Author Topic: PC126: Creature  (Read 19367 times)

Boggled Coriander

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Reply #25 on: October 16, 2010, 12:00:58 AM
I haven't listened to this story yet -- big podcast backlog after a hectic couple of weeks.

But I want to say that I read the story excerpt above, and I so naturally heard it in Norm Sherman's voice.  I mean, who else?

Looking forward to listening to this one.

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internalogic

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Reply #26 on: October 16, 2010, 12:07:05 PM
This story is beautiful and it's breaking my heart.

about 7 minutes left.

*listening*

There.  It's finished.

And that last sentence kicked literary gluteus.  Thank you.



Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #27 on: October 16, 2010, 05:50:08 PM
I myself was kind of curious by you saying "Creature reminded you too much of Frankenstein's Monster," because the choices Creature and the monster make seem to go in such opposite directions. So if you do want to go more into that, I'd personally be curious to hear. If you don't, that's cool too.


I'm not talking about their respective choices, I'm talking about.... well, I'm not exactly sure.
Random preamble: I don't like taking public transportation, and I don't own a car, so I mostly walk from place to place. It takes longer, but I enjoy it more, and the exercise is an added bonus.
And that's when I listen to podcasts. I load a bunch onto my phone, plug my headphones in and start walking. I freely admit that I am therefore subject to external stimuli and that sometimes it affects my opinion on the podcast, or the story.
In this case, I didn't see any monsters or crazy doctors. (Frankenshtein) But, while I was waiting at a traffic light I realized I had been thinking of Monster, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why.
Later, while digesting the story, I think it may be because Creature and Monster have similar histories.
(Yes, I know that life is a series of choices that you make, and since I already said that they made different choices their lives can't possibly be the same. But read on before flaming.)
Both of them are something new that world has never seen before, and in both cases the world was not prepared to accept them.
Yes Monster was created on purpose and Creature was the unholy union of a woman, half a man and post-apocalyptic chemicals. It doesn't matter. In both cases their "birth" was strange, unusual, and unacceptable by everybody, except perhaps the parties responsible for said birth.
Another thing.
I'm going to oversimplify here. If we were to draw the world in black and white, then both Monster and Creature found the rest of the world guilty of putting them in the black, when they clearly intend white.
Monster wanted to love and to feel loved, but was scorned. Creature wanted to make people feel happy, and help the little girl, but was accosted by the Black Clads, the crazy preacher, and the bridge denizens.
And this is where, in my opinion, they diverge. Monster took this very hard, and went on to lead his creator to his death, but not before driving him insane.
Creature simply understood that people suck, and will no longer have anything to do with them. He took the little girl and his compassion and fled to the wastelands.

Sometimes you just get this weird thought and you wonder where it came from. Sometimes you can backtrack your train of thought, other times you can't, but you may be able to reconstruct the reasoning.
That's what (I think) I did here. I hope I made some kind of sense, it's all so clear to me, but putting thoughts down into the written word can be hard.

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Scattercat

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Reply #28 on: October 19, 2010, 06:09:47 AM
Hooray!  I'm finally in line with popular opinion! 

This story was awesome.  I love fables/allegories/fairy tales, so my biggest complaint (or perhaps simply least favorite part) was that there was occasionally a too-naturalistic tone to the dreamlike narrative.  (I also didn't really care for the extended backstory infodump; the birth scene was sufficient, to my mind, and the rest could have been spread more evenly and easily throughout the rest of the story.)  Otherwise, very much enjoyed this one.  Reminded me of this quite a bit.



Unblinking

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Reply #29 on: October 19, 2010, 01:26:44 PM
Hooray!  I'm finally in line with popular opinion! 

Wait, I must've read the story wrong.  I'm going to go listen to it again, I'm sure I can't agree with scattercat...

Nope, still just the shotgun bullets thing, I still like think it's great overall.   ;D



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Reply #30 on: October 19, 2010, 06:58:22 PM
So who built this "creature". While the story is sweet, the unlikeliness of a "creature" ever existing ruined it. If any such creature existed, it would not give a care about a little girl.

You did notice that this story ran on Podcastle and not Escape Pod, right?

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Nixelplix

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Reply #31 on: October 20, 2010, 02:05:11 AM
This story was great!  I saw it as a sort of Gamma World love story. The Creature and the Girl will rule the Waste! Woe to any of the evildoers (or anyone else for that matter) that dare trespass their domain!  I wonder what their kids will be like.



nem0fazer

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Reply #32 on: October 20, 2010, 04:59:47 AM
Wonderful. Thanks.



jjtraw

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Reply #33 on: October 21, 2010, 01:13:43 PM
LOVED this story!
Creature: way less Frankenstein, way more Daikaiju.
Some kind of weird-ass rainbow peace-and-love attack!
I had to go listen to Radioactive Runaway again :)

-Jijit



Boggled Coriander

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Reply #34 on: October 21, 2010, 02:09:57 PM
Finally listened to this one.  Loved it.  Met my expectations.

It's kinda funny - if I'd read a synopsis of this story without listening to/reading it in full, I would have thought, "Friendship between unhappy child and monstrous beast.  Okay, so it may not be a proper cliche yet, but it is a well-worn trope."

And yet I barely registered such thoughts while listening, because of the excellent writing.  And Norm's reading bumped it up yet another notch.

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


internalogic

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Reply #35 on: October 21, 2010, 05:51:30 PM
And yet I barely registered such thoughts while listening, because of the excellent writing.  And Norm's reading bumped it up yet another notch.

yes.




Rain

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Reply #36 on: October 22, 2010, 12:08:49 PM
I really liked the story and would like to hear more from the same world, i didnt hurt that Norm was the narrator. Norm makes everything better  :D



icegirl

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Reply #37 on: October 22, 2010, 09:25:32 PM
I enjoyed this one - just the idea that Creature could survive by making everyone around him feel better made me happy!



Faraway Ray

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Reply #38 on: October 23, 2010, 02:21:58 PM
This story was great!  I saw it as a sort of Gamma World love story. The Creature and the Girl will rule the Waste! Woe to any of the evildoers (or anyone else for that matter) that dare trespass their domain!  I wonder what their kids will be like.

I'm a little creeped out that you immediately thought of a romantic relationship between the young child and the monster, as opposed to the blatantly obvious paternal one that the story was going for.

I really loved this story. I'm always a fan of odd monsters, particularly outsiders. It's rare that a story about a misunderstood creature doesn't end up crossing the line into angsty "woe is me" territory. I think this one works because a reader's sympathy is primarily placed on the girl. Well, that and the fact that Creature is seemingly nigh-invulnerable and could easily tear a man in half.


A story of lust, violence and jelly.

Well, Here I Am. My little slice of the blaggin' world.


gateaux

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Reply #39 on: October 24, 2010, 10:02:47 PM
I really adored this story. At the end I was left wondering what that little girl would be like after growing up in ... monster land, or hell, essentially.
And I pictured creature to look like a Hayao Miyazaki character, like No-face in Spirited Away.




Talia

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Reply #40 on: October 25, 2010, 03:58:43 PM
And I pictured creature to look like a Hayao Miyazaki character, like No-face in Spirited Away

Oooh. Good call!



Maplesugar

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Reply #41 on: October 25, 2010, 04:06:33 PM
And I pictured creature to look like a Hayao Miyazaki character, like No-face in Spirited Away

Oooh. Good call!

I agree- that's exactly how I thought of him.



gateaux

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Reply #42 on: October 25, 2010, 05:23:58 PM
:D :D :D



jay daze

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Reply #43 on: October 27, 2010, 10:26:12 PM
AWESOME!!!  Effortless surreal landscape writing goodness.  More please!



That Hirschman Guy

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Reply #44 on: November 28, 2010, 04:25:15 AM
I love this story. LOVE.  Norm's delivery needs no praise from me, but consider it given anyway.

I fell in love with creature wholly as the episode unfolded. My heart sank as I feared the worst for the little girl being shot at, and I confess I suspected Creature wouldn't know to surface for air when he plunged into the river... but I am glad he did.

A grand listening experience. Plus bonus for having Al speak after the ep!



FireTurtle

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Reply #45 on: December 04, 2010, 03:55:07 AM
I <3 Creature!

Yes, this is a horribly late comment. I just finished my book-on-tape extravaganza and am now feverishly working my way through two-plus months of podcast backlogs.

This was an excellent story with Norm's voice as the cherry on top. Fascinating. And for those of you who bemoaned the "predictability" of the story, I find great comfort in familiar, fairy-tale type plot sequencing. I think to many authors go far astray of a decent story trying to be hip and original. Sometimes a new story told in familiar ways can open our eyes to the world before we lost our reading innocence.

Fabulous.

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LaShawn

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Reply #46 on: December 16, 2010, 05:24:23 PM
Awww...a girl and her blob. How cute.

I guess I was waiting for the story to creep me out, but it didn't. This disturbs me. On the other hand, I guess that's why it's here on Podcastle and not on Psuedopod, which I don't listen to because I'm afraid the stories will creep me out, which I don't like, but I wouldn't mind here, because...

TILT...TILT...TILT...

Thus said, it was an okay story. Loved the language. The semaphoric crows got my jaw dropped in awe. But yeah, other than that, I expected...more. Or maybe it's because I spent the last couple of months reading a lot of Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe, and my tolerance for dark, squishy stories have built up more.

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kibitzer

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Reply #47 on: December 17, 2010, 01:46:06 AM
Awww...a girl and her blob. How cute.

ROFLMAO! "a girl and her blob", hehehe.


::sideeyes Pseudopod and considers::

Depends a lot on what creeps you out...


Unblinking

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Reply #48 on: December 17, 2010, 02:50:22 PM
Awww...a girl and her blob. How cute.

And the blob didn't even need jellybeans!

I guess I was waiting for the story to creep me out, but it didn't. This disturbs me.

I guess it creeped you out, once removed?




Wilson Fowlie

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Reply #49 on: December 20, 2010, 06:45:19 PM
I guess I was waiting for the story to creep me out, but it didn't. This disturbs me.

I guess it creeped you out, once removed?

Heh.

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