to it, didn't get it, came here, saw the general like of the story so I even went back and listened again and I still don't get it. It's an epilogue from a larger story, for me it just doesn't work on it's own merits.
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It's an epilogue from a larger story, for me it just doesn't work on it's own merits.
For me, that's the beauty of it. It paints a picture with very few strokes, while all the time pretending to be focusing on the protagonist's current relationship with his ex-wife.
I'm a bit surprised it ran on Podcastle rather than Pseudopod. I'm not saying it doesn't count as fantasy, but it seems like the horror elements dominate. Not so much the implication that the kid's a zombie (or something), but the fact that the parents have emotionally gotten over it.
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I really liked this one, and the way it carefully doled out information a tiny bit at a time to get the full story across.
Normally I would complain about this style where all the action happens before the text of the story, but this is just done so well that I can't make that complaint.
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Quality. Nice. Character development through dialogue and action, not exposition. Thank you.
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Nice flash story. I can't give a fully unbiased review as a couple of the details jangled with me personally, but it was definitely worth the listen.
I wandered over here based on a recommendation in the Pseudopod forums, and wasn't disappointed. Eventually, I will draw the Pseudopod well down and wanted to see if y'all had recommendations of stories for the PseudoPod listener to explore.
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Nice flash story. I can't give a fully unbiased review as a couple of the details jangled with me personally, but it was definitely worth the listen.
I wandered over here based on a recommendation in the Pseudopod forums, and wasn't disappointed. Eventually, I will draw the Pseudopod well down and wanted to see if y'all had recommendations of stories for the PseudoPod listener to explore.
Mermaid's Tea Party could definitely have fit in over at Pseudopod as well!