People really need to stop spreading this misinformation.
It was a TRAIN.
Gangbangs are simultaneous, trains are sequential.
So if you were to compare it to a vehicle a gangbang would be like a plane that goes to Epstein Island, just like Steven King did multiple times.
Reading the story, the "gangbang" part wasn't like a huge orchestrated planned event. The kids were lost in the dark, loosing hope, and knew that IT wanted them to feel down and weak as alone they could be defeated by IT.
In an effort to make them feel close, Beverly took it up her self to make them all Eskimo Brothers. This brought the Losers Club back into solidarity.
I'm a big fan of Stephen Kings work. He's deserving of respect as a writer and story teller. Your explanation is reasonable and true in the context of the story.
There is just no way to talk about, write about, discuss, etc, stuff like that, without the air in the room not going still as fuck. All of what you say is true, it's still.... off.
And that book was just a bit too long, but again, great book, great writer, questionable AS FUCK portion.
cocaine
Ya know, people keep saying this, but I've tried coke before, and preteen sex didn't cross my mind once during it.
We're you writing a book about pre-teens being lured by a murderous clown when you did cocaine? No, I didn't think so!
There is just no way to talk about, write about, discuss, etc, stuff like that, without the air in the room not going still as fuck.
I don't think that's true at all. I think there are a lot of people out there who could discuss it, but that requires a significant degree of emotional maturity and there are too many people who can't step back and be open to discussing topics which make them uncomfortable.
Mate, where are you going with this? Aldous Huxely erotic play for children? I think you're missing the point. It's not a discussion because the fallacy purported by the writer was to give 12 year olds emotions, desires, and mental processes that they simply have not yet developed. Beverly, the twelve year old girl, wouldn't think to have sex with her friends to comfort them. Full stop. That's the writer putting these emotions where they simply wouldn't exist. And. Creepy.
It's not maturity. Maturity is knowing that twelve year olds don't reason that way.
Well, she would, because she's a child sexual abuse survivor and it's a hypersexualization thing and a result of how she's been told things work by the adults taking advantage of her.
Still fucked up to type that out and not have some editor say "Are you doing okay, Stevie?"
This is a very well-made point which does make a very good case for her actions fitting with her backstory.
However, a) it really only works as a post-hoc rationalisation for the scene, rather than an explantation for why the book is better with it, and b) speaking about consistency and foreplanning is somewhat undermined by the climax of the book being “…actually, it’s a…giant alien spider!”
There are plenty of people who are abused at a young age that come to associate sex with giving comfort or thinking its the only way they can help others.
That sounds very much like a pedophile fantasy.
That's like saying that a lot of people get murdered in Stephen King's stories, so he must have homicidal fantasies.
Horror writers look for ways to shock and shake up their readers, and judging from the comments here, he succeeded.
Jonathan Swift must have really wanted to cannibalize poor children!
I'll never forget bringing that up in a classroom and realizing adults had no idea it was satire.
up for interpretation
Not defending King, as I always found the gangbang suspicious after I learned about it (haven't, and won't read it anyway), but there are people who fully believe Trump is a pedo etc but don't think there's any actual files the way people want. They argue there's evidence, sure, but not the exact client list full of incriminating details on everyone involved that people are expecting to see.
Personally, if I remember the timeline right I can see that point, and it could be true, or there could be files, but I think the lions share that associated with him should be under suspicion, no matter the political alignment, and we should still keep pushing for them anyway, even if there is a chance they aren't the format lots of people think they are.
The gangbang makes sense but it is still fucked. Penny wise goes after kids so fuck and you’re no longer a kid. Still a plot point that should have stayed unexplored
The gangbang makes sense but it is still fucked. Penny wise goes after kids so fuck and you’re no longer a kid.
Maybe they could pay some bills, fill some spreadsheets in a cubicle, get a doctor's appointment complaining about lower back pain, instead of a gang bang?
Stephen King is not a good writer. He has great story ideas; but, his actual writing is poor and he does weird things that are unsupported by the narrative - like writing sewer gangbang scenes with children so that they can defeat the bad guy with the power of underage eskimo brotherhood.
You can explain that in a less derisive way that sounds a bit more reasonable, but it doesn't make it a good narrative choice.
Another example is 11/22/63. People on reddit cream their pants over the book, but it's literally just King self-inserting as the main character so he can (totally uncritically) reminisce over how great small town America was in the 50s/60s and have a fantasy relationship with this incredibly weak/badly-written female character and repeatedly "make poundcake" with her and drink rootbeer floats in diners or whatever. It's an 800+ page book (paperback is 1049 pages) supposedly about time traveling to stop the Kennedy assassination (which is a cool story idea), but like 700+ pages are filled with asinine garbage and the actual plot is thin and pretty bad.
This is pretty much my experience with King. I highly appreciate his ability to consistently create great story ideas, but his actual writing is just kind of bad. Since he has so many books, there might be some good ones in there, but from what I've read I'm not impressed. Not that he needs to impress me, he's done fine for himself.
I read so many of his book thinking "at some point I'll land on one that'll make me understand what all the fuss is about". Never happened. As you said, the guy has great concept ideas, but he doesn't know how to build on them. So many endings are so stupid and far fetched it would be comical if it were a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure episode...
Disclaimer: I enjoyed the Tower books and many of his other books.
Often his man characters are reparative, always writers. I had many hits with him but also misses. Like maybe because I was too young and have no children of my own I found Pet sematary not very good. But what he does he gets me into a flow of reading. He makes it easy for me to enjoy the book no matter how thin the plot is.
But there a couple of plot points I admit I find now weird and not well played out. Like in The Stand why is everybody understanding English? There is no real communication barrier apart from not being able to talk at all. So I miss language barriers. So his books have a place in my heart but I also grew up with Goosebumps so it was a natural progression to King.
To be fair, he was drowning in cocaine when writing that book, so he managed to keep the lid on it to the best of his abilities.
Ah. This is why everyone posting cocaine.
I was trying to figure out how a bunch of tweens stuck in the sewer got a hold of enough cocaine to think an orgy would help their cause.
According to King, at the height of his cocaine use he wrote the entire novel Cujo and doesn't remember writing it at all.
You could also make a strong case that the director credit for the movie Maximum Overdrive should go to cocaine rather than King lol.
Yeah, King went through a rough patch that only got worse before it got better.
"Buy why"
Drugs.
"no it's about growing up and it's like the pig thing in Lord of the Flies not my latent (hopefully) pedophilia"
Wasn’t IT about the loss of innocence? Also drugs were a factor
I've been told that cocaine is a helluva drug
I always thought the part with Patrick and the refrigerator was far, far worse than the adolescent sex scene.
Also, Beverly having her period is a pretty big plot point. Not exactly prepubescent. The boys maybe.
This scene haunts me to this day. The barrens is for me the most unholy place in fictional existence. Shouldn’t have read it as a teenager. Nobody stopped me cause “look she is reading such a huge book.” …
When I was 12, my mum told my teacher that I found the books we were reading for class childish. Teacher then gave me IT to read instead. No idea what he was thinking. Being the same age as the characters, the sex scene was the most traumatizing by far.
"so you little shit think you can handle what adults read, huh?"
If you are writing a horror book, you gotta find a variety of ways to scare people. Sex often triggers a select group of readers.
People reading horror for some reason:
"What the fuck is this horrific shit what was the author thinking"
This scene is such a stain on his legacy I wish he'd put out a version without it.
I think that we all have really fucked up thoughts every now and again, and behaving like we never have is a great way to delude ourselves into believing a false reality.
Better to own them and grow than bury them and act like you're some golden god on high.
What was acceptable in the past is no longer acceptable. There are people that can't accept that.
In 1986 though? Pretty sure we had our cultural view on child gangbangs locked in by then.
Unfortunately it isn't even to this day. Just look at who is in the white house.
Most of voters who support Trump are in genuine denial that he's a pedophile. It's ridiculous, but it doesn't change the fact that they also hate pedophilia - they're just being conned into thinking queer people are the pedos (also very likely some of them are pedos/complicit).
Also, have the standards of what's acceptable changed or not? You said they have, then you implied they haven't. Either way, I highly doubt everyone was just fine with that scene in 1986, especially given it was not recreated in any adaptation.
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