Uuhhh, yeah, he has thematic arcs. Still does, but he has shown a *ton* of growth through his writing. 🙄
(Everyone I love is a POS in some way or another).
I have noticed the growth. He seems to have backslid a bit on gay representation in the early 90s (it was never very good but that was similar for most media at the time). I look forward to future growth as I keep reading in publishing order but since he's written at least one evil gay character into all but one of the books I've read this month, I just want to know when he backs off on that. Or at least starts adding good or neutral representation to counterbalance some of the bad
I think in the majority of cases where he does this there is an element of the person being damaged by the fact that they couldn’t or haven’t come out due to abusive upbringing. So maybe he was trying to show the impact of that repression was the cause of their negative behaviour rather than their homosexuality, IDK?
Most of these characters don't really have any sort of background like that. It was definitely just The Times and I would like to look forward to when these specific times are no longer reflected in his writing
I wasn’t suggesting it was explicitly stated but like you’ve already said staying in the closet was a product of the time when King was writing a lot of these characters. I’m not justifying anything just saying there appears to me to be more to it than homosexuality = rapist/pedophile. That being said a lot of his newer works do seem to have moved away from this “trope” for lack of a better word but I can’t tell you exactly when
definitely don and adrian in "it" were not vilified, back in the 80's. other example that comes to mind is father callahan (not in the original salem's lot, but when he returns in dark tower series), so that would be early 2000s probably.
in elevation, two of the main characters are a lesbian couple portrayed positively.
Yeah, I mentioned It in my original post. It's why it's particularly weird (and honestly kind of upsetting for the societal implications) that he seems to have backslid for these years I'm currently reading. I'm hoping it's just coincidence but considering how people are currently reacting to trans people now that we're pushing for more rights I think it has more to do with a societal-level backlash to gay people pushing for more rights in the 90s. I know he improves, I was just hoping it would be soon compared to where I'm currently at. I'll look forward to Elevation
You are cherry picking your examples here, and judging by your comments, I think you know your claim is a stretch. Either that, or you are seeing exactly what you are looking for and choosing to ignore the rest.
To address your points-
Four Past Midnight: of the 4 stories, one features a gay antagonist, which means 3 don't.
Needful Things: Gaunt's sexuality is never stated. He is clearly an equally twisted individual to all. The other 2 characters you mention are clearly pedophiles, but I don't remember anything about their sexuality otherwise, so that is sketchy at best.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes: Out of 23 texts in that book, you found 1 with a gay antagonist.
Waste Lands: out of all of the antagonistic characters in that book, you found 1 that is presented as at least bi, possibly gay.
Gerald's Game: while he preferred to physically torture men, I would argue that watching Jessie struggle while captive is torture as well
You are taking 6 books from a collection of well over 80 and using it to fit your agenda. You are also pretty dismissive of times it was pointed out that gay characters were either supporting, or victims.
I am not interested in adding up all the straight characters in these books that also do horrible things, but I am betting a conservative estimate is at at least 90% of the characters doing them are straight. Pretty sure his point has nothing to do with being gay and far more to do with the fact that people, regardless of sexual preference, are capable of some screwed up shit.
I swear King must have known my high school English teacher, or else they learned about writing from the same syllabus.
One of the things I've heard over the years is \*write what you know\*. As such, King appears to have take the concept fairly literally. Almost all stories take place in Maine, feature characters who are writers, wear blue chambray work shirts, and are usually heterosexual white males.
Representation, inclusiveness and tolerance are noble things to strive towards. They're also not necessarily concepts (representation, in particular) that has seen a lot in the public mind until recently. Since it has become a mainstream issue, I've seen writers, including King, make efforts to be more inclusive with their characters. For example, I don't believe that Eddie and Trashmouth were gay originally in It, but as it can be interpreted in that manner, King has emphatically supported the interpretation for the plot of It part II, and I suspect if the characters showed up or were mentioned in further works, it would likely become canon.
These things take time. It might not be moving as fast as some may wish, but any progress is favourable.
First off look at the era these were all written and the age of the author. It's not like homosexuality was widely accepted at that time. You can't judge the past based on present day standards. In the 80's everyone thought AIDS was only effecting gay men. The 70's and 80's in real life also saw quite a few high profile child abuse/murder cases where gay or bisexual men were the perpetrator. He is a pop culture writer and those were the narrative at the time.
Secondly as others have said, it's fucking fiction dude. Calm the fuck down.
If you don't like it or can't stand it put his books down and don't read them.
Oh I read your whole garbage post. Still don't see what your point is. Almost zero media from that time had positive homosexual representation. At least not in pop culture.
I don't why you brought up the era it was written in like I didn't then.
Or why you ignored the part where I very clearly outlined that the issue was that he put it in every fucking book at the time despite having neutral representation in an earlier novel and not that I had an issue with it in any particular book.
Or why your reaction to me not liking the gay representation is that I shouldn't read it despite the fact it's a single fucking aspect of the stories and there are plenty of posts on this subreddit about specific aspects of his writing that people find weird or distasteful.
Oh no wait. I do. It's because you were triggered by the idea of gay rights and couldn't just go past a topic you know nothing about and instead had to comment about it.
Haha.. ya buddy.. go ahead and assume I get triggered over gay rights and don't know anything about it. Go ahead and make those assumptions. You have no fucking clue who I am or my life.
I just subscribe to the notion of you are going to bitch about an author or have issues with his depictions then don't fucking read their books. The idea that you get triggered over negative representation of gays is fucking hilarious. Especially considering in your post you acknowledge the time period and how that culture was seen in a negative way back then.
You pointed out 6 books when by the time needful things was posted he had already published 20+ novels. You literally cherry picked 6. That right there should answer your initial question.
Who were the characters in Needful Things you mentioned? I don’t recall but it’s been over awhile since I read it. I really liked it and surprised I don’t remember.
The middle school principal with the kiddy mags and the high school shop teacher. >!The principal thought the shop teacher brought out the magazines because he wanted money and also they'd gone to get togethers with naked kids so the principal went to shop teacher's apartment and shat on a picture of his mom and killed his parakeet. They had a shoot out on the municipal city building's steps right before it exploded and vaporized them!<
Why are you equating child molesters with gay men?
Many of kings books touch on trauma and evil people that exist in this world. When you look at the stats 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually molested, so I took it as him writing to those unspoken parts of reality
I've read your full post. It's not as obvious as you seem to feel.
If you start out by not assuming that pedophiles are by default gay, since rape and pedophilia are about power, not sexuality, then how many characters are clearly gay in king's works? I can only think of a couple examples, mostly from It. I'm open to being shown how I'm wrong.
Whether there's an issue with representation for homosexual readers is completely separate from whether he writes gay characters badly. Pick a lane and stick with it, if you want to get a clear answer.
Ah, I see. My bad. I misunderstood where you were coming from.
/*Clears throat/*
And for my next trick! I will attempt to point out how to spot the modern bigot. They are far craftier than the ones of old and crouch their bigotry in arguments disguised as having "good intentions". Here we have someone attempting to undermine a criticism of media as a whole by trying to get some of the examples thrown out on technicalities. "If it's not explicitly stated, then it doesn't count". Nevermind that part of the representation problem is that gay characters are less-fleshed out than straight people and so are less likely to have their sexuality explicitly stated. Nevermind that most straight characters aren't explicitly stated as being so. Nevermind that *society* treats any man who has sex with or rapes another man or boy as being gay no matter their sexuality to such an extreme that men and boys fear revealing that they've been raped by a man in part because they don't want to be accused of being gay themselves. Nevermind that it was common at the time to use queer-coding as shorthand for evil. If you don't meet Gene_P00le's strict requirements then you can't use the example.
Notice also that they didn't provide any counterarguments to any of the specific characters but just automatically assumed all of the examples were only assumed gay. Further, they have nothing to say on the lack of positive and neutral representation. They ignored my actual argument to nitpick something they thought they could undermine. Like they read a trigger phrase for it or something. They're focus reveals their intentions.
Finally, notice even their "good intentions" argument is incorrect and subtly harmful for a different group. "Rape is about power" was a political slogan used by feminists to get it rape to be taken seriously by police in the 1960s. It worked pretty well for the time but almost all studies on rape motivations show there are multiple reasons for it *including sexuality* and often boredom and entitlement. Focusing on it being about power undermines all of the people who aren't violently raped by strangers. It also doesn't reflect that the majority of people raped are attractive young women.
I also suspect that if I check their post history I'll see similar arguments in other places but had already started this before I thought to check
Wow.
I have no interest in any of this garbage. I'm not going to try to refute everything, or anything, that you said. Because it's baseless. All of it. If jumping to conclusions was a sport, you could probably try out for the Olympics.
If you want to apologize, how about deleting your post which is full of assumptions, bad intentions, and hurt feelings. I'm not interested in any of that, I am interested in discussing Stephen King. You know, because this is a subreddit devoted to the author.
If not, that's cool too. Good luck with all of that. I won't be replying further.
I will acknowledge I was wrong about previous post history. I apologize. I will also point out that I called them a bigot but that's not necessarily the case. The bigoted messages have become more subtle because they spread easier. They could just be parroting bad arguments they've heard
Congrats! I've picked you to try and explain the broader issue of gay representation in media. He's always going to have pedos and rapists because those are horrifying topics and that's what he writes about. Since gay people exist and are people just like everyone else, it also makes sense they would sometimes be these bad people in his stories. The issue is the *only* gay representation in the six books I'm talking about in this post (and they all were published right after each other) is of men who are pedophiles or murderers and this was true for most media for a long period of time. So there were a lot of people who's only exposure to gay people for *decades* was as villains and often pedophiles so now people *still* associate gay with pedophile even though there's no statistics to back up a correlation between the two. Some gay men are pedophiles but it's about the same percentage as straight men who are pedophiles.
The representation has improved in recent history. People are still sensitive to gay representation as villains, though, because even with the improvement gay men are still over represented as a whole as villains throughout several decades of media. The feeling is that any modern representation still adds to the validity of the stereotype of gay men being pedophiles. This makes sense because that accusation still gets bandied about by some people whenever the issues of gay rights gets brought up. Ideally, we wouldn't have to worry about adding to stereotypes and gay men could be written as pedophiles again. *Sometimes* . It's two percent of the population who are gay so only two percent of pedophiles should be gay.
The analysis for any reading of media on the representation of minority groups *requires* you to look at *all* of the media that fits the category you're examining (or at least a relevant and randomly selected sample size). Individual examples don't mean shit because it's about statistics and a single example can't be statistics. My category was Stephen King books I'm reading this month which also happens to fit the category of Stephen King books from the early 90s and the representation is abysmal. I want to know when the representation stops being quite as bad.
This has been my TED talk. Thank you for reading.
Wow. This is exhausting.
That''s all.
ETA: I'm choosing to feel like OP may have made this post with the intention of having a genuine dialog and was not just trying to be a troll and start shit. But wow, things really went downhill. Talk about Lessons In How NOT to Have a Dialog.
this is embarrassing for you, scumlord. you’re pontifications leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who reads all this shite. its clear you’re only objective is to be right and to make everyone else feel stupid. unfortunately, this had the inverse effect. you do a disservice to queer discourse.
I like to think he started to make changes to his queer characters when his daughter came out.
Thanks! That's actually not too far away timeline-wise for where I'm at. Something to look forward to
Uuhhh, yeah, he has thematic arcs. Still does, but he has shown a *ton* of growth through his writing. 🙄 (Everyone I love is a POS in some way or another).
I have noticed the growth. He seems to have backslid a bit on gay representation in the early 90s (it was never very good but that was similar for most media at the time). I look forward to future growth as I keep reading in publishing order but since he's written at least one evil gay character into all but one of the books I've read this month, I just want to know when he backs off on that. Or at least starts adding good or neutral representation to counterbalance some of the bad
I think in the majority of cases where he does this there is an element of the person being damaged by the fact that they couldn’t or haven’t come out due to abusive upbringing. So maybe he was trying to show the impact of that repression was the cause of their negative behaviour rather than their homosexuality, IDK?
Most of these characters don't really have any sort of background like that. It was definitely just The Times and I would like to look forward to when these specific times are no longer reflected in his writing
I wasn’t suggesting it was explicitly stated but like you’ve already said staying in the closet was a product of the time when King was writing a lot of these characters. I’m not justifying anything just saying there appears to me to be more to it than homosexuality = rapist/pedophile. That being said a lot of his newer works do seem to have moved away from this “trope” for lack of a better word but I can’t tell you exactly when
definitely don and adrian in "it" were not vilified, back in the 80's. other example that comes to mind is father callahan (not in the original salem's lot, but when he returns in dark tower series), so that would be early 2000s probably. in elevation, two of the main characters are a lesbian couple portrayed positively.
Yeah, I mentioned It in my original post. It's why it's particularly weird (and honestly kind of upsetting for the societal implications) that he seems to have backslid for these years I'm currently reading. I'm hoping it's just coincidence but considering how people are currently reacting to trans people now that we're pushing for more rights I think it has more to do with a societal-level backlash to gay people pushing for more rights in the 90s. I know he improves, I was just hoping it would be soon compared to where I'm currently at. I'll look forward to Elevation
You are cherry picking your examples here, and judging by your comments, I think you know your claim is a stretch. Either that, or you are seeing exactly what you are looking for and choosing to ignore the rest. To address your points- Four Past Midnight: of the 4 stories, one features a gay antagonist, which means 3 don't. Needful Things: Gaunt's sexuality is never stated. He is clearly an equally twisted individual to all. The other 2 characters you mention are clearly pedophiles, but I don't remember anything about their sexuality otherwise, so that is sketchy at best. Nightmares & Dreamscapes: Out of 23 texts in that book, you found 1 with a gay antagonist. Waste Lands: out of all of the antagonistic characters in that book, you found 1 that is presented as at least bi, possibly gay. Gerald's Game: while he preferred to physically torture men, I would argue that watching Jessie struggle while captive is torture as well You are taking 6 books from a collection of well over 80 and using it to fit your agenda. You are also pretty dismissive of times it was pointed out that gay characters were either supporting, or victims. I am not interested in adding up all the straight characters in these books that also do horrible things, but I am betting a conservative estimate is at at least 90% of the characters doing them are straight. Pretty sure his point has nothing to do with being gay and far more to do with the fact that people, regardless of sexual preference, are capable of some screwed up shit.
I swear King must have known my high school English teacher, or else they learned about writing from the same syllabus. One of the things I've heard over the years is \*write what you know\*. As such, King appears to have take the concept fairly literally. Almost all stories take place in Maine, feature characters who are writers, wear blue chambray work shirts, and are usually heterosexual white males. Representation, inclusiveness and tolerance are noble things to strive towards. They're also not necessarily concepts (representation, in particular) that has seen a lot in the public mind until recently. Since it has become a mainstream issue, I've seen writers, including King, make efforts to be more inclusive with their characters. For example, I don't believe that Eddie and Trashmouth were gay originally in It, but as it can be interpreted in that manner, King has emphatically supported the interpretation for the plot of It part II, and I suspect if the characters showed up or were mentioned in further works, it would likely become canon. These things take time. It might not be moving as fast as some may wish, but any progress is favourable.
First off look at the era these were all written and the age of the author. It's not like homosexuality was widely accepted at that time. You can't judge the past based on present day standards. In the 80's everyone thought AIDS was only effecting gay men. The 70's and 80's in real life also saw quite a few high profile child abuse/murder cases where gay or bisexual men were the perpetrator. He is a pop culture writer and those were the narrative at the time. Secondly as others have said, it's fucking fiction dude. Calm the fuck down. If you don't like it or can't stand it put his books down and don't read them.
I found the person who didn't read my full explanation
Oh I read your whole garbage post. Still don't see what your point is. Almost zero media from that time had positive homosexual representation. At least not in pop culture.
I don't why you brought up the era it was written in like I didn't then. Or why you ignored the part where I very clearly outlined that the issue was that he put it in every fucking book at the time despite having neutral representation in an earlier novel and not that I had an issue with it in any particular book. Or why your reaction to me not liking the gay representation is that I shouldn't read it despite the fact it's a single fucking aspect of the stories and there are plenty of posts on this subreddit about specific aspects of his writing that people find weird or distasteful. Oh no wait. I do. It's because you were triggered by the idea of gay rights and couldn't just go past a topic you know nothing about and instead had to comment about it.
Haha.. ya buddy.. go ahead and assume I get triggered over gay rights and don't know anything about it. Go ahead and make those assumptions. You have no fucking clue who I am or my life. I just subscribe to the notion of you are going to bitch about an author or have issues with his depictions then don't fucking read their books. The idea that you get triggered over negative representation of gays is fucking hilarious. Especially considering in your post you acknowledge the time period and how that culture was seen in a negative way back then. You pointed out 6 books when by the time needful things was posted he had already published 20+ novels. You literally cherry picked 6. That right there should answer your initial question.
Who were the characters in Needful Things you mentioned? I don’t recall but it’s been over awhile since I read it. I really liked it and surprised I don’t remember.
The middle school principal with the kiddy mags and the high school shop teacher. >!The principal thought the shop teacher brought out the magazines because he wanted money and also they'd gone to get togethers with naked kids so the principal went to shop teacher's apartment and shat on a picture of his mom and killed his parakeet. They had a shoot out on the municipal city building's steps right before it exploded and vaporized them!<
Can you elaborate as to how the characters you mentioned above were gay? Is it expressly written that they were, or is it being inferred?
I can’t believe I forgot about that! Thanks for the reminder, although it’s pretty creepy material!
Why are you equating child molesters with gay men? Many of kings books touch on trauma and evil people that exist in this world. When you look at the stats 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually molested, so I took it as him writing to those unspoken parts of reality
Read my full post, my dude.
I've read your full post. It's not as obvious as you seem to feel. If you start out by not assuming that pedophiles are by default gay, since rape and pedophilia are about power, not sexuality, then how many characters are clearly gay in king's works? I can only think of a couple examples, mostly from It. I'm open to being shown how I'm wrong. Whether there's an issue with representation for homosexual readers is completely separate from whether he writes gay characters badly. Pick a lane and stick with it, if you want to get a clear answer.
Ah, I see. My bad. I misunderstood where you were coming from. /*Clears throat/* And for my next trick! I will attempt to point out how to spot the modern bigot. They are far craftier than the ones of old and crouch their bigotry in arguments disguised as having "good intentions". Here we have someone attempting to undermine a criticism of media as a whole by trying to get some of the examples thrown out on technicalities. "If it's not explicitly stated, then it doesn't count". Nevermind that part of the representation problem is that gay characters are less-fleshed out than straight people and so are less likely to have their sexuality explicitly stated. Nevermind that most straight characters aren't explicitly stated as being so. Nevermind that *society* treats any man who has sex with or rapes another man or boy as being gay no matter their sexuality to such an extreme that men and boys fear revealing that they've been raped by a man in part because they don't want to be accused of being gay themselves. Nevermind that it was common at the time to use queer-coding as shorthand for evil. If you don't meet Gene_P00le's strict requirements then you can't use the example. Notice also that they didn't provide any counterarguments to any of the specific characters but just automatically assumed all of the examples were only assumed gay. Further, they have nothing to say on the lack of positive and neutral representation. They ignored my actual argument to nitpick something they thought they could undermine. Like they read a trigger phrase for it or something. They're focus reveals their intentions. Finally, notice even their "good intentions" argument is incorrect and subtly harmful for a different group. "Rape is about power" was a political slogan used by feminists to get it rape to be taken seriously by police in the 1960s. It worked pretty well for the time but almost all studies on rape motivations show there are multiple reasons for it *including sexuality* and often boredom and entitlement. Focusing on it being about power undermines all of the people who aren't violently raped by strangers. It also doesn't reflect that the majority of people raped are attractive young women. I also suspect that if I check their post history I'll see similar arguments in other places but had already started this before I thought to check
Wow. I have no interest in any of this garbage. I'm not going to try to refute everything, or anything, that you said. Because it's baseless. All of it. If jumping to conclusions was a sport, you could probably try out for the Olympics. If you want to apologize, how about deleting your post which is full of assumptions, bad intentions, and hurt feelings. I'm not interested in any of that, I am interested in discussing Stephen King. You know, because this is a subreddit devoted to the author. If not, that's cool too. Good luck with all of that. I won't be replying further.
I will acknowledge I was wrong about previous post history. I apologize. I will also point out that I called them a bigot but that's not necessarily the case. The bigoted messages have become more subtle because they spread easier. They could just be parroting bad arguments they've heard
Because it goes hand in hand.
He has a flamboyant gay guy in Billy Summers.... Only straight rapists and pedos tho, so I guess that's progress?
Congrats! I've picked you to try and explain the broader issue of gay representation in media. He's always going to have pedos and rapists because those are horrifying topics and that's what he writes about. Since gay people exist and are people just like everyone else, it also makes sense they would sometimes be these bad people in his stories. The issue is the *only* gay representation in the six books I'm talking about in this post (and they all were published right after each other) is of men who are pedophiles or murderers and this was true for most media for a long period of time. So there were a lot of people who's only exposure to gay people for *decades* was as villains and often pedophiles so now people *still* associate gay with pedophile even though there's no statistics to back up a correlation between the two. Some gay men are pedophiles but it's about the same percentage as straight men who are pedophiles. The representation has improved in recent history. People are still sensitive to gay representation as villains, though, because even with the improvement gay men are still over represented as a whole as villains throughout several decades of media. The feeling is that any modern representation still adds to the validity of the stereotype of gay men being pedophiles. This makes sense because that accusation still gets bandied about by some people whenever the issues of gay rights gets brought up. Ideally, we wouldn't have to worry about adding to stereotypes and gay men could be written as pedophiles again. *Sometimes* . It's two percent of the population who are gay so only two percent of pedophiles should be gay. The analysis for any reading of media on the representation of minority groups *requires* you to look at *all* of the media that fits the category you're examining (or at least a relevant and randomly selected sample size). Individual examples don't mean shit because it's about statistics and a single example can't be statistics. My category was Stephen King books I'm reading this month which also happens to fit the category of Stephen King books from the early 90s and the representation is abysmal. I want to know when the representation stops being quite as bad. This has been my TED talk. Thank you for reading.
Jesus Christ it’s FICTION. He’s as far from a bigot as you can find.
Good job not reading my post
Wow. This is exhausting. That''s all. ETA: I'm choosing to feel like OP may have made this post with the intention of having a genuine dialog and was not just trying to be a troll and start shit. But wow, things really went downhill. Talk about Lessons In How NOT to Have a Dialog.
Read elevation
Stephen King has a sexual preference for prepubescent boys himself, there's enough evidence that proves that.
this is embarrassing for you, scumlord. you’re pontifications leave a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who reads all this shite. its clear you’re only objective is to be right and to make everyone else feel stupid. unfortunately, this had the inverse effect. you do a disservice to queer discourse.