Goosebumps

With the 2nd arc of the Horrorland Series ending, I think it's time to being this thread back.

So...discuss.

Does R.L. still even publish books?

Or..is he..?

DEAD??!

Goosebumps was terrible with breathtaking regularity. I loved the short story collections that he wrote/compiled, often under the Goosebumps name, though. I also enjoyed reading his autobiography.

I actually read the first arc of the Horrorland set, and it was pretty terrible. I did think Help! We Have Strange Powers! was creative, though. It was a nice original idea for a story, by Goosebumps standards. But the idea could have been done better. Halfway through, the heroes stopped being actively involved in their own fate and became the typical helpless Goosebumps characters you'd expect, and the story just got boring.

I also liked about 2 chapters of the camp book, when the heroes were snooping around and trying to find out what was going on.

Come to think of it, I like when Goosebumps heroes actually do stuff, and not just react to stuff that happens. It make the stories so much better. Otherwise, Goosebumps amounts to little more than "Something bad happened and I got scared. Then something else happened and I got scared. Now something worse is happening, and I'm scared." So it's probably no coincidence that my favorite books in the series are those where the heroes get involved and actually do something to try to shape their fate, instead of just sitting back and getting scared a lot.

I'd love to see Blogger Beware's take on these. That guy is hilarious in tearing these books apart.

edited 19th Jan '11 6:55:31 AM by BonsaiForest

I'd love to see Blogger Beware's take on these. That guy is hilarious in tearing these books apart.

He gets a little repetitive after a while. It is pretty funny that he likes none of the books besides one of the books that I can't remember (might've been Werewolf Skin) and one of the anthology books.

Anyway, by far my favorite book of the series was "The Ghost Next Door," because the protagonist was... I dunno, more of a person, and more than a little more focused on than most in the series. She was actually interesting. Plus, it's the only episode of the show I really liked.

Well, that and Werewolf Skin, but only because I liked it's more suspenseful ending a little better.

I'm just clicking around Blogger Beware, and in the "Haunted Mask II" review, apparently the protagonist is tricked into kicking a concrete soccer ball...why on Earth do the kids have a concrete soccer ball!?

Anyway, by far my favorite book of the series was "The Ghost Next Door, " because the protagonist was... I dunno, more of a person, and more than a little more focused on than most in the series.

• high-fives Known Unknown*

edited 19th Jan '11 2:23:45 PM by Nexus

Blogger Beware is awesome.
Anyway, I like the Hororland, proably cuz it feels like RL knows his books aren't that scary, so he just has fun with it Then there's the villain, who has the highest implied body count in Goosebumps history.

My fave book is Ghost Camp, cuz ....I liked it.

Blogger Beware does indeed rule, especially the entry on My Hairiest Adventure, a.k.a., "the one where it turns out they're all dogs or something."

This thread introduced me to Blogger Beware.

I love all of you.

My favorite book in a way was I Live In Your Basement, for the sheer Mind Fuck of it. Yes, the profanity is VERY justified.

^ Is that the one with the plant people?

No, this is the one with Keith, who lives in Marco's basement, and they have...weird experiences. All Just a Dream Taken Up To Eleven and Beyond

Ah, so it's drugs, then. Damn kids and their PCP-fueled debauchery.

Cuckoo Clock of Doom always creeped me out, since the protagonist basically (accidentally, granted) kills his sister - worse actually - and not only does he not care, it's treated as a funny twist rather than a terrible one by the narrative, which is, of course, from the protagonist's perspective - though the creepiness was likely intentional, it doesn't stop the guy from going way past Jerkass in my opinion.

edited 1st Feb '11 9:48:49 PM by KnownUnknown

That little brat deserved it.

I'm a terrible person

By the end of the book, you'll wonder if you were on drugs, and if some of the people besides the kids were on them. The thing reads like The Diary of a REALLY Bad Trip.

edited 5th Feb '11 6:09:55 PM by NickTheSwing

Always hated the protagonist of that particular one (the cucco one)....

especially since I have three siblings....

I don't think I ever read many of them because I read like two and was kind of unimpressed. There was some pretty evil plot lines in them too, like the kid who erased his younger sister from history and figured "Oh well."

Wehn I was younger and I read thatbook, I fucking hated Tara, that evil bitch. And at the end, it seems the world is better off with her gone, creatign a sort of It's a Wonderful Plot Subversion.

Agreed on that. I realized the ending was meant to be creepy, but it was also a sort of happy ending. Tara does not exist because she was not born, but that's not the same as killing her. I saw it as simply history changing in the hero's favor.

I was moderately unimpressed when I was a kid. Some of them were okay by the standards of a 7 year old, but only okay, and I moved on. One of my friends told me that he loved them as a kid and then he read some interview of Stine in one of those book fair papers or something in which Stine recommended some authors. My friend went and read some of those books and realised they were a lot better.

^^ I've always considered being erased from existence a fate worse than a fate worse than death. There's no anything for you, because you never existed. You never had a life to lose, nor a soul to enter whatever interpretation of the afterlife the story uses, nor any semblance of conscience - one minute you did, the next you never were. Just a bit of nothing, with not even a yawning chasm in your absence. And you would never know, or ever be able to know, or ever even have the capacity to comprehend or even recognize your nonexistence, because you don't exist. One instant you're a living, thinking being, the next you never were. Nothing. Worse than nothing, because nothing implies that there's an acknowledgable absence of something. Complete and utter destruction.

<shudder>

So anyways, this kid is happy about doing that to his sister, because she was a pest. I sense a future sociopath in the works. Par for the course in Goosebumps, really.

edited 19th Feb '11 10:35:01 AM by KnownUnknown

YMMV zerky believes that's what happens after you die anyway. It's also a rather comforting thought for her.

I've always loved the Goosebumps series, I had the entire set stashed on my bookshelf. My favourite books were the ones with the werewolves and ghosts - The werewolf of fever swamp and the Curse Of Camp Cold Lake, which was pretty dark in itself... Also, one of the Protagonists in The Headless ghost has my True Name

^^ Yeah, except now you never had an impact, a presence, or any sort of anything in the world to begin with - it's one thing to die into nonexistence, it's another to forcibly and retroactively taken there.

Not that I'm saying it's like an abominable thing to right or something GRIMDARK or something, just that it's a shudder-worth way to go out.

It's on my top ten lists of "ways to try not to die," right up there with being stranded in orbit, floating away in a spacesuit with no escape but to wait. And drowning.

edited 21st Feb '11 1:37:03 AM by KnownUnknown