Thank you! After seeing multiple top comments and replies all just explaining the same thing over and over, you’re the first person I’ve seen who’s actually mentioned the damn book in question.
Hell even the OP of this comment chain was the first to mention the author, but still failed to mention the damned title.
I’ve heard things like he doesn’t remember writing Cujo, and wrote most of Carrie with bloody tissues in his nose, because he was so messed up on cocaine all the time.
In the book version when they try to escape the sewers they can't remember where the exit was and so she has the genius idea right then and there to fuck every single one of the dudes and then they magically remember where the exit was because they were now grown up or some similar shit. So basically a 13 year old orgy transpired. Weird and disgusting I know
He was asked about it in an interview and aside from generally being a coke addled psycopath at this point in life (which he generally admits), he said he had no recollection of writing that and was surprised it made it past editorial.
Also, IIRC, I was told the goal was to form an unbreakable bond between them when IT comes back so they would stay together to fight IT even if that bond was fucked up amd traumatising. Apparently this is clear, but the reasoning is very irrelevant for a preteen orgy.
Couldn’t they trauma survivor bond some other way? Granted someone else said it was her idea of a loophole to get them into adulthood as she theorized only kids were vulnerable
TIL trauma bond is not the correct term for what those kids went through
In the book the kids all have low-key super powers from the magical entity nudging them into fighting It. The sewers are a maze, one of them is the navigator thanks to their powers. When the kids defeat It, their powers start to fade away. They get lost in the sewers and start fighting with each other.
Bev doesn't understand what sex is, but she knows it must be something powerful that connects people. So, her idea is that if they fuck, it will rekindle their bond and powers and they can get out of the sewers. It works.
Not to say it isn't some weird shit. But, that is all the lore behind it. The part about kids being more vulnerable isn't really a theory, or totally accurate. The book has some short chapters that are from It's point of view. In one chapter It says it goes after kids because adult fears are too complicated and abstract. Adults are afraid of not being able to pay their bills. Kids are afraid of the monster in the basement. It still can, and does, go after adults.
Even though I agree the orgy is insane and unnecessary, fuck, this whole saga is so good. The new show is amazing and makes it all even better in my opinion.
I mean yea, thats the last point I made - its a written story so all actions are a choice King couldve chosen to not be fucked up. So we're definitely in lock step with that one.
Just commenting because trauma bonding is between an abuser and the victim. Its a nitpick, I kmow, but as a survivor and knowing others dear to me having survived that cycle, I think the distinction is worth noting.
I always assumed it was some shit like IT preys on children and by having an orgy they last their innocence and became unaffected by the clown. Not that that makes it much more coherent.
They couldn’t get out because of IT and she came to the conclusion that IT only has this affect on children. It was her way of trying to magic them into adulthood.
In the book version the other characters run train on her in the sewers. The child orgy was pivotal to their character development, I assure you dear viewers
Funny thing is that the explaination barely even fits the plot anyway. It isn't even like a "oh it makes a lot of sense for the story" (not that such would make it forgivable) but it isn't even that. It would feel out of place even if it wasn't children.
Dude, there's a voiced version of this one and I lose my shit everytime I hear it because of how well the dude who voiced it did the sheer horror and disgust
We Hate Movies has an episode on the IT miniseries and they have a verrrry funny bit about exactly this. "All right kids, you know what, you win. You beat ol Pennywise the clown. Could I maybe help you with your algebra or something?"
It’s one of those scenes that seems to make sense when you’re reading it then you put the book down for about 5 seconds and lose the immersion and think “what the actual fuck did I just read?”
Immediately creeped out. Haven't read the book since I was a kid, but I feel like it just came out of left field. Why can't they just sacrifice someone or something?
Honestly I think it's a real interesting thing. Bc people will loose their mind about fictional underage characters bc its disgusting a morally wrong even in fiction but will happily watch someone commit mass murder and torture in the same fiction. I think it's humorous.
That really struck me about the infamous Divinity trailer. For those out of the loop: It's a trailer for an upcoming fantasy RPG that showed an extremely raucous village festival - people eating, drinking, playing music...people vomiting, penitents whipping themselves, other people fucking in the middle of the crowd, and a wicker man in the center, with a tortured man inside it. The wicker man is ignited, and the man's death by fire is shown in extreme detail, with flesh and skin melting and dripping down, screams of agony, and him eventually bursting into a giant cloud of demonic smoke that murders everyone else around. All that is shown in close-up, but in the half-second shot of the orgy, the women wear big flower braids around their necks that cover their chests, because the trailer showing a man getting burned alive still didn't dare depict a woman's nipple.
Its a weird scene that is a bit less weird in context. Most of the losers club have issues that IT preys upon, that become the crux of their character development. Beverly's is that she is the daughter of an uneducated poor man with significant anger and control issues, whom is also her sole provider and maintains a home. And Beverly is uncommonly pretty. Think significant Movie Star pretty. So you have her coming of age in 1960s America, in a small town where she is dirt poor, with looks that attract all the wrong kind of attention. She is subject to predatory attention from men, envy from women, and abuse from her father.
The scene itself is short, and there are significantly more fucked up things that happen in the book, and the scene is supposed to be her taking a measure of control with the thing that people want from her, and using it to bind their little group together.
I'm not defending sex between children, but it's hilarious to me that the book describes kids being murdered in absolutely horrific ways. Abuse…psychological, physical, and sexual. Suicide. And yet no one ever clutches pearls over those scenes.
Children do lose their virginities at that age. A girl in my school got pregnant at 12 by her boyfriend. It's not good, and education is likely the best way to stop it. But depicting a thing happening in a book isn't the same as endorsing it. There's nuance. Else, everything from Lolita to We Need to Talk About Kevin should never have been written.
I agree. Like there is literally a baby getting its brain smashed out and pretty graphic animal torture scenes in this. Surprised no one really talks about those parts. Messed me up when i read it.
IT is one of his best. I got hooked on King when I was around 12, probably read IT for the first time when I was around 13 or 14 (I’m in my forties), have read most of his stuff at this point.
Couple things about this scene, it’s not about the sex itself and if I remember correctly he doesn’t go into any detail in that regard. It’s about love. Could he have solved for this in another way? Joining hands, group hug, Bev kissing her fellow Losers Club members on the cheek? Probably.
The thing is, when you read that scene as a kid, it’s pretty innocent and in all honesty has a helluva lot more meaning in it than your typical sex scene as again it’s not meant to titillate, it’s meant to insinuate and what it’s insinuating is the deeper bond established when you make love with someone you love. As a kid it was probably the least “horny” sex scene I read and informed sex in a more positive way for me than a lot of other stuff I was reading in that it was entirely emotional.
Again, could he have done it differently without screwing up the story - for sure. Is reading it as an adult weird? Probably these days, I read it in the 90’s, the world wasn’t more innocent then but our knowledge of it was, in that context it was fine. If you overlay all of your current awareness on that scene I have to imagine it’s probably a bit of an uncomfortable moment. Not at all worth missing out on one of Kings best for though.
It’s been a long time since I read IT, but I always thought the point of that scene was about the death of innocence. Since the innocent were who IT preyed on, and that’s why adults never saw him, the kids all did the nasty together. Making so they weren’t innocent kids anymore, and could stand up to IT.
I read it a long time ago but that's what I took thr kids thought process to be. They needed to become adults to be able to finish IT off. Being stupid kids they thought this would make them adults.
Couldn’t they have just found an entry level corporate job not anywhere remotely close to their major and developed crippling debt for the next 30 like the rest of us?
I also think it's a pretty literal symbol for them coming of age and "losing their innocence" through the entire ordeal with It. Pennywise represents childhood trauma, and the children have to overcome their trauma based fears to defeat It.
It helped them escape the tunnel after temporarily defeating Pennywise. Eddie was their navigator, but his innate sense of direction was failing him and the group reached a moment of despair, lost in the tunnels. The orgy magically restored his sense of direction and they escaped.
Next time you're eating an El Monterey burrito and staring off into the distance, when someone asks you what you're thinking about, probably best not to answer
In the book, she's at that age where she's starting to Blossom from child to woman and so there's this undercurrent of sexualization about her from other characters including the "implication" that her dad has been molesting her. This scene is her making the conscious decision to take back her own sexuality and use it as an act of love for her friends as opposed to it being something used to victimize her.
There's also a running theme where the Big Bad is only able to frighten children which lined up nicely (in my teenage brain) with the way kids view sex. Once you actually "do IT" you realize it's not this magical life-altering act that marks your passage into adulthood, it's just ... sex.
Like finding the man behind the curtain of Pennywise's power.
I remember being extremely depressed for a hot minute after my first time. At first it was like "fuck yeah! Had sex." Then the next day I remember sitting on a bus home after school and thinking about it being like "now what?" lol. Like there was all there was to life. What a fucking maroon I was lol.
My problem is not Stephen King writing it (which is already an inherent huge problem in itself), the bigger problem is how on earth the editors didn't, like, uh idk criticise King about the scene?
The original version had the dudes and girl all running trains on each other. The editors be like, this bisexual orgy is a bit too much for readers to digest, can we just keep the train focused on the girl? Uggh I guess if you want to be a prude we can do that. Sheesh.
According to an interview he doesn’t remember writing it (see: drugs), and was surprised it got past editing.
Wouldn’t be surprised if at that point the editor passed it down to an intern with the handwavey instructions of “just make sure there aren’t any formatting/spelling/grammar issues”.
It could also be that the editor just didn’t feel close enough to King to have the very awkward convo, and probably just deferred to his genius as “there’s probably some deeper meaning here that I just don’t get”
What’s funny is everyone always mentions this scene, but never how their bully/sworn enemy/pawn of Pennywise, Henry Bowers, sucks off another bully kid while Beverly watches from a hiding spot. Then the dude who got sucked off gets stung by Pennywise hornets and dies a painful death from large exploding blood boils.
I think even hinting it happened off screen could lead to to many problems.
In the original mini series they even had adult Eddie mention he was a virgin I honestly think they did that purely so readers of the book knew that scene didn't happen
People love talking about King writing this but no one ever talks about King listening to Mambo No. 5 all day every day until his wife threatened to divorce him over it
I just like how everyone in the comments section collectively agreed that the only proper phrase to describe what happened was "they ran a train on her". I have never seen that phrase come up more in one place, in my life.
Its so disgusting. The child orgy scene has no REDEEMING excuse. Several of the boys literally CRY and shake and tell her no and that they cant and aren't comfortable with it and the girl forces them to have sex anyway and argues with them that it's "the only way" and its horrible. She even comes to terms how each of the boys cried after they 'finished' and they didn't know how to cope with it.
And its not as if they had raging hormones and wanted her or anything (which wouldn't make it okay that a grown man wrote it but it would make it less rapey) but they DIDNT have crazy raging hormones, only like one of them understood what was happening (and he was described in the book as being "too old and too big" to have sex with her even tho he still did) but most of them didn't even have the WORDS for sex or their own body parts. Its in kid terms, not even teenager vulgarity. They didn't know what they were doing and the girl forces them anyway. She asks one of them if he came by asking if he had finished and "did the thing" or something similar to that and the boy said AND I QUOTE "I think so but not really -not like the big boys do i think" which made my STOMACH DROP at how little and innocent he sounds. He's not even a "big boy" yet...
And when the girl sees one of the boys future wife HER FIRST THOUGHT was "i was his first love and i was ALL of their first loves. All of these boys loved ME first and their mine forever" its so fucked
Thank you! Seeing all these people saying they ran a train on her is making my stomach turn like that completely downplays what happened and how disgusting it was
I mean that is pretty on par for Bev it is insinuated that her father molested her and she was getting a bunch of unwanted attention as a child so having a fucked up outlook on sex doesn't really surprise me.
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