EP287: A Taste of Time

[kibitzer]

Finally got around to listening to this...and yes, that means I'm catching up to my own story, which is weird in its own sense.

It's very interesting to compare the protag from this story and mine. Both are women who are not satisfied with their circumstances. Both get caught up in the "what if" trap. It does feel like that this story is bleaker. It starts off with the MC contemplating suicide, and towards the end it feels like she does (unless she truly does wake up in her mother's womb. I don't think though that the bottle would appear with her. If it's empty, it's entirely conceivable that the magic was in the elixir and not the bottle itself.) What gets me is that *nothing* this protag does makes her happy, even when she does get the happy life she always wanted. She's *never* satisfied, but she can't let herself die a normal death because...what if she *could* get a happy life? As long as there is enough tabula Rasa, the *possibility* still exists. My protag towards the end went insane, but it least it was a happy sort of insane? This protag feels as if she's driven more by despair.

All in all, I found this more frightening than my tale.

I dunno, I read it more that she could not bear not knowing what might have happened. You're probably more correct since I haven't listened to it for a while but that's the essence I took away from it. Sure, Sometimes she had a good go around at life -- but what if it could have been better?

' "Child," said Aslan, "did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?" '

[Faraway Ray]

I liked it well enough.

This one is that could just as easily have been a flash piece, or have been a complete story centering on the first drink. I almost wish it had been. The amount of change possible in just a two year span would be sufficient for a (shorter) story, and might be easier to relate to with the lens closer to the slide, so to speak. It starts getting pretty esoteric after she's already lived an entire lifetime. Everything past the "got rich, got old" timeline feels like its more of an exploration of a concept than a necessary part of the tale.

[Unblinking]

My protag towards the end went insane, but it least it was a happy sort of insane?

Great quote!

[jwbjerk]

Wow, if she thinks being physically 11 with the memories of 100+ years is bad, being unborn will be torment supreme.

It struck me as odd that a story that tries to explore the unexpected consequences of extreme manipulation of your life, would miss this obvious one.  Sure tons of people want to win the lottery, but most people that do quickly end up bankrupt, and many claim that it ruined their life.  This story sorta treated lottery-winning as the key to the "happy ending", or at least as close to a happy ending as this story would go if she had actually allowed it to be an ending.