SHHG! Episode 24: You Should've Seen What Gollum Did
Added 2024-03-04 15:00:15 +0000 UTCCatching Fire chapters 24-27
It's been a busy couple of weeks for both of us (working; moving) but that didn't stop us from finishing the last four chapters of Catching Fire! And boy, if we thought we were in a rush, nothing compares to this book's bizarre finale. People often offer the criticism that certain stories "just stop," but the last few moments of this novel are on their own level. We discuss the breakneck final action sequence and practically bullet-pointed list of reveals as well as checking in with strings drama, Ikea, and those three famous detectives we all know and love!
Comments
Lloyd Alexander's first book of the Prydain Chronicles (the Black Cauldron books) The Book of Three actually ends very much like what you say. The characters discover the Dark Lord type is going to attack basically Gondor, so the lead Taran says he will run a message to them so they're prepared and can at least fight off a siege, with him needing to race against time. Taran gets a little ways and then gets knocked out with the Dark Lord's Captain who is like a horned guy with a skull mask and book long antagonist attacking him. He wakes up later and the entire battle is over: another side character ran the message, basically Rohan (guys Gondor were on the outs with) showed up to save the day, and the Aragon type not only fought off but killed the Dark Lord's Captain also off-screen. I didn’t expect a Brandon Sanderson or Malazan 300 page battle climax but literally couldn’t believe that was it. I believe the reveal of what happened post-wake up is even given in one single paragraph. The second book, Black Cauldron, improves on that in that Taran is awake but he does literally nothing except tell his friends to keep up their courage in the face of the villains who have them tied up. Then the Aragon type guy shows up with an army and in a page or two the villains are defeated, the end.
DJ
2024-10-28 11:04:18 +0000 UTCYour summary of these last chapters gave me whiplash, I can't imagine reading the actual thing.
DJ
2024-10-28 10:39:26 +0000 UTCI listened to the audiobook of Truce at Bakura and it's very cinematic, they put R2D2's beeping in it and stuff
Bearplane
2024-03-15 02:36:15 +0000 UTCI'm a maintenance guy and homie saying his wire is a fuse makes zero fucking sense of the knife is supposed zap and kill people. The point of a fuse in every device is to open a circuit if too much power is sent in to prevent excess electricity from damaging parts of a machine that may require less voltage than others. A easy to explain example is a microwave. The PCB (da computer board) requires low voltage. Meanwhile other components like the magnetron, the device that nukes the food, is high voltage. If a transformer were to become damaged and allow the high voltage into the control board, it would probably short out (blow up). You can think of the flow of electricity like a road to a glass house. Imagine a fuse as a draw bridge that connects the power coming in to the main board(Glass House). But what if a car speeding down the road and fr going to crash? The bridge raises and protects the glass house, preventing the flow of electricity. If homie really wanted to kill with an electric knife powered by lightening, homie shoulda used a capacitor. Capacitors are made to hold charge. Without a method to make the knife hold charge, dude would basically need someone to be touching it of the cables at the time of the strike. If the guy had some kind of capacitor/dagger and a good rubber pair of gloves, he could be the lightening queen of the Hunger games. Sorry I'm extremely high and have ADHD. Love the show. Liz shouldn't feel bad the plan made no fucking sense because it fr doesn't and maybe the author was trying to write around not knowing electrical lore. Which is fair. I don't even know that much either. Electricity is an eldritch chasm that only grows deeper the more you learn. Shit has fucked up alchemy diagrams for equation tables. It's hell.
Dekuinthelake
2024-03-09 05:06:22 +0000 UTCThe casting for Catching Fire is wild...I really hope you haven't been spoiled for BeeDee's casting lol. Also I think theres a fairly non spoilery TIME article with suzanne collins around the Catching Fire movie that might interest you
cem
2024-03-07 09:09:26 +0000 UTComg i had been kinda surprised that you guys had no reaction to cinna getting jumped by capitol agents right before the games started, and now your most recent cinna comments have me wondering if you might've just missed that bit lol. but yeah the ending of this book is NUTS, truly the cherry on top of a whole book of weird pacing.
Alison M.
2024-03-07 00:07:42 +0000 UTCDark Lord of Derkholm and the sequel end like that, suddenly and maddeningly
Crock272
2024-03-06 22:13:13 +0000 UTCYeah, in the Hobbit this is played with on purpose, as Bilbo was never the big adventurer type. Plus, someone actually explains to him what happened as a character, whereas here it really is just a second-hand summary that feels really disconnected from the story and cast
The Shrieking Shack
2024-03-06 18:25:36 +0000 UTCThis is the episode I've been waiting for from the moment you said you were reading this series, because I remember so distinctly how baffled the ending of this book made me feel a decade ago. It's honestly extremely validating to hear you both react the same way, lmao. Specifically, I remember thinking how much more interesting everything that happened off-screen sounded than the book I'd just read. It really did feel like she hit a page limit - to the point that I checked the page count for all 3 books and they *were* extremely close. Given that there's consistently 27 chapters in each book (which I missed at the time) I'm guessing this is just how she writes to a fault rather than a contract thing, but it's just *so* confusing to end it like that. The only thing I appreciate a little more in retrospect is just how funny it is that everyone's very clearly only set on keeping Peeta alive because Katniss would probably kill them and ruin the plans if he died? But that's about it.
deepFlaw
2024-03-05 18:55:13 +0000 UTCThe LOTR comparison the episode was titled after struck me as a little odd since that's exactly what happens in The Hobbit as a joke. The fact that is IS a lighthearted joke fitting Bilbo's (and the book's) less violent nature is worth bringing up, however.
Dan Big Challenges Silva
2024-03-05 18:23:45 +0000 UTCJust wanna say: this is my favorite podcast ever and I'm glad you guys take your time with putting out episodes when you need to.
Lambda
2024-03-04 16:55:51 +0000 UTCPeeta-Haters can at least take some satisfaction in the Ending being like "Oh Katniss, you thought we wanted Peeta to live, cause he's so charismatic. No, he's useless. We just saved him, cause you somehow care about him."
ZiggyWSB .
2024-03-04 16:27:18 +0000 UTCI hated all other furniture stores as a kid but I loved going to ikea it was like a Scandinavian playground
Marisa
2024-03-04 15:53:55 +0000 UTCJohanna didn't say, that she doesn't love anyone. She says that everyone she loved is dead.
ZiggyWSB .
2024-03-04 15:41:23 +0000 UTC
