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‘Beetle-browed’ means ‘scowling’. So pick the Citroen with the angriest-looking windscreen.
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Jul 13, 2018 12:31
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Wheat Loaf posted:I wonder if it has some connection to the origin of the term "toady" to describe a sycophant, which I believe derived from the practice of men who would swallow live toads as part of medicine shows (so they could be miraculously "cured" by whatever coloured water the mountebank was claiming would even counteract a toad's poison). I think the origin is much simpler - the original (which used a small piece of beef rather than a sausage) looked like a partially submerged toad.
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Aug 10, 2018 17:13
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It’s amazing how much it says about Bond (and Fleming) that his ideal of feminine beauty is ‘looks like a slave-owner’.
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Aug 18, 2018 14:11
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Epicurius posted:The other thing is, for all the kind of pervasive racism throughout this book, he's not stereotypical, or comedic. A lot of times, even today, when you have a black villian, the sterile is that he's a thug, just dumb muscle, who the (white)protagonist ends up outsmarting. That said, his mystique is undermined in one particular way, as Bond points out - he’s not an original thinker, but an adaptor. Everything he says and does is taken from someone else, usually a white man. While his spins on old concepts can be impressive, he’s not a true innovator, which fits with the racist assumption that black people could only ascend through imitation, not through their own merits. I mean, the very fact that he’s part-white rubs that in further. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 02:47
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sebmojo posted:Kind of a stretch - the book never really questions that he's a genius-level motherfucker.. It does, though - remember that bit where Bond sniped at him for never having a truly original thought? I don’t believe that’s ever contradicted in the rest of the book - every time he philosophises or comes up with an idea, it’s couched as a reference to those who came before him. It feels like an explanation of why he didn’t consider that his boat might be mined - it’s not a script he’s ever encountered before.
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Sep 5, 2018 04:29
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It would have been kinda fun if Solitaire was just incredibly chill about the whole thing. This is her mystical territory, after all.
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Sep 12, 2018 01:46
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poisonpill posted:Were there a lot of amnesiacs coming out of WWII or something? I mean, it was a world war. Lot of fun and exciting ways to break your brain.
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Sep 28, 2018 03:25
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Fleming clearly has a physical type for his villains. We’re three for three on big fat dudes with curious facial deformities. Be interesting to see how well and for how long that pattern holds up.
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Oct 1, 2018 18:27
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I mean, yeah, ugly villains are common in pulp, but it just seems like an unusually consistent form of ugliness to have for three books in a row. Where’s the skinny little giggly dude, or the guy who’s conventionally handsome except for one hideous flaw?
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Oct 1, 2018 22:59
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That said, if Fleming imagined Bond as M’s illegitimate son, I would not be surprised.
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Oct 2, 2018 16:49
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Sperglord Actual posted:The sanitized Luger seems like a bit of an odd choice when there was no shortage of more compact guns in circulation. I suppose Fleming just went for the one with the most name recognition. The Luger was a stereotypical Nazi officer’s gun - a decent, reliable, unique-looking weapon that was old enough and expensive enough to be a little rare (it was replaced by the Walther P38 in 1938, but was popular and long-lived enough to be a collector’s item for both sides, to the point where the Nazis would use discarded Lugers to bait traps). Between Drax’s attitude, his backstory, and his hiring practices, I’m beginning to think Fleming is telling us something...
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Oct 9, 2018 19:23
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Could be a bit of characterisation - Drax is a burn victim, after all.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:38
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Runcible Cat posted:Did Walter call Krebs a shitlord? 'Shitboy' is probably the closest translation (in spirit, at least).
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Nov 20, 2018 22:31
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chitoryu12 posted:I still love how basically every single stunt and gadget seen for 3 books has been used by the villains and Bond has almost exclusively used guns and his fists. I do wonder when, it ever, Bond will win a car chase.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:34
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Epicurius posted:Wait. His real name is Hugo von der Drache, and the dead British soldier was Hugo Drax? TBF, it sounds like there were a huge number of wounded and missing soldiers, and he just went 'yeah, that's me' when he heard a name similar to his own.
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Dec 3, 2018 17:53
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Sperglord Actual posted:That's... convenient. I think the implication is that it could have just as easily have been Hugh Drake, or Eugene Black, or whatever. He just helped get enough people killed for random chance to favour him - which does rather tie into his God-complex.
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Dec 3, 2018 18:32
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Is it just me, or do all of book-Bond's car chases end poorly for him?
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Jan 30, 2019 16:18
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The_White_Crane posted:
And hand-to-hand. And taking a beating. Pretty much his only saving grace is that he's unkillable in direct combat, although certainly not undefeatable.
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Mar 29, 2019 17:09
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MonsterEnvy posted:I am surprised Dr No got poor reviews. That was probably one of the most entertaining ones so far. The racism was a little closer to the surface than usual, and the U.K. was becoming increasingly aware of such things.
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May 10, 2019 23:41
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poisonpill posted:I don’t know much about golf, but what little I’ve read here is both confusing and boring! Not what I think of when I’m thinking of the dashing adventures of international playboy/spy James Bong. Fleming has made this golf game considerably more exciting than is usual for the sport.
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May 22, 2019 17:46
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I do recall that Fat Man and Little Boy fared poorly against reinforced concrete buildings even near the epicentre. It's possible that a detonation in Fort Knox might contain at least some of the damage - and, more importantly, that the gold might be at least partially protected from the blast by the vault defences.
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Jun 6, 2019 08:33
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sebmojo posted:My two favorite themes are casino royale and quantum of solace, they have so much swagger. You Know My Name has enough swagger to serve as the musical accompaniment for one of the most gleefully melodramatic anime in history.
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Jun 15, 2019 00:29
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For the record, 'O sole mio is a Neapolitan song, and Venetian gondoliers prefer not to sing it when there are perfectly good Venetian songs they could be singing instead.
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Jul 1, 2019 16:07
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Well, at least the Walther's first true outing was fairly impressive.
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Jul 2, 2019 18:11
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Midjack posted:Given some of the poo poo Bond has said and thought in the books so far it seems a bit hypocritical of him to be annoyed with some rear end in a top hat dude physically abusing the woman he’s currently loving. Regular torture with a barbed whip is a bit more brutal than most of the stuff he's looked the other way on or tried to justify. Plus, it's generally been hinted quite heavily that his misogyny is largely bluster so he can pretend he doesn't have a thing for tough, independent women.
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Jul 4, 2019 02:20
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I like how every single story in FYEO is about Bond badly underestimating a woman.
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Jul 5, 2019 20:09
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Macau businessman probably means it's a triad mark.
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Jul 11, 2019 16:55
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Payndz posted:I love this bit: The man just executed one of them and his smoking corpse is sitting next to them. They'll be in rapt terror the whole time.
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Jul 19, 2019 13:42
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Davin Valkri posted:Did the UK have any policy of flying nukes 24/7, similar to the US's Chrome Dome? Why would a bomber on a training flight be loaded with live nukes, instead of, say, cement-filled dummies of the same weight? The implication we get is that SPECTRE had quite thoroughly compromised the base.
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Jul 19, 2019 20:55
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sebmojo posted:I kind of want an inventory of how ridiculously badass book bond girls are now, compared to the movies. Didn't honeychile rider break out of her cell with a knife and head off to stab everyone? Domino did, except that it was a harpoon gun rather than a knife. She got a more James Bond finale in Thunderball than Bond did.
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Sep 13, 2019 03:54
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Incidentally, one of the weirdest and most famous weapons in the fictional ninja’s arsenal, the kusari-gama, is also one of the most historically plausible. It’s a long, weighted chain (a kusari) attached to a small farmer’s sickle (a gama, or kama) - the idea was that you would tangle an opponent (or their weapon) with the chain, and then move in and stab them with the sickle. In other words, it’s something that someone disguised as a peasant could easily assemble out of items that look very much like the ones he’s supposed to have lying around.
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Jan 9, 2020 14:25
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Proteus Jones posted:Yep, he's a saboteur and assassin. One thing I did like about Die Another Day is that it spelled this out. He's specifically identified as an 'MI6 assassin' on the villain's database.
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Jan 20, 2020 14:33
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The_White_Crane posted:Why on Earth did he leave Bunt alive?! Remind me, has Bond ever deliberately and personally killed a woman?
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Jan 22, 2020 18:55
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I find it interesting that there wasn't any grand, world-threatening evil plan here. Blofeld just decided to enjoy a lucrative, gruesome, and politically embarrassing semi-retirement, but he'd made too many enemies and his past caught up with him.
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Jan 23, 2020 01:43
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lol, of course Bond was raised in Assgrab, Kent.
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Jan 23, 2020 15:49
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Yeah, this definitely feels like Bond being actively self-destructive. Like a greater manifestation of what we saw in The Living Daylights. TBH, You Only Live Twice and what came after it gives him perfectly adequate justification for feeling as he does, and it can't help that his reaction to Scaramanga can best be summarised as 'oh no, he's hot'.
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Feb 25, 2020 08:34
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Easy move to the Goodmine once we're done, I'd say.
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Mar 4, 2020 16:02
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Definitely a solid addition to the Goodmine when we come round to that.
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Mar 23, 2020 15:00
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chitoryu12 posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3918016 Goodmine, not goldmine, surely? Don't get me wrong, it's a great thread, but the Comedy Goldmine is now exclusively for, well, comedy threads, whereas the Goodmine is now where we put stuff that's interesting, educational, and otherwise worth having around.
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Mar 23, 2020 16:28
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