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The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King 1987

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Dark Tower AU where Mort joins the tet instead of getting killed and the rest of the series is about how the others just fucking hate him-

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I almost feel like I'm making actual progress with this series! Dark Tower Book II- The Drawing of the Three... done!

I remembered this one having lobsters in it, but I did not remember them taking up so much of the main plot (for what little moves on in this book). I definitely remembered a few details: Roland losing two fingers, like an adult Will Parry; Eddie Dean being a serious addict; and Sussanah's personality being an excellent reminder that this book was written in the eighties, when most people's knowledge of Dissociative Identity Disorder ultimately boiled down to watching Sybil once (oof, that's an obscure reference).

Whereas Gunslinger feels like an episodic (Tune in Next Week, Folks!) sort of thing, Drawing of the Three is arguably a just-shy-of-five-hundred-pages-long introduction to the cast we will be continuing our journey with. Consequentially, this journey has not moved on a bit since the end of the previous book.

Luckily for us, Waste Lands is next, and if I remember correctly, this one is actually pretty insane. It's the book with the robot bear, the killer AI train, the house demon, Roland suffering the worst of Time Fracture Headaches (with no chocolatized dairy products in sight).

To my fellow Green Creek fans, this ending line caught me off guard; it feels so T.J. Klune that I have to share:

"There I will sing all their names."

I've kind of made a deal with myself that I'm not allowed to read Out of Oz (thus finishing The Wicked Years) until I finish Wizard and Glass, since that was the book I gave up on halfway through. As an aside, I haven't really focused too much on logging these books I have others for the simple fact that I like to share my opinions on Revelations and Developments as they happen, in relatively real-time and that experience doesn't really exist for me with books I've already read.

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some more memes i made while reading "The Drawing Of The Three"

im shit scared to finish this series, but damn its addicting.

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Well. I finished the drawing of the three

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hi hello i’m here to rant about drawing of the three let’s gooo

first of all, every single obstacle builds upon the previous one. first we have the lobstrosities–which in and of themselves are the perfect way to start the book. if you’ve already read the gunslinger by the time you pick up drawing, you already know roland’s capabilities. he is the perfect killing machine. with both guns and both hands in one piece the man is nearly unstoppable. 

meaning: when he’s still whole and fully functioning, he doesn’t need the tet.

the tet is meant to work together, help where another can’t, they cover each other’s bases. when roland is still in perfect condition, he doesn’t need that. emotionally, he does, but he’s not to the point where he could accept or acknowledge that. the physical handicap forces him to that point.

anyway next the way that every Single obstacle is more dramatic than the last? impeccable. king makes shoplifting somehow feel more dangerous than a shootout in a drug lord’s den, and that’s in part because of the word choices, obviously, but also because of the character roland’s in the scene with. eddie is a little head empty but there’s cleverness in there and he’s willing to help. odetta/detta is Very clever and since detta is the one running the controls when roland steps in, is a threat to roland. this is really the first time we’ve seen something be mildly threatening to roland, and it’s a great way to establish how the tet interactions are going to be further down the line. he’s immediately establishing characters and points for Further tension later in the narrative.

and then we have the third act which you all already know i like the most (shut up kinnie) but it’s because this is the first time roland has actually,,,,freaked the fuck out? like yeah he’s been chasing this horrible evil wizard all these years, but then he meets One guy who commits murders and maimings for kicks and has a full-blown crisis. he’s seeing someone that he sees not only as a threat but as someone who could potentially outsmart him. it’s really neat to see when characters react realistically to other characters who go completely against their moral code instead of being forced to work together for plot reasons. plus the whole bit near the end where they have the mad scrabble for control of the body and roland almost loses. like i dunno it’s just neat to see this legendary gunslinger folk hero figure look at this twink-ass accountant and just threat.

anyway yeah drawing of the three has great structure and narrative tension so go read it

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Rereading the Dark Tower series and it just occurred to me that Jack Mort's last day on Earth had to wind up getting covered by at least one "weird shit" Youtube channel (or whatever) on that level of the Tower.

A completely ordinary businessman (as far as anyone knows) frames a gun shop clerk for robbery, knocks out the cops who came to investigate, steals their guns, steals ammo (sort of) from the gun shop, then holds up a pharmacy and demands penicillin and "pays" for it with his Rolex. Then he hijacks the aforementioned cops' car and goes to a subway station, gets shot by another cop and survives but somehow catches fire, then strips down to his underpants, shoves all the crap he stole into his underpants and jumps in front of a fucking train. And during all this he's doing gun tricks out of a fucking Wild West Show and doesn't kill anyone.

Like that's gotta be worth at least a Caitlin Doughty video, right?

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"Mr. Katz." his assistant said a voice that sounded strangely winded. "I think we have a prob—"

There was another scream. It was followed by the crash of a gun, startling him so badly he thought for a moment his heart was simply going to utter one monstrous clap in his chest and then stop forever.

He opened his eyes and stared into the eyes of the gunslinger. Katz dropped his gaze and saw the pistol in the man's fist. He looked left and saw Ralph the guard nursing one hand and staring at the thief with eyes that seemed to be bugging out of his face. Ralph's own gun, the .38 which he had toted dutifully through eighteen years as a police officer (and which he had only fired from the line of the 23rd Precinct's basement target range; he said he had drawn it twice in the line of duty . . . but who knew?), was now a wreck in the corner.

"I want Keflex," the man with the bullshooter eyes said expressionlessly. "I want a lot. Now. And never mind the REX."

For a moment Katz could only look at him, his mouth open, his heart struggling in his chest, his stomach a sickly boiling pot of acid.

Had he thought he had hit rock bottom?

Had he really?

The Drawing of the Three, by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #2)

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Giggles.

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From Stephen King’s “The Drawing of the Three”

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Did a thing the last time I was in New York, and now I've gotten to the part in "The Drawing of the Three" where it happens.

Click the pictures, because apparently it doesn't load them all the way?

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Eddie every time he hears the word Ka

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If you have given up your heart— you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast.

Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

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"Oh, fuck you," Eddie said disgustedly. "You're nothing but a goddam machine."

He strode past Roland, went to the woman, knelt beside her, and when she put her arms around him, panic-tight, like the arms of a drowning swimmer, he did not draw away but put his own arms around her and hugged her back.

"It's okay," he said. "I mean, it's not great, but it's okay."

"Where are we?" she wept. "I was sitting home watching TV so I could hear if my friends got out of Oxford alive and now I'm here and I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE HERE IS!"

"Well, neither do I," Eddie said, holding her tighter, beginning to rock her a little, "but I guess we're in it together. I'm from where you're from, little old New York City, and I've been through the same thing—well, a little different, but same principle—and you're gonna be just fine." As an afterthought he added: "As long as you like lobster."

She hugged him and wept and Eddie held her and rocked her and Roland thought, Eddie will be all right now. His brother is dead but he has someone else to take care of so Eddie will be all right now.

But he felt a pang: a deep reproachful hurt in his heart. He was capable of shooting—with his left hand, anyway—of killing, of going on and on, slamming with brutal relentlessness through miles and years, even dimensions, it seemed, in search of the Tower. He was capable of survival, sometimes even of protection—he had saved the boy Jake from a slow death the way station, and from sexual consumption by the Oracle at the foot of the mountains—but in the end, he had let Jake die. Nor had this been by accident; he had committed a conscious act of damnation. He watched the two of them, watched Eddie hug her, assure her it was going to be all right. He could not have done that, and now the rue in his heart was joined by stealthy fear.

The Drawing of the Three, by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #2)

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60 years ago today Odetta Holmes lost the lower half of her legs.

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The Lady Of Shadows (2/5)

It’s 1964 and you’re stealing jewelry from a Macy’s…