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The Dark Tower/Stephen King Discussion Thread

On the topic of TDT itself, there are a couple of other books outside of the "main" series that directly tie into it and explain some vital info in detail. Those books would be:

  • The Talisman
  • Black House (sequel to The Talisman)
  • Insomnia
  • The Wind Through The Keyhole (canon spin-off of the series proper)
Granted, I wouldn't go reading these until you've reached Book 5-6 of The Dark Tower (or else you'll probably spoil a few things for yourself), but they're pretty important to the series nonetheless.
 
can someone copypaste my comments from the King vs Glory thread?

basically we need a 1-A key for CK

Gan should be 1-A

and Maerlyn needs a High 1-B | 1-A profile for being the firstborn of the Prim and possessing the power of the Void in his true form

that one blog is the key to all of this

again, it's like poetry, sorta they rhyme
 
K, i'll do it

Yeah, a different one, but it still could be considered to be another variation of Los. The only one that doesn't really look like that or have those attributes is the Black Thirteen, which could be considered CK's version of the Tower/Rose.

From the blog post:

Another form of the Crimson King is that of Black 13, a magical artifact from which the King's Eye looks out of. It can banish people out of the universe: "And Callahan sees what's inside the box: he sees Black Thirteen crouched on its red velvet like the slick eye of a monster that grew outside God's shadow. And Callahan begins to shriek at the sight of it, for he senses its endless power"

"Deep down in the black eye, a red speck forms, glows....grows. Callahans horror swells, filling his throat, threatening to stop his heart with its chill. Its the King, he thinks. Its the Eye of the Crimson King as he looks down from his place in the Dark Tower. And he is seeing me.

"NO!" Callahan shrieks........"NO! NO! DONT LOOK AT ME! OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DONT LOOK AT ME!" - Wolves of the Calla
In the Dark Tower, Rando Thoughtful, the Crimson Kings Minister of State, says that "Big Red always was Gans crazy side."


Honestly, the way Black 13 is described later, in that it predates everything, is very much connected to the Prim, and embodies the power of the Void beyond creation, I think that this could be CK's 1-A form.


Also from the blog post:

The Crimson King's avatar is naturally resistant to being erased from reality. The power of the Rose is needed to accomplish this feat:

"Now take thy pad, Patrick. Draw yonder man." Not that he was a man, but at least he looked like one.

At first, however, Patrick only continued to gaze at Roland, biting his lip. Then, at last, he took the sides of the gunslinger's head in his hands and brought it forward until they were brow to brow.

Very hard, whispered a voice deep in Roland's mind. It was not the voice of a boy at all, but of a grown man. A powerful man. He's not entirely there. He darkles. He tincts. - The Dark TowerSurely if Patrick had been able to erase the sore from that one, then he could erase the Crimson King from this one, leaving nothing but the balcony railing before him and the closed door to the Tower's barrel behind. Roland almost expected the Crimson King to breathe and move, and so surely it was done! Surely...

But it was not. It was not, and wanting would not make it so.

Not even needing would make it so. - The Dark TowerPatrick colored the other eye with the same delicate dip of the finger. Now two brilliant crimson eyes looked out of Patrick's black-and-white drawing, eyes that had been colored with attar of rose and the blood of Eld; eyes that burned with Hell's own fire.

It was done.

Roland produced the eraser at last, and held it out to Patrick. "Make him gone," he said. "Make yonder foul hob gone from this world and every world. Make him gone at last." - The Dark Tower



Oh yeah, and I still think I could make a case for 1-A Maerlyn, based off of rising from the Outer Dark of the Prim first, the fact that he possesses Black Thirteen, and that he has full power over the Todash Darkness between dimensions, which is also a void.

I can make a separate thread for that, but here's this:


What bubbled up from the depths of the Prim with a great burping stench of decay was the force of the Outer Dark, the ki'box of eternity. And out of that ki'box stepped a being that looked like the creatures that would later be called human, but human it was not. The firstborn of the Outer Dark was an agent of magic, and it called itself Maerlyn.- The Gunslinger BornThough Maerlyn looked like a grey-bearded mage, he was an Agent of the Prim, a creature of raw magic. Like the chaotic force that bore him, he cared nothing for either stability or order. All he cared about was his own amusement, and what amused him most was havoc. - The Gunslinger Bor

Maerlyn hated being exiled to Todash Darkness, so came up with a plan to lash out at creation via his laughing mirror. In doing so, he did a great service to the Random/Outer Dark by increasing that evil force's influence within the many worlds:

Maerlyn wanted Gan's pristine multiverse to reflect his own inner darkness, not the clear energy of its maker. He wanted to sully the new worlds so that he could fill them with his own filthy nests, but how to do so?

As the water of creation dripped from Gan's body, still sparkling with the energy of life that Gan had imbued it with, Maerlyn caught the drops in his hands. Cupping this precious fluid until it solidified, Maerlyn raced back to his cave on the shores of the Prim and placed it on a potters wheel where he spun it until it was thin and round. Then he placed his transparency facedown on his table.

The first thing Maerlyn did was spit a gob of silver spit onto the glass. He spread this evenly over the glass's back surface with his right forefinger - the one he used to point and to accuse. Once the silvering dried, he painted it twice more - once with a layer of vanity and then one of self-deception. Both of these coatings were so black that they were impenetrable to the light of reason. - The Gunslinger Bor

His magical looking glass was made to distort.

In the mirror's polished silver surface, good appeared ugly while evil seemed handsome. Not only did the mirror make all reflections of the White appear hideous and stupid, but it also made them seem ridiculous. In fact, the stronger the power of the White that it faced, the funnier the mirror found it and the louder it laughed. - The Gunslinger Bor


It seems like CK can just make a massive amount of avatars of himself who all seem to be relatively at the same level as Los or even more powerful. It makes sense though, taking into account his metafiction/reality warping/creation/plot manip/void manip hax (He doesn't have Void Manipulation or Concept Manipulation, and since Black Thirteen and CK both control these via the blog, CK should have them)

Yeah, he unkilled himself to avoid Roland's guns due to his mind becoming unhinged. .-.

But yeah, that pretty much covers the gist of it. King needs Conceptual Manip and Void Manip for the reasons I stated, though. Todash Space is non-dimensional and is similar to the Prim.


I think we might need to have a thread about Kingverse and adding more stuff for the top tiers, making more ultra-high tiered creatures, etc. Because Gan, Bessa and CK aren't the only transcendental, dimension warping dudes, neither are they the only ones who originate from the Void beyond creation.


Yep. Turns out we might need some more DT revisions (plus added profiles for Maerlyn and Todash beings like the Cthuns, as well as some cleanup on Gan's profile, maybe a straight 1-A rating for him and Bessa, and an additional Possibly 1-A key for Black Thirteen and maybe some other stuff) except this time I'll put more back work into it ;-;


I wanna talk about Maerlyn being 1-A due to the stuff I posted above, though.

He's stated to "twin," just like CK and Gan, and his lower form (the one you explained to me couldn't be 1-A because he got trapped via magic while drunk) was only his avatar, his real form being the first-born of the Outer-Dark in the Prim.
 
Was gonna do it myself (and separate some of those quotes that seem to be running together), but whatever.

Should probably mention though; I already addressed the thing about the blog's bit about Maerlyn having a twinner and why it doesn't match up with what evidence we're given, back in CK VS Death, remember? (Or was it CK VS Destiny? Hmmm...)
 
Found my old quotes. It was CK VS Death after all.

Anywho:

________________

"And before you say it, the bit in the source blog about there being 'two twinners' of Maerlyn is wrong. They were never stated to be different entities from each other, and such a thing wouldn't be possible anyway, as the concept of 'twinners' only exists within creation. (meaning it doesn't apply to beings originating from the Prim)"

"In regards to the blog we're using, most of it is accurate and extremely well-sourced. But there are a few bits, such as Maerlyn having a weaker 'twinner' and 'Legion', 'the Ageless Stranger' and Andre Linoge being the same entity as Randall Flagg, which are simple headcanon at best. As a case-in-point, Linoge in particular being an incarnation of Flagg was actually denied a while back by Stephen King himself much in the same way that he denied Dandelo and Pennywise being the same entity. (Although I forget where the exact source of his word on Linoge is)"

_________________

Explaining what I originally meant about the concept of "twinners" only existing inside of creation, it's much different from the concept of using an avatar to interact with the world. Twinning is basically a byproduct of Gan's whole act of dividing the multiverse to "contain all possible manifestations of life and experience". When covering literally every possibility that could ever be conceived, just on general principle, one will obviously run into multiple alternate versions of the same exact thing. In the case of twinning, the "same thing" would essentially be a person, and each "twinner" of that person would essentially be clones of him/her who exist in the many alternate realities of the Tower.

The reason why Prim-born creatures cannot have twinners is because they weren't born in a place that is capable of having any alternates out there. They were born inside of the Prim, which exists outside of the multiverse and only has one version of itself. It's similar to how those born in Mid-World cannot have twinners due to there only being one Mid-World in the entire multiverse. (Hence why we never see Roland run across a twinner of himself; such a thing doesn't exist)

As far as I'm aware, there are no direct statements (or even vague implications) that Maerlyn has a twinner, since such a thing would contradict the very nature of twinning that has been established in the first place.
 
Well, then the twinner thing is wrong and he just has an avatar then, unless you can falsify that statement as well, because the void properties of Black Thirteen and the first born of the Prim thing seem pretty compelling to me. (I never tried to say the blog was perfect)

That being said, I think all entities of the Prim need an origin 1-A, even if their lesser incarnations/forms are lower than that.
 
TBF though, when I read the DT series (1-7 as well as the Wind Through the Keyhole), I didn't really focus on powerscaling as much as how immersed I was in the mythos of the story.
 
Never said you were trying to claim the blog is perfect. Just making sure to cover all the bases, is all. I write long posts, but it doesn't mean I'm going on a tirade or anything.

Anywho, all of the above is just in regards to the whole thing about Maerlyn having a twinner. I don't have an opinion formed on any of the other stuff yet, but if the quotes support what you're saying, then I don't see the point in trying to "falsify" anything.

I'll probably try and read the other quotes in a minute.
 
@Fhf

I'll go take a look at that here in a bit.

I still say we need a new DT general revisions thread, as I now support the original statement of Gan/Bessa/Maerlyn's real form being Likely 1-A or just straight 1-A, along with Black Thirteen, which would go under CK's profile.
 
I didn't argue them being High 1-B's because of me wanting them to be that range though, I did it because while the Prim is a void beyond entity, I couldn't find evidence of it being explicitly beyond dimensions.

That being said, they're not the lowest 1-A's, either. Not the highest, but certainly not the lowest. The Prim also has levels within it.

CK still would stay At least High 1-B, he would just additionally get another 1-A key.

TBF, power wise, I still think CK is at the tippy top either way.

You could also just give them a 1-A key each for existing before the Prim receded, and then the At least High 1-B stuff could be after it recedes, since that void is not a thing anymore, and instead they're just outside creation because of Gan. Although, the Todash is also called a void beyond space, so...
 
It'll mean that all of the Crimson King's matches will be removed from his profile though, seeing as they feature Dis rather than Los'. A few of those were some of the most hype matches I've debated in on here, so if that happens, I'm gonna miss seeing those results on his page.

On the plus side though, if Dis, Maerlyn, Bessa, etc. become 1-A, that pretty much cements Gan as being well above baseline 1-A.
 
I think that

The 1-A key should be separate from Dis and Los, etc. Maybe "Before the receding of the Prim," since that's exactly what Gan does. It would also go great to display his power.
 
Aeyu said:
@Fhf
I'll go take a look at that here in a bit.

I still say we need a new DT general revisions thread, as I now support the original statement of Gan/Bessa/Maerlyn's real form being Likely 1-A or just straight 1-A, along with Black Thirteen, which would go under CK's profile.
Thank you.

A revision thread for the whole universe would be good.
 
Roland is missing a couple of different things on his page, also. Namely his hypnotism ability that he learned from Flagg back when the latter was calling himself Marten.

I think his resistances could stand to be updated as well, but I'll wait to go into detail about that until the right time comes.
 
Well, there's a lot of other ultra-high up characters that either simply don't exist or were deleted in the past due to being waaaay too vague.
 
I'll look into Roland's capabilities. I also might look for some characters we can add, but, i'm not really the guy for new characters.
 
Welp, since we're discussing Roland now.

Walter/Flagg states in the DT film (again, it's canon to the books) that Roland can resist his magic. He mentions this after trying to kill both him and his father with a command, as he only succeeded at doing so to the former.

He mentions it again later on in the film.

The wording of this is actually kind of important: Flagg specifically says "magic", not just "mind control" or anything else specific. Moreover, he directly no-sells Flagg's attempt to stop his breathing, and in their fight at the end of the movie, Flagg is stuck using nothing but telekinesis and fire against him, presumably due to the fact that literally nothing else he has at his disposal will work. (This isn't exactly spelled out for us, but they're also indoors during that fight, so he can't strike Roland with a lightning bolt either)

Aside from being the film's hamfisted attempt at simple method of handwaving the fact that Flagg never tries to kill Roland directly (the reason for that was never actually made clear in the novels), this should also mean that Roland himself ought to have some major resistances to magic on his profile, not just ones for mind/empathic manipulation.
 
Also, Roland's apparently been walking around with chronic radiation sickness and multiple forms of Hepatitis for God knows how long. He seems relatively fine.

Let that one sink in for a moment.
 
You were planning to make a revision blog on the Dark Tower Right?
 
At some point. I don't have all of the information on every single aspect of the verse yet, since DT as a work is huge and has a lot of different things that tie into it even outside of the main series. But I wanted to make a blog (or network of blogs) similar to the one Azathoth has on the Cthulhu Mythos sometime in the future, since it'd be a useful thing to have on-hand for many different reasons.

Why do you ask?
 
Just interested. Maybe i can get a few more scans. I'll compile all the ones you and i had in the CRT and above.
 
Posted something Flagg's CRT. Figure it's worth sharing here as well.

MrKingOfNegativity wrote in another thread:

There's some confirmation in the Gunslinger's Guidebook supplement on what Maerlyn's Grapefruit did to Roland. It did in fact pull his mind into itself, and the entire sequence where he's trapped in it is a lucid dream on his end.
Maerlyn's Rainbow info 2 (Gunslinger's Guidebook) (2)
It says "users who touch the Pink One with blood on their hands", but I dunno whether this is meant to be hyperbolic or literal, seeing as Roland did kill several people prior to being sucked into the Grapefruit, but didn't have any actual blood on his hands. He also shot it immediately beforehand, so there's always the possibility that it decided to just pull him into itself out of anger.
Anyway, given the above, and seeing as Flagg is shown directly manifesting numerous powers during the sequence where Roland is trapped in the Grapefruit, this means his Dream Manipulation is better than initially thought. He also straight-up ejected Alain Johns from this dream-realm with a single move, and made it so that the latter couldn't return for very long without losing his connection to the place. So that's pretty damn cool, I'd say.
If we get any profiles made for Alain and Sheemie in the future, this would mean that they have Dream Manipulation too, since both of them were able to enter Roland's dream and manifest some powers in there. The Crimson King's avatar was also there, so this'd be more proof that he has dream hax as well.
 
Making a suggestion here in this thread where everyone can see it.

We should probably replace Roland and Flagg's current images with better ones. I don't mind the ones we have for them right now, but there's other perfectly usable art we can use that's closer to their appearance in the novels. Some of it is the semi-official stuff done by Michael Whelan, also.
 
I really like Roland's art, since it captures his usual appearance. Flagg's picture is great, too, but I can understand why you'd want to replace it. It's heavily darkened.

For Flagg, are you looking for a picture of him in the Stand or the Dark Tower?
 
We could probably use multiple pics; one for the Randall Flagg persona, another for Walter O'Dim, and a third for Marten Broadcloak. The latter would probably come from the comics, since there doesn't seem to be any art of that particular guise outside of those.

For Roland, I was thinking of using this, since it's extremely accurate to his appearance in the books, but also shows his entire body. (Which the current profile image doesn't.)
 
That makes sense, Flagg has a lot of names, but those appearances are the ones we see the most. I still like the first pic for Roland better, but the lack of a full body shot is a good reason to change it. I remember this wiki making it a point to capture the full body of character for a profile.
 
I found another good pic of Roland that shows his body, but most of it seems to have been left in shadow thanks to Jae Lee's drawing style. There isn't much art of Roland that shows his entire standing figure; the majority of it focuses on either his facial features or his guns/shooting.

There's also this and this for Flagg and Walter, respectively. There are probably better resolutions of those pics floating around somewhere, though.
 
That first pic you suggested for Roland seems to be the better option when compared to the second one, because you can see the full body without much shadow. The second one is really dark. Found this one for Roland, doesn't capture the legs and the background is dark but you can make out his features.

Those are good pics for Flagg and Walter. I found a pic here with better resolution for Flagg, although it has a caption of Marvel. Also, might want to consider this for Walter or Marten. It looks good.
 
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