#nyxneon's personal ramblings

[nyxneon]

I like fanvids and edits on tiktok but whenever I get videos about books...dear god, it's like getting slapped in the face. (This is about Stephen King's Carrie.)

So, yesterday I happened to see a video where a girl was complaining about how Stephen King described Carrie, in particular her body and how she got her first period. However, the whole thing was very... vague. What i got was that "he was creepy and disgusting and he should have never been allowed to write about underage girls". (Does this remind you of anything???? Because this does remind me of some specific fandom discourse... but I digress) so I went to the comment section, and 99% of the comments were actually about THAT infamous IT scene. So, yeah, it wasn't very enlightening as to what the fuck was wrong with King's depiction of Carrie...

So, let me ramble a bit about this.

I first read Carrie (in the italian translation) when I was about...14/15 I think. (So, about 23 years ago, for reference.) Bought a cheap paperback at the supermarket (yes). And I read it and re-read it. I think I know some bits by heart. I loved it. And why? Let me tell you.

First of all, as a teen who felt awkward and fucking ugly, I saw a lot of myself in Carrie. The descriptions of her body, which apparently creeped out those people in the tiktok video, felt right to me. It conveyed disgust and curiosity and the potential for pleasure. Idk if you get what I mean...

(Also, btw, all the people grossed out on tiktok forget that Carrie is actually at least 16 in the story so...i mean, she's not a baby. Also the story is set in the 70s if I remember correctly, and you don't need to have a history degree to know that at the time people...well, were doing a lot of "grown up stuff" around 16/17. That's just how...it was. But apparently gen z have no sense of history whatsoever.... sorry.)

Moreover, people were getting offended (so I gathered) because King was "kinda disgusting and creepy" because he wrote about Carrie getting her first period like that. *major sigh here*

Look, i got my first period when I was 11. And it was fucking traumatic for me. Basically, i've been having periods longer than the people in the video and comments have been alive. Periods are nasty, uncomfortable and a pain in the ass. They're gross... they suck. King described the whole thing in a way that felt...real. (and also symbolic in a way, but this is for another time.)

A man can't write about it? Why? No, don't answer... i'm afraid i know the reasoning behind this brand of idiocy.

I gathered that they complained about the sexual undertones. Have those people ever been teenagers? Teens have sex on their minds quite a lot. I was like that and I was also pretty annoying and weird about it.

And lots of the comments were about how King was high on coke most of the time back when he wrote his most famous stuff and I was... baffled. Lots of artists have created great stuff while being high as fucking kites... y'all are clearly not so open-minded and accepting of drugs as you claim to be if you're dismissing King's writing because he was on drugs.

Also, one last thing that made me laugh:

Someone in the comments wrote that "King is considered high art while twilight is considered crap". My sibling in Christ, I can assure you that Stephen King is definitely not considered high art anywhere. He's a genre writer and genre writers are basically never considered high art. Like, at all.

#not to be a worse asshole than usual #nyxneon's personal ramblings #this time about literature