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castleclerics · 6 months ago

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The Talisman: All Connections to Stranger Things

I keep forgetting that I read this whole book and bookmarked like eighty things so let's dive into all the connections that I found to Stranger Things (also things about the way the world of this book works that just scream ST to me that need to be included) including ties to my own theories.

(lovedddd this book btw. wolf is my fav character i've ever read, matt duffer knows what's up:

Quick plot: 12 y/o Jack Sawyer travels across the country to acquire The Talisman, which he was told will save his dying mom's life. He "flips" over between his world and to a world called the Territories constantly during his travels.

This is extremely spoiler heavy btw ok let’s begin:

This is just in order of my bookmarks to make it easy for me, bolded are the most important/blatant parallels.

First, just for some context if you’re curious, in the scene with The Talisman in it, Lucas is reading the part where Jack flipped over to the Territories for the very first time. This is definitely significant considering Max is newly in a coma, and probably alone wherever her consciousness may be, but more on that later.

-This man named Speedy gives Jack a potion to flip into the Territories. When Jack comes back to reality he asks where he went. Speedy tells him he vanished into thin air. It's veryyyyyy Will in the shed. He literally vanishes.

-Jack's entire journey is him traveling from the farthest east of the country, to the farthest west of the country. The Talisman resides in the west in the Territories.

-The queen of The Territories is Jack's mom's Twinner. When Jack sees the queen in The Territories she's in a coma-like state. "The queen cannot see, she cannot speak, she cannot move" ahem:

-In one scene a root from the ground in the Territories grabs Jack by the ankle and another one chokes him. Classic.

-Jack and his mom (Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer) really remind me of Billy and his Mom’s relationship. They also lived in California like them. Billy’s mom saying “ten more minutes, but any longer dad’s going to be mad” reminds me of how Lily has always tried to keep Jack safe from uncle Morgan, and how he was very abusive to her.

-While working at a tap, Jack hears the phone ring and he senses it’s something calling from the Territories. When he picks it up it’s a monster from the Territories that migrated to his world. He’s a customer sitting at the bar and he hunts down Jack while in the tap. Wonder what that reminds me of...

-When drinking the potion that can transfer Jack into the Territories, he instead got thrown back into a memory from when he was six.

-Something someone does in reality can have a ripple effect in the Territories, for ex. a war in America started a war in the Territories, when Jack's dad died in their world he died in the Territories soon after.

-Jack meets a werewolf named Wolf in the Territories, and he calls the real world "the place of the strangers".

-A full moon is coming so Wolf and Jack decide to lock Jack in a shed to keep him safe. Jack loses his mind in the shed because it's basically sensory deprivation, but given how much Jack reminds me of Will it's interesting it was a shed he was locked in because time itself starts to become not even a real thing to Jack, and he can't tell how much of it had passed.

-Jack and Wolf eventually make their way to this place for troubled boys called "The Sunshine Home" which is very HNL, strict, and revolves around evangelical Christianity. The man in charge of it all, Sunlight Gardener, has major Brenner vibes. Also, a kid at the home says over 60% of the kids there are there voluntarily which could be interesting to think about, The Truman Show kind of idea that if El truly wanted to escape the lab she could've. or this:

-At The Sunlight Home, Jack and Wolf try to escape but Jack had run out of Speedy's magic juice. While they're about to get caught, Jack concentrates really hard and realizes he can flip into the Territories with Wolf only with his mind. He remembers he used to be able to this as a child too. He would go to this place called “the daydreams” as a kid and he believed it was his imagination, only learning later on that he had actually been flipping into the Territories. Interesting because of the way ST ties people's own minds to physical dimensions.

-When they flip, they flip into “Furnaces of Black Heart” “Black heart at the middle of the world." A pit. there, the most fucked up creatures and horrific things that exist in the Territories live there. It just reminds me of the gates colliding at the very center of Hawkins, and how new monsters are possibly going to be crawling out of it (The Crawl).

-This one is probably my favorite. So throughout the book they really make you love Wolf, he's the gentlest soul, horrified of being in Jack's world and everything scares him but he still tries for Jack. He’s the most loveable character ever. At The Sunlight Home they end up locking Wolf in a box as punishment for him not getting used to the rules fast enough, which triggers him to turn. He then commits a huge massacre of The Sunlight Home and all the boys who live there.

However, what the book has already established about him makes you come to understand that he isn't a monster. It's the main overarching lesson of that event. Even though he just did all of that, he doesn't want to hurt people, it was a result of the way he was treated. I believe this to be a direct parallel to my theory that El actually did commit the massacre, and Brenner showed her a timeline where she didn't, in Nina.

-In the box Wolf was in, the cops found bible verses and stick figure drawings etched into its walls…

-For some context let's talk about Morgan Sloat, Jack's uncle. When Jack was 6 months old, Morgan attempted killing him in his crib, and is after Jack the entire novel.

-Here’s a direct quote about Twinners. “When one migrated and entered the body of one’s Twinner, the result was a kind of benign possession.” also Morgan’s Twinner, “Morgan of Orris”, spoke to him in his mind. Orris would migrate to the real world from the Territories and basically possess normal Morgan’s body. They don’t just possess your body, things about you change. Your heartbeat may run at a faster rate, your eyesight may be different etc.

“Sloat was able to plan murder, but it has been Orris, time and time again, who migrated to carry out the act itself. It had been Orris in Sloat’s body who had attempted to smother the infant Jack Sawyer in Utah (just as he had overseen the assassination of Phil Sawyer’s counterpart, the commoner Prince Phillip Sawtelle, in the Territories.)"

I haven’t seen The First Shadow and idk everything about it yet but I’m pretty sure this is this is very TFS Henward coded

-When Jack and Richard are almost as far west as they can go in the Territories in a place called The Blasted Lands, the creatures there remind Jack of radiation poisoning. Here's an excellent post that covers radiationgate. Jack concludes the land had nuclear damage and these creatures are born poisoned.

-The Territories can be a reflection of the real world at times like for example, if you're walking somewhere, your Twinner is walking in the same direction to a place that could reflect the one you’re traveling to in the real world.

-The "Black Hotel" is where The Talisman is held. The description of the inside of it reminded me of the Creel house and there were some people who believed the evil in the Territories had begun all the way west, "At land's end, at the edge of the big water." where the Black Hotel is. (the sequel to The Talisman is The Black House and I haven't read it but I'm interested as to why it turned into a house :0)

-While trying to run away from one of Orris' minions in The Territories, Jack tried flipping but had brought himself forward in time in The Blasted Lands a century or two where everything was abandoned.

-It's revealed that The Talisman is the "axle of all possible worlds". let's go timeline knowers!!!!!! Jack is the "chosen one" because he’s one of few “single-natured” people, meaning because his Twinner died (when Sloat had tried killing him in his crib in the real world, his Twinner had died in his crib in the Territories) and since that happened, he died in all other worlds, but he still exists in one world, only one world.

Morgan says how since there's endless worlds/timelines, then there more than just "twinners" and the Territories is just one world out of infinite ones.

-The Talisman is also the same in The Territories as it is in the real world and is the single thing that is the exact same in all worlds.

The closer Jack gets to the Talisman in the Black Hotel, the more he flips between worlds and the more the worlds overlap.

This may be the most important parallel:

The light within the crystal globe of the Talisman was every color of the rainbow. Rainbows are mentioned a few times throughout the book, even on the first page. When Jack would feel happy or protected during his journey, he would be reminded of a rainbow. You realize it’s because the Talisman is literally calling him before he even knows about it. In a scene he heals Speedy with the Talisman and even chants “rainbow! rainbow!”.

Idk if I've ever mentioned this, but I’ve been theorizing for a while now that the rainbow room is a direct reference to the multiple timelines/other timeline selves. I think this book proves me right, especially since The Talisman is the axis of all possible worlds.

The first time I ever thought this was because of this shot, twins on the rainbow.

“there upon a rainbow is the answer to a never ending story”

It gets more interesting when you look at something like skittles (taste the rainbow) and who is seen having them in the series.

I have also theorized that max being in a coma is important bc she's not fully gone but wherever she is, she may be another version of herself in a different timeline completely. She wasn’t supposed to be revived and I think this gives the characters an upper hand in s5 because she is still existing out there somewhere, as her Twinner possibly, and that Twinner may have knowledge the characters need if they can find her.

also here’s just some more rainbows in "holly’s" room that I had to add hehehe

-When Jack makes contact with The Talisman for the first time, an earthquake happens across all worlds.

-The final battle between Morgan and Jack takes place on the beach of the Black Hotel, and snow stars to fall. A huge storm ensues and reminds me of the source and spores in the air in Billy’s mind in s3.

-The very end of the book is the Talisman healing Jack’s dying mom and the queen of The Territories waking up. The healing is described as a birth and they describe it in vivid detail even mentioning how “the opening of the Talisman was like a vagina.” We all know the gates resemble vaginas, and how there is soooo much about mothers and birthing in this show and it just reminded me of this kickass post also by the goat @henrysglock because I cannot get into all that here but iykyk <3

But let's think about this again. The queen only wakes up because her other self in another world is healed, and is healed by something that holds every timeline in existence... and maybe that's why they chose to have the Talisman in the scene it is, and why they paralleled Max to the queen. In conclusion, I think Max’s Twinner is one of the answers to everything, and could even be possible that she'll wake up as her Twinner, not the Max we all know.

Thats about it! I lowkey feel like I’m missing a certain dynamic or something but if I think of it I’ll edit this and add it. I finished reading it a long time ago so this took a while to remember what was going in this book bc it has like 700 pages 😭😭 anyways I rly love this book even despite the few shortcomings it has and am so excited to see the series the Duffers are working on for it !!!!!!!! aaaaa

#im so excited to get this post out of my drafts it's been staring at me for many months bc i kept putting it off lmao #stranger things #the talisman #timelines

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pluppleseverywhere · 2 years ago

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I finished Fairy Tale by Stephen King yesterday. I was delighted about similarities I noticed between this book and The Talisman that he wrote with Peter Straub. But, overall, I loved this entire book. I don't have any major complaints, only silly gripes that don't actually detract from the story or characters in any way. I love the entire adventure from start to finish. I will say, though, that this is one of King's thicker books. And I know a lot of people, even some King fans, don't like how long some of his books are. They think they could often benefit from an editor who cuts out a lot of "unnecessary" stuff. I'm not here to say they're wrong or they're right, but I am going to say that people who feel that way about some of his other thicker books will likely feel that way about this book.

However, that's a big reason that I love King's writing and I love his chunkier books. I love the way he digs into the characters, even the ones we don't see much of, the ones that are just there to die, the ones that we don't even get to meet but whom the main character is reminded of for some reason. I eat that stuff up. I think, for me, it makes the book more immersive and the characters more real and so the things a lot of people complain about regarding King's writing are things I adore and major reasons he is my favorite author. So when you see me gushing about one of his books please keep that in mind.

Under the cut I'm going to go into what I noticed as far as similarities between The Talisman and the things I wish we had gotten in Fairy Tale but didn't. Spoilers for both books will be below so if you haven't read either of them and major spoilers will ruin things for you, don't go any further. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So, I'm going with The Talisman first. I want to preface this by saying that I have never finished that book. I loved, absolutely adored, what I did read of it but I had gotten an ebook file from my library for it and I didn't get too far before I was confronted with the fact that part of the file was corrupted and I couldn't read any further. So, if you have read both of these books and noticed things I didn't that are similar this could be a reason for that. I kind of forgot about the book after that but reading Fairy Tale made me think of it and I now have a physical copy I'm going to read next.

So, the first thing is that both of these books are portal books where the main character, a young man in Fairy Tale and a young boy in The Talisman, must go through on a quest to save someone they love and get entangled in far more than they bargained for.

In Fairy Tale 17 year old high school senior Charlie wants to save his dog from dying of old age. In The Talisman 12 year old Jack wants to save his mother from dying.

Another thing the characters have in common is an older adult character who tells them about this portal to another world and sets them on their quest.

The books diverge wildly, in that the world that Jack visits seems to be grittier and there's more violence right away. Charlie's other world is full of mostly good people who aren't interested in cruelty and violence. Most people Charlie meets are nice, and those that aren't are kind of neutral or just bitter.

Something that didn't get explored too much in Fairy Tale but was a major point in The Talisman is the idea that the people of these worlds are counterparts of each other. Charlie notes this concept a couple of times, most notably with Christopher Polley from our world and Peterkin from Empis. He states multiple times that he thinks they're Rumpelstiltskin characters and that, while he can't prove it, he is convinced himself that when Peterkin died in Empis it was the moment that Christopher Polley was killed in our world.

So, not only is the idea of counterparts existing for people in our world to people in Empis present, but so is the idea of intertwined fates.

In The Talisman Jack is told that people in this world all have a version of themselves in the other world and whatever happens to them happens to us and that to save his mother in our world he must save her counterpart in the otherworld.

In Fairy Tale it's mostly just alluded to.

I really enjoyed these similarities and parallels and I'm so glad that I had some knowledge of The Talisman in order to pick up on them.

Now, onto the things about Fairy Tale I wished were different.

It's widely known that King puts references in his books to the books he wrote before the current publication and this book is no different even if you take away all of the similarities with The Talisman.

There was a reference to Cujo that I was a little bummed about, irrationally, for an example. In this book Cujo isn't an event that actually happened bit rather a movie instead. I suppose it could be a movie based on true events but if so it wasn't so much as hinted at. This is a me thing, though. I just prefer the idea that all of these books take place within the same universe, in the sense that it is acknowledged that these things really happened and aren't just fictional books and movies within the books themselves. Most people probably don't care.

I wish that Mr. Bowditch could have watched Charlie play at least one game. I don't care which sport. I thought it was very touching that he wanted to and I thought he seemed disappointed that he wouldn't get to. I wish he could have gone to just one. I understand why Charlie didn't want that but I sure wanted it.

I wish Hamey had lived. I really got attached to his character and as someone who had bowel problems myself I identified with him in that way. I also just really felt sorry for the character and it was so sad to see him start out caring for Charlie in that dungeon and asking if Charlie would protect him only to watch his mental and emotional resignation to his fate and tell Charlie he didn't have to protect him after all. I wish he had lived and been able to he treated properly for his ailment. Maybe the doctor or Claudia could have helped him out a bit.

Barring that, I wish that Hamey would have been one of the ghosts that came to visit Charlie on his sick bed after the defeat of the big bad. It was left up to the reader to decide if these were real ghosts or figment of Charlie's imagination while he was trying to fight off poison, but either way I wish Hamey had made a visit.

I would have liked to get some more stories from Mr. Bowditch about his adventures in Empis that he didn't talk about in those tapes because they weren't pertinent and he knew he didn't have a lot of time left to tell Charlie what he needed to know. He said there were many more and I'm very curious. I wonder if King will write a short story or two about one at some point and put it in a short story collection, line he did with 'Salem's Lot. I would love that.

It was suggested by Mr. Bowditch that other people in our world might have visited Empis and mentioned a couple of authors whose books he thought may have had basis in things found in Empis. Could there be other portals to Empis outside of the one in Sentry, IL? I would love to know.

I knew Charlie would make it impossible for anyone to get to Empis through the portal in Mr. Bowditch's shed, but I still wish he hadn't. Mostly because it means Radar won't get another turn on the sundial and will die and I prefer to think of Radar living forever either with Charlie who decides to eventually take a turn himself or with Charlie's descendants. Who doesn't want dogs to live forever, right?

Anyway, I think that's it for now. There was an excerpt from his next book at the back of Fairy Tale and I'm looking forward to that one!

#Fairy Tale by Stephen King #books and reading #fantasy books #books #Stephen King #The Talisman #spoilers #review #sort of #i just loves this book #I want more!#even if it was already long

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