Me: Ka is a Wheel hasn't updated in forever.
Me: What's the hold up?
Ben: THE STAND is back at my house.
Ben: I've read a bit farther in it.
Ben: Further?
Ben: Fuck it.
Me: How much faurther did you get?
Ben: I read up to the chapter with the man in black.
Ben: Well
Ben: that is to say
Ben: I read that chapter
Ben: and the reason I've been delaying this conversation is because I'm having a hard time deciding exactly what I want to say.
Ben: Okay.
Ben: Let's go.
Ben: I mean
Ben: so far, THE STAND is the scariest thing I can remember reading.
Ben: It's a believable horror.
Ben: A seemingly benign threat that cannot be stopped.
Ben: It has the weight of inevitability with a small glimmer of hope.
Ben:
And I was anticipating that the remaining two thousand pages of the
book would concern the hundreds of characters so far introduced
struggling to survive in the empty desolation wrought by the disease.
Ben: I can foresee a good book in that.
Ben: A very compelling, very human tale.
Ben: I was glad, thinking to myself, that Stephen King wasn't going to fuck up this great setup with any kind of bullshit magic.
Ben: OOPS WAIT I CAN FLY LOL.
Ben: I mean, seriously.
Ben: Why was it necessary to attribute this narrative to anything other than human folly?
Ben: It has to be some dark Other perpetrating these schemes.
Ben:
It can't, I guess, just be about normal, real-world people plumbing the
depths of human morality (or lack thereof) when the structure of
society comes crashing down around them in the wake of catastrophe.
Ben: Frankly, I'm pretty fucking pissed.
Me: I guess the man in black shows up at some point to make the amoral flu virus more of a bad guy.
Ben: I was voicing my fears.
Ben: I was hoping they were unfounded.
Ben: OH WELL.
Ben: I was really hoping that the man in black would just be your usual antagonist.
Ben: He doesn't have to be the disloyal vizier sprinkling magic fucking poison sand into the king's goblet.
Ben: He can just be a bad dude.
Ben: Doesn't need to fly.
Ben: Doesn't need to consort with the dark forces of Evil to reclaim the earth in fiery apocalypse.
Me: Ben! He's a wizard!
Ben: Fuck that.
Ben: Wizard's don't have to use magic.
Ben: Holy shit I am so angry I am misusing apostrophes.
Ben: Look what you've done to me.
Ben: Look what Stephen King has done to me.
Ben: The depths to which I have sunk.
Me: LOL
Ben: Anyway
Ben: I am still enjoying the book so far
Ben: but my cautious optimism has been replaced with trepidation.
Me: What do you think is going to happen now?
Ben:
I think now the world is going to end and then this ragtag group of
misfits will discover that it was the midichlorians in their blood that
allowed them to resist the disease, and then they will have lightsaber
duels with the four horsemen of the apocalypse before confronting Satan
himself, who is actually a giant spider.
Me: Forget about the spider bullshit.
Ben: Hahaha.
Me: That was the disappointing revelation at the end of IT.
Ben: Everything is drawn to the Dark Tower.
Me: Just the cosmic Turtle.
Me:
Most of the book is the post-apocalypse story, the magic just
influences the direction of the plot and character motivations after the
world is over.
Ben: Okay.
Me: Because the man in black is like the personification of the evil of man or something.
Me: Doesn't King give a bunch of anecdotes about him being involved with evil shit but not actually directly causing it?
Ben: I'm not sure if they were allusions or if he was implying that he was actually physically present for every evil event ever.
Me: Well he kept coming back and causing mischief in that one kingdom didn't he?
Me: He's a shit stirrer like Will.
Ben: You can't name drop like that on KA IS A WHEEL.
Ben: You'll have to redact that.
Me: It will read "He's a shit stirrer like Will."
Me: Like how Richard became Richard.
Ben: Oh my god.
Me: Now that will read "Like how Richard became Richard."
Ben: That's what I was lamenting.
