 So today we have a review that's been kind of a long time coming now that I think about it. It's Stephen King's The Stand, which was a patron request from Eris Targaryen. So thank him if you're if you're happy about this. And specifically I'm talking about the unabridged version because like originally when this book came out to the publisher made Stephen King cut out a bunch of stuff. It came out in 1978, I believe. And then in 1990 this version came out which had all the extra bits added in there. So it's kind of like a director's cut. And my basic thoughts on this are that it is 100% amazingly good. Like yeah, it's just uh It's good. That's about it. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So The Stand has been getting a lot of attention recently for two reasons. One, this story is all about a superflu that escapes from a lab and then kills off the vast majority of humanity. So, um, yeah, you can see why that might be on some people's minds these days. And the other reason is that a miniseries is coming out at the moment. And I did watch the first episode. I thought it was all right, but I am not that interested in watching the rest. I might at some point after it's finished so I can just watch it all at once, but you know, the the main thing is that the book is about the apocalypse and well, it's kind of hard to describe the rest of the plot from that point forward because the first like third of this is before the world goes away. Like this much basically is before the world gets destroyed. The prologue is the virus escaping, but we don't really see the effects of it that strongly until much later on. Like it's just introducing this whole cast of characters, getting to know them, their lives, their personalities, what their struggles are before the world ends, and then the majority of them are immune to the virus. So then the world ends and there's like, oh well, now what? And they basically wind up splitting into two groups. There's a good group led by some sort of prophet named Mother Abigail and an evil group led by some evil wizard dude named Randall Flag. And well, it's kind of it. You know, it's just kind of very basic bare bones, good versus evil when you get down to that. But what saves it really is the characters. Now pretty much every character in this book is I mean, it's Stephen King. You know, every character in this book is at the very least fleshed out. They might not necessarily be likeable. In fact, I think that's one of the biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses of Stephen King's writings is that he really knows how to get inside the human mind. He knows what makes us tick. He knows how to really portray what people think like. And the problem with that is that it makes all of his characters come across as kind of assholes. Like even the good guys, they usually just seem like massive throbbing pricks. And that's because if you could look inside the average person's head and really read all their thoughts, they would probably come across as a massive throbbing prick. Now that isn't always a bad thing. Like, you know, villains being that way works pretty well. And heroes, it works to give them flaws at the very least. Because again, they are the good guys. They are overall decent people. They just, it's hard to like them really. But that said, I remember all of them, you know, I remember Franny and what she's like. I remember Stu Redman and Nick Andross play the clip. And that goes double for the villains. You know, I remember Trash Man. I remember Randall Flag. Randall Flag is a fantastic villain. You know, I feel bad for Trash Man and some of the other villains and I think, man, this really sucks how a lot of these things happened and you understand why he became the way he became. Randall Flag is just pure evil though. And you don't spend a whole lot of time in his head from his POV. So whenever he shows up, that helps to make him feel mysterious and more powerful and more intimidating. And so whenever he pops up, you're like, oh, shit's about to go down. This is not good. Shit's about to go down. Okay. Okay, do not panic. Just stick to the plan. You know, that sort of thing. And it's hard to really go into detail about how much of an amazing villain he is because it's honestly kind of hard to put into words. But like I said, every time he shows up, he's just very intimidating. You know, he doesn't really have complex motivations or reasons for being evil. He's just evil for the sake of it. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But he is very powerful and a very threatening force. So more than anything, well, the other characters are, you know, good and fleshed out and yada yada, he, more than anything, makes the cast work. Now, like I said with the story before, it, um, that there's not a lot to it. It's just very bare bones, good versus evil. And I mean that in a very literal sense. Like Mother Abigail is supposedly, at least, literally touched by God and ordained by God. And all the people with her are the good people who will defeat Flag, who was chosen by Satan and is leading his army on earth. And that's supposed to be like the final showdown, or maybe not the final showdown, but this is like, who will inherit the earth? Will humanity be good or evil from this point forward? And it's just ungodly, corny and cheesy, especially once you get to the end. Because, um, probably not going to do a spoiler section for it, so don't worry about that. But basically, Stephen King just can't write endings because the way he writes is, okay, let's come up with these characters and introduce them, which works really well for the most part. And then he's like, okay, let's show them go about their lives a little bit. Let's show them start to deal with the threat, whether it's supernatural or a serial killer or something. And then that also works pretty well. But then it just keeps going on like that for a while. And sometimes he skips over the most interesting bits, like when the world is actually getting destroyed, a lot of that is very glossed over. It's like the characters are looking at stuff like, oh, hey, there's some sort of new disease outbreak. Well, let's be careful, wash our hands and stuff. And then later it's, oh, the entire town is dead. So it's, it's kind of weird. And then just, it shows them traveling for a little while, and then it skips two months later, and they've already established their community and everything, which, okay, that's a little weird, too. And then Stephen King basically just says, okay, I don't feel like writing anymore. And then he writes an ending. And so that can lead to a lot of very unsatisfying conclusions, which sometimes works. You know, I will say some of his books have decent endings. But this one is not one of them. And if I had to sum up all of this book's problems in one single word, it would just be pacing. You know, like I said, the first third is before the world is destroyed. And yes, these are interesting characters. And I did enjoy reading about their lives. And because the way Stephen King writes is very good, all the pages kind of fly by. But after a while, I'm just like, okay, can we like get to the apocalypse stuff? And then once the apocalypse stuff hits, it's okay, can we do something a little more interesting, at least? Like, geez, this is getting kind of dull. And then the last like, I don't know, 200 pages of this, it gets a little more interesting. And we have an actual climax. But like I said, that doesn't lead to much. And this book, I think has about 800 pages worth of story, but it's crammed into or but it's spread out across 1400 pages. Because just to give you an idea of how long this book is, I have my copy of Battlefield Earth here, which still has all the tabs in it. And that book is a monster. Like if you saw my review on it, you know that. But you can compare them here. Look at how much bigger the stand is, like you can noticeably see how much bigger it is. And granted, these are both kind of old and beat up. So it might be a little more noticeable if they were new and clean and everything. Oh God, that smells. Oh, wow, this is musty. No one's opened this for a while. But it's a little bit longer than even the way of Kings, actually, because I have that here, as you can see, a little bit longer. And both of those are really, really long books. But at the very least, they have stuff happening throughout the whole thing, like they have much stronger plots with without all the pacing issues that the stand has. And even though the stand has like really good characters and everything, that's just not enough to carry it all the way there. And I'm making it sound worse than it is, I think it is a good book overall. But it just tries to be a bit too much, actually. Like in fact, there is a quote on the back from the New York Times review. It says, the stand has everything. Adventure, romance, prophecy, allegory, satire, fantasy, realism, apocalypse. Great. End quote. And um, yeah, that's kind of it. It has too many things in there. And so it doesn't really manage to do all of them all that well. Like the romance in particular is just not that good. Like whenever characters start shacking up together, I just go, oh, okay, I guess they're a thing now. And I think if they were to cut that out at least, and maybe cut out some of the more explicit mentions of like God and Lucifer, good and evil, and just let us on our own come to the conclusion of like, oh, are they, is it really the forces of good and evil? Or is it just how humanity works? Like, maybe that could be cool. And it would cut out a lot of stuff in here. But you know, that's just not really the way Stephen King likes to do it, I don't think he is generally pretty direct. He doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation with his works, which can work pretty well. But in this case, I feel like it just fell a little flat. And like I said, this is the expanded edition. So like maybe the original is better in that regard, but I just don't know. And as for the miniseries, like I said, I did watch the first episode and thought it was okay. But I think that it managed to solve the problem, the pacing problem in this book in a very, I don't know, it solved the pacing problem. That's all I can really say. Because basically, the show is showing stuff that happened in the past, like when the outbreak first happened and before it happened. But it's also flashing forward to months later, when everything has kind of settled down and people are settling into Boulder, and the others are settling into Las Vegas. And there's like, okay, yeah, this is how things are now. But then it's just going back and forth, you know. So it doesn't really have that pacing issue. And I think that's a much better way to tell the story. I think that's a much smarter way to tell the story. And yeah, I'm getting kind of rambling now. But really overall, The Stand is a good book, but I don't know if it really is good enough to justify its length. So if you feel like reading it, then one set aside a lot of time to do it. And two, maybe consider reading the original version rather than the expanded, updated director's cut, whatever you want to call that, because it has a lot of problems. And most of those problems are due to its length. Special thanks to all my patrons. You guys are the best. And special thanks to my $10 and up patrons, including Aposavalanen, Eva Tuma, Brother Santotis, Christopher Quinten, Deanna Dayhem, Ambus, Emily Miller, Joel Carcat, Kitsune, Liza Ruta-Coba, Madison Lewis Bennett, Microphone, Sad Mardigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, Vacuous Silas, and Vaivictus. You guys rock. I love you almost as much as I love Gerard Way. Please like this video, comment, and subscribe to show me that you are nut a prep. Bye.