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Post by HAL 10,000 on Oct 4, 2022 23:17:00 GMT -5
Chapter 2: Fountain of Victorious Finance, hey VFD reference. Is the name Bellamy a reference to something? The description of the group of buildings reminds me of Paltryville. I like the description of the Clusterous Forest.
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Post by Reba on Oct 5, 2022 3:38:21 GMT -5
chapter 3:
it's amusing to imagine Hangfire baking those almond cookies.
why was Theodora "told" that her client was a man? was Hangfire foolish enough to contact VFD undisguised? or was there a real case sent to VFD by someone in Stain'd, which was then intercepted by Hangfire for his own purposes? (that would make more sense than Hangfire inviting VFD to the town himself, though admittedly it still wouldn't make much sense.)
our attention is drawn to the fact that Theodora rings six times. i think someone has suggested before that the S could stand for Six. if so, that would be pretty disappointing. this is one of the few mysteries that DH confirms has a definite answer which can be found in the text. i believe he also said that someone has figured it out before, and confirmed it with him, which made him very pleased. i just can't imagine him being that excited about someone figuring out "Six." i know that the name is inspired by S. Epatha Merkerson, but i just checked and i actually can't find out what the S stands for in her name either....
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Oct 5, 2022 13:01:04 GMT -5
i know that the name is inspired by S. Epatha Merkerson, but i just checked and i actually can't find out what the S stands for in her name either.... Apparently it's Sharon. Also - "In an interview with The Television Academy, Merkerson joked her first initial stands for "Sweet" before admitting a classmate from high school divulged her first name, making it public knowledge. Merkerson explained how she started using just her first initial because she got the idea from G. Gordon Liddy." Doesn't seem relevant, but thought I'd throw it out there.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 5, 2022 14:51:28 GMT -5
Isn't Theodoras name pretty definitvely 'Solitude'?
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Post by Reba on Oct 5, 2022 16:33:14 GMT -5
no, we've just discovered that it's Sharon.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Oct 5, 2022 20:27:08 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure it's Sunny, but once I reread I'll look for clues in any way.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 6, 2022 0:47:08 GMT -5
Solitude works best thematically, as its the answer to another unanswered question in the series, and is also where we leave Lemony at the end of the series. So you'll never convince me it's anything other than that.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Oct 6, 2022 9:43:56 GMT -5
Chapter 3: The cookies make me kind of hungry. I have to agree that the Johnny book sounds boring. Interesting how we first hear about the Sallises and Mallahans as enemies but then hear about them being friends. Wonder if the newspaper that Mrs Mallahan transferred to was The Daily Punctilio. For some reason I find it kind of funny that there's Bombinating Beast merch.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 8, 2022 4:18:03 GMT -5
I wanted to talk a bit more about the Staind by the Sea as a setting, but I think some of these comments would work better in the next book. A question to ask here though is - Did anybody expect, when reading the pre-publicity for ?1 in particular, that the setting would stay the same through the series, or did people think we would move to a different location with each book?
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Post by Reba on Oct 8, 2022 5:28:28 GMT -5
ok, i can't read and discuss one of these in just a week. mais je m'en fiche.
chapter 6: i don't appreciate the Laura Ingalls Wilder diss. rather misleading illustration shows them climbing down a little rope like a lasso. hawsers are massive!
chapter 7: i don't appreciate the Prince reference. so, the membrane of the beast-kazoo is on the bottom hole. that means you would have to give the beast a lovely kiss to make it buzz. you can't hum right over the paper. juicy clue: Lemony's heard of Killdeer Fields because he just saw it on the telegram from Hangfire.
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Post by Reba on Oct 8, 2022 6:32:11 GMT -5
I also suspect them making orecchiette al pesto is a reference to the Baudelaire children making pasta puttenesca in TBB. or DH just loves pasta. have you seen his chins? chapter nine: Bear's Verified Favorite Drollery: "It was a basement well, worked by a simple but clever pump. Well, well, well, I thought." "The plan was to get us to steal the Bombinating Beast and then have us caught by the Officers Mitchum. With us in jail and Sally Murphy drowned in the basement, the villain would have everything he wanted, including the statue." i fail to see how Hangfire would get the statue after this, unless in a very simple way, such as his attempt to lure the Mallahans out of their house, in which case, why didn't he try that in the first place? as semblance points out, this chapter is something of a disaster. Hangfire is not supposed to be a fool like Olaf. if we give DH the benefit of the doubt, we have to assume Hangfire wasn't really trying to kill Sally Murphy in a "cartoon villain" manner, especially when it was orchestrated at the same moment as he lured Moxie right next door. he must have wanted the "murder" to be discovered and thwarted. chapter 11: pardon my language, but did Hangfire JIZZ on the doorknob ? ? ?
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Oct 8, 2022 10:09:43 GMT -5
Chapter 4: Is unpeopled a word? Took me a second to realize that the woman with no clothes or arms was a mannequin lol. What’s a complicated star?Star with more than 5 points? The Bombinating Beast legends are pretty fascinating. God, Stew is annoying…and an animal abuser.I love the bottom of the wastebasket comparison though. Chapter 5: I must be spending too much time on 667, because I laughed like a lunatic at “It was your turn to empty the dishwasher.” The officers Mitchum remind me of those parents who go on and on about how their really spoiled kid is “so brilliant but misunderstood.”
If you combine Pip and Squeak’s names it spells Pipsqueak. Chapter 7: Lemony sure talks about Ellington’s nails a lot. I like the name Handkerchief Heights. Chapter 8: Speaking as a babysitter and aunt, scolding isn’t all that fun. Chapter 9: Who needs a basement pool when the whole basement is the pool. Little surprised Darth Cheddar never tried to claim that rootbeer cured covid.Then again, Snicket might be above his reading level.
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Post by Reba on Oct 8, 2022 13:36:50 GMT -5
Took me a second to realize that the woman with no clothes or arms was a mannequin lol. it's a statue. of the Venus de Milo. (or something similar) having just finished, here are my thoughts on the book as a whole: it's definitely the weakest of the series. i find it to be a bit dour and unintriguing in its weirdness, a quality i think it shares with TMM, which is understandably the common least-favorite of ASOUE. like Paltryville, Stain'd is presented as somewhere totally lifeless, and its eccentricities are more ludicrous than mysterious. Stain'd needs to be explored unusually thoroughly to make the reader's imagination sympathetic to it. as LS & Theodora approach the town, we get one dizzying exposition dump, then for the rest of the book are confined to a few dull abandoned streets, which LS ambles through while endlessly brooding over how he doesn't want to be there. plotwise, LS broods, and he meets a few dull distasteful characters, and he makes a couple of friends. the mystery confined to this book is so nonsensical, and so overshadowed by the series-long mysteries being established, that it provides little satisfaction. i agree with Mister M's post earlier about plot problems -- the series presents itself as a tightly-constructed contrast to ASOUE, but DH is actually far too whimsical a writer to pull it off.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Oct 8, 2022 17:01:59 GMT -5
I have to admit that I feel a bit in the worst of both worlds... While in ASOUE everything is openly chaotic and with important loose points that allow me to create interesting theories, in this first book the loose ends don't get me anywhere while the main plot is a little poorly tied. I really like FU13 better. The environment is better crafted, people are more interesting despite having less screen time. I mean, that's how I remember it, at least. I haven't finished it yet, actually, I haven't even gotten to the Eligton part yet. I remember liking her. I hope I still like this part.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Oct 9, 2022 10:04:06 GMT -5
Chapter 11: Love the Wind in the Willows reference. Chapter 12: Hangfire can mimic people’s voices.That’d be really cool if he weren’t using that ability with villainous intent. The mental image of Ellington peeling an orange is weirdly satisfying. Chapter 13: Oh hi Hector. The last paragraph is honestly the best paragraph.
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