Horror
The Walking Dude
Author’s preface: Though I like to give Stephen King a hard time, see here for a good example, generally speaking I am a fan. I happen to think the Dark Tower could have been the greatest horror/fantasy series of all time if not for the disastrous Susan Delgado and the most cliched Deus Ex Machina ending of all time. Yes, I get it, time is a circle, everything happens over and over. That was clever series ending the first few times someone thought of it, but after ten thousand other examples it just looks lazy. Sort of like, I couldn’t think of anything better so here you go. Almost makes me wish he would have gone the George Martin route and just not ended it. The Stand is another one of my favorites and though it is far from perfect either, as a microbiologist of course I was gonna be favorably disposed to the main plot device and even after so many books, movies, and tv shows, have done the super virus thing to death, King’s version of a slowly falling to pieces world still resonates with me as one of the best, if not the best description of what such a thing would actually feel like to live or die through. This story is a sort of tribute to one of the main characters from that book and other Stephen King stories, the mysterious walking dude. I don’t find him a particularly compelling bad guy, wearing jeans and a jean jacket is about the least scary thing one can do, unless one is trying to frighten the fashion police. Walking is also one of the least intimidating or evil modes of transport, other than perhaps taking ubers everywhere, but I do find him interesting for other reasons. I have also wondered what it would be like to meet him, or a slightly altered version of him in my own world.
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