Finished “Under The Dome” Yesterday, Spoiler-free thoughts below:
First off, yes, it is a beast although I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten through 1088 pages that quickly before. Took me about 2 weeks, maybe 12ish hours of devoted reading. It’s structured into what effectively episodes so you’re always working towards a major plot development/event, I think this will lend itself to some quality TV.
It’s a big cast of characters, they don’t really get a whole lot of growth except for maybe the 2-3 main Main characters. That isn’t to say the characters aren’t interesting, they are, just most of them are most or less in the same place at the end of the book as they are when The Dome first comes down.
The main bad guy is pretty spectacular, he’s not particularly nuanced but man will you hate that motherfucker. Every pageturn I was hoping for his comeuppance, he’s basically yucky christian Joffrey.
So I intentionally avoided learning about the cast of the show before reading it to preserve my mental images. Now that it’s done and I’m looking at them I do chuckle at how pretty everyone is, not exactly how I imagined Smalltown, Maine. In my head it was more like a very dark episode of King of the Hill, especially plucky local reporter Julia Shumway/Peggy Hill.
That King of the Hill connection does bring me to one thing in that book that cracked me up. After The Dome separates the town of Chester’s Mill from the world they are constantly confronted with an extreme need of what is apparently this internal universe’s most valuable and necessary resource:
Not. even. kidding. For at least half the book every character’s primary motivation is either “Get Power” or “Get Propane”.
Ultimately it was a fun read and I’m excited for the show, hopefully it gets a sizeable enough fandom that I’ll have people to talk to about it.
11:58 pm |
June 18 2013
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This is one of my weirder experiences
Was taking a cab to pick up my car from the shop. The cab got into an accident with an old lady, not sure who’s fault, I was dicking around on my phone. Hearing that unmistakable crunch my first thought was “oh shit my premiums going to go up, I hope my car is ok” but then came the realization that no, this is not my car and I am not driving it. This is the most consequence-free accident I’ve ever been involved with.
9:19 pm |
June 18 2013
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inothernews:
Now that’s how to sell a TV show.
Also filed under “things you never thought you’d see being used to sell a TV show. Thank you, JJ Abrams and crew, for making Star Trek cool again.”
Of course they always forget to include that they’re also the writers & producers of the Transformers movies… also The Proposal.
9:47 pm |
June 17 2013
| 65 notes
Alright so I tried Aliens Colonial Marines
“It can’t be that bad” I thought. How wrong I was.
I don’t think I’ve ever complained about a game being too hard, even
Dark Souls offers some progress when you get murdered. This was just merciless by the point you’re shooting the second Xeno. It’s hard to shoot, it’s hard to tell when you’ve hit something, enemies hit too hard. Checkpoints are too infrequent so getting ambushed puts you back 10+ minutes of progression. I just kept thinking “There’s no way I’m THIS bad at a video game” but no, seriously, colonial marines, it’s not me it’s you.
I only got an hour or so in before I simply couldn’t take it anymore.
2:35 am |
June 16 2013
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Tonight’s Jeopardy Categories:
- I Have A Particular Set of Skills
- A Nightmare For People Like You
- Liam Neeson
3:25 am |
June 15 2013
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The worst part of the advent of 3D movies…
is having to watch those 3D payoff shots in 2D. It’s so blatant too, like something gets thrown directly at the camera or the focus changes awkwardly. It’s really going to date any movie made from 2010-2015 (I imagine/hope we’ll be done with this in a couple years).
11:36 pm |
June 14 2013
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it’s like no place I’ve ever seen
The Nvidia 9000 is the most advanced video card ever produced, each of these butterflies is rendered independently. And it can run Crysis 3 on Ultra and maintain a clean 60 frames per second.
*CES audience ooos and aaahs*
(Source: iamnevertheone)
10:32 pm |
June 14 2013
| 1,576 notes
