sometimes i scroll through stephen king’s twitter and i’m never disappointed
He wrote a orgy sex scene between a group of children
There’s this thing called authors writing something they don’t agree on. Writers write about murdering, they don’t immediately become a murderer. Just saying (;
Writing about children having sex is different to having people die
That’s exactly my point. People write about incest. People write about pedophilism. People write about terrible things like that. Guess what, they don’t immediately approve of it. Never mix up the author, the implied author and the narrator because they’re different things.
Totally vague and I’m not sure I know full details for sure but didn’t Stephen King write about a homophobic killing precisely to frame it as terrible and wrong in the IT story? Just cos you write about something doesn’t make it what you condone – it’s generally the opposite when it’s something bad, when it’s framed as wrong! Duh
Yep Tink, exactly. He wrote it to show how bad it is. Same with Mr Mercedes. The mass murderer wants to have/has sex with his mom, is homophobic and racist and even though from his POV he sees this as good and all, you know that it isn’t. For history we read a part from a book written from the pov of a German soldier executing people. We know it’s bad, everyone knows, the author too, and still they wrote about it. That’s the thing about writing, you don’t have to agree with it to put it in your work.
I hope you don’t mind me jumping in, but I just have to say something here. This attitude that the author(s) of Bad Things automatically condone the Bad Thing because they wrote about it needs to stop. It’s a non sequitur and it’s not only bad logic, it’s a dangerous mindset to have. The man is the biggest name in American Horror for pete’s sake and if he can’t write about vile, evil, gross things without the implication that he somehow supports said vile, evil things then who’s immune? Genre conventions of horror include things that are designed to gross you out, to scare you, to make you feel icky. That’s the whole point of the genre! And to be frank, it doesn’t matter if you’re reading from the POV of the murderer or the victim – we know going in (because we’re reading horror and know what to expect from the genre) that it’s not going to be nice or “okay” in real life. It’s fantasy!
Now, of course, it’s okay to critique authors on their works. It’s totally okay to point out things that weren’t perfect or were racist/homophobic/sexist/ect in written work but you can’t just write an author off and imply they’re Bad because of one thing they wrote one time. Need I mention that yes, King wrote a child sex scene, but he also wrote a book about a black man who was unjustly murdered by the state in which the white narrator is doomed to live (and age) for godknows how long b/c of his involvement in the man’s death? (Yeah, I can cherry pick, too.)
Seriously, this idea that one thing about a writer’s body of work should define them and condemn them is ridiculous and needs to end. Also, here’s King talking about the scene in question. He aslo brings up the point most funny to me; that we worry so much about the sex scene but don’t talk too much about the child murderes as the thing that should condemn him.
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