#skingtag

[stinkybreath]

Ok gonna liveblog my Carrie White/Taylor Hebert thoughts as I have them bc I’m sure I won’t have the motivation to write up anything coherent

Disclaimer that of course stories about bullied teen girls will all have overlap and I don’t think these observations are particularly unique so don’t come at me about it I’m just getting thoughts out of my head

Chronologically first and also most obvious: inciting incident making powers present has to do with period supplies- this trope shows up in a lot of genre writing, particularly the genre writing of men, due to the cultural fear of girlhood turning to womanhood (for expansion on this I highly recommend reading Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers). What could be more disgusting and terrifying than period blood, right? And aren’t all teen girls starkly defined by their menstrual status? (I hope y’all know me well enough to hear the eye roll)

Second thing I’m noticing: Carrie gets referred to by animal terms and descriptors by almost every POV, reminding me obviously of the way Taylor takes on bug like mannerisms. Both are unaware of how they appear to other people, both are objects of disgust and dehumanization for it. They are distanced from their humanity by both the text and by the characters surrounding them.

Also: they both seem harmless to others at the beginning of their stories but are simmering with huge and barely contained rage (this I would mark as considerably more true to the universal teen girl experience than period trauma). Again this is kind of a genre trope, for pretty good reasons, if you want your otherwise unassuming protagonist to become feared, you have to give them some internality that justifies becoming that feared thing

A contrast rather than a similarity: Carrie is, famously, very religious. King disdains fundamentalists in a lot of his books so that involves a lot of discussion of them. Wildbow for the most part avoids explicit discussions of religion in his work. Not at all my place to pontificate here because I don’t have the knowledge necessary but I have seen some ppl on wormblr talk about Worm and Judaism and I wish I had a better grasp on that to contrast it here.

10% in and this is what I’ve got so far, would love to get other people’s input too as I go along

[stinkybreath]

OP I think you might be delighted to encounter the Just King Things podcast where two academics read Stephen King books in publication order and analyze (truly analyze, not just recap!) them. They even have a segment called “my favorite Kingism” where they gently make fun of or praise his quirks!

google help me

[stinkybreath]

I’m proud of how this turned out so I’m crossposting from fb but I respect you so I’m putting it under the cut. Here’s 5 of the absolute worst bullshit I put myself through consuming in 2023 in my lifelong pursuit of cultural literacy. Individual explanations underneath each for those who are interested in me being a hater 🫶

I have tried really hard to develop my critical perspective this year so I do have actual thoughts about these but I did me best to make them entertaining as well.

The Stand - This year I embarked on an effort to read more Stephen King because I really like the Ranged Touch guys and I wanted to better engage with their show Just King Things. I read Carrie first (more on that in another post), which really set me up for such monumental disappointment when it came to this fucking book. Jesus Christ. I have scarcely read a better selling or more beloved work of popular fiction, and I have also separately scarcely read a more offensive and poorly constructed work of popular fiction. I don’t even know how to begin addressing the headache it gave me, but I was pissed off almost the entire time I read it. Caveat here that, like everyone else, I did love the “no great loss” section both on its own merits and as a cute little Vonnegut nod.

Goodnight Beautiful - I read a lot of shitty thrillers because they get miscategorized as horror very commonly- and while I don’t think genre boundaries are hard and fast I do think that these are very distinct groups- but they’re almost as satisfying so I guess I’ll take it while I’m here. But my lord. This is one of the shittiest shitty thrillers I’ve ever managed to make myself finish. I have brain problems that make it difficult for me to distinguish between characters when there’s a lot of action or time weirdness or whatever whatever, but based on reviews that I trust, it was so poorly done that even normal people couldn’t follow what was happening until the author took the reader by the hand and shoveled the answers directly into their mouth.

Stolen Tongues - for YEARS I’ve been hearing people rave about how unique and effective and just good this book is. My experience, however…

1)author can’t turn a phrase to save their life *vine boom*

2) this has such an extended ‘nlog breasting boobily’ description of the girlfriend that I think I literally gagged *vine boom*

3) racist. *vine boom vine boom vine boom*

No One Is Talking About This - one of my biggest pet peeves is the way most people (authors, journalists, thought leaders, your parents, congresspeople) talk about the internet. It is broad, with both the lack of specificity and the extremity that implies. The way someone talks about the internet can tell you so much about their perspective that they must not know how revealing it is or they’d be more embarrassed about how they sound (again, more on this in another post). This book is a great example- it’s inauthentic to the core. There are some readers who clearly interpreted this as funny glibness but the particular way Lockwood takes internet haterism ad absurdum lets me know she’s never had one single internet argument with someone. It pissed me off so royally that I nearly sent this author an email except I’m not convinced she understands how to open those.

The Vile Thing We Created - the only book on this list that I did not finish and yet felt qualified to speak on anyway. Suckered again by booktok! There was sufficient hype for this book that I let myself get excited, I even spent a few of my actual dollars to get the ebook for convenience. I am really enthusiastic about engaging with themes of the horror of parenthood, good or bad, because I find them an interesting reflection of social ideas about parents. However. Let me just excerpt some of this dreck so you can feel the full force of the normie milennial local cringe that is baked in to every sentence:

Lola was elbow-deep in her fifteenth batch of macaron batter for that week. Spring orders were in full swing, as were an ocean of orders for baby shower treats. It never failed. She never refused the business. Quite the opposite. Macarons meant time. Time meant money. She easily brought in an extra twelve-hundred dollars a week during baby shower season. Music floated into the kitchen from the living room record player. Depending on her mood, Lola’s extensive vinyl collection met her every need. While baking, she usually threw on some David Bowie, Foreigner, something along those dramatically-opposite lines. Today, Louis Armstrong’s “A Lot of Livin’ to Do” danced in the air, trumpet notes accompanying Lola’s bopping around the kitchen.

……….yeah. You can see why I ragequit at 15%. It’s also really fucking weird about the dialogue of the black characters.

[stinkybreath]

My relationship to Stephen King’s work has historically been kind of adversarial. I’ve always been a reader, always into horror, and always been offputting, so adults would meet me, not know what to do with me, hear about my interests and go “oh you like horror and reading so much? Well surely then you must loooooove Stephen King!” as a way to try and relate to me

I, like many humans, did not like to be incorrectly pigeonholed. So since this started happening before I’d ever picked up one of his books, it became a subconscious resolution, some sort of post hoc personality trait, that I hated King’s books. This was of course compounded by the fact that my mother really likes his writing. The girls that get it get it etc etc

Then a for a few years in school, all the kids that normally didn’t ever read for pleasure were devouring It. Being a bookish weirdo desperate for ways to relate to my peers, I gave it a go. Fucking hated it so much that even at that time where I’d never before let myself not finish a book I started, I returned it to the library the very same day I checked it out. I gave him another few tries over the years, by dint of being stuck in waiting rooms (places you are almost sure to find a King trade paperback or two), and because my sestra insisted he was good, and also because it’s important to me to be culturally literate and he’s one of the best selling authors in history. Gave up for many years because I did not enjoy any of the chances I gave him.

Then I found the Ranged Touch podcast network! Tore through Homestuck Made This World and loved it so much that I have been tearing through some of their other shows, and Just King Things kind of loomed in the background, haunting me. “I hate Stephen King! But I love the quality of these podcasts. But I don’t want to have to read more fucking Stephen King! But I want more Ranged Touch content,” back and forth forever. Also, not for nothing, it was a way to bond with a friend of mine who had spoken about his love of King’s books and who was reading Worm for my sake and I figured it was pretty fair for me to slog through another few King books in return.

The point of this post, the thesis that I am getting at here, is that I have received such enrichment, such education and entertainment from the Just King Things podcast, that I have developed a critical appreciation for the writing of Stephen fucking King. A thing I would have previously thought to be impossible for me. I think it helps that I have found it at a time I’m hungry for intellectual challenge, but I find myself wanting to write about my reading experience. I know none of y’all are really here for that sort of thing (prommy this is not me being bitter, I just get that I haven’t done Actual Posting much w this blog and it would be a weird pivot) so I won’t really do much more and I’ll continue to use the tag in case you wanna blacklist. But all of this is to say. Listen to Just King Things! Talk to me about Carrie or The Stand or Pet Sematary or The Eyes of the Dragon (the works I’ve read that I‘ve retained enough of to have opinions about)! Convince me to read a few others maybe! There is, much to my surprise, lots to talk about here!

[stinkybreath]

reading The Stand (I kind of hate it for reasons that should be obvious but I’m gonna get through it by god) and my opinion on most of our main cast is lukewarm at best but in particular I got so fed up hearing from Larry Underwood, couldn’t take any more of it, he was just the most boring caricature of a certain type of guy, I got annoyed every time he was even mentioned in anyone else’s mind

But then

In Boulder, after somewhat of a time skip and an almost total personality change (even then I was hardened against him) and he is surprised to note to himself that he loves Leo, I crumpled! Oh I crumpled like tissue! Absolutely my favorite character trope, transformed by love for a child. I hated this jackass so much and now I am soft for him. Gets me every goddamn time.

[stinkybreath]

I hate this man. Enough already

[stinkybreath]

Stephen King did not smoke weed at the time of writing Carrie lmao