Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on August 14, 2014, 12:40:30 PM
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EP458: If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love (http://escapepod.org/2014/08/14/ep458-dinosaur-love/)
By Rachel Swirsky (http://rachelswirsky.com/)
Read by Christina Lebonville
This story has been previously published in Apex Magazine (http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/)
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If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you would be a T-Rex. You’d be a small one, only five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you. You’d be fragile-boned and you’d walk with as delicate and polite a gait as you could manage on massive talons. Your eyes would gaze gently from beneath your bony brow-ridge.
If you were a T-Rex, then I would become a zookeeper so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats. I’d watch the gore shining on your teeth. I’d make my bed on the floor of your cage, in the moist dirt, cushioned by leaves. When you couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.
If I sang you lullabies, I’d soon notice how quickly you picked up music. You’d harmonize with me, your rough, vibrating voice a strange counterpoint to mine. When you thought I was asleep, you’d cry unrequited love songs into the night.
If you sang unrequited love songs, I’d take you on tour. We’d go to Broadway. You’d stand onstage, talons digging into the floorboards. Audiences would weep at the melancholic beauty of your singing.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP458_IfYouWereaDinosaurMyLove.mp3)
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About halfway through, I was thinking this was OK. Silly, kinda nice, but not deserving of a Hugo nomination.
And then it got real. I was literally crying during the second half.
Wow, that was amazing. Well done Ms Swirsky.
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I heard this before on Starship Sofa, so I knew what to expect. And it still got to me.
Not a usual sci-fi story, but a very good choice.
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Oh, swell. Thank you, Rachel Swirsky, for turning me into a sodden, snotty pile of blubbering wreckage. At work. >.<
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Having read several "If you X then I will Y" books to my kids, I thought I had a sense of this as a silly diversion story. She really captures that tone well.
Then, wow.
The ability to somehow change tone without actually changing tone was amazing. This was almost more of a poem than a story. It was that carefully crafted.
I also liked the length. Sometimes, you can say what needs to be said in ten minutes. Those ten minutes will stick with me longer than most 40 minute stories that I've heard.
Great job.
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If you give a mouse a cookie... there will be blood.
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Maybe I missed the neat twist because I was too busy thinking up snarky responses.
- If you turned into a dinosaur because of a transmogrifier instead of magic, the story would belong on Escape Pod instead of PodCastle.
- If you give a fantastic writer an insipid children's book as inspiration, she'll write an insipid story with bigger words.
This story put me so in the mood of the dopey "If you give a mouse a cookie" books that I've read to my kids a million times (and that have been used in other forms (particularly television commercials) so often as to have become hacky), I was completely turned off. Maybe, maybe if she'd hooked me in the first two or three if...thens, I'd have liked it more.
We have frequent family reading nights. Fortunately, my nine-year-olds can now read the Mouse/Cookie books to themselves on reading night while I enjoy something aimed at grownups. Or at least something less formulaic that's written for kids. I loved the two Squonk the Dragon stories that ran in 2006 and 2007, for example.
Fortunately, this wasn't my introduction to Swirsky and I've enjoyed several other things she's written, so she gets a mulligan.
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Maybe I missed the neat twist because I was too busy thinking up snarky responses.
- If you turned into a dinosaur because of a transmogrifier instead of magic, the story would belong on Escape Pod instead of PodCastle.
- If you give a fantastic writer an insipid children's book as inspiration, she'll write an insipid story with bigger words.
I'd never suggest that you don't think up snarky responses. But once you're done thinking them up, you might also think better than posting them. Especially the tedious "this belongs on podcastle" one - if nothing else, this story belongs on Escape Pod because it's a Hugo nominee, and for Hugo nominees, genre is irrelevant.
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I'd never suggest that you don't think up snarky responses. But once you're done thinking them up, you might also think better than posting them. Especially the tedious "this belongs on podcastle" one - if nothing else, this story belongs on Escape Pod because it's a Hugo nominee, and for Hugo nominees, genre is irrelevant.
Your second point is fair. It's a Hugo nominee and it belongs on Escape Pod because of that, although I wonder where it would have run had Escape Artists bought the rights if it weren't a Hugo nominee and I think that's a reasonable point for discussion. I'm not sure I understand your "you might also think better than posting [snarky responses]" admonishment as it relates to my comment about it being inspired by an insipid children's book. I'm curious, if I'd said:
"It's a real shame that she appears to have been inspired to write this story by an insipid children's book. I usually enjoy her work, but this one fell flat for me because if followed a childish formula."
instead of following the same childish formula she did in her story, would you still have advised me to think better than posting it? No snark, same sentiment.
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I loved it.
I completely missed the reference to the children's book. Is it a USAian one? (I'm in the UK).
Immediately expected a this-is-not-SF thread on the forum. Called it (and just don't flipping care ;-)
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I'm not familiar with the children's books. I was also in tears by the end. Well done.
I can't blame KP Duty or anyone else for giving up on a story midway through, but in this case you definitely miss the whole point of the story, abd your impressions aren't going to have much in common with those of people who did finish it.
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I can't blame KP Duty or anyone else for giving up on a story midway through, but in this case you definitely miss the whole point of the story, abd your impressions aren't going to have much in common with those of people who did finish it.
I actually didn't give up, I lost interest but kept listening. I realized that eytanz's reaction to my post was similar to my reaction to the story. That is, eytanz found the "Escape Pod/PodCastle" line I opened with (which was meant mostly in jest) so tedious, the rest of my point was ignored. I felt the same way with this story. I hated the opening lines so much, I didn't give the rest of the story a chance.
Fortunately, the story is so short I gave it a second listen--coincidentally on the day my paleontologist sister returned to the country from several months doing field work--and I still don't think it's particularly strong. I imagine that "my love" became a scientist because he wants to increase human understanding through science. If he were a dinosaur who could kill his attackers (even if the protagonist felt shame about being happy about their deaths later), would she really still love him? The shift from peaceful researcher to violent killer is such a radical character shift, I doubt most relationships could withstand it.
Yes, she's in pain. Yes, she wants him back. Still, it's a silly premise.
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KP Duty - my comment was entirely about the tone of your post, not its content. I ignored the rest of your comment because I had nothing of interest to say about it, not because I was distracted by the part I did address. As to your question, if you had formulated it the other way, I would have had no issue with it.
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I was profoundly affected by this story and it's taken me awhile to formulate my thoughts on it.
This is a very queer story, not that it could only apply to queer people, but that it will certainly resonate with them. The narrator and her love are declared to be a woman and a man respectively, but the violent assault is at least partially propelled by homophobia and transmisogyny, suggesting that they are not gender-conforming. As soon as that paragraph began, I inwardly went "ohh. i get it now". Until that point, like most people, I thought this was a mediocre lighthearted parody, since the whole thing does read fancifully, indeed reminiscent of the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
However, once it is placed into context, the first part of the story re-resolves itself into an eloquent expression of a feeling that is instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever feared for the life of their loved ones in the way that all queer people are forced too. It is a yearning for their great inner strength to be transformed into outward, for the rest of the world to see them with the awe and wonder that you see them with, that they deserve.
This is in fact one of the most serious and realistic stories we've had on EscapePod in a long time, because of the thing that makes people question whether it belongs here at all - that it is told in hypothetical. It is a story about how and why an ordinary person would come up with a story about being in love with a dinosaur. I am surprised that for many people that was not an easily relatable feeling.
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This is a very queer story, not that it could only apply to queer people, but that it will certainly resonate with them. The narrator and her love are declared to be a woman and a man respectively, but the violent assault is at least partially propelled by homophobia and transmisogyny, suggesting that they are not gender-conforming.
Teeny weeny, Itty Bitty Nit Pick here, but whenever abuse, hatred and discrimination against the Trans Community is discussed with the Trans I speak with every day elsewhere on The Internet, we use the term Transphobia.
A rather larger Nit Pick is that if you are right, and the victim is referred to as Shemale because he is Trans, then surely the attackers would have only known this because the victim was either TRULY Shemale, i.e. a Pre Op M to F Transsexual, or because they Read their victim as a Transvestite, even though En Femme. If this is so, If The Victim was M to F Trans, then the proper pronoun should be SHE.
True, The Victim could have been F to M Trans, but then the Shemale comment makes no sense. I have never heard of anyone having F to M "Bottom" Surgery, i.e. Hysterectomy and Penis Construction, but not the "Top" Surgery, i.e. Double Mastectomy.
In short, as a Trans piece, I find this story badly researched.
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I thought the piece specifically said the attackers yelled a lot of things in their rage that didn't pertain to the victim. I found this part confusing. There is a lot of variety in gender expression - the victim could be a man who presents as a man, identifies as a man, but wears some feminine signifiers - eye liner, jewelry, something like that.
Or maybe you're right and the author screwed up the pronouns.
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I thought the piece specifically said the attackers yelled a lot of things in their rage that didn't pertain to the victim. I found this part confusing. There is a lot of variety in gender expression - the victim could be a man who presents as a man, identifies as a man, but wears some feminine signifiers - eye liner, jewelry, something like that.
Or maybe you're right and the author screwed up the pronouns.
"They’d grasp each other for comfort instead of seizing the pool cues with which they beat you, calling you a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not, shouting and shouting as you slid to the floor in the slick of your own blood."
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Wow. Just, wow. I was sucked in initially by the playful tone of the early paragraphs, which intensified the gut-punch effect of the middle, which left me ready to appreciate the transcendence at the end. I was run completely through the emotional wringer in about ten minutes. Well done, Ms. Swirsky, well done.
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I thought the piece specifically said the attackers yelled a lot of things in their rage that didn't pertain to the victim. I found this part confusing. There is a lot of variety in gender expression - the victim could be a man who presents as a man, identifies as a man, but wears some feminine signifiers - eye liner, jewelry, something like that.
Or maybe you're right and the author screwed up the pronouns.
"They’d grasp each other for comfort instead of seizing the pool cues with which they beat you, calling you a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not, shouting and shouting as you slid to the floor in the slick of your own blood."
What I love about that paragraph is that we don't learn much about the love: any of those could be true or false. As if the hate and violence of that group didn't illuminate anything about the person killed; or as if any otherness would fit for a spasm of violence that is just looking for a excuse.
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This is a very queer story, not that it could only apply to queer people, but that it will certainly resonate with them. The narrator and her love are declared to be a woman and a man respectively, but the violent assault is at least partially propelled by homophobia and transmisogyny, suggesting that they are not gender-conforming.
I would say that it has more to do with racism. Men often accuse other men of being gay while beating the living shit out of them, absent any evidence of sexuality.
I'm curious to hear what was in Rachel's mind.
And thanks for pointing out that it was in Starship Sofa - I knew I'd heard it before (the title alone is unforgettable)
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This is a very queer story, not that it could only apply to queer people, but that it will certainly resonate with them. The narrator and her love are declared to be a woman and a man respectively, but the violent assault is at least partially propelled by homophobia and transmisogyny, suggesting that they are not gender-conforming.
I would say that it has more to do with racism. Men often accuse other men of being gay while beating the living shit out of them, absent any evidence of sexuality.
There's no reason it can't be both. Queer people of color face nightmarish rates of violence. But again, there are multiple ways to read the story and I believe the author left it purposefully ambiguous.
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A rather larger Nit Pick is that if you are right, and the victim is referred to as Shemale because he is Trans, then surely the attackers would have only known this because the victim was either TRULY Shemale, i.e. a Pre Op M to F Transsexual, or because they Read their victim as a Transvestite, even though En Femme. If this is so, If The Victim was M to F Trans, then the proper pronoun should be SHE.
True, The Victim could have been F to M Trans, but then the Shemale comment makes no sense. I have never heard of anyone having F to M "Bottom" Surgery, i.e. Hysterectomy and Penis Construction, but not the "Top" Surgery, i.e. Double Mastectomy.
In short, as a Trans piece, I find this story badly researched.
I suspect it's rather realistic for (possibly transphobic*) bigots to not care about the proper terminology while beating someone up.
*Well, OK. The fact that they're using "shemale" as an insult basically means that they're transphobic as well as homophobic, racist, etc. The question is whether their attack is motivated by transphobia or if that's just something they think is humiliating.
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Not that I think it matters too much, but I am pretty sure that the author was taking more from The Runaway Bunny than the If You Give a Moose A Muffin series.
The Runaway Bunny is more touching story and deals with the idea of trying to protect and be with those close to you, so it would seem to fit more.
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I read this story when it came up for Hugo voting, and it fell really flat for me. It has no plot, no character arc, and steals its structure from a children's book. It seems to be nothing more than a violent revenge fantasy against bigots, and the way the author threw in every kind of epithet she could felt emotionally manipulative, as if she's just trying to get as many people as possible to take the bigots' attacks personally so they can share in the joy of bloody retaliation.
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Me while listening: Cute... Repetitive... No apparent plot... BAM! Wham!
I totally get why this was nominated, and I believe that Rachel succeeded admirably in what she seems to have set out to do. I like that she purposefully left out all salient details about "my love" so that the story can be applied to any number of situations at the discretion of the reader.
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I read this story when it came up for Hugo voting, and it fell really flat for me. It has no plot, no character arc, and steals its structure from a children's book. It seems to be nothing more than a violent revenge fantasy against bigots, and the way the author threw in every kind of epithet she could felt emotionally manipulative, as if she's just trying to get as many people as possible to take the bigots' attacks personally so they can share in the joy of bloody retaliation.
Everyone's free to have their own opinion--oh, how I've gnashed my teeth over Hugo noms before remembering that truth.
But I think you miss a step when you say "It seems to be nothing more than a violent revenge fantasy against bigots"; that step is the fact that the violent revenge fantasy sours very quickly into the reality of revenge, the reality that people of all sorts leave behind loved ones whose hearts may break over their loss.
In that way, it seems more like a condemnation of bloody retaliation; and if we momentarily thrill to that retaliation, then we also get a momentary shock when we realize what that thrilling bloody retaliation would lead to.
Rather, a really delicious revenge fantasy would go something like: "And that guy who called me gay was secretly gay the whole time! Now we live in Tampa with our son."
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A rather larger Nit Pick is that if you are right, and the victim is referred to as Shemale because he is Trans, then surely the attackers would have only known this because the victim was either TRULY Shemale, i.e. a Pre Op M to F Transsexual, or because they Read their victim as a Transvestite, even though En Femme. If this is so, If The Victim was M to F Trans, then the proper pronoun should be SHE.
True, The Victim could have been F to M Trans, but then the Shemale comment makes no sense. I have never heard of anyone having F to M "Bottom" Surgery, i.e. Hysterectomy and Penis Construction, but not the "Top" Surgery, i.e. Double Mastectomy.
In short, as a Trans piece, I find this story badly researched.
I suspect it's rather realistic for (possibly transphobic*) bigots to not care about the proper terminology while beating someone up.
*Well, OK. The fact that they're using "shemale" as an insult basically means that they're transphobic as well as homophobic, racist, etc. The question is whether their attack is motivated by transphobia or if that's just something they think is humiliating.
I was actually replying to another post rather than commenting on the story, and my pronoun nit pick referred to the narrator making it clear that her love was male. I don't think it is a Trans story, as it happens, just a bunch of what we Brits call Wankers beating someone up for being 'Not one of Us.'
As like as not it was his accent and erudition which got the 'My Love' character into trouble, since he was an academic, after all. Some people feel belittled by education in others. No idea why, since some of the stupidest people I ever met had more letters after their names than in them.
Hmm... Looks like I've commented on the story now, notwithstanding it giving me a desperate urge to go and brush my teeth by about two minutes in.
Too cutesy and sugary in style for my taste.
And yes, I do realise that that only counterpoints the subject matter, but it still wasn't my thing.
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But I think you miss a step when you say "It seems to be nothing more than a violent revenge fantasy against bigots"; that step is the fact that the violent revenge fantasy sours very quickly into the reality of revenge, the reality that people of all sorts leave behind loved ones whose hearts may break over their loss.
In that way, it seems more like a condemnation of bloody retaliation; and if we momentarily thrill to that retaliation, then we also get a momentary shock when we realize what that thrilling bloody retaliation would lead to.
So the moral of the story is "Murder is bad"? Seems a bit obvious, but clearly some people never learn it, so you've got me there.
But even with a paragraph of backpedling from pure revenge fantasy, it still has no plot or characterization. Literally NOTHING HAPPENS in this "story". The narrator daydreams about dinosaurs while her fiancee lies in a coma. No one has any goals, takes any actions, encounters any resistance, or overcomes any obstacles. The characters were nothing but formless blobs of suffering presented to be sympathized with.
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So the moral of the story is "Murder is bad"? Seems a bit obvious, but clearly some people never learn it, so you've got me there.
But even with a paragraph of backpedling from pure revenge fantasy, it still has no plot or characterization. Literally NOTHING HAPPENS in this "story". The narrator daydreams about dinosaurs while her fiancee lies in a coma. No one has any goals, takes any actions, encounters any resistance, or overcomes any obstacles. The characters were nothing but formless blobs of suffering presented to be sympathized with.
I think both the moral and action of the story could be summed up as, "A woman struggles to come to terms with the senseless violence visited upon someone she loves." It's about internal pain and conflict, which is perfectly legitimate grounds for storytelling. While I understand it's not to everyone's taste, I hardly thing it's fair to classify this type of story as somehow less legitimate than more traditional types of storytelling.
To put it another way, one thing I deeply admire about many of the best short story masters of our time (including Swirsky, and people like Kij Johnson) is their ability to make haiku-like use of relatively few simple words to pack a huge emotional punch. Sometimes less is more, and for many readers, the sparseness of Hemingway is more emotionally rich and resonant than the wordiness of Dickens. Such is the case with this story. If it's not your thing, that's okay, but no need to write off other readers' enjoyment of minimalist storytelling if it didn't connect for you.
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So the moral of the story is "Murder is bad"? Seems a bit obvious, but clearly some people never learn it, so you've got me there.
But even with a paragraph of backpedling from pure revenge fantasy, it still has no plot or characterization. Literally NOTHING HAPPENS in this "story". The narrator daydreams about dinosaurs while her fiancee lies in a coma. No one has any goals, takes any actions, encounters any resistance, or overcomes any obstacles. The characters were nothing but formless blobs of suffering presented to be sympathized with.
I thought about listing all the stories and books that you might want to steer clear of--god, nothing really important happens in James Joyce's Ulysses, it's just about a guy wandering around a city!; way to go, Uncle Tom's Cabin, could you find a more obvious message than slavery is bad!?; boo, John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, you totally stole your structure from John Dos Passos!
But sarcasm may not be the best welcome to the EA Forum (and judging by the fact that you have 2 posts, you seem new here). So: Welcome!
I'm glad to hear alternate opinions and hopefully in the future can hear more about what you like. As Varda noted, this sort of story isn't to everyone's taste. The story isn't full of exciting episodes--someone is attacked (off-screen) and their love resorts to fantasy as a way to deal with their loss. If you don't like this particular story, maybe the next will be more to your liking.
And in times of artistic annoyance, I always like this cartoon (http://esreality.com/files/placeimages/2013/98857-1369094536515.jpg).
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Sorry, I didn't mean to come off like I was attacking other peoples' enjoyment of this piece; if you like it, really, good for you. I'm just trying to articulate why what apparently worked for you and others felt trite and shallow to me.
And yes, I'm new to the forums because I've only just worked though my backlog of podcasts to the point that I can comment while the conversation is still going on. Maybe I'll go comment on last week's story so I can get some positive thoughts on the record :-)
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My thoughts on the story I posted in my Hugo short story review (http://www.diabolicalplots.com/?p=5316):
This story starts out with the whimsical hypothetical in the title, as spoken by a woman to a friend she loves dearly, and continues on to give real life reasons why she is pondering this whimsy.
The characters read as real once the story got to the story, but I found all the hypotheticals more irritating than entertaining or illuminating. If A, then B. If B, then C. If C, then D. A story this short shouldn’t feel too long, but to me it did. Eventually the story gets to the actual story behind the hypotheticals, but by that time I was just impatient for it to be over.
I can see why the story has such a following. It has a strong emotional core. But IMO, that core reveals itself too late, when the story text is more than half over. If I had found the pre-emotional content at all entertaining, then it could've worked wonderfully for me, but as it was my progression of reaction was: flat flat flat annoyed annoyed annoyed EMOTIONALCLIMAX!
The neverending string of hypothetical statements does seem reminiscent of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. But for me it put me more in mind of a string of car insurance commercials that have run in recent years that start with something like "If you choose a cut-rate car insurance company, then X" and string along hypotheticals until something ridiculous and clearly bad happens like apes taking over the world or something (I don't recall any of the details of the commercials, just the string of hypotheticals structure) and then ends with the conclusion: "Don't let apes take over the world. Buy our car insurance". Which I generally just found annoying for logic reasons, because many of the steps are not things that I would personally do, so the whole thing falls apart at its weakest link and the commercials weren't good enough to make up for that annoyance.
I was also generally unhappy with the Hugo Short Story category this year because it only had 4 stories (because of the minimum 5% vote rule that I think needs to be cut) and 2 of those stories were apparently not speculative, including this one. And 3 of the stories just fell flat for me.
My vote for the category went:
1. The Water that Falls on You From Nowhere.
2. No Award.
I don't think I have yet found a Rachel Swirsky story that I liked. I think I might be missing the gene for it or something--they never seem to invoke the response in me that they are apparently meant to.
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But for me it put me more in mind of a string of car insurance commercials that have run in recent years that start with something like "If you choose a cut-rate car insurance company, then X" and string along hypotheticals until something ridiculous and clearly bad happens like apes taking over the world or something (I don't recall any of the details of the commercials, just the string of hypotheticals structure) and then ends with the conclusion: "Don't let apes take over the world. Buy our car insurance". Which I generally just found annoying for logic reasons, because many of the steps are not things that I would personally do, so the whole thing falls apart at its weakest link and the commercials weren't good enough to make up for that annoyance.
Do you mean these ones? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxvNHE50-XE
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But for me it put me more in mind of a string of car insurance commercials that have run in recent years that start with something like "If you choose a cut-rate car insurance company, then X" and string along hypotheticals until something ridiculous and clearly bad happens like apes taking over the world or something (I don't recall any of the details of the commercials, just the string of hypotheticals structure) and then ends with the conclusion: "Don't let apes take over the world. Buy our car insurance". Which I generally just found annoying for logic reasons, because many of the steps are not things that I would personally do, so the whole thing falls apart at its weakest link and the commercials weren't good enough to make up for that annoyance.
Do you mean these ones? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxvNHE50-XE
Ah yes! No wonder I failed to find it searching, it's a cable company not car insurance. "Don't chase butterflies into something highly illegal. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV."
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Ha. I enjoy those commercials. I should probably listen to this episode post-haste. :P
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But for me it put me more in mind of a string of car insurance commercials that have run in recent years that start with something like "If you choose a cut-rate car insurance company, then X" and string along hypotheticals until something ridiculous and clearly bad happens like apes taking over the world or something (I don't recall any of the details of the commercials, just the string of hypotheticals structure) and then ends with the conclusion: "Don't let apes take over the world. Buy our car insurance". Which I generally just found annoying for logic reasons, because many of the steps are not things that I would personally do, so the whole thing falls apart at its weakest link and the commercials weren't good enough to make up for that annoyance.
Do you mean these ones? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxvNHE50-XE
or maybe these: http://budlight.whipnet.com (http://budlight.whipnet.com)
okay, I knew you didn't mean those, but one popped up in my iTunes the other day and made me laugh enough that I had to download them all.</conversation_derail>
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He should have been a dinosaur. Damnit, this episode punched me right in the feels. I think I need a feelectomy. Ouch.
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Wow, I'm working thru backlog of stories, I had to come comment on this
I think I might be the first to say this, but I enjoyed the story BEFORE it kicked me in the gut, but then again i enjoyed those directv commercials
I appreciated that the gut punch was crafted to be vague and apply to as many people as possible. And damn was it a gut punch to me personally.
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About halfway through, I was thinking this was OK. Silly, kinda nice, but not deserving of a Hugo nomination.
And then it got real. I was literally crying during the second half.
Wow, that was amazing. Well done Ms Swirsky.
That was my experience, exactly.
I was listening, thinking Hmm, she turned If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, et al, into a short story about a man becoming a dinosaur, and then, WHAM! My jaw dropped. I stared at my iPod in horror, then in tears.
Really, I don't care if it qualifies as SciFi or Fantasy or what. I was blown away by the emotional impact achieved by taking the whimsical notion and tone of a children's story and turning it around so abruptly.
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If he was a dinosaur..? Perhaps they would have taken self defense training or not gone strolling into a dangerous environment that gave no indication that it was a safe harbour in the first place. Taking the logic nowhere - venues that serve alcohol are places where violence is known to occur so why go there if you can't defend yourself unless it's to pretend that you can defend yourself and impress your girlfriend who hopefully isn't also a child and therefore should know better. But here a melodramatic impression of events past is clearly the more blameless reality to live in for the victims.
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If he was a dinosaur..? Perhaps they would have taken self defense training or not gone strolling into a dangerous environment that gave no indication that it was a safe harbour in the first place. Taking the logic nowhere - venues that serve alcohol are places where violence is known to occur so why go there if you can't defend yourself unless it's to pretend that you can defend yourself and impress your girlfriend who hopefully isn't also a child and therefore should know better. But here a melodramatic impression of events past is clearly the more blameless reality to live in for the victims.
I don't know where you live or what bars you frequent, but I've been going to places that serve alcohol my entire adult life and have never participated in, or even witnessed, violence in any of them (I have witnessed violence elsewhere, but that's not relevant).
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No, it's okay, Eytan. As we all know, in reality, the universe is predicated on fairness, and nothing bad ever happens unless you specifically do something to provoke it, since the inherent safety settings will ensure that only pleasant things happen to individuals who follow all the rules. It's only reasonable to expect fiction to conform to those same principles.
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I didn't actually address this one so I will answer your criticisms of my take on it.
Where I live there are a collection of bars that are renowned for the violence that takes place in and around them and every Friday and Saturday night there are several people going to hospital because they have been assaulted and yet these people are invariably amazed that such a thing could happen to them. I'm not saying that the people who are beating them up aren't animals at all. They absolutely are and they do tend to roll up every petty disappointment they have into a fist and throw it at whoever is unlucky enough to get in their way. All I'm saying is that sometimes and in a lot of cases an ounce of not being in their way is worth a pound of not getting pounded.
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Obviously those were the bars in the story, then. Weird that you and the author live in the exact same place and have the exact same lived experiences.
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See, Scattercat, the problem here is our definition of "bar". Where I live "bar" is actually short for "barbarian den", and while alcohol may or may not be served (it varies), everyone knows their main function is providing a space for people to have violent fights. This is an extremely well-known function; it's advertized at the door, everyone signs a consent form before the first haymaker is thrown, and generally we all have a great time knocking out each other's teeth and breaking pool cues over each other's head. Just good ol' fashioned fun. So it really is a person's own fault if they're upset about getting the beat down, because they signed a consent form which was clearly explained to them before they entered, and now they just want to spoil everyone else's fun because they can't take a little hospitalization and possible death.
The only exception is that local ordinances prohibit attacking dinosaurs in these facilities. Absolutely illegal and completely frowned-upon. So that's what this story's about.
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Thankyou Varda. It is true that bars rarely get sued for the violence that occurs in them. Regardless of the frequency of violent acts that take place in them.
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The only exception is that local ordinances prohibit attacking dinosaurs in these facilities. Absolutely illegal and completely frowned-upon. So that's what this story's about.
Of course! That's because if you kill a velociraptor, you could be killing the LAST velociraptor. There are, on the other hand, plenty of people cluttering up all corners of the planet, so a human killed violently here and there really just helps Mother Earth by easing the strain on her resources. So if you do get disemboweled by a velociraptor in a bar fight after honorably refusing to throw a punch, as you're bleeding out on the floor and trying to hold your intestines in, you can smile beatifically in the knowledge that you've not only performed one perfect act that day, but two.
....What were we talking about again? I may have meandered off the conversational thread.
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Listening to this story has finally inspired me to get off my butt and get back here onto the forums, if only because I need to do something besides cry.
Pretty much everything that I would say about it has been said, but I don't think I'm wasting my time by coming on to say that I really enjoyed it. I remember the previous story from this author, "My Heart is a Quadratic Equation," which I wasn't a fan of, so hearing that this was from her did not excite me.
However, this was just beautiful. Heartbreaking, and pretty much perfect. The best thing, for me, was how short it was. The author knew exactly how long this piece needed to be, and finished it off right when my tears really got going.
Love stories that really grab you and make you feel. Thanks, EscapePod!
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I remember the previous story from this author, "My Heart is a Quadratic Equation," which I wasn't a fan of, so hearing that this was from her did not excite me.
"My Heart is a Quadratic Equation" was written by Shane Halbach. This story, "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love" was written by Rachel Swirsky.
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I remember the previous story from this author, "My Heart is a Quadratic Equation," which I wasn't a fan of, so hearing that this was from her did not excite me.
"My Heart is a Quadratic Equation" was written by Shane Halbach. This story, "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love" was written by Rachel Swirsky.
They were both read beautifully by one of the hottest nerd girls to walk the planet, though. :P
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Nicely done. Short, brutal, and effective.
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This one fell flat for me. It picked up near the end, with the big reveal, but I think it took too long getting there.
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I still get a little choked up after multiple readings. This poem is a beautifully crafted dark jewel of a story. Some people say it's neither science fiction nor fantasy, but I assert vehemently that it IS speculative fiction. The narrator says "If," not "Is," but that just means it's sort of like a simile, not a metaphor; anyway, it's certainly not mundane fiction. Without the speculative element, it wouldn't be anything at all. The writer uses the if-SFF structure to tell about love and grief, and if a non-fan asked me to recommend just one piece of fiction from 2013, this would be it.
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Powerful and perfectly structured. Personally I think the length invalidates any complains about the emotional impact coming to late. It's a bit like complaining about a joke only being funny at the end. I think the beginning, while similar to children stories drags you into the head of the narrator in a very effective way. I never doubted there would be more to it, but hardly dreamt it would have the punch it had. And I assume the author put all those invectives in there exactly because in the end it doesn't matter why the love was beaten - in the end it's the same mechanisms of hate and fear of the unknown no matter what the particular prefix to -phobia we're dealing with.
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Personally I think the length invalidates any complains about the emotional impact coming to late. It's a bit like complaining about a joke only being funny at the end.
As long as you validate my parking. :)
But seriously, even a joke has to keep your interest if it goes on long enough. And your average joke doesn't take thousands of words to tell.
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Loved this. Got me right in the emotions. I love how it's a kind of sinking hypothetical that just goes deep and deeper into fantasy before kind of submerging in the sad reality of it all. This was beautiful, because it was real and raw and honest. More like this.
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I definitely see why this has gotten the accolades it has gotten due to the generally well written (and read) change of pace, tone and emotion, but it doesn't work as well for me, as I think it did the rest of the group. I did really enjoy the paragraph where our T-Rex buddy gets hospitalized by the drunken, pool cue wielding, epithet flinging malefactors, and the way our narrator was daydreaming of helping our beloved T-Rex smite his enemies was awesome. However, IMO, it went from cutesy to revenge fantasy and ultimately was just a bit too cloying for my personal tastes.
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Beautifully written and read. More poetry than prose.
Couldn't say it better than @Varda did above.
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Wow. This just did not work for me!
It went from quirky, to heavy handed, to revenge fantasy, to sexist pap!
I didn't get gut punched with emotion, I felt banged over the head by a moral.
And seriously, was no-one else insulted by the narrator's lack of agency? Even in her revenge fantasy it's the man who does everything, who is tasked with keeping her safe and making her happy. All she can do apparently is plan a frou-frou wedding. Honestly, this part really, really infuriated me. I thought we had gotten past such stupid gender stereotypes! To see them perpetrated in a story that preaches respecting differences was just more than I could bear.
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Wow. This just did not work for me!
It went from quirky, to heavy handed, to revenge fantasy, to sexist pap!
I didn't get gut punched with emotion, I felt banged over the head by a moral.
And seriously, was no-one else insulted by the narrator's lack of agency? Even in her revenge fantasy it's the man who does everything, who is tasked with keeping her safe and making her happy. All she can do apparently is plan a frou-frou wedding. Honestly, this part really, really infuriated me. I thought we had gotten past such stupid gender stereotypes! To see them perpetrated in a story that preaches respecting differences was just more than I could bear.
I didn't really care for the story, either, but I don't see the sexism you're referring to. She dwells on the wedding because he was her fiancee, their wedding is a momentous event in their life stalled by an assault that left him in a coma. Maybe he'll wake up, maybe they'll marry. Maybe he'll die soon, or maybe he'll be stuck in a coma indefinitely. If that were my fiancee then weddings would certainly be on my mind, and more so for most women that I've met than myself because whether it's considered stereotypical or not, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that many women do a lot of planning for their wedding--if it's sexist for a woman in a story to dwell on that, is it also sexist for a woman in real life to?
Regarding the "keeping her safe" what she is talking about being kept safe from is the assault on his well being that happened in real life, and the "making her happy" is being spared the grief of seeing him horribly broken in an assault. Why aren't these feelings valid?
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I didn't really care for the story, either, but I don't see the sexism you're referring to. She dwells on the wedding because he was her fiancee, their wedding is a momentous event in their life stalled by an assault that left him in a coma. Maybe he'll wake up, maybe they'll marry. Maybe he'll die soon, or maybe he'll be stuck in a coma indefinitely. If that were my fiancee then weddings would certainly be on my mind, and more so for most women that I've met than myself because whether it's considered stereotypical or not, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that many women do a lot of planning for their wedding--if it's sexist for a woman in a story to dwell on that, is it also sexist for a woman in real life to?
Regarding the "keeping her safe" what she is talking about being kept safe from is the assault on his well being that happened in real life, and the "making her happy" is being spared the grief of seeing him horribly broken in an assault. Why aren't these feelings valid?
Let's just say that most people who build a revenge fantasy in their mind put themselves as the action hero and do the revenging themselves, not wish for someone else to do it for them. That's the part that stuck out for me the most. And then having her think of her bridesmaids dresses on top of this, well, just, ugh!