Oct 18, 2026, 11:33 AM@stavvers point horror might have been full of wanky "american high school mythology" shit BUT
hell yeah death and murder and almost invariably girl protagonist and girl friend and "boyfriend is well meaning but a bit clueless". or "boyfriend is a fuckin waster and probably the killer"
some of the short stories were fuckin dark too
Oct 18, 2026, 11:34 AM@stavvers when I was in primary school there was this one battered old book that I think was like point thriller or point drama or something? literally about a plane crashing into some girl's neighbourhood. Our whole class fucking DEVOURED that book, it was all we talked about for weeks
@sinvega omfg that sounds absolutely fucking banging
Oct 18, 2026, 11:37 AM@stavvers it's where I learned the concept of the golden hour in medicine. Because there was a whole scene where she's looking around at the field hospital and realising, jesus, the golden hour was like 5 hours ago, and we're still trying to save people
... fuck I've gotta find a copy now
@sinvega this has just reminded me of a book series I *devoured* which was about a bunch of Troubled Young People doing internships in the ER, loads of horrible medical stuff and big accidents, I loved it
Oct 18, 2026, 11:44 AM@stavvers one of the horrible histories books memorably explained that adults think kids are delicate because adults are delicate, and we know that you, kids, fuckin love that shit
Oct 18, 2026, 11:44 AM@stavvers (I may be paraphrasing somewhat)
@sinvega a few years ago, I worked at a children's charity and once we saw the Horrible Histories stage show. Kids absolutely lost their fucking minds singing a disgusting song about plague symptoms
Oct 18, 2026, 11:50 AM@stavvers omg i found it aaaand:
opening paragraph is... well written! omg
@sinvega !!!! TELL THE CLASS WHAT IT'S CALLED
Oct 18, 2026, 11:54 AM@stavvers NEVER I MUST PROTECT MY oh alright
it's called Flight 116 Is Down, and apparently it both won an award and was reissued in 2013. With a crappy blurb but ih, publishers are fuckwits
I am mildly disappointed that the dude is introduced first, but I do remember there being two protagonists so we'll see whether she got equal billing or I just liked her more
Oct 18, 2026, 11:52 AM@stavvers "Patrick did not like coffee and wished he could order a Pepsi. But he was learning how to gag coffee down. His original plan was to drink it black because he liked guys who straddled the stools at the counter and said, “Black”—tough and hard, as if saying, “Assassinate Me.” But black coffee was disgusting; you might as well drink concentrated river pollution. Then he tried his father’s style, “Half a sugar, drop of milk,” but that just turned the pollution paler. He was up to “Two sugars, heavy on the milk” now, and he still couldn’t figure out why people wanted to pour this stuff into their systems.
But he loved the coffee shop."
I am IN this is good shit
@sinvega I have legitimately read "good" books with a less good opening than this
Oct 18, 2026, 11:55 AM@stavvers seriously
also it opens with "Saturday: 5:05pm", which according to the WTYP rule means you IMMEDIATELY know shit is about to get real
Oct 18, 2026, 12:02 PM@stavvers so page 3 and we're getting naturally worked in context about the town having no jobs, so there are no adults around to volunteer for shit, so most of the emergency first responders are teenagers, whcih puts our guy in the ridiculous position of being trusted to go to crash sites and deliver babies and shit, but still needing special written permission to leave a classroom (which lol @ USians btw)
"If it weren’t for Juniors, it would be very poor planning to have a car accident, a baby, a stabbing, a heart attack, or a drug overdose between eight in the morning and six at night."
this might be really fuckin good
Oct 18, 2026, 12:04 PM@stavvers "Eighty-four-year-olds in nursing homes were always having difficulty breathing. "
yesss get those dumb bitches
Oct 18, 2026, 12:06 PM@stavvers okay I will stop atting you but only after this last one, because our boy is ONE OF US and maybe the coming horrors will save him from some brutal relationship lessons
"Mr. Farquhar’s enthusiasm for rescue of any kind had hit an all-time low.
Patrick’s enthusiasm was at an all-time high. All he needed was somebody to rescue. "
@sinvega I hage just downloaded and I don't doubt I will end up @-ing you with favourite bits
Oct 18, 2026, 12:14 PM@stavvers yayyyy
@sinvega incidentally I just googled the author and it turns out she also wrote the thing about the volunteers in the ER that I loved.
Oct 18, 2026, 12:10 PM@stavvers "For my daughter, Louisa, who became an EMT at sixteen" so basically she just admired the fuck out of her kid it sounds like 😭