Spoilers for Chapters 04-06:
Party All the Time
The Number of the Beast
Sunday Bloody Sunday
shiki-jitsu wrote: ↑Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:36 pm
This seems to be where the story really seems to start. I loved the part about taking acid. Mainly because I loved taking acid, but also, that really captured the feeling of when you know you just took some that was complete bullshit and you are just trying to WILL any sense of a trip out of it.
My god, this is so accurate. I never did acid for the reasons Gretchen didn't want to, but I distinctly remember the first time I tried weed and it was exactly like that. I'm quite confident now what we had was garbage, but we acted like we felt it.
He fucking nailed it.
shiki-jitsu wrote: ↑Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:36 pm
The events at the lake…. Not sure how I felt about this part. I loved the frenetic-ness of reading it, but I also honestly felt a little lost. Actually now that I am typing this out I think I am going to go back and read that part again to get a better handle on it. Maybe I was too tired when I read it. I don’t know.
So I re-read. Yeah, it’s still very frenetic, but I must have been tired when I read it because its not as choppy on this read as I initially thought. Really does give that sense of dread and anxiousness that Abby especially was feeling when searching for Gretchen and then the fear when she was/thought she was being chased through the woods.
I wish I understood more about what physically happened with Gretchen. I do not understand the lake life, so what is the assumption here, that she jumped into a couple feet of water and knocked herself out got confused and wandered (lured maybe?) into the abandoned building? I had to look up what pluff mud was as I had no fucking clue what that meant.
Some hick shit.
YES! I'm glad I wasn't the only one. I read it, cocked my head, re-read it and still didn't really get it. Maybe Neon will get it and make us feel like hoppleheads.
As far as it being frenetic, I do agree, but I think it really works. I don't think Hendrix was rushing anything, but rather this is the characters' state of mind. They are panicked and EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING FAST AND WE HAVE TO FIND GRETCHEN AND DO WE CALL THE COPS NO WE DON'T CALL THE COPS BECAUSE MARGARET COULD GET IN TROUBLE STOP BEING GAY GRETCHEN IS FINE WHERE IS SHE I'M SCARED OH SHE'S FINE GET HER A SHIRT LET'S GO HOME.
And it was like once she was found, things slowed the fuck down. She gets home, has that weird ass scene with her dad, and heads off to work.
shiki-jitsu wrote: ↑Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:36 pm
Anyway I am intrigued. Curious to see where this is going, like I said earlier in the thread I am already further ahead. The book just keeps pulling me in which is always a good thing. Maybe this will change by the end but so far I am not annoyed by the constant nostalgia reminders and mentions of bands or things (
Margaret looks up from her Trapper Keeper, etc). Normally those things are heavy handed and just needle at me, but I don’t know if it’s just a good amount of them or the book kind of set it self up so much as a nostalgia trip with that cover alone that I knew what I was getting into from the word go.
I think I'm okay with stuff like
Margaret looks up from her Trapper Keeper because it's really no different than
Margaret looks up from her iPhone
, you know? It's an easy way to put you RIGHT THERE without beating you over the head.
However, I suspect there will be only so much I can take, especially when they are
talking about music (like the car ride when "Don't Worry, Be Happy" came on). But I hate that fucking song, so that might be why it kind of stuck out as me going 'enough'.
But, like you said, there's definitely an expectation due to the book's nature, so I will be very forgiving with it.
And totally disagree about Stranger Things.