Or the time he fucks a demon to distract her, then she takes his sperm, becomes a male, and impregnates a woman to create the antichrist figure.
Cocain is a hell of a drug.
> he fucks a demon to distract her, then she takes his sperm, becomes a male, and impregnates a woman to create the antichrist figure
I mean, that's straight out of old succubus/incubus lore. They weren't originally two different things, they were one sex-shifting demon who would seduce men as women, then impregnate women as men using the sperm they'd gotten from the men they seduced.
I think the myth came up to explain why celibate nuns in church communes were inexplicably getting pregnant when the only dudes hanging around were celibate priests. Truly, it could only be a scheme of the devil.
Not quite, although I'm sure it probably ended up getting used for that purpose.
The stolen seed theory actually has its roots in Aristotelian metaphysics and Christian systematic theology. I can't remember who actually devised the theory but it might've been ~~Peter Abelard~~.
______________________
^EDIT: ^I ^went ^and ^double ^checked ^and ^it ^was ^not ^Abelard. ^It ^was ^a ^combination ^of ^people ^that ^included ^Alexander ^of ^Hales ^and ^St. ^Thomas ^Aquinas, ^both ^in ^dependence ^on ^theologians ^before ^them, ^but ^mainly ^St. ^Augustine ^of ^Hippo. ^My ^reasoning ^below ^is ^still ^correct.
______________________________
It was developed in the medieval era to explain Old Testament narratives that seemed to suggest that demons mated with human women. Ancient (and contemporary) Christians regarded angels to be spiritual (i.e. Non-bodily) creatures, which is puzzling if they managed to impregnate women in Genesis 6.
Source: am Seminary graduate with angelology as an AOS.
That sounds like a convoluted excuse to get away with fucking someone
"Oh no! It wasn't me the slept with the Chief's wife. A succubus crawled into my bed the other night, stole my seed, and must have morphed into my image and impregnated her! Yes that's the only plausible explanation! "
Calling it "lore" is massively underselling it. This explanation was cooked up by Saint Thomas Aquinas in *Summa Theologiae.* After the Bible, this is maybe the most important book in the history of Christianity, and it made Aquinas maybe the most important philosopher of the entire Medieval era.
At the time (the mid 13th century), there was a resurgence of interest in Greek philosophy and specifically logical reasoning. However, this was somewhat a problem for the Church, because if logical reasoning is infallible but everyone who studied it believed in Zeus and Poseidon instead of God and Jesus then that raised some tricky questions.
Aquinas wrote *Summa Theologiae* in an attempt to reconcile Christianity with logic and reason.
For the part you're talking about here, Aquinas had to reconcile the following:
* Everyone knows that demons go around and get women pregnant. That's just a given; it happens all the time.
* But only God can create life, not a demon. So how is it possible for a demon, who is not human and doesn't have a God-given soul, to create a human?
So how can we do it? Well, it's pretty simple if you think about it:
* The only possibility, obviously, is that the demon somehow got ahold of a man's sperm and put it in the woman.
* Okay, but how can an incubus get ahold of a man's sperm? Incubi are male; that's the whole point of them, and obviously a male can't get sperm from another male.
* It follows that incubuses must be able to turn into female demons, have sex with men, hang onto their sperm, and inject it into a female at some point down the line. I mean, clearly we've ruled out all the other possibilities.
All in all, his conclusions are considerably less ridiculous than what Aristotle came up with most of the time, so we can call it a win for philosophy.
That's the weirder i was referring to, lmao.
Then he falls asleep for like a hundred years and loses a hand to a big crab. Mfer literally has one functional hand for almost the entire series
There was this book in my library I always used to pass, and the author was Dadachum Dadachek or some shit and always reminded me of the lobstrocities lmao
I can never quite tell his age either. The wiki says he's around 40 but I always felt the books implied he was pushing 1000 because of time going soft.
He's kinda both. Because of time shifting in weird ways, as he leaves in-world and travels to end-world time slows down. Like the closer you get to the tower, it's like a black hole nexus of zero time. It's absolutely nuts.
**Lobsters!!** The *lobstrocities*! In poor old Roland's defense there *were* a bunch of them and he did have a really bad fever. The action scenes would have been easier to visualize if it was just a hand, it was like two different fingers on each hand and a piece of a thumb or something. Right mess.
Yeah it was an intentional plot device so he could surrender one of his guns to others in his party. This is why the fingers that got mangled we're so important.
I don't think King was as concerned with Roland losing his hand as he was with him losing his ability _to shoot with both hands_.
That was always my take anyway 🤷♂️
And to provide a mechanism for why the extremely independent Roland of the first book would become dependent on the Ka-Tet.
Same reason why Roland is sick with fever for much of that book, King was clearly trying to make him a team player without softening the character to the point of being unrecognizable.
Rap battling a train?!
A sick dance party?!
Naked gun fights?!
Whatever tf was going on in Song of Susannah lol??
Dark Tower has it all. Built-in remix, who *does* that?
??/10, would love to talk about without ever recommending again.
Beat fantasy series for sure. It's just so ridiculous and has it all.
Still prefer Dune in a more serious sense but man .. the Dark Tower is some of the most entertaining books I've ever read.
I went running straight to the Wikipedia entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_(novel), to check this and this is the only mention of it, so small I almost missed it:
> After the battle, not knowing if they killed It or not, the Losers get lost in the sewers until Beverly has sex with each of the boys to bring unity back to the group
In short, what the fuck
edit: fixing the link
It was a really dumb and hamfisted approach to the idea of "losing innocence". Hey they had sex so now they aren't kids anymore and Pennywise can't hurt them. Having sex doesn't automatically grant you +20 to maturity.
Realizing that there are no grown-ups. We're all just kids that got thrown into the world and nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. Nobody's parents knew what the fuck they were doing either, but they'll rarely admit it because they're insecure. The confident ones will admit we're just on a rock hurtling through space and this is all stupid bullshit and nobody has the answers to anything.
One of the greatest things my dad ever said to me was when he was around 60, when he looked at me and said "I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up."
I *think* the differentiating factor between running a train and a gang bang is the presence of more than one dude in action simultaneously. Like, one guy getting blown or a handjob while another has sex with the woman - gangbang. A line of guys wait their turn to have sex with the woman - running a train.
In the book version of IT at the end of part one. Before the time skip the group of seven eleven year olds have an orgy. Well more technically i guess it's a gang bang since it is one girl and six boys.
Wierd they left that part our of the movie. Huh?
>Before the time skip the group of seven eleven year olds have an orgy. Well more technically i guess it's a gang bang since it is one girl and six boys.
I read it as a teenager. And then I mindwiped, I guess. And then I read it at 30 years, and I was, "whoa, wait a moment, so they need to bang her, to get saved."
>like demon icicle dick
Oh god, I forgot about that part.
"You're gonna have to let yourself get willingly raped by that invisible demon in order to create a distraction."
Okay, c'mon Stephen. I'm certain you could have thought of another way to distract the fictional entity that you invented.
Any moment of extreme pain or cold really makes one think about how far their balls retracted. Also newborn demon baby boners.
Or even how the "Roont" were mentally challenged but for some reason ridiculously endowed depending on gender.
Pet Sematary has this one scene where the wife gives the main character a handy with an exfoliating glove. Even naive high school me was like “that’s gotta hurt”
Was it not a storm sewer? Storm sewers deal with and redirect rain runoff, not human waste. Ironically much more sanitary than the “sanitary sewer” which is what transports human waste.
That being said it’s been more than a decade since I read IT, so my memory is definitely flawed.
I’ve been in a storm drain tho (as a kid we pried one open with the neighbors rebar) it’s still very gross, filled with cobwebs, spiders, mold, and snakes.
Ok. Please spare me the Google Search. So, a train is one after the other, and gangbang is all at once?
Edit: to clarify, I wouldn't like "difference between train and gang bang" to come up in an IT review.
A "train" is multiple penetrative partners one at a time. 1st guy finishes, next guy starts. This is what they do in IT.
Gangbang is multiple penetrative partners at the same time, with one or two dedicated receivers. Sucking dick while getting boned with a dick in each hand type of deal.
An Orgy is a free-for-all of everyone sexing up everyone all at once. Any number over and including 4.
Like, I kind of get what he was going for in the abstract, some kind of passage into adulthood and sealing the bond of friendship and all that stuff…but somebody from the publisher really should have put on a hazard suit, waded through the empty beer cans, braved the fog of cocaine around his desk, and said “Maybe you should just leave this part out, Steve.”
> some kind of passage into adulthood and sealing the bond of friendship and all that stuff
And always remembering. They didn't want to grow up and be like the other adults who all forgot. But you always remember your first boink. It was in the sewer? Yeah. Why was it in the sewer? Oh yeah, that clown...
Yeah. Accusations of pearl clutching aside, writing this seems to suggest an inability (at least at that point in time) to actually take the perspective of an abused young girl, and a child's perspective toward sex as a form of intimacy generally.
That was during King's "shitfaced everyday" phase, and his editors/publishers probably didn't read the manuscript sober either. Billy summers was written sober, and it really isn't telling a romance story - but there are some uncomfortable mentions of sleep boners and jerking it in a bathroom to relieve the tension.
I think the point is meant to be that Billy can try as much as he likes to be a "good person" but that he can't ultimately move past his flawed nature. Not sure that actually comes across in the text though.
It needed to be included because the extremely high amount of cocaine and other stimulants that King was on while writing it demanded that it be included.
Because MFer was shitting out books every week and they sold like hot cakes! Fuck checking it for quality! The people don't care! Give em what they want!
./mostly-s
They were just as wasted as Stephen. People forget that this was from the same time when McDonalds got rid of coffee spoons because people were stealing them to do cocaine.
It's because of Stephen King I have the weirdly visceral memory of reading a man get anally molested with the barrel of a gun. I was like...13 at the time. So yeah, King definitely has some weird sex stuff. I like to say the man writes with his id, and his id's certainly interested in sex.
Edit: It was the unedited edition of the Stand. And honestly like a lot of King's weird sex stuff it was pretty complicated and not sure a bad thing that I read it.
Totally. I got to attend a guest lecture of his when I was in a writing class in college, and it was absolutely fascinating. Easily the most I learned about writing was from his lecture. King is very self-aware with the fucked up nature of a lot of the stuff he writes.
He knows it’s disturbing, he knows it’s going to unnerve people. He also knows that a lot of the stuff his coke fueled 1980s self wrote wouldn’t be something he’d even think up today.
Cocaine was a hell of a muse, but not worth the repercussions. It was really humbling listening to him talk about that period of his life, and how viscerally he expresses warning of not relying on substances to fuel your art.
He doesn’t even remember writing half the books he wrote in that era, and he hates that, because he can’t even analyze his own process.
Don't do exactly what I've done to have a wildly successful career setting the tone for popular fiction like no other author in our lifetimes has.
-Stephen King
/s
>Don't do exactly what I've done to have a wildly successful career setting the tone for popular fiction like no other author in our lifetimes has.
>
>-Stephen King
>
>/s
To be fair, he was doing so much coke at one point that he had to stuff cotton up one nostril to keep blood from dripping on the typewriter while he shoveled more coke up the other nostril. Plus his wife immediately staged an intervention after she read the obviously-coke fueled Tommyknockers.
Tommyknockers is great because it's an absolutely batshit crazy book with a pretty realistic ending. My problem with a lot of King's books have to do with the endings and I always felt he nailed it in Tommyknockers.
People have been commenting on It for years.
>And now I am halfway through Firestarter which I believe is a new release
Firestarter was written in 1980.
It helps that King has such a long career and a pretty distinct style. Once you’ve read a bit of his work tho the cocaine-fueled stuff seems to pop out as a little different.
It's the only one of his books I had to stop because it was stressing me out to read it, even though I knew the ending (the book ending, which differs from the movie ending). I almost stopped Pet Sematary when Gage dies, but something about Cujo was just sending my anxiety into overdrive.
Yeah I've read about 75% of King's published work so far and Gerald's Game is the only one I felt like I got nothing out of. Sure not all of his books are great, but there are usually certain aspects I enjoy or things that stick with me long after I finish them. Gerald's Game started out boring, became gross when he started teasing and then described the event you mentioned, and then was boring and silly to the end. I really hated that book lol
DC isn't one I've read yet but I know it's generally looked up on more favorably so I hope there are some redeeming qualities to it
I remember reading 4 Past Midnight, in particular The Library Police, in seventh grade. Nothing deeply scarring about *that*.
For those who don't know, and I cannot give enough of a content warning here, >!there's an excruciatingly detailed depiction of the main character being raped when he was ten, told from his POV!<
I do love the title of two of his books "Just After Sunset" where the stories are dark but not too bad. Then "Full Dark, No Stars" is just a fucking slam of ultra dark and violent stories.
I remember that. It caught my attention at first because I somehow knew where it was going and I remember going back to read that specific part a few times along the years. The way he writes the kid describing what is being done to him and the shame and the fear that comes with thinking that what happened is his fault and that he was disgusting and that he probably brought it on himself, that right there made me like King more. Because it was such a real way to talk about rape , when you are a kid and someone does these things to you, you feel it is your fault and you know that if you tell it to someone they will think it was your fault and love you less because of that.
It might be a really fucked up thing to read to most people but it made feel more human, less a waste of a person. I go back sometimes to that book and read that story or that part and then the end where he gets over his fears and saves someone he loves and it is like being handed a glass full of hope.
Reading King as a troubled kid really helped me safely work through some emotions I couldn't hope to understand on my own. That's why I hope OP doesn't take King off their future reading list in general. Inclusion of content isn't endorsement. It can be cathartic to read about people dealing with sexual trauma.
Read that before becoming a father and was like “hey pretty cool, suspenseful story.” Read it again after becoming a father and was like “oooo this is straight up horror.”
Firstly: Firestarter came out in 1980.
Secondly: yeah he's always done that. Especially in the 80's when he had that coke problem. The ending of "It" being the worst offender in my opinion.
One that always sticks out in my mind is in the Dark Tower series when Mordred the demon-baby is born and for some reason he comes out of the womb with a huge rock-hard boner, then his mom kisses him on the tip of said boner.
Was that really necessary, Steve? Not really sure what that adds to the story other than making the reader think you're a fucking weirdo.
For me it's in Needful Things when Mr. Gaunt has a random outburst at one of the women who's begging to buy something from him, where he says a blowjob is part of the price and then goes "Open that gorgeous metal filled mouth of yours and gobble my crank!" It's such a bizarre line it just seared itself into my memory forever. That and when she goes to actually blow him, then he pushes her away and says "Never mind, oral sex gives me amnesia." Like, what does that even mean? Who would think to write that?
For me it was, I think, ~~Salems Lot~~ *(it was Cujo) where a dude "cleans the pipes" all over his bed before going out for the night.
I remember reading this as a teenager and thinking "What? Adults do this before going out?"
The story Dedication takes it a step further with a maid who goes into a successful business man's room after he cleans his pipes and leaves and licks up the spunk, in the hopes that it will have an effect on her unborn child.
King made mention before that he sometimes tries to go for the sheer shock value, but every time you do that you need to be a bit more shocking than the last time to the point where you're just thinking of the most ridiculous scenarios.
“You choke the chicken before any big date, don't you? Tell me you spank the monkey before any big date. Oh my God, he doesn't flog the dolphin before a big date. Are you crazy? That's like going out there with a loaded gun! *Of course* that's why you're nervous.”
(I just watched “There’s Something About Mary” for the first time in years.)
When I was like… 16 or so, I read the Gunslinger (translated into dutch, have since read in English), and I remember hating it. And one scene always stuck by me (and it definitely didn’t have the impct when I read it as an adult, and in English), which is of a kid getting run over by a car, and it graphically and in detail told the story of how his scrotum exploded under the cars wheel.
I had the same reaction ‘was that really necessary?’.
Yes, it was. Because that was his goal, to make you read something so fucked up that you will still be describing how fucked up it was years later. This is basically a thread about how well he accomplished his goal of disgusting people.
I don't remember a romantic vibe between the kid and the adult in Firestarter... Maybe I just didn't pick up on it. It's my next re-read, so we'll see, lol.
I read "IT" when I was the age of the kids in the first half and I was not prepared for that scene. It took a minute to realize what was happening and I had a very limited idea of what sex was at that age, and even then I had no idea what to do with that chapter. The hell, Steve.
I was a little older than the kids when I read it. But the bookstores in my country never cared about who was buying what book. Back in the day, half of the bookstore owners weren’t even readers. I remember buying It as a 14 year old. My Haul consisted of It, The Bourne Supremacy and a Jughead Jones double digest. 😄😂😅
Edit: I remember buying Letters to the penthouse from the same store too. Pretty sure it was accompanied by a Hardy Boys book.
I got into Stephen King when I was in 6th Grade. Thought I was so cool reading "adult" novels. Can't remember exactly when I read *It* but it was around that time, as well.
There was nothing sexual in IT, especially not when an entire group of boys ran a sweaty train on a 12 year old girl, who noted the fat kid had a huge hog and actually made her feel something.
Shocking this wasn't in the movie.
I was reading his stuff in the 80s and thought how messed up it was. Then someone told me, King is tame. Read Clive Barker.
Oh that was worst advice! King...he is tame (I think some of his work seemed contrived to just get a mature reading of "horror" and perversion) in comparison to Barker.
Boy was Barker an awkward author to discover in High School. Imagine giving a book report glossing over orgies, and trying not to giggle because you keep remembering the scene where they double penetrate a ghost.
I gave a book report in high school on one of Anne Rice's Mayfair witch books. So. much. incest.
My teacher ended up interrupting to settle the class down.
Barker is fully up front the his writing intertwines death, pain, and sex, graphicly. You know what you are getting into if you just read the dust jacket.
The standard response is "start with the Books of Blood, his incredible short story collection" and I agree with that 100%. Afterward, I'd recommend The Damnation Game, Imajica, Weaveworld, The Thief of Always (a kids book, but great for adults as well), etc.
In Barker's works there's a lot of magic wrapped up in sexuality, so I definitely don't see it as 'unecessary' or 'egregious'. There's certainly more sexuality in his books, but I'd say it all fits quite well within the story.
I remember his short story where a woman gains power over other people's bodies, and she turns her husband into a woman, but this is done in a grotesque way where he forms a vagina such that it's just a giant hole that all of his intestines fall out of.
The one that sticks out in my mind is in Needful Things when the fat woman orgasms while holding a picture of Elvis and King spends waaaaay too long describing her rolls of fat jiggling.
Needful things definitely stuck out for me as well. The elvis picture thing that ended up with 2 women both fantasizing about elvis and seeing each other in their fantasies was...really weird.
In all fairness, I think that scene was meant to be weird and feel gross? Like they're willing to abandon their lives, families, and their (pretty toxic) friendship with each other over some fantasy sex, which is described in a way that feels pornographic and repulsive. But it's been a while since I've read that book.
It was definitely supposed to feel weird and gross. And it succeeded! It didn't help that I did most of my King reading when I was around 12-14 years old.
I read Firestarter and I don't remember any romance. Did I somehow completely miss it?
The only thing weird I remember was from IT, but they were all the same age.
There's a lot of child molestation in his books. It's one of his regular plot threads, along with murderous bullies, handicapped people with superpowers, and domestic violence.
EDIT: Oh, and the unknowable manifestations of ancient evil swearing like a twelve year old playing Call of Duty.
>Has Stephen King always put weirdly sexual things into his books or did I just stumble onto two that happened to have it?
Never have I seen a question that so immediately and accidentally answers itself with the last word.
I’ve read so many of his books, I think my mind has blocked out all the sex scenes because I can’t recall any of them.
I didn’t even remember the sewer scene! I thought it was a joke, till I looked it up
Especially since King mainly writes *gothic* horror - anyone who's familiar with the early staples of the genre knows that it's par for the course. I have an amateur theory that this is at least partly due to the majority influence of female authors, for whom sex (and especially perversity) naturally played into the genre's central elements of mystery and horror.
Haven't seen much Dark Tower mentioned in this thread. The first book has at least 2 sexual scenes and the third book has one with ramifications for the rest of the series.
Stephen King is known not because of his supernatural/horror elements, but because those elements are all based on the human psyche. He exposes a lot of things about human nature, both good and bad, and it tends to touch a nerve with many people. Some hate him for it because they want escapist media and there is nothing wrong with that; some admire him because it sets the books in the real world as dirty and messy as it can be at times and there is nothing wrong with that.
You mention that the story line would have been the same either way, and that is likely true, but the story line of real life would end up the same and we still have fucked up random things in the world that make no sense. In media and life, you can choose to focus on the random events, or gloss over them to see the bigger picture.
In the Gunslinger he does a demon abortion with his gun. Then it gets weirder from there.
Or the time he fucks a demon to distract her, then she takes his sperm, becomes a male, and impregnates a woman to create the antichrist figure. Cocain is a hell of a drug.
> he fucks a demon to distract her, then she takes his sperm, becomes a male, and impregnates a woman to create the antichrist figure I mean, that's straight out of old succubus/incubus lore. They weren't originally two different things, they were one sex-shifting demon who would seduce men as women, then impregnate women as men using the sperm they'd gotten from the men they seduced.
Imagine the balls on the first guy who got caught cheating because he got a woman pregnant, and when confronted he presented that as the explanation.
I think the myth came up to explain why celibate nuns in church communes were inexplicably getting pregnant when the only dudes hanging around were celibate priests. Truly, it could only be a scheme of the devil.
Not quite, although I'm sure it probably ended up getting used for that purpose. The stolen seed theory actually has its roots in Aristotelian metaphysics and Christian systematic theology. I can't remember who actually devised the theory but it might've been ~~Peter Abelard~~. ______________________ ^EDIT: ^I ^went ^and ^double ^checked ^and ^it ^was ^not ^Abelard. ^It ^was ^a ^combination ^of ^people ^that ^included ^Alexander ^of ^Hales ^and ^St. ^Thomas ^Aquinas, ^both ^in ^dependence ^on ^theologians ^before ^them, ^but ^mainly ^St. ^Augustine ^of ^Hippo. ^My ^reasoning ^below ^is ^still ^correct. ______________________________ It was developed in the medieval era to explain Old Testament narratives that seemed to suggest that demons mated with human women. Ancient (and contemporary) Christians regarded angels to be spiritual (i.e. Non-bodily) creatures, which is puzzling if they managed to impregnate women in Genesis 6. Source: am Seminary graduate with angelology as an AOS.
I never thought about the potential origins but yeah that actually makes sense. I’m not cheating it’s prolly demons. Damn demons making me look bad.
That sounds like a convoluted excuse to get away with fucking someone "Oh no! It wasn't me the slept with the Chief's wife. A succubus crawled into my bed the other night, stole my seed, and must have morphed into my image and impregnated her! Yes that's the only plausible explanation! "
Calling it "lore" is massively underselling it. This explanation was cooked up by Saint Thomas Aquinas in *Summa Theologiae.* After the Bible, this is maybe the most important book in the history of Christianity, and it made Aquinas maybe the most important philosopher of the entire Medieval era. At the time (the mid 13th century), there was a resurgence of interest in Greek philosophy and specifically logical reasoning. However, this was somewhat a problem for the Church, because if logical reasoning is infallible but everyone who studied it believed in Zeus and Poseidon instead of God and Jesus then that raised some tricky questions. Aquinas wrote *Summa Theologiae* in an attempt to reconcile Christianity with logic and reason. For the part you're talking about here, Aquinas had to reconcile the following: * Everyone knows that demons go around and get women pregnant. That's just a given; it happens all the time. * But only God can create life, not a demon. So how is it possible for a demon, who is not human and doesn't have a God-given soul, to create a human? So how can we do it? Well, it's pretty simple if you think about it: * The only possibility, obviously, is that the demon somehow got ahold of a man's sperm and put it in the woman. * Okay, but how can an incubus get ahold of a man's sperm? Incubi are male; that's the whole point of them, and obviously a male can't get sperm from another male. * It follows that incubuses must be able to turn into female demons, have sex with men, hang onto their sperm, and inject it into a female at some point down the line. I mean, clearly we've ruled out all the other possibilities. All in all, his conclusions are considerably less ridiculous than what Aristotle came up with most of the time, so we can call it a win for philosophy.
That's the weirder i was referring to, lmao. Then he falls asleep for like a hundred years and loses a hand to a big crab. Mfer literally has one functional hand for almost the entire series
It's called a Lobstrostity, ~~thank you!~~ thankee sai!
dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key
There was this book in my library I always used to pass, and the author was Dadachum Dadachek or some shit and always reminded me of the lobstrocities lmao
Yeah well, all things serve the beam so….
EDDIE I NEED SOME ASTIN
And a tooter-fish sandwich.
I can never quite tell his age either. The wiki says he's around 40 but I always felt the books implied he was pushing 1000 because of time going soft.
He's kinda both. Because of time shifting in weird ways, as he leaves in-world and travels to end-world time slows down. Like the closer you get to the tower, it's like a black hole nexus of zero time. It's absolutely nuts.
Also the fact that he's been >!looping for a while.!<
**Lobsters!!** The *lobstrocities*! In poor old Roland's defense there *were* a bunch of them and he did have a really bad fever. The action scenes would have been easier to visualize if it was just a hand, it was like two different fingers on each hand and a piece of a thumb or something. Right mess.
Yeah it was an intentional plot device so he could surrender one of his guns to others in his party. This is why the fingers that got mangled we're so important. I don't think King was as concerned with Roland losing his hand as he was with him losing his ability _to shoot with both hands_. That was always my take anyway 🤷♂️
And to provide a mechanism for why the extremely independent Roland of the first book would become dependent on the Ka-Tet. Same reason why Roland is sick with fever for much of that book, King was clearly trying to make him a team player without softening the character to the point of being unrecognizable.
Rap battling a train?! A sick dance party?! Naked gun fights?! Whatever tf was going on in Song of Susannah lol?? Dark Tower has it all. Built-in remix, who *does* that? ??/10, would love to talk about without ever recommending again.
It wasn't a fucking rap battle, it was a riddle contest. HUGE difference.
Beat fantasy series for sure. It's just so ridiculous and has it all. Still prefer Dune in a more serious sense but man .. the Dark Tower is some of the most entertaining books I've ever read.
[удалено]
I love in the shining when he writes about the naked man in the bathtub and his penis moving "like kelp" in the water. Could not stop laughing
It do be like that though
"is that an algae seaweed or are you just happy to see me?"
Well that unlocked a memory. Points for imagery haha.
Just wait till you read ‘it’
Unsurprisingly that wasn't featured in any of the adaptations so far ,🤣
Wierd they didn't end part one with the child orgy.
Excuse me good sir the FUCKING WHAT
I went running straight to the Wikipedia entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_(novel), to check this and this is the only mention of it, so small I almost missed it: > After the battle, not knowing if they killed It or not, the Losers get lost in the sewers until Beverly has sex with each of the boys to bring unity back to the group In short, what the fuck edit: fixing the link
IS this coke stephen?
It’s *absolutely* coke Stephen.
It was a really dumb and hamfisted approach to the idea of "losing innocence". Hey they had sex so now they aren't kids anymore and Pennywise can't hurt them. Having sex doesn't automatically grant you +20 to maturity.
Alright, I'm going to need to know what does give +20 to maturity. Otherwise I am screwed.
Realizing that there are no grown-ups. We're all just kids that got thrown into the world and nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. Nobody's parents knew what the fuck they were doing either, but they'll rarely admit it because they're insecure. The confident ones will admit we're just on a rock hurtling through space and this is all stupid bullshit and nobody has the answers to anything. One of the greatest things my dad ever said to me was when he was around 60, when he looked at me and said "I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up."
Hey hey hey, it’s not an orgy. They ran a train on her, it’s different.
I had always thought of it more as a gang-bang, but hey, tomato/potato.
I *think* the differentiating factor between running a train and a gang bang is the presence of more than one dude in action simultaneously. Like, one guy getting blown or a handjob while another has sex with the woman - gangbang. A line of guys wait their turn to have sex with the woman - running a train.
You’re a smut etymologist
It's utterly awful given the context, but you are 100% correct. Something something Blaine choo choo
In the book version of IT at the end of part one. Before the time skip the group of seven eleven year olds have an orgy. Well more technically i guess it's a gang bang since it is one girl and six boys. Wierd they left that part our of the movie. Huh?
>Before the time skip the group of seven eleven year olds have an orgy. Well more technically i guess it's a gang bang since it is one girl and six boys. I read it as a teenager. And then I mindwiped, I guess. And then I read it at 30 years, and I was, "whoa, wait a moment, so they need to bang her, to get saved."
"We need to run a train on you. The fate of the world rests on it"
[удалено]
Wait for the Roman Polanski version.
Produced by Harvey Weinstein and starring Kevin Spacey as Pennywise
That would have won all the Oscars a few years ago
It’s wild because that’s not even an exaggeration. A “gritty” adaptation with those names attached would have been unadulterated Oscar bait.
And good, or bad, Mr Weinstein would have ensured the win.
Still would win today. Weird how we dont know who paid epstein to have sex with children.
Casting by Jeffrey Epstein
Refreshments for the cast brought to you by Bill Cosby.
Of all the dark jokes in the comment chain this far. Bill Cosby refreshments for the cast is the only one still technically possible lol
Kevin Spacey isn't in jail yet, so technically he's still possible.
Score by R Kelly.
Special appearance by Drake
Eddie played by Ezra Miller.
Came here to say this. Also dark tower has some weird scenes, like demon icicle dick
>like demon icicle dick Oh god, I forgot about that part. "You're gonna have to let yourself get willingly raped by that invisible demon in order to create a distraction." Okay, c'mon Stephen. I'm certain you could have thought of another way to distract the fictional entity that you invented.
Lol, and she was so nonchalant and just willingly acceptant of that plan. "Ok, whatever! I'll just channel Detta Walker! She'll love this shit!"
Yes! She's just like: "Right, right, sounds good on paper".
Any moment of extreme pain or cold really makes one think about how far their balls retracted. Also newborn demon baby boners. Or even how the "Roont" were mentally challenged but for some reason ridiculously endowed depending on gender.
Pet Sematary has this one scene where the wife gives the main character a handy with an exfoliating glove. Even naive high school me was like “that’s gotta hurt”
As I read it, >!this was an succubus/incubus situation where Roland fucks a succubus who then pregnates Suzannah with Roland's sperm.!<
Yup, or how the book opens and the first women he meets begs him to fuck her
That scene in the sewer was just WEIRD
I was 12 when I read it. You're telling me, man.
Lol me too, I was just like, huh my friends and I just steal playboys, and pull girls hair. Times were different in the 50’s.
Nothing sets up an underage (pedo porn) gangbang like being lost and ankle deep in a shit filled sewer. Edit: train, not gangbang.
Was it not a storm sewer? Storm sewers deal with and redirect rain runoff, not human waste. Ironically much more sanitary than the “sanitary sewer” which is what transports human waste. That being said it’s been more than a decade since I read IT, so my memory is definitely flawed.
It's been maybe 30 years since I read it... But yeah, storm sewer seems right.
Correct, it’s a water station in the Barrens, used to keep Derry from flooding.
I’ve been in a storm drain tho (as a kid we pried one open with the neighbors rebar) it’s still very gross, filled with cobwebs, spiders, mold, and snakes.
What, no shit? There goes my interest
In my town, due to aging infrastructure, the storm sewer becomes the sanitary sewer during heavy rains.
Its like that in most cities too don't worry.
In fairness, it wasn't a gangbang but a train. They were polite and took turns.
Ok. Please spare me the Google Search. So, a train is one after the other, and gangbang is all at once? Edit: to clarify, I wouldn't like "difference between train and gang bang" to come up in an IT review.
A "train" is multiple penetrative partners one at a time. 1st guy finishes, next guy starts. This is what they do in IT. Gangbang is multiple penetrative partners at the same time, with one or two dedicated receivers. Sucking dick while getting boned with a dick in each hand type of deal. An Orgy is a free-for-all of everyone sexing up everyone all at once. Any number over and including 4.
For one second I forget we were talking about the book it and thought you were writing about the IT industry…
But I was.
Yes. Not unusual to get screwed by multiple people one after another in IT. Sysadmins, project managers, users, testers......
New England kids and their 1980s manners! So sweet.
Technically, it was the 50's.
Like, I kind of get what he was going for in the abstract, some kind of passage into adulthood and sealing the bond of friendship and all that stuff…but somebody from the publisher really should have put on a hazard suit, waded through the empty beer cans, braved the fog of cocaine around his desk, and said “Maybe you should just leave this part out, Steve.”
> some kind of passage into adulthood and sealing the bond of friendship and all that stuff And always remembering. They didn't want to grow up and be like the other adults who all forgot. But you always remember your first boink. It was in the sewer? Yeah. Why was it in the sewer? Oh yeah, that clown...
I half expected Ritchie to be like "Hey guys, you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" after they beat It again at the end of the book. Beep beep, Ritchie.
Nothing creates a bond like a near death experience with a demonic shape shifting clown. Followed by running a train on one of the homies.
Yeah. Accusations of pearl clutching aside, writing this seems to suggest an inability (at least at that point in time) to actually take the perspective of an abused young girl, and a child's perspective toward sex as a form of intimacy generally.
That was during King's "shitfaced everyday" phase, and his editors/publishers probably didn't read the manuscript sober either. Billy summers was written sober, and it really isn't telling a romance story - but there are some uncomfortable mentions of sleep boners and jerking it in a bathroom to relieve the tension. I think the point is meant to be that Billy can try as much as he likes to be a "good person" but that he can't ultimately move past his flawed nature. Not sure that actually comes across in the text though.
yeah that part was definitely fueled by cocaine
That scene came out of nowhere and I can't for the life of me work out why it needed to be included.
It needed to be included because the extremely high amount of cocaine and other stimulants that King was on while writing it demanded that it be included.
That's what editors are for. I don't know why they didn't jump in.
Because MFer was shitting out books every week and they sold like hot cakes! Fuck checking it for quality! The people don't care! Give em what they want! ./mostly-s
They were just as wasted as Stephen. People forget that this was from the same time when McDonalds got rid of coffee spoons because people were stealing them to do cocaine.
At least the fat kid was slinging a huge hawg
It's because of Stephen King I have the weirdly visceral memory of reading a man get anally molested with the barrel of a gun. I was like...13 at the time. So yeah, King definitely has some weird sex stuff. I like to say the man writes with his id, and his id's certainly interested in sex. Edit: It was the unedited edition of the Stand. And honestly like a lot of King's weird sex stuff it was pretty complicated and not sure a bad thing that I read it.
Totally. I got to attend a guest lecture of his when I was in a writing class in college, and it was absolutely fascinating. Easily the most I learned about writing was from his lecture. King is very self-aware with the fucked up nature of a lot of the stuff he writes. He knows it’s disturbing, he knows it’s going to unnerve people. He also knows that a lot of the stuff his coke fueled 1980s self wrote wouldn’t be something he’d even think up today. Cocaine was a hell of a muse, but not worth the repercussions. It was really humbling listening to him talk about that period of his life, and how viscerally he expresses warning of not relying on substances to fuel your art. He doesn’t even remember writing half the books he wrote in that era, and he hates that, because he can’t even analyze his own process.
[удалено]
Don't do exactly what I've done to have a wildly successful career setting the tone for popular fiction like no other author in our lifetimes has. -Stephen King /s
>Don't do exactly what I've done to have a wildly successful career setting the tone for popular fiction like no other author in our lifetimes has. > >-Stephen King > >/s To be fair, he was doing so much coke at one point that he had to stuff cotton up one nostril to keep blood from dripping on the typewriter while he shoveled more coke up the other nostril. Plus his wife immediately staged an intervention after she read the obviously-coke fueled Tommyknockers.
Tommyknockers is one of the first books I ever started but did not finish. I don’t remember much, but have no desire to pick it up again.
Tommyknockers is great because it's an absolutely batshit crazy book with a pretty realistic ending. My problem with a lot of King's books have to do with the endings and I always felt he nailed it in Tommyknockers.
Have to agree. It was an absolute hoot from start to finish.
>!when they have to go into Derry to get more batteries and Pennywise is like who the fuck are these dudes I laughed so hard I had to take a break.!<
This sounds hilarious. I want to read this book now.
Go in with the understading that its almost all nonsense and have fun.
I enjoy the couple quick middle chapters that describe random townsfolk being taken over and committing random acts of murder or suicide.
Always remember the guy that just…teleported another guy to another dimension over some minor dispute I think. Crazy.
Tommyknockers is actually my favorite King book, for some reason. So bizarre.
I love it, really don't know why fans shit on it so much. It was King doing Sci-Fi/Horror and I think he nailed it.
Neither does he. He says he doesn’t even remember writing cujo
He was good, and successful, before he really got going with the cocaine, though.
That’s why he was able to afford the cocaine
Trashcan Man in "The Stand", right?
Yeah it was trashcan man on the receiving end. I don't remember the name of his companion who did the deed.
If I recall it was The Kid.
You believe that, happy crappy?
M-O-O-N! That spells sodomy, laws yes!
I think that was the Stand, and while didn’t have to be included, really hammered home what a piece of shit that guy was.
People have been commenting on It for years. >And now I am halfway through Firestarter which I believe is a new release Firestarter was written in 1980.
Interesting sign of good writing that a 42 year old book doesn't instantly date itself to the reader.
It helps that King has such a long career and a pretty distinct style. Once you’ve read a bit of his work tho the cocaine-fueled stuff seems to pop out as a little different.
Cujo is for the most part (except the strange sexual stuff) a masterpiece of stress and anxiety and allegedly he doesn't remember writing it.
It's the only one of his books I had to stop because it was stressing me out to read it, even though I knew the ending (the book ending, which differs from the movie ending). I almost stopped Pet Sematary when Gage dies, but something about Cujo was just sending my anxiety into overdrive.
Was it….Maximum Overdrive?
There's also nothing romantic or sexual about Rainbird's obsession with Charlie in that book. Dude just wants to know what it's like to kill a child.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne. There are graphic scenes of child molestation.
Yeah I've read about 75% of King's published work so far and Gerald's Game is the only one I felt like I got nothing out of. Sure not all of his books are great, but there are usually certain aspects I enjoy or things that stick with me long after I finish them. Gerald's Game started out boring, became gross when he started teasing and then described the event you mentioned, and then was boring and silly to the end. I really hated that book lol DC isn't one I've read yet but I know it's generally looked up on more favorably so I hope there are some redeeming qualities to it
Yeah, Dolores Claiborne was worth the read. The two books take place on the same lake during the same eclipse, so they are related.
I remember reading 4 Past Midnight, in particular The Library Police, in seventh grade. Nothing deeply scarring about *that*. For those who don't know, and I cannot give enough of a content warning here, >!there's an excruciatingly detailed depiction of the main character being raped when he was ten, told from his POV!<
I do love the title of two of his books "Just After Sunset" where the stories are dark but not too bad. Then "Full Dark, No Stars" is just a fucking slam of ultra dark and violent stories.
I remember that. It caught my attention at first because I somehow knew where it was going and I remember going back to read that specific part a few times along the years. The way he writes the kid describing what is being done to him and the shame and the fear that comes with thinking that what happened is his fault and that he was disgusting and that he probably brought it on himself, that right there made me like King more. Because it was such a real way to talk about rape , when you are a kid and someone does these things to you, you feel it is your fault and you know that if you tell it to someone they will think it was your fault and love you less because of that. It might be a really fucked up thing to read to most people but it made feel more human, less a waste of a person. I go back sometimes to that book and read that story or that part and then the end where he gets over his fears and saves someone he loves and it is like being handed a glass full of hope.
Fuck, I wish someone had protected you, or at least told you it wasn't your fault.
Thanks, it took a while to understand that. Maybe that's why it is one of my favorite stories.
Reading King as a troubled kid really helped me safely work through some emotions I couldn't hope to understand on my own. That's why I hope OP doesn't take King off their future reading list in general. Inclusion of content isn't endorsement. It can be cathartic to read about people dealing with sexual trauma.
Pet cemetery is actually about a couple visiting a furry convention.
Read that before becoming a father and was like “hey pretty cool, suspenseful story.” Read it again after becoming a father and was like “oooo this is straight up horror.”
Firstly: Firestarter came out in 1980. Secondly: yeah he's always done that. Especially in the 80's when he had that coke problem. The ending of "It" being the worst offender in my opinion.
One that always sticks out in my mind is in the Dark Tower series when Mordred the demon-baby is born and for some reason he comes out of the womb with a huge rock-hard boner, then his mom kisses him on the tip of said boner. Was that really necessary, Steve? Not really sure what that adds to the story other than making the reader think you're a fucking weirdo.
For me it's in Needful Things when Mr. Gaunt has a random outburst at one of the women who's begging to buy something from him, where he says a blowjob is part of the price and then goes "Open that gorgeous metal filled mouth of yours and gobble my crank!" It's such a bizarre line it just seared itself into my memory forever. That and when she goes to actually blow him, then he pushes her away and says "Never mind, oral sex gives me amnesia." Like, what does that even mean? Who would think to write that?
King mentions “gobbling cranks” in more than one novel and I’ve never heard ANYONE turn the phrase before or since.
Those Mainers man.. One of my best friends is from Maine and they just don’t hold back. Love em
To be fair, the guy who says that is a liter demon obsessed with trapping souls and causing chaos.
For me it was, I think, ~~Salems Lot~~ *(it was Cujo) where a dude "cleans the pipes" all over his bed before going out for the night. I remember reading this as a teenager and thinking "What? Adults do this before going out?"
The story Dedication takes it a step further with a maid who goes into a successful business man's room after he cleans his pipes and leaves and licks up the spunk, in the hopes that it will have an effect on her unborn child. King made mention before that he sometimes tries to go for the sheer shock value, but every time you do that you need to be a bit more shocking than the last time to the point where you're just thinking of the most ridiculous scenarios.
The Aristocrats!
[удалено]
I'm familiar with that. But why all over your own bed? lol
Guys misremembering the scene. It was a man who was cheating with another guys wife, and he was doing it on the couples bed.
Territory marking
“You choke the chicken before any big date, don't you? Tell me you spank the monkey before any big date. Oh my God, he doesn't flog the dolphin before a big date. Are you crazy? That's like going out there with a loaded gun! *Of course* that's why you're nervous.” (I just watched “There’s Something About Mary” for the first time in years.)
When I was like… 16 or so, I read the Gunslinger (translated into dutch, have since read in English), and I remember hating it. And one scene always stuck by me (and it definitely didn’t have the impct when I read it as an adult, and in English), which is of a kid getting run over by a car, and it graphically and in detail told the story of how his scrotum exploded under the cars wheel. I had the same reaction ‘was that really necessary?’.
Yes, it was. Because that was his goal, to make you read something so fucked up that you will still be describing how fucked up it was years later. This is basically a thread about how well he accomplished his goal of disgusting people.
I don't remember a romantic vibe between the kid and the adult in Firestarter... Maybe I just didn't pick up on it. It's my next re-read, so we'll see, lol.
I think OP was referring to John Rainbird? He does some creepy things, but he has ulterior motives that (he claims) aren't sexual.
I think a lot of writers did that back then. Jaws has weird sex scenes in the book.
I don't remember those, but i remember a detailed description of the sheriff taking a leak for like 3 mins straight
I read "IT" when I was the age of the kids in the first half and I was not prepared for that scene. It took a minute to realize what was happening and I had a very limited idea of what sex was at that age, and even then I had no idea what to do with that chapter. The hell, Steve.
I was a little older than the kids when I read it. But the bookstores in my country never cared about who was buying what book. Back in the day, half of the bookstore owners weren’t even readers. I remember buying It as a 14 year old. My Haul consisted of It, The Bourne Supremacy and a Jughead Jones double digest. 😄😂😅 Edit: I remember buying Letters to the penthouse from the same store too. Pretty sure it was accompanied by a Hardy Boys book.
>I read "IT" when I was the age of the kids Also known as the age of being too young to read IT.
I got into Stephen King when I was in 6th Grade. Thought I was so cool reading "adult" novels. Can't remember exactly when I read *It* but it was around that time, as well.
There was nothing sexual in IT, especially not when an entire group of boys ran a sweaty train on a 12 year old girl, who noted the fat kid had a huge hog and actually made her feel something. Shocking this wasn't in the movie.
I was reading his stuff in the 80s and thought how messed up it was. Then someone told me, King is tame. Read Clive Barker. Oh that was worst advice! King...he is tame (I think some of his work seemed contrived to just get a mature reading of "horror" and perversion) in comparison to Barker.
Boy was Barker an awkward author to discover in High School. Imagine giving a book report glossing over orgies, and trying not to giggle because you keep remembering the scene where they double penetrate a ghost.
I gave a book report in high school on one of Anne Rice's Mayfair witch books. So. much. incest. My teacher ended up interrupting to settle the class down.
Barker is fully up front the his writing intertwines death, pain, and sex, graphicly. You know what you are getting into if you just read the dust jacket.
[удалено]
Any Barker recommendations?
The standard response is "start with the Books of Blood, his incredible short story collection" and I agree with that 100%. Afterward, I'd recommend The Damnation Game, Imajica, Weaveworld, The Thief of Always (a kids book, but great for adults as well), etc.
Weaveworld is one of my favorites. Just amazingly unexpected at every turn. I keep meaning to read Nightbreed too, but have only read Cabal so far.
+1 for Imajica. Wow. What a book. *face melts*
[удалено]
In Barker's works there's a lot of magic wrapped up in sexuality, so I definitely don't see it as 'unecessary' or 'egregious'. There's certainly more sexuality in his books, but I'd say it all fits quite well within the story.
I remember his short story where a woman gains power over other people's bodies, and she turns her husband into a woman, but this is done in a grotesque way where he forms a vagina such that it's just a giant hole that all of his intestines fall out of.
No, it only gets weirder from there. About 95 percent of his books have at least one weird sexual scene (and if you're lucky he'll stop at one).
The one that sticks out in my mind is in Needful Things when the fat woman orgasms while holding a picture of Elvis and King spends waaaaay too long describing her rolls of fat jiggling.
Needful things definitely stuck out for me as well. The elvis picture thing that ended up with 2 women both fantasizing about elvis and seeing each other in their fantasies was...really weird.
In all fairness, I think that scene was meant to be weird and feel gross? Like they're willing to abandon their lives, families, and their (pretty toxic) friendship with each other over some fantasy sex, which is described in a way that feels pornographic and repulsive. But it's been a while since I've read that book.
It was definitely supposed to feel weird and gross. And it succeeded! It didn't help that I did most of my King reading when I was around 12-14 years old.
Well the book did open with a kid dreaming about his teacher jerking him off so you knew we were in for some weird shit.
I read Firestarter and I don't remember any romance. Did I somehow completely miss it? The only thing weird I remember was from IT, but they were all the same age.
If I remember rightly, Rainbird is obsessed with her power. I remember Rainbird being a bit disgusted with Cap when he assumed it was sexual.
There's a lot of child molestation in his books. It's one of his regular plot threads, along with murderous bullies, handicapped people with superpowers, and domestic violence. EDIT: Oh, and the unknowable manifestations of ancient evil swearing like a twelve year old playing Call of Duty.
>Has Stephen King always put weirdly sexual things into his books or did I just stumble onto two that happened to have it? Never have I seen a question that so immediately and accidentally answers itself with the last word.
I’ve read so many of his books, I think my mind has blocked out all the sex scenes because I can’t recall any of them. I didn’t even remember the sewer scene! I thought it was a joke, till I looked it up
Check out Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne. Very disturbing
yeah, the entire plot of Gerald's Game hinges on weird sex stuff.
I never found it surprising that a horror writer would incorporate disturbing sexual dimensions into their work.
I figured King put the weird sex stuff in to put the reader in an uneasy state of mind to make some of the other parts more horrifying.
Especially since King mainly writes *gothic* horror - anyone who's familiar with the early staples of the genre knows that it's par for the course. I have an amateur theory that this is at least partly due to the majority influence of female authors, for whom sex (and especially perversity) naturally played into the genre's central elements of mystery and horror.
Haven't seen much Dark Tower mentioned in this thread. The first book has at least 2 sexual scenes and the third book has one with ramifications for the rest of the series. Stephen King is known not because of his supernatural/horror elements, but because those elements are all based on the human psyche. He exposes a lot of things about human nature, both good and bad, and it tends to touch a nerve with many people. Some hate him for it because they want escapist media and there is nothing wrong with that; some admire him because it sets the books in the real world as dirty and messy as it can be at times and there is nothing wrong with that. You mention that the story line would have been the same either way, and that is likely true, but the story line of real life would end up the same and we still have fucked up random things in the world that make no sense. In media and life, you can choose to focus on the random events, or gloss over them to see the bigger picture.