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Dec. 11th, 2018 07:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreSo, I'm rereading The Shining for the first time in...a while. It's not my favorite Stephen King but it's good and solidly enjoyable. (And not, for me personally, scary enough that I can't read it before bed, which is a plus.)
But.
Y'all, I read enough of a certain type of fantasy literature as a child that I to this day immediately and automatically read any word that looks weird and made up backwards just in case*. And I get that the characters often literally can't do that but I can only engage with the book as written media. And given Stephen King's habit of picking a significant word and having it recur and recur and recur throughout whatever he's writing**, by about halfway through, the fact that we are still acting like the meaning of "redrum" is a big scary mystery is just annoying as all hell.
*Every once in a while, I run into a Harry Potter fan who still has not done this with the Mirror of Erised. It is always a fun time.
**Which usually I'm pretty into.
But.
Y'all, I read enough of a certain type of fantasy literature as a child that I to this day immediately and automatically read any word that looks weird and made up backwards just in case*. And I get that the characters often literally can't do that but I can only engage with the book as written media. And given Stephen King's habit of picking a significant word and having it recur and recur and recur throughout whatever he's writing**, by about halfway through, the fact that we are still acting like the meaning of "redrum" is a big scary mystery is just annoying as all hell.
*Every once in a while, I run into a Harry Potter fan who still has not done this with the Mirror of Erised. It is always a fun time.
**Which usually I'm pretty into.
