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Episode 549 - Black God's Kiss - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2021-05-28 06:09:31
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Join Jirel as she climbs out of hell in the conclusion of Black God's Kiss by C.L. Moore!

Extra special thanks to our reader Heather Klinke!

Music from this episode is also available to our Cultists should you choose to indulge!

Next up: MARS!!!

Comments

Lord Rancid

More than a Conan comparison, having read this story and it's immediate sequel (rushed straight over to Amazon after the last episode and ordered the collection) I can see stronger parallels between the Jirel stories and W.H. Hodgson's much maligned (with reason) masterpiece, The Night Land.

Ben Gilbert
>>60738199

I liked The Night Land but it has two of the most annoying protagonists ever.

Anonymous

I was initially repelled by the "then she realized she loved him!" ending, because a) OK, irony and b) written in the middle of the last century, but c) ugh. However, your suggestion was that the price of the kiss/curse was that emotional reverse made it maybe better. Or, in the weird, other dimensional nature of the story, maybe Jirel apprehended all the other realities where the two of them could have join forces and had a fine time fucking up their neighbors. Kill him and "well, somewhere else you're happy..."

Anonymous

Chad, if you are going to write a story with a necromancer, please find a necromantic sensitivity reader. You have a pretty bad track record.

Anonymous

Also, we could have a Jirel of Julyoiry....

Anonymous

...I gotta say, as twists go "The protagonist was just tsundere this whole time" kinda chaps my ass.

Anonymous
>>60768523

Oh, I'm glad the guys floated this interpretation. I haven't listened to the ep yet - wanted to read the story first. Well, I finished it and I was REAL MAD for about 15 minutes until this reading occurred to me. It's actually well supported in the text. Here's the conversation with the mirror-Jirel-demon: '"I seek a weapon," she said, "a weapon against a man I so hate that upon earth there is none terrible enough for my need." "You so hate him, eh?" mused the voice. "With all my heart!" "With all your heart!" echoed the voice, and there was an undernote of laughter in it that she did not understand.' And as soon as Jirel escapes the tower, she realizes she made a huge mistake in taking the weapon as a gift. So yeah, I choose to read this as the curse being a two-edged sword, with the demon being absolutely delighted that it can torture her by letting her kill Guillaume, but in the killing be infected with overwhelming love for him. Very nasty, layered punishment: you now love (and thirst for) the gross rapist who assaulted you and killed all your men; plus you also have to live with the guilt of killing him AND the belief that you will never love anyone as much. SO AWFUL. (But way less awful than the interpretation that oh woops, she loved this creep with her whole heart all along!)

Anonymous

Given that this story was written by a woman, about a woman, did either of you get your wives opinions on the story/ending since it was so conflicting to you both?

Anonymous

that ending made me a little bit too mad. really? a weird fiction story written by a woman with a female protagonist, and it ends with 'she was in love with him the whole time'??? ugh ugh UGH

Anonymous

Very glad I'm not alone in my distaste for the warrior woman falls for the only guy who can beat her trope. Also, this house has three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, and a portal to hell in the basement. It has a basement! Sorry, basements are super rare in Florida.

Anonymous

This is an exceedingly well written "would you rather?" scenario. Love the world building, pacing, and red hair, of course. I think we're all wrestling with a the cruel binary the story forces us to choose from: Do you... 1) surrender everything to the murdering bastard who assaulted you - living in the knowledge that you will probably never get revenge for yourself or your comrades? or 2) Secure your revenge and return to glory - cursed to love the man who took everything from you? Something like that.

Anonymous

The journey through hell sequence of this story is so weird in a good way. It reminds me very much of the travels of Michael Moorcock’s heroes — they always seem to bounce from one weird event/encounter to another. And it’s usually pretty great!

Anonymous

I love the ambiguity around the meaning of the ending. Ambiguity is the Devil's lingerie.

Anonymous

I was so excited to see that you guys were covering this story. After your coverage of “Shambleau,” I was immediate compelled to read C.L. Moore, and devoured the Jirel of Joiry stories. Among other things, I was taken with the cerebral nature of the tales, Jirel often having to combat emotions or concepts made manifest instead of brawny adversaries. The way sorrow and regret are tangibly personified in “The Black God’s Kiss,” and to an even higher degree in “The Black God’s Shadow,” seemed to me a dead-on representation of depression, with which perhaps the author herself was familiar. A similar example exists in “Jirel Meets Magic,” where [spoiler alert for the rest of this sentence] the sorceress forces Jirel to behold her own timeline, condemning her to the torture of remembering her every mistake, poor judgment, sin, and failure for eternity. It all rings so human and true to me. Who, of course, doesn’t know that sudden pang of regret from remembering a past wrong, and who doesn’t obsess over their own foolish decisions and callous behaviors years or decades after the fact? These are the things that I feel make the Jirel stories relatable in a way that those of characters like Conan, for all their awesomeness, never are. If I can say anything critical, it’s that Moore tends to bog down the reading experience describing things multiple times in succession, as though she’d come up with two or three cool ways to paint her word picture and couldn’t settle on one. Also, if she uses a clever turn of phrase once, she uses it a dozen times. This is of course all minor compared to the sheer imaginativeness of her stories. It seems a shame to me that Jirel is a character virtually unknown to mainstream audiences despite being the prototype for fantasy warrior women such as Red Sonja. I’d love to see Jirel in comic books, television, movies, and...hell, why not?...even a musical. She even has a trademark costume which Moore makes sure to re-describe in every story (though I imagine it to be less skimpy than depicted on the Weird Tales cover). Throw in some yellow contact lenses and you have a new cosplay favorite. Anyway, loved listening to you guys cover this story and am eager for you to cover others. I think you’ll enjoy them immensely.

Anonymous

Aw, Skipton Castle was my very first field trip in primary school! We got to take turns being locked in the pitch black dungeons - great for five year olds. Good thing I was unaware of the portal to hell!

Anonymous

I first read this story when very young and loved the creepy weird fiction aspects of it. At the time, I was perhaps too young to pick up on the idea that Jirel had fallen for her enemy though, and so interpreted the scene more as a reflection of the emptiness of destruction and revenge. I just recently happened to read an essay describing the only falling for guys who can defeat you trope as a good thing, as it was a supposed alternative to everyone just swooning over the heroes like Conan. But I personally do find the trope problematic, as it makes the female character all about THAT romantic plotting in a way that feels both limiting and perhaps unrealistic. For all the arguably problematic things in Robert E. Howard's work, I think one of the things he did right was to give his female characters their own motivations and desires pretty consistently, mostly apart from such a trope. Some of his female characters even trick or take advantage of guys for their own reasons. Whereas the defeated by love trope kind of makes it into a competition for a prize that is more about the guy's pursuits, in a way.

Anonymous
>>60895885

Has anyone written Deep One's in Florida? Having a basement would be a dead give away!

Anonymous

I couldn't agree more strongly with the comments above. The reversal interpretation you two arrived at in the end is absolutely the way I read the resolution. The trope of falling for the man who abused you is a tired, repugnant device, but I too think that Moore intentionally subverted it. Jirel was unwavering in her hatred until she received the demonic "gift." The kiss in many respects killed a part of her by making her feel attraction for the person she hated the most. This becomes more clear in the next tale in the series. I would add that the descriptions of hell are the most compelling part of this tale. They are starkly medieval--there are elements of Milton and Dante, yes, but also weird elements that feel like Bosch, Van Eyck, and Bruegel depictions of the final judgement. I found both here and in her other Jirel stories, there are aspects in Moore's writing that belong squarely in David Lynch territory (or perhaps Terry Gilliam). It's rare to have descriptions this vivid and haunting in writings from the 1930s--even the horse imagery. I don’t know if he read these, but there are some similarities between Stephen King’s work (especially the Dark Tower) and Moore’s depictions. I echo Micah's statement above as well: you two should absolutely cover more of Moore, especially the other Jirel tales. They are not as weird in some cases, but they delve deeply into Jirel's psychology, and broaden the universe Moore created in Joiry. Black God's Shadow is a direct continuation of Black God's Kiss, and it does undo some of the mystery of the first tale. But it adds more to the pangs of regret and pain felt by Jirel, and makes, if anything, for a good conversation. And, after all, that's the whole point of this enterprise!

nils hedglin

In your discussion of Jirel grabbing her crucifix causing the horrors the be blacked out, it reminded me of when you wear polarized sunglasses and look at a computer screen perpendicular. Maybe the "hell" is on a non euclidian perpendicular wavelength to the christian wavelength

Anonymous

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do the rest of these stories. These two episodes were fantastic, and I would love to hear the rest