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.
But why
Submitted 15 hours ago by Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com to memes@sopuli.xyz
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Comments
slickgoat@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
miked@piefed.social 5 hours ago
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.
slickgoat@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Yeah, King went through a rough patch that only got worse before it got better.
Heikki2@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
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.
DaMonsterKnees@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
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.
Drusas@fedia.io 6 hours ago
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 things that make them uncomfortable.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
That sounds very much like a pedophile fantasy.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
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.
Notyou@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
I assumed that there was a reason that he agrees with trump on not releasing the Epstein files.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Stephen King is not a good writer. He has good story ideas. But his actual writing is poor and he does weird things that are unsupported by the narrative - like writing in sewer gangbang scenes with children so that they can defeat the bad guy with the power of 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 writing himself in 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. It’s an 800+ page book supposedly about time traveling to stop the Kennedy assassination, but like 700+ pages are filled with asinine garbage and the actual plot is thin and pretty bad.
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 27 minutes ago
At least people will admit that the horror books often are terrible. The dark tower books suffer from so much of the same, but are lauded and people will flip out if you say they’re not good. The entire first book was like reading a history timeline rather than a story, and was boring history to boot. The second book was better, but still just felt like a really dull friend relaying a story.
CyanideShotInjection@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
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…
banazir@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
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.
otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
King isn’t a “writer” as much as he’s "some rando that took up horror lit as a paid hobby in college in order to fund the completion of his “opus” The Dark Tower series …some numerous decades later 🤢 Prolific =/= professional, etc.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
I can’t agree more. I enjoyed his earliest works some, but he quickly hits his “stride” and falls into his characteristic writing pattern, making every book more or less the same novel with interchangeable variations on the same plot points.
HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
“Buy why”
Drugs.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 6 hours ago
“no it’s about growing up and it’s like the pig thing in Lord of the Flies not my latent (hopefully) pedophilia”
QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Wasn’t IT about the loss of innocence? Also drugs were a factor
Drusas@fedia.io 6 hours ago
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.
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
I’ve been told that cocaine is a helluva drug
MehBlah@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
What was acceptable in the past is no longer acceptable. There are people that can’t accept that.
VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 hours ago
In 1986 though? Pretty sure we had our cultural view on child gangbangs locked in by then.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Unfortunately it isn’t even to this day. Just look at who is in the white house.
Alpha71@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I will admit I’ve had my suspicions about him for a long time. He’s also written a short story of a child being raped outside a library and in another he went into great descriptive detail about the genitalia of a young girl who is lost in the woods. This is after she drank water from a stream resulting in exposure to Cholera.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 15 hours ago
Paedophilia?
snooggums@piefed.world 14 hours ago
All characters involved were kids, so not in the context of the story.
It was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for becoming and adult or something. The editor and publisher left it in.
Weird as hell, but not like that.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Cocaine?
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Maybe a fleeting dream or memory he had as a teen where he was part of a gangbang?
Acinonyx@lemmy.sdf.org 8 hours ago
there are people being murdered in this story as well, so he must want to murder someone too right?
heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net 13 hours ago
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.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
What icks me out is when they make an evil character LGBTQ or kinky.
heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net 8 hours ago
I recently heard about how the Hellraiser movies helped represent the kinky community
banazir@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Snortin’ Whiskey, Drinkin’ Cocaine.
JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
Well, Coca Cola…
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 14 hours ago
Really tells us all we need to know about Stephen King.
I read his crap as an older teen, and frankly it sucked.
Drusas@fedia.io 6 hours ago
lol
Stephen King is an objectively good writer, especially when it comes to portraying realistic characters, even if his stories aren't always great. Just because you don't enjoy something doesn't mean that it's not good.
Lux@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
Image
up for interpretation
chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
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.