So...got to the sex scene in "IT" WTF, King?

That's your WTF moment? Not when he kills countless kids?

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but the scene was so stupid and out of place,

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I agree. You know the book is fricked up, but this version of fricked up just doesn't fit with the rest of the book.

For me it wasn't so much the act itself, but the fact that King had the girl going into great detail describing each boy, their penis size, how they smelled, etc. Just way past the point of "this is a sex scene" and firmly into "for an adult to be writing this is not OK."

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So...got to the sex scene in "IT"

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Literally read that scene this morning before going to see the movie this afternoon.

I had not heard of it before reading the book either...though someone had mistakenly said, "There's a gang rape scene in the book," so anytime Bev or Audra or any woman got into some situation I kept waiting for them to be raped...

Now...I figured it was coming at some point, because she DOES tell us after sleeping with Bill as adults that she was with all of them. Didn't imagine how it happened though.

I mean...I get what he was going for. At that point in the book they were utterly lost, and their memories and closeness were already slipping. Being kids and not knowing much, she reached for the thing that she thought were bring them closer again. That's obviously a pretty big fricking leap from the puppy love they gave us all book long, but I get it. Parts of even that were ok...the nervousness of the boys, etc. But yeah...we could have done without the excruciating detail. But then, without excruciating detail, the book would have only been 800 pages long instead of 1150 or whatever it ended up bring!

As for the movie...they did hint at it, right? When they added that nonsense of Bev having been taken and floating, what brought her back...what got them focused again was Ben kissing her. I mean...obviously not what King did, but that was the scene.

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That being said, the part that really got to me was the final forgetting at the end. They had rebuilt this friendship and reconnected, but they knew they would forget each other again. Richie's final "I love you man" and Mike's "I loved all of you so much" have stuck with me since I got to that. Not the kind of things you expect to take away from a horror book.

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Damn...I had the same feeling walking away from the book!

For me, the book was much more of a coming of age story like Stand By Me than a horror novel. I loved all that stuff, but what really got me hooked into the story was their friendship as kids, that summer as they fought Henry AND dealt with Pennywise and yet still played like regular kids, etc. To then have all those memories come back, deal with their fears and defeat them and then lose that togetherness they had gotten lucky enough to have a second time was heartbreaking. Made me start thinking about my friends at that age...if I still talk to them, have I forgotten them and our adventures, etc.

The characters in real life at the time of the filming of the movie were all 14'ish. How old were they in the book?

I just finished the scene on the audiobook. I knew it came after they defeated IT in the sewers, so I was expecting it. Like others said, it was certainly more graphic than I anticipated. I get what he was going for, but there maybe could have been another unifying act of love/devotion/sacrifice aside from Bev fricking all the boys. Yeesh.

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all the Losers were 11 and in the summer after the 5th grade year. Stan was the same age but had been held back so he had just finished 4th. Bowers was a year or so older...think he'd been held back twice already, but he was also in 5th grade.

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It is this age that makes me wonder. I mean, maybe I am out of touch a lot - but while I think 11 year olds are starting to be aware of things like sex, I'm not at all certain that they are all "fully functional" or knowledgeable in what they actually can or will do. Even if an opportunity like Bev gave them is served up on a silver platter. And then I have to wonder about Bev and her true motivation for offering herself up for this - how would this unify the boys if sex might awaken desire and then division between the boys who might view each other as a rival for her affection? Or was her daddy right after all about her being a slutchild? Or was this whole thing another string being pulled in all their heads/bodies by Pennywise from the great eternal beyond?

Almost every sex scene in a King book is a little WTF. Guy has a weird perception of sex.