CW: just my favorite thing in the world to argue about apparently
i tagged anything involving the idea of kids as sexual subjects in anyway as pedo shit because i don't think it's something that merits depiction in pretty much any way, except for perhaps something like Lolita, and even then it's clearly touchy. the point with the plot isn't that king contrived a narrative that could only be resolved by a child orgy, it's that he reached a narrative point where he had a group of very upset and scared children in a sewer with a cosmic horror, and he decided that they should calm down by fucking each other. i'm not going to debate in general about "well i would have done it better," just that holy fucking shit is that not an acceptable plot device, unless perhaps you're writing a serious literary novel that is explicitly exploring the fucked up nature of the dynamics. i think it's harmful to display this in any way, and just super weird for the kids to be doing in a sewer in response to cosmic horror.
if others have summarized it properly, they're doing it to coax themselves into adulthood under the assumption that the clown will leave them alone afterwards. it's not exactly pulitzer shit, but it's not completely out of left field for that story either. in other words it's pertinent enough to the story that it can't really be hand waved away as a cheap pretext to shove a child orgy into the novel.
I guess it just doesn't really get any reaction out of me. mind, I'm not particularly attached to the idea of having children as sexual subjects in my stories either. only I'm having trouble seeing how it's inherently worse than any other commonly accepted excess of imagination like SV, or torture porn, or make-believe genocide, what have you. it's all beyond my capacity to reminisce either way.
I’m not particularly attached to the idea of having children as sexual subjects in my stories either. only I’m having trouble seeing how it’s inherently worse than any other commonly accepted excess of imagination like SV, or torture porn, or make-believe genocide, what have you.
I don't think those things should really be in "art" either. but this is at least very clear cut to me. i don't think it matters how or why they got to that point. did anyone else point out to you that king, a cis white male, decided to depict inherently non-consensual sex between minors wherein all the child protagonists but one are males? did anyone decide to also explore the importance to the plot of what that would do medically to the girl in the situation, a minor as equally unprepared for it as every other minor involved. i'm not asking to reminisce on any of these awful things, i'm just baffled that people would go to bat in the comments that it's important to be able to depict this.
you make a good case for this stuff being peak /r/menwritingwomen material. I guess that on its own makes either the book or the passage in question problematic and/or worthy of derision. this is tangential though. if the author hadn't been a cis white male, and if their depiction of the situation had been medically accurate, wouldn't you still object to the scene on the grounds that it contains a child orgy?
as far as the importance of being able to depict this goes, I can think of a better way to phrase it. if you want to take the option away from other people, you need to have a good reason. more than that, it needs to be pretty unambiguous, because even before bringing ethics into consideration we all have subjective notions of what doing it "correctly" entails, pertaining to our abilities as storywriters and/or critics of storywriting. if anything, we've proven this.
in any case, I don't want this discussion to grow contentious, so I'll bow out here. I appreciate the time you've spent discussing this with us and I can't say I completely disagree with you either.
wouldn’t you still object to the scene on the grounds that it contains a child orgy?
absolutely, but i'd be less interested in debating it because the focus could be on the general trauma of the depiction, and it would be more likely to meet the extremely narrow artistic range in which i could find such a depiction in some way acceptable.
more than that, it needs to be pretty unambiguous, because even before bringing ethics into consideration we all have subjective notions of what doing it “correctly” entails, pertaining to our abilities as storywriters and/or critics of storywriting.
i don't disagree here, i'm not really in the habit of saying that something should be banned outright. but i also don't see the idea of no one reading IT ever again to be in any meaningful way a loss to the world.
![[CW: Pedo shit] Pillar of american culture](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/w7IraBiZuk.png){kind=link}
CW: just my favorite thing in the world to argue about apparently
i tagged anything involving the idea of kids as sexual subjects in anyway as pedo shit because i don't think it's something that merits depiction in pretty much any way, except for perhaps something like Lolita, and even then it's clearly touchy. the point with the plot isn't that king contrived a narrative that could only be resolved by a child orgy, it's that he reached a narrative point where he had a group of very upset and scared children in a sewer with a cosmic horror, and he decided that they should calm down by fucking each other. i'm not going to debate in general about "well i would have done it better," just that holy fucking shit is that not an acceptable plot device, unless perhaps you're writing a serious literary novel that is explicitly exploring the fucked up nature of the dynamics. i think it's harmful to display this in any way, and just super weird for the kids to be doing in a sewer in response to cosmic horror.
CW: advanced desensitization
if others have summarized it properly, they're doing it to coax themselves into adulthood under the assumption that the clown will leave them alone afterwards. it's not exactly pulitzer shit, but it's not completely out of left field for that story either. in other words it's pertinent enough to the story that it can't really be hand waved away as a cheap pretext to shove a child orgy into the novel.
I guess it just doesn't really get any reaction out of me. mind, I'm not particularly attached to the idea of having children as sexual subjects in my stories either. only I'm having trouble seeing how it's inherently worse than any other commonly accepted excess of imagination like SV, or torture porn, or make-believe genocide, what have you. it's all beyond my capacity to reminisce either way.
CW: advanced desensitization
I don't think those things should really be in "art" either. but this is at least very clear cut to me. i don't think it matters how or why they got to that point. did anyone else point out to you that king, a cis white male, decided to depict inherently non-consensual sex between minors wherein all the child protagonists but one are males? did anyone decide to also explore the importance to the plot of what that would do medically to the girl in the situation, a minor as equally unprepared for it as every other minor involved. i'm not asking to reminisce on any of these awful things, i'm just baffled that people would go to bat in the comments that it's important to be able to depict this.
CW: can probably tell by now
you make a good case for this stuff being peak /r/menwritingwomen material. I guess that on its own makes either the book or the passage in question problematic and/or worthy of derision. this is tangential though. if the author hadn't been a cis white male, and if their depiction of the situation had been medically accurate, wouldn't you still object to the scene on the grounds that it contains a child orgy?
as far as the importance of being able to depict this goes, I can think of a better way to phrase it. if you want to take the option away from other people, you need to have a good reason. more than that, it needs to be pretty unambiguous, because even before bringing ethics into consideration we all have subjective notions of what doing it "correctly" entails, pertaining to our abilities as storywriters and/or critics of storywriting. if anything, we've proven this.
in any case, I don't want this discussion to grow contentious, so I'll bow out here. I appreciate the time you've spent discussing this with us and I can't say I completely disagree with you either.
CW
absolutely, but i'd be less interested in debating it because the focus could be on the general trauma of the depiction, and it would be more likely to meet the extremely narrow artistic range in which i could find such a depiction in some way acceptable.
i don't disagree here, i'm not really in the habit of saying that something should be banned outright. but i also don't see the idea of no one reading IT ever again to be in any meaningful way a loss to the world.
anyway, good convo.