EP228: Everything That Matters

[wakela]

Pretty entertaining little story. 
Petty gripes:
-The author put in enough detail to show that he knows is scuba diving, but it didn't make sense to me that in a world with such high technology people would still be using 20th century scuba equipment. 

-I guess he was diving without a buddy or the proper permits because he was doing something sneaky in looking for that ship.  But when you do that and get attacked by a ribbon shark and then the insurance won't pay for it it's kind of your fault.  I know that Abonae  summoned the shark, but any number of unpredictable things could have happened.  So when Abonae gouged him, I couldn't work up that much sympathy.  The MC left himself open to gouging.

-It seemed odd that someone a wealthy and powerful as Abonae wouldn't have flunkies to do his dirty work for him.

-In general the characterization of Abonae was pretty cliche and uninteresting.  Pale people who wear cuff links are not all evil. 


But I did enjoy the story for the fun action and intrigue.

I think it's interesting that EP EpComs always get hijacked by accent or word pronunciation gripes.

[KenK]

I think it's interesting that EP EpComs always get hijacked by accent or word pronunciation gripes.

I dunno about that. I remember my sci-fi book club back in HS bitching about the cover art and font size amongst our reading selections back in the day. Different media leads to different sorts of bitching but not necessarily less of it.

[Scattercat]

Pretty good.  Not my favorite, for the following two reasons:

1) "Everything that matters" apparently boils down to having lots of money and sex.  I get this message from advertising; I don't need it from my pleasure reading (listening?), too.  Seriously, I was expecting a little more playing with the meaning of "everything that matters," since it's the title of the piece.  I'd be willing to take it as, "Revenge is really what matters," except that the protagonist specifies that once he cashes in his find and gets his penis working again, he'll have everything that matters, and not until then.  It just grated on me that the character doesn't seem to grow or change at all in the course of the story, except that he goes from "fish people are icky" to "hey this fish person thing is kinda neat yet also icky."  I feel like "Pressure" did a much better job of exploring the impacts and costs of such extensive modification.

2) Why did Abonae give his diver the shark-bait vest BEFORE said diver had located the wreck?  I mean, if you're going to kill your minion to avoid him spilling the beans and/or taking a cut, then you really ought to wait until after he's served his purposes before you send the laser-beam sharks after him.  It's also more than a little convenient that the spaceship just happened to be in this spot right near the "highly territorial" animals' lair.  What was the plan for killing off the protagonist if the shark didn't happen to be located accessibly?  It feels very sloppy to have the constant risk that your under-the-table diver might get eaten by a shark just BEFORE he finds your ship, even if you have the beacons rigged to cast "Summon Ribbon-Shark."

I'll also ditto most of the other critiques that have been mentioned so far.  Abonae's lack of other minions, uneven emotional responses from the protagonist, the fact that the doctor was so ready to jump into bed with her patient (and the fact that they seemed to have nothing in common except physical desire, which is odd given that she first saw him when he was a torso and half an arm).  It all combined to make the story "pretty good" instead of "wow!"

[Geoff]

As an Australian, I thought the reader did pretty good. Seemed to be more attention paid to it in the first part, and slipped more into 'rrr's than 'ah's toward the end, but on the whole a good effort.

On the story as a whole, it was definitely one that fit the audio format well. It was easy to follow (kind of reminded me the stock D&D format: get the treasure, avoid the monster, save the girl -- although the plot didn't quite go like that) and when there was chronological jumps, there was a lead-in line of narration explaining it.  Good work. 

Hee hee hee.... when Jeremy sent me this story to narrate, I gave it a read and thought "Crap - I bet my Australian accent will be pretty horrible".  I live in south Louisiana, and usually have a noticeable southern "twang" to my voice.  I caught most of the first season of the "Flight of the Conchords" TV show, who's main characters are Kiwis.  Mix that in with the occasional channel-surfing stops on "The Crocodile Hunter", and I'm sure you can all imagine why my Aussie accent was pretty bad
If any Australians out there want to give me some lessons on a proper accent, let me know.
Let's hope that the fine EP folks ask me to narrate a story that has a cajun character, or someone from New Orleans in it... I could do those two some justice.

But for all those out there who thought my Australian accent attempt was bad - Sorry about that   

[Boggled Coriander]

Geoff, let me say you did a fine job on the narration.  I just consider myself entirely ill-equipped to judge your Aussie accent.

[mrund]

The story did little for me, but Sherman's intro and closing song caused me to write a blog entry titled "Norm Sherman is an Elder God".

http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2009/12/norm_sherman_is_an_elder_god.php

[cdugger]

Geoff, let me say you did a fine job on the narration.  I just consider myself entirely ill-equipped to judge your Aussie accent.

Ditto!

[600south]

But for all those out there who thought my Australian accent attempt was bad - Sorry about that   

I'm from there, Geoff, and I thought it was one of the better ones I've heard. The only problem with accents is people tend to exaggerate their most extreme sounds and wind up sounding like a farmer. Good for general use; not so good when there's a sex scene. 
Glad I'm not a narrator. I almost got punched out by a guy from Glasgow for my (bad) Scottish accent.

And just so this isn't a total threadjack, I thought the story was good too. I got the feeling this was a future in which people weren't as attached to their physical bodies as we are now, which might explain the lack of psychological trauma during the attack. The detail in the first scene was a bit stomach-wrenching though (especially when his stomach got eaten).

[Marguerite]

Solid story, and I liked the extra touch with the "fading into consciousness" sound effect.

[CryptoMe]

I liked the story. It was a straight-forward fun, story that I enjoyed listening to. And in the story's defense, I would like to post my thoughts on some of the comments that have been floating around....

"Everything that matters" apparently boils down to having lots of money and sex.  

Actually, if you remember, there wasn't any real sex (depending on your definitions, of course). And it was pretty clear that after the government was done taking their share, the main character was only gonna get a bit of money.

It just grated on me that the character doesn't seem to grow or change at all in the course of the story...

I think the character goes through quite a bit of personal growth. He started off being a galaxy-trotting treasure hunter. By the end of the story, he has decided to settle down on Ori (sp?) with the doctor (if she'll have him), and with only whatever money the government deigns to give him for his find. Enough money to live a modest life with the person you love, that's "Everything that matters" in my opinion.

[T]he fact that the doctor was so ready to jump into bed with her patient (and the fact that they seemed to have nothing in common except physical desire, which is odd given that she first saw him when he was a torso and half an arm).

I don't know about nothing in common. I think they appreciated each other's characters. He admired the doctor's skill and positive attitude. She admired his strength in the face of this big adversity. That's a fairly reasonable basis for attraction... Much more reasonable, I think, than physical traits (like torso and half an arm ).

This diver is way too glib about experiencing a horrible, scary and  life shattering event. ...This didn't seem like a human reaction to me.

Different people handle grief/loss/tragedy in different ways. Just because it's not your way, doesn't make it any less human. Humanity is about adapting. This guy seems to have adapted the way that worked best for him.

[Scattercat]

I think the character goes through quite a bit of personal growth. He started off being a galaxy-trotting treasure hunter. By the end of the story, he has decided to settle down on Ori (sp?) with the doctor (if she'll have him), and with only whatever money the government deigns to give him for his find. Enough money to live a modest life with the person you love, that's "Everything that matters" in my opinion.

I don't think settling for even one tenth of a percent of world-shattering wealth is particularly modest, personally.  This was an artifact that was purportedly worth billions. 

And given that he supposedly *couldn't* resume his world-hopping had he elected not to have a fish-body and stay on the ocean planet (they make it clear that his regrown normal-body would be weaker than before and he'd never be what he was, and he has that brief panic-flash imagining facing his old friends in a crappy regrown body), I'm not really feeling the character growth there.  A character who only does the sensible thing because there aren't any other options doesn't count as a sensible character to me.

I don't know about nothing in common. I think they appreciated each other's characters. He admired the doctor's skill and positive attitude. She admired his strength in the face of this big adversity. That's a fairly reasonable basis for attraction...

They both had so little personality, though, that there was almost no chemistry.  Dude had more scintillating and active conversations with the Big Bad than with his love interest.  They exchanged maybe half a dozen sentences - most of those rather vituperative and/or resentful RE fish people being icky - and then had fail!sex.  I mean, their date?  He shows up, they look at the ocean for about ten minutes, then they get drunk and go at it.  The complete lack of any interaction between them outside of hormones made their relationship feel shallow.  Plus, the doctor-patient dynamic is rarely a healthy one for anyone involved.  I'm not saying it can never work out, but it's not likely to work out well.

[eytanz]

An enjoyable story, but not one that I think will stick with me long. Nothing wrong with it, but it just didn't pack much of a punch.

[Kaa]

I have to say...I don't think I've been as squicked by an EP episode. When the shark is eating our narrator....ugh. But the "Not the cock...not the cock..." was quite funny.

I'm a big fan of revenge stories. I'm not sure what that says about me, but there it is. So I enjoyed this one more than I thought I was going to at the beginning.

And add another vote for the song at the end. Good stuff.

[Loz]

For me this was one time when the charm of the story overwhelmed the several shortcomings which others have already noted.

[Gamercow]

with regards to Scattercat's complaint about the "very territorial shark", the point was that the ship was pretty far away from the shark's normal territory, therefore was a surprise to the MC. 

For me, the story started out quite interesting, and then it seems that the author ran out of steam, and had an idea of how they wanted the story to end, but did not have a good idea on how to get there.  Having the MC say "Yeah, everything is fine down here" and the antagonist, who knows damn well the shark is going to show up sooner or later, come down so readily, seems a bit paper-thin to me. 

To me, the ribbon shark was imagined as a giant tapeworm.  Tapeworms are highly frightening/disgusting to me, so a 25 meter long one was absolutely terrifying. 

[Scattercat]

with regards to Scattercat's complaint about the "very territorial shark", the point was that the ship was pretty far away from the shark's normal territory, therefore was a surprise to the MC. 

My complaint wasn't that the shark was there; my complaint was that apparently the Big Bad's plan HINGED on the shark being there, way out of its territory where it totally blindsided the protagonist.  I mean, if I'm going to kill someone, I wouldn't tie a steak to their backs, send them out into suburban Virginia, and hope that a timber wolf somehow attacks them improbably, which seems to be about the level of this assassination plot.

[Unblinking]

I liked this one okay.

I had trouble connecting with the protagonist very early because the guy is getting chewed up by a monster fish and he seems... disinterested.  I totally missed it when he lost his first appendage because he said it in the same tone as if he were describing what he'd eaten for lunch. 

I share some of the other gripes, such as the doctor being willing to jump into bed with him so readily, the villain not having any henchmen, the villain being so willing to enter the water even though he's the one that laid the trap.  And the title--what is the title supposed to refer to?  Nothing as far as I could tell.

The song at the end was HILARIOUS!  Twas a nice addition to the week's story.  I hope that there will be other occasions to include bonus material like that.  Very cool. 

[lisavilisa]

Two things that are mentioned on the forum are addressed briefly in the story.

The eerie calm while being eaten: 5:40 he mentions that the drugs in his diving suit calm his rage to just discontentment.

The fact the shark came that far from it's territory: most of minute 28 has him discussing how the mobster boss could have signaled to the shark using low frequency and an attracting scent.

good story, liked the song.

[Unblinking]

Two things that are mentioned on the forum are addressed briefly in the story.

The eerie calm while being eaten: 5:40 he mentions that the drugs in his diving suit calm his rage to just discontentment.

The fact the shark came that far from it's territory: most of minute 28 has him discussing how the mobster boss could have signaled to the shark using low frequency and an attracting scent.

good story, liked the song.

Those must be some powerful drugs to not care when losing limbs! 

[lisavilisa]

Those must be some powerful drugs to not care when losing limbs! 

From the addicts I've known, I'd believe it.   

[Listener]

I thought of this story when I read this article about underwater skyscrapers.

[CryptoMe]

I thought of this story when I read this article about underwater skyscrapers.

How very, very cool!!

[Fenrix]

I think it's interesting that EP EpComs always get hijacked by accent or word pronunciation gripes.

There were attempts to devolve into genre appropriateness gripes, but they were less successful.