Re: Books by Stephen King
King has stated at different points that at first, Marten/Walter were meant to be very different characters, but that he got confused and, given the message he was going for and the similarity of the characters to one another overall, he decided to squish them together. If you read the first Gunslinger, then yeah, it's going to jar like hell, but I personally think it was smart of him to update the Gunslinger the way he did. Writers do this sometimes. If you read the newer Gunslinger, you'll even see tiny foreshadowings (the kan-toi, for instance, and the Taheen, which I quite liked). It's made a bit clearer how stuff actually works, and the ending actually makes more sense (the ending of the series, not the book, although the book's ending is clarified a bit too).
Okay...Susannah. *deep breath* I agree with you on part of it - I'm a big fan of how she evicted Detta/Odetta and became her own person - but if you'll remember what ended up happening to her. She did not just develop a new personality. She literally became infested by a demon, an elemental if you will, with a female aspect (or one that can shift aspects). It's a lot of hoo-ha, honestly, but the upshot is that this elemental (explained in book 6) realized after eons untold of not being able to experience anything that it wanted a child of some kind, and it made a sort of Faustian bargain with the Crimson King, said it would do anything to have a child. So what happened? Essentially, through some really wonky fantasy logic, Roland has sex with an oracle demon in the first book, and that demon somehow impregnates Susannah in book 3. It then essentially rides quietly for a couple of books before making its play. Yes, pregnancy is a bit of a tired trope, and I think King could've done better, but if you think about it, you can see it as Roland snaring Susannah, all unknowing, all over again; were it not for him, this doesn't happen and no one is at risk. But his choices led to this, put her in that position, so it's in many ways Roland's own damn fault. This guy does a lot of monstrous stuff when you get right down to it.
But Mia is a real creature, of sorts, so I'm okay with that part of it. Actually made me sympathize a little, even.
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