Author Topic: EP458: If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love  (Read 28234 times)

Fenrix

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Reply #50 on: September 22, 2014, 03:16:35 AM
Nicely done. Short, brutal, and effective.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


Gamercow

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Reply #51 on: September 26, 2014, 05:48:40 PM
This one fell flat for me.  It picked up near the end, with the big reveal, but I think it took too long getting there. 

The cow says "Mooooooooo"


TrishEM

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Reply #52 on: September 28, 2014, 10:05:55 AM
I still get a little choked up after multiple readings. This poem is a beautifully crafted dark jewel of a story. Some people say it's neither science fiction nor fantasy, but I assert vehemently that it IS speculative fiction. The narrator says "If," not "Is," but that just means it's sort of like a simile, not a metaphor; anyway, it's certainly not mundane fiction. Without the speculative element, it wouldn't be anything at all. The writer uses the if-SFF structure to tell about love and grief, and if a non-fan asked me to recommend just one piece of fiction from 2013, this would be it.



hardware

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Reply #53 on: October 08, 2014, 05:09:37 PM
Powerful and perfectly structured. Personally I think the length invalidates any complains about the emotional impact coming to late. It's a bit like complaining about a joke only being funny at the end. I think the beginning, while similar to children stories drags you into the head of the narrator in a very effective way. I never doubted there would be more to it, but hardly dreamt it would have the punch it had. And I assume the author put all those invectives in there exactly because in the end it doesn't matter why the love was beaten - in the end it's the same mechanisms of hate and fear of the unknown no matter what the particular prefix to -phobia we're dealing with. 



Unblinking

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Reply #54 on: October 08, 2014, 05:23:48 PM
Personally I think the length invalidates any complains about the emotional impact coming to late. It's a bit like complaining about a joke only being funny at the end.

As long as you validate my parking.  :)

But seriously, even a joke has to keep your interest if it goes on long enough.  And your average joke doesn't take thousands of words to tell.



UnfulredJohnson

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Reply #55 on: October 12, 2014, 05:42:13 PM
Loved this. Got me right in the emotions.  I love how it's a kind of sinking hypothetical that just goes deep and deeper into fantasy before kind of submerging in the sad reality of it all. This was beautiful, because it was real and raw and honest. More like this.



davidthygod

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Reply #56 on: October 14, 2014, 07:57:35 PM
I definitely see why this has gotten the accolades it has gotten due to the generally well written (and read) change of pace, tone and emotion, but it doesn't work as well for me, as I think it did the rest of the group.  I did really enjoy the paragraph where our T-Rex buddy gets hospitalized by the drunken, pool cue wielding, epithet flinging malefactors, and the way our narrator was daydreaming of helping our beloved T-Rex smite his enemies was awesome.  However, IMO, it went from cutesy to revenge fantasy and ultimately was just a bit too cloying for my personal tastes.

The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.


dSlacker

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Reply #57 on: October 22, 2014, 05:49:49 PM
Beautifully written and read. More poetry than prose.

Couldn't say it better than @Varda did above.



CryptoMe

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Reply #58 on: March 30, 2015, 05:46:39 AM
Wow. This just did not work for me!

It went from quirky, to heavy handed, to revenge fantasy, to sexist pap!

I didn't get gut punched with emotion, I felt banged over the head by a moral.

And seriously, was no-one else insulted by the narrator's lack of agency? Even in her revenge fantasy it's the man who does everything, who is tasked with keeping her safe and making her happy. All she can do apparently is plan a frou-frou wedding. Honestly, this part really, really infuriated me. I thought we had gotten past such stupid gender stereotypes! To see them perpetrated in a story that preaches respecting differences was just more than I could bear.



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Reply #59 on: March 30, 2015, 02:21:49 PM
Wow. This just did not work for me!

It went from quirky, to heavy handed, to revenge fantasy, to sexist pap!

I didn't get gut punched with emotion, I felt banged over the head by a moral.

And seriously, was no-one else insulted by the narrator's lack of agency? Even in her revenge fantasy it's the man who does everything, who is tasked with keeping her safe and making her happy. All she can do apparently is plan a frou-frou wedding. Honestly, this part really, really infuriated me. I thought we had gotten past such stupid gender stereotypes! To see them perpetrated in a story that preaches respecting differences was just more than I could bear.

I didn't really care for the story, either, but I don't see the sexism you're referring to.  She dwells on the wedding because he was her fiancee, their wedding is a momentous event in their life stalled by an assault that left him in a coma.  Maybe he'll wake up, maybe they'll marry.  Maybe he'll die soon, or maybe he'll be stuck in a coma indefinitely.  If that were my fiancee then weddings would certainly be on my mind, and more so for most women that I've met than myself because whether it's considered stereotypical or not, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that many women do a lot of planning for their wedding--if it's sexist for a woman in a story to dwell on that, is it also sexist for a woman in real life to? 

Regarding the "keeping her safe" what she is talking about being kept safe from is the assault on his well being that happened in real life, and the "making her happy" is being spared the grief of seeing him horribly broken in an assault.  Why aren't these feelings valid?



CryptoMe

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Reply #60 on: March 31, 2015, 06:23:20 AM
I didn't really care for the story, either, but I don't see the sexism you're referring to.  She dwells on the wedding because he was her fiancee, their wedding is a momentous event in their life stalled by an assault that left him in a coma.  Maybe he'll wake up, maybe they'll marry.  Maybe he'll die soon, or maybe he'll be stuck in a coma indefinitely.  If that were my fiancee then weddings would certainly be on my mind, and more so for most women that I've met than myself because whether it's considered stereotypical or not, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that many women do a lot of planning for their wedding--if it's sexist for a woman in a story to dwell on that, is it also sexist for a woman in real life to? 

Regarding the "keeping her safe" what she is talking about being kept safe from is the assault on his well being that happened in real life, and the "making her happy" is being spared the grief of seeing him horribly broken in an assault.  Why aren't these feelings valid?

Let's just say that most people who build a revenge fantasy in their mind put themselves as the action hero and do the revenging themselves, not wish for someone else to do it for them. That's the part that stuck out for me the most. And then having her think of her bridesmaids dresses on top of this, well, just, ugh!
« Last Edit: March 31, 2015, 06:25:33 AM by CryptoMe »