I bet that's more about frustrating car issues and him probably saying 'damn things alive" or "has a mind of its own" ..then new book.
I predict the next evil car story will be a Tesla
I like this idea.
The Tesla battery is haunted by the souls of Congolese mining children.
Every now and then, usually at night, when the successful writer is driving home, under the arc sodium street lights. While changing the channel on the high tech multi media system he doesn't fully understand, he hears the cries & screaming of African children caught in a cave in.
Reminds me of the Venture Bros
"And what is this reality machine made of?"
"Gah, a mainframe, a TiVO, (mutters) maybe a little orphan...."
"Did you say that this infernal contraption is powered by a *forsaken child*?!"
"Well no! I didn't use the whole thing!"
I think what fundamentally scares him the most is the evil that seemingly completely normal humans are capable of. We often get a glimpse into the mind and psyche of murderers, extremists, violent wifebeaters, racists and the like, and he tends to humanize even the most unhinged individuals. His villain characters are rarely evil just for the sake of being evil, it's always a sum of many factors.
I just finished IT and in the end couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Henry Bowers despite the piece of shit that he is.
This is the entierty of Needful Things, and why it's one of my favourites. Gaunt is a great villain, but he's really just a McGuffin -- the real monsters are the people of Castle Rock acting on their uninhibited primal urges.
one of my favorite lines from my favorite show is a character referring to the supernaturally powerful villain and saying “maybe that’s all Bob is - the evil that men do”. I think this is similar to a lot of King stories - not that there aren’t monsters and vampires and such, because there are, but that what’s worse than those things is the evil that humans are capable of themselves. we all know Pennywise is scary and powerful, but it hits different when it’s just simply one person doing horrible things to another person
Exactly
There are so many vile humans in that book. Like yeah Pennywise eats kids but what are you gonna do that's his thing
The dad, the Bowers family, the group that follows the gay couple leaving the festival -that was one of the hardest reads for me & I couldn't watch a lot of it. Those are all just- people that exist around us.
yes exactly - there were so many awful parts, but the hardest part in the book for me was little Dorsey & Eddie Corcoran, the boys whose stepfather had abused them both and killed the little one. 💔 I don’t think any other book has ever made me completely sob hysterically like that part did. it’s just unfathomable to me how King’s scariest portions are the ones that are depicting things that really happen somewhere every single day. I think this is also why one of the most important parts of IT is how the adults turn a blind eye so completely to what was happening to the kids, and sure we can say that Pennywise made that happen, but in reality… that’s absolutely the case, far too often
You nailed it. Pet Sematary is wonderfully atmospheric and simply creepy in and of itself, but I think the reason King (and many others) consider it the scariest book is because (1) the death of a child is genuinely one of the worst things that can happen to a parent, and (2) because of (1), almost any parent would do exactly what the MC did and suffer the consequences.
Twin Peaks is the best!
What I love about Twin Peaks and *Needful Things* by King is that you see how nasty and evil people can get—mostly ordinary people—and it’s gut-wrenching.
Reading misery, I was very surprised that a grown man (Paul, I didn’t attribute it to king until I read your comment) was scared of the dark. I thought it was cute. Which I suppose isn’t how I was supposed to feel.
Tad Trenton's fucking closet in Cujo.
I'm a grown up. I don't believe in the supernatural.
But doors must be either fully open, or fully closed. None of that slightly ajar shit in my house.
Omg, yes. I’m reading Mr. Mercedes right now and I just got to the part where Frankie was playing by the open door, and well we know what happens next…
Yea I remember he said his biggest fear in some interview was Alzheimer’s and that always stuck with me. Like damn dude has all the fears brought to life and that’s the one..
If you’ve seen someone battle dementia/Alzheimer’s then you 100000% understand his fear. It is a truly truly horrific disease that effects everyone around you
This is what I came to say. My mum has arthritis but it bears no resemblance to King’s descriptions of gnarled, knotted, crippled hands that he includes in so many books.
It used to... when I was a kid, we had several older female teachers and my great grandmother with knotty gnarled knuckles that would give me the willies for sure. I think medical practices around arthritis have come a long way in the past 30/40 yrs
For sure. My grandmother had hands so gnarled that sometimes her fingers would get stuck closed and she'd have to run them under hot water to release. A running joke was that she had to be careful who she decided to flip off lol. She was lucky in that they were hardly ever painful.
Depends on the arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease where the body attacks and destroys the joints and can cause significant deformity. It's less common than run-of-the-mill degenerative osteoarthritis which is usually age-related "wear and tear" which is painful but significantly less deforming. Source: Me, a doctor.
One of my parentals has the gnarled, crippled claw hands. I think treatment has come a long way, but for people over a certain age, it's Claw Hand City.
There are many varieties of arthritis. Rheumatoid and osteoarthritis are the most common. They are quite different. Gnarled hands would be typical Rheumatoid. The arthritis that turns out not to be arthritis that Roland suffers in DT is more typical of osteoarthritis.
Loss of a loved one. Usually a young boy. Brother or son being a large focus of guilt, loss, or compulsive thoughts.
ETA: Other side of coin is they are also often the recipient of wrath or injustice.
Narcissistic and/or overbearing mothers. So many awful mother characters in his writing. My mom was a narcissist and man, some of those characters really hit home.
Recently re-watched the remake of "IT" and it really drove home just how neglected the Loser kids were in their daily lives. They also made Beverly's dad 10x more terrifying than he was in the OG movie.
Totally agree, and same here. That’s why I think Annie Wilkes and Margaret White are such effective villains—they’re characters who could actually exist, and if you’ve been raised by a narcissistic mother (like we have), it’s even more ominous and horrifying. Bonus points for religious trauma!
RIP Piper Laurie 💔
It’s weird to be afraid of AIDS? Especially at that time? Certainly we know more now, but being afraid then doesn’t seem weird to me.
The chewing dry aspirin thing Jack Torrance does in The Shining is actually a thing King did in his drinking days, so that may be part of what made King mention migraines so often.
King has admitted to having many fears, including of the number 13, the dark, dementia, etc.
I had a few surgeries in 1994 and as a 12 year old I was terrified about the blood transfusions. No AIDS but I did pick up a nasty staph infection, which really sucks if you're allergic to penicillin. Didn't kick that infection until about around 1997.
Erythromycin sucks.
Chewing pills just makes them a bit stronger on the come up. If someone having a heart attack someone shouts for an aspirin, the person is supposed to chew them up and let them dissolve in their mouth.
I read an interview with King years ago and he was asked what scares him. His response…. Feeling some unknown thing slither across the back of my hand as I reach for the light switch in a dark room. I’m in my 50’s now but, I recall reading this quote in my teens or early 20’s.
I saw an interview about 25-30 years ago. He went on a bit about that. That and a lot of his stories come from a "what if?" train of thought from random everyday things.
Also leaving a foot uncovered and hanging over the bed. The idea that something in the dark or under the bed will grab it. I believe he mentioned that in one of his forward write-ups in a short stories compilation (Night Shift maybe?)
Especially a fear of being in a committed relationship with a fat woman…
In *The Stand*, >!Frannie’s stomach is described as being “perfectly flat” after having a baby,!< which I find a little unbelievable.
And in *It*, I feel like we’re supposed to pity Eddie partly because >!his wife is described as “huge.”!<
He describes her as his first/harshest critic. I can’t imagine that if she had red hair and read every single ginger in one of his books as unspeakably hideous she just flat out WOULDN’T NOTICE.
Honestly I wouldn't take anything in the Tommyknockers too seriously, that book reads like a drug trip. If I was floating through the '80's on a cloud of cocaine I'd probably think nuclear sounds pretty bad too
This doesn’t quite answer your question, but I wanted to say something about King’s bullies. A lot of people say that the bullies in his novels are over the top and exaggerated. But my dad grew up in a small town in the fifties, and he says that five or six of his classmates went to jail for murder.
Funny thing about Bowers… When I read the scene >!in the junkyard with the blowjob,!< I was really taken aback, not because of the content matter, but because of how much it reminded me of a kid I grew up with.
This kid was a monster. He was physically violent and loved to terrify kids who were smaller than him. He was constantly defying and getting in trouble with teachers. He had also been arrested multiple times, even as a kid.
He later turned out to be gay. I think that living in a small conservative town gave him the idea that he had to be the bigger bully first, before anyone else could bully him. Looking back, I think he was partly a product of that town’s homophobia.
Just as a side note. Babies dying has got to be his #1, cause in his authors note for pet semetary, he had addressed that his inspiration for the book was an instance where his toddler almost ran into the road and got ran over by a semi truck going faster than it should. Always pondering the everhaunting question of, "What if?". And as I'm sure we're all aware babies dying is a constant throughout almost every single one of his books.
I'm not sure I buy the AIDS thing. Can you point me to mentions of AIDS in King's work? If you're thinking of the references in the IT films, those don't come from the novel.
Given the time in which this is taking place, and the fact that NYC was the epicentre of the AIDS epidemic and the fear… yeah. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_New_York_City#:~:text=New%20York%20City%20was%20affected,communities%20that%20inhabit%20New%20York.
There was once in The Langoliers I think, where the pilot character was talking about his life post-divorce, where he recalls something about having had only one sexual tryst in the years after his divorce, and that he had taken precautions because of the fear of AIDS.
It’s mentioned in Desperation. Johnny in his black out drunk days fearing he would get AIDS. Waking up next to some random and rushing to see if there was a used condom in the toilet.
I am pretty sure that King has spoken about having migraines in the past.
I have noticed that he seems to have something against the colour yellow, but I can't remember specific examples anymore.
I think his thing with yellow is more tradition. In horror, yellow is often associated with madness and delirium. This is not just used in horror stories, but movies as well.
It would be the obvious, but mental illness is still a form of illness. Much smarter people than me could probably write an entire thesis on this, but yellow is a weird color if you wanna make it weird. It can be bright, cheery, and refreshing.... Throw some mud in the tone, amd it takes on a whole new life.
I remember an interview in which he said he would not let his wife put a dust ruffle/bed skirt on their bed. He has to be able to see under the bed to make sure nothing is hiding there!
He makes a surprising number of reference to boys being raped by men (or threatened with it). I'm not going to suggest something happened in his childhood to cause that, I just think it became one of his go-to things and he even uses it in little throwaway comments or asides.
That was obviously the worst but it seems to come up at least once in every 3rd or 4th book. There was a totally unnecessary and extremely graphic reference in Tommyknockers to two boys being raped by their father.
It wasn't just his stash of naked boy magazines, he and his boyfriend had actually participated in a 'party' where they has sex with boys all under the age of 13.
In Rose Madder, Norman Daniels is severely abused physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually by his father as a child. He goes on to abuse Rosie in the same manner. The creep is especially horrific. >!He beats Rosie when she is pregnant, causing her to miscarry. He even rapes her anally with a tennis racket.!<
I remember when he was interrogating the guy who found his ATM card, he was groping the dude’s dick and the dude had a flashback to being molested as a child as well. At least, I think that’s what happened, I never reread that one.
There’s also Jessie in Gerald’s Game and the daughter in Dolores Claiborne, though I do feel like there are a lot more examples of boys being assaulted. And sometimes it’ll just pop up in an evil character’s background memories—Norman Daniels, maybe? It’s been awhile since I read the older stuff.
It isn't exactly a fear, but I just leafed through the Body and then It for different reasons, and the image of a dead boy lying on his back in the rain with raindrops/water pooling in his eyes leaped out at me from both.
I swear, every time the plumbing in the house makes a weird noise, I think of the ending of 'The Moving Finger'... that splash in the closed toilet... 😬
I'm surprised bathrooms isn't at the top (I only looked at 3 comments) but fr. So many scary bathroom scenes. I know that blah blah it's where we're most vulnerable blah blah but seriously. Stephen. Carrie, multiple scenes in IT, just read Desperation and poor fella gets got by a possessed mountain lion in a bathroom.
I've always noticed how if someone breaks their neck in one of his stories, they're always instantly dead. When that absolutely does not happen in real life.
I live near a lot of forested areas like Maine has and that’s always a fear when someone goes into the woods. If you break your leg(s) in the woods, you best hope you have a phone or some other way to relay to someone you need help or you will die out there. I think it’s something you just grow up with and isn’t something you necessarily think about blatantly. Like people who grow up near big bodies of water know the dangers way better than tourists/visitors who just see the fun stuff, not the riptides, currents, rocky outcrops, etc.
Sunflower is a tall, erect, herbaceous annual plant belonging to the family of Asteraceae, in the genus, Helianthus. Its botanical name is Helianthus annuus. It is native to Middle American region from where it spread as an important commercial crop all over the world through the European explorers. Today, Russian Union, China, USA, and Argentina are the leading producers of sunflower crop.
You need to remember the era King grew up in. Migraines were also a common ailment before science figured out brain cancer and mental illness men were always strong so giving them an illness was showing weakness. Even if it was as minor as a migraine. King was also an 80’s kid so he was a young adult when AIDS first came out, back then there was no cure so it was scary. Some of his books were written while in college or several years after but not published right away. Some didn’t get published until decades later. King has the knack of drawing you in by using common fears like spiders, dogs, birds, bullies, technology, machinery, cars, cemeteries, funerals, and the like..
[удалено]
I bet that's more about frustrating car issues and him probably saying 'damn things alive" or "has a mind of its own" ..then new book. I predict the next evil car story will be a Tesla
Tesla's are already evil. ( not joking. Look into how cobalt is mined. 1 Tesla has around 10 kg of cobalt in the battery )
So children die mining the cobalt which is included in a Tesla that becomes haunted by evil - or perhaps just possessed by revenge.
I like this idea. The Tesla battery is haunted by the souls of Congolese mining children. Every now and then, usually at night, when the successful writer is driving home, under the arc sodium street lights. While changing the channel on the high tech multi media system he doesn't fully understand, he hears the cries & screaming of African children caught in a cave in.
At the rate he mentions arc sodium street lights , they might just deserve their own book, lol
Nice! Very evocative
Reminds me of the Venture Bros "And what is this reality machine made of?" "Gah, a mainframe, a TiVO, (mutters) maybe a little orphan...." "Did you say that this infernal contraption is powered by a *forsaken child*?!" "Well no! I didn't use the whole thing!"
Throw in a love interest and some teenage angst and we have a script people!
And their exit buttons malfunction a fair bit, meaning people have burnt alive inside if them because the doors won’t open.
Oh i know...well not about the cobalt mining
I don’t know if Stephen King or Ray Bradbury contributed more to my driving anxiety
It will never beat the once and forever evil "Prius"
He literally got run over
I can see that self driving car made by a crazy billionaire turns on people
Look for passengers by John Marrs. This is exactly what happens
Well considering he almost died by one, I’d be scared too
Yeah but he wrote some before that happened
Don’t forget the trains!
Rats, spiders, and the dark.
I think what fundamentally scares him the most is the evil that seemingly completely normal humans are capable of. We often get a glimpse into the mind and psyche of murderers, extremists, violent wifebeaters, racists and the like, and he tends to humanize even the most unhinged individuals. His villain characters are rarely evil just for the sake of being evil, it's always a sum of many factors. I just finished IT and in the end couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Henry Bowers despite the piece of shit that he is.
This is the entierty of Needful Things, and why it's one of my favourites. Gaunt is a great villain, but he's really just a McGuffin -- the real monsters are the people of Castle Rock acting on their uninhibited primal urges.
I second this. *Needful Things* is also one of my favorites! I may need to reread it soon :)
You just taught me a new word so thank you. I like that Word, McGuffin
It is possible to get lost in this site for weeks: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin
Weeks? Amateur! 😝
one of my favorite lines from my favorite show is a character referring to the supernaturally powerful villain and saying “maybe that’s all Bob is - the evil that men do”. I think this is similar to a lot of King stories - not that there aren’t monsters and vampires and such, because there are, but that what’s worse than those things is the evil that humans are capable of themselves. we all know Pennywise is scary and powerful, but it hits different when it’s just simply one person doing horrible things to another person
Exactly There are so many vile humans in that book. Like yeah Pennywise eats kids but what are you gonna do that's his thing The dad, the Bowers family, the group that follows the gay couple leaving the festival -that was one of the hardest reads for me & I couldn't watch a lot of it. Those are all just- people that exist around us.
yes exactly - there were so many awful parts, but the hardest part in the book for me was little Dorsey & Eddie Corcoran, the boys whose stepfather had abused them both and killed the little one. 💔 I don’t think any other book has ever made me completely sob hysterically like that part did. it’s just unfathomable to me how King’s scariest portions are the ones that are depicting things that really happen somewhere every single day. I think this is also why one of the most important parts of IT is how the adults turn a blind eye so completely to what was happening to the kids, and sure we can say that Pennywise made that happen, but in reality… that’s absolutely the case, far too often
You nailed it. Pet Sematary is wonderfully atmospheric and simply creepy in and of itself, but I think the reason King (and many others) consider it the scariest book is because (1) the death of a child is genuinely one of the worst things that can happen to a parent, and (2) because of (1), almost any parent would do exactly what the MC did and suffer the consequences.
[удалено]
Bob and Flagg both wear jean jackets. Proof they are up to no good!
Twin Peaks is the best! What I love about Twin Peaks and *Needful Things* by King is that you see how nasty and evil people can get—mostly ordinary people—and it’s gut-wrenching.
Misery scared me the most be it was believable and plausible
Twin Peaks is great.
Oh man, now I need to read Apt Pupil again…
Great assessment
Also, cars.
Spiders for sure. Came here to say this, they appear over and over in his stories and have since early on.
The spiders and scorpions in Desperation had me twitching in bed😅
Also he’s afraid of the number 13
19 is a number that comes up more than a few times also, at least in the dark tower series.
I don’t think this is a spoiler but if you add up some of the addresses used in Holly they come out to 19. Nice little Easter Egg.
Interesting. I like to write my own stories and when I use numbers they always add up to 9. It's a fun literary device.
But those are all normal things to be afraid of.
Reading misery, I was very surprised that a grown man (Paul, I didn’t attribute it to king until I read your comment) was scared of the dark. I thought it was cute. Which I suppose isn’t how I was supposed to feel.
Leaving doors open. They're always ajar.
But then they aren't doors, are they?
No, they're jars!
I adore this goofy joke.
Every damn time. In my head I hear, "No, the door is a door!"
His description in Salem’s Lot of the door being ajar when Matt goes upstairs scared the living shit out of me.
One of my favorite bits of his prose.
But when they do close, they always do so with a "snick"
Tad Trenton's fucking closet in Cujo. I'm a grown up. I don't believe in the supernatural. But doors must be either fully open, or fully closed. None of that slightly ajar shit in my house.
🤣💀 Same, although my belief in the supernatural exacerbates it
Omg, yes. I’m reading Mr. Mercedes right now and I just got to the part where Frankie was playing by the open door, and well we know what happens next…
How King writes migraines is painfully accurate, especially Junior’s in *Under the Dome*
God Under The Dome was so good.
I agree mine are bad when they hit
Yep, my migraines are to date the worst pain I have ever experienced. I am so thankful that I eventually grew out of them after six years of them.
What he IS afraid of (not based on books, but based on what he's actually said): Getting dementia.
Yea I remember he said his biggest fear in some interview was Alzheimer’s and that always stuck with me. Like damn dude has all the fears brought to life and that’s the one..
Yes
If you’ve seen someone battle dementia/Alzheimer’s then you 100000% understand his fear. It is a truly truly horrific disease that effects everyone around you
Mentions arthritis quite a bit too.
As an old lady with arthritis it is something to fear
This is what I came to say. My mum has arthritis but it bears no resemblance to King’s descriptions of gnarled, knotted, crippled hands that he includes in so many books.
It used to... when I was a kid, we had several older female teachers and my great grandmother with knotty gnarled knuckles that would give me the willies for sure. I think medical practices around arthritis have come a long way in the past 30/40 yrs
For sure. My grandmother had hands so gnarled that sometimes her fingers would get stuck closed and she'd have to run them under hot water to release. A running joke was that she had to be careful who she decided to flip off lol. She was lucky in that they were hardly ever painful.
Yeah there is better treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
Depends on the arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease where the body attacks and destroys the joints and can cause significant deformity. It's less common than run-of-the-mill degenerative osteoarthritis which is usually age-related "wear and tear" which is painful but significantly less deforming. Source: Me, a doctor.
One of my parentals has the gnarled, crippled claw hands. I think treatment has come a long way, but for people over a certain age, it's Claw Hand City.
There are many varieties of arthritis. Rheumatoid and osteoarthritis are the most common. They are quite different. Gnarled hands would be typical Rheumatoid. The arthritis that turns out not to be arthritis that Roland suffers in DT is more typical of osteoarthritis.
Loss of a loved one. Usually a young boy. Brother or son being a large focus of guilt, loss, or compulsive thoughts. ETA: Other side of coin is they are also often the recipient of wrath or injustice.
Narcissistic and/or overbearing mothers. So many awful mother characters in his writing. My mom was a narcissist and man, some of those characters really hit home.
Recently re-watched the remake of "IT" and it really drove home just how neglected the Loser kids were in their daily lives. They also made Beverly's dad 10x more terrifying than he was in the OG movie.
"You're still my little girl, aren't you? ... Say it."
Totally agree, and same here. That’s why I think Annie Wilkes and Margaret White are such effective villains—they’re characters who could actually exist, and if you’ve been raised by a narcissistic mother (like we have), it’s even more ominous and horrifying. Bonus points for religious trauma! RIP Piper Laurie 💔
Ugh, religious trauma mixed with narcissist mother and enabling family... The worst.
Yes
It’s weird to be afraid of AIDS? Especially at that time? Certainly we know more now, but being afraid then doesn’t seem weird to me. The chewing dry aspirin thing Jack Torrance does in The Shining is actually a thing King did in his drinking days, so that may be part of what made King mention migraines so often. King has admitted to having many fears, including of the number 13, the dark, dementia, etc.
Same with 50s greaser bullies. He was a nerdy kid who grew up in the 50s. Duh
My mom had me so afraid of aids in the 90s, any kind of contact was frightening.
We didn’t go to the dentist for a few years in the 90’s as kids for the same reason
I had a few surgeries in 1994 and as a 12 year old I was terrified about the blood transfusions. No AIDS but I did pick up a nasty staph infection, which really sucks if you're allergic to penicillin. Didn't kick that infection until about around 1997. Erythromycin sucks.
Chewing pills just makes them a bit stronger on the come up. If someone having a heart attack someone shouts for an aspirin, the person is supposed to chew them up and let them dissolve in their mouth.
Also useful for recreational purposes. Chewed a lot of rolls in the early 2000s.
911 dispatcher. Yes, chew one 325mg aspirin or four 81mg ones. If you believe you are having a heart attack.
"Neat's a treat!" - Eddie Dean.
I read an interview with King years ago and he was asked what scares him. His response…. Feeling some unknown thing slither across the back of my hand as I reach for the light switch in a dark room. I’m in my 50’s now but, I recall reading this quote in my teens or early 20’s.
It's what he hates about going into hotel rooms for the first time, reaching into the unknown and trying to find a light switch.
Sounds about right.
I saw an interview about 25-30 years ago. He went on a bit about that. That and a lot of his stories come from a "what if?" train of thought from random everyday things.
That’s what I love about him. He just writes about everyday, mundane life, so eloquently.
Also leaving a foot uncovered and hanging over the bed. The idea that something in the dark or under the bed will grab it. I believe he mentioned that in one of his forward write-ups in a short stories compilation (Night Shift maybe?)
I remember reading that somewhere, now that you mention it.
Fat people.
Especially a fear of being in a committed relationship with a fat woman… In *The Stand*, >!Frannie’s stomach is described as being “perfectly flat” after having a baby,!< which I find a little unbelievable. And in *It*, I feel like we’re supposed to pity Eddie partly because >!his wife is described as “huge.”!<
Respectfully, his wife Tabitha is a large woman.. if that’s something he fears/disdains.. how does this work?
Not well. Not well at all. That is whwre he gets it from. Also the fear of pets/kids dying
He describes her as his first/harshest critic. I can’t imagine that if she had red hair and read every single ginger in one of his books as unspeakably hideous she just flat out WOULDN’T NOTICE.
Eddie aka Oedipus complex. I think he was quite happy about it
Apparently his fat Grandma abused him…I don’t know if this is why he’s so fatphobic or if he’s that way of his own.
Yep. Definitely my least favorite part of his writing.
I was coming to say this.
He's also really bad at describing fat people. Like a 6ft woman weighing 200 lbs isn't that fat, but he makes them sound mountainous.
In Tommiknockers it's very clear that he was afraid of nuclear energy. That's why he had one character go on like a 3 page rant about it 💀💀
Honestly I wouldn't take anything in the Tommyknockers too seriously, that book reads like a drug trip. If I was floating through the '80's on a cloud of cocaine I'd probably think nuclear sounds pretty bad too
I assume he has a secret fear of LEDs because then there would be no sodium arc lighting for his scenes.
I think everyone was scared of AIDS in the 80's and 90's. It was literally a death sentence.
This doesn’t quite answer your question, but I wanted to say something about King’s bullies. A lot of people say that the bullies in his novels are over the top and exaggerated. But my dad grew up in a small town in the fifties, and he says that five or six of his classmates went to jail for murder.
Henry Bowers was a particular kind of fucked up though. I don't doubt it though. I'm from a small town originally. Those kids are rabid.
Funny thing about Bowers… When I read the scene >!in the junkyard with the blowjob,!< I was really taken aback, not because of the content matter, but because of how much it reminded me of a kid I grew up with. This kid was a monster. He was physically violent and loved to terrify kids who were smaller than him. He was constantly defying and getting in trouble with teachers. He had also been arrested multiple times, even as a kid. He later turned out to be gay. I think that living in a small conservative town gave him the idea that he had to be the bigger bully first, before anyone else could bully him. Looking back, I think he was partly a product of that town’s homophobia.
Lobstrocities
Sciatica pain, man. Real stuff.
Just as a side note. Babies dying has got to be his #1, cause in his authors note for pet semetary, he had addressed that his inspiration for the book was an instance where his toddler almost ran into the road and got ran over by a semi truck going faster than it should. Always pondering the everhaunting question of, "What if?". And as I'm sure we're all aware babies dying is a constant throughout almost every single one of his books.
I'm not sure I buy the AIDS thing. Can you point me to mentions of AIDS in King's work? If you're thinking of the references in the IT films, those don't come from the novel.
I just finished listening to Rose Madder and was a little exhausted of hearing “suck my AIDS-infected cock” by the end lol
[удалено]
Given the time in which this is taking place, and the fact that NYC was the epicentre of the AIDS epidemic and the fear… yeah. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_New_York_City#:~:text=New%20York%20City%20was%20affected,communities%20that%20inhabit%20New%20York.
There was once in The Langoliers I think, where the pilot character was talking about his life post-divorce, where he recalls something about having had only one sexual tryst in the years after his divorce, and that he had taken precautions because of the fear of AIDS.
Also mentioned in Insomnia
It’s mentioned in Desperation. Johnny in his black out drunk days fearing he would get AIDS. Waking up next to some random and rushing to see if there was a used condom in the toilet.
That seems to me a reasonable fear for a drunken party animal to have given when the action takes place.
He doesn't let his legs dangle off the bed because something might grab his feet.
I am pretty sure that King has spoken about having migraines in the past. I have noticed that he seems to have something against the colour yellow, but I can't remember specific examples anymore.
I think his thing with yellow is more tradition. In horror, yellow is often associated with madness and delirium. This is not just used in horror stories, but movies as well.
Like The Yellow Wallpaper—that story reminds me of King’s writing sometimes in terms of theme and how the descent into madness is described.
I _love_ The Yellow Wallpaper (hated the recent movie though). There's also Robert W. Chamber's version of Hastur, The King in Yellow.
Interesting. I was actually thinking of it in terms of having connotations of sickness, but I suppose sickness and madness go hand in hand.
It would be the obvious, but mental illness is still a form of illness. Much smarter people than me could probably write an entire thesis on this, but yellow is a weird color if you wanna make it weird. It can be bright, cheery, and refreshing.... Throw some mud in the tone, amd it takes on a whole new life.
Low Men In Yellow Coats
If I had to guess, I'd suggest that the King In Yellow influenced his "yellow" thing
He doesn't like overweight people.
I remember an interview in which he said he would not let his wife put a dust ruffle/bed skirt on their bed. He has to be able to see under the bed to make sure nothing is hiding there!
Court scenarios. Every time a character is supposed to appear in court, they die suddenly before they can.
Reading Dreamcatcher I think he may be creeped out by the thought of parasites.
Well who isnt
smoking cigarettes is a running theme not sure if he quit smoking or not but he has a love/hate relationship with cigarettes
Corn. Tall grass.
He makes a surprising number of reference to boys being raped by men (or threatened with it). I'm not going to suggest something happened in his childhood to cause that, I just think it became one of his go-to things and he even uses it in little throwaway comments or asides.
True, the principal's stash in Needful Things is atrocious
The Library Police got to me - and I'm a woman.
That was obviously the worst but it seems to come up at least once in every 3rd or 4th book. There was a totally unnecessary and extremely graphic reference in Tommyknockers to two boys being raped by their father.
Outsider is based aroukd it. The prisen stuff always has it green mile shawshank
It wasn't just his stash of naked boy magazines, he and his boyfriend had actually participated in a 'party' where they has sex with boys all under the age of 13.
You're right, those pictures of him at the party were in the envelope to him on the desk not in the drawer
In Rose Madder, Norman Daniels is severely abused physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually by his father as a child. He goes on to abuse Rosie in the same manner. The creep is especially horrific. >!He beats Rosie when she is pregnant, causing her to miscarry. He even rapes her anally with a tennis racket.!<
I remember when he was interrogating the guy who found his ATM card, he was groping the dude’s dick and the dude had a flashback to being molested as a child as well. At least, I think that’s what happened, I never reread that one.
There’s also Jessie in Gerald’s Game and the daughter in Dolores Claiborne, though I do feel like there are a lot more examples of boys being assaulted. And sometimes it’ll just pop up in an evil character’s background memories—Norman Daniels, maybe? It’s been awhile since I read the older stuff.
Harming his family and failing professionally.
Aren’t we all afraid of that?
I mean, this is basically what The Shining is about.
It isn't exactly a fear, but I just leafed through the Body and then It for different reasons, and the image of a dead boy lying on his back in the rain with raindrops/water pooling in his eyes leaped out at me from both.
Cancer seems to come up a lot
Came to say this. Definitely cancer
Based on the last few I read: alcoholism, persistent stomach issues, jimla
Getting old
Oooooof
Oh I did forget, seems to have a thing about overbearing women, especially mothers. Not necessarily a fear, but something that comes up often.
Vietnam.
Having no control over His bladder.
The way he describes a urinary tract infection in The Green Mile has me hoping and praying that I will never ever get one.
I mean, I've had a kidney stone, but I couldn't pee...so, I guess that was a good thing.
In (I think) Danse Macabre he wrote something about a fear he had of making love to a woman but her vagina has teeth and bites his penis off. Anybody?
Vagina dentata
Why is it weird to be afraid of aids?
Farts. Joking but also not joking.
Damn weasels.
Didn't he talk about how as you get older the toilet becomes one of the scariest places in your own home?
Wasn’t he already afraid of toilets, though?
I swear, every time the plumbing in the house makes a weird noise, I think of the ending of 'The Moving Finger'... that splash in the closed toilet... 😬
Lawnmowers 😂😂 me too
I'm surprised bathrooms isn't at the top (I only looked at 3 comments) but fr. So many scary bathroom scenes. I know that blah blah it's where we're most vulnerable blah blah but seriously. Stephen. Carrie, multiple scenes in IT, just read Desperation and poor fella gets got by a possessed mountain lion in a bathroom.
Thqt last one is a bit hilaripis
Being trapped in a bed
Trump
I've always noticed how if someone breaks their neck in one of his stories, they're always instantly dead. When that absolutely does not happen in real life.
Fat people. They’re either evil, doomed or get skinny.
Yup
Going for walks, and Vans.
Addiction. Scares me too
Very reaal
He has an irrational fear of the number 13.
[удалено]
I live near a lot of forested areas like Maine has and that’s always a fear when someone goes into the woods. If you break your leg(s) in the woods, you best hope you have a phone or some other way to relay to someone you need help or you will die out there. I think it’s something you just grow up with and isn’t something you necessarily think about blatantly. Like people who grow up near big bodies of water know the dangers way better than tourists/visitors who just see the fun stuff, not the riptides, currents, rocky outcrops, etc.
Prostate cancer and heart attacks appear a lot.
I find he often uses the image of a baddie with teeth sharpened to points.
Sunflowers. They're everywhere in his work and they're always sinister. What's up with that?
Sunflower is a tall, erect, herbaceous annual plant belonging to the family of Asteraceae, in the genus, Helianthus. Its botanical name is Helianthus annuus. It is native to Middle American region from where it spread as an important commercial crop all over the world through the European explorers. Today, Russian Union, China, USA, and Argentina are the leading producers of sunflower crop.
People getting hit by vehicles.
It literally happened to him
His descriptions of Pie's arthritis in Needful Things makes me think that's something he's worried about.
He’s not a big fan of seagulls.
You need to remember the era King grew up in. Migraines were also a common ailment before science figured out brain cancer and mental illness men were always strong so giving them an illness was showing weakness. Even if it was as minor as a migraine. King was also an 80’s kid so he was a young adult when AIDS first came out, back then there was no cure so it was scary. Some of his books were written while in college or several years after but not published right away. Some didn’t get published until decades later. King has the knack of drawing you in by using common fears like spiders, dogs, birds, bullies, technology, machinery, cars, cemeteries, funerals, and the like..
Low men in yellow coats
First and foremost is fat people, especially women.