Author Topic: EP218: Ode To Katan Amano  (Read 30750 times)

Boggled Coriander

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Reply #50 on: November 04, 2009, 03:43:16 AM
By the way, a Google image search on "Katan Amano" is a gallery of EP forum member icons.  Win!
ha it's true! win!

The five pictures that popped up automatically when I did a normal Google search on "Katan Amano", from left to right:

* Creepy doll.
* Creepy doll.
* Creepy doll.
* Composite image of several creepy dolls, and a skull that's got flowers sprouting from it.
* StePH's jar of salsa.

"The meteor formed a crater, vampires crawling out of the crater." -  The Lyttle Lytton contest


CryptoMe

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Reply #51 on: November 12, 2009, 09:15:27 PM
I don't understand why there needed to be the sex parts. Telling the MC to remove her face was plenty disturbing enough without her mistress also having sex with her in that state.

I too found the sex in this story to be gratuitous and unnecessary. I'm not opposed to sex in stories, it's just that, here it seemed to have little more than shock value. And this distracted me from the interesting points of the story, the ones that other posters here have mentioned, such as the sex doll rising above her experiences to become something better and more human than her owner. In my opinion, the gratuitous sex overshadowed these ideas. Without the forum input, these concepts were completely lost on me. And that is a real shame.



Planish

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Reply #52 on: November 25, 2009, 02:18:02 AM
Odd. I listened to this one at least a week ago. I don't remember how it ended, and many of the plot details are fuzzy in my memory, but know that I pretty much enjoyed it. I liked the moods it evoked, I guess.

Maybe I'm just having a senior moment.  ;)

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Reply #53 on: April 28, 2010, 01:54:43 PM
Hmmm...
I mostly didn't like this one.  It had a solid writing style and I can see what Anarkey says about conveying mood, but in a newer style.  But mood has to go with some actual plot movement for me to generally be happy.  Maybe it's just because I like Poe's now antiquated style, but I'm rarely dissatisfied by a Poe story.

Ode to Katan Amano--not a great title.  I doubt I'm alone in having no idea who this guy is until hearing the outro.  The best titles give me some expectation, whether that expectation is filled or not, and give some foreshadowing.  But since the name is unfamiliar, it was just a non-entity.

I also thought the "you" was male, shame on me I suppose.  But did it ever actually say that it was a female?  I know there was a strap-on dildo, but I'm not sure that rules out a male, particularly if he's more interested in dominance than sexual pleasure, which was not out of the question considering the "you"'s treatment of the narrator.  Maybe he's hypocrtically disgusted by actually touching the doll with his member, and so uses a strap-on as a form of disdain.  Unless I missed other clues, the sex of the "you" character is still undefined to me.

This is a rare case where 2nd person narration didn't bother me.  The one's that really bother me are the ones that just simply replace 1st or 3rd with 2nd without any reason for it, and it just comes off as someone trying to tell me what I've done and should already remember.  Maybe you could call this the "generic" you where it's not supposed to be talking about any entity in particular, and that entity should already know the story.

In this case, the "you" was targeted at a specific person, the owner of the doll.  And there was a reason for telling the story to you.  The doll will likely never get a chance to tell her owner any of this, but she is composing in her head like it's a journal entry aimed at this other person, maybe even an internal logbook.  The other person seems to be unaware of this doll's point of view, so it's told as though explaining that point of view so another could understand it.

But, the reason it all fell flat is that it all just felt emotionally manipulative.  I mean, the stories I like best are the ones that make me feel some kind of emotion, and I realize that the artist wrote the story to have this effect, so in some ways the writer is like a puppeteer, tugging on the emotional centers of my brain.  But sometimes, the curtain falls away and I can see the strings being pulled and it just ruins the magic.  Instead of feeling anger, I note "The author wants me to be angry now," and that doesn't work for me. 
For me it's the difference between the Resnick stories that I love (Barnaby in Exile) and the Resnick stories that I don't (Robots Don't Cry).  It's the difference between feeling an emotion and knowing that I'm supposed to feel an emotion.



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Reply #54 on: April 28, 2010, 02:42:01 PM
When mentioned that there was an obvious song to fit this, I also expected Coin-Operated Boy by Dresden Dolls, since the story was about a sex doll, and dolls from Dresden were specifically mentioned. 

But I really like Coulton in general, and the Creepy Doll song in particular, so I ain't complaining.  :)
"Do you really need that much honey?"



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Reply #55 on: April 28, 2010, 04:55:23 PM
The Coin-Operated Boy doesn't turn on you and try to kill you, though...



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Reply #56 on: April 28, 2010, 05:07:49 PM
The Coin-Operated Boy doesn't turn on you and try to kill you, though...

Is that what the doll was planning in this story?  I somehow missed that.  I thought she just continued the chain of dominance by molesting the powerless doll, and then convinced herself she was a good person because she stopped the molestation.

Anyway, the Coulton creepy doll doesn't try to kill anyone either, it just nags about the honey:tea ratio.  :)



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Reply #57 on: April 28, 2010, 05:41:15 PM
And then traps you in the box with the fire when you try to destroy it...



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Reply #58 on: April 28, 2010, 06:28:46 PM
And then traps you in the box with the fire when you try to destroy it...

I thought that the doll IS you, like a voodoo doll.  Your fiery demise is no one's fault but your own.



Scattercat

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Reply #59 on: April 28, 2010, 10:33:47 PM
I think taunting someone into a course of action you know to be unwise counts for some degree of culpability...



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Reply #60 on: April 29, 2010, 01:30:10 PM
I think taunting someone into a course of action you know to be unwise counts for some degree of culpability...

I don't know that "Do you really need that much honey?" was meant to drive him to throw the doll into the fire.  Annoying, yes.  Malicious, not so much.  :)

And even if it was malicious intent, the doll is, again, also him, so it's more suicide than murder.



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Reply #61 on: April 29, 2010, 09:36:01 PM
Well, it's been following him EVERYWHERE since he got the box, remember.  "There's a creepy doll/that always follows you," etc.  Being haunted by something creepy would get on one's nerves.  I mean, it's not like:

"Oh, hi.  Wow, that's a lot of honey." 
"GET IN THE BOX AND BURN!"

I think the doll wanted him to do it so he could burn.  Or at least the crazy protag of the song thought the doll was taunting him...



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Reply #62 on: April 30, 2010, 01:26:19 PM
Well, it's been following him EVERYWHERE since he got the box, remember.  "There's a creepy doll/that always follows you," etc.  Being haunted by something creepy would get on one's nerves.  I mean, it's not like:

"Oh, hi.  Wow, that's a lot of honey." 
"GET IN THE BOX AND BURN!"

I think the doll wanted him to do it so he could burn.  Or at least the crazy protag of the song thought the doll was taunting him...

It's a doll with no knowledge of human social boundaries.  I know some people who act like that in real life, but I'm assuming they don't want me to burn.  Or maybe they do!  (In any case, we may be overanalyzing  ;) )