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NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Mat's talk of "resignation" in King's recent novels made me think of his older ones like Pet Sematary or Insomnia. I thought this was where Revival was going too but boy was I wrong. No, the events of PS are oddly hopeful in comparison to this book's ending revelations.

What drew me to King many years ago now was a guy on another forum who was big into the King mythos. This mythos is built up in IT or Insomnia but mostly comes from The Dark Tower I believe. There are unspeakable horrors out there but there is also The Turtle or I think it's called Gen. There is whatever force it is that tried to save the Creed family.

Here?

"No death, no light, no rest."

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Canuckistan
Jan 14, 2004

I'm the greatest thing since World War III.





Soiled Meat
Speaking of lore, Shardik the robo-bear was built by the Old Ones to guard the beam generator. I wonder if the Old Ones killed the flesh and blood Shardik in order to put in a replacement guardian that they controlled? Who knows, but I'd love for King to really deep dive on the All-World lore.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

I'd rather he didn't. It works so much better when left unexplained.

mdemone
Mar 14, 2001

Inspector 34 posted:

I picked up Daniel X at an airport one time because I forgot to bring something to read and I had heard that Patterson was the king of airport fiction or some bullshit. My god, that might be one of the worst books I've ever read and I was amazed that he was such a popular and prolific writer. But if it was ghost written and they just slapped his name on the cover I guess that explains some of it.

Patterson has been suffering from dementia for a long time now, and he began the ghost-writing model soon after his faculties started to decline.

Skrillmub
Nov 22, 2007


Canuckistan posted:

Speaking of lore, Shardik the robo-bear was built by the Old Ones to guard the beam generator. I wonder if the Old Ones killed the flesh and blood Shardik in order to put in a replacement guardian that they controlled? Who knows, but I'd love for King to really deep dive on the All-World lore.

I thought the Old Ones made the beams too. Were there beams and organic guardians before them?
I don't think there's a real answer, really. We only ever meet Shardik and it's way past its expiry date when we do.
Also, Gan is the guardian of the Turtle end of the beam? And also the entity that vomited all of creation into being? Or is the guardian just named after the "real" Gan?
The whole mythos is vague and contradictory. I think that's kind of intentional. It matches the whole idea of the world having moved on.
I feel like King's (maybe not conscious) intention with his larger mythos is that God in this world wasn't so much a creator as a storyteller. It didn't make everything and then rest, it was actively telling the story of reality as it went along. They idea of the world moving on is the storyteller losing its mind to old age. The way in the Dark Tower everything starts to double back on itself is like the creator getting Alzheimer's.
Also, that's why he wrote his own damned self into the books and also he was God.

Part of me hopes some day we'll get a short story collection in the Dark Tower universe. I'm going back through the series right now and The Wind Through the Keyhole really made me want some side stories without Roland and his Ka-Tet.
Did anyone ever read those Dark Tower comics they made? Are those worth looking at?

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



The art style of the first handful aren't really my thing but the stories themselves are good. There's a fair bit of filling in pieces of Roland's backstory and character development leading up to the main books.

The Siege of Gilead was the only one where I really felt like it didn't do justice to the actual story. Not bad so much as just uneven. One of those things where it should've been left vague and unclarified.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



I'm in such a King mood, and my other plans for today have been sidetracked due to technical difficulties, so I'm gonna start up IT again. First reread in many years.

As long as we're talking King's cosmos, IT being a necessary part of the multiverse always struck me as interesting. Yet some higher power clearly helped the Losers kill IT. Now I think on it, the friend I mentioned earlier theorized Pennywise had to be dealt with because he liked eating kids and there was a very important kid who lived in Derry a short time later. I think he's named in Insomnia....

NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Apr 4, 2022

Baron von Eevl
Jan 24, 2005

WHITE NOISE
GENERATOR

🔊😴

Skrillmub posted:

I thought the Old Ones made the beams too. Were there beams and organic guardians before them?
I don't think there's a real answer, really. We only ever meet Shardik and it's way past its expiry date when we do.
Also, Gan is the guardian of the Turtle end of the beam? And also the entity that vomited all of creation into being? Or is the guardian just named after the "real" Gan?
The whole mythos is vague and contradictory. I think that's kind of intentional. It matches the whole idea of the world having moved on.
I feel like King's (maybe not conscious) intention with his larger mythos is that God in this world wasn't so much a creator as a storyteller. It didn't make everything and then rest, it was actively telling the story of reality as it went along. They idea of the world moving on is the storyteller losing its mind to old age. The way in the Dark Tower everything starts to double back on itself is like the creator getting Alzheimer's.
Also, that's why he wrote his own damned self into the books and also he was God.

Part of me hopes some day we'll get a short story collection in the Dark Tower universe. I'm going back through the series right now and The Wind Through the Keyhole really made me want some side stories without Roland and his Ka-Tet.
Did anyone ever read those Dark Tower comics they made? Are those worth looking at?

The Tower and the beams are natural magic, maybe as old as the universe itself. The beams are failing because magic is failing, but the old ones built techno-magic devices to aid them; it's not clear if this is what's causing the magic to fail or if it's just part of the apocalyptic setting.

The old ones built the guardians, but again it's unclear if they were replacing actual titans or what.

Gan is the god-turtle specifically, like the world is balanced on his shell. Maturin is the name of the guardian turtle opposite Shardik, but is also a cosmic force and is the name of the turtle from It. It's not clear if Gan and Maturin are the same entity, but the name Gan is only used to refer to a hypothetical Christian-god like turtle, while the name Maturin refers to an unseen guardian robot and also an intervening cosmic entity.

If I had to try and find a consistent representation in there, Gan is a mythological entity that may or may not ever intervene in the world out even exist, while Maturin is an entity that definitely exists but is like Greek god powerful, not actually omnipotent.

Maturin being a cosmic force makes me think the guardians were probably real at one point.

bobjr
Oct 16, 2012

Roose is loose.
🐓🐓🐓✊🪧

That's one thing I also like compared to the adaptations, is the inherent wrongness of Derry and IT itself.

Also the last part is one of the sadder things I've read with them all forgetting each other.

mdemone
Mar 14, 2001

NikkolasKing posted:

I'm in such a King mood, and my other plans for today have been sidetracked due to technical difficulties, so I'm gonna start up IT again. First reread in many years.

As long as we're talking King's cosmos, IT being a necessary part of the multiverse always struck me as interesting. Yet some higher power clearly helped the Losers kill IT. Now I think on it, the friend I mentioned earlier theorized Pennywise had to be dealt with because he liked eating kids and there was a very important kid who lived in Derry a short time later. I think he's named in Insomnia....

Yeah I'm pretty sure that was explicitly stated somewhere, but I forgot where. I don't think it was in Insomnia. Maybe book 6 or 7 of Dark Tower.


edit: EEEEEEEEE!! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Son of a Vondruke!
Aug 3, 2012

More than Star Citizen will ever be.

bobjr posted:

Also the last part is one of the sadder things I've read with them all forgetting each other.

I've always wondered. What replaced those memories? Fake memories? Nothing? If I remember correctly, a couple of them stayed close until they moved away to college. That's a lot of your life to just be missing.

mdemone
Mar 14, 2001

Son of a Vondruke! posted:

I've always wondered. What replaced those memories? Fake memories? Nothing? If I remember correctly, a couple of them stayed close until they moved away to college. That's a lot of your life to just be missing.

Ain't very old yet, are ya?

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Is Patrick in the new IT movies? I didn't eve remember his name until I restarted the novel but I'll never forget his death. His entire character was one of the bigger surprises when I first read the book, having only seen the TV miniseries originally.


mdemone posted:

Yeah I'm pretty sure that was explicitly stated somewhere, but I forgot where. I don't think it was in Insomnia. Maybe book 6 or 7 of Dark Tower.


edit: EEEEEEEEE!! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

I like King but Dark Tower does not sound like it is for me, and that supreme anticlimax I've heard about doesn't give me much incentive to start it.

NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Apr 6, 2022

gileadexile
Jul 20, 2012

NikkolasKing posted:

I like King but Dark Tower does not sound like it is for me, and that supreme climax I've heard about doesn't give me much incentive to start it.

Eh, the journey there was pretty good. Especially Wizard and Glass.

Son of a Vondruke!
Aug 3, 2012

More than Star Citizen will ever be.

mdemone posted:

Ain't very old yet, are ya?

Neither are they. I'm about the same age as the adult versions of the characters. I've got a terrible memory, but having absolutely NO memory of your childhood is far from normal.

Last Celebration
Mar 30, 2010
Imho the Dark Tower is reading at least once, it’s an overall good story and the ending is…okay, insofar as iirc Roland getting sent back to start over properly is supposed to be the very last time because his dumb, obstinate rear end finally realized the real Dark Tower was all the friends he made along the way, which is why he had the horn. Or at least that’s what I remember hearing, can’t pretend I wouldn’t be livid if I got to the end of a twenty year saga without that knowledge.

Plus, you get to see Father Callahan’s redemption arc!

Baron von Eevl
Jan 24, 2005

WHITE NOISE
GENERATOR

🔊😴
I thought the ending was fine. Anything else would have been disappointing. Besides, the point was never 'what's at the top of the tower' so much as him getting to and saving the tower.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



quote:

Finally he stands up in class one day, after the discussion of a sallow young woman’s vignette about a cow’s examination of a discarded engine block in a deserted field (this may or may not be after a nuclear war) has gone on for seventy minutes or so. The sallow girl, who smokes one Winston after another and picks occasionally at the pimples which nestle in the hollows of her temples, insists that the vignette is a socio-political statement in the manner of the early Orwell. Most of the class—and the instructor—agree, but still the discussion drones on.

When Bill stands up, the class looks at him. He is tall, and has a certain presence. Speaking carefully, not stuttering (he has not stuttered in better than five years), he says: “I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand any of this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics ... culture ... history ... aren’t those natural ingredients in any story, if it’s told well? I mean ...” He looks around, sees hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. “I mean ... can’t you guys just let a story be a story?”

[...]

Finally the instructor says softly, as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, “Do you believe William Faulkner was just telling stories? Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in making a buck? Come now, Bill. Tell us what you think.”

“I think that’s pretty close to the truth,” Bill says after a long moment in which he honestly considers the question, and in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation

I've never forgotten at least the gist of this scene, and I feel it's more relevant now than when I first read it. A great story has a message to be sure but it doesn't scream the message at you. You try that, you get travesties like Birdemic whose admirable message is completely undermined by the worst story imaginable. A great message is conveyed by a great story.

mdemone
Mar 14, 2001

Last Celebration posted:

Imho the Dark Tower is reading at least once, it’s an overall good story and the ending is…okay, insofar as iirc Roland getting sent back to start over properly is supposed to be the very last time because his dumb, obstinate rear end finally realized the real Dark Tower was all the friends he made along the way, which is why he had the horn. Or at least that’s what I remember hearing, can’t pretend I wouldn’t be livid if I got to the end of a twenty year saga without that knowledge.

Plus, you get to see Father Callahan’s redemption arc!

Yep you got it right. And the coda is what happens next time.

oldpainless
Oct 30, 2009

This 📆 post brought to you by RAID💥: SHADOW LEGENDS👥.
RAID💥: SHADOW LEGENDS 👥 - It's for your phone📲TM™ #ad📢

NikkolasKing posted:

Is Patrick in the new IT movies? I didn't eve remember his name until I restarted the novel but I'll never forget his death. His entire character was one of the bigger surprises when I first read the book, having only seen the TV miniseries originally.

I like King but Dark Tower does not sound like it is for me, and that supreme anticlimax I've heard about doesn't give me much incentive to start it.

Patrick is in them but his role is extremely limited and is just “Henry’s friend”

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



oldpainless posted:

Patrick is in them but his role is extremely limited and is just “Henry’s friend”

I guess that makes sense for an adaptation having to crunch things down. My memory is that, ultimately, he's not a very important character. He's not really part of Henry's gang, he's his own, isolated human abomination.

I can't really think of why he exists in the plot except maybe to drive home how even the worst human beings alive are nothing compared to IT's evil. The most scummy humans are still just Pennnywise's meals and playthings.

DrVenkman
Dec 28, 2005

I think he can hear you, Ray.

NikkolasKing posted:

I've never forgotten at least the gist of this scene, and I feel it's more relevant now than when I first read it. A great story has a message to be sure but it doesn't scream the message at you. You try that, you get travesties like Birdemic whose admirable message is completely undermined by the worst story imaginable. A great message is conveyed by a great story.

You see this a lot more now, particularly in horror. It's a bit of a running joke that everything these days is 'about trauma' but that's because they try very hard to make sure you get the message. A good comparison are the CANDYMAN movies. The original has subtext about gentrification, about the treatment of black people and mythology etc, it's all baked in to the story being told and the new one takes all that and just makes it text instead.

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible



Son of a Vondruke! posted:

Neither are they. I'm about the same age as the adult versions of the characters. I've got a terrible memory, but having absolutely NO memory of your childhood is far from normal.

I can only remember the name of one of my friends in the 4 and 5 grades when I went to a different school. I had others, but I couldn't tell you their names.
I couldn't tell you any of my teachers' name from elementary school, nor most of my middle school teachers, or some of my high school teachers.

Leave
Feb 7, 2012

Taking the term "Koopaling" to a whole new level since 2016.
If there's weird eldritch cosmic horror magic at work erasing memories, you've gotta cut some slack to the people having their memories hosed with.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



On the topic of the Losers' post-Derry life and all its accompanying weirdness, I did remember the comment on how they all ended up pretty well off. I couldn't recall if their memories fading and their success was part of IT's machinations. After all, maybe IT was "bribing" them to stay away.

That theory seems conclusively disproven by the taunting nature of the 1980s murders. IT didn't want the little shits gone forever, It went out of its way to make its kills this time as blatant as possible to lure them in. Seems like a poor idea, probably should have just made them stay away.

BaldDwarfOnPCP
Jun 26, 2019

by Pragmatica

NikkolasKing posted:

On the topic of the Losers' post-Derry life and all its accompanying weirdness, I did remember the comment on how they all ended up pretty well off. I couldn't recall if their memories fading and their success was part of IT's machinations. After all, maybe IT was "bribing" them to stay away.

That theory seems conclusively disproven by the taunting nature of the 1980s murders. IT didn't want the little shits gone forever, It went out of its way to make its kills this time as blatant as possible to lure them in. Seems like a poor idea, probably should have just made them stay away.

I'm just gonna file that under banality of evil.

Evil can be real dumb sometimes.

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



NikkolasKing posted:

I like King but Dark Tower does not sound like it is for me, and that supreme anticlimax I've heard about doesn't give me much incentive to start it.

I will say that, flawed as it is, the ending of the Dark Tower books has grown on me over the years. The way it ends is the only way it could have ended, although IMO Roland is nowhere near the end of his re-runs - that will only happen when his entire found family makes it to the tower with him. There's a lot of stuff in there that reads perfectly in line with the first four books (even the sneetches and Dr. Doom robot stuff doesn't feel as cringey now, given the various cultural shifts since the books came out)...but there's a lot that gets kind of botched (basically everything to do with Walter, for one). The path between the big milestones is all hosed up, so to speak. King understandably was worried that he was going to croak before finishing his great work, however in retrospect had he waited a couple more years it probably would've been a bit more consistent if nothing else.

The first 4 books are pretty unparalleled though - Wizard and Glass is easily one of my favorite books of all time, and top 3 by King across all his eras in my opinion. Don't force yourself to read them, but if you work through everything else and find yourself jonesing for another hit you could do a lot worse. If nothing else it's an interesting experiment in seeing a writer grow through the scope of a series.

Lester Shy
May 1, 2002

Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!
Everybody should read The Gunslinger at least. It's mostly self-contained and only 300 pages. If you hate it, no great loss, but I knew I was hooked from the first page.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



I'm sure I'll try out the DT books one of these days. Right now though, I still got a lot more King to read.

And one book to reread. I remembered Beverly's "wander alone in Derry" moment the best, although I forgot this was part of it. How can you ever forget this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt49HYF_QgU

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


Lester Shy posted:

Everybody should read The Gunslinger at least. It's mostly self-contained and only 300 pages. If you hate it, no great loss, but I knew I was hooked from the first page.

IMO, the best way to read The Gunslinger is to go to a used bookstore and hunt up an old copy with the original text. The revised version from 2003 is lacking in comparison, imo. It fits better with the later books, sure, but none of the changes are necessary and some of them are actively bad.

Baron von Eevl
Jan 24, 2005

WHITE NOISE
GENERATOR

🔊😴
My first exposure to the Dark Tower was getting The Gunslinger out of the library in 7th grade, and then only because I had read every single non-DT King book they had. The book was missing the first few pages so I didn't even get to read that infamous opening line.

Last Celebration
Mar 30, 2010

Khizan posted:

IMO, the best way to read The Gunslinger is to go to a used bookstore and hunt up an old copy with the original text. The revised version from 2003 is lacking in comparison, imo. It fits better with the later books, sure, but none of the changes are necessary and some of them are actively bad.

Out of curiosity, what are the changes? Iirc they rewrote some stuff about reading because paper’s so rare in that setting, made Roland less ambivalent when he killed the lady he slept with, and the man in black wasn’t originally Flagg but I’ve only ever read the most readily accessible version.

Speaking of revisions, it’s pretty silly that King went through the trouble of rewriting The Stand to make it take place in the “current” time but not the short story in Night Shift that took place around then. Also the man writes a great short story, most of them end on cliffhangers but that just makes sense for a horror short story.

Toast King
Jun 22, 2007

Last Celebration posted:

Out of curiosity, what are the changes?

There's lots of minor setting and background details changing everywhere, plus things added or changed around to tie into the later books more directly. I remember looking at this page for a good list of direct changes between the two.

Phanatic
Mar 13, 2007

Please don't forget that I am an extremely racist idiot who also has terrible opinions about the Culture series.

Lester Shy posted:

Everybody should read The Gunslinger at least. It's mostly self-contained and only 300 pages. If you hate it, no great loss, but I knew I was hooked from the first page.

But find the earlier editions, before he retconned the book in 2003.

Mister Kingdom
Dec 14, 2005

And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Khizan posted:

IMO, the best way to read The Gunslinger is to go to a used bookstore and hunt up an old copy with the original text. The revised version from 2003 is lacking in comparison, imo. It fits better with the later books, sure, but none of the changes are necessary and some of them are actively bad.

Back in the late 80s, I picked up the audiobook version read by King. I remember thinking that $30 (about $75 today) was a lot of money to plunk down on something I had no idea whether or not I would like.

Thankfully, I did.

Gnoman
Feb 12, 2014

Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme




NikkolasKing posted:

On the topic of the Losers' post-Derry life and all its accompanying weirdness, I did remember the comment on how they all ended up pretty well off. I couldn't recall if their memories fading and their success was part of IT's machinations. After all, maybe IT was "bribing" them to stay away.

That theory seems conclusively disproven by the taunting nature of the 1980s murders. IT didn't want the little shits gone forever, It went out of its way to make its kills this time as blatant as possible to lure them in. Seems like a poor idea, probably should have just made them stay away.

They were made into successful, boring adults.

That was the point - all their childlike wonder -the power that gave them the power to hurt It in the first place- was turned into adult versions that lacked that primal power. So It taunted them back when they had no power to harm It for the sake of getting revenge. Which is why so much of the 1980s section of the book is them recapturing those childhood memories.

There's a monologue from It's point of view somewhere in the book that explains it.

Last Celebration
Mar 30, 2010

Toast King posted:

There's lots of minor setting and background details changing everywhere, plus things added or changed around to tie into the later books more directly. I remember looking at this page for a good list of direct changes between the two.

Neat, thanks

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


Last Celebration posted:

Out of curiosity, what are the changes? Iirc they rewrote some stuff about reading because paper’s so rare in that setting, made Roland less ambivalent when he killed the lady he slept with, and the man in black wasn’t originally Flagg but I’ve only ever read the most readily accessible version.

I think it just has a different feel to it. The addition of all that "thankee-sai do ya ken commala" stuff just changes the tone of the book, and that's along with all the little edits like grammatical stuff that just change how the book flows.

Also, I think it softens Roland too much in an attempt to make him seem more heroic at the start. It feels out of character, to me.

Teriyaki Hairpiece
Dec 29, 2006

I'm nae the voice o' the darkened thistle, but th' darkened thistle cannae bear the sight o' our Bonnie Prince Bernie nae mair.

NikkolasKing posted:

On the topic of the Losers' post-Derry life and all its accompanying weirdness, I did remember the comment on how they all ended up pretty well off. I couldn't recall if their memories fading and their success was part of IT's machinations. After all, maybe IT was "bribing" them to stay away.

That theory seems conclusively disproven by the taunting nature of the 1980s murders. IT didn't want the little shits gone forever, It went out of its way to make its kills this time as blatant as possible to lure them in. Seems like a poor idea, probably should have just made them stay away.
It has been around since in came down on a meteorite during dinosaur times, and It's bored?

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Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

Khizan posted:

I think it just has a different feel to it. The addition of all that "thankee-sai do ya ken commala" stuff just changes the tone of the book, and that's along with all the little edits like grammatical stuff that just change how the book flows.

Also, I think it softens Roland too much in an attempt to make him seem more heroic at the start. It feels out of character, to me.

There was a deleted scene in The Phantom Menace where someone tells kid Greedo "You're gonna come to a bad end one day, Greedo" and that's what a lot of the revisions feel like to me.

Also part of the whole goddamn point of the cycle was Roland becoming less of a total bastard, softening him up kind of ruins the point

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