With the recent news that Idris Elba is being considered as an actor for Roland in the upcoming movies, I figured it was about time we had a Dark Tower thread. If you've never heard of it, The Dark Tower is a long-running book series by author Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King) mixing a sort of weird scifi-fantasy-old west feel into a story that's a bit like Homestuck, once you consider all the time shenanigans, universe shenanigans, and pop culture references. The story is about a gunslinger named Roland Deschain and his quest to find the Dark Tower, which is this big honkin' tower in his world that has to do with how reality is held together. The trouble: something's wrong with it. Roland's world has "moved on": time doesn't work the same, universes overlap, and fancy high tech creations are a thing of the distant past. While the series takes its time setting everything up - you don't even know what started Roland's quest until late in the fourth book - it's an interesting story, and the journey is much of the point. The first book in the series, The Gunslinger, is more concerned with Roland's pursuit across the desert of someone called the Man in Black. It is worth noting that besides the expected gun violence, the series is very frank with its use of sexuality, and nonconsensual scenes crop up here and there. (A character's sexual agency and who controls it is a big plot point in the fourth book, for instance.) Nonetheless, the series does have a lot of good themes, like what's worth sacrificing in the face of a bigger quest, what happens when fate has plans for you, and the bonds of adopted friend-family-comrades. I ask that people please mark their spoilers! The books have a bunch of surprises, and I myself am only halfway through the series yet. But wow, hey, these are great, let's talk about them.
Aw yiss, Dark Tower is my jam '3' And man there are (of course, did you doubt) already a horde of tiny children shrieking angrily about the possibility that Elba might play Roland even though a rumor is a long way from a casting announcement, yea even in the Dark Tower subreddit. I want to grab every one of these toddlers and be like 'heyyy we're all Stephen King fans here right, so rack your brains and recall ye that there has been ANOTHER Stephen King story wherein there was an explicitly white character and he got cast as a black guy in the film and turned out a stunning performance and SHOCKINGLY THE QUALITY OF THE MOVIE WAS NOT WORSENED BY THIS IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.' 'but Detta called him a honky once!' Man if altering like one line of dialogue SLIGHTLY is the worst thing that happens to the show I think we'll all be happy viewers. 'but he's supposed to basically be Clint Eastwood!' well since we can't actually cast Clint Eastwood there's gonna be SOME differences no matter what and what the fuck does his ethnicity have to do with his character? it certainly has jack fuck to do about how people in-series identify him as a gunslinger. (ethnicity CAN be very important to a character; exhibit A, Susannah Dean. if SHE were cast as white or whatever that would be a SERIOUS problem.) 'historically the equivalent of gunslingers were white-' hello Bass Reeves would like a word with you man I don't want to get my hopes up because yknow. this is show business and I don't have a lot of faith in them to take a 'chance' at casting a generally-seen-as-white character as otherwise. But I gotta keep my fingers crossed. ;3; (also I am thrilled to see that King don't give a fuck.)
I would watch Idris Elba reading the phone book. He'll be perf. I struggled with the first few books because my friends loved them and I needed to understand why they were calling me 'dinh' (I was the ringleader in that group) and stuff, but I loved books 4-7 like burning burning fire. Spoiler: warning: strong opinions, may be caustic Some people who I have tried to discuss Dark Tower with have had a problem with me because I really hate Susan Delgado. There are many female characters in the Dark Tower that I like, but she is SO NOT one of them.
@alchemicalheart Spoiler Yeah, I mean they can still have the 'honky mahfah' line if they want to, since Eddie's almost certain to be cast as a white guy, she'd just have to direct it at him and not him AND Roland :P Someone on Twitter also pointed out that 'Uncle Tom mahfah' might be something Detta'd say if Roland gets played by Idris. But no, EVERY LINE OF THE BOOKS IS SACRED or at least the parts that justify my opinions are!!!!1! @cryptoThelematrix Spoiler: i dunno what we should be spoilering :U Interesting, care to elaborate on why? No biggie if you don't feel like it :P I'm just curious, cause I've encountered plenty of people who are ambivalent/don't care for her particularly, but none that really hate her. Me, I had a sort of Sansa Stark thing going on with her, where at first she annoyed me a little, but on later reading I was like 'okay she's a god damn teenager and she's had/having a lot of really fucking horrible shit happening to her and has virtually no agency but does what she can with what she's got' and henceforth felt a lot more kindly towards her.
@cryptoThelematrix Spoiler: i dunno what we should be spoilering :U Interesting, care to elaborate on why? No biggie if you don't feel like it :P I'm just curious, cause I've encountered plenty of people who are ambivalent/don't care for her particularly, but none that really hate her. Me, I had a sort of Sansa Stark thing going on with her, where at first she annoyed me a little, but on later reading I was like 'okay she's a god damn teenager and she's had/having a lot of really fucking horrible shit happening to her and has virtually no agency but does what she can with what she's got' and henceforth felt a lot more kindly towards her. [/QUOTE] Spoiler: it's been years since I read the books but So, it's been a long time since I read the books but I don't remember thinking that she didn't have much agency. She had more than a lot of people in her society did, particularly the part where she was educated and could have done a number of jobs instead of what she ended up doing. She had a lot of strikes against her, it wasn't a good world to be a woman in, but she made some really bad choices when she had choices to make, and those choices had catastrophic effects for a lot of people who were not her. Sansa mostly messes herself up.
The most entertaining part of the whole Idris-Elba-as-Roland thing has been watching buttmad white fanbros show up on Stephen King's very own Facebook post where he said "I don't care what color Roland is" and do those verbal acrobatics of trying to say "but he can't be black!" without actually saying "but he can't be black!" Really, y'all are going to try to have this argument with the creator of the thing his own self? Good luck with that!
i wasn't all that interested in this series because the lone grizzled man hero in a heterosexual world of victims and angst trope is extremely over for me. but idris elba. idris fucking elba. wasn't there some breaking-the-fourth-wall bullshit, like hussie style but without the humor or irony?
There was definitely some fourth-wall-breaking bullshit, though I can't remember exact scenes off the top of my head. I don't have it handy and Google is not helping but a friend was fond of posting a picture of the Dark Tower itself with a lampshade Photoshopped on it as commentary on said bullshit.
yeah the most upvoted post on the link to Stephen King's tweet about how Roland's skin color doesn't matter, just the speed of his gun and how he takes care of the ka-tet on /r/darktower was along the lines of 'you realize he had no choice but to say that right???? he would have gotten in trouble if he'd said anything against it!!!1!' So yeah, tacitly implying that King totes probably DOESN'T support Idris's (possible) casting and is just lying for fear of the ess jay doubleyews. also arrrgh I'm taking a smidgen of a karma hit arguing with the racists in that subreddit >:( but I did convince one guy to change his mind, which warms the cockles of my little ace heart.
I just came here to congratulate you guys. I don't even go here but my plurk timeline is full of celebration. And Elba being the lead in anything is cause for celebration tbh.
Oh man I just noticed this thread was a thing and I have been slowly treating myself to each of the books in audio. I read the whole series a while back - I can see all the paperbacks on my shelf as I write - and I get so much more done when I'm listening rather than reading. While £15 is a big ask for me financially all at once, it's not huge to save up for and maybe treat myself every few months, since that's how long it takes for me to get through each one. I've just finished 'The Waste Lands' again (which will always be my personal favourite if only for the title. I was terribly obsessed with that poem back when I was smol and gothic and thought it terribly cool to know a long poem off by heart.) and I was SO pleased to heard Elba cast. He has exactly the right weight to play Roland, and fuck anyone who cares about his fine looks. It definitely has it's flaws as a series - the abovementioned lack of anyone who isn't entirely cishet, and the work Susannah mio, divided girl o mine has to put in as both the sole woman AND poc AND neurodivergent AND disabled of the main cast, which teenaged me didn't even notice but profoundly bothers me as an adult - but damn, I love the imagery and the verse and the worldbuilding so. My mum read them around the same time I did, and loved them for the same mythic quality as I did, we still have a little print-out version of the Turtle's poem in the kitchen.
Digging up this thread because the rose that grows in the garden of the abandoned house in the centre of my town is blooming again, and I thought people here would appreciate it. Here's a closer-up shot of it. It always makes me smile to look at it - maybe not as much as the Rose in the series, but I think folk who walk past like it too, because it's never damaged or hurt when it's in bloom, and there's someone who comes and prunes and feeds it each year. There's also a taxi rank that take up the street next to the garden, behind the rose, and I've seen the cabbies sitting on the wall keeping half an eye on it on fine days, while they talk and wait for fares.
