Pseudopod 137: The Reign of the Wintergod

[Sgarre1]

One can complain about the deployment/execution of troublesome content and not have the complaint be about the troublesome content per se.  Or at least, that was my problem - I just thought it was used in a juvenile way.

[Unblinking]

This one was very disturbing, a glimpse into the mind of a psychopath.  I hadn't considered that the Winter God was the head doctor--that makes perfect sense in retrospect, but I didn't pick that up. 

However, I don't know I'd ever listen to it again.  Not because of the extreme language, and not because of the content (which was dark and disturbing, right on target), but because i got sick of hearing the seemingly dozens of descriptions of the Winter God's member.  I'm not saying it was out of character for her, it just got old really fast.

[Millenium_King]

I had a pretty lukewarm reaction to this one (har har).  I didn't mind the language or anything, but it didn't do much for the story either.  I held preceisely zero sympathy or interest in the main character (does that make me one of the "cold" people too, then...?) and didn't really care what happened to her.

Stories in this format also tend to make me drift away and pay less attention.  What I mean by that is: they spend a long time characterizing the main character, filling in backstory and generally spend a lot of time navel-gazing before an abrupt swing into action and character change.  There's just not much to keep me interested in the beginning (a similar case of "beginning-lag" is to be found in "The Man who Sank").

[Fenrix]

I had forgotten about this one, and was pleasantly surprised on a re-visitation. This is the Yellow Wallpaper with the apocalypse of In the Mouth of Madness through a hentai filter. The unreliability of the narrator is nicely drawn, as there is a very reasonable interpretation that there is nothing supernatural going on. But as with The Yellow Wallpaper, the possibility of the supernatural makes it so much more awesome.

The language in this one was shocking. I did a distinct double take while listening again. Because that's what it was supposed to do. I have full faith in the author, after consuming enough of her work, that the words were carefully chosen to maximize the abrasiveness. The comments in this thread make it clear that the aim was achieved.