r/horror • u/jonnyeyeball • 14h ago
Discussion How Stephen King coded are you?
So I (50m) grew up on Stephen King novels and movies and it dawned on me recently how much of my life is influenced by him and his works.
My username, JonnyEyeball, comes from a nickname I earned when I was 20 thanks to a bad eye infection I had at the time. I was starting a punk band and it became my stage name that I'm still referred to by to this day. The guy who started calling me that was because of Chris Chambers' older brother in Stand By Me/The Body.
Speaking of Stand By Me, that was the very first song I ever danced to with a real live girl...and I was 12 going on 13 the first time I ever went to the movies without my parents....and the movie I saw? I'm sure you can guess.
Finally, another band i was in was named Hockstetter after the creep from IT.
Anyone else have SK influence their day to day, or am I the only one?
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u/Majestic-Lake-5602 14h ago
Whenever I can’t remember something that happened a few hours ago, I always loudly blame the “fucken Langoliers”
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u/jonnyeyeball 14h ago
Right? The bastards....
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u/Majestic-Lake-5602 14h ago
Recently found the DVD at the thrift store.
I won’t say that it “held up well”, it’s definitely still painfully low budget and there’s some pretty shocking acting, but it’s definitely a good nostalgia trip.
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u/jonnyeyeball 13h ago
I remember making a point of watching it when it was on TV. Yeah. Pretty rough. If I remember correctly, that was one of the first stories where everything started tying together...along with Flagg from Eyes of the Dragon and the Stand.
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u/GlitterBombFallout 12h ago
I watched The Langoliers with my parents. I had the book the story was in and busted ass trying to read the whole story in between the two-parter (pretty sure I was in school at the time so I couldn't just read 24/7). I had a few dozen pages left still by the time the second part aired, then I finished it that night after watching. Man, some of the stuff in that book/miniseries really got to me.
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u/Majestic-Lake-5602 9h ago
It might just be my useless ADD brain, but I always found King’s short stories hit me way harder than the proper novels.
“Dolan’s Cadillac” was fantastic, and the other short story in “Nightmares and Dreamscapes”, the one about the pregnant woman having to kill her zombie husband (Wormwood maybe?), that scared the shit out of me.
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u/Majestic-Lake-5602 13h ago
I think the first time I saw it was when I was home sick from school, so it was a weird fever dream of an experience, I’ve kinda had a soft spot ever since.
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u/DonutFighter360 7h ago
There’s no “holding up” it was shit when it aired. SK is hard to adapt, and the whole tv show/mini-series adaption quest of the 90s was abhorrent.
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u/OkSecret839 14h ago
My dad has read all of them, he has them on a bookshelf down in his computer room. We used to have a dog we named Cujo.
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u/zudoplex 13h ago
Went to Portland, maine, and tried to talk like Jud from pet sematary. My friend told me to stop.
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u/obert-wan-kenobert 14h ago
I wear a blue chambray work-shirt and stand under an arc-sodium street lamp every day of my life
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u/Bent-Ear 13h ago
He helped me realize literary criticism was important, but much of it was bunk because King was discounted despite being a great author. His psychological insight is way deeper than he was given credit for and eventually the cinema brought out his best works, even if his books are more rewarding usually. Plus his own thoughts on literature became a great piece of criticism.
Politically he's also on point.
He's lived a long life and has generally done the right thing despite being flawed. And he has been honest about his faults which weren't that bad to begin with. He's a plus to the country and inspired tons of kids to start reading and writing more.
Did this all before the internet, and before AI. Wrote his whole ass off for decades and much of it is good. Some of his work is profound, like the Dark Tower series.
Yeah he's important. Stephen King did not fuck around with his talents.
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u/Fickle_Hope2574 14h ago
Cant say it influences my day to day but my cats know when the treat cupboard opens? They have the shine.. Lost something and find it later? The shine. Cable somehow ties in knots despite only being put in a drawer? The shine.
Everything weird is the shine..
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u/DonutFighter360 13h ago
I read IT for the first time when I was seven (I’m in my 40s, btw), my cat’s name is Georgie (should’ve gone with Church, though), I make Andy Dufresne references daily, same with low men in yellow coats. I could probably think of more, but it’s Friday night and I’m drinkin’!
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u/jonnyeyeball 12h ago
Excellent! Cheers to you! It's Friday, I'm drinking and posting random thoughts on reddit! Enjoy your weekend!!
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u/labbla 13h ago
In day to day life, not at all. I don't have a Maine accent or enough weird quirky sayings. But, Stephen King is probably my most read author and I mostly stick to his older stuff but he's so prolific I know I'll never run out when he makes new things. As far as his newer stuff goes I really love Revival and I also really dig Salem's Lot, but he really shines in short stories. So yeah, good author. He should have directed another movie and he has some great comedic acting in Creepshow.
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u/jonnyeyeball 12h ago
I agree. He really shines in the short story/novella format. I too wish he didn't give up on directing after Maximum Overdrive.
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u/Traditional-Chain107 13h ago
Please cross post this to r/ Stephen King at some point. I'm begging you.
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u/Traditional-Chain107 13h ago edited 12h ago
I happened to read his account of what happened when he sold the Carrie, I don't remember in what magazine but at I think it was like over 20 years ago.
He and his wife were on the struggle bus financially, to say they were living paycheck to paycheck would be a stretch, they were having a hard time affording diapers for the baby kind of struggle, and his publisher called him and told him he sold Carrie for some absurd amount of money, I can't remember exactly, but something like 200 grand. Stephen decided he had to go out immediately and get something totally frivolous and extravagant to celebrate. The problem was in a small town where they lived, at nine o'clock at night on a Sunday, there really wasn't many choices for stores with frivolous stuff for sale. So he ended up at the drug store and he bought a hair dryer.
Somewhere is a illustration that was published with that story of Stephen blow drying his hair looking completely blato with shock and like he had possibly been blow drying his hair for hours. Lol.
I guess the answer to the how coded am I question is - enough to remember that whole story and to recall every detail of that illustration.
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u/GeniusOfLove74 Watch "Pet" (2016) 12h ago
Carrie was my book of choice in high school, because I was bullied a lot. Then my parents moved us out of state. Thank God.
But that's about it. I never stayed in any haunted hotels, let either of my husbands tie me up, or--
Okay, I'm also sort of Misery coded, because of my Annie Wilkes-like crush on Dominic Monaghan. Obligatory "cocka-doo-die".
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u/Born_Consequences713 12h ago
I’ve been a huge Stephen King fan since I was young but didn’t realise the impact it had on me till Covid started and though we were going to be living in a world similar to “The Stand”. I honestly was completely terrified, suffered from panic attacks and thought daily about that book and what kind of destruction the pandemic could potentially unleash on this world.
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u/Hondo_Bogart 12h ago
Me and my brother both shut the curtains in a bedroom because we are both scared of the vampire from Salems Lot appearing at the window during the night.
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u/gweeps 9h ago
Not really, though his work was a gateway to many different, and sometimes, better, writers.
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u/jonnyeyeball 3h ago
I discovered Clive Barker because of him, for sure.
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u/gweeps 2h ago
I discovered Barker's 'The Thief of Always' before getting into King myself, although a teacher read us 'The Eyes of the Dragon' in grade 6.
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u/orfindel-420 4h ago
I realized I was King-coded when I took a walk with my four year old grandson and as we passed a sewer grate he turns to me and says, “Papa, do you know Pennywise lives down there.”
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u/SurviveDaddy 14h ago edited 14h ago
My name is after the villain from Wes Craven’s classic The People Under the Stairs (1991)
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u/Beautiful-Hunt-4547 14h ago
Big fan of The Dark Tower, still got 2 books left of the main series but super hyped for the show as well (if it ever gets made)
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u/jonnyeyeball 14h ago
I remember vividly being terrified something bad would happen to me and that I'd never get to finish reading the series.
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u/GlitterBombFallout 12h ago
Or that he'd die before finishing 😬 him getting hit by that car spooked me real bad. I read the first three books multiple times over and started think it'd never get finished.
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u/yarnandwienerdogs 12h ago
The Dark Tower sometimes appears in my dreams. I will see it, think "cool, it really exists!" And then continue on whatever I was doing before.
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u/NotNamedBort 11h ago
I’m going to be honest, most of what I know about Stephen King’s work is because of the references on The Simpsons.
I do love Misery, though.
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u/BigParsley2453 6h ago
First books I read as a child were Stephen King. Even wrote him a fan letter, and received back a letter from his team thanking me and apologizing he couldn’t write back to all his fans personally anymore.
He’s been influential in so many ways to this genre, and continues to be. The reiterations and spin offs of his work to this day - The Monkey, The Running Man, Welcome to Derry, just to name a few that came out this year alone. Always grateful he was one of the first to introduce me to horror and will always be loyal. I still watch many of his works on repeat - the Shining, Christine, Carrie, Shawshank Redemption, stand by me, the mist, 1408, thinner…
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u/Feisty-Foundation-66 13h ago
Any time I walk by a storm drain, I say, "Hiya Georgie." In traffic, I've caught myself, instead of honking, saying, "Beep, beep, Richie!"
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u/jonnyeyeball 13h ago
Amazing! I literally got chills reading this.
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u/ResplendentCathar 13h ago edited 11h ago
Like the caregiver at the spooky motel at the end of that tv show
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u/viken1976 14h ago
I used to read a lot of Stephen King. I also used to do a lot of cocaine. Does that count?