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timepiececlockI am currently reading Stephen King's 5th Dark Tower book, Wolves of the Calla.
I know, I know. I'm horribly, horribly behind. And just last week he released the 7th and final book, the book to end his magnum opus, his masterpiece, his work to encompass all works.
And I'm still a book and a half behind! ::reads furiously::
Still, I bring all this up because I was think about "universes" in fandom and I've decided that I fall back on the Dark Tower approach.
You see, fandom likes to present each show/book/play/film/comic as existing in its own "verse." There's HarryPotterverse and WestWingverse and Buffyverse. And beyong Buffyverse, there is Jossverse. One can reflect on the fact that the "verses" of the Terminator films and the Matrix films are practically interchangeable-- The Matrix is what happens when John Conner and the rebels lose to the rise of the machines. Or that the crew of Serenity from Firefly might as well be flying around in the same space as the crew of The Bebop from Cowboy Bebop, because the settings for both shows are almost exactly the same.
You may even be pondering what will happen the day the Guold run into the Peacekeepers for the first time. Who will win: the space-Nazis or the psuedo-godly worms?
And of course, there's the fact that Highlander-verse is cross-able with absolutely anything and everything.
So where am I going with this? Back to the Dark Tower, of course.
Stephen King's Dark Tower series (The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower, respectively) are based on a concept that he has woven into all the fiction he's ever written: that in the end, all universes and all worlds converge, and at the center is the Dark Tower. He's even said that as he's written over his carreer and ever since he started writing the Dark Tower series (20 years ago?), he's come to realize that all his characters in some way belong to the universes and worlds surrounding the Dark Tower.
Now, having read 4 and 3/4 of the 7 book series over the course of the last 5 years, I have to say that in my head, it's bigger than that. The way Stephen King sets up the idea of his Dark Tower is so beautifully meta that I can't help but want to use it to encompass all fandoms everywhere. There's no such thing as a fanfic crossover that could never happen. Because they're all linked through the Dark Tower at the center of all universes.
In my head, every fandom verse is somehow a world that branches of from the Dark Tower. Stephen King, with his beautiful mind, has created a fandom with which I can cross or converge or tie-in any other fandom ever created.
I know, I know. I'm horribly, horribly behind. And just last week he released the 7th and final book, the book to end his magnum opus, his masterpiece, his work to encompass all works.
And I'm still a book and a half behind! ::reads furiously::
Still, I bring all this up because I was think about "universes" in fandom and I've decided that I fall back on the Dark Tower approach.
You see, fandom likes to present each show/book/play/film/comic as existing in its own "verse." There's HarryPotterverse and WestWingverse and Buffyverse. And beyong Buffyverse, there is Jossverse. One can reflect on the fact that the "verses" of the Terminator films and the Matrix films are practically interchangeable-- The Matrix is what happens when John Conner and the rebels lose to the rise of the machines. Or that the crew of Serenity from Firefly might as well be flying around in the same space as the crew of The Bebop from Cowboy Bebop, because the settings for both shows are almost exactly the same.
You may even be pondering what will happen the day the Guold run into the Peacekeepers for the first time. Who will win: the space-Nazis or the psuedo-godly worms?
And of course, there's the fact that Highlander-verse is cross-able with absolutely anything and everything.
So where am I going with this? Back to the Dark Tower, of course.
Stephen King's Dark Tower series (The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower, respectively) are based on a concept that he has woven into all the fiction he's ever written: that in the end, all universes and all worlds converge, and at the center is the Dark Tower. He's even said that as he's written over his carreer and ever since he started writing the Dark Tower series (20 years ago?), he's come to realize that all his characters in some way belong to the universes and worlds surrounding the Dark Tower.
Now, having read 4 and 3/4 of the 7 book series over the course of the last 5 years, I have to say that in my head, it's bigger than that. The way Stephen King sets up the idea of his Dark Tower is so beautifully meta that I can't help but want to use it to encompass all fandoms everywhere. There's no such thing as a fanfic crossover that could never happen. Because they're all linked through the Dark Tower at the center of all universes.
In my head, every fandom verse is somehow a world that branches of from the Dark Tower. Stephen King, with his beautiful mind, has created a fandom with which I can cross or converge or tie-in any other fandom ever created.
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Date: 2004-09-29 04:29 pm (UTC)If I ever stumbled in, for example, I like to think it would look like a vast library. With a tremendous DVD collection and an internet hookup, and every story is an actual portal into the world it's about.
How is the Dark Tower universe set up?
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Date: 2004-09-29 05:48 pm (UTC)How is the Dark Tower universe set up?
Er... that's really hard to explain. It keeps changing and the characters pass through different times and worlds, sometimes without even realizing it, as they go. It's a quest story. It starts off in the world/verse of Roland Deschain, gungslinger, which may or may not be a post-apocayptic version of our world or another world like ours. But his world has "moved on" -- meaning it's dying. And all the worlds everywhere in the universe are starting to die and decay because something is wrong at the Dark Tower, the point where all worlds converge. So Roland is searching for the Dark Tower.
It kinda builds from there. A lot. See? It's hard to explain. Cause there's so many worlds and they all kinda mesh together. And sometimes they don't mesh, but you can cross them by going through doors.