• [email protected]@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Stephen King was terrifyingly high for astoundingly long stretches of time. He can’t even remember writing some of his books. IT is the manifestation of fear, and a metaphor for King’s own experiences; he conquered fear through understanding, companionship, and anxiety-obliterating levels of cocaine and xanax.

    • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Just goes to show that you can become incredibly rich and successful by locking yourself in a drug prison for a decade or two.

        • daed@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’d argue you can hedge your bets with thorough research and a good understanding of your chosen substances and own body chemistry though

  • misterwu@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I just finished it. What really irritated me was why the heck did he write the part where seven 11-year olds had an orgy in order to find the way back from the sewers. What. The. Fuck. Stephen. WTF.

    And IT was definitely female. The discovered it was pregnant when they fought it as Kids. By the time they came back to finish the job 27y later, IT already laid some juicy spider eggs.

    • Pringles@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Tbh the orgy ruined the book for me. I just don’t see the point of it. I understand what he did narratively, but it is so completely out of the left field and unnecessary that it just shatters the enjoyment. And I know what SK would say: it’s about the journey, not the destination. But that is such a load of horse crap! Imagine LOTR until the battle of the black gate and they decide to defeat Sauron by having a hobbit bukkake. Wouldn’t have the same place in history, I imagine.

    • Aermis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It was a train. But yeah I love his books and I’ve tried everything under the sun to justify this but just couldn’t wrap my head around it being a “having to lose the innocence and transition to being an adult by everyone losing their virginity and somehow connect via love?”

    • TheMongoose@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      What really irritated me was why the heck did he write the part

      For Stephen King, the answer is always ‘drugs. Lots of drugs’

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I haven’t read IT specifically, but I’ve read a lot of SK, and lot of stories in his shared universe(s) (not sure how many people have connected IT to Dark Tower, but wouldn’t surprise me), but knowing him I’d imagine IT isn’t male or female. It just is. Or, at the very least, it’s not something that really falls into human concepts of gender.

        • zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          There is another similar creature in one of the late Dark Tower books but it feeds on laughter instead of fear. Does not seem nearly as powerful as Pennywise though, so maybe only tangentially related.

  • Rudebrew@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    If you can’t handle me at my child sewer orgy, you don’t deserve me at my interdimensional time spider fight.

  • prole@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This is one of the reasons I just love Stephen King’s mind. Dude is fucking insane. We’re lucky to have him.

      • prole@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Only for one period of his life, and the stuff he’s written after he got clean is some of the best stuff he’s ever written…

        King may have been on tons of coke (and drinking bottles of Scope mouth wash) while writing some books, it was in spite of it, not because. Those books don’t necessarily reflect the characteristics of cocaine.

        It’s not like what speed is to On The Road, as that book actually reads like someone tweaking out.

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      A brief internet search tells me that IT’s real form (or at least the closest thing to a real form the human mind can comprehend in our plane of existence) is a giant pregnant female spider. Apparently one of the characters in the book says “oh dear Jesus, IT is female,” though the web page I was reading doesn’t give a page number.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Okay radical. I think maybe the fact that it was a spider is why the female level didn’t immediately click with me haha

        Thanks

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The It monster is in the dark Tower? Which book? I think I only read the first three.

        And honestly I can barely remember them even though I read the first three twice. They’re so crazy.

        • Squibbles@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          When he finally came back to finish that series he really took it off, way off, the rails. I envy you for only having read the first 3.

          • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Oh yeah? Which one did they first visit a metropolitan city?

            Was the gunslinger in a pharmacy?

            Idk I think I lost interest at that point.

            Ahhh look at these strange metal boxes with people inside! - geeeet outta here.

            • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              2nd book has the gunslinger (in Eddie’s body) in New York, and yes he had a shootout with the police in a pharmacy. He needed meds for his infected hand.

              I don’t remember strange metal boxes with people inside…

              4th book is really good. At least teenage me liked it at the time. It’s a prequel book about a time in the gunslinger past when he had just become newly knighted, and a love interest.

              After that things get weird. I should try another read through.

                • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  It can be pretty much read as an independent book too, so don’t feel like you need to read the other books first. There’s just a bit of tie in from the other books at the beginning and the end.

          • prole@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, but Book 4 is the best. Wizard and Glass is the pinnacle of the series.

            Been years (prob over a decade) since I’ve read any of them, but I remembered hating Wizard and Glass at first, because it was a prequel and I wanted to hear more about the current journey, but fell in love with it by the end. So fucking good.

            • prole@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Oh man, talk about unpopular take.

              You’re entitled to your opinion of course. But that’s a tough one to defend lol

          • Pringles@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Yes, I wouldn’t bother reading 5-7. The terrifying thing is that he wrote that stuff sober. Cocaine King would’ve done a better job of it, I think.

  • Smallwater@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What he meant by that was “holy shitballs I gotta stop drinking”

    Dude had serious issues. Try reading his Dark Tower series - you can pinpoint at which book he got sober, because the story starts to make sense.

  • Starkstruck@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ok so I’ve never read IT but the monster killed ALL dinosaurs? Like damn that must’ve taken forever.

    Edit: wait was it crash landing basically the asteroid cause that makes more sense.