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 This is the first of my many Let's Read threads to not have been started because of either a personal connection to the books or the forum at large alerting me to how terrible it is beforehand. I simply received a PM from Back Hack informing me that this should be on my list. It happened to be free on Kindle, so I snagged it and read a few pages. I feel like I've stumbled upon a treasure. Monster Hunter International is a novel by Larry Correia. Larry Correia is crazy.  Specifically, he's the founder of the Sad Puppies. The Sad Puppies are a group of "activists" who feel that the Hugo Awards have become too infected by those darn SJWs who keep awarding works with progressive political and social themes. Upset at what he feels is a push away from conservative and libertarian thought (which certainly can't have any causes beyond limp-wristed liberal influence....), the Sad Puppies nominate lovely macho man pulp. These efforts by and large failed, and we should all laugh at them. Larry Correia is also a gun nut, specifically a Mormon gun nut, and he is or was a regular poster on The High Road, a large firearms message board mainly populated by rednecks and crotchety old people. Using his knowledge from years of experience running a gun store, Larry wrote some hack sci-fi and fantasy fiction on The High Road featuring a lot of gunplay. At the encouragement of these members, he self-published Monster Hunter International. I also happen to be very well-versed in firearms, so I'll be extra critical of anything he professes in the book. But overall, the first few pages of this book suggested something magical in its pulpiness. Hopefully it can keep up the momentum, but I've never burst out laughing from a pulp novel before. Rolled my eyes, sure, but this is funny (both intentionally and otherwise). I think it'll be a fun break from the absolutely awful dreck I've been doing and will be doing in the future. And if worst comes to worst, we shoot Larry Correia. He'd want it that way. quote:Welcome to Monster Hunter International. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 21:34
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I will definitely say that what limited amount of gunplay is in the first chapter is actually completely accurate, which bodes good things for whatever gun porn will come. I need to hit up the range to rent a snubnose .357 Magnum and see if I'm as badass as Owen Zastava Pitt.
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Apr 4, 2018 21:55
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quote:On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window. Well, that's certainly a way to open a book. Owen Pitt worked for Hansen Industries, Inc. as an accountant. He's the new guy in his first post-college job as a single young man that doesn't involve manual labor or beating up drunks at the bar. It's as generic as generic can be, from dead potted plants to Dilbert cartoons on the cubicle walls. The only drawback is his boss, Mr. Huffman. He's likewise a generic bad boss: short, fat, and perpetually angry. A man too dumb to understand why he hasn't been promoted any higher, believing that it must be because the whole world is out to get him. As his supervisor, Mr. Huffman is in charge of training Pitt. He's been working overtime with 12-hour days to try and impress the higher ups and get a transfer away from Huffman's department. It's been a bit easier because in the past month Huffman has either been on vacation, on sick leave, or locked in his office and not talking to anybody. quote:I glanced absently at my watch. 8:05 p.m. The surrounding gray-carpeted cubes were quiet. My stomach growled, signaling that the bag of Cheetos and the banana I had eaten for lunch had long since worn off. It was time to go. I logged out of my computer, locked up my files, and put on my coat as I headed for the door. Believing I was the only one there, I killed the lights on the way out. Then the intercom buzzed. It made me jump. As Pitt opens the door, all thoughts of an excuse vanish. Huffman's left his lights off, with only a tiny bit of illumination coming through the windows. His leather chair is facing away from him, looking out the window. A stained paper bag is sitting in the middle of his messy desk, leaking fluid all over his paperwork. quote:"Have a seat, Owen," Huffman rasped. His voice sounded strange. He did not turn around to look at me. From the top of his head it appeared that he was looking at the evening sky. I really hope the dialogue keeps up like this. Huffman rants at Pitt, claiming that he wants to backstab him and steal his job because he doesn't respect his authority. Pitt starts to slowly turn the doorknob behind him and claim that he's going to step outside for a bit, but then the paper bag falls over and something tumbles out. quote:"Is that a hand?" I blurted. Oh. quote:The naked, crazy, fat man pointed out the window. "The time has come! Tonight I am a god!" he squealed. I'd like to point out that we're only on page 7 and this guy's boss has already turned into a werewolf to eat him. quote:To this day I don't know why at that moment I felt the need to make a confession to my rapidly mutating boss. Even though I was in accordance with Texas state law, I was in direct violation of the company's workplace safety rule. This was the moment I decided that I was continuing with this book. Werewolf-Huffman falls back against the window, stained with blood and cracked from either missed or overpenetrating shots. Pitt turns and practically bashes the door open with his face, rifling through his coat pocket for a speedloader as he runs down the hall. The door is quickly smashed open behind him, with Huffman's fat bulk having turned into a lean and mean man-eating machine. quote:Running in the direction of the elevator, I snapped the cylinder of my revolver closed with five more Federal 125-grain hollowpoints inside. The creature was fast, much faster than an Olympic sprinter, and I was no Olympic sprinter. My lead down the hallway dwindled in seconds. I spun and fired as it leapt at me, striking the beast in the face. His snout turned on impact and momentum carried him into the wall, crushing the sheetrock. Immediately he started to rise, jagged fur bristling down his back. As Huffman stands, the exposed brain matter begins to retreat back into his skull and the bones crunch back into place over them. The werewolf tosses a chunk of his own meat in its mouth and shakes the blood off like a wet dog. As Huffman howls, Pitt runs into the marketing office (decorated with a typical "Hang in there" kitten poster) and slams the door shut, shoving a desk in front of it. It only buys him a few seconds as the werewolf tears the door apart and begins shoving the desk aside. With his gun completely dry, Pitt grabs a fire extinguisher off the wall. Pitt makes it into the finance department and slams the door shut on Huffman's snout. Huffman shoves the door open and slashes Pitt deeply across the chest with his claws. Pitt deploys the extinguisher as he falls, spraying directly into Huffman's open mouth and kicking it in the ribs back into the corridor. Luckily it's not a very big werewolf. quote:The werewolf punched through the wooden door, talons narrowly missing my flesh as he searched for me. I raised the fire extinguisher above my head and lashed out at the hairy arm, smashing it again and again with blows that would easily have broken ordinary bones. Finally the forearm shattered with an audible snap, but Huffman was not deterred. The claws kept swinging, and within seconds the limb had seemingly healed. Shouting unintelligibly, I continued bringing the extinguisher down on Huffman, the metal echoing with each hit. The elevator is 140 feet away, down the hall from Finance. Clutching the fire extinguisher, he stumbles for the door but only makes it as far as his cubicle before Huffman heals and bursts through the door. Without any way to outrun him, Pitt decides to fight instead of flee. The werewolf easily swats the fire extinguisher away (breaking Pitt's hand) and slams him all the way to the ceiling, smashing through the drop tiles and into an air conditioning duct. quote:I fell onto the top of my cube wall. It was not designed to take the impact of a three-hundred-pound man. It collapsed and I slammed onto my desk. This dude weighs loving how much? I'm 6'2 and in decent shape and I only weigh 210 to 220. If he's 6'7, he'd be the same weight as Hulk Hogan or Killer Kowalski in their prime.   Either he's the size of some of the toughest pro wrestlers in history, or he's the size of a poster on The High Road. As he tries to escape, the werewolf pounces on Pitt and slowly opens his mouth wide to bite off his face. Before he can leave Pitt to a slow and painful death, he whips out his 3-inch Spyderco folding knife and stabs Huffman in the throat, severing his jugular, then stabs him in the eye. The bloody handle slips from his hand. quote:"Regenerate this!" I bellowed as I grabbed my letter opener off of my desk and stabbed it repeatedly into his chest. Reversing my grip, I thrust it up through his bottom jaw, lodging it deep into the roof of his mouth, pinning his muzzle shut. Then I kicked him in the balls and smashed my chair over his head for good measure. He hit me with a backhand that knocked me across the room like a human cannonball. I crashed through a potted plant and rolled across the carpet. Pitt runs into Huffman's office nearby, then sets up an ambush. As Huffman charges through the door, Pitt leaps from the top of the filing cabinet onto his back and they both smash into the desk. He wraps his meaty arms around the werewolf's throat to try and strangle him, which Huffman responds to by raking his claws along Pitt's back. Pitt grabs Huffman's snout, and with all his might twists until the werewolf's neck snaps. As Huffman thrashes on the floor, Pitt weakly climbs to the other side of the desk. quote:I heard the scraping of bones again as Huffman's vertebrae realigned. In a second he would be back up, and I would not be able to fight him off again. With my good hand I struggled up so I could see over the desk. There was Huffman's dinner, and in my brain that was running dangerously low on blood and oxygen, it struck me as funny. "Need a hand?" I asked nobody in particular and giggled. This book is loving awesome.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:48
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I like how we went from an author who tries his hardest to avoid writing difficult action scenes to an author who starts an action scene on page 7 that takes up the whole rest of the first chapter.
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Apr 4, 2018 23:40
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Choco1980 posted:Also, I suspect Pitt miiiiight be a self insert, and the author pic looks like he might not be a small guy.  Might have a point.
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Apr 5, 2018 00:36
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PittTheElder posted:This book is amazing. I'm not sure why but him stopping to point out that he'd lost a shoe somewhere cracked me up. Of course your username would be loving PittTheElder. I actually do think this fight scene was staged well, even if it comes so rapidly that the book is basically hitting you in the face as soon as you open it. It would flow together nicely in a movie.
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Apr 5, 2018 00:44
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Sperglord Actual posted:His middle name is Zastava? He's the cheap copy of Dirk Pitt, you see.
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Apr 5, 2018 04:02
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quote:I could tell I was dreaming. Everything had that fuzzy, disjointed dream feel to it. First I had flashes of dragging myself toward the elevator, my belt being used as an improvised tourniquet on my leg. However, in my dream it didn't hurt a bit. Movement was slow as though I were underwater. There were glimpses of an ambulance and men sticking me with needles and pounding on my chest. Pitt wakes up to the smell of antiseptic and a dry mouth, the painkiller high the only thing keeping this from feeling like a hangover. He's in a hospital room, his left hand in a cast and an IV in his arm, covered in bandages. He reaches a hand up and feels a line of stitches along his forehead, and lifts up the bandage on his chest to find that it's been stapled shut. His brain starts trying to apply logic to what just occurred, insisting that the werewolf stuff was just a hospital fever dream and he really got in a car crash, but he tells his brain to shut the gently caress up. He hits the call button, but the people who show up aren't exactly nurses. quote:"Mr. Pitt. I'm Special Agent Myers and this is Special Agent Franks. We're with the government." The two men flashed their credentials in my general direction. One agent was a dark brooding type, obviously muscular and grim of attitude. The speaker was older and looked more like a college professor than a Fed. They were both wearing off-the-rack suits, and neither looked very happy. They pulled up chairs. The professor crossed his legs, steepled his fingers, and scowled at me. The younger one pulled his gun. While this seems like a terrible way to conduct a government investigation, there's actually a point to it. Myers hands Pitt some water while Franks keeps the gun on him, giving him enough moisture to speak. Pitt tries to lie and claim that his injuries are from falling down the stairs (he blames the morphine for coming up with such a crappy excuse), but they immediately tell him that they saw the security tapes and are well aware that Cecil Huffman turned into a lycanthrope and got shoved out a window. quote:"It was self-defense. I'm the good guy here. Why the gun?" So yeah, these definitely aren't regular FBI agents. They're still waiting on a blood sample to come back to confirm whether or not Pitt is going to transform into a werewolf and tear apart the room. He's free to go if they come back negative, but will be in violation of the Unearthly Forces Disclosure Act if he breathes a word of any of it and will be hunted down with lead bullets. In the meantime, they wait. So I have one big problem here. I flipped through the rest of the chapter, and it seems like he's in a regular hospital and not some secret Monster Hunter International base deep underneath a mountain or anything. These guys were getting ready to pop a patient in a public hospital with a silver bullet to the forehead. Suppressors may quiet a gunshot, but they don't exactly make it silent (and as a gun sperg, Correia should be well aware of that). I hope they had a plan to bag his body and find a way to smuggle it out while still in their suits, unless they want to end up on the evening news. quote:A doctor came in and took my pulse and blood pressure. A nurse changed my IV and checked my bandages. The staff seemed intimidated by the Feds, and left without talking. Flowers were delivered. They were from Hansen Industries, with a card wishing me a speedy recovery. Along with the card there was also a letter on Hansen Industries stationary that informed me that I was fired for violating the Official Workplace Safety Code No Weapons in the Workplace Rule. If I did not want to risk an interruption to my Workers' Compensation, I had best not protest the firing. Hugs and kisses, Human Resources. Myers and Pitt watch Jeopardy on TV together, which Pitt easily destroys him in. Franks sits with his silenced Glock and a Diet Coke. quote:Alex Trebek had all of the answers. I just had questions. Myers gives up and switches to CNN, where the news is covering a Russian oil pipeline blown up by Chechen terrorists. Pitt tries to ask more questions, but gets firmly shut up as being on a need-to-know basis. There's a knock on the door, but it swings open immediately after and Franks barely has time to hide his pistol under a Martha Stewart magazine. The man who walks in is lean, average height, mid-forties. Close-cropped blonde hair and no real distinguishing features apart from a cigarette in his mouth.  Yes, there's actually a bunch of fan stuff about this series. They even made a tabletop RPG. quote:"Well, if it ain't the junior danger rangers. How's the murdering witnesses business?" the man asked, reaching into the pocket of his leather bomber jacket and pulling out a business card. He stuck the card into the edge of my wrist cast. It stuck there, vibrating slightly. I'm wondering if Harbinger is some kind of non-human based on what Myers said. Considering this is a Larry Correia book, "your kind" could just as well be a no-nonsense Republican who breaks the rules to save the day and stop those darn SJWs. Pitt interrupts, and Earl Harbinger shakes his hand and introduces himself as being from MHI. All he says about them is they're a private, for-profit business and that he thinks Pitt would be a good new recruit. He waves off the agents' thinking about him turning into a werewolf; as he says, he "wrote the book" on werewolves and after 5 days without any signs he's confident that Pitt isn't infected. He says once the tests come back negative to give him a call on that business card. As Harbinger leaves, Pitt flips off the agents and tells them to leave him alone to get some sleep. quote:I had a strange dream. It was hazy and blurry, jerky and disjointed, violent and quick. Not like a normal dream at all. Pitt wakes with a start, Myers' cell phone playing an annoying "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" ring tone. The phone call ends without him saying anything, and Pitt closes his eyes as the fear and anxiety well up. He hopes that if they're about to shoot that his brains leave a mess on their suits. Finally, he opens his eyes to see the agents walking out. Franks actually looks a bit dejected about not getting a chance to kill someone. quote:Slow minutes passed as I made sure they weren't coming back, but all was still. The call had come. The stranger's promise had been true. I was not infected, was still human, and wasn't going to die. I laughed until I pulled something in one of the many lacerations in my back and then I cried in pain and then in relief. As I said earlier, I was not normally by nature a pious man, but on that night I sure was. I sobbed and heaved as all of the stress left me spent and wasted. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 13:20
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Paingod556 posted:He's gonna stop cold to mention every firearm through this, isn't he? Better than how Die Hard 2 did it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecwK3UMxoxQ
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Apr 5, 2018 13:57
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Drunken Baker posted:I think this is the first one of your threads where I've actually read all the book parts. Hahah. He seems to be one of those conservative guys that is absolutely convinced that the only reason society is bowing to those darn SJWs and their "give human rights to people" advocacy is because of the liberal media propaganda, so when the Hugo Awards started awarding progressive authors he lost his mind and started trying to get people to nominate the dumbest pulp ever (which coincidentally often included his own books) in protest.
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Apr 5, 2018 14:38
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So not only did a Kickstarter get set up for making a Monster Hunter tabletop RPG in the Savage Worlds system, it got funded almost 10 times over.
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Apr 5, 2018 14:41
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Who the gently caress has time for a quip when your boss is turning into a werewolf in front of you You actually always want to carry at least one reload if you've got a concealed weapon. Not because you might get into a huge gunfight with five dudes and need to John Wick your way out, but because: 1. You might miss a bunch and still be in danger, so you reload instead of just trying to beat the attacking person or animal with your gun. 2. You suffer some kind of problem with your ammo or magazine that can only be quickly solved by reloading. Choco1980 posted:To be fair, a tabletop set in the modern world where you're a covert organization hunting monsters in secret is still a pretty fun idea. There's a GURPS tabletop campaign I'm writing that's basically like this, only more in the Supernatural style where there's no real organization, just a bunch of independent people who are aware of what lurks in the shadows and have a loose-knit alliance between each other to exorcise ghosts and kill vampires. It's a road trip series and I based a lot of the quests on real haunts and locations, like Bela Kiss being a vampire instead of just a serial killer and living in NYC or digging up buried treasure in Salton Sea, CA and taking it back to where it was stolen from the Aztecs in Mexico to get rid of a haunting.
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Apr 5, 2018 17:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Like I get that but I mean literally where was he carrying it if he was sneaking his gun in on an ankle holster in the first place It was in his coat pocket. Please note that Mr. 300 Pounds was in a suit during this.
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Apr 5, 2018 18:46
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quote:Physical therapy sucks. Recuperation sucks. And the never-ending itching that comes from under a cast has to possibly be the worst form of torture known to man. The worst, unless you happen to have your parents invade your home in an attempt to comfort you. My folks had flown in when they had been informed of the "incident," and had immediately set about being a huge nuisance. As Pitt slowly recovers in the hospital, he's interviewed by the Dallas PD. They've apparently been informed that Huffman was a deranged serial killer on PCP with a 14-inch Bowie knife. They quickly inform him that it'll likely be deemed justifiable homicide in self-defense and arrange to have his revolver returned to him once the prosecutor's office clears it. quote:The local papers had run stories about my heroic defense against the crazed serial killer Cecil Huffman. In an amusing note the cover story featured both of our employee pictures. I'm sure that most casual readers would conclude that my picture showed the insane murderer, since I was big, young, muscular, swarthy, generally ugly, and beady-eyed. Mr. Huffman looked more like the victim type, a fat, middle-aged, middle manager, with big sad eyes and triple chins. Looks could be deceiving. During my hospital stay I had repeatedly turned away reporters. The last thing I wanted to do was to make up a story, or screw something up and draw the ire of the FBI. I had even turned down a potential guest spot on Oprah. My mom had been royally ticked when she found out about that. This dude is so loving redneck. His mom isn't anything special. She's the emotional one, all hugs and kisses and cooking. After Pitt gets discharged, they take him back to his apartment and settle in to help him recuperate over the coming weeks. His dad mostly just watches golf on TV, while his mom bugs him about still being single and rents movies for him to watch. One night he gets a call from his brother, David "Mosh" Pitt. His band, Cabbage Point Killing Machine, is getting ready to release their newest album Hold the Pig Steady and Owen demands VIP passes to see him play in Dallas. David asks his brother for details on what happened, and Owen reluctantly gives the FBI-approved version about Huffman being a serial killer. The night before his parents fly out, Pitt's dad pulls him aside. He seems agitated. quote:"Look, son, let me just come right out and say it. I know you aren't telling us everything." Pitt says the pay was good, but he lies and says he only did it to pay for school. He's got some kind of secret about why he really left the fight club scene, but he can't tell his dad yet. His dad recognizes that those wounds are nothing like what a knife would cause, and knows that his son could easily handle a guy with a knife without getting smashed all over the room like that. He compares the wounds to those of a guy he saw get mauled by a tiger in Southeast Asia, a gory bedtime story Pitt heard when he was 6. He encourages his son to come clean and promises not to tell anyone if he reveals something strange, but he doesn't budge. His dad scowls, but doesn't press further. quote:I cursed and swore as I hobbled through my apartment, crutch banging randomly into objects as I tried to make my way to the entrance. The doorbell rang again, and this time they held it down, and wouldn't let up. It was a very shrill doorbell. Pitt lets them in. He sees that Harbinger has brought a woman, and you can probably guess where this is going next: quote:She was beautiful. In fact she was possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was tall, with dark black hair, light skin, and big brown eyes. Her face was beautiful, not fake beautiful like a model or an actress, because she was obviously a real person, but rather Helen of Troy, launch-a-thousand-ships kind of good-looking. She wore glasses, and I was a sucker for a girl in corrective eyewear. Since I was ugly it was probably some sort of subconscious reaction in the hope that I might have a chance with a cute girl who couldn't see very well. She was dressed in a conservative business suit, but unlike most women I knew, she made it look good. If I were to guess I would have said that she was in her mid-twenties. Oh yeah, and she also has a small Southern accent like Harbinger. I think I know Larry's type. I like that he specifies that her hair is "dark black", as opposed to the other kind of black? The trio sit down (in Pitt's case, more like falling into a chair with his crutch) and Harbinger checks on how he's healing up. He's not quite at the level of benching 400 pounds like he used to, but he'll get there. Harbinger and Julie explain that they work for Monster Hunter International. quote:"MHI is a private organization, and we handle monster-related problems. I guess you could say that we are in fact Monster Hunters." Man, with capital letters and everything! quote:"As you now are aware, monsters are very real. They're out there, and are a serious threat to the world. Our company specializes in neutralizing monster threats," she said. Note to self when writing: never make a silly acronym just so you can have one. Also, this is probably the second or third time I've seen a setting where monster hunting in America was started by Teddy Roosevelt. Either that or I saw something about MHI a long time ago and just never remembered it. The bounties change depending on the circumstances. Since lycanthrope attacks are at an all time high and Huffman had killed a few people already, he was a valuable kill. Pitt asks about what other kinds of "unnaturals" there are, and Julie refuses to tell him more unless he joins up. quote:I cut her off. "Zombies? Are there really zombies?" This motherfucker is like a kid in a candy shop, except the candy is murder. Julie pulls out a DVD and puts it into Pitt's DVD player. It's the security camera footage of his fight with Huffman, apparently from hidden cameras Pitt didn't even know they had installed. As they watch the video, Harbinger explains that Pitt was different because not only did he put up a fight when confronted with a monster instead of freezing, he won. They also pull out his secret Department of Homeland Security file, where they cover his middle name (his mother is Czech and Serbian). quote:"Black belt in two martial arts. You wrestled in high school and took the state championship heavyweight division two years in a row. Homeland Security has you flagged because you're considered a militant right-wing gun nut. You became involved in competitive shooting at eight years old, and have a master rating in International Practical Shooting. You've placed in the top five in several different national level three-gun tactical competitions. You were ranked as one of the top young shooters in the country, though you've slipped over the last few years." Oh yeah, that's the kind of protagonist you want: someone who was flagged by the federal government as right-wing militia. Frankly the most unrealistic part of the book for me is that the government even bothers flagging white right-wingers. Pitt tried to join the Army, but was turned down for minor health problems. He instead turned to illegal gambling and underground fighting rings, earning a bachelor's and master's degree in only 6 years and passing his CPA exam on the first try. He finally ended the fight club thing because he came extremely close to accidentally killing another fighter. He even speaks 5 languages fluently and is passable in a few others, which they handwave as a "varied family background" because I guess that makes you fluent in all the languages you're related to. quote:"Your psychological profile says that you're a pathological overachiever with severe overcompensating tendencies as a result of your relationship with your father, and the fact that you were always the picked-on fat kid while growing up." They mention the pay again, specifically that they have a problem with their best agents retiring to buy small countries. It's incredibly dangerous and he's liable to die young, but it's something that he can be good at while helping protect people and making a ton of money. He remembers what the mysterious Eastern European Not-God said to him while he was dead about finding his calling. He says he'll go down to the bank and cash the check. If it's real, he'll join on two conditions: the first is that if he ever thinks the job is too crazy, he can quit whenever. And the second... quote:"You, uh . . . need to have dinner with me tonight," I stammered, surprising myself with my own courage. There you go, Casanova. I had no idea why I had said that, it had just kind of popped out. You goony gently caress. Julie is perplexed by him asking her out during a job interview, but Harbinger encourages it because he has some mysterious business alone tonight anyway. quote:Julie Shackleford sat on my bargain basement furniture in my rundown apartment in a bad part of town and examined me quizzically. I had no idea what she was thinking. It was an awkward moment.
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Apr 6, 2018 00:39
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Grenrow posted:The most telling part of this is that he totally would have joined the army, you guys, definitely for sure he would have, except for those pesky ol' medical issues (that will no doubt never come into play in a way that would hinder him later in the book). But don't worry, dear reader! Larry Correia's self insert is still a super badass who was awesome in underground fight clubs and is the best shot ever. I actually can't find any evidence that Larry tried to join the military or had any plans to. He is an accountant in addition to owning a gun store. He also complained in an interview that he can't relax by reading any more because "I use the same part of my brain for writing as I do for reading".
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Apr 6, 2018 02:21
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Hostile V posted:Dude was born in 77, he's only 41. He grew up in a post-draft post-Vietnam America. According to his backstory where he's talking about his dad, it was asthma and flat feet. Owen Pitt is that muscular hot dude on the cover of the book, with Julie behind him.
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Apr 6, 2018 02:55
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quote:"So you know all about me because of that file," I said after swallowing a blob of cheese and pineapple. Delivery had been relatively swift, the pizza was good, and surprisingly enough Julie seemed to be enjoying our conversation. After the first few awkward minutes she had warmed up to my attempt at flirting, and was at least tolerating me. Her smile was contagious, and I felt better than I had in weeks. The sun was starting to set, and long orange shadows were cast through my barred apartment windows. Julie explains a bit about Myers and Franks. Myers actually used to be a monster hunter before being recruited by the government, and they work for the secretive Monster Control Bureau. She also confirms that she's already in a relationship and is only having pizza with Pitt as a professional courtesy. She puts her legs up on the coffee table, revealing that she's wearing combat boots under her conservative suit. Her jacket falls open, revealing a leather pancake holster on her hip. quote:"What are you carrying?" As a fellow 1911 enthusiast, I admire her taste. She says she did most of the modifications herself, and tosses the .45 ACP round she extracted to Pitt for him to examine. It looks like a standard hollow point, but with a metal ball filling the cavity. quote:"What's this? This is actually absolutely true! I've done a lot of research on silver bullets myself, and Correia probably got his info from the same experiments I did. Along with all of these issues, silver requires extremely hot crucibles to melt (whereas lead will melt over an ordinary campfire) so it tends to cool very rapidly after melting, requiring you to make pure silver bullets very fast with a lot of precision. Soft lead will expand to engage the rifling or swage itself down if slightly oversized for the bore, while silver is so hard that an imperfect bullet will either be too small to contact the barrel or be so big that it risks blowing the gun up because it can't even get down the barrel. Funny enough, it seems that Larry and I both came up with the exact same idea for a silver hollow point for monster hunting. They're not quite sure why silver hurts monsters. One theory is that it's related to the 30 pieces of silver Judas was paid to betray Jesus. The Vatican Hunters say it's because silver is a pure and good metal, while lead is of the earth. Scientifically, they still can't find an explanation. quote:"Looks like a Corbon Pow'r Ball." That was a type of regular defensive ammunition that I had used a few times before. It used a ball stuck in a hollow cavity designed to squish back to force expansion of the bullet on impact, thereby increasing the severity of the wound. You know, this might actually turn out to be flawless from a gun perspective. After Mack Maloney's pulp (where researching anything but planes seems to cause an allergic reaction and he actually gets farther from reality with each book he writes), it's refreshing to see accuracy. quote:"So about this 'relationship'?" I used my fingers to make quotation marks. Julie rolled her eyes at me behind her glasses. Unfortunately for the gun accuracy, Owen Pitt appears to be the gooniest goddamn protagonist ever. Earl Harbinger and Julie are related, and he's in fact much older than her despite how he looks. He raised her and her brothers long enough that she considers him a father figure. Pitt asks if her boyfriend is also a hunter, and she says yes and that she'll also beat him to death with his own crutch if he doesn't shut up. After talking some more about MHI and monsters, Pitt notes that Julie seems distracted. She asks him if he knows what today is, and finally gets up and opens the curtains to reveal the full moon. It's been one month from the werewolf attack, and she was ordered by Earl to watch him just in case the tests were wrong and he started to transform. This somewhat deflates Pitt's boner for her. quote:We silently watched the sky. I realized that she was still holding my arm, standing close, and I could feel the warm, soft pressure of her body against mine. There together, in the light of the moon, just the slight tenseness of her hands on the muscles of my arm, I could feel her breath on my ear. It was a good moment. I wished that it could last forever. Unfortunately she was only holding me to help keep my pathetic crippled rear end from falling down. I hate Alabama.
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Apr 7, 2018 01:52
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Internet Wizard posted:Of course this dork has weird calibre hang-ups and thinks that true men only use .45 and .308 When doing my monster hunter campaign, I justified the use of the largest calibers possible because you actually want the silver plug to stay in the monster instead of overpenetrating and exiting, and you want the largest amount of silver possible. So you really just want to use the minimum necessary to penetrate the skin (vital organs if necessary, depending on how vulnerable the monster is to silver) while getting a fat honking bullet like a .45 or .50. This also means assault rifles aren't that great because of the small bullet and potential for overpenetration, while shotguns full of silver buckshot or slugs are ideal.
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Apr 7, 2018 02:53
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:So an interesting thing about gun-nuttery, Correia hates HK guns IRL, and I don't think his protagonist ever uses them. But when John Ringo wrote his basically fan-fiction of MHI that has been published and Correia helped edit, his protagonist wanked off about how HK makes the best guns for a solid 2 pages and it was glorious in some meta gun-nut argument kind of way. I think it's because Ringo is a weirdo who can't stop wanking over special forces, while Correia is a gun shop owner and shooter so he has the typical hatred of HK for being crappy to civilian consumers.
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Apr 7, 2018 17:27
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Choco1980 posted:I love how he says that she rifles off stats that would only be interesting to gun nuts, then immediately rifles off those stats. This is also something I've studied. A big problem with iron is that depending on your particular formula, it can also end up being too hard and ruining your rifling. One question is "What does 'cold iron' mean?" If it means a specific kind like consecrated iron, you've got a problem. If any kind of iron or steel works, you've got steel core ammo or steel buckshot and birdshot. Shotguns are the ideal anti-monster or anti-ghost (if you're shooting rock salt) weapon because they're just steel tubes, so they can safely load and fire virtually anything that fits in a shell. Need a quick silver load? Just buy a bunch of silver beads from a jewelry supplier and make as much silver buckshot as you need. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyS6tiGiEcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEEjArD1R3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ5Fhb395i8
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Apr 7, 2018 20:22
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quote:The next three weeks had passed quickly. The PUFF check had surprisingly enough cleared. And with a bloated bank account, I had packed my bags, sold or given away most of my stuff, broken the lease on my apartment, and driven to the middle of nowhere, following the directions that Julie Shackleford had left me. Pitt drives straight through from Dallas to the small town of Cazador, Alabama about 2 hours from Montgomery. It's in the middle of nowhere with only one road in and out, surrounded by dense forests, rolling hills, and many streams and creeks. The town has a population of 682 according to the sign; the only attraction is a catfish plant, tours open until 4:00 PM. Pitt stops at the only convenience store in town for a soda, gas, and to scrape the bugs off his windshield. Deeper in the woods, he follows the directions to a small gravel turn-off. A sign reading "MHI" with a green smiley face with horns is the only marker, with many "No Trespassing" signs as he drives down.  quote:Finally I came to an open gate surrounded by high chain link and razor wire. Near the gate, a man sat in a folding chair under the shade of a large umbrella, relaxed and apparently listening to a big battery-powered radio. He waved lazily as I braked and rolled down my window. This gate guard is Milo Ivan Anderson, who simply introduces himself as "the guy who teaches you how all the cool stuff works". Driving past the gate, the MHI compound comes into view. The only permanent building is a red brick and steel office building with narrow windows and iron bars. Walking inside, Pitt notices that there's a second set of doors airlock-style behind the main entrance with a portcullis that can be dropped to separate them. The receptionist is a matronly old woman in her 60s, a large revolver printing underneath her purple sweater. She likewise compliments Pitt on killing the werewolf; her name is Dorcas, and she used to be a hunter herself until a werewolf left her with a plastic prosthetic leg. Pitt signs in at the desk and continues on to the cafeteria and meeting hall. The halls are lined with photos and plaques memorializing fallen hunters; the oldest go back to the 1850s, while nearly a hundred of the pictures all share the date of 12/15/1995. Conspicuously, there's no death dates beyond that until a few in the current year. Pitt notes this is 6 years, suggesting that this book actually takes place in 2001. quote:A group was waiting in the cafeteria. There were a few small pockets of conversation, but mostly they had pulled up chairs by themselves and were waiting nervously. Not being one for socializing, I grabbed a metal folding chair and took up residence in the back of the room. The fellow to my right was snoring loudly. To my left was a young Asian man, warily watching the others. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Albert Lee. When I asked him how he had ended up here he muttered something about spiders. Big spiders. From everything you've said about your racial background, Pitt, you seem pretty drat white. Earl comes in, along with a few other people like Milo and Julie. quote:"Hello. My name is Earl Harbinger. Many of you know me already. I'm the Director of Operations here at MHI. Welcome to our new Hunter orientation. Let's get one thing straight right off the bat. We hunt monsters. That's what we do. Every one of you has had the experience to realize that there is a lot more out there than you've been led to believe. In the coming days I would just ask for one thing. Keep your mind flexible. Don't get caught up in what you're sure is real, because if you can't believe in them, you can't fight them." Larry really seems to idolize Southerners who don't take poo poo from anyone and hate political correctness. quote:"Welcome to Monster Hunter International. My name is Raymond Shackleford the Third. You can call me sir, Mr. Shackleford, or Boss. Today you are going to get a little history lesson, so pay attention." He cleared his throat loudly. "My grandfather founded this company in 1895. Raymond Shackleford the First, but around these parts everybody knew him as Bubba. Bubba Shackleford was born and raised in this very valley, here in the heart of Keene County. One winter the good folk of Keene County started to disappear: sadly, some of them even came back, only they were not quite human any more. My grandfather formed a group of concerned citizens, best could be described as an angry mob, and took care of the problem. The fault lay with what we now know to be a vampire. Grandpa Shackleford lynched the creature twice, and when it wouldn't die they finally, in frustration, burned it at the stake. One by one my grandfather's men found every newly created vampire, and destroyed each in turn, until finally the county and Cazador township was made safe." Yeah, MHI is a full blown conservative Southerner's convention. Despite how Pitt insisted that the recruits are all races, I'm pretty sure there's only one he really cares about. quote:"For over a hundred years, this company has fought the good fight, the noble fight. We have always fought in secret because the powers that be don't want the sheep to be scared. We are the sheepdogs, and there are wolves out there, as all of you know firsthand. But things have changed. We have entered dark times indeed. For a brief time the fools in power, who should have known better, declared our business illegal. They caved in to monsters' rights groups, and the bureaucrats who assured them that federal agencies could handle the problem. There was an executive order. We were shut down, our assets confiscated, and any of us who opened our mouths were threatened with jail time. The drat nanny state couldn't handle the idea of private citizens taking care of their business." He was becoming visibly agitated. That explained the gap in the memorial plaques, but not what happened on December 15th. I'll eat my hat if these books actually display government action as a good thing at any point in history. quote:"Ha! Ignorant bastards just had to have their fingers in everything. Monster attacks went up three thousand percent in the six years PUFF was shut down. The government has long had a policy to keep the truth secret. That is why so many of you here today were paid visits by agents and threatened with physical harm if you talked too much. But with incidents going through the roof, they were not going to be able to keep the lid on for much longer. Even with the full cooperation of the media, word was starting to spread. Not all of those crazy folks on that Internet thing are as crazy as you might think." He grinned widely, obviously amused at that thought. "Once enough voters were getting eaten, Congress had had enough and pressured the next President to reinstate PUFF and revoke the executive order that had banned professional monster hunting." I'm a little confused about exactly how the government has kept a lid on things so easily. Somehow the whole of Congress is now in on it too? And the media has 100% cooperation so nothing leaks? At what loving point in the 21st century has the media been completely cooperating with the current administration? You just know if there were monster attacks under Obama, Fox would have been running it 24/7. quote:"So now we have restarted operations, and are trying to move past our dark days. Unfortunately we are short handed, and the monster problem is out of control. We are spread thin, with only small teams of experienced Hunters scattered around the country trying to put out fires. On the bright side, with so many attacks, it certainly makes finding and recruiting brave people like y'all much easier." He gestured at us with his hook. Harbinger takes over once quote:"Your teachers will consist of experienced Hunters. Listen to them carefully. Read everything that you're given. Your life, or the lives of your teammates, may depend on your skill or knowledge." Harbinger pointed at the small knot of people sitting behind him. "We're not normally teachers. The folks sitting behind me are actually my personal team. I trust each of them with my life, and any of them would trust me with theirs. If any one of them decides that any one of you does not have what it takes to be a Hunter, then you're gone. That is all. Don't screw around with us. We're much better killers than we are babysitters." I knew Julie, and I had met Milo briefly, but I had no clue who the others were. One instructor had a giant mustache, looked like a cross between a cowboy and a truck driver, and reminded me of Kenny's dad from South Park. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhqbSf_fb1g Terrifying. quote:"Training will last until we decide that you're good enough. After that you will be assigned to your duties. Some of you will be assigned to Hunter teams. We have teams stationed all around the country. Those teams respond to crises as they develop. Other people will work in direct support of the teams. We will go into greater details about how this entire thing works as training progresses. Every employee will be paid bimonthly according to your position. Any PUFF your personal team earns will be shared by the whole company, with your team getting the largest percentage. Think of it as profit sharing. That means that if your team wins a huge bounty you don't get to keep it all. Be careful not to bitch too much about that, however, because the next week it will probably be some other team that wins the big one and not you. Don't worry, though, the lowest paid employee we have probably made more than most of you did in the last year. Our business is monsters, and business is booming." He showed a lot of teeth when he smiled. It almost reminded me of when Mr. Huffman was about to eat me. The only one to raise his hand is Pitt. He asks what happened on December 15th, 1995. One of the instructors (a handsome man in a suit, whom Pitt instantly hates) asks how he knew about that, and Pitt points out the dates on the death plaques. Someone in the crowd asks if he's a detective or reporter. Harbinger says he's worse: an accountant. quote:"Very astute of you, Pitt. I'll answer your question, but not today. Most of you in this room are not going to make it through training. Those folks get to walk away from this place and never look back. They don't need to know. Trust me, they don't want to know. For those of you who make it, I'll tell you the story personally, because I was there, and it affects every single Hunter. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and got us shut down. It was the one hundred year anniversary of the founding of the company, and it was one hell of a Christmas party."
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Apr 7, 2018 21:26
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Sperglord Actual posted:chitoryu, would you mind if I reposted the Shark Puncher snippets here? Go for it.
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Apr 7, 2018 22:54
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Choco1980 posted:So I'm not a gun guy, but I tend to understand stuff when people talk about it (it's funny, I'm the same way about programming language, so people automatically think I'm some computer expert for it). It sounds to me like the whole hollow point with a chunk of silver inside that the book went with and you said was where you independently decided to go with other stuff, it's basically the same principle as buckshot, wherein the payload isn't the bullet, but rather inside the bullet to do it's damage piggyback style, correct? Yeah, the problem is that silver is actually extremely hard to make bullets from. It requires very high heat to melt and cools too rapidly to pour easily, so you often end up with air pockets or an uneven shape. Because silver is very hard, it won’t expand if slightly undersized or swage down if slightly oversized like soft lead entering the barrel, and an oversized silver bullet can blow up the gun. The bullets also have very low mass, resulting in poor ballistics and accuracy. Larry and I independently came up with the same idea for monster hunters: filling the cavity in the nose of a JHP with silver. This plug will deal the contact damage of silver inside a monster body and potentially separate to create its own wound cavity. Shotguns avoid this problem because they have no rifling and just pack the shot contents into a plastic shot cup in the shell. You can load up literally anything that will fit in the shell. Steel or iron shot for fae, silver beads for those monsters, rock salt for ghosts, palo santo infused with garlic and holy water, whatever you want.
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Apr 8, 2018 01:58
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Depending on your age, it also makes you think of Puff the Magic Dragon.
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Apr 9, 2018 14:45
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quote:Over the last week I had become very familiar with the compound. There was the two-story office building/fortress, and several smaller buildings that served as barracks, classrooms, workshops and armories. A few hundred yards away was the hangar, housing one medium plane and one strange-looking helicopter of foreign origin. Behind the asphalt runway, just far enough away so that the noise would not be distracting, were the shooting ranges. Bulldozers had pushed up huge berms of red clay soil to serve as backstops. A razor-wire-topped chain link fence stretched around the entire property, intimidating and sharp wherever it had not been overtaken with kudzu vines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyAoQBYUQEA Keep in mind that Pitt is doing this a full second faster than that; set the YouTube video to x2 speed to see what it's like in the book. He says his personal best is 1.75 with one of his custom guns back home. Someone says that it's a fluke and to do it again, so Sam (the guy with the walrus mustache and cowboy clothes, that he said looks like Kenny's dad on South Park) sets him up. Despite dressing in a Stetson and with a gigantic belt buckle, Sam is a former Navy SEAL. quote:Somebody else pushed the button to activate the pneumatic target system. The five plates reset themselves with a hiss. I decided to show off a little for the crowd. Since the action was open, I quickly plucked a spare round of buckshot from the elastic sidesaddle mounted on the shotgun's receiver. I dropped it into the chamber, and instantly slammed the pump forward. Instinctively my support hand moved to the bandoleer of spare shells strapped across my chest. Grasping four cases, I palmed them under the loading port and rapid fire shoved them in as if my hand itself was a spring-loaded mechanism. Snick, snick, snick, snick. Four shells loaded in under two seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lprcnmeql2Y That's the loading trick. Of course Pitt is so badass that the instructors ask him for help on his first week. Pitt's second run is 1.82 seconds, proving he can repeat it. The guy that was demanding he do it again is Grant Jefferson, his self-imposed nemesis. Grant is a handsome, muscular guy who looks like an underwear model with perfect hair descended from a wealthy New England family. But the real reason Pitt hates him is that he's Julie's boyfriend. Since Pitt inevitably has to bone Julie, one wonders what will become of Grant. Does he die or get transformed into a monster? Does he turn coward and run? Does he turn out to be secretly evil? Sam decides to have Pitt take over instructing the class. Pitt explains that you need to shoot as if the gun is an extension of your body, rather than thinking about what you do. He uses Trip as an example, who pauses after every action he takes. Trip (whose real name is John Jermain Jones, or "Triple J"), is the token black guy of the group. He's a dreadlocked high school chemistry teacher (since it was a small school, also substitute band teacher and assistant football coach) who joined MHI after a voodoo priestess placed a curse on his small Florida town, forcing him to put down his zombified students with a pickaxe. The next one he talks about is Holly Newcastle, a blonde stripper with huge fake boobs who hasn't yet told anyone why she ended up here. quote:As far as I could tell she had exactly zero experience with any sort of firearms, but she was coming along gradually. She really surprised me when it came to the class portion of our training; she had an amazing ability to soak up knowledge and monster-related trivia. She may have looked like the stereotype, but she was no dumb blond. I had no doubt that whatever she had done to get herself recruited by MHI, she had done very well. Pitt continues through the line. The recruits are as varied as a taxi driver, a narcotics cop, a librarian, and even a plumber (Pitt says you do not want to know what his monster encounter was). The number of recruits has dwindled day by day, with instructors making judgement calls as necessary to send recruits home or recruits quitting when they're unable to handle the training, so Pitt's group of 40 has now gone down to 20. Anyone who leaves is given an extremely generous severance check. Even Pitt considered quitting a few times, both from internal conflict over monster killing for fun & profit and struggling with PT due to his werewolf injuries. quote:Earl Harbinger sat with his feet up on the desk. In one hand he held the remote control for the slide show, and the other held a yardstick that he used to point out interesting things. The photos on the slide show were disturbing to say the least. Zombies come from all sorts of sources, from voodoo to mad scientists. Depending on the severity of the outbreak, PUFF is usually $5000 a head plus more for bagging the reanimator himself. quote:Click. The thing in the picture had obviously once been a person, but was now a hunched and rotting pile of rags and jagged edges and pointed teeth. The creature held what appeared to be a human leg in its mostly skeletal hand. It looked as if its lunch had been rudely interrupted by the flash of the picture. "This is a ghoul. Think of it as a super zombie on crack. Much smarter, much faster, way harder to stop. Luckily they're rare, which is a good thing because the one in this picture soaked up about two hundred rounds before it finally quit kicking. Head shots don't usually work, though they tend to slow them down. Your best bet is to hammer them until you break down their skeletal structure to the point where they just can't fight anymore. Then burn them to be sure. They're usually found around cemeteries, as they're carrion feeders. PUFF for a ghoul runs around 20K." Pitt can't resist asking for the story behind this. He explains that it occurred when Julie was 18, just before Halloween 1995 (Pitt estimated her age at mid-20s, which would put her at 24 in 2001 and thus confirm that this book takes place about 6 years before it was published). Wights paralyze whoever they touch, even through clothing, and it popped out of the ground during a ghoul hunt at the cemetery and paralyzed Harbinger and Milo. Julie jumped out and took on the wight with a spear until Harbinger recovered and lit it up with a flamethrower. quote:Sawing off a human head is harder than it looks. The body tends to flop around every time you hit it, and it makes a really nasty mess. Once goo gets on the handle of your knife, it gets even worse, and the next thing you know, your blade is glancing off of bones that you didn't even know were there. I grunted as I strained the blade against the rubbery flesh. Obviously, you need to get your class used to chopping up poo poo and staking vampires. They usually save this until the end of training, since most recruits have washed out and that's fewer bodies you need to wrangle up from medical schools. They hold these classes in the Body Shack, a refrigerated room near the hangar. quote:"Next team. Newcastle and Mead," Sam said to Holly and Chuck, the next people in line, as Milo used a hose to spray down the floor. Several of the other Newbies had lost their lunch on this exercise. Mingled fluids coagulated around the central drain. The Gut Crawl just sounds like something a modern extreme haunt like McKamey Manor would put someone through for signing a waiver. Holly the stripper seems completely unperturbed by staking a corpse, which leaves everyone wondering just what she ended up doing to get invited to MHI. quote:"That wasn't so bad. Chuck got stuck with the head. Poor guy, he brought it on himself though," she said, flashing us with a wicked grin. They get the weekend off, but we cut to their next training session where Pitt is about ready to collapse after the last mile of the forest running trail, which Grant Jefferson gleefully calls him pathetic for. As the other newbies stumble off to sleep or throw up (Trip gives a jaunty thumbs-up because he's fine with running forever), Pitt collapses on a bench to rest. This invites Julie to take up a seat next to him as Grant strips off his shirt and begins practicing martial arts by himself in the yard. quote:"So . . . how long have you guys been dating?" I asked, trying not to sound jealous. I don't know if I succeeded. Larry is really proud of being an accountant. As Pitt walks back to the barracks, he kicks over a trash can in his anger at not getting to date Julie because he's actually 12. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Apr 9, 2018 |
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Apr 9, 2018 15:23
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Choco1980 posted:Wait, I thought he said earlier that the one brick building was the only permanent structure at the camp? Now they have barracks, aircraft hangers, a refrigerated morgue, etc etc Temporary refrigerated morgue!
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Apr 9, 2018 15:43
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quote:"What're you doing?" Trip asked me as he entered our tiny barracks room. The windows were open and loud insects chirped and whistled in the darkness outside. So yeah, Pitt had a bit of an accident in between paragraph breaks. He tells Trip about his history in underground fighting rings, but also that apparently his dad is a hardcore survivalist who prepared Pitt for life in a post-apocalyptic world. This led to a bit of a problem when he ended up in a fight against a guy who was rumored to have killed a few people in prison: he snapped and blacked out, and woke up with broken knuckles and blood up to his armpits as he was being dragged off the guy. Pitt chose to become an accountant because it was the most boring, straight-laced job he could think of to get away from that life. Trip successfully convinces Pitt that he's probably not going to accidentally get mad and kill someone during training, so he puts his suitcase away and heads back to training. This extremely uncomfortable Alabama summer day is also the day the remaining recruits get their monster hunting armored suits. To acclimate them to it, they're required to wear them for several days straight. Milo (wearing a Violent Femmes T-shirt and with his beard tied into two braids, which conveniently makes him look like Jeff Quinn of Gunblast) is adjusting everyone's suits to be arranged properly; they had a particular problem with Pitt due to his comically large 62-inch chest. quote:Grant Jefferson watched us smugly in our discomfort. He was wearing his armor, which had been tailored to suit him better. Holly had said that he was dashingly handsome, and even she, being so very jaded and cynical about men because of her background, found him very charismatic and charming. She told me that it was easy to see why Grant and Julie had hooked up. He was young, smart, good-looking, knew how to talk to people, and everybody loved him. I still wanted to kick his rear end. Grant goes on about how the armor saved his life from what would surely have been a mortal blow from a golem, and Milo whispers to Pitt that the golem was only three feet tall. Hey, do you like tech porn? quote:The armor was a modular system that could be configured by the user depending on what kind of threat we were going to face. A thick layer of stab-proof Kevlar covered the vital organs. Though not much heavier than regular thick clothing, the sleeves and pant legs had the same fibers sewn into the fabric. There was a neck guard that could be raised to resemble a turtle neck to protect against bites. Most of the threats we would face would involve teeth or claws, so unlike regular body armor, ours was designed for that rather than for bullet resistance. Milo informed us that the torso was rated the same as a traditional level IIIA bulletproof vest, able to stop most pistol rounds. There were pouches on the front and back designed to hold ceramic plates that could stop rifle rounds if the threat warranted it, and if the user didn't mind the extra weight. The system incorporated load-bearing gear and pouches for magazines, weapons, tools, medical kits, or whatever other useful things the Hunter might need. Level IIIA is the highest level you can get soft armor in. While it can stop a lot of pistol rounds, I've seen videos of surplus 7.62x25mm Tokarev going straight through it. One question I have is how the armor is actually constructed, since stab-proof and bulletproof vests require completely different compositions and the opposite weapon will easily go through it. Grant notices that Pitt isn't paying attention to his tales of heroism and yells at him. Pitt snarks back, so Grant runs up and starts asserting his authority by poking him in the chest. quote:"I'm trying to teach you Newbies how to stay alive." Because Pitt is the cool hero that everyone loves, Milo promptly takes Pitt's side and warns Grant that he's about to commit "suicide by accountant". Grant calls Pitt a bitch and tells him to stay away from Julie, since Pitt's been real loving obvious about having the hots for her, which is what finally results in the class breaking up. As they walk away, Trip talks to Pitt about the confrontation. He explains that while both he and Grant think the fighting is over Julie, Trip can tell that it's just because Grant is the former golden boy jealous at getting shown up by a newbie, while Pitt can't stand to lose a fight and antagonizes him rather than backing down. Plus, you know, slobbering all over his girlfriend. quote:"Thanks, Pastor Jones. I'll be sure to keep my pride and my slobbering in check from now on." I laughed. He was not that much older than I was, but somewhere along the line Trip had gained a lot more wisdom than I had.
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Apr 9, 2018 20:34
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Also in case you wanted to see how big Owen Zastava Pitt's 62-inch chest is, this is a 60-inch chest:
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Apr 9, 2018 20:56
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Yeah, the more Pitt is described the less he looks like the guy on the cover art. He's the size of a "world's strongest man competition" powerlifter.
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Apr 9, 2018 23:12
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The size of Pitt and his muscles will increase with every chapter. In the next he’ll be struggling to fit his head through the office door and need to wear custom uniforms made from bedsheets.
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Apr 10, 2018 01:49
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PittTheElder posted:Well I am now imagining Pitt as The Big Show, wondering why his love interest is more attracted to the well dressed, attractive, talented man she has an established relationship with. Pitt in his work outfit: 
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Apr 10, 2018 02:02
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Oh yeah, Big Show's chest size is 64 inches. So that really is what our hero looks like.
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Apr 10, 2018 04:38
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quote:I was dreaming. I found myself in the same field as I'd been in during the strange dream that I had experienced in the hospital. Once again, the crop was lush and green, and my feet were bare. The air was cool and fresh, so I definitely was not in Alabama. The sky was darker and thick black rain clouds were collecting on the horizon. It looked like it was going to be a terrible storm. As the storm approaches unnaturally quickly, Pitt suddenly finds himself over the MHI compound. He's aware of everything, in spite of the walls that should be blocking his vision. Along with seeing his own body sleeping below, he can see a huge underground level below the main building that none of the trainees are aware of. quote:. In the dark corners I glimpsed that not all of the other employees were human. What a strange dream. Okay but....are you going to tell us what they look like? quote:In the women's barracks I was not surprised to learn that Holly Newcastle slept in the nude. As interesting as that sight was, I moved on. I was no Peeping Tom, or in this case a peeping ghost. How chivalrous of you. Pitt finds Harbinger, Julie, Sam, Grant, and Milo all holding a meeting on the top floor of the main building. As he focuses on them, he suddenly appears next to them. Their movements are cloudy and their voices are muffled, but he can still understand everything perfectly to help the plot move forward. quote:"No other teams are available. Just us and the Newbies. Boone's team's in Atlanta. They just finished a case, and they can meet us on the way. I can send them the schematics." Julie was speaking. "The protagonist is the best and I want him to personally massage my prostate!" said literally everyone but the guy we're supposed to hate. As the rest of the team overrules Grant and heads downstairs to wake up the trainees, Harbinger suddenly jumps and stares right at where Pitt's dream ghost is standing. Pitt is suddenly jerked from the room into the sky by an apologetic Old Man. The ground flashes by at thousands of miles an hour, over the dark ocean and night sky. He's landed on a beach at night, where a small lifeboat is moving toward shore under its own magical propulsion. Pitt can sense every living creature in the forest behind him going silent or running as the boat approaches. quote:"He comes," said the Old Man. When the armored thing touches the sand, the whole universe seems to jolt. An unexplainable shiver and feeling of unease emanates for hundreds of miles. quote:The lead vampire announced something in a foreign language. It took me a moment to recognize it as Portuguese, or a dialect thereof. I knew enough of the language to understand. Well, that's awkward. Giant winged with enormous horns and claws crash down onto the beach from where they had been silently circling above. The old man, Byreika, pulls them away, but Pitt can feel Lord Machado's power attempting to pull their spirits back. Pitt finds his soul unceremoniously flung back into his body and wakes up screaming. quote:"Owen! Dude! Wake up. It was a dream. Calm down."
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Apr 10, 2018 14:08
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Orthodox Rabbit posted:Or as he's dying with his last breath he will admit he's come around and now reluctantly has to admit that our protagonist is just the greatest. Owen Pitt's pecs grew three sizes that day.
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Apr 10, 2018 15:34
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There's a lot of artwork and even miniatures of Owen Zastava Pitt (this book actually has a huge fanbase). Some of them are accurate to his real size: 
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Apr 10, 2018 15:37
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Owen Pitt so far has much more character than Wade Watts or Zade Holder.
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Apr 10, 2018 19:23
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I'm reading ahead in Kindle (I had to download a copy elsewhere because some books put restrictions on how much text you're allowed to highlight before being cut off), and I honestly like it a lot more than RPO. It's not good, but it's serviceable pulp that's actually been pretty good about gun porn without a bunch of inaccuracies. I'm not so sure I'm going to keep reading the series unless they start really impressing me, but I could do worse.
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Apr 10, 2018 20:48
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quote:The small boat rolled on the harsh waves, leaving me with a slightly nauseous and uncomfortable feeling. I held onto the guardrail until my knuckles were white, or at least I'm sure they would have been if I could have seen them through my gloves. I had been uncomfortable since the coast had disappeared. The ocean stretched as far as my eye could see. The sun had risen shortly before we launched, and now cast a golden light over the blue surface. I'm sure that if I wasn't mentally preparing myself to go into battle I might have found it a stunning sight. I had never really been out to sea before, other than brief trips on tourist boats off the California coast. I'm sure some of my father's islander ancestors would have scoffed at that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2IBoQOomTU Trip is enjoying the boat ride, which Pitt suggests may be genetic memory from his Jamaican fisherman ancestors because Larry Correia has absolutely no clue how ancestry works. Pitt tells Trip about his dream, but Trip waves it off; according to their training, vampires are extremely territorial and hostile so the idea of 7 master vampires working together is inconceivable. Sam and Milo are both on the boat with 10 of the newbies, while the rest (including Chuck Mead, the former Army Ranger) are on a helicopter right behind them. They're getting paid $15,000 a piece for this job, half up front and half on return. quote:"Listen up, folks. Here's the deal." Sam began to brief us as he methodically unloaded, checked each round and reloaded his rifle. The rear of the boat smelled like fish. "A few hours ago we were contacted by the French corporation that owns the freighter. It was destined for the USA carrying an extremely valuable cargo. The freighter lost contact a week ago in the Atlantic. The last transmissions indicated some sort of supernatural problem." Since they don't know exactly what's aboard the boat, they're bringing something for everything. Silver bullets for all the guns, every specialty shotgun round, .50 cals, RPGs, flamethrowers, even a chainsaw. The ship is loaded with priceless artwork in the open cargo hold, so they're under strict orders for no gunfire or open flames down there. The contract is $1 million up front, $3.5 million if the cargo is unharmed. Their reward for the cargo decreases the more is damaged. The ship had a crew of 30 with a 10-man security detail; including the 12 French hunters, an undead infestation could mean upwards of 50 hostiles. quote:Finally we could see the freighter. It was a massive gray construction, with superstructure rising high into the air. It was a beautiful summer morning, but I could not help but feel an ominous shiver when I looked at the otherwise-normal-looking ship. I knew from the briefing that the mammoth ship was just under 600 feet long and displaced over 15,000 tons. Sam had assured us that the ship was not as big as it appeared, since most of the interior was open cargo space, but it was still going to be a beast to search.  Apparently this is from a 1980s Russian movie, Zaryazhennye Smertyu (Loaded With Death) where they painted a Hind in US Coast Guard livery. Probably where Larry got the idea. The helicopter settles over the deck of the freighter. Julie (the waving door gunner) confirms that the deck is totally empty and silent, with the French hunter helicopter still on the landing pad. Looking through the ACOG scope on her accurized M14, she sees no movement on the bridge. It's a complete ghost ship. The helicopter team ropes down to the deck and tosses down a pair of chain ladders for the boat team to climb up. Holly the stripper is on support duty, so she's staying on the boat to send up any special gear they request. quote:"This sucks," she said as I waited my turn at the ladder. I was extremely nervous, but I tried not to let it show. You know I think the rebel yell was something a bit more than just "Yee-haw". As Pitt climbs up the ladder, he suddenly sees the name of the ship painted right in front of him. Antoine-Marie. Dun dun DUUUUUUUUN quote:I had not been able to see it from the angle of our approach, and when we had been directly under the letters, I had been too preoccupied to notice. It was the same name that had been printed on the little boat of evil in my dream. Harbinger looks pissed as hell when Pitt reaches him. Pitt explains his dream, including that he knew about the operation because he was ghost-spying on their meeting. Harbinger sends the helicopter around to look for missing lifeboats. quote:"What the hell is going on?" Grant demanded. His black armor was still polished bright, and somehow not dirtied from the rappel down. His personal weapon was an extremely expensive, customized, suppressed Knights SR25 .308 carbine. "We don't have time for this nonsense, Harbinger. Send him back to the boat. Pitt can't handle it and he's freaking out." Pitt tries to defend himself by telling Harbinger that he was the weird presence he thought he saw in the meeting. What finally seems to get through to him is bringing up the weird feeling everyone got, and that it happened when Lord Whatever's feet touched the beach. quote:"Earl. I take back what I said. Looks like they had a motor launch or something. There is a pulley system rigged near the end of the ship. Looks like it was used to lower or haul something out of the water. It's empty and the cables are dragging in the water, I repeat it is empty and the cables are in the water. There was a boat of some kind, but it is gone." Yeah get hosed Grant. Priest comes in on the radio from his initial exploration of the ship. He puts his mic up to an air duct where someone is tapping Morse code. Sam translates: quote:"SOS . . . T R A P P E D space E N G I N E R O O M space D A R N E space SOS." Priest doesn't know Morse code, so he can't send a message back. quote:Harbinger got back on the radio. "Okay, folks. Mission parameters have changed. This is now a rescue." He released the mike. "Boone, gather your men. Let's clear this ship!" Oh gently caress off Boone. quote:I waited for my boss to address me. I could not tell what he was thinking.
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Apr 10, 2018 21:11
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Sometimes when I go to the airsoft events with Mindgames Productions, they do stuff like monster hunting or zombie apocalypse scenarios. I might unironically want this lighter if I can find one before their next:
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Apr 10, 2018 21:18
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 12:28 |
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It's also a lot easier to read than Mack Maloney's stuff that I did before. Wingman is okay, but suffers from a lack of research on anything except planes and some really gratuitous sexism from start to finish. Superhawks is a horrendously racist screed made to vent about 9/11, combining bafflingly bad tech writing and terminology with demonization of the entire Muslim religion and Arab race while celebrating the use of terrorism against all brown people who dare to go against the United States. The first book ends with an ironic repeat of 9/11 against a civilian building in the UAE (after repeated attacks on civilian targets beforehand, including killing terrorists' kids because otherwise they'll grow up evil), and the series ends with the protagonists turning themselves into Muslims through makeup and plastic surgery to try and turn Islam into a peaceful religion from within.
chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 22:10
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