 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to Thursday Theorists. Today we are talking about Skeleton and Crew. Yeah, this is Stephen King's second collection of short fiction after Night Shift. I'm going to go through and tell you my favorite stories and then we're going to go through and talk about the stories that tie into the Dark Tower, the King Universe. I'm going to leave a couple open for you, specifically for you to find, so please do that down there in the comments below. I don't really care if you cheat, but if you know the stuff off the top of your head, that'd be cool too. So first up, the Mist. The Mist, there's an element to the story, the creatures, the idea that things coming from another world. I like to think that the creatures in the Mist are the creatures that Roland and everybody comes across while they're on blame, the mono going across the wastelands. You look down, some of the creatures that they describe there seem to be the same type of creatures from the Mist. Also, you have the, what is it, not the show, I always forget these guys, the shop. The shop is mentioned in this, which is also mentioned in Fire Starter, and it's also mentioned in the Dark Tower series. So all that stuff ties together right there. Next up, we have one that I saw, somebody made a very, very loose connect with, but I like it. It's fun, it's fan theories, all this stuff is fan theories, but here there'd be tigers. Somebody, I saw online connected, here they'd be tigers with wind through the keyhole because of the tiger that's in wind through the keyhole. It might be the same tiger, but if you've actually read Wind Through the Keyhole, you know that that tiger is not the thing from that story, but I thought it was a fun little fan theory. Next up, we have Paranoid, a chant comes into play later on, but as far as that one, I mean it's just, it's a poem and Kings never been really good at poetry, I don't think. Let's see here, Nona, Nona happens, a part of Nona happens in Castle Rock, so that again ties all that together because I've attached Castle Rock to the Dark Tower Universe already and other ones that's had, I connected the body and nipple things, all that. And by the way, it's Wendy's button box that connects all of them, it's the hard connect for all of Castle Rock, which is funny because that one didn't come till later. Let's see here, and then we have, let's see, I'm going through this. The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet is interesting because there's a lot of similarities between that story and the story N. There's also, there's also fan theories that say that the character in, I forgot the name of the story, in the Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, that's a hard one to remember. I always want to say writing the bullet and I know that's not it, but the Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, the same character from that, I think his name Reginald Reggie, something like that, wrote Paranoid a Chant, so that's interesting. But actually I did this backwards, that's how all the Dark Tower stuff ties in. Now we're going to go into the stories that I like and what I liked about them. I did it backwards this time, y'all fuss at me down there in the comment section. Okay, right off the bat, of course the Mist is great, I love the Mist. It's one of the best Stephen King adaptations, also the one with Thomas Jane. I couldn't get through the television series, I tried to watch it and I couldn't get through the first episode. I was just like, this is whatever. But I do enjoy it, I enjoy the way it starts with the storm and everything just building up and when they go out into the Mist, it's probably my favorite part, when they go to the, I think it's the store next door, I thought that was really cool. The monkey is another favorite of mine, for the same reason that chattering teeth, chattery teeth, can't remember, is a favorite of mine. It's just such a weird, weird concept and with the cosmic horror connotations that he puts in this with just the damn symbol monkey, it's crazy and it's the kind of originality and the original content that I show up for. It's the reason why I like Joe Hill's collection so much, stories like pop art. I love the weird stuff, especially if it gets too big for the story kind of deal and I think the monkey did that. The jaunt is of course another favorite of mine. The jaunt is one of those rare short stories that actually terrifies me, not because I believe in other worlds or other dimensions or anything like that. It's just one of those existential stories that really makes you think and get you involved and it is a scary concept to be lost for that long, however long those people are lost for when they go on the jaunt. It's a lot of fun, that story doesn't overstay. It's welcome, he gets down and dirty straight to the point and it's one of the few very succinct and tight Stephen King short stories, I love it. Let's see here. The raft is another great one, although as far as experiences are concerned, I prefer to experience in what Creepshow 2, right? I think it's Creepshow 2. I prefer the I guess the film adaptation version of it more than I do the story just for experience wise. I like watching that more than I like reading the story. Y'all fussing me down there in the comments below. Let's see here. Beach World is cool. Every time Stephen King tries to do sci-fi like that, I think he nails it because he doesn't go too far into it, doesn't go full on explanation. He just says, hey look, here's a story involving this weird shit. Enjoy it. And Beach World is one of those stories. It's fun. I mean there's nothing wrong with it. It's not that it's one of his greatest stories ever. It's just a fun little story. Survivor Type is another one. Somebody brought this up in the comments asking which one this was. And I think Cowboy, who I don't know, somebody beat me to the answer. So thank you for beating me to the answer. But Survivor Type is of course about a doctor who has to spoilers. I guess I could have said this at the beginning of the video. But he has to eat himself because he's gotten stranded on a desert island. It's just a really cool concept. Him being a doctor and him having, was it heroin or cocaine? It's something like that. I think it's heroin because there's a pain reliever. I've never done cocaine, so if it's a pain reliever, let me know down there in the comments below. You know how we did. Anyways, but heroin's definitely, definitely a pain reliever. But he uses that to chop off his foot and he just starts eating himself. It's a great story. Very, very disturbing. Oh, The Reach. Finally, at the end. And I always get this one confused with Castle Reach, Little Tall Island and all that. In fact, in the, I think the Castle Rock, Castle Talk episodes that we did, I discussed how The Reach happened on Little Tall Island. It doesn't happen on Little Tall Island. My brain is like the Mandela Effect or whatever the hell it's called. It happens on Goat Island, but it's funny because Stephen King later on in his career created Little Tall Island and the passage between Little Tall Island and Castle Rock would freeze over and you'd be able to walk across. So I just always assumed that that was the case with The Reach, but it actually happens on Goat Island. But The Reach, I think, is one of those fantastic stories. And if you remember in the last Thursday Thursday I did, I talked about how the man in the black suit, how he won an award for that story. And I said they were, I felt like they were giving him an award because they had missed out on opportunities earlier in his career. And I think one of those cases is The Reach. It is a personal favorite of Stephen King's. I know that from watching interviews with him even to this day, he says it's still one of his favorite short stories and it's one of mine too. As far as this collection as a whole, hey I really went backwards with this one. I'm ending with what I thought of the whole collection. The collection as a whole is not one of my favorites. There are some terrific, terrific stories in here, but there's really no middle ground. So the stories are either really, really good in my opinion or they're really, really bad. I don't, I don't know what it is, but it just felt like some of these stories were way too forced and it felt like they were stories that were maybe written to maybe make ends meet back in the day that could be wrong, that could be wrong, but that's what they felt like. Stories that you just crank out so that you can get a paycheck. But that's how I feel about Skeleton Crew. How do you feel about Skeleton Crew? Did I mention any of your favorites? Did I not mention them? Do you want to fuss at me? Because the ones I didn't mention, I don't like at all. Leave your rage comments down there in the comments below. But until next time, I have an E, you have an U, this has been another Thursday Theorist Review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!