Line #25 Literature/TheRegulators


1	[[quoteright:274:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_regulators_2.jpg]]
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3	''The Regulators'' is a 1996 novel written by Creator/StephenKing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.
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5	In the town of Wentworth, Ohio, an autistic boy named Seth has gained power to control the reality around him (thanks to the machinations of the sinister Tak) and turns it into a caricature of The WildWest based off the shows that Seth watches. Creatures from Seth's imagination begin to attack the town and the residents are forced to work together to stop Tak.
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7	!!This work contains examples of:
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9	* TheAlcoholic: Gary Soderson. When he's unable to find anything else, he drinks cooking sherry.
10	* AlternateUniverse: ''Literature/{{Desperation}}'', another book by Creator/StephenKing, is an alternate universe version of ''The Regulators''. It has the same characters, but in different roles (a brother and sister become a married couple for example, with their parents in one book becoming their children in the other).
11	* AnyoneCanDie: Including children. ''Especially'' children.
12	* AnArmAndALeg: [[spoiler:Marielle Soderson gets her arm almost completely blown off by the Regulators]].
13	* BangBangBANG: Gunshots are incredibly loud; a sound of a shotgun is described as the sound of "a detonating backpack missile." Justified, because the shooters are actually figments of Seth's imagination, made real by Tak.
14	* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: Between Seth and Tak.
15	* TheBaroness: Countess Lili Marsh, the sidekick of the main villain in the ''[=MotoKops=]'' universe is a stereotypical example of this character. She has dark hair, pale skin and "cruel, beautiful features." Peter Jackson describes her as "some pubescent boy’s first hesitant try at a sex-fantasy."
16	* BigBad: Tak, an extradimensional entity that possessed Seth Garin and uses him to transform the town into a setting similar to his favorite TV show in order to trap and kill off all the town residents.
17	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Tak is defeated, but in the end, Audrey and Seth both end up dead. However, their spirits wind up in the real-life version of Audrey's happy place, and one of the letters in the end of the book is from a witness who has heard the tales of the occasionally visible ghosts of a woman and a young boy.]]
18	* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Inverted, as [[spoiler:the neighborhood's only black couple are among the few survivors.]]
19	* BodyHorror: Less so than ''Desperation'' in which Tak's possession of the body would cause the host to expand and eventually fall apart; here, his possession of Seth is more of the psychic variety. That being said, Tak is unable to possess anyone else but Seth because their minds are too weak. When he tries, [[spoiler:their heads explode]].
20	* BrattyHalfPint: Ralph Carver looks like a cute kid but he is one obnoxious little booger who delights in tormenting his older sister and is spoiled rotten by his parents.
21	* CaptainErsatz: The characters of Seth's favorite cartoon ''[=MotoKops 2200=]'' are a cross between Franchise/GIJoe and the Franchise/PowerRangers.
22	* CartridgesInFlight: Early in the novel, a handful of characters try to identify what sort of gun a large, pointed metal slug could have come from by looking for features such as the indentation from a firing pin or a stamp bearing the caliber or manufacturer's name. Made even more glaring by one of the characters mentioning they used to help their father reload ammunition- meaning they'd at least know how a bullet works- and another having been on the ground in the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar.
23	* CelebrityParadox: In the epilogue, it's mentioned that a character has worn out not one but two copies of ''Literature/TheShining'', another novel by Stephen King. Zigzagged insofar as this novel is written by King under his alias as Bachman.
24	* DarkerAndEdgier: To ''Desperation'' given that it's written by Bachman.
25	* DemonicPossession: Tak's possession of Seth.
26	* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Jim Reed shoots himself after accidentally shooting Collie Entregian, after being egged on by Tak.]]
27	* EldritchAbomination: Tak.
28	* EnemyMine: In Seth's favorite show, the heroes team up with their enemy to stop something from destroying Earth. Tak channels this as the final assault on the protagonists.
29	* EvilPhone: The Tak-Phone.
30	* ExtremelyShortTimespan: Flashbacks aside, the main story takes place over the course of a single afternoon (of course, Tak tempering with reality screws up time untill his defeat makes reality snap back to normal).
31	* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: Various television characters from Seth's imagination wreak havoc on the block.
32	* GanglandDriveBy: We learn through a news paper clipping that, at some point prior to the story, Seth's entire family was murdered in what is believed to be a gang shooting. An unknown gunman killed them from within a red van with a radar dish on the roof. The plot of the story itself is kicked off when the same van suddenly shows up in Poplar street and the driver kills Cary Ripton and Hannibal (the dog of the Reed twins)
33	* {{Gorn}}: It's definitely one of King's goriest works.
34	* HappyPlace: Seth manages to create such a refuge for his aunt/guardian Audrey (using a vacation she took in her college days as source material) to give her a way to get away from Tak's various torments.
35	* HollywoodAutism: Seth's autism is essentially treated like this.
36	* HypotheticalCasting: InUniverse. After Johnny Marinville and his black neighbor, Brad Josephson have a hard time climbing a fence to escape from monsters, Johnny jokingly suggests that they should make a movie called ''[[Film/WhiteMenCantJump Black Men Can't Climb Fences]]'', where Brad would be played by Creator/LaurenceFishburne.
37	* KickTheDog: Hannibal, the German shepherd, is the second to die in the afternoon's mayhem. To show exactly how evil the villains are (or how evil Tak is, it's not quite clear how much autonomy his creations have), the shooter ''was'' aiming at a group of people but turned specifically to shoot the dog when he ran by.
38	* KitschCollection: Kirstie Carver collects Hummel figurines. Her goal in life is to design one that looks like her son. When Johnny sees them, his first thought is "and the Carvers had seemed so normal in other respects."
39	* LaxativePrank: Since she knows Tak hates to be inside Seth when Seth moves his bowels, and thus always temorarily leaves his host at these times, Audrey puts a laxative in Seth's chocolate milk to force Tak out of Seth.
40	* LudicrousGibs: When one character gets shot by the Regulators, she's described as simply disappearing, and then a second later a rain of blood falls to the ground.
41	* MamaBear: Audrey makes it repeatedly clear she's not going to abandon Seth to Tak's devices, and refuses to entertain the notion of killing her nephew to get rid of the entity possessing him.
42	* MasturbationMeansSexualFrustration: Audrey confesses to her journal that Tak gives off waves of hate and emotional energy which make her feel crazy; the only relief she has found is locking herself in the bathroom and masturbating. (This seems similar to the effect of the ''[[HappyFunBall can tahs]]'' in the alternate universe of ''Literature/{{Desperation}}'', which drive people to give in to their basest urges.)
43	* MauveShirt: Mary Jackson is introduced and given a rather full backstory, such as the fact that she's on her way back from cheating on her husband, and how she realizes she's not wearing any underwear, ''while she's in the act of dying.'' This is done to the point that she even believes that her husband and the neighbors, who are gathered after the death of the paper boy have figured out she is cheating are there to confront her moments before she is killed. This is especially jarring given in ''Desperation'' [[spoiler:she is a much more prominent character who manages to survive, against all odds, to the end of the book.]] This makes sense, considering The Regulators is in many ways an inversion of Desperation.
44	* NightmareFuelColoringBook: Seth draws pictures of the drive-by shooting in which his entire family was killed. The pictures are actually included in the text.
45	* OpenHeartDentistry: Subverted. Marielle Soderson's arm is torn off by a gunshot. Tom Billingsley, a vet, tries to treat her, but she soon dies. Billingsley remarks that she needed a trauma unit, not "an old veterinarian with shaky hands".
46	* OrphanedPunchline: When Mary Jackson is shot to death and falls down, Johnny sees that she's not wearing underwear, and thinks of a punchline of an old joke: "I don't know about the other two, but the guy in the middle looks like Music/WillieNelson". (The joke itself is never told in the book; [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/5jmjg2/a_woman_walks_into_a_tattoo_parlor/ it's about a woman]] who has the faces of celebrities tattooed to her thighs.)
47	** Also, "Hey, Mister, your sign fell down."
48	* ParentalFavoritism: David and Kirsten both seem to think that Ralph is the most delightful child who ever lived. Absolutely everyone else - especially [[TheUnfavorite his long-suffering sister]] - can see that he's a loathsome SpoiledBrat.
49	* PrefersRawMeat: Tak likes hamburgers with raw meat but stops eating them this way because Seth's stomach cannot take it and Tak is disgusted by his bodily functions even when they're normal.
50	* RealAwardFictionalCharacter: Johnny Marinville is now writing children's books, but in the past he won the National Book Award for a novel about ParentalIncest.
51	* RealityWarper: Tak.
52	* ScrapbookStory: Interwoven with the narrative are diary entries from Audrey detailing her life with Seth and Tak's growing influence, as well as newspaper clippings, letters, pages from books, and Seth's drawings.
53	* StepfordSuburbia: Creator/StephenKing spends the first 5 or 6 pages of the novel practically gushing over Poplar Street's all-American ''normalness'' with narration so upbeat it's almost manic. And then everything goes [[WouldHurtAChild straight]] [[{{Gorn}} to]] [[EldritchAbomination hell]], in typical King style.
54	* StylisticSuck: From what's shared of ''[=MotoKops=] 2200'', it's rather painfully a MerchandiseDriven cartoon of the 1990s. Audrey in particular isn't fond of Cassie Styles as the only female member of the team, and she outright can't believe someone was paid to think up "Rooty Toot."
55	* SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: Well, sudden twinner-death syndrome actually. In ''Desperation'' [[spoiler:Mary Jackson and David Carver are two of the only four survivors who make it all the way to the end of the story. In this book however, they are among the first three (four if you include Hannibal the dog) victims to fall to Tak's creations before the end of the fourth chapter]]
56	* ThoseTwoGuys: Between this novel, and ''Literature/{{Desperation}}'' Steven Ames and Cynthia Smith are not only among the few characters who remain virtually unchanged in appearance and manner in both books. [[spoiler:They're also the only two major characters to SURVIVE both books, and in both books, it's hinted they may end up romantically involved.]]
57	* TrashOfTheTitans: The Wyler/Garin household; Seth/Tak doesn't care what the place is like, and his aunt/guardian Audrey, the only surviving adult in the household, has much bigger problems occupying her time and energy. As a result, the place is a huge mess.
58	* UnconventionalFormatting: The book's ScrapbookStory elements appear as actual newspaper clippings, a postcard, etc. Audrey's journal sections are hand-written. Also, these sections have no page numbers.
59	* WantedPoster: A baseball card wrapper turns into one about Jeb Murdock (the main villain from Tak's favorite Western).
60	* WorthyOpponent: Tak considers Seth to be one.
61	* YourHeadAsplode: [[spoiler:The result of Tak's failed attempt to possess Cammie.]]

Context Literature / TheRegulators