Bsides 30 – The Tribe

[Algernon Sydney is Dead]

Feature: The Tribe by Daniel Vlasaty
Genres: Strange
Warning: Explicit language



Tuesday, October 15th, 2013
The grass is cool against my skin. A nice contrast from the burning hot sun hanging in a sky the color of pale skin, sickly and suffocating. I’m naked but I think I’ve always been this way. There’s a moment of comfort, like everything is going to be OK, before I remember that nothing is going to be OK, and everything is fucked.

Episode Art: Bo Kaier

[strawman]

Strange, strange, strange. But so straightforwardly strange that it was strange on a whole nother level.

[Algernon Sydney is Dead]

Argh! I HATE "stories" like this -- it's one of the reasons I stopped listening to Podcastle, every other episode does sh*t like this.

A story has a beginning, middle and end within a proper plot arc. Bonus if it has interesting characters, thoughtful ideas, a likeable hero, and a happy ending, etc.

This story started weird, but great. It tossed around potentially fun "Chekhov's guns" like beads at Mardi Gras. But then, with a snicker-snack... Nothing. The "story" just cuts off (almost literally) at what might otherwise be a climatic scene. No completed plot arc, no satisfying (or logical) resolution, a hundred red-herrings (or guns) flopping about, unused.

Norm has been better about avoiding this kind of incomplete story in the past. Let's hope this was just temporary drunken insanity, or he lost the last 5 pages of the manuscript.

[tbaker2500]

I think that "Author works at a methadone clinic" covers this story quite well.

[strawman]

Blame it on the government shut-down.

[El Barto]

Good creepy weird story. It made me think of the previous episode, in which LSD got into the water supply. In fact, I wondered whether this was the same story but from a different point of view.