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Welcome back, we have our traditional recap chapter today with Christopher as our narrator. I wonder if we'll see any character growth from him this book?
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# ? Oct 6, 2023 21:56 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:28 |
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Gross and disturbing they may be, but are the Hetwan actually dangerous? The fairy queen said in the last book that Ka Anor eats gods, not mortals, and when Christopher talks here about how scary they are he specifically references that Loki and Huitzilopoctli fear them. I may be wrong but have we seen any ordinary men or monsters fear the Hetwan?Zore posted:Honestly I really remember a bunch from these chapters, no idea why they stuck with me but David deliriously shifting back and forth and his little talk about running on Childhood 1.0 with all your fears stacked on top of it are things I remember even 20 years later. I distinctly remember the scene where they show the fairy the Walkman and sell the concept of the telegraph to him, because it's just such a neat idea. I think around the same time I would have been reading Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series, another portal fantasy where some real-world college kids get stuck in a fantasy world and end up dramatically transforming it. IIRC it ends up covering like 20 or 30 years and towards the end they've "invented" gunpowder and railways.
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 01:17 |
freebooter posted:Gross and disturbing they may be, but are the Hetwan actually dangerous? The fairy queen said in the last book that Ka Anor eats gods, not mortals, and when Christopher talks here about how scary they are he specifically references that Loki and Huitzilopoctli fear them. I may be wrong but have we seen any ordinary men or monsters fear the Hetwan? That's a solid question. I don't believe we have.
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 02:20 |
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I mean, given how every other walking and breathing thing in Everworld has proved to be dangerous, I'm willing to bet they are! But it would be an interesting twist if they only care about harvesting gods for Ka Anor and are completely uninterested in ordinary humans. I feel like maybe the fear the other humans (like the Vikings) have for them is because they see their own fates as intertwined with their own gods - something our Chicagoans couldn't care less about.
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 03:29 |
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I can't remember- have the hetwan actually done anything... bad yet? Cos devouring the likes of Hel basically makes them the good guys.
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 03:50 |
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Tree Bucket posted:I can't remember- have the hetwan actually done anything... bad yet? Cos devouring the likes of Hel basically makes them the good guys. They do want to get their hands on Senna presumably to open a portal to Earth so that isn't great. Like the whole reason in the last book April got taken prisoner and David had to bring Nidhoggr in was because the Hetwan were offering enough to the Fairies that even getting them modern telegraphs wouldn't budge their decision on selling her to them. Like fundamentally they did invade Everworld and are trying to conquer it and eat some of its inhabitants before moving on to do that elsewhere. Zore fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Oct 7, 2023 |
# ? Oct 7, 2023 05:49 |
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freebooter posted:I think around the same time I would have been reading Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series, another portal fantasy where some real-world college kids get stuck in a fantasy world and end up dramatically transforming it. IIRC it ends up covering like 20 or 30 years and towards the end they've "invented" gunpowder and railways. Is this an actually good book? Because it sounds like my jam.
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 09:37 |
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Zore posted:They do want to get their hands on Senna presumably to open a portal to Earth so that isn't great. Eating some of its bad inhabitants. Current status: cautiously pro-Ka Anor
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 11:25 |
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kiminewt posted:Is this an actually good book? Because it sounds like my jam. IMO yes, and I've been meaning to re-read it for ages - I think my old copies are buried somewhere at the back of my dad's garage in another state. I haven't read it since I was a teenager so there's probably some poo poo that hasn't aged well, but I think it's definitely on the same level as something like Everworld: a dumb-sounding premise that is played completely straight and done really well. Certainly it's stuck in my mind 20 years later than most of the other fantasy I read at the time.
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 11:34 |
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Tree Bucket posted:Eating some of its bad inhabitants. maybe bad dudes like Loki and Huitzil being scared is... good?
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# ? Oct 7, 2023 15:42 |
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Recap pt 2 quote:
What if trees could scream, indeed. Applegate has always been good at describing alien places, I really dig this weird almost cartoon landscape the kids are heading into. And hey, Chris also pointing out that maybe they're okay because they're not gods.
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# ? Oct 8, 2023 00:49 |
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Incidentally- does this series end properly? I need to know how comitted to get.
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# ? Oct 8, 2023 02:08 |
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Tree Bucket posted:Incidentally- does this series end properly? I need to know how comitted to get. Yeah it has an actual ending that it builds up to. Like there's definitely a point where you can see them just cut some of the plans short (due to low sales) and move into the endgame, but the last few books go really hard and I enjoy the ending overall.
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# ? Oct 8, 2023 03:14 |
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The ending is rushed, but it's there. Books 11 and 12 are basically one big story. There are a lot of things alluded to but never visited - like Michael Grant said in an interview somewhere, in this style of writing you plant seeds, and not all of them get a chance to grow. I liked it. But hey, I prefer too-little over too-much.
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# ? Oct 8, 2023 04:13 |
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Maybe Christopher ends up learning a lesson on racism from someone even worse then he is.
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# ? Oct 9, 2023 02:18 |
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Yeah, Christopher has some serious issues with being a little racist poo poo and just got a job with someone who was suspicious 'Hitchcock' wasn't white enough. I'm sure everything is gonna turn out great there. I think that's also the longest scene we've had on Earth with a character actually living their alternate life and not just meeting up with one of the others to share info since like April's book?
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# ? Oct 9, 2023 02:27 |
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Oh man, that's an ominous and foreboding line to end a chapter on.
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# ? Oct 10, 2023 00:21 |
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Any of you read Embassytown by China Mieville? There's some good, genuinely alien forests in that book.
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# ? Oct 10, 2023 02:33 |
Tree Bucket posted:Any of you read Embassytown by China Mieville? There's some good, genuinely alien forests in that book. I have not! Did they write something for Marvel? I know I've read something, but it wasn't a novel. Can't remember if I liked it or not.| quote:
Christopher is one of those guys shouting, 'THEY COULDN'T MAKE BLAZING SADDLES IN THIS DAY AND AGE!!! But yeah, we are definitely on the path to him learning that jokes 100% count as racism. quote:
That was an interesting exchange and rings very true to the attitudes of the time period, among me and my male friends, atl east.
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# ? Oct 11, 2023 13:59 |
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It definitely feels very 90s that its a binary youre either gay or youre straight, and noticing somebody of the same sex means that youre gay with no concept of bisexuality or the idea that you can appreciate somebody aesthetically without it automatically leading to sexual attraction. Or, i dunno, maybe that stuff was around and I just didnt notice it as a kid in the 90s. But I definitely would have read that chapter and agreed with David at the end if I had been reading this when it was published.
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# ? Oct 11, 2023 18:28 |
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Yeah this book is where we're really gonna start digging into the racism and homophobia that's mostly been a background feature up until now and is probably where this series breaks hardest from Animorphs. Honestly it was pretty formative for me since I was like 11-12 when I was reading this and it stuck with me.
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# ? Oct 11, 2023 20:01 |
God dammit Christopher.
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# ? Oct 11, 2023 20:03 |
Remalle posted:God dammit Christopher. MODS?!? The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Lets read Everworld-God dammit Christopher.
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# ? Oct 11, 2023 22:33 |
quote:Chapter quote:
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# ? Oct 12, 2023 01:06 |
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I feel like Christopher is the last character we want that offered to. Hmm.
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# ? Oct 12, 2023 18:31 |
Dammit, God Christopher?
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# ? Oct 12, 2023 19:15 |
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Remalle posted:Dammit, God Christopher? Simple, just ditch the "opher"
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# ? Oct 12, 2023 23:20 |
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Good thing they have a knife that can cut through anything. quote:
So this was the period where RDJ was earning that old rep. That's some crazy sexual dimorphism there.
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# ? Oct 13, 2023 02:06 |
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Coca Koala posted:It definitely feels very 90s that its a binary youre either gay or youre straight, and noticing somebody of the same sex means that youre gay with no concept of bisexuality or the idea that you can appreciate somebody aesthetically without it automatically leading to sexual attraction. Yeah 100%. Also really captures the lovely teenage dynamic (that some people never grow out of) of "ohhhh what you can't take a JOKE bro?!" Christopher's character is interesting in that I think he's not a fundamentally bad person but he just doesn't have the resilience and/or coping skills the other three do (probably because he's had the most cruisy and pampered life of all of them) and so the constant trauma they're all going through is making him lash out and be the shittiest version of himself in a way that just isn't happening with the others.
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# ? Oct 13, 2023 12:39 |
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Sounds like Christopher is gonna have a bad time in the real world soon enough.
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# ? Oct 14, 2023 02:25 |
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Why does Christopher keep referring to the Hetwan as "Ally McBugs?" I didn't get it the first time he said it and it seems to have stuck. Do they have something in common with Ally McBeal, or is it just a Timely Pop Culture Reference? Forced references aside, I get the feeling that Christopher will learn more than one lesson about bigotry soon.
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# ? Oct 14, 2023 05:57 |
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QuickbreathFinisher posted:Why does Christopher keep referring to the Hetwan as "Ally McBugs?" I didn't get it the first time he said it and it seems to have stuck. Do they have something in common with Ally McBeal, or is it just a Timely Pop Culture Reference? Its because Calista Flockheart is super thin and the Hetwan have bizarre and thin proportions, so its just coupling that for a pop culture reference. I think they spell it out the first time he made the comparison.
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# ? Oct 14, 2023 06:03 |
quote:"Through his palace, in a sense," Ganymede said. "The Hetwan have apparently decided to break the treaty with Zeus. We must be at war. Otherwise they would not have seized the two of us."
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 06:01 |
that sounds like zeus tbqhquote:
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I'm not sure what Christopher thinks he's gonna do here, but I'm surprised he's going to help.
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# ? Oct 15, 2023 23:20 |
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quote:David nodded agreement, but the general was already looking ahead. "Yeah, but if you had artillery you could sit up here and blow the hell out of everything. This is an amazing defense, amazing fort or whatever, but if you had artillery " He broke off and nodded to himself, satisfied. I was going to mention earlier when they talked about how you can trade wonders in Ka Anor's city, and someone says they still have the Walkman - the fairies are one thing but I'm pretty sure the Hetwan are not the people you want to introduce 20th century tech to. But this foreshadowing seems to be going in a different direction. Remind me, did they already trade the chemistry textbook to the Coo Hatch or did they decide that wasn't a good idea?
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# ? Oct 16, 2023 23:32 |
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Yeah, they went ahead with the trade. Senna claimed she met with a band of Coo-Hatch who asked her questions about how bullets should be shaped, though she made up at least half of that story, so she might have just been preying on their doubts with that one.
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# ? Oct 17, 2023 01:07 |
I think senna is the kind of liar that tells the truth, only twisted, so I believe the coo-hatch are already prototyping firearms
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# ? Oct 17, 2023 16:52 |
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Soonmot posted:I think senna is the kind of liar that tells the truth, only twisted, so I believe the coo-hatch are already prototyping firearms So we're gonna get squads of coo-hatch with assault rifles by the end of the series is what I'm hearing.
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# ? Oct 17, 2023 17:03 |
Soonmot posted:that sounds like zeus tbqh turns out, neither did he!! quote:
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We have about twenty pages left in this one. Also: Christopher weighs 180? He's loving huge for a highschool kid. I was picturing him as a skinny kid, not jacked. And premptive RIP Ganymede, dude is covered in death flags at this point.
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# ? Oct 17, 2023 19:38 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 09:28 |
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I also assumed Christopher was not a big guy but maybe that's because he's coded as the class clown and they always seem to be, and also he's the Marco successor and Marco was short. I was going to make fun of Christopher for not realising metric is an 18th century invention, but then it occurred to me that "degrees" in the compass sense might also be relatively modern, and then you have to wonder whether Everworld is even a globe or if north just vaguely means "left of where the sun rises."
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# ? Oct 18, 2023 00:07 |