>Kills scores men as level 1 gunslinger
>Jobs to a single mudcrab as level 20 gunsliger
Homebrew classes are a joke
>Kills scores men as level 1 gunslinger. >Jobs to a single mudcrab as level 20 gunsliger
>Kills scores men as level 1 gunslinger
>Jobs to a single mudcrab as level 20 gunsliger
Homebrew classes are a joke
The critical role gunslinger is so shit, by using the alternate guns you actively nerf yourself with how often they break.
If you want to play a gunslinger just play a battle master fighter using DMG firearms
Special rules for exhaustion and post-sleep fugue in that system make critical hits explode in an absurd way. Plus there was the massive morale malus on his rolls from the mountain arc. The final boss of that campaign was the real joke. Plus what the GM did to the evil wizard character, I just don't think he could find a way to wedge him in and just wrote him out for his new idea.
Mountian arc was clearly railroaded, morale malus from that was bullshit
It was a Big Crab though.
Big Lobster
Holy shit the lobsters wer fughuge. The book does not sound like that at all.
Think the writer was just coping "see they were HUUUGGGEE. SEE"
I don't think they were that big. I'm pretty sure they're described as like...2-3 feet long.
or...
>four feet long,1 and a half foot wide, with sharp serrated beaks, and eyes on stalks.
well shit, they're fricking big. Alright.
Yeah, they're like large dog sized.
That's about how I imagined them, its been like a decade since I read the book, but I thought they like clipped roland's fingers when he was passed the frick out or just super disoriented and he like woke up bleeding
thought the lobsters were supposed to resemble things from the mist
Which homebrew?
What game?
newbie who didn't get it.
Playing into an evil wizard's scheme when he's openly telling you it's his scheme gets you what you deserve.
nu/tg/ is about not being a nogames, so where are the games, moron?
OP is japing that the Dark Tower series of fantasy novels, which follow a gunslinger protagonist, is actually a ttrpg, and that the author, popular horror and thriller writer Stephen King, is the GM!!
>newbie who didn't get it.
I can't believe the meme is true.
>Which homebrew?
>What game?
Mine.
Still stuck on that mono.
That only means the ka-tet has never broken.
Go then. There are other campaigns than this.
(but don't think for a moment that I've forgotten their faces)
And likewise. As an amusing aside, would you believe that Barbarians of Lemuria is to this day a cursed system to me? Hoping to change that soon, through Honor+Intrigue. And speaking of BoL, I actually think you could run a reasonably solid Dark Tower game using it alongside Barbarians of the Aftermath.
I think Wolves of the Calla is an alright book besides the Wolves looking like they do for no apparent reason than to feed into the characters realizing they're not just in an alternate reality, but a constructed reality. Song of Susannah I can barely remember even though I did a re-read a few years back, and that's not a good sign.
My big beef with Mordred is he comes too late to work, though I found the sympathy shown for him (for being a lonely, starving monster who knows he exists purely for murder) to be compelling. Could've worked with more time to breathe and a less, uh, contentious way of introducing the character's powers.
The fact that most of the Crimson King's worst defeats happen in other novels is a huge bungle on King's part. That the old man is just a mortal (and later, undead) avatar makes it worse.
I'll second the sentiment that The Wind Through the Keyhole is excellent. King has a bit of a knack for dark fairy tales.
>GM has clearly run out of ideas and starts overdoing it on the pop culture references
Hate when this happens.
that entire fricking book had me shaking my head. he had his son Joe Hill write everything post wizard and glass for him.
rolands whole schtick is keep going and grind time itself down to win. its why he has the horn when the timeloop restarts.
This moment here, when the wolves are revealed, is when the series went to shit for me. Book 6 was trash and King fricking writing himself in was idiotic, and while Book 7 had a great moment for Callahan, the book as a whole is FRICKING unreadable, and the final confrontation is a goddamn joke.
I haven't even read book 8.
>I haven't even read book 8.
Believe it or not, Wind Through the Keyhole is a terrific read. Better than 5, 6, and 7.
Have you tried not playing DnD?
That dude doesn't look like Idris Elba, the frick is going on?
Once the TV show comes out, the we wuzzer version will be completely memoryholed.
>this homie expecting quality from a tv show in 2024
You're ACTUALLY moronic. Like sub 70 IQ.
This is known as "having fun." You should try it sometime.
The guy helming it had made it explicit he wants to stick to the books, he has adapted King before, and he has done so successfully.
Uh-huh. You're a moron. It's going to be unwatchable woke garbage, same as fricking everything in the past 10 years.
If it is then it'll be no worse for wear, the worst case scenario adaptation already happened.
>classes are a joke
Correct. But some people have a crippled imagination and brain, so they use classes as a wheelchair.
RIP.
Some Slow Mutants
Some Out-World folken
Very fitting Andy.
Guy on the far right about to start going ACK ACK ACK ACK.
that andy looks fantastic.
Everything after the first book just got worse an worse in quality and tone.
yeah, it should've stayed a single novel and it would've been remembered fondly instead of the monstrosity it evolved into by the end
and the ending, my god
wizard and glass was kino you illiterate swine
Book 1:
>pretty good overall, some parts drag, and King can't fricking write cosmic horror
Book 2:
>underrated, and I almost immediately like Eddie
Book 3:
>the only time the series gets close to scary, with some fantastic moments. Lud is a great setpiece.
Book 4:
>fricking kino with a The Stand+weird Wizard of Oz scene tacked on
Book 5:
>The fricking wall. Bringing back callahan was a cool move, but spelled nothing good for the narrative. Then the Wolves are revealed and...christ.
Book 6:
>And there's that shark jumped.
Book 7:
>Mordred.
>King can't fricking write cosmic horror
read Revival
Revival feels like something Lovecraft might actually like.
ghostwritten by his son Joe Hill like everything post VANNING
its obvious he wanted to be moorwiener.
you seethe with PENGUIN LUST for King. its disgraceful, show some fricking self respect.
>Class is a much better indicator of criminality.
bullshit and you know it. criminality has always been tightly tied to race.
>criminality has always been tightly tied to race
so has class.
not like race. blacks commit crimes at the same rate in africa and the usa.
The whole series was him trying to write like Michael Moorwiener.
In that respect, it kinda succeeded, as the series gets worse the same way that Moorwiener has gotten worse over time.
But the first book is the only one that really feels like it matches Moorwiener's peek weirdness, and a lot of *that* was retconned away when he rewrote the book.
The Wolves being bizarre pop-culture constructions was another attempt at that weirdness, but it just falls incredibly flat.
My only real hot take about the series is that I actually like how Marten gets taken out. Partly because he's the sort of villain whose end should involve talking himself to death, and partly because it matches the prophetic nightmares he had in 'Eyes of the Dragon'.
Nothing has ever filled the void for me since I read the gunslinger when I was a teen
Does /tg/ have any recs for weird west/gunslinger books?
Book 1, where warped, post-Apocalyptic America is patrolled by Gunslinger Knights until entropy in the form of now-dead warlords eat away at it too.
Where Roland spends decades chasing the last survivor across the plains and desert and mountains until he catches him and before he dies, the black magician tells him the chaos was planned by the forces of evil.
Book 2-3, it’s not just post-apocalyptic America but so far ahead that many places bare less than a passing resemblance. Flaggs shows up again.
Book 4, it’s not post-Apocalyptic America but a post-apocalyptic alternative world which happens to be filled with American stuff filtering over. Flagg was behind it all, even the stuff where he had to be multiple people and repeatedly fake his death. Not bad for a guy who until this point was the Antichrist from late 30s Nebraska.
Book 5-7, Somewhere under all the old tech is magic and the universal magic of the King-verse. Also the DT and the forces the define it are a big nothing. Redo from start until Roland is satisfied and realises he could leave.
Short stories published in 1978-1981, fix-up novel 1982, book 2 is 1987, book 3, 1991. Book 4 when King has really ditched the future aspect, 1998.
20 years after he wrote about a cult worshiping an AMCO gas station pump.
Mid-World never had an America. The two merely shared a lot of cultural touchstones.
Until book 4, although shaky by book 3, Midworld was pretty clear America of the distant future.
The worlds are all interlinked. Stephen King's catalog is actually an extended universe for The Dark Tower. Insomnia stars the Crimson King himself.
The Crimson King stars in Insomnia first, really. King decided to port him over later.
King is a trash writer.
The single good legacy of his volumptious writing can be condensed to a single word:
Delain.
He's a great writer on shitloads of coke but never once has he written a decent ending and I've read dozens of his books
>never once has he written a decent ending
Salems Lot
Revival
A lot of his short stories
Desperation probably but been ages since I read
>Salems Lot
Didn't count because it fed right into The Dark Tower. Callahan was a GOAT character and had a tremendous exit.
>Revival
Never read it
That is your answer. If they were any good you'd remember it.
'Salems Lot had a terrible ending. What King did to Callahan in that book was terrible. I know he comes back in The Dark Tower, but within 'Salems Lot, it sucked.
Other than that, after a whole novel of build up. Barlowe jobs to holy water. And why the frick did he even seek to convert the whole town into vampires? There's not going to be enough blood to go around.
I think I remember the ending to Cujo and Misery both being fine, but I can barely remember either
Misery has an excellent ending. The Green Mile's ending is excellent. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption has a great ending. The Running Man has a pretty amusing one. The Stand's ending is set up from the beginning of the story and works well. I think Eyes of the Dragon has a good ending, though being a fairy tale it's slightly easy mode. Cujo has a good (awful) ending. Probably more besides, but that's just what jumps to mind.
That should be The Shining, not The Stand. Stand's ending is set up but IMO poorly-executed. The back half of the novel is pretty meandering even if it did keep me reading. Brain fart.
Real Great Writers don't need "shitloads of coke" in order to convey their ideas. They also don't need to write extremely long books, although some of the people counted among the greats did. Stephen King is a writer for plebs. Same is true for that fat homosexual who made Game of Thrones.
Delain is the singular redeeming word of King's writing career, and even that is not due to his actions, but blind fate making word take a life on its' own.
Delain?
Kingdom of Delain is a setting for some King's novels. a Dutch musician and composer liked the word and named his band "Delain". It's not the best symphonic metal out there, frankly speaking, Delain isn't even symphonic and just gets labeled because they have a female vocalist, their head Black person plays keys and they used to split with Nightwish, but at any rate, their art is miles ahead of any drivel King ever spewed out into this world.
>Nightwish
Discarded
>Likes King
>Hates Nightwish
Post hand. I suspect you might be of non-European stock.
You first. I suspect it’s a masculine hand with exquisite nails and a charm bracelet.
Black person, if I wanted to speak to a Black person, I'd just talk to my cat.
You sound like an insufferable hipster, lol.
Insufferable hipsters all read Stephen King. I hate his books, and him personally, with a passion. Ergo, I cannot be an insufferable hipster.
Besides, Delain is far too mainstream for actual hipsters, they'd rather listen to some 1-man black metal project nobody has hear nor will ever hear of. Still not as awful as King's drivel.
Hipsters always say they hate other hipsters. Classic hipster behavior.
>I hate his books, and him personally, with a passion
get a life loser
>Ergo
insufferable then
>the most mainstream author of the 20th and early 21st century is for hipsters
If we were talking about Cormac McCarthy, that argument might float for a while. Though this being Ganker, it's more likely he'd be declared "for redditors."
Laugh at this post
Nice to meet you, m'dam.
>some 1-man black metal project nobody has hear nor will ever hear of.
You leave Xasthur out of this!
>Real Great Writers don't need "shitloads of coke" in order to convey their ideas.
Name some writers you consider great.
Tolkien
Dostoyevsky
Hugo
That's enough for you? If you want "fantasy or science fiction writer" specifically, I'll have to go Tolkien, Mahen, Lovecraft or Phil Dick, as far as I know, Dick did have a substance abuse problem but of another kind.
Hugo and Dostoyevsky literally wrote deliberate filler in their novels. Dostoyevsky in particular (whom I do mostly like) basically just rewrote the same novel over and over. Tolkien - I respect The Lord of the Rings, but it's vastly longer than it needs to be for what it's doing. That didn't bother me (obviously, considering all these authors in discussion...), but I think Hobbit is the only bit of fiction he wrote in an ideal state.
Surprised anyone would mention Lovecraft as a Great Writer. I immensely enjoy him, but I tend to think of him as having died in the transition to becoming great rather than an endearing schlock writer. Dick is mid.
>Surprised anyone would mention Lovecraft as a Great Writer.
He is almost as influential as universally-accepted Greats; His style might not be so refined, that's why he's sharign 3rd place with Dick in that tier list. Dick understood why sci-fi/fantasy exists, something that cannot be said for most "fiction" fans, and for most part he is not guilty of writing filler (novelization of previous short stories notwithstanding, as it is a derivative)
>Hugo and Dostoyevsky literally wrote deliberate filler in their novels.
They were professional writers, much like King is today, except not shit. Hence:
>although some of the people counted among the greats did.
Influential is not great. JK Rowling is influential. She's also just a passable children's fiction author at best.
>They were professional writers, much like King is today, except not shit.
Point I'm making is they were as unsentimental and mercenary as any Weird Tales author or schlock-slingers like King. Especially Hugo. That you personally like their fiction is good for you (and I actually agree), but it's not a metric of greatness.
>JK Rowling is influential.
For now. So is King. You think anyone will be reading Harry Potter 100 years after Rowling kicks the bucket?
If someone is influential centuries after death, and it's not a fad driven by a clever marketing campaign, there must be some substance to their writing. King wouldn't be remembered 2 years after GRIDS finally claims his butthole.
As for mercenarism, I think some degree of it is unavoidable if you're a professional writer, i.e you not being a hobo is condintional on constantly showing some "progress" to a publisher. You can't be in a state of divine inspiration 24/7, at least not on this Earth. Big royalties usually come in a few decades after the work is done.
How much is King paying you to defend him online? Or is it you, Steven, you fricking low IQ boomer pervert?
>You think anyone will be reading Harry Potter 100 years after Rowling kicks the bucket?
No clue. A lot of authors people cum over today were failures in their day, or considered mid-card hacks or one-hit wonders. I trend towards 'no' for the simple reason that her only notable work is a series, and you don't see many series stay in the limelight long term. Even Oz is only really remembered because of a movie.
King will probably remain a figure in horror and weird fiction as long as people still care about that genre, however. A lot of it will be relegated to the dustbin, but his short story works and some of his novels have staying power. I don't think his current fondness for crime novels has a lifespan.
I mean do people really remember C.S. Lewis besides the Chronicles of Narnia? Everything else he wrote was schizo-tier rantings about Christianity. Harry Potter will have staying power through the movies and video games as well.
>Everything else he wrote was schizo-tier rantings about Christianity.
Those are actually more pleasant to read than Narnia. Overt moralizing and putting "literally Christ" into the fantasy world(s) in Chronicles is absolutely awful. I get why Lewis thought it's correct metaphysics, but it's bad writing. As is the isekai-ing of protagonists, except in "Magician'ss Nephew" where it was central for establishing the setting.
>for the simple reason that her only notable work is a series
There's another indicator, is that, short of fan-fiction (I've heard some it is written to a higher standard than the main books, but wouldn't care to check) there's nobody trying to follow Rowling. Because there is... nothing to take home from her works, it is modern British high school and their weird class drama (race issues being notoriously absent, as it was considered polite to not inflate them back when HP was written), but WITH MAGIC. The only logical alternative would be to do the same, but IN SPACE, and frankly speaking I'm surprised nobody has ever tried yet.
When Dostoyevsky writes about Russian criminals, gigantic depression and other less-than-pleasant things, at least he makes an attempt to analyze what happens to the soul of the sufferer and how he can be saved; this is relevant outside of 19th century Imperial Russia. Shame he didn't get to complete his final work, although perhaps it wasn't entirely Fate's fault, but also his, for undertaking a project far too ambitious in scope.
Even that's not a universal indicator. Poe, Lovecraft, and Howard are still beloved today in spite of writing "fast food" pulp fiction. Often because of it. I don't think simple school fiction will stop resonating with lonely kids any time soon, though I'd put Rowling on a lower rung than any of those, obviously. But in SPACE was done first already, with Ender's Game.
Speaking of race issues, they're there, but not in a way that's flattering to Rowling. I usually roll my eyes at attempts to equate fantastic monsters to people, but the way Rowling approaches house elves in particular does make you think.
hell, speaking of fast food pulp fiction, fricking shakespeare wrote soap operas about horny kids.
Virtually all of Shakespeare was written for the vulgar common. It's also all full of prostitute jokes, fart jokes, poop jokes, and general comic absurdities.
Shakespeare wasn't written "for" the commons, it just has lots of Family Guy style cutaway gags and plot diversions that appeal to vulgar sensibilities because the lawyers and members of the temple that made up his audience brought their prostitutes to the theater and more enjoyed works that didn't bore said prostitutes dry.
Most relevant race issues to UK is not Black folk, and not even Muslims, frankly speaking, but the Hindu invasion - they're the ones actually being installed as middle management to rule over the British plebs. I don't remember anything even resembling touching on that.
Rowling wasn't really in a position to care about poojeet managers, which is probably why.
For me it's Ovid's Metamorphosis, which reads like deviantart fetish fiction.
#
Here is what I think separates Lovecraft and Poe to King.
Lovecraft and Poe didn’t just write a lot of horror stories. They contributed to the development of their genre. Poe refined the Gothic Horror story, vastly improving upon it compared to its creators snd setting the standard for future Gothic Horror to be compared to. In addition, he invented the detective genre.
Lovecraft, meanwhile, invented Cosmic Horror wholesale. Yes, he has his inspirations like Chambers and Bierce, but no one was talking about alien gods driving people to madness with their dreams or really focusing on the insignificance of man in the face a vast universe.
Both of their works were revolutionary to their genres and expanded the works of literature.
What is King’s contribution? I struggle to say he’s invented his own genre. Some people imitate his style, but his stories are familiar, and his monsters likewise. The Shining and Christine are ghost stories. Pennywise and the Crimson King are both Lovecraftian, as are the Tommyknockers. ‘Salem’s Lot was literally started with the idea “what if Dracula came to America?” Where are his original monsters, his original concepts?
I feel like that’s why he’s the least of the great American horror authors. He doesn’t create, he only contributes.
>Where are his original monsters, his original concepts?
The Low Men, Breakers, the replacement of the Beams and their Guardians with lesser machinery.
The Mist was weirdly influential, too.
My favorite part of Eyes of the Dragon was probably the Queen's 'god and dog' lecture.
magical Black is a King trope
>Shame he didn't get to complete his final work, although perhaps it wasn't entirely Fate's fault, but also his, for undertaking a project far too ambitious in scope.
you will never accomplish anything meaningful in your entire life so just keep on regurgitating bullshit you've read online about authors you're too dense to fully understand and you'll manage to trick a few stupid Gankerners into thinking you know what you're talking about.
Stephen, you're gay. Get out of the closet.
clever
I've actually read Karamazovs. The first volume is complete more or less, but there was supposed to be quite a few more, giving more exposition of Dostoyevsky's personal philosophy, which is pretty wierd (similar in some regards to aforementioned Lewis, but considerably more heretical). And he was already quite old at the time, with many health problems stemming from earlier stint as a Siberian exile.
>A lot of authors people cum over today were failures in their day, or considered mid-card hacks or one-hit wonders.
Not even the authors do. Twain thought his fictional memoir about Jeanne D'Arc was the best thing he wrote, and his wife was inclined to agree. Unless you're a Twain fan, though, you've probably never heard of that one at all. And even for a lot of his fans, it's more interesting for how peculiar it was (laudatory despite Twain disliking both Catholics and the French, and an extremely early example of such when English fiction about her was was mostly tinged by Bong slander).
We still read Cat in the Hat. Harry Potter books are good, timeless children's fiction.
nice bait 🙂
He's influential but not good.
He (H.P.) invented a new genre, and it proven itself to be relevant for the century of State Atheism; how is he not good?!
He was also right about non-European "peoples".
He didn't create it, King In Yellow predates him, and technically the first notes of "cosmic horror" as we understand it was formulated by Plato.
>racism
Class is a much better indicator of criminality. If we could kill every single person that makes sub-70k, the world would be a better place. The poors have done their job in creating the middle and elite class, thus they are now an atavism that serves as the power base for the corrupt hyper-elite, which need to be overthrown.
>inb4
You're wrong.
>Class is a much better indicator of criminality.
Class is derivative of IQ, which is a heritable trait and is easily stratified by races. Look beyond first-order considerations. I live in a low-income rural town, and it is clean and well-run, with virtually no crime. It also happens to be 99% White. Whereas when I used to live in Indianapolis in a neighborhood with 200k+ houses (in a black neighborhood), there were regular drive-by shootings and graffiti-sprayings
Class is not derivative of IQ don't be moronic.
>low-income rural town
No crime that you know of. Besides, the people there are home-owners, are they not? Or at least trailer-owners? That's not low-income. Low income is renting and not having enough money for rent.
This is true and don't get me wrong Lovecraft is a fun writer, but pretending he invented a genre is incorrect.
>he doesn't think it can get worse
I mean I know you think you're making fun of me, but I actually agree with these. I'll survive because of my community and my life experience but a lot of people who don't have the same resources as I do won't, and this is a good thing.
I was the one who wrote that copypasta, interestingly enough. I was REALLY upset about the homestuck ending.
One of the advantages of being anonymous is that you don't know who you're talking to. I could be an avid hunter. Hell, I could be a soldier or even a criminal. Or a LARPing 40-year-old virgin. Who knows? Certainly not you.
>you don't know who you're talking to
I know I'm talking to a moron who thinks he can judge who should live or die based on how many Federal Reserve notes they accumulate in a year.
So it's an interesting thought, right? Do I think money is important and useful in of itself. No, of course not. That's moronic. But money is a good earmark of whether someone is a fully-functional and useful member of society. Obviously there are exceptions, but someone who makes more than 70k is presumably paying their taxes, has some property, takes care of it, etc. - thus being a citizen in the proper sense of the word.
So to answer your implied question - yes, someone who makes more money than someone else is statistically more likely to be a decent human being.
I will admit that I haven't, but again, the first instance of proper cosmic horror would be the Allegory of the Cave.
>someone who makes more than 70k is presumably paying their taxes
Must be 18 to browse Ganker.
Yeah...? You're not wealthy enough to utilize the OP tax shelters but you're not living off of welfare either.
And you also have very high-IQ individuals who are incapable of making money. Yes, I will say there's absolutely correlation, but it's not an absolute indicator.
I'm still wondering what possessed you to lie about being the originator of the dt meme.
>And you also have very high-IQ individuals who are incapable of making money.
How? I started out poor. I loaded trucks in a warehouse for years while living in a ghetto. Now I own land and make $200k/year because I worked hard and taught myself a trade. All the dumb guys I knew back then are still making shit wages living in sketchy neighborhoods, and the hardworking smart guys moved onto professional careers. Yes, it's anecdotal, but it's an example of the path from poverty that working hard and planning ahead makes. Short of mental disorders, what makes it impossible for intelligent people to thrive?
Because you're not? I'm talking 130+ IQ people who get into STEM careers and despite that are still poor.
First off, who the frick uses the word bourgeoisie? Second, you're using the word wrong. Third, I didn't say that, I just said they don't count as poor because they own property.
>Or a LARPing 40-year-old virgin
pretty sure it wasn't a mystery
>Class is not derivative of IQ don't be moronic.
It highly correlates. A stupid person who can't think ahead will make poor personal and economic decisions and will not rise. People who can plan ahead and are smart will eventually move up in station. It's common sense. Things get a bit skewed when you start talking about very-rich people with inherited fortunes, but for 99% of the population class is highly-correlated to intelligence.
>Trailer park whites are bourgeoisie
Holy frick I hate communists
HPL didn't even credit himself with the creation of cosmic horror. He was rather humble about his own work and quick to laud what he saw as the best of other authors. Considering how voraciously he read, those lists and comments actually remain useful to a reader of weird and horror fiction to this day.
>those lists and comments actually remain useful to a reader of weird and horror fiction to this day.
That's how I discovered Arthur Machen back in the day - he isn't widely known, sadly. But his works are less cosmic horror and more occult detective, when a gentleman from London is suddenly confronted by a mystery that permits no rational explanation and usually involves some crimes.
>If we could kill every single person that makes sub-70k, the world would be a better place
I agree! The remaining population would largely starve to death, the rich would no longer have the cheap labour their wealth is built upon, the industrial complex would collapse and all our consumerist civilization with it, and the rest of life on earth would finally flourish again. It's not my preferred path to sustainability, but it's surely better than our current one.
>If we could kill every single person that makes sub-70k
You can't even kill a deer lol
Have you read “The King in Yellow?” In and of itself, it’s not a cosmic horror story. It’s about a play that drives you mad if you read it, but no one knows why. There’s nothing there about the insignificance of man in the face of a vast cosmos, or how limited our perceptions are of the true world. It is only in retrospect that it becomes a part of Cosmic Horror canon due to HPL working it into his own stories. But in and of itself, King in Yellow is more of a psychological horror. Hastur isn’t even identified as being a cosmic deity in the original story.
The whole story collection isn't very cosmic at all, but besides the one about the cute French ghost waifu, they all have a really pervasive atmosphere of creeping disaster and festering lunacy which obviously really tickled Lovecraft's pickle.
Oh it’s certainly an influence. So was Algernon Blackwood and Lord Durnsany. Doesn’t mean it’s cosmic horror.
It’s like Psycho. You wouldn’t call it a slasher movie, but it definitely led to the development of the slasher movie.
Not that anon, but The King in Yellow is amazing. Tone-wise, it's so bleak that it's easy to see the atmosphere Lovecraft uses in his stories. So it makes sense to at least count it as cosmic-horror-adjacent.
I mean, the concept of suicide booths came directly from it, and it was written in 1895.
It's funny to see Lovecraft laud Chambers' horror writing and be exasperated that he was inclined to write romantic fiction.
excellent analysis
Needful Things, The Shining
>The Shining
"Oh no I forgot to check the boiler *boom*"
That's fine. It's set up the entire novel that the boiler creeps, and the climax of the novel has the Overlook so obsessed with getting Danny via undead Jack that it's pretty reasonable the hotel itself forgot. It was hungry.
Did Kuing ever say how he wanted The Dark Tower structured back when he started in 1978?
Might give more definition to any TTRPG that someone could derive from it.
King didn't ever intend The Gunslinger to be a first entry in a series, and as more novels emerged he just wrote them as the ideas presented themselves, until the last three novel sprint. This is per the man himself.
Going cold turkey at the end of the 80s, and getting hit by that car, both cause major shifts in his writing.
The series that goes so long it bridges all three major periods of his life demonstrates this, mostly to its detriment.
>be a dimension-hopping changeling with near-immortality and the magical potency to do anything from bring the dead back to life to making yourself immune to all bullets from a world to turning into an animal and eating people alive and screaming
>job to a baby because you trusted a Naruto headband
Flagg made use of magic, Mordred WAS magic.
Bit of a weak argument. Walter/Flagg is from inhuman stock himself, at least on his father's side. But being stupidly overconfident was always a recurring weakness of Flagg's.
I though Flaggs was some kid from Nebraska?
Flagg gets a brief origin explanation in the last novel, he was originally from Mid-World, his name was Walter Padick originally, and his family owned a mill. The comics (very sus canon) elaborate further that he is one of Maerlyn's by-blows and only half-mortal, and was left with normal humans to learn their ways. Whatever the case, he's not a normal human.
I think it's kind of interesting how alike Walter and Roland are in some ways.
If you don't care for the comics - as I do not - it is likely that Flagg's inhumanity, and probably the greater part of his magic, comes from the Crimson King. Not the mortal avatar, but the actual beast penned at the top of the Dark Tower. This doesn't seem to engender any particular loyalty in him, and Flagg fully intended to attempt to seize the Tower for himself.
Mordred was outright stated to be the strongest Breaker ever created, more than powerful enough that he could have potentially torn down the Dark Tower by himself. He was easily strong enough to overwhelm Flagg, even though Flagg was smarter and a much more developed example of an inhuman entity.
>Harry Potter books are good
begin{copypasta}
I went to the Yale bookstore and bought and read a copy of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character “stretched his legs.” I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling’s mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
...
I was told that children would now only read J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn’t, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn’t that a good thing?
It is not. “Harry Potter” will not lead our children on to Kipling’s “Just So Stories” or his “Jungle Book.” It will not lead them to Thurber’s “Thirteen Clocks” or Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows” or Lewis Carroll’s “Alice.”
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, “If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King.” And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read “Harry Potter” you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
end{copypasta}
Separating literature into "children's literature" and "adult literature" was always a mistake. Tokien and Lewis both commented on it a great deal. Children should read proper literature, understand some of it that is plain, and later come back and read it once again to see how much more there's to the thing.
as a child I was only allowed to read heart of darkness until I could properly summarize it's themes.
No need to be pretentious. They're perfectly enjoyable reads. I read the Hobbit as well. Something can be good and worth reading without also being a literary masterpiece. I do agree that the Harry Potter books got more praise than they deserved from manchildren and soilets, but they're still enjoyable fantasy books.
The Hobbit is actually a well-written book. It is not as epic as LOTR, let alone Silmarillion, but it is a good story. Harry Potter and Seven Tomes of Unadulterated homosexualry is not.
The Hobbit is my favorite book of all time, up there with Ender's Game. But the quality of the Hobbit doesn't make Harry Potter less enjoyable. When I was a child, everybody enjoyed reading them when they came out. I was a very well-read child and enjoyed them quite a bit. I'm sorry that you're either too young to have been there or that you've let political brain-rot ruin perfectly-fine children's stories for you. This level of vitriol towards books meant for young teenagers and children is unhealthy
It is deeply funny to me that the only writing people remember of Harold Bloom's is him seething over Stephen King by way of JK Rowling, and the only people who remember even that is Ganker. I suppose it's better than him only being remembered for sexually harassing his students, though.
Christ, that's actually a Bloom quote?
Yep.
"Children's literature" is literature that speaks to the concerns of children. It's not a pejorative. Citing Lewis and Tolkien for clout here is a bit embarrass, because Lewis's contributions to literature amount to tedious polemics, the Derleth to Tolkien's Lovecraft, if we're want to be shitposty.
Tolkien was adamantly against the label, the "kiddie box" of literature, and insisted that there's nothing embarassing about reading fairy tales (quintessential "Children's literature") as an adult man, although of course, his perspective as a professor who studied fairy tales, among other things, is a bit warped.
Lewis concurred with him in that, even if his own writing was never quite as magical as Tolkien's. Chronicles of Narnia is very evidently framed as "Children's book", considering that almost all protagonists are teenage boys, from England, from Narnia itself or from that sandy desert with totally-not-Arabs adjacent to it.
...
But all of Lewis' unsublte moralizing about le society cannot be directed towards the supposed target audience, but towards their parents. Or may be I'm giving the old man too much credit.
He's right, but that's coming at the issue from the other end of things, that fairy tales or stories written for a child reader should not be viewed as lesser. And its true.
Mudcrab superiority
REMINDS ME OF THE DARK TOWER
newbies won't get this
I prefer Dean Koontz. With King, you gamble on quality. Koontz is more reliable, though he never quite reaches the same heights. "Strange Highways" is an excellent anthology.
I can't imagine liking Koontz more than King. Are you brain damaged?
I think I read a koontz book once. It was about a serial killer who liked to eat a big meal after he killed someone, and he had a friend who didn't like to eat after killing, and the cops realized it was two people because the second guy just put a bunch of food from the victim's fridge into the garbage disposal.
I think the detective might have been psychic.
>I was the one who wrote that copypasta interestingly enough. I was REALLY upset about the homestuck ending.
7/10 troll, you're actually talking to the dude that made it. It wasn't even a copy pasta, it was a one man job and the OG format was a lot more obnoxious than now. We have talked about this a few years ago already. You are now a part of the inner circle, I bestow upon you THE FORUMLA
>I was the one who wrote that copypasta, interestingly enough. I was REALLY upset about the homestuck ending.
>>I was REALLY upset about the homestuck ending
REMINDS ME OF THE DARK TOWER,
newbies won't get this
>someone writes a backstory that doesnt fit a gunslinger
>its the games fault
god americans are so frickin stupid
How the frick did you know I've been re-reading this series?
I Just finished book 2 actually. The lobstrosities were explicitly described as "About 4 feet long" and so heavy that Roland could kick one away but it felt "like kicking a boulder"
Oh this thread is absolutely riddled with shitbrain fungus
All the books are just good, pretending otherwise is silly. They're deeply compelling, and anyone who complains about Mordred getting Walter's goose is stupid, the man was doomed from the beginning, and I bet in every run of the timeline he gets fricked hard