Of the storm of Cat Rambo that has been podcast lately, this is probably the best of the bunch because it had a distinct plot -- that is, stuff happens. And I totally get the parallels to "The Old Man And The Sea". I guess the narrator did too because she read the story at a very slow pace, so slow that I started to get annoyed. I needed faster pacing.
Of course, TOMATS wasn't very fast-paced either.
I like boats, and boating. My grandfather had boats. As an ex-SCUBA-diver (my license lapsed, but I had both Open Water and Advanced), I know how to handle myself on boats and around heavy equipment on rolling seas (mostly: avoid it). So I appreciated the boat parts. Also, the non-battle with the corporate scavengers at the Lump was pretty cool. But the journey there and back was long, and Jorge Felipe had absolutely no redeeming qualities (the best villains have at least one, I think), so I didn't really feel anything when he died. Nico's return annoyed me -- where was he hiding all that time? an air bubble in the mini-lump? -- and I almost wonder if the author wrote herself into a corner and had to grab a rope and swing back to the doorway.
But what annoyed me about the story was the mermaids. The story title says mermaids. Even the Eliot poem has mermaids. Mermaids attack Lolo's mini-lump until it's gone. Mermaids are evil. That's about it. I suppose there's a commentary there on how the rich (who became mermaids, spawned, then turned back) are still screwing the poor (Lolo et al, by taking away this chunk of treasure), but I don't want to think about that. Not when I have to think about the rape thing, and the action thing, and the boat thing... it's too much.
Speaking of the rape and gender-removal thing... *sigh*... I don't see how the story was improved by adding it. Lolo could've remained Laura, learned some form of martial art, and still have been a girl (I'm guessing she was late-teens by this point). Adding the gender-removal was just another SFnal thing, and these days it seems like nongender has taken over the "shock" role of male homosexuality. Think about it -- in "Tio Gilberto and the 27 Ghosts", the MC was gay. Good for him. But the story wasn't about his sexuality, and I doubt any readers were shocked by it. In this one, Laura made a choice to become the nongendered Lolo because of a fairly obvious reason, which has been covered by other commenters. And that's fine... if that's what the story was about. But it wasn't about her choice to become nongendered. So what was the point, exactly? Showing how far people will go to try and escape the memory of / prevent the recurrence of a violent event against them? Showing Lolo's regret at her choice, at the bait-and-switch comparison between choosing nongender and parenting hundreds of mermaid spawn?
So, in the end, I didn't love this story, although I liked it a lot more than other Rambo stories (although I do think "Sugar"'s descriptions blew this one's away -- which, given the TOMATS comparison, I suppose is all right). Actually, I read "Seeking Nothing" in Daily Science Fiction today, and I actually kind of liked it -- which tells me that I guess Rambo's writing, at least in my eyes, is better suited for the printed page.
Feedback went on a tad too long this episode as well.