The Winners - Blog Posts

The Survivor

First off I want to thank everyone who has watched this tournament whether from the beginning or if you only found us in round seven, thank you.

Secondly I want to thank @justagremlinoncaffeine who after I realized that I could not do this by myself graciously volunteered to help me, so thank you Gremlin.

The sole survivor of 256 bands, after a surprising comeback, the winner of the hottest 80s band tournament is……

GUNS N’ROSES

This group of five consisting of Axl Rose on vocals, Slash on lead guitar, Izzy Stradlin on rhythm guitar, Duff Mckagan on bass and Steven “popcorn” Adler on drums.

I JUST FINISHED THE WINNERS AND THERE WILL BE MINOR SPOILERS

when I say just I mean like 15 minutes ago— There are still dry tears on my face.

The way Mr Backman spoils the book for us over and over is flawless at giving individuality to the story as a narrative, giving it its own voice, but it’s also a top notch literary device to cultivate plot twists. I was so preoccupied with him telling us—from the beginning—who was going to die that the things that Bang the dog, Mumble’s ending, and all the other little tragedies we watched happen took shocked me to my core

On the subject of the compassion and hopefulness— I can’t even begin to put into words how I feel about the “Time travel can’t be real” lines and the lines written on all the different tombstones in the story, or Alicia’s story

Cannot deal with how the story of Beartown knows itself inside and out and how it tells itself so nonchalantly, spoiling things left and right, and killing our notions of a happy ending before we even get the stupid idea to hope.

"She won't succeed." "It won't be enough." "He will be too late."

But what gets me is how the story also so obviously cares. Cares about the people, about the events that went down, and it knows that the outcome can't be changed but it wishes so damn hard it could be.

"Obviously we still hoped. Dear god, how we hoped." "The people in this town who loved him. There were so many of us."

It's not them, it's us. Almost like the town itself is telling it. Fredrik Backman I am in your walls.