Florida (big Jim in heels), Texas (big Jim on wheels), South Dakota (big Jim with extensions and a puppy hunting license), Arkansas (Smoky lazy eyed big Jim).
I didn’t like Under the Dome because I didn’t want to believe people would turn to someone like Big Jim. Someone they knew was a crook and an unscrupulous guy but who was also charismatic and somewhat wealthy. Sadly I was proven wrong.
I never got the feeling that the town in general knew he was so unscrupulous and manipulative. Sure a few of the councilmembers did and those that worked with him on the long glass, but as a whole I had the impression he was loved by the community and respected due to his position on the council and religious fervor.
I was wrong about people not following a Big Jim in real life. But I’m still not a big fan of the book. The only other characters that are memorable are memorable for their incompetence. The protagonists have no impact in the story which is largely one of an entire town circling the drain. I assume it’s meant to be a cautionary tale & King himself has said it’s about what happens when the wrong people are in power. The book just didn’t do it for me. The whole alien thing feels slapped on at the end as a way to resolve the story. It’s jarring & I thought needed to be established better.
Came here to say this.
He is real and he is terrifying. The scariest thing of Big Jim is I felt he initially was truly doing what he thought was best for the town, and when that position of power and control was threatened, that changed him and forced him to reveal himself to the town and the delusion of “doing what’s best” faded.
When you’re feeling it.
My choice too. Once you hear the audiobook, and the slimy voice Raul Esparza gives him, it's sooo realistic to imagine this guy existing. I first heard it pre-Trump, and now, after him? Whoo boy
Say what you will about Trump, but his religious convictions are paper thin. Nuclear war is bad for his portfolio, he doesn't want to lose all his gaudy overpriced hotels in a nuclear inferno.
My high school definitely had a Patrick Hockstetter/Henry Bowers terrorizing younger kids wherever they went. No Pennywise though as a possible antidote.
It's a character from the book It: a psychopathic/sociopathic teenager that looks like your average low IQ bully, the classic kid from a difficult family, but he secretly enjoys torturing insects and small animals to the point of getting sexual pleasure from it. He gets a kick from watching the life fading away from living beings and the stuff he does in the book as he grows bold in his sadistic behavior are downright terrifying.
With people like Trump making Stillson seem obvious and then Wilkes making the crazy killer nurses popular in the papers they'll be the most common answer...violent abusers are much more common.
Narcissists aren't supernatural. I'll take a vampire, werewolf, or any number of 80s horror movie killers over growing up with a narccisstic father(and brother and mother). Look up "narcissistic fathers and daughters." The closest Stephen King character he wrote like that was Jesse's father when she was 12. What he did to her after the eclipse was way worse than I realized at the time.
Yeah. He scared the snot out of me. All the abusive parents and spouses.
Margaret White in Carrie. Ultra-zealous religious people are terrifying. Carrie would be an entirely different story with aother who loves her daughter.
Yeah, I said in another comment on this post, my eighth grade teacher was maybe not as openly crazy as Margaret, but just as zealous. Her daughter was in third grade at the same school, and every time I saw that kid she looked terrified, like something was after her. I don’t know if she was getting abused or anything, but a decade later, I do wonder about it.
I agree that Carrie's story would have been different with a different mother/ family. I think the epilogue, with the letter from a woman to her sister about her daughter, could be a prologue to the sort of story you're talking about. This mother loves her daughter and isn't frightened of her talents, but admires them. Of course the epilogue is also a repudiation of the "experts" who claim that there's no other children with Carrie's abilities.
She should be much higher up!! That book scared the living shit out of me because it was like reading about my father have a series of bad days . . . movie Annie pretty much *was* my father.
Cujo. There are a lot of dogs that don’t get vaccinated and run free, especially in the countryside. I could totally see a rabid dog running asking causing havoc and starting a rabies outbreak.
This is why I made sure my kids were vaccinated on schedule (except for my micro-preemie, he got shots on a schedule from his real due date and not from when he was actually born per his dr’s suggestion), and my dogs too. I’m not talking any chances because Bimbo Barbie thinks she knows better than doctors and scientists.
I work with dogs, specifically puppies. If you’ve ever seen a puppy with Parvo, it’s not something you will ever forget. If the puppy is small breed, the chances of them surviving Parvo are very small. It’s a slow, painful death where they’re literally pooping blood.
It’s not even completely preventable with vaccines. it has a lot to do with how long the mother dog nursed the puppies and if she nursed for the proper length of time in order to give them the immunity they are supposed to have. Then, in the meantime, did they get all their vaccinations?
And Parvo is everywhere. Take an unvaccinated puppy to any park, woods, highway rest stop, store etc… and there’s a chance he’s going to pick it up from the ground. And these idiots somehow think giving shots to dogs is no longer necessary and I just don’t understand why you would risk killing your puppy.
I realize it’s just as bad with humans but I’m talking about puppies because that’s what I work with and that’s what I see every day. It’s somehow more surprising to me that these women won’t even get their animals vaccinated. I’m like, do you think your puppy is going to get autism? And would it matter if he did? Would we even know if a dog had autism? Haha (believe me, I know vaccines don’t cause autism. I’m just saying what they think!)
I, not knowing any better at the time, got my first Boxer from a backyard breeder. She came home so very sick, wouldn’t eat or drink, and had horrible diarrhea. We took her to the vet and, she had Parvo. We fought so hard and spent so much money but, she survived. We still don’t know how.
Sadly, our two friends who had taken pups from the same litter lost their pups. In addition, we found out later that of the 6 pups they had left after our 3 were taken 4 died.
This was on a military base and they got arrested and the last two pups plus the mom and dad all got confiscated. They were also banned from ever living on a base again. I don’t know what the charges were or what happened after but, I know that much.
That scared me so badly that I’m very careful about what breeders I get puppies from, I keep them as quarantined as I can until they get their shots, I get all their puppy shots, and every year I make sure they get updated.
That was such a horrible time for me.
I’m so sorry you went through that. And yes, it is a very horrific thing to see an animal suffering with that. The fact that it is almost completely preventable makes it even worse.
The breeder you got your dog off of probably wasn’t vaccinating any of the dogs, and there’s a good chance that the mother dog had been bred over and over and over again that she didn’t have enough milk for all the puppies, so they weren’t getting the natural immunity they should’ve gotten from her. It’s just a bad deal all around.
Really glad your dog survived and very, very sorry for your friends and the rest of those poor babies in the litter. So sad.
Your son needing a different vax schedule as a preemie was a secondary reason why I made sure to get my kiddo vaccinated on schedule. The primary reason was her safety, of course. Protecting the people who can't get vaccinated by reducing transmission rates was important to me.
I'm right there with you on my dog, too. She's a member of the family. It would break my heart if she got sick, especially if it led to putting her down.
I used to work in a sector with vulnerable adults and a lot of ex-offenders, one of my colleagues was an absolute real life Percy Wetmore who took great pleasure in being the shittiest person possible to the people he was supposed to be helping.
He got the job through nepotism and was one of the most unpleasant people I've ever met. It was almost impossible for him to lose his job because of his connections so it took months of us documenting and evidencing his behaviour and actions alongside constantly raising formal complaints before anything was done.
He nearly got let off with a warning but decided to punch a client and didn't realise the client was recording on his phone. Thankfully the client was OK and wanted to press charges so there wasn't a hope of that absolute bastard keeping the job after that.
We sent the client the biggest parcel of nice things and had a very secret staff celebration party as soon as "Percy" was officially gone.
Annie Wilkes. Obsessing about a fictional IP and its writer so much she behaved like she did.
I've seen people get so angry about decisions made regarding fictional characters and worlds these last few years. And its scary. First example that comes to mind- A videogame I'm a big fan of (The Last Of Us, if you're wondering) killed off a beloved character early in the sequel. The writers got an insane amount of hate, but the treatment of the actress who played the murderer was truly unhinged. She got death threats, rape threats, endless abuse. And her newborn baby was threatened by these nutters!! Because she voiced a fictional character who killed another fictional character in an inciting incident in a videogame. A lot of lunatics showing how mentally unstable they are there, most are sad losers hiding behind their computer, but there must have been some genuinely dangerous people in there.
Danforth “Buster” Keeton, the selectman from Needful Things. Not as bad a Big Jim Rennie but in the same vein.
Incidentally, who is named Danforth? I’ve never heard that one ever.
I was going to say him, but couldn't remember his name. I do remember J.T. Walsh in the movie with a cigar in his mouth playing with those trains he got from Gaunt.
Frank Geary from 'Sleeping Beauties'
He means well for his daughter but has very realistic depictions of anger issues and feelings if inadequacy that drive him. One of King's most underappreciated characters.
Jack Torrence feels very real. Especially as someone with a drunk for a dad. Although at least Jack tries, you know, until the evil hotel gets to him.
Don Biderman from Hearts in Atlantis. The real estate agency owner who is actually a sleezy POS rapist. When he doesn't get to pass around his vulnerable female employee.
This is going to sound funny, but some incarnations of Flagg. The cult leader, the charismatic terrorist masquerading as a revolutionary, the shifty trickster. How is he possible? Then how were Donald DeFreeze (one of King's inspirations for Flagg), Jim Jones, and David Koresh possible? Bin Laden, Shoko Asahara?
Flagg, while being supernatural, feels all to real in that everything is smoke and mirrors and glamour.
All of them. That’s why King is so damn scary as a writer. Every villain is just real enough to be plausible irl - assuming you don’t count things like unkillable clowns.
Annie Wilkes. I had a stalker when I worked in a mall in the 90s. She’d wander into the store just to see me. She was more Annie Wilkes than Kathy Bates could ever be. Looked up her name off the debit card she used and looked her up in one of those Henderson reverse phone directories. Right beside her name it said ‘Nurse’. I got fricking goosebumps.
Annie Wilkes exists all over, everywhere. But I don't see her as a villain really just as a severely mentally ill person not getting the help and the meds she needs. Ditto the Dad in the Shining, Carrie, etc.
A lot of King's villains are just real people with issues that had they been helped they probably wouldn't have been a threat to anyone.
So yes, they DO exist in a sense in the real world.
Jack Torrance that was my alcoholic parents growing up. They fortunately didn't live in a haunted hotel.
Annie Wilkes that was my 1st roommate in NYC years ago who went off the deep end and who out of sheer self preservation I ran away from until she finally got her shit together, got some help and started medicating so she could control her illness and stop abusing her friends.
Carrie White that was ME growing up being bullied to within an inch of my life every day at school potentially going full on psycho from C-PTSD. Lucky for my cruel pack of classmates I didn't have PK ability or access to my father's guns.
King's villains a lot of them are basically all of us.
They're everyone with a mental illness, anyone who's got an addiction or who has been bullied. Who has had an abusive spouse...
The ones that are more supernatural that's a different thing, though shades of real life, you can find aspects of those beings too in real people if you look long enough...
King humanizes even his true "monster" beings a lot of the time. Not always but sometimes because that's how he writes. He takes the normal and he twists it into being abnormal so that the fear you feel it comes from being able to relate to the character he's writing as his villain.
I've known several Jack Torrances in my life. Ditto Annie Wilkes, Carrie White, and quite a few other villains created by King. They're not really all that rare in human society his villains. They're just going full on bat shit crazy for the sake of drama in a book.
Most people truly bad like that they fly under the radar for quite a while until they get caught doing something truly horrendous. Some never get caught. But they DO exist.
Bev's father in IT?
That was my one friend's Dad in highschool. Son of a bitch finally crossed the line into full on molestor and villain when my friend's Mom died in 8th grade. She endured being basically being made into his substitute wife till about 10th grade when she told me and I sensibly told a counselor at school who called CPS.
I lost a friend for a while over that because she was so traumatized and more so when they removed her from the house. She hated her Dad but he was the only family she had left and foster care wasn't much better. We met again in 12th grade though and she hugged me and thanked me so in the end I know I did the right thing.
King's villains they're right in front of us, among us, he's just writing about what we all know is really there. That's his genius really turning the normal into something that can REALLY scare us silly...
You guys aren’t gonna believe this, but I’ve seen plenty of clowns. Never verified that any of them aren’t from beyond our reality, so technically *It*.
I just now (seconds ago) finished The Institute. People like the ones working the Institute exist. Spoilers if you haven’t read it. I’m talking about former military people that may have been involved with advanced interrogation that then transferred to security firms and were recruited (probably as contractors) into black sites. These are people desensitized to violence and have curbed morality for the sake of, more spoilers, probability. Consider AI use in predicting target locations in a warzone-yes, this is real.
Pennywise/IT takes the form of what terrifies you the most, which most of my life, especially growing up, would be my dad. I read IT around age 10 or 11, and was my favorite at that time because I became a part of the loser's club, had friends, and we were about to move(again), so instead of having to be the new kid again and start a new school, I was still in Dairy, Maine and because of how much love they had among each other, the horrors they fought wasn't as terrifying as not knowing what state of mind my dad would come home in.
Big Jim Rennie.
Yeah I think every town in the US has a handful of Big Jims unfortunately.
I think he’s the governor of some states. Big bully!
Florida (big Jim in heels), Texas (big Jim on wheels), South Dakota (big Jim with extensions and a puppy hunting license), Arkansas (Smoky lazy eyed big Jim).
Louisiana has a high concentration of big jims and Mick Jagger called the governor one out a couple weeks ago
Sweeeeeeet!!! I gotta check that out.
Hilarious because it’s true!
🏆🏆
Here in Florida we got short jim
We had one running everything for a while here.
He even had a Jr. that I wouldn't be surprised to find out has also murdered several women and slept with their bodies in a pantry!
We had him as president 2016-2020
Come to think of it, same here in UK. There’s one living next door to me.
Yeah as soon as I wrote the US - it dawned on me that we don’t get to claim all the villains in the world!
Actually Big Jim and the guy next door to me look alike! He of next door actually looks like an ugly version of Big Jim!
I didn’t like Under the Dome because I didn’t want to believe people would turn to someone like Big Jim. Someone they knew was a crook and an unscrupulous guy but who was also charismatic and somewhat wealthy. Sadly I was proven wrong.
I never got the feeling that the town in general knew he was so unscrupulous and manipulative. Sure a few of the councilmembers did and those that worked with him on the long glass, but as a whole I had the impression he was loved by the community and respected due to his position on the council and religious fervor.
Fucking Worst Ending Ever!!!
I was wrong about people not following a Big Jim in real life. But I’m still not a big fan of the book. The only other characters that are memorable are memorable for their incompetence. The protagonists have no impact in the story which is largely one of an entire town circling the drain. I assume it’s meant to be a cautionary tale & King himself has said it’s about what happens when the wrong people are in power. The book just didn’t do it for me. The whole alien thing feels slapped on at the end as a way to resolve the story. It’s jarring & I thought needed to be established better.
Came here to say this. He is real and he is terrifying. The scariest thing of Big Jim is I felt he initially was truly doing what he thought was best for the town, and when that position of power and control was threatened, that changed him and forced him to reveal himself to the town and the delusion of “doing what’s best” faded. When you’re feeling it.
You beat me to it. There are too many people like him in America
I’ll be eating steak and potatoes with Jesus tonight 😒
My choice too. Once you hear the audiobook, and the slimy voice Raul Esparza gives him, it's sooo realistic to imagine this guy existing. I first heard it pre-Trump, and now, after him? Whoo boy
Omg. I was coming to say the exact same thing. Sadly.
Greg Stillson.
i just started reading the dead zone last thursday cause i got it as a birthday gift and jesus christ that prologue...
I believe he is currently a House Rep from Florida.
I think he’s currently on trial but he’s available on Wednesdays.
He does exist he just changed his name to Donald Trump.
Stillson was a hell of a lot smarter than Trump, IMO.
The real difference is Trump could hold up a baby as a human shield and his idiot cultists would *still* vote for him.
The baby was a socialist
Yes, sadly.
True, but a conman is a conman.
Say what you will about Trump, but his religious convictions are paper thin. Nuclear war is bad for his portfolio, he doesn't want to lose all his gaudy overpriced hotels in a nuclear inferno.
He even started as a Bible salesman...
First one that came to mind.
This is the one.
turns out that book was optimistic - the real stillson could use a baby as a human shield and not lose a single voter
Yep. This guy.
Patrick hockstetter, and the fact I could have even met someone like him without even realizing scares the hell out of me.
Yeah, had a kid like that in middle school. I was not even remotely shocked when he was arrested in high school for a list of stuff.
My high school definitely had a Patrick Hockstetter/Henry Bowers terrorizing younger kids wherever they went. No Pennywise though as a possible antidote.
Care to tell us the story?
It's a character from the book It: a psychopathic/sociopathic teenager that looks like your average low IQ bully, the classic kid from a difficult family, but he secretly enjoys torturing insects and small animals to the point of getting sexual pleasure from it. He gets a kick from watching the life fading away from living beings and the stuff he does in the book as he grows bold in his sadistic behavior are downright terrifying.
Beverly Marsh's husband in It. Can't remember his name right now. He is by far realistic and all to common.
I think it was Tom 🤔 something. I could be wrong
Yup. Tom Rogan. He’s gonna give you a whuppin’.
Her dad as well. Don't know why I didn't think about him. I worry. I worry about that a lot.
>I worry about that a lot. Well played!
That's it!
I do agree with you. There are many more Toms out there than aren’t
With people like Trump making Stillson seem obvious and then Wilkes making the crazy killer nurses popular in the papers they'll be the most common answer...violent abusers are much more common.
Narcissists aren't supernatural. I'll take a vampire, werewolf, or any number of 80s horror movie killers over growing up with a narccisstic father(and brother and mother). Look up "narcissistic fathers and daughters." The closest Stephen King character he wrote like that was Jesse's father when she was 12. What he did to her after the eclipse was way worse than I realized at the time.
Her dad, too.
Norman Daniels from Rose Madder. Known a couple of cops like Norman and am glad I no longer know them.
I came here to add Norman. Scariest because of how realistic he is.
What's even scarier is He could be real. Hitting their spouse to hide the bruising, narcissistic, manipulative.
Yeah. He scared the snot out of me. All the abusive parents and spouses. Margaret White in Carrie. Ultra-zealous religious people are terrifying. Carrie would be an entirely different story with aother who loves her daughter.
Yeah, I said in another comment on this post, my eighth grade teacher was maybe not as openly crazy as Margaret, but just as zealous. Her daughter was in third grade at the same school, and every time I saw that kid she looked terrified, like something was after her. I don’t know if she was getting abused or anything, but a decade later, I do wonder about it.
I agree that Carrie's story would have been different with a different mother/ family. I think the epilogue, with the letter from a woman to her sister about her daughter, could be a prologue to the sort of story you're talking about. This mother loves her daughter and isn't frightened of her talents, but admires them. Of course the epilogue is also a repudiation of the "experts" who claim that there's no other children with Carrie's abilities.
This is the answer. Norman is just a dude with power. Evil, single-purpose, realistic, and by far the most frightening.
I’m reading rose madder for the first time right now. Was going to add that prick Norman if no one else had yet.
Ze boule
Brady Hartsfield, >!pre-Finders Keepers stuff.!<
Ooooh I’m reading finders keepers right now and wasn’t sure if he was in it.
Ahh sorry, I hadn’t considered that it could be a spoiler 😓
It’s okay I forgive you. If anything, I’m excited now!
The first half of Finders Keepers was my favorite part of the trilogy so far (I still need to read End of Watch).
End of Watch is good, but the supernatural element takes me out of the trilogy. I prefer Mr. Mercedes by a large margin.
i second this notion
You’ve already got Greg Stillson running for a second term as president.
The Kid from the Stand. Ugh
You believe that happy crappy
You don't tell me, I tell YOU.
I'm gonna ventilate your thinking machine
Sure
Harold Lauder
100%!!! My high school boyfriend was just like him.
scary
Annie Wilkes
Baby Reindeer
She should be much higher up!! That book scared the living shit out of me because it was like reading about my father have a series of bad days . . . movie Annie pretty much *was* my father.
Harold Lauder
Incel and simp combo
Mrs. Carmody
Came here to say this, the first one that came to mind
I've met more people like her than I care for
The DeVores in Bag of Bones.
Christine "Chris" Hargensen. The world is full of them.
There's several of her in Congress right now.
Nothing crueler than individuals with the minds of high-schoolers.
Just finished carrie hard agree
PLENTY of Margaret Whites and Chris Hargensens out there.
I first read Carrie as an 8th grader at a Catholic school, and my teacher at the time was, if not fully Margaret, well on her way to it.
In 8th grade I was pretty much boy-Carrie and knew a few Chris Hargensens in both boy and girl forms. At least I had loving parents!
I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far to see a Margaret White mention.
Ed Deepneau
There's a million Tom Rogans out in the world right this very minute
Cujo. There are a lot of dogs that don’t get vaccinated and run free, especially in the countryside. I could totally see a rabid dog running asking causing havoc and starting a rabies outbreak.
Especially nowadays since we’re having this whole wave of crunchy moms refusing to vaccinate their kids or animals. It’s disgusting.
This is why I made sure my kids were vaccinated on schedule (except for my micro-preemie, he got shots on a schedule from his real due date and not from when he was actually born per his dr’s suggestion), and my dogs too. I’m not talking any chances because Bimbo Barbie thinks she knows better than doctors and scientists.
I work with dogs, specifically puppies. If you’ve ever seen a puppy with Parvo, it’s not something you will ever forget. If the puppy is small breed, the chances of them surviving Parvo are very small. It’s a slow, painful death where they’re literally pooping blood. It’s not even completely preventable with vaccines. it has a lot to do with how long the mother dog nursed the puppies and if she nursed for the proper length of time in order to give them the immunity they are supposed to have. Then, in the meantime, did they get all their vaccinations? And Parvo is everywhere. Take an unvaccinated puppy to any park, woods, highway rest stop, store etc… and there’s a chance he’s going to pick it up from the ground. And these idiots somehow think giving shots to dogs is no longer necessary and I just don’t understand why you would risk killing your puppy. I realize it’s just as bad with humans but I’m talking about puppies because that’s what I work with and that’s what I see every day. It’s somehow more surprising to me that these women won’t even get their animals vaccinated. I’m like, do you think your puppy is going to get autism? And would it matter if he did? Would we even know if a dog had autism? Haha (believe me, I know vaccines don’t cause autism. I’m just saying what they think!)
I, not knowing any better at the time, got my first Boxer from a backyard breeder. She came home so very sick, wouldn’t eat or drink, and had horrible diarrhea. We took her to the vet and, she had Parvo. We fought so hard and spent so much money but, she survived. We still don’t know how. Sadly, our two friends who had taken pups from the same litter lost their pups. In addition, we found out later that of the 6 pups they had left after our 3 were taken 4 died. This was on a military base and they got arrested and the last two pups plus the mom and dad all got confiscated. They were also banned from ever living on a base again. I don’t know what the charges were or what happened after but, I know that much. That scared me so badly that I’m very careful about what breeders I get puppies from, I keep them as quarantined as I can until they get their shots, I get all their puppy shots, and every year I make sure they get updated. That was such a horrible time for me.
I’m so sorry you went through that. And yes, it is a very horrific thing to see an animal suffering with that. The fact that it is almost completely preventable makes it even worse. The breeder you got your dog off of probably wasn’t vaccinating any of the dogs, and there’s a good chance that the mother dog had been bred over and over and over again that she didn’t have enough milk for all the puppies, so they weren’t getting the natural immunity they should’ve gotten from her. It’s just a bad deal all around. Really glad your dog survived and very, very sorry for your friends and the rest of those poor babies in the litter. So sad.
Your son needing a different vax schedule as a preemie was a secondary reason why I made sure to get my kiddo vaccinated on schedule. The primary reason was her safety, of course. Protecting the people who can't get vaccinated by reducing transmission rates was important to me. I'm right there with you on my dog, too. She's a member of the family. It would break my heart if she got sick, especially if it led to putting her down.
I used to work in a sector with vulnerable adults and a lot of ex-offenders, one of my colleagues was an absolute real life Percy Wetmore who took great pleasure in being the shittiest person possible to the people he was supposed to be helping. He got the job through nepotism and was one of the most unpleasant people I've ever met. It was almost impossible for him to lose his job because of his connections so it took months of us documenting and evidencing his behaviour and actions alongside constantly raising formal complaints before anything was done. He nearly got let off with a warning but decided to punch a client and didn't realise the client was recording on his phone. Thankfully the client was OK and wanted to press charges so there wasn't a hope of that absolute bastard keeping the job after that. We sent the client the biggest parcel of nice things and had a very secret staff celebration party as soon as "Percy" was officially gone.
Time, like in 11/12/63. On a more serious note, maybe Todd Bowden?
Yeah, I had a classmate who was way too much like Todd in the 1980s. He even named his dog Panzer. Big into the N\*zi stuff.
Frank Dodd
That section in the book made me nauseous
That whole part of the dead zone is one of those things that really strike home as realistically possbile
Percy Wetmore
There's way too many Percy Wetmores in law enforcement and corrections, not to mention healthcare. Small-minded bigots with too much power.
Percy Wetmore do a dance. Hear ‘im squishin in his pants.
Harold Lauder. There’s someone at work that gives me his vibes and it’s not sitting right with me.
Reddit is pretty much full of Harold Lauders.
Ha!!! Not far from true.
Greg Stillson was elected President in 2016.
11/22/63. Sadie's ex-husband. And the janitor's father. Having trouble remembering names, sorry.
Johnny Clayton Frank Dunning
Thank you!
Greg Stilson.
Greg Stilson. He more or less does exist in real life.
[удалено]
Aspects of RF are around though. Like that he’s drawn to protests to agitate and escalate. Don’t remember which alias that was under, maybe Filaro?
whoever developed and released captain trips at the beginning of The Stand…
Annie Wilkes. Obsessing about a fictional IP and its writer so much she behaved like she did. I've seen people get so angry about decisions made regarding fictional characters and worlds these last few years. And its scary. First example that comes to mind- A videogame I'm a big fan of (The Last Of Us, if you're wondering) killed off a beloved character early in the sequel. The writers got an insane amount of hate, but the treatment of the actress who played the murderer was truly unhinged. She got death threats, rape threats, endless abuse. And her newborn baby was threatened by these nutters!! Because she voiced a fictional character who killed another fictional character in an inciting incident in a videogame. A lot of lunatics showing how mentally unstable they are there, most are sad losers hiding behind their computer, but there must have been some genuinely dangerous people in there.
Henry Dean. Maybe not a classic villain but…yeah he is.
Johnny Cash is everything
Lee Harvey oswald! ….oh wait…
Smokey Updike from the Oatley Tap in *The Talisman*
Ace, tragically Patrick and definitely Henry Chrissy and carries There are weak kings so Thomas is fairly on the cards, tho not really a true villain
Danforth “Buster” Keeton, the selectman from Needful Things. Not as bad a Big Jim Rennie but in the same vein. Incidentally, who is named Danforth? I’ve never heard that one ever.
I was going to say him, but couldn't remember his name. I do remember J.T. Walsh in the movie with a cigar in his mouth playing with those trains he got from Gaunt.
Former VP James Danforth Quayle is the only one I can think of.
Ohhhh yeah, it’s coming back to me
Annie Wilkes, definitely. And I suppose she does to some extent.
Big Jim. Final answer…
Steve Ordener. I've met many.
I don't recognise that name?
Roadwork: Corporate tool.
…. Literally any of the non-supernatural ones.
Jack Mort is out there right now
Long days and pleasant nights.
Margaret White.
Sunlight Gardener
You say true. Great choice to put him in Indiana. Plenty of "scared straight"/conversion homes in the Great Lakes Midwest, plus the Bible Belt stuff.
I'm pretty sure Big Jim Rennie is running on the GOP ticket in November.
Beverley's dad, Carrie's mum, Jessie's dad ....the scariest monsters are the the ones living amongst us
that kid from the green mile, the one that actually got to the girls.
Frank Geary from 'Sleeping Beauties' He means well for his daughter but has very realistic depictions of anger issues and feelings if inadequacy that drive him. One of King's most underappreciated characters.
Jack Torrence feels very real. Especially as someone with a drunk for a dad. Although at least Jack tries, you know, until the evil hotel gets to him. Don Biderman from Hearts in Atlantis. The real estate agency owner who is actually a sleezy POS rapist. When he doesn't get to pass around his vulnerable female employee. This is going to sound funny, but some incarnations of Flagg. The cult leader, the charismatic terrorist masquerading as a revolutionary, the shifty trickster. How is he possible? Then how were Donald DeFreeze (one of King's inspirations for Flagg), Jim Jones, and David Koresh possible? Bin Laden, Shoko Asahara? Flagg, while being supernatural, feels all to real in that everything is smoke and mirrors and glamour.
Jack Mort. From The Dark Tower the drawing of the three. Always thought his character could be easily seen in real life.
Emily and Rodney Harris
That's a couple that could be in the headlines tomorrow.
All those people in charge of that group home for kids in the Talisman.. almost every adult in that book was a villain to poor Jake minus a few.
Forgot the guys first name but Deepnau from Insomnia
Norman Daniels 10000% I know a few who aren't too far from him. Not all cops are evil bastards, but a whole lot of evil bastards are cops.
All of them. That’s why King is so damn scary as a writer. Every villain is just real enough to be plausible irl - assuming you don’t count things like unkillable clowns.
I think it's pretty safe to say that interdimensional shapeshifting clowns who live in the sewer don't really exist lol
Try telling that to my neighbor who won't go near a sewer drain!
Brady Hartsfield, for sure.
Pimli Prentiss. It’s okay if you’re killing the world as long as the trains run on time. Just doing your job.
Annie Wilkes. I had a stalker when I worked in a mall in the 90s. She’d wander into the store just to see me. She was more Annie Wilkes than Kathy Bates could ever be. Looked up her name off the debit card she used and looked her up in one of those Henderson reverse phone directories. Right beside her name it said ‘Nurse’. I got fricking goosebumps.
Trashcan man. Anarchists everywhere.
Annie Wilkes exists all over, everywhere. But I don't see her as a villain really just as a severely mentally ill person not getting the help and the meds she needs. Ditto the Dad in the Shining, Carrie, etc. A lot of King's villains are just real people with issues that had they been helped they probably wouldn't have been a threat to anyone. So yes, they DO exist in a sense in the real world. Jack Torrance that was my alcoholic parents growing up. They fortunately didn't live in a haunted hotel. Annie Wilkes that was my 1st roommate in NYC years ago who went off the deep end and who out of sheer self preservation I ran away from until she finally got her shit together, got some help and started medicating so she could control her illness and stop abusing her friends. Carrie White that was ME growing up being bullied to within an inch of my life every day at school potentially going full on psycho from C-PTSD. Lucky for my cruel pack of classmates I didn't have PK ability or access to my father's guns. King's villains a lot of them are basically all of us. They're everyone with a mental illness, anyone who's got an addiction or who has been bullied. Who has had an abusive spouse... The ones that are more supernatural that's a different thing, though shades of real life, you can find aspects of those beings too in real people if you look long enough... King humanizes even his true "monster" beings a lot of the time. Not always but sometimes because that's how he writes. He takes the normal and he twists it into being abnormal so that the fear you feel it comes from being able to relate to the character he's writing as his villain. I've known several Jack Torrances in my life. Ditto Annie Wilkes, Carrie White, and quite a few other villains created by King. They're not really all that rare in human society his villains. They're just going full on bat shit crazy for the sake of drama in a book. Most people truly bad like that they fly under the radar for quite a while until they get caught doing something truly horrendous. Some never get caught. But they DO exist. Bev's father in IT? That was my one friend's Dad in highschool. Son of a bitch finally crossed the line into full on molestor and villain when my friend's Mom died in 8th grade. She endured being basically being made into his substitute wife till about 10th grade when she told me and I sensibly told a counselor at school who called CPS. I lost a friend for a while over that because she was so traumatized and more so when they removed her from the house. She hated her Dad but he was the only family she had left and foster care wasn't much better. We met again in 12th grade though and she hugged me and thanked me so in the end I know I did the right thing. King's villains they're right in front of us, among us, he's just writing about what we all know is really there. That's his genius really turning the normal into something that can REALLY scare us silly...
Norman Daniels is more common than anyone wants to imagine
GREG!!!!
Steve Kemp
I'm pretty sure Randall Flagg is clocking the highways somewhere.
Annie Wilkes
Greg Stillson
Big Jim Rennie is actually the former president of Brazil. The his sons are actually little Juniors
We have all met a Percy Wetmore…
You guys aren’t gonna believe this, but I’ve seen plenty of clowns. Never verified that any of them aren’t from beyond our reality, so technically *It*.
Randall Flagg.
Kurt Dussander
There's an Annie Wilkes and a Jack Torrence in every city in the world. It's just we can't always recognize them easily ... 👀
Cujo!!!
Leland Gaunt. I dunno. I can just totally picture this guy being a shopkeeper irl.
Brady from Mr Mercedes series
Jack Torrance, Annie Wilkes and Cujo.
I just now (seconds ago) finished The Institute. People like the ones working the Institute exist. Spoilers if you haven’t read it. I’m talking about former military people that may have been involved with advanced interrogation that then transferred to security firms and were recruited (probably as contractors) into black sites. These are people desensitized to violence and have curbed morality for the sake of, more spoilers, probability. Consider AI use in predicting target locations in a warzone-yes, this is real.
>I am aware that Pennywise/IT, Kurt and Randall Flagg are completely supernatural beings It's 2024... and the Walkin' Dude is *online*.
Percy Whetmore. That was my mom's boyfriend. He got his though.
trump thinks he’s Randall Flagg
Pennywise/IT takes the form of what terrifies you the most, which most of my life, especially growing up, would be my dad. I read IT around age 10 or 11, and was my favorite at that time because I became a part of the loser's club, had friends, and we were about to move(again), so instead of having to be the new kid again and start a new school, I was still in Dairy, Maine and because of how much love they had among each other, the horrors they fought wasn't as terrifying as not knowing what state of mind my dad would come home in.
Roger Klerke, without a doubt.
Any of the small town religious nut jobs. Big Jim Rennie as well.
Annie Wilkes, no doubt.
Danforth “Buster” Keaton, another Big Jim type
Fucking Percy. I know personally people in positions of power due to nepotism, and two of them eerily remind me of Percy from the Green Mile.
Big and little Jim from the under the dome.
Brandy hats field
Kurt Dussander
Sunlight Gardener. I have met people just like him as a survivor of the TTI.
Jim Dooley, and everyone from Billy Summers.