The Thread of Stephen King

3 pages and no mention of Misery? I always thought that was a good one.

I used to like Misery, even watched the film adaptation with Kathy Bates and James Caan, and liked that too.

Now, though? I'm not so sure. And it's hard to say why. It's not a book or a film I'm going to read or watch again for a while.

Mind you, it's streets ahead of how I think about Pet Sematary. (Vile, depraved and sickening.)

I thought it was just supposed to be very very scary?

Is there a reason why Pennywise is a figurative and literal monster in the first place, or is he just Made of Evil? Or is it one of those things where Nothing Is Scarier. I am still wondering what exactly he was doing before he reached Earth, given he's some sort of entity that predates the universe

To be fair, for the longest time, King himself thought Pet Semetary may have been too terrifying to publish, and only released it due to a contractual obligation.

Oh, so he could have lost some money if he didn't publish that dreck?

My heart bleeds the world's supply of purple pish.

Yes, Pennywise does seem to be made of evil. It gets worse when you realize that he's just a mask It is wearing.

So I finally finished The Dark Tower series. I dont know what to think of that ending yet, but I'm still glad I read through the series (I only read the main 7 books, I didnt read any of the books that are "connected" to the universe save for Salem's Lot, which I read before I knew that a character from it shows up later).

I recently finished Revival. It was okay, the characters were well written, though like with some other recent works of King it spends waaaaay too much time on the boring daily life of its protagonist.

With that out of the way... does the ending really imply that everyone who dies in the Stephen King universe ends up in the hell dimension ? I mean even the protagonist's dead sister was there and she had nothing to do with the priest's experiences with electricity. Because if so, then holy shit did this universe just get darker.

edited 13th Apr '18 1:00:32 AM by Nithael

@ tricksterston: Is that because he's the product of something worse, or just the evil of the multiverse congealed

King's cosmology as outlined pretty clearly in Insomnia talks of Purpose and Random. IT is a creature of Random, he was made to be an agent of chaos by the God of the Kingverse. I kinda wanted him off the CM page because IT can't help what IT is and IT actually serves a vital function in the multiverse. No go though.

I thought IT was female?

If you feel like IT shouldn't be on the Complete Monster list, you can always bring it up on the Complete Monster cleanup thread.

I did bring it up there hence why I said "no go." Lightysnake said IT was too competent and in control of its own actions to be taken off the list. Same for Flagg, even though its specifically laid out in The Stand that Flagg doesn't even understand why he does the things he does. He, IT, they're all just pawns and they serve a greater purpose. But they stay on the list for whatever reason. I guess you learn more about Flagg in The Dark Tower but I haven't really read those yet.

But yeah, there are plenty of characters i don't think belong on the CM page but I'll get folks jumping down my throat if I pursue it so I leave it alone.

So Pennywise is naturally evil, but is a CM because he chooses to be extra personal evil as well? Like the difference between a pyromaniac burning a house down and a pyromaniac prolonging somebody burning just to make it hurt more?

Yeah, that's pretty much it exactly.

I always wondered why IT had eggs. What exactly does an entity older than the universe, who believed the only things that mattered where It and the turtle, need with offspring? Is It planning to spread beyond Derry?

I don't think it's unheard of for such entities to have children. Maybe having children is a part of her kind's "life cycle?"

Over the last month or so, I’ve finished The Outsider and Elevation and am about 3/4 through Sleeping Beauties. I enjoyed the first two, but have struggled to get through Beauties...not sure what it is, but something about it is just not clicking with me. I’m definitely not all that impressed with the main plot point...it’s interesting in theory but so far the why of it hasn’t been revealed and it’s frustrating me.

Edited by Willbyr on Jun 13th 2019 at 10:39:42 AM

IT has it that the universe came to be because The Turtle vomited up. Maybe Pennywise's talk of superiority isn't pure arrogance-we're some sort of hairball and Pennywise doesn't like Maturin because he's a weirdo interested in his own puke.

I read The Mangler, I thought it was a parody of Attack of the Killer Whatever.

Am I just a weirdo for expecting Pennywise to be anything but a two-dimensional evil elemental? Stephen King like C.S Lewis(and J.R.R Tolkein to a lesser extent) did run on the belief that evil is pathetic, though it's a different manner on whether they're right about that or how good storytelling-wise that is

In the Tower series we learn that IT and the Turtle are two of the Guardians of the pillars that uphold the universe but all of them have died, gone senile or just plain turned Evil. SO apparently IT may not have always been evil. Then again King pretty much made up his universe as he went along without, until the Dark Tower series, much of an effort to organize it.

I was reading Stephen King's The Stand, and at one point when Flagg is introduced, it mentions he has many revolutionary and incendiary pamphlets, amongst them one from America Firsters. I didn't realize that there was such an organization, or that they were that old. Would there be any relation to Trump's slogan?

The book also mentions Yeats' The Second Coming, of which this line struck me in particular: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." Well, that sure sounds familiar.

king himself talk about how trump remind him of one of his chararters, I forget the name, who was a sellmen and who kill a dog by stomp on it.

And he said "oh dear the letter, I kill millions of people in the stand and nobody said anything but dear god curse me for killing a dog"

it was hilarious

King's views on the US government and military sure are bleak. Was this part of the time he grew up in, or is it just a personal belief?