Author Topic: PC003: Run Of The Fiery Horse  (Read 57619 times)

Heradel

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on: April 15, 2008, 11:16:16 AM
PC003: Run Of The Fiery Horse

By Hilary Moon Murphy
Read by Rachel Swirsky.
Introduction by K. Tempest Bradford.
First appeared in Realms of Fantasy, 2002.

His tongue flickered out, sniffing the river of dreams that swirled around him. He had studied humans long enough to be a connoisseur of their flavors: those born in the year of the Wooden Ox tasted faintly of wheat and nuts, Metal Pigs had the aroma of tart berries, and Water Dragons reminded him of the salty wines of Nippon. But the taste he sought remained elusive.

Then he found it: hot, almost peppery, with an underlying sweetness. Tsi Sha closed his eyes and hissed with pleasure. A female of the Fiery Horse, the rarest of flavors. Few of the girl children born in that year had lived past their first night. Tsi Sha had found them abandoned on country hillsides and city rubbish heaps as families rid themselves of their inauspicious newborn daughters.

They had tasted delicious.


Rated PG. Contains sensuality, serpentine twists, and a darting tongue that can taste your dreams.

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Sylvan

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Reply #1 on: April 15, 2008, 12:30:38 PM
What a lovely story!

I found it interesting that here we have a MacGuffin that isn't a MacGuffin:  the reputation of girls born under the sign of the Fire Horse.  At first I found this information to be mere stage dressing:  the excuse for the tale.  Chinese folklore and culture were never my strong suit and so I found this to be something added by the author to explain to readers what caused the situation to arise in the first place, and little more.

How enchanting to be wrong!

Maybe, on the long drive in to work, my mind was dulled, but I don't think so.  Despite having a very classic ending, I never saw it coming.  The hints were layered throughout but the author expertly avoided drawing too much attention to them.  Instead, we were treated to a very three-dimensional character and a living, breathing world.  What I thought was the basic excuse to get the story rolling was, indeed, its resolution.

I adore storytelling like this.  Perhaps it is too dependent upon the reader to be in just the right frame of mind, but I don't think so.  Perfected tale-spinning like this can't be just the luck of the draw.  No, I think this was a carefully sculpted and beautifully rendered tale that shows not only an understanding of the lore and culture of "Fiery Horse"'s China but of the genre of Fantasy it conveys.

My congratulations and thanks, both, to the author!

Yours,
Sylvan (Dave)



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Reply #2 on: April 15, 2008, 05:50:33 PM
Very nice story! And even though it was mentioned several times in the story, I also didn't see the end coming. That's definitely the mark of a well written story. Loved it.

For anyone interested in reading more about and trying to figure out their element and sign things, the wikipedia has a pretty informative entry regarding Chinese astrology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_astrology#Five_elements



Ocicat

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Reply #3 on: April 15, 2008, 09:35:45 PM
An excellent story, and an engaging reading as well. 

I've been wondering if the dream serpent is an actual Chinese myth, or if it's the author's invention.  I'm more familiar with Japanese mythology, which has a dream eating creature called a Baku, which apparently came from Chinese mythology originally.  But the critter is far from serpent-like.  And if the story had used an elephant/tiger/pig thing, we wouldn't have gotten the nice touch of the scales being left behind occasionally. 

I really liked how the story managed a strong girl character and a feminist message without the character totally rejecting her culture or being rejected by it. 

By the way, glad you're giving summaries of feedback on previous episodes on the closers.  I always enjoyed that on EP, and it's certainly what brought me here to the forums.  But mostly it just gives the impression that you care about the listening community, and that we're all a part of this thing together.



eytanz

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Reply #4 on: April 15, 2008, 11:08:26 PM
Let me add my voice to those who really enjoyed the story. It was well written, well read, and engaging throughout. I really enjoyed it.

I did find the intro a bit heavy on the explanation. I think the story did a good job of explaining the tradition it was predicated on and its consequences, I wasn't sure why I had to be told about it beforehand.

Let me second Ocicat's gladdness with the mention of the feedback in the outro.



Thaurismunths

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Reply #5 on: April 16, 2008, 12:36:20 AM
I really enjoyed this story, and even learned a little about myself in the end.

First off, story was beautifully illustrated. I say 'illustrated' rather than written because (at least to me) everything was so colorful and vibrant. Ms. Murphy knew exactly when, where, and how much to sketch the scenes so that my minds-eye could paint it with its own shades and not lose track of the story.
Secondly, Rachel did a great job with the reading. You put a lot of passion and enjoyment in the production and it showed. I'm very impressed with how well you inflected the goings-ons, it sounds as though you spent a lot of time practicing.
Thirdly, I've never heard of "Tsi Sha" before, or any fables that closely resemble it. There are dozens of stories about any given creature, and dozens of variations on each story, so finding one that's new and different is really exciting for me. Does anyone know the background of this "Tsi Sha" creature or more stories about it?
Fourthly (I should have picked a better way to write this), it was nice to see a strong female character take charge of her destiny in her own way, rather than the very cliche route of taking over a man's role. Good example of this cliche would be Disney's Mulan: Girl subdued, revolts by assuming "Man's role", girl gets accepted as a man (not a woman).
Lastly, what I learned about myself is why I like faerie tales so much. In morality plays there are only so many ways it can turn out, and unless the author is feeling better, good always wins. I had a pretty good hunch on how this story would end by the mid-way point, but it was watching it unfold, seeing the mechanisms that lead to that ending (Her fiery spirit; Tsi Sha's kindled interest; the meddling of fate; exploitation his love and her sexuality, and the shibumi of the ending) that I enjoy so much.

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stePH

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Reply #6 on: April 16, 2008, 12:59:04 AM
Let me add my voice to those who really enjoyed the story. It was well written, well read, and engaging throughout. I really enjoyed it.

I did find the intro a bit heavy on the explanation. I think the story did a good job of explaining the tradition it was predicated on and its consequences, I wasn't sure why I had to be told about it beforehand.

I certainly appreciated it.  I knew that the Chinese "horoscopes" had several animals associated with a cyle of years (Year of the Cock here :)) but the elemental aspect was new to me, and I'd have been a bit lost at the mention of "earth snake" and "wood pig" and whatnot.  (I'm already familiar with the five feng shui elements but not with their association to Chinese horoscopes.) 

I'd probably have been thinking more of the "Animal Attraction" episode of Kim Possible (Kim is a Blue Fox and is best suited to pair with a Yellow Trout.  Ron is a Pink Sloth, the worst thing anybody can be.)

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deflective

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Reply #7 on: April 16, 2008, 03:49:54 AM
first of all i want to say that the story was good, exactly the type thing i come to podcastle for. a nice mixture of traditional beliefs and modern fantasy plot. it can be fun to compare actual traditions with those fantasy pantheons that are created purely for entertainment.

but there's one thing about podcastle that's beginning to bug me, all three stories have had a heavy theme of female empowerment. i typically enjoy that, it can be illuminating. the first week was very cool, both escape pod and pseudopod had similar themes and the idea of show-crossing theme weeks is appealing. but a reoccurring theme every week quickly hits a saturation point.

fantasy as a genre has had something of a checkered past with women. it's traditionally set in a patriarchal environment, the early works seemed to reserve leather bikinis for female roles. even as the genre evolves the leather bikini endures, acceptable so long as the woman also holds a sword. the backlash of female-centric fantasy is both necessary and welcome but there's so much more out there.



Rachel Swirsky

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Reply #8 on: April 16, 2008, 05:14:42 AM
I expect it would be fairly trivial to find three weeks' worth of stories on Escape Pod that are all focused on male narrators. Why is it an agenda and a problem when it's women, but invisible when it's men?

In any case, the "female empowerment" theme is largely coincidental. (As a matter of fact, I don't think "Come Lady Death" is about female empowerment at all... in fact, the only way I can make that argument is to assume that "female empowerment" = powerful female characters, which seems patently not the case. If we're supposed to ration out how many powerful women characters appear in stories... well, that's not going to happen. I suppose the interpretation may be negotiable, however.)

There are three more female narrated stories coming up, two by women and one by a man: "Goosegirl" by Margaret Ronald, "Dead Girl's Wedding March" by Cat Rambo, and "The Girl with the Sun in Her Head" by Jeremiah Tolbert. After that, there are two male-narrated stories.

Our Halloween story arc will be six stories long, and if we're able to acquire all the pieces I'm currently in negotiation for, it'll be five male narrators and only one female narrator.

As to why our first few episodes are female-centered? Well, I urge you not to discount coincidence, and to remember that there are many male-centered stories on Escape Pod that may not catch your attention the way a series of female main characters does. However, I suspect there may be another trend. It is very, very difficult to find good high fantasy and sword and sorcery stories. Most of what we see in slush are purple prosed Tolkein rip-offs. Even most of what we see that plays with setting or places women at the center is not well-written -- but I think there may be a small chance that those writers who are responding to the sword and sorcery tradition, for instance with tales of female empowerment, are somewhat more likely to have a fresh approach than those who are trying to recreate Robert Jordan. (I have no problem with recreating Robert Jordan, but the unfortunate truth is that the original is probably better than the derivative.)

As soon as I figure out who to contact, I'll be trying to acquire some of the Kedrigern stories that have run in F&SF. These are diverting tales of a male wizard. However, they seem to be representatives of an increasingly rare breed of fiction -- and I note that the author passed away a couple years ago. :(

For those who may have reservations about the fact that the magazine is edited by a woman, and an avowed feminist woman -- well, sure, we're going to run stories about women, and we're probably not going to run stories about women in chainmail bikinis, however mighty their swords. (Though it could happen.) Will there be more stories about women in PodCastle than Escape Pod? Maybe.

But remember, "Come Lady Death" and "For Fear of Dragons" were Steve Eley's picks, and they sit in company with several other tales he acquired for our stock that I suppose could be interpreted as female empowerment narratives or female-centered, for instance a Jim Hines' Sword & Sorceress piece. This may be a quirk of what's being written in high fantasy right now that's good, or perhaps a quirk of the fact that fantasy is associated with more female authors and a larger female readership than science fiction, or a quirk of what people are sending to us / what's coming to our attention -- but whatever it is, it's certainly not a phenomenon caused by my presence on the staff.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2008, 05:21:47 AM by Rachel Swirsky »



deflective

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Reply #9 on: April 16, 2008, 08:44:15 AM
to be absolutely clear, i'm not talking about the sex of the narrator, author, or characters. it's stories concentrating on a woman struggling against an oppressive male dominated society that's been overdone recently. all of it so seriously too, maybe if we had a nina kimberly in the mix it wouldn't feel so homogeneous.

you're right to point out that come lady death doesn't really belong in the trend. it probably felt that way because it came out the same week that the other podcasts had their stories and a large part of the episode's discussion thread concentrates on death's sex.

i hope you didn't read me as accusatory, Rachel, podcastle compares favourably with any other new podcast. some part of me is always trying to figure out the story behind the story, imagine the atmosphere in the newspaper office by the stories it chooses to print. if this is a general trend for short fantasy fiction then it could be worse.



Thaurismunths

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Reply #10 on: April 16, 2008, 10:39:40 AM
but there's one thing about podcastle that's beginning to bug me, all three stories have had a heavy theme of female empowerment. i typically enjoy that, it can be illuminating. the first week was very cool, both escape pod and pseudopod had similar themes and the idea of show-crossing theme weeks is appealing. but a reoccurring theme every week quickly hits a saturation point.

I have to admit, I was terribly distracted while listening to this story. It is an AMAZING story, and a great choice for Podcastle, but I couldn't help but wonder about the editor's motive while picking the piece. Rachel is known for going well out of her way on the topics of gender equality and women's rights. She is an outspoken feminist, and this story has another strong female lead (yes, Steve chose the first one but, from the outside perspective, you set the order). Is she using PC as her personal pulpit? Am I going to be brow-beaten if I speak out against a story I didn't like? Are we going to get crap stories, just because the good ones didn't have support the feminist agenda?
In the end I realized that it doesn't matter why she chose this story, it only matters that she chose a good story and presented it to us. Her personal views should not color my enjoyment of a piece nor my view of the podcast. Her actions will have to speak for themselves.
We're only three stories in, and two of them 'might' have had feminist appeal (Beagle's doesn't count). That's hardly a streak. Presenting stories that fit with the editors' (and there are more than one) personal political views only become an issue for us, the listeners, when they refuse to run stories that don't or run only pieces that have an agenda message.
If the editors don't run good fiction because the women are deemed too simpering, or refuse a well put together belly-bunny piece because the lead isn't wearing enough clothes, then we can all vote with our dollars and our downloads. Until then I think we should let Podcastle take its own course and keep our speculations relevant to the stories at hand.

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ajames

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Reply #11 on: April 16, 2008, 10:46:43 AM
The only disappointment from this story was in myself for not seeing the ending earlier. I mean, Hilary Moon Murphy practically gave us the ending in large neon letters, and still I didn't know what was coming until just before it happened.

This type of story is definitely what I hoped for from Podcastle. Rich in imagery and ideas, beautifully told.

[My two cents on the discussion regarding the female empowerment theme - I suggest we wait for more stories before discussing trends and underlying themes in any depth. I've spent too much time lately with statistics to make much out of three samples, and the only trend I care about right now is quality, however subjectively I may judge it. And from my perspective, 2 of the 3 stories so far have been FANTASTIC, with the remaining story still being a good listen.]



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Reply #12 on: April 16, 2008, 12:28:50 PM
This story had every single thing I love about fantasy in it, and I would be utterly shocked if it doesn't appear in some best-of somewhere.  (I don't remember the intro; maybe it has.)  It was beautifully illustrated, as Thaurismunths said; not too heavy on the details, but the words themselves painted the pictures without being overtly full of exposition.

The ending confused me slightly -- not the climax, where Tsi Sha basically punched his own ticket, but where Li Chi ran off into the dream world.  I'd like to know what happened when she got out of there... or if she did.  I can't remember the exact quote, but someone once said that the world in which you hold your reader is ephemeral, that the characters have lives to get back to after you're done with them, and a good story lets them do that and makes you wonder what's outside the covers of the book.  (I'm paraphrasing.)

If I had a gripe, it was that certain words were repeated too close together -- "turned" and especially "sighed".  Maybe I'm sensitized to notice these things because I write as part of my job; I don't know.  But I did notice it.

The reading was very good.

(The following is my opinion, and not based in fact.)

To briefly address the female-empowerment thing -- in a story like this, that takes place when this one does, in the culture in which it's set, the way Li Chi rebelled against society fit into the story without difficulty.  In Western culture, we are (I think) overly sensitized to the appearance of themes that empower those who were, for whatever reason, not empowered in the past.  At this point in the 21st century, those who were never unpowered (non-empowered?) are getting worn out on the empowerment themes.  Because it was not done overtly, IMO, I didn't notice it in the story.  As for the previous one (fear of dragons), that was less a story about empowerment and more a story about a girl who's tired of seeing girls sacrificed to a dragon and doesn't want to live in fear.  If anything, she's overcoming fear, not oppression.

I just deleted a massive paragraph with an example of sensitization to trends that run counter to one's own beliefs because it was a major tangent, and if a mod starts a thread about that to split off from this one, I will participate.

Anyway.

As a rule, I have no problem with strong female characters so long as they don't draw attention to the fact that they're strong female characters in an out-of-character fashion.  Li Chi was strong within her character, and that's why I didn't really see this as an empowerment story.

Enough rambling.

My final review:

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hautdesert

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Reply #13 on: April 16, 2008, 12:31:00 PM
Quote
it's stories concentrating on a woman struggling against an oppressive male dominated society that's been overdone recently.

I think this—or the appearance of it-- is going to be a given with more or less traditional fantasy with a female main character.  Those traditional medieval cultures weren't much to write home about in terms of allowing women latitude for heroic deeds. Those "women struggling against an oppressive male dominated society" stories might have been written with an explicitly feminist theme in mind—or they might have been adventure stories and the author wanted to use female main characters.  There are a lot of female readers who kind of like heroic female characters.

I also think it's worth considering just what makes a story tick.  You want conflict, you want something for your main character to overcome.  Anytime you have a female character overcoming obstacles to achieve her goal, it's going to look a lot like Fiery Horse.  (Or, you know, if it's done right.  Cause Fiery Horse is a great story.)  Any time you've got a woman overcoming obstacles, it's going to read, from a certain angle, as explicitly feminist.

Consider Fiery Horse in particular.  She's actually succeeded with the help of her father.  She's not rebelling against her father, he's her ally the whole time.  She scores no points against the society that exposes baby girls because their horoscopes aren't right.  She manages to avoid footbinding—because of her father.  The thing she's fighting is a monster that will kill her and absorb her, and she kills it by following the dictates of her male-dominated culture:  agreeing to a marriage and outwardly submitting.

This isn't actually a story about sticking it to the patriarchy.  This is a story that has a woman protagonist.  The author has used the things that follow from that to her advantage—we all want Li Chi to avoid having her feet bound, that increases our sympathy for her.  The exposure of Fire Horse girls sets up the situation nicely.  The author has done an excellent job with her materials.

The author is clearly working from some assumptions—women are capable of being smart, strong, and heroic, for one—that have some political ramifications, in the sense of "all stories are political."  But look closer at this one.

Let's consider Fear of Dragons a moment.  That's not a "sticking it to the patriarchy" story either.  It's not boys who were sacrificed to dragons in the "knight saves maiden from dragon" template.  The author wants to play with that template—letting the "sacrifice" be heroic is a good way to do that.  And that story is more about the way governments and religions use fear to manipulate people.  The genders of the characters come straight from the original stories.  You could easily make the main character a boy.  Everyone would blink and say, "But it's girls who…"  But the story wouldn't be substantially different.  The biggest hurdle would be the virginity test, but hell, it's fantasy, there'd be a way around that.

Heroic, spunky, strong women who achieve their goals against all odds are not automatically "struggling against an oppressive male dominated society."

Rachel is right about the slush pile dynamics, by the way.  Ajames is absolutely one hundred percent right about statistics—three is just way too small a sample. And I also know that when Rachel emailed me about Fiery Horse and said "Do you like this story?  I think it's excellent" the gender of the narrator was not an issue.  It hasn't been, of any of the stories she's said she wants to buy.  Usually what she says is something like, "Wow, I love this!"



Rachel Swirsky

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Reply #14 on: April 16, 2008, 01:36:53 PM
Quote
She is an outspoken feminist, and this story has another strong female lead (yes, Steve chose the first one but, from the outside perspective, you set the order).

It went second because it had a dragon in it.

Personally, I'm not fond of the story "For Fear of Dragons." I agree with those who say the believability is strained, it draws far too heavily on cliche, and the political agenda is awkwardly heavy-handed (although, for the record, I think the political agenda is anti-establishment in general, not anti-Iraq or anti-men). I was given the option of rejecting the story and sending it to be run in Escape Pod, but even though the story's not my cup of prose-form tea, I opted to keep it for PodCastle. I wanted to be very light-handed with turning stories away because while I dont always agree with Steve's taste, he's clearly an awesome editor. In the end, I only rejected two stories from PodCastle and sent them back to Escape Pod (both had female heroines and could be construed as female empowering). 

So, I kept this piece. It went early in the line-up because A) it's traditional fantasy, B) Steve picked it, and C) it had a dragon in it. Had the story come into my slush raw, I would have rejected it.

That's not to say anything negative toward Steve or Carrie Vaughn or anyone else who liked it. I just don't particularly. It's a story that split the audience, more or less, the same way it split me and Steve. I just want to be clear about my taste, and how it does or doesn't interact with my politics -- a story about a plucky heroine or spirited girl or what not is emphatically not enough to win me over.

By the by, I crunched some numbers last night, and looking at what we have in stock, we have, depending on what slice of stories you look at (scheduled or not, etc) somewhere between 43 and 55% stories written by and narrated men (oddly, the numbers for narration and writing are dead even, even though we have plenty of men writing as women, and women writing as men, and so on). As a point of contrast, Steve says last time he crunched numbers, only 30% of Escape Pod stories were written by women, and Ann tells me that only two of his last sixteen pieces had female narrators. Again, that's not meant as nasty or upset toward Steve at all; I'm just pointing out that PodCastle's numbers are closer to equal, and so it's going to be hard to convince me we're doing something wrong with our gender skew, since I haven't seen people saying the same of Escape Pod.

Anyhoo, I'm going to drop out of this thread. Friday's piece is female-written and male-narrated, and basically, IMO, awesome. (If it's about anything civil rights related, I suppose it's about ogre empowerment.) We're moving into our "fairy tale" phase for the next three weeks, and this has tended to be a subgenre dominated by women's voices -- although we are running a two male-written ones (Jeremiah Tolbert's "The Girl with the Sun in Her Head" and Gord Sellar's "Pahwahke"). On the other side, we'll be looking at modern folktales -- M. K. Hobson's "Hotel Astarte" (which I'm pretty sure Mary mentioned is nominated for some big award this year), and Ben Rosenbaum's "The Ant King." Both are available online, if you like to see text versions before your audio:

http://www.demimonde.com/SFWA/astarte.html
http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/biblio.html

I do appreciate the compliments in the thread, and that these critiques are offered in a spirit of helpfulness and desire to see PodCastle rockin'. But I've had my say, and it's probably best for y'all to be able to discuss without me. You can catch me in private message or at the podcastle email addresses.

See you Friday for "Giant!"
« Last Edit: April 16, 2008, 02:20:55 PM by Rachel Swirsky »



birdless

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Reply #15 on: April 16, 2008, 03:27:46 PM
This has been my favorite of the three PC stories so far, and one of my favorites overall. It was beautifully illustrated by the author. I wasn't expecting to like it a whole lot, just because the small bit of Asian fantasy I've been exposed to usually ends tragically. On the other hand, it has all been beautiful, and this was no exception. I was very impressed how the author achieved such rich characterization of her cast in such a short piece. All of the characters felt very real to me.

I didn't give a lot of thought to the "politics" of this story, but I thought Thaur's comment contrasting this story to Mulan was very insightful (as well as that whole line of thought that was echoed by other posters, too). I think, even though I didn't realize it while listening to it, this treatment actually enhanced my enjoyment of the story.

The one moment that kind of jarred me out of the story for a bit was the father's dream of his daughter's glistening skin as she emerged from the bath... that's just a little weird. :P I hope it wasn't just gratuitous sensuality, but I'd rather think it was that than to follow the other direction those wonderings lead to. But, if it was gratuitous... well, this story just seemed above that.

And I have to admit that I noticed that the three stories so far have had female lead characters. It didn't bug me, but I did notice it, and I felt fairly certain it was just coincidence. But Rachel shamed me in correctly pointing out that if it had been three male lead characters, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. I guess an argument could be made that the demographic for SF/F is largely male, thus female lead roles stand out more starkly in contrast, but I'm not interested in trying to make that argument.

Anyway, great choice and very well read!

<edit>
Oh, one other thing:
It is very, very difficult to find good high fantasy and sword and sorcery stories. Most of what we see in slush are purple prosed Tolkein rip-offs.
I'm not sure what "purple-prosed" means, but if the Tolkien rip-offs are nevertheless good stories, I'd still like to hear them. But by "rip-offs," do you mean more or less the type of world they are set in (not an issue for me), or that a hobbit an elf finds this ring sword that needs to be destroyed before Sauron the Master of Darkness can get his hands on it (yeah, a bit of an issue).
« Last Edit: April 16, 2008, 03:38:36 PM by birdless »



eytanz

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Reply #16 on: April 16, 2008, 03:47:06 PM
The one moment that kind of jarred me out of the story for a bit was the father's dream of his daughter's glistening skin as she emerged from the bath... that's just a little weird. :P I hope it wasn't just gratuitous sensuality, but I'd rather think it was that than to follow the other direction those wonderings lead to. But, if it was gratuitous... well, this story just seemed above that.

It wasn't gratuitous at all, and was meant to be uncomfortable. The serpent - who was sexually attracted to the girl - was making her father dream of her in an inappropriate manner, which is partially why he realized something was up. This follows the narrative path quite well, as the serpent's influence on her life grows more and more negative.



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Reply #17 on: April 16, 2008, 04:24:59 PM
The one moment that kind of jarred me out of the story for a bit was the father's dream of his daughter's glistening skin as she emerged from the bath... that's just a little weird. :P I hope it wasn't just gratuitous sensuality, but I'd rather think it was that than to follow the other direction those wonderings lead to. But, if it was gratuitous... well, this story just seemed above that.

It wasn't gratuitous at all, and was meant to be uncomfortable. The serpent - who was sexually attracted to the girl - was making her father dream of her in an inappropriate manner, which is partially why he realized something was up. This follows the narrative path quite well, as the serpent's influence on her life grows more and more negative.

Agreed, I thought that was a great character moment, actually - both for the father and the serpent.  Thats when the father realizes that these dreams aren't his - they can't be, he doesn't think of his daughter that way.  And it's when we readers know that the serpent *does* think of his daughter that way (if only because he ate her suitor).  So that moment sets up the serpent's downfall from two different angles.



birdless

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Reply #18 on: April 16, 2008, 04:28:21 PM
The one moment that kind of jarred me out of the story for a bit was the father's dream of his daughter's glistening skin as she emerged from the bath... that's just a little weird. :P I hope it wasn't just gratuitous sensuality, but I'd rather think it was that than to follow the other direction those wonderings lead to. But, if it was gratuitous... well, this story just seemed above that.

It wasn't gratuitous at all, and was meant to be uncomfortable. The serpent - who was sexually attracted to the girl - was making her father dream of her in an inappropriate manner, which is partially why he realized something was up. This follows the narrative path quite well, as the serpent's influence on her life grows more and more negative.
OOooohh.... yeah, that makes perfect sense... how did I miss that?!? Thanks for clearing that up.



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Reply #19 on: April 16, 2008, 04:38:39 PM
<edit>
Oh, one other thing:
It is very, very difficult to find good high fantasy and sword and sorcery stories. Most of what we see in slush are purple prosed Tolkein rip-offs.
I'm not sure what "purple-prosed" means, but if the Tolkien rip-offs are nevertheless good stories, I'd still like to hear them. But by "rip-offs," do you mean more or less the type of world they are set in (not an issue for me), or that a hobbit an elf finds this ring sword that needs to be destroyed before Sauron the Master of Darkness can get his hands on it (yeah, a bit of an issue).

Purple prose is a term for when someone is dragging out the thesaurus on every word to make their story seem mellifluous, dulcet and well-inscribed. Another example would be someone who uses every word but said (announced, informed, declared, articulated, uttered, surmised, posited, etc.). Pretty uniformly they get really annoying, really quick. I'm sure that if they're good at their heart she's sending them back to the writer with a note about it, and asking them to resubmit after a rewrite.

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Reply #20 on: April 16, 2008, 04:45:52 PM
Damn, that was a great story. One of the best that I've heard in the PseudoEscapePodCastleVerse. Touching upon many interesting themes, based on a very interesting historical and social setting, beautifully constructed and a kick-ass heroine.






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Reply #21 on: April 16, 2008, 04:47:22 PM

It is very, very difficult to find good high fantasy and sword and sorcery stories. Most of what we see in slush are purple prosed Tolkein rip-offs.
I'm not sure what "purple-prosed" means, but if the Tolkien rip-offs are nevertheless good stories, I'd still like to hear them. But by "rip-offs," do you mean more or less the type of world they are set in (not an issue for me), or that a hobbit an elf finds this ring sword that needs to be destroyed before Sauron the Master of Darkness can get his hands on it (yeah, a bit of an issue).

Do we use the term "EFP" here?

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Reply #22 on: April 16, 2008, 04:48:39 PM
My 2 Eurocents on the feminism issue (which clearly beat your American cents, since the Euro stands at about 1.6 $):
I didn't think that either "Come Lady, Death" (which I loved) or "For Fear of Dragons" (which I didn't like) are about feminism or female empowerment at all. Imho, the first doesn't have a political or social message at all and the second is anti-religion or anti-establishment.
This story definitely has a component female empowerment , but I'd argue that it is not at the core of the story. It is only the reason why she strikes a deal with the snake demon. After that the story is about her conflict with the EVIL MONSTERtm which I don't read as feminist or political at all.     



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Reply #23 on: April 16, 2008, 04:53:10 PM
Oh and before I forget, the self-deprecating humor in the outro made me laugh out loud. Gooooo Rachel!



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Reply #24 on: April 16, 2008, 05:07:20 PM
Do we use the term "EFP" here?

Explosively Formed Penetrator? Not usually. I prefer the naturally formed ones myself.

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