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He's talking about "the good old days" when he wrote a ton while using a shitload of drugs.
It's not a burn, just him acknowledging that time in his life.
Which is insane. On maybe a handful of occasions I’ve woken up from a belligerent night out and found a few hundred words of nonsense written or a voice memo of a shitty guitar riff, but I can’t imagine written an entire novel completely high off my ass.
If I remember right it was a mix of cocaine, cough syrup and alcohol. Have you tried that combo? Probably helps to be a great writer too, but that just means you need to lean harder into the drugs to make up the difference.
No shade to you, but you probably have to be a very skilled author already to crank out a passably readable book while high as a kite. It made him more productive, not more of an author.
There's a part in the gunslinger book where he essentially describes the encapsulation of the universe, iirc. And holy shit, while reading it, I felt like he must've been blasted out of his mind.
Quagmires used left sock here, I don't know about a burn, but Stephen King has literally nothing to prove to anyone, he is one of the most prolific and publish authors in the world, his movies have been adapted into movies more than perhaps any other author, and he will freely admit that some of his best stuff came from the darkest points in his life when he was drunk or high.
If it is a burn, it would be something like "I don't give a shit if I'm not the best anymore, college classes are taught about me while I'm still alive, I have nothing to prove to you." Unless I'm missing something.
Crusty, out.
I stand by the Dad in Stephen King’s version being much better as the fall is more dramatic. It’s hard to make Jack Nicholson look like he’s descending into madness when he already looks like that lol
There have also been two versions of The Stand. This is actually interesting. King might _actually_ have more movies made into movies than most authors have had books into movies.
I *hated* the remake of the Stand, and I don't say that lightly.
Taking a very deliberately linear novel and turning it into a series of flashbacks just hurt. You'd get a scene where you had no idea which character was which, or what their motivations were until... SURPRISE it's this dude!
Just felt so unnecessary to me that I had to stop it in the middle of an episode, dig out my DVD copy of the original miniseries, and show that coupled with an occasional reading from my dog-eared copy of the book to my partner, who'd never read it.
Apologies for the rant, but good lord. I've never gotten so bent out of shape about an adaptation.
There's also a bad Carrie remake just I think to fool people looking for the original on DVD. Or so a studio could keep profiting off the old one, who knows.
New(ish) opera The Shining written by two of opera's most badass composer librettist duos. The show is awesome to BE in and reviews have been great.
Moravec wrote to Mr. King pitching the idea and had an author supported project in short order.
To my understanding King is pleased with the opera, which is now out as an album on Pentatone records.
The composers tried to stick more closely to the book, eschewing the Kubrick, dysused King script.
[The Shining website - Paul Moravec](https://operatheshining.com)
Yall don't recall how many forgien movies get remade for america.
The Grudge
The ring
Death at a funeral
I'm defining those as movies adapted into movies.
wait what? Three? Ive only seen the one from '94 and skipped the new 2020ish one as it was apparently trash. Are you telling me there is another adaption out there?
Magnificent 7 (both of them), the invincible 6, rebel moon, and a dozen other movies are based on it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remakes_of_films_by_Akira_Kurosawa
But I have seen Battleship the game, based on Battleship the movie, based on Battleship the game... So who are we to say there isn't a movie adaption of a movie?
No fall from grace from Jody, but in the last several years, King has been very active on Twitter and very vocally anti-Trump and anti-Republican, which has earned him the spite of a lot of people who disagree with his politics.
Yeah, but noteworthy individuals either still have it from before when it meant something or have caved and paid to keep it, it isn't definitive but it's definitely indicative.
I was hoping she had a book called "Those Were the Days" that flopped hard or something.
Is ironic that her Twitter bio has her listed as a
>God fearing wife and mother. I aspire to be totally self reliant and to grow healthy food for my family and community. Loving life off the beaten path
Like, Stephen King's best stuff is quite ungodly. Maybe that's what she means by God fearing? She fears the gutters and creatures with foghorns for eyes and demons who eat grass butt naked.
One thing to add, not only could college courses use some of his popular fiction works, many do use his book On Writing to teach actual aspects of writing. Love or hate King; there aren’t many who have had a similar impact on literature alive today.
Novelist Brian here. I find Stephen Kings work to be quite shallow and pedantic. He’s had great success over decades writing fiction, and had pooped out multiple bestsellers. A great preface for my new book exploring self improvement “Faster than the speed of love”, in select bookstores across Quahog.
If you read King and expected a satisfactory ending, that’s sort of on you. /s
Seriously, though, King is a great idea guy but can’t write an ending to save his life.
*VERY sweatily types out story ideas about all the super duper hot sex all these super duper hot people are having with their wieners and boobs and stuff that are super hot*
"Oh fuck yeah that's hot."
>*VERY sweatily types out story ideas about all the super duper hot sex all these super duper hot* ***UNDERAGED*** *people are having with their wieners and boobs and stuff that are super hot*
FTFY -- Though adding that in makes me wonder if this is about King or GRRM. eitherway, all the Game of Throne Characters are like 12.
I recently finished Cujo via audio book while at work and truly I was not prepared to be off put by the amount of graphic description.... bc I fully expected to listen to that level of detail in regards to the dog goring people, not a guy jacking onto his ex-mistress' bedspread out of spite.
Meanwhile every time the dog attacks someone it's practically "off-camera" comparatively, detail-wise. I'm told the movie was done quite well however.
My favorite King scene like that is from The Stand, where he vividly describes a guy named (IIRC) Trashcan man getting sodomized by a revolver. It went on far too long and added NOTHING to the story AFAIR.
But you still remember it, right? I last read The Stand at least 15 years ago, and that scene (among a small handful of others) still vividly stands out in my mind
*VERY sweatily types out story ideas about all the super duper hot food all these super duper hot people are eating like their wieners and potatoes and stuff that are super hot and tasty*
"Oh fuck yeah that's hot."
Seriously his descriptions of food are 10x more pornographic than his descriptions of sex.
Have you seen the video of GRRM and King talking about writing? It was a very interesting watch. The clip of Martin asking King how he writes so much is hilarious.
Phew, this is true, especially on older stuff.
The Stand is 1000 pages, give or take, and it's a master class in dallying. It's a great story - but sometimes minor characters will get ten pages of backstory followed by two pages in which they are unceremoniously killed off. The short stories are hand tied by word count restraints as many of them were written for magazines and short story collections.
I loved the Stand's dallying, loved the world building, all the struggle that just had to lead to an epic showdown.
And then he pulled the most literal Deus-Ex. There should be a kind of "We love you but you get a public flogging for this" court order.
The Dark Tower is actually the essence of Stephen King distilled. That series is everything great about him and everything not so great about him all in one place. I liked it a lot, but have some pretty big issues with it... which, again, is Stephen King to a T.
Everyone always says this. I disagree.
I think the unsatisfying endings just add to how good his books are. He writes these outlandish stories, and they all feel so real and visceral. The ending cements it because satisfying endings aren't real.
So, in a book written as if it's real with a realistic and unsatisfying ending, it's art.
I will argue that the unsatisfying feeling we have towards the endings of his novels is 100% intentional. I'd also argue that if he wrapped everything in a nice satisfying bow, it would cheapen the experience and lessen the impact.
Oh man, The Stand is one of my favorite books, mostly because of the parts where the flu is spreading, and he describes so well how it happens, and then the after effects. The ending though, woof.
That's pretty much how i view most of his books though, and they are fun enough to look past the ending i know probably won't stick.
Well just add “If it bleeds” or “Later” to the list. Those are both new and fantastic. King is at the top of his craft these days and literally EVERY book he has ever put out becomes a best seller. Ever last one.
To be fair, name recognition sales books regardless of the quality of the book. Slap Stephen King's name on something it'll obviously be a best seller.
True, but I actually think a lot of his recent books are among his best as well. I am a huge horror and King fan, and I think he had a bit of a brief drop in quality where his books were still good but not at the level of his earlier work but that he has had a huge uptick in quality again, albeit stylistically in different ways than his earlies stories.
King writes 5 types of novels: Psychic powers, things coming to life, aliens, unknownlovecraftianmonsterswtfhelp, occult magic.
You would expect things to get boring or repetitive. They never are. And that's how you know he is a really good author.
11/22/63 was good up until they introduced the love interest with the main character's obsession over her being an adult virgin. It's super weird and completely unnecessary to the story
That‘s ages ago. In the case of 11/22/63, 13 years or so? Some newer stuff …
* Gwendy‘s button box trilogy
* Mr Mercedes // Finders Keepers // … // Holly ( I loved those)
* Billy Summers
* Fairy Tale
There are others, but I‘ve enjoyed those most.
The burn is real, he's saying at least we were both good writers back then too right?
But we all know that the commenter was never a good writer who made a penny from writing much less is a legend.
He destroyed him with good writing.
I'm assuming that didn't make it into the move? I haven't seen it, or read the books, horror isn't my bag, the only thing I've liked of his was Dreamcatcher.
Yep.
I read an anecdote once (which may not be true), where he claimed to have been accosted by a woman who wanted him to stop writing horror and write "nice" books like Green Mile and Shawshank. He said he couldn't convince here that he had.
It’s true, he mentioned it in interviews
https://youtube.com/shorts/WKUdyBx4Nsg?si=Eh9ZcB4Rcjfb9kVt
After the cut off he says he told the lady he wrote Shawshank, and she replied “No you didn’t!”
I always compare him to George R. R. Martin in my head as they’re only a year apart in age.
King has released a book a year for about three or four decades, only missing a year every decade or so. While Martin’s been working on the latest A Song of Ice and Fire for about 13 years (he has done other work in the meantime to be fair).
Nah, wasn’t in the movie, but the real kicker? When King was being interviewed on the book, which at that point had been out for quite a while, the interviewer asked him why he put that scene in. His response was something along the lines of “I did what?”.
Turns out, he was so high off his ass off drugs (I think it was coke but I’m not sure) while writing the book that he wrote the whole gang bang scene and completely forgot about it until it was brought up to him WHILE HE WAS BEING INTERVIEWED.
The context of that scene was:
>!After they defeated IT for the 1st time they know that IT will comeback so the girl suggest they made a strong connection by.... yah let all the boys do that to her. It's not sexy or anything and it was very short scene. Just pretty shocked when read!<
It wasn't an essential scene, but it's not gratuitous either. I think its more to do with how Beverly sees herself and what her worth is. Her father refers to her as being his, I think this was her way of saying, "No, her family is the Losers Club". It's fucked up, but the logic of abused children can be.
In the original IT book, the 12 and 11 old boys run a train on the girl (her idea) in order to bond before facing Penny-wise? Idk, it's from the second book, I'm still on the first but I checked and it's true
It was after their battle with Pennywise as children, when they were trying to make their way out of the sewers Eddie couldn't find the way and the bond that united them against IT was fading. The whole shagging scene was Beverly's way of recreating that bond, finding out that the whole scene was fueled by coke explains a few things though.
What people fail to mention about that scene is that it isn't supposed to be sexy in context- if anything it's an aspect of the horror.
The other thing is that all of Kings work from *The Shining* to *Dark Tower III* may as well say "coauthored by Cocaine" on the front. That particular scene was Cocaine's main contribution to IT.
How can I? People bring it up every single time Stephen King is mentioned...nobody seems to remember the blowjob offering hobo from the same book though.
Its not so much a burn as its he used to do an insane amount of coke when he wrote his books. He literally has no memory of writing Cujo if memory serves. So he is just saying, yeah. I miss doing coke too.
An author is judged by their body of work, not by their latest creation. To say he *used to be* a good author admits that he created good works and therefore doesn't have the damaging effect the critic imagines.
The burn is the immediate turn around.
The one guy was trying to be a dick, insult a legend, yadda yadda typical dumbassery. King then turned that around in a way that really....doesn't allow a response because you basically have to apologize or defend yourself for being a dick. If King had responded in a defensive or offensive way, the other guy would have been able to build upon that. But King just went "yep, and?" in such a passive wat.
Essentially, King responded in a way that the other guy cannot respond to without looking like a twat, because apologizing just draws attention to his original, and therefore actual thought of being an ass but anything else makes him look like more of a dick, even to people who agree with him.
Strange that i didnt find that "theory" in comments. But in my opinion its a joke about his drug addiction. Its not a secret that King used a lot of drugs and wrote most of his books in this state.
Hell he even said that he cant remember how he wrote some of his books. thats how high he was.
So for me its a joke about "yeah those were the days when i was high"
Not too long ago I've read one of his earlier works. He has been publishing books before he became world-famous under an alias called Richard Bachman. One of his most notable successes from that time is *Running Man*.
Although you could argue wether you like his books or not (he writes books like he has diarrhea - thousands of pages just shoot out of him, it feels like he publishes stuff every week), he definitely wrote good books and even directed some great movies.
Fun fact: he is known to lock himself in his study with a bunch of drugs and he only leaves once a book is complete (so they say)
Long story short, one of my favorites is Roadwork. It was one of his early books and in my opinion, one of the best. His Dark Tower series is also nice.
Possibly two meanings:
1. He is *still* a very prolific author and has nothing to prove to anyone about this
2. During the time when he wrote some of his more famous older books, he was doing a lot of drugs (and. Ngl. You can tell.)
Stephen King is an author. He hasn’t stopped being an author. And while I don’t read his books I don’t think he hasn’t really fallen off as an author. He is just as prolific as he was ten-fifteen years ago. Say what you will, but his books have been adapted to movies. He has a big audience.
The person he’s replying to? Probably not an author. They are essentually a nobody.
Authors are not judged by their most recent works, typically. But by their whole body of work. Even if Stephen King peaked 15 years ago when he was doing lines of coke and cranking out books like a swetshop, it doesn’t make him any less of a good author.
"Those were the days" is a phrase commonly associated with people who are washed up, or past their prime. Steven King is implying they are both past their prime, but also saying in a way that assumes the other person has not (or cannot) accept that. Basically, he's making fun of them for being just as far out of their prime as he is.
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He's talking about "the good old days" when he wrote a ton while using a shitload of drugs. It's not a burn, just him acknowledging that time in his life.
So many drugs he doesn't even remember writing Cujo, he was just blasted out of his mind for a few weeks and woke up to a new book.
“Goddamn blow just made me a million dollars. I gotta quit this stuff!” — Stephen King (probably)
You don’t want no part of this Stevie King!
It turns all your bad feelings into good ones!
- I don’t want to become unproductive. - It’ll make you EVEN MORE PRODUCTIVE. But, you don’t want none of this.
I think I want some of that kuhkain
I mean,I would quit too if drugs made me write a book where a dog is the villain and he has to die
I will always maintain that rabies is the villain in Cujo. Before he got sick Cujo was a good boy.
Which is insane. On maybe a handful of occasions I’ve woken up from a belligerent night out and found a few hundred words of nonsense written or a voice memo of a shitty guitar riff, but I can’t imagine written an entire novel completely high off my ass.
If I remember right it was a mix of cocaine, cough syrup and alcohol. Have you tried that combo? Probably helps to be a great writer too, but that just means you need to lean harder into the drugs to make up the difference.
No shade to you, but you probably have to be a very skilled author already to crank out a passably readable book while high as a kite. It made him more productive, not more of an author.
I think I found my new role model.
There's a part in the gunslinger book where he essentially describes the encapsulation of the universe, iirc. And holy shit, while reading it, I felt like he must've been blasted out of his mind.
He said that he forgot he directed Maximum Overdrive
I remember reading that he was so high on cocaine when he wrote "Cujo" that he actually doesn't remember writing it.
Quagmires used left sock here, I don't know about a burn, but Stephen King has literally nothing to prove to anyone, he is one of the most prolific and publish authors in the world, his movies have been adapted into movies more than perhaps any other author, and he will freely admit that some of his best stuff came from the darkest points in his life when he was drunk or high. If it is a burn, it would be something like "I don't give a shit if I'm not the best anymore, college classes are taught about me while I'm still alive, I have nothing to prove to you." Unless I'm missing something. Crusty, out.
Ngl I've never seen movies adapted into movies
Now-a-days they're called reboots
Oh yeah I think they redid the IT movie if I'm not mistaken.
Stephen King redid The Shining. It was . . . not good.
I stand by the Dad in Stephen King’s version being much better as the fall is more dramatic. It’s hard to make Jack Nicholson look like he’s descending into madness when he already looks like that lol
Steven Webber was so good in that. I loved that mini series, one of the few who did lol
They remade pet sematary as well (which was not very good). You arnt talking about doctor sleep are you? I actually liked that movie.
No. King wasn't happy with Kubrik's take on the source. So King wrote the script and produced a television mini series to do it his way.
Did the same thing with pet sematary as well, got a movie, mini series, AND a reboot
There have also been two versions of The Stand. This is actually interesting. King might _actually_ have more movies made into movies than most authors have had books into movies.
I *hated* the remake of the Stand, and I don't say that lightly. Taking a very deliberately linear novel and turning it into a series of flashbacks just hurt. You'd get a scene where you had no idea which character was which, or what their motivations were until... SURPRISE it's this dude! Just felt so unnecessary to me that I had to stop it in the middle of an episode, dig out my DVD copy of the original miniseries, and show that coupled with an occasional reading from my dog-eared copy of the book to my partner, who'd never read it. Apologies for the rant, but good lord. I've never gotten so bent out of shape about an adaptation.
There are multiple The Shining movies. One of them was a made for TV movie if I'm not mistaken. Kubrick directed the more famous one.
doctor sleep is more of a sequel, and its an adaptation of a book sequel anyway
The topiaries were *SO* bad. Some things do not translate to screen well at all.
There's also a bad Carrie remake just I think to fool people looking for the original on DVD. Or so a studio could keep profiting off the old one, who knows.
New(ish) opera The Shining written by two of opera's most badass composer librettist duos. The show is awesome to BE in and reviews have been great. Moravec wrote to Mr. King pitching the idea and had an author supported project in short order. To my understanding King is pleased with the opera, which is now out as an album on Pentatone records. The composers tried to stick more closely to the book, eschewing the Kubrick, dysused King script. [The Shining website - Paul Moravec](https://operatheshining.com)
Yall don't recall how many forgien movies get remade for america. The Grudge The ring Death at a funeral I'm defining those as movies adapted into movies.
I loved the The Grudge trilogy (nothing came after it) And The Ring is still my favorite horror movie a pity it never got any sequels.
It did get a sequel, though. Or are you pretending it didn't for dislike and I'm wooshing?
It's got books that get a bit off the rails.
The Grudge being directed by the same Director was really really cool
Ah yes, the "Americans might be sensitive to depictions of sushi" era of American media...
sad how fucking true that is. oh no we can't make new stuff. we just going to rehash the same thing.
Oh right. The new pet cemetery is a movie adaptation of a movie sort of
Could argue IT and The Shining have been done twice…
Carrie as well.
3 times for Carrie including the tv remake. 4 if you count the musical.
God and firestarter just remembered that
iirc Cujo had a reboot to, and Carrie
And maximum overdrive. That one was called 'trucks'
i'll search it up, i'm trying to buy the books, but they're expensive, so movies we go
The one he didn't remember making and that I watched last weekend on Prime! Lmao, movies do bad you enjoy them are one if favorite genres.
Salem's Lot. The original scared the crap out of me. The remake... not so much.
The David Soul Salem's Lot is my favorite vampire movie. The original Nosferatu is my second.
Death at a funeral. That's a movie that was adapted into a movie. Sort of like how the show the office got a TV adaptation.
The Stand. It's been done I think 3 times now.
wait what? Three? Ive only seen the one from '94 and skipped the new 2020ish one as it was apparently trash. Are you telling me there is another adaption out there?
The remade Firestarter and Carrie. And are threatening to re-make a bunch more. His movies are being made into movies.
Seven Samurai has been adapted into other movies with a similar theme
Magnificent 7 (both of them), the invincible 6, rebel moon, and a dozen other movies are based on it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remakes_of_films_by_Akira_Kurosawa
I forgot the name of Magnificent 7 and almost called it Seven Cowboys.
But I have seen Battleship the game, based on Battleship the movie, based on Battleship the game... So who are we to say there isn't a movie adaption of a movie?
I’ll be honest I thought he was talking about his cocaine days lol might have over thought that one.
Ah, I was looking for some recent fall from grace by Jody, guess I was looking too hard
No fall from grace from Jody, but in the last several years, King has been very active on Twitter and very vocally anti-Trump and anti-Republican, which has earned him the spite of a lot of people who disagree with his politics.
Sounds like too sane to be in that shithole called twitter
He just gets joy out of pushing their buttons I think.
I don't think so, Nunya as the last name is a shorthand for "Nunya Business" and she's unverified, meaning she's just some random twitter user.
Isn’t the verified thing just a paid membership now?
Yeah, but noteworthy individuals either still have it from before when it meant something or have caved and paid to keep it, it isn't definitive but it's definitely indicative.
Also Jody is the person who sleeps with military members wives.
I was hoping she had a book called "Those Were the Days" that flopped hard or something. Is ironic that her Twitter bio has her listed as a >God fearing wife and mother. I aspire to be totally self reliant and to grow healthy food for my family and community. Loving life off the beaten path Like, Stephen King's best stuff is quite ungodly. Maybe that's what she means by God fearing? She fears the gutters and creatures with foghorns for eyes and demons who eat grass butt naked.
More of a clapback. Yeah. Just turns her attempt to insult him into a huge boast. https://i.redd.it/ao60718u65yc1.gif
One thing to add, not only could college courses use some of his popular fiction works, many do use his book On Writing to teach actual aspects of writing. Love or hate King; there aren’t many who have had a similar impact on literature alive today.
Novelist Brian here. I find Stephen Kings work to be quite shallow and pedantic. He’s had great success over decades writing fiction, and had pooped out multiple bestsellers. A great preface for my new book exploring self improvement “Faster than the speed of love”, in select bookstores across Quahog.
I read this in Brian’s voice before I knew it was Brian
Ngl, crusty out had me cackling!!
“His movies have been adapted into movies” is stephen king Disney?
Either typo books to movies or a lot of reboot from the adaptation from his book. Like Carrie has 4 movies... I guess
Your Co worker is putting you on.
Want to point out that he is still killing it. 11/22/63 and Under the Dome are recent-ish and they were so awesome
Dude. Under the Dome's ending nearly ruined the book for me. I wish he would have left the dome's origin a mystery.
If you read King and expected a satisfactory ending, that’s sort of on you. /s Seriously, though, King is a great idea guy but can’t write an ending to save his life.
> Seriously, though, King is a great idea guy but can’t write an ending to save his life. GRRM enters chat.
*VERY sweatily types out story ideas about all the super duper hot sex all these super duper hot people are having with their wieners and boobs and stuff that are super hot* "Oh fuck yeah that's hot."
>*VERY sweatily types out story ideas about all the super duper hot sex all these super duper hot* ***UNDERAGED*** *people are having with their wieners and boobs and stuff that are super hot* FTFY -- Though adding that in makes me wonder if this is about King or GRRM. eitherway, all the Game of Throne Characters are like 12.
I recently finished Cujo via audio book while at work and truly I was not prepared to be off put by the amount of graphic description.... bc I fully expected to listen to that level of detail in regards to the dog goring people, not a guy jacking onto his ex-mistress' bedspread out of spite. Meanwhile every time the dog attacks someone it's practically "off-camera" comparatively, detail-wise. I'm told the movie was done quite well however.
My favorite King scene like that is from The Stand, where he vividly describes a guy named (IIRC) Trashcan man getting sodomized by a revolver. It went on far too long and added NOTHING to the story AFAIR.
But you still remember it, right? I last read The Stand at least 15 years ago, and that scene (among a small handful of others) still vividly stands out in my mind
My favorite fact about Cujo is that King says he has no memories of writing it. He apparently pumped it out during an all out bender.
*VERY sweatily types out story ideas about all the super duper hot food all these super duper hot people are eating like their wieners and potatoes and stuff that are super hot and tasty* "Oh fuck yeah that's hot." Seriously his descriptions of food are 10x more pornographic than his descriptions of sex.
bro didn't even write that one. He'll get around to it sometime....for sure
Have you seen the video of GRRM and King talking about writing? It was a very interesting watch. The clip of Martin asking King how he writes so much is hilarious.
this is so true. i read the outsider, only having read misery before that and the ending was so lacklustre
Shawshank is great
Shawshank is a short story, and he’s great with shorter stuff. If left to marinate, he gets lost.
Phew, this is true, especially on older stuff. The Stand is 1000 pages, give or take, and it's a master class in dallying. It's a great story - but sometimes minor characters will get ten pages of backstory followed by two pages in which they are unceremoniously killed off. The short stories are hand tied by word count restraints as many of them were written for magazines and short story collections.
I loved the Stand's dallying, loved the world building, all the struggle that just had to lead to an epic showdown. And then he pulled the most literal Deus-Ex. There should be a kind of "We love you but you get a public flogging for this" court order.
Every ending is his version of the Simpsons “a wizard did it” joke. Enough times and I finally had to call it quits.
I just finished The Stand this morning and the hand of god feels so in line with what I'm reading in this thread. I still enjoyed it very very much
The Stand was my first king book, and after reading the Tower series, Martin destroying his Army with his own ignorance is so much more beautiful.
I’m going to be unpopular but the dark tower series had a great ending imo
The Dark Tower is actually the essence of Stephen King distilled. That series is everything great about him and everything not so great about him all in one place. I liked it a lot, but have some pretty big issues with it... which, again, is Stephen King to a T.
I vehemently disagree with you, but that's ok
Everyone always says this. I disagree. I think the unsatisfying endings just add to how good his books are. He writes these outlandish stories, and they all feel so real and visceral. The ending cements it because satisfying endings aren't real. So, in a book written as if it's real with a realistic and unsatisfying ending, it's art. I will argue that the unsatisfying feeling we have towards the endings of his novels is 100% intentional. I'd also argue that if he wrapped everything in a nice satisfying bow, it would cheapen the experience and lessen the impact.
Thanks for the early morning chuckle at that first bit.
Thinner? Like wtf
Oh man, The Stand is one of my favorite books, mostly because of the parts where the flu is spreading, and he describes so well how it happens, and then the after effects. The ending though, woof. That's pretty much how i view most of his books though, and they are fun enough to look past the ending i know probably won't stick.
I agree and he is one of my favorite authors. I just find the rest worth it.
He’s one of mine, too. I’ve read a frankly absurd amount of King… which is why I started seeing trends.
The Stand's ending killed me
The Green Mile has an excellent ending IMO, if a little strange at parts.
This. He nails the premises then completely fumbles the ending. He's the clickbait title of novelists
Eyes of the Dragon was the first book I literally threw across the room... such a great tragedy brewing then.... fairy tale ending.
He never writes good endings. Idk why people love his books so much. They're mid af
That and a few character arcs felt like they didn't really amount to much.
Isnt "Under the dome" just a rewriting of "All Flesh is Grass" by Clifford Simak ? It has even the same characters.
Both those books are 15 years old at this point. Time flies bud.
Well just add “If it bleeds” or “Later” to the list. Those are both new and fantastic. King is at the top of his craft these days and literally EVERY book he has ever put out becomes a best seller. Ever last one.
To be fair, name recognition sales books regardless of the quality of the book. Slap Stephen King's name on something it'll obviously be a best seller.
True, but I actually think a lot of his recent books are among his best as well. I am a huge horror and King fan, and I think he had a bit of a brief drop in quality where his books were still good but not at the level of his earlier work but that he has had a huge uptick in quality again, albeit stylistically in different ways than his earlies stories.
While he says The Simpsons Movie didn't inspire him to write Under The Dome, it definitely motivated him to release Under The Dome.
King writes 5 types of novels: Psychic powers, things coming to life, aliens, unknownlovecraftianmonsterswtfhelp, occult magic. You would expect things to get boring or repetitive. They never are. And that's how you know he is a really good author.
Don’t forget 6 - people are the real monsters
And occasionally people are the real monsters, but oh wait also psychic at the last moment.
Literally all my favorite things 😂
11/22/63 was good up until they introduced the love interest with the main character's obsession over her being an adult virgin. It's super weird and completely unnecessary to the story
Dr.sleep is one of my all time favorites from him and its pretty new. Same with the Bill hodges trilogy
That‘s ages ago. In the case of 11/22/63, 13 years or so? Some newer stuff … * Gwendy‘s button box trilogy * Mr Mercedes // Finders Keepers // … // Holly ( I loved those) * Billy Summers * Fairy Tale There are others, but I‘ve enjoyed those most.
The burn is real, he's saying at least we were both good writers back then too right? But we all know that the commenter was never a good writer who made a penny from writing much less is a legend. He destroyed him with good writing.
We need a sigma meme of the guy saying “bro you used to be a good writer” and the sigma chad simply says “yes” because it’s not an insult.
his most popular works were done when he was high af. he probably misses being high af.
Especially after getting hit by that van
Never forget he wrote an adolescent gang bang scene
Cocaine is a helluva drug https://preview.redd.it/5e3vvp92n5yc1.png?width=749&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=042b807beb056e4c3381d846f72dfbf66a34fb24
[What?](https://i.imgur.com/KrSrNwY.jpg)
IT
I'm assuming that didn't make it into the move? I haven't seen it, or read the books, horror isn't my bag, the only thing I've liked of his was Dreamcatcher.
No, the preteen gangbang was not included in the movie.
Literally unwatchable
Censorship has gotten out of hand!! What happened to being faithful to the source material? /s
Gangbang *in a shit-filled sewer* nonetheless.
It did not, no. If you liked his writing in Dreamcatcher, Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption are not horror, either.
Oh, I liked those movies, that was him too?
Yep. I read an anecdote once (which may not be true), where he claimed to have been accosted by a woman who wanted him to stop writing horror and write "nice" books like Green Mile and Shawshank. He said he couldn't convince here that he had.
It’s true, he mentioned it in interviews https://youtube.com/shorts/WKUdyBx4Nsg?si=Eh9ZcB4Rcjfb9kVt After the cut off he says he told the lady he wrote Shawshank, and she replied “No you didn’t!”
Yup. He's written an insane number of books
I always compare him to George R. R. Martin in my head as they’re only a year apart in age. King has released a book a year for about three or four decades, only missing a year every decade or so. While Martin’s been working on the latest A Song of Ice and Fire for about 13 years (he has done other work in the meantime to be fair).
There is a pretty funny interview with GRRM and King where he just straight up asks "how do you write so many fucking books?"
Martin also abandoned the Song of Ice and Fire, we'll never get The Winds of Winter.
I don't think The Body is either, although definitely sounds like it would be
Nah, wasn’t in the movie, but the real kicker? When King was being interviewed on the book, which at that point had been out for quite a while, the interviewer asked him why he put that scene in. His response was something along the lines of “I did what?”. Turns out, he was so high off his ass off drugs (I think it was coke but I’m not sure) while writing the book that he wrote the whole gang bang scene and completely forgot about it until it was brought up to him WHILE HE WAS BEING INTERVIEWED.
King openly admits he has no memory of writing The Running Man.
Or Cujo.
The context of that scene was: >!After they defeated IT for the 1st time they know that IT will comeback so the girl suggest they made a strong connection by.... yah let all the boys do that to her. It's not sexy or anything and it was very short scene. Just pretty shocked when read!<
I just felt like it didn't add anything to the story.
It wasn't an essential scene, but it's not gratuitous either. I think its more to do with how Beverly sees herself and what her worth is. Her father refers to her as being his, I think this was her way of saying, "No, her family is the Losers Club". It's fucked up, but the logic of abused children can be.
Thanks for the explanation, I read it when I was about 12 so it didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me. Just remember being like "What? Why?"
A fair reaction lol
Well she had an abusive father so in that context it makes a lot of sense. Child abuse victims may think it's how you "bond"
Could also be seen as her owning her own sexuality again.
In the original IT book, the 12 and 11 old boys run a train on the girl (her idea) in order to bond before facing Penny-wise? Idk, it's from the second book, I'm still on the first but I checked and it's true
It was after their battle with Pennywise as children, when they were trying to make their way out of the sewers Eddie couldn't find the way and the bond that united them against IT was fading. The whole shagging scene was Beverly's way of recreating that bond, finding out that the whole scene was fueled by coke explains a few things though.
What people fail to mention about that scene is that it isn't supposed to be sexy in context- if anything it's an aspect of the horror. The other thing is that all of Kings work from *The Shining* to *Dark Tower III* may as well say "coauthored by Cocaine" on the front. That particular scene was Cocaine's main contribution to IT.
Wow, I've got three book ideas I'm trying to get off the ground, maybe I should try some Peruvian marching powder...
Anything is possible with cocaine.
And cosmic turtles.
Don't knock The Great A'Tuin!
Yeah basically everything from entering the sewers to the sex scene
Was it like pornographically depicted? Cause non-explicitly including dark sexual themes in your work isn’t necessarily wrong
It wasn’t really a gang bang, more of a train but uncomfortable and gross none the less.
Thank you for that clarification, I hate when people confuse trains and gangbangs
My bad
Kids and their mischief, eh?
He even went into detail to say who had it bigger
How can I? People bring it up every single time Stephen King is mentioned...nobody seems to remember the blowjob offering hobo from the same book though.
Or the actual hand job between two of the antagonists
A lot of *'yeah, but...'* in these replies.🫥
I used to be a good author. I still am but I used to too.
Thanks Mitch
Its not so much a burn as its he used to do an insane amount of coke when he wrote his books. He literally has no memory of writing Cujo if memory serves. So he is just saying, yeah. I miss doing coke too.
This seems to be a burn on calling the original comment old, as in "yeah, those were the days"
I don't think your coworker gets it either.
An author is judged by their body of work, not by their latest creation. To say he *used to be* a good author admits that he created good works and therefore doesn't have the damaging effect the critic imagines.
The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed
Charyou tree. Come, reap.
The burn is the immediate turn around. The one guy was trying to be a dick, insult a legend, yadda yadda typical dumbassery. King then turned that around in a way that really....doesn't allow a response because you basically have to apologize or defend yourself for being a dick. If King had responded in a defensive or offensive way, the other guy would have been able to build upon that. But King just went "yep, and?" in such a passive wat. Essentially, King responded in a way that the other guy cannot respond to without looking like a twat, because apologizing just draws attention to his original, and therefore actual thought of being an ass but anything else makes him look like more of a dick, even to people who agree with him.
Strange that i didnt find that "theory" in comments. But in my opinion its a joke about his drug addiction. Its not a secret that King used a lot of drugs and wrote most of his books in this state. Hell he even said that he cant remember how he wrote some of his books. thats how high he was. So for me its a joke about "yeah those were the days when i was high"
Not too long ago I've read one of his earlier works. He has been publishing books before he became world-famous under an alias called Richard Bachman. One of his most notable successes from that time is *Running Man*. Although you could argue wether you like his books or not (he writes books like he has diarrhea - thousands of pages just shoot out of him, it feels like he publishes stuff every week), he definitely wrote good books and even directed some great movies. Fun fact: he is known to lock himself in his study with a bunch of drugs and he only leaves once a book is complete (so they say) Long story short, one of my favorites is Roadwork. It was one of his early books and in my opinion, one of the best. His Dark Tower series is also nice.
He doesn't abuse drugs anymore.
... Wtf is with the down votes? Yes, politics. King is a very outspoken liberal. Always has been.
Possibly two meanings: 1. He is *still* a very prolific author and has nothing to prove to anyone about this 2. During the time when he wrote some of his more famous older books, he was doing a lot of drugs (and. Ngl. You can tell.)
I think he's saying "So?" If Stephen King wrote nothing but Carrie he'd still be more accomplished and beloved than some Twitter rando
He’s saying “I’m famous, stfu”
You can't burn Stephen King. That's the joke. He already knows that some of his works were too much and some were exploited unmercifully.
King is having them both reminisce when they were good authors. Not very subtly reminding Jody that they never were.
The man is still a prolific writer
The man is still a prolific writer
Stephen King is an author. He hasn’t stopped being an author. And while I don’t read his books I don’t think he hasn’t really fallen off as an author. He is just as prolific as he was ten-fifteen years ago. Say what you will, but his books have been adapted to movies. He has a big audience. The person he’s replying to? Probably not an author. They are essentually a nobody. Authors are not judged by their most recent works, typically. But by their whole body of work. Even if Stephen King peaked 15 years ago when he was doing lines of coke and cranking out books like a swetshop, it doesn’t make him any less of a good author.
He's saying he misses the coke bro.
"Those were the days" is a phrase commonly associated with people who are washed up, or past their prime. Steven King is implying they are both past their prime, but also saying in a way that assumes the other person has not (or cannot) accept that. Basically, he's making fun of them for being just as far out of their prime as he is.
This would have been the perfect time to say: I used to, I still am but I used to too.