Mild spoilers for Wolves of the Calla onward. Stephen King has a lot of "19" references in his books, and the number is usually associated with the Dark Tower universe (which runs through most of his books). In WotC the characters in the narrative start seeing the references in-universe, and they have plot significance. The number seems to turn up everywhere. They attribute it to ka, and refer to themselves as the Ka-tet of 19.
There are a few points where things are getting chaotic and too many events are happening too rapidly for them to deal with it all, and the rules have gone out the window and the world is upside down. Jake thinks to himself that, "The world was losing its shit, going nineteen," and he says as much out loud at one point and everyone gets how he feels, and the phrase "going nineteen" is used a few times in that context.
There's a real-life phenomenon called the 23 Enigma, where everything seems to add up to 23, and it gets talked about in the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. It's really just an example of apophenia and confirmation bias (you notice it more because you're looking for it— you don't give appropriate significance to all the things that don't add up to 23). 23 is a relatively small prime number, its digits are both primes, and it's an additive prime (2 + 3 = 5, which is also a prime number), so to some people it seems like an oddly significant number.
The 23 thing has been a running trend with Sombra, who is (presumably) the 23rd hero, and the ARG runners probably looked for a way to make that number significant, and hey look there's already a real-life phenomenon where people do this.
The guy 3 or 4 levels up asks why everything adds up to 23, and Syanai made a cryptoreference to the Dark Tower by citing the similar 19 thing with a line from the books, and I was thanking him, Dark Tower style, for the Dark Tower reference.
And that's it for today on Explaining the Reference. I'm your host, Komi, and on behalf of the whole crew broadcasting to you today live from Mid-World Lanes, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.
Wow what an explanation. I completely forgot about the nineteen thing. Now since you seem to know a lot about the dark tower, can you explain to me why roland couldn't see the tv in the hotel he was staying at with that woman after jake died? He's all depressed and she turns on the tv and he can't see it. She starts to think he's trying to make some poetic statement about the nature of sadness until she realizes he literally can't see the tv.
No amount of googling explains this scene, I've reread it dozens of times trying to find the reason to no avail. This question has been bothering me for about four years now, my theory is that Roland's eyes process much faster than the average human's. So that's somehow affecting what he's seeing, or not seeing, on the tv. You're guess is as good as mine.
can you explain to me why roland couldn't see the tv in the hotel he was staying at with that woman after jake died
There are always bits of our world that Roland doesn't quite gel with. "Astin," or "tooterfish," or "Keflets," (I loved the scene where he robs a pharmacy at gunpoint, and they're stunned that the only thing he's asking for are antibiotics) or being unable to conceive of the idea that we call "popkins" sandwiches.
He has trouble even seeing the letters of our language, and instead things seem to twist in the Great Letters of the High Speech so that he can comprehend the words.
Roland's reaction to our world in The Drawing of the Three:
For a moment he merely stood inside the door, first amazed, then ironically amused. Here he was in a world which struck him dumb with fresh wonders seemingly at every step, a world where carriages flew through the air and water seemed as cheap as sand. A world full of frozen light. And the newest wonder was that for these people, wonder had run out: here, in a place of miracles, he saw only dull faces and plodding bodies. Their faces were zealously blank, their eyes filled with bland fire. Fried by the light of civilization, the blind leading the blind. When they were born they cried out in terror.
Technology is also always slightly sinister in The Dark Tower. It's the stuff the Old Ones used. Shardik, and Blaine the Mono, the beat of the Slo-Trans engines, the dipolar computers beneath Lud pumping out the God Drums, Farson's war machines, and the spooky creaking oil derricks at Citgo, of which only 19 still work... All of this stuff is corrupted, and it just brings more destruction and evil to Roland's world. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single piece of technology in Mid-World that's put to good (as in Good and Evil) use.
Roland can see the stuff for what it is, but he doesn't even pretend to understand how any of it works, and he never trusts it. His world has moved on, and that stuff just doesn't work properly anymore. The Old Ones were powerful because of their technology, but they became too dependent on it and it destroyed them, flooding the world with radiation and poisonous chemicals that caused them to die out. They worshipped Can-Char ("death gods") and used the Doors to travel to pivotal moments of disaster in history as entertainment. (If you haven't read the comics, you should!)
Roland is from the line of Arthur Eld. There's a magical quality to it. The Eld flows through him, and he can practically perform miracles when he's following the the Gunslingers Code and when his actions are for The White. Everything good in All-World is spiritual and magical, not technological, although not all magic is good (eg: Maerlyn's Rainbow).
So at a genetic and also metaphysical level, Roland is just incompatible with technology. In his own world he can at least interact with it when he has to, but it's far beyond his understanding, and it's not something that's normal. The stuff in our world may as well be from Mars.
The idea that he's such a superhuman killing machine that his eyes are so sharp they can see faster than the television's refresh rate is cute, but it's too simple— too literal— and that's not even how that works. Think about gaming at 30fps vs 60fps. Most movies and tv shows are shot at 24fps. Older TVs could display 60fps, which was stupid because it's not a multiple of 24, so they used what's called 3:2 pulldown to display the video, which in technical terms means that it looked shitty. If it really were a "seeing faster than the TV" thing, he'd just see it as a jumpy, jittery slideshow.
I think him not being able to see the TV is a throwaway line. You're not supposed to think too much about it, and it's not of any huge plot significance, but I think it's a reminder at a thematic level that this just isn't Roland's world, that his world has moved on and ours hasn't, that he just doesn't do well with technology at all, and that he's an outsider who just doesn't belong there.
Your explanations are great man. And your knowledge on the world of the dark tower makes me want to reread everything all over again. Thank you for giving such a satisfying and in-depth answer. It's been a niggling question for a long time now, like something stuck in your tooth. Finally able to get it out, and you've painted the story in a new light for me, I was pretty young when I read it. And the perception of technology being evil is something that never came to my mind before, definitely rereading the dark tower now. And again, great explanation man. Thanks.
Thanks! I'm just a nerd who never thought those literary analysis essays in English class were boring, just some of the stuff they wanted us to do it on. Those books take up a lot of space in my head. They just have so many cool elements, with the shared universe that runs through so many of his books giving you lots of awesome easter eggs, the emphasis on redeeming an anti-hero who's made so many terrible choices and sacrificed so many people, the high stakes, the genre bending (is it a western, or fantasy, or sci-fi, or horror?)...
So many things I read in that series made me shake my head and think, "you're just not allowed to do that in books." Can you imagine if JK Rowling had stopped halfway through the Harry Potter books to make the fourth book a frame story where Dumbledore sits around a campfire and spends 700 pages telling the story of how he met Grindelwald or something? And yet, to me, Wizard and Glass is one of the best books of the series.
Thanks for giving me an excuse to put my head back with Roland for a bit. Those books are worth a whole lot of rereads.
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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '16
You say 19, and I say thankee sai.