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[–] 226 points 5 months ago* (25 children)

Hey now, let's be clear. Stephen King did not have the clown defeated by a bunch of outcast youths gangbanging in a sewer. That's just patently incorrect. Every single part. No, he had the ancient terror disguised as a clown temporarily banished by summoning an ancient turtle from the dawn of time and engaging It in a battle of wills. Completely different and, in fact, perfectly reasonable. Anyone that's actually read the book knows the outcast youth sewer gangbang happens after that and actually has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Stephen King's not some freak writing a book where the entire plot hinges on a bunch of traumatized kids screwing each other to save the world, no; he's a perfectly normal guy writing about a bunch of traumatized kids screwing each other for no reason at all. Bet you feel real silly now, huh?

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  • [–] 171 points 5 months ago (10 children)

    What the fuck are you on about? Nothing you said is remotely true, this is a gross misinterpretation of the events depicted in the book.

    It's not a gangbang, it's a train. They go one after the other.

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  • [–] 48 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    I thought that in order to be a train they should be connected to each other.

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  • [–] 36 points 5 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

    There is an old painting about this. Tho they are adults.Gay ottoman erotica from 1700s where everyone forms a circular chain with their dicks and ass

    (Tuhfet Ul-Mulk by Shayk Al-Misri, 1773)

    (This is illustrated version of the Turkish translation from 1400s and there is an older, Arabic version from 1300s according to carbon-dating)

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    How the hell is that related? Those lads were merely showing a circle can be made with numerous stiff rods, a precursor to calculus. It has nothing to do with ancient terrors, god-like turtles or traumatized children having a gangbang in a sewer after killing what they thought was a supernatural clown. For shame!

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  • [–] 21 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    Was there not some time traveling component? Like their future selves had to find each other again and come back ti their childhoods. I thought that was what made the "children having sex" part not as triggering as it sounds,because they were actually adults. Mind you, it's been years since I read the book. I might be misremembering things.

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  • [–] 45 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    So ... adult-minds having sex with children's bodies?

    That makes it worse!

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago

    No, it is even more bizarre. They have sex because the group is lost in the sewer and apparently this makes them know where they are, somehow, so they can leave, which they then do. It adds literally nothing to the plot, apart from really shoddy symbolism of growing up.

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  • [–] 17 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    I remember it being for the need to destroy their innocence or something

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 53 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    I went into IT with an open mind and was prepared for that scene. Kept thinking that it probably made a lot of sense since many King fans had said it had a very beautiful reason behind it.

    Then I get to it. And it's just stupid. Genuinely stupid.

    The kids are scared of forgetting each other, because that is the power of IT. It makes people forget as they grow up.

    So they want to do something meaningful to remember each other. And Bev is like: y'all can fuck me.

    And I am over here like: how are the boys supposed to remember each other if they only fuck you? If that scene was supposed to make a lick of sense, the kids would have an orgy with each other and not just the boys lining up to have sex with one girl.

    I can go along with weird and uncomfortable ideas in books if they make sense. In this case, it made no sense. But people either seem to defend it because they just go along with the premise or they defend King because he was high or some shit.

    I'm not defending bad storytelling. IT has a lot of cool concepts in it and no one can write about small communities like King can, but I'm not gonna pretend like the kids having sex is some clever narrative device. It's very, very stupid.

    I also think the Turtle is goofy af.

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  • [–] 33 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Tbh if my first time was a train of my bros all with the same chick, i'd probably remember them for a very long time even without a proper orgy. Though i'd probably remember them all for helping to defeat an eldritch sewer fiend anyways.

    Still sounds like a stupid thing to put in a horror story about teenagers though..

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    What makes it bad is they're not teenagers. They're 11 year olds.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    That the thing, though. IT steals your memories, so the intimacy was supposed to bond the kids together forever so that they wouldn't forget one another (they do anyway), but to me it makes no sense, when Bev is the only one who's intimate with everybody and the boys aren't intimate with one another.

    Then again, I think there could have been other way to get the same point across. They do a blood oath as well and I think that could have served a similar purpose if the kids had all mixed blood like the vikings and become bloodbrothers/sister and symbolically carried a part of each other in their veins forever.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Oddly enough, I put that BS down far before the halfway point back in the day, and never picked it up again.

    Thankfully, the only knowledge I have of this King-style WTF Deluxe?

    Vicariously. Phew. 😬

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    It's not a terrible book. The stories and descriptions about Derry through time are really well written and fun world building in my opinion.

    I just think the book was a bit too long and also had a couple of elements that were too silly.

    I haven't read every king book ever, but currently, I think Misery is his best book. While he likes to have big casts and writing about communities, he's absolutely at his best when he is stuck with two interesting characters who play off one another in a battle of wills.

    But yeah, IT is far from a bad book, but in my opinion a bit overrated in popculture.

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  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    Cocaine is a hell of a drug...

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  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Washed down with some Listerine according to his On Writing autobio

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago*

    Fuck, that's nasty.

    Which flavor? Napalm Mint™? Yellow Horse Breath? Amethyst Apocalypse?

    edit: Now I've got a 3pc band in my head of straightedge Mr. Cleans w/ scrubby-bubble brushstaches in Ned Flanders fit, called The Listerines.

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago

    It would have been so easy to just not write that part. Or her character like that at all tbh

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    I went in knowing nothing about the book other than there was a supernatural clown in it. When I read that scene I had to stop, then go online to find an explanation of what the fuck I just read (to be fair, I was also pretty confused by the denouement in general) and how it is related to the plot. I was absolutely baffled by the amount of people saying they thought it was fine to have, some people even said it was a good allegory for leaving childhood.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    "And you thought I was fucked up? I didn't have anything to do with that! I just eat children!"

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (35 children)
  • [–] 29 points 5 months ago (31 children)

    The book has child porn in it. A group fuck where they all fuck the girl.

    Not joking.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Today I learned everyone with a copy of the book 'It' is in possession of CSAM, and amazon and Barnes and noble are actively and criminally distributing the same material.

    Words have meaning.

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  • [–] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

    At least in the US, I'm not sure if purely textual would ever be illegal. You could likely get away with a visual depiction of the scence with current law.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    The Pedophile-in-Chief is ok with it, even though he personally prefers them to be teenaged, he'll gladly start a war and crash the global economy to defend him and his pedo pals from too much scrutiny in the Epstein files.

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  • [–] -4 points 5 months ago (26 children)

    The fuck who read that shit Stephen is disgusting

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  • [–] 49 points 5 months ago (21 children)

    I think a lot of people never saw it coming. He was on a lot of drugs at the time.

    That said, in every single book he wrote, he has very elaborate scenes where a person urinates themselves. Every. Single. Book.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    On the one hand, I kinda get the logic. On the other, Stephen no, wtf.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    You get the logic… of… peeing or the middle school gang bang to defeat a monster?

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    The second one. It preys on innocent childish fears, so kill that part of you. Haha, so clever, makes sense in universe I guess. But like, why would you make your universe that way?

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Cause when you use drugs, you are in the deepest, darkest corners of your psyche. You usually start taking drugs because you either want to silence that part of yourself, or because you feel like a piece of shit because of the thoughts you have in your head. Ultimately, healing comes from realising that everyone experiences thoughts like that, they just decide to not live out the thoughts.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago

    That's not necessarily why you take drugs.

    Uppers like cocaine (which he was very fond of at the time) are often consumed to be more productive or to "enhance" an otherwise already positive time. From what I've heard, he was introduced to coke at a party, which makes perfect sense. Cocaine abuse starts with making a party exhilarating, then it continues with giving you so much energy while working, finally you simply take the stuff because your brain doesn't know how to work with natural levels or serotonin/dopamine/noradrenaline anymore.

    To name another class of drugs, taking psychedelics (which I haven't heard of King having much business with) to hide from your inner demons would be a profoundly bad move since those tend to forcibly confront you with yourself. Great if you have the feeling that deep down there's something you need to address but you don't know what. Terrible if you know there's something but you can't handle dealing with it.

    Downers like cannabis (which King apparently did at least occasionally use) can be used to silence the bad thoughts. Putting up a smokescreen between your conscious and your subconscious isn't exactly the best way of handling things but at least you're not pouring fuel onto the fire.

    Drugs of all kinds can still take your mind in directions you normally would've shied away from, that's true. And a sustained drug habit of any kind is often indicative of an underlying problem; happy people don't mess with their brain chemistry as often. The specific underlying problem can vary wildly – unassisted psychological distress, physiological issues like chronic pain, performance anxiety, peer pressure... the list goes on and on.

    Of course, given that King also had a sustained alcohol problem and apparently at one point abused everything he could get his hands on, he definitely seems like someone who couldn't handle what was going on inside of his head. Thankfully he had the support he needed to overcome his drug problem.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (11 children)
  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    His early work was exceptionally good. Tommy knockers, Needful Things, Salem's Lot, Misery, Stand By Me, were all pretty good. Not a fan of some of his latest stuff.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    I don’t know. His books aren’t that great. His movie adaptations are just okay.

    He has some early work that was good and got a lot of attention. It was back in the prime days of horror novels. Right place right time. That’s all.

    With the right amount of cocaine I think you or I could probably give him a run for his money

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    His books are variable, but they usually have like 300 pages of genuinely good character development and scene setting, an inciting horrible incident and then another 100 pages of suspension-of-disbelief. All of the film adaptations I've seen are pretty bad though.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Shawshank? Shining? Mist? Green Mile? Misery? Maybe not everything is a winner, but these are pretty classic movies and some like Pet Sematary, Thinner, Carrie, Dream Catcher and many others are not bad movies. The Running Man wasn't super well made (old one) but a decent movie for it's time. I haven't even seen half of his adapted works and I just rattled off 10 movies that pretty universally are not seen as "pretty bad":

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Is using cocaine the writing equivalent of the programmer's Ballmer Peak?

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    I think, in his case, the more he did the more he produced.

    However, he’s very public about having no recollection or writing many of his books.

    I wish I could say “damn, I don’t ever remember making that app. It made a million you say? Wow”

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    I latent agree with that for all of his books, except for the Dark Tower series. I actually think the Dark Tower series is pretty good. It's very different from his other books though.

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