#it meta

So here me out here. You have two towns with a dark and unholy place located beneath them and intertwining this with doubly bad nightmare fuel for the children of the town, used to horrific sights and presumably both hardened and traumatized by it. The thing lurking in the sewers is an ancient cosmic horror with an axe to grind against the heroes specifically but as the villain of a setting like the one it's in is contractually obligated to lose.

On the one hand the New England monster.

On the other the 'Devil' of the Buffyverse, the First Evil, which appears as the dead and has this grand cosmic scheme to remake the world in its image but needed evil Malc-er Father Caleb to actually have much of a chance.

Of the two the monster child-eating clown is far more terrifying in reality, but the First is able to manipulate people like Pennywise does (Spike/Henry Bowers), displays illusion powers in its encounter with Dawn (but as with the multiversal factor in Amends it forgets about this because it's much worse at evil than Pennywise itself) and one of its nastier traits that also tends to be under-used (to be fair it's also a complete laughable assclown with very little terrifying about it even when supposedly the incarnation of evil, when Adam is more of an impressive villain than you, you're shit. You're a shit villain).

Okay I’ve let my thoughts marinate for a few days, so I think I can somewhat coherently express them now. I know you sent this before the final episode, anon, but I’m going to use this message to talk about the whole season. 

I’ll start with some highlights.

I wouldn’t say the show started off strong, but it wasn’t bad at first… it just got progressively more infuriating week after week. I liked that the first episode featured kids who were meant to mimic the Losers and then most of them died almost immediately, which highlighted how special the Losers actually were. Of course this message didn’t last, though, because by the end of the season the remaining kids managed to do a whole lot of special shit they should not have been able to do… but it was a fun twist while it lasted. 

I enjoyed the Hanlons overall. Will was way more in character as Will than Mike was as Mike in the movies, which was nice. I loved Charlotte! 10/10 no notes on her - she was the best character in the show, by far. And the show did a good job of portraying her as an outsider to Derry who, because she’s an outsider, has a unique perspective on how insidiously weird and hateful the town is. I accepted the aging down of Will to make room for Leroy being the military guy instead because I enjoyed the Hanlons quite a bit. That change was a nonissue. 

I was suspicious of the show’s treatment of the local Native tribe at first, based on Chapter 2, but I liked Rose and Taniel, and I was happy to find out that Kimberly Guerrero and Joshua Odjick are not only actually Native American/First Nations, but Kimberly is an activist and historian as well, so the writers consulted with her a lot for a more well-rounded depiction. Doesn’t mean I loved the entire plotline about the pillars, but… I did like those characters being central to the story instead of plot devices.

Dick Hallorann grew on me a lot. The angrier I got at the show, the more I liked him. He has such a small role in the Black Spot’s interlude, a cameo that ends up allowing the entire story to happen - he saves Will Hanlon from the fire and the rest is history. Having him be a main character in WTD, I wasn’t sure about it at first, but I ended up liking that Andy included some of the backstory from Doctor Sleep and expanded on the Shine. Chris Chalk did a good job with the character, too. An unexpected but appreciated role upgrade. 

SOME of the scares were pretty good. Some. I fucking hated that demon baby and it overstayed its welcome almost immediately, and the cemetery scene was also dumb, but I liked the body horror scene with Marge (though I do question how it makes sense that IT can become a real person’s literal eyeballs? It felt more like a bad trip than a proper IT encounter, but the visuals were cringe-inducing enough to make up for that) and the pickle jar scene wasn’t bad either. I also really enjoyed the reveal that Matty 2.0 was Pennywise - that transformation was well done. Pennywise becoming the bird (sort of??) at the very end was also cool, and I liked how theatrical Pennywise was, like having a whole set in the school auditorium for no reason other than the drama.

Lastly - THE THEME! That intro was the best part of the show every week, if I’m being honest. Loved the old-timey visuals, loved the song choice, loved the walk down memory lane through each interlude - another home run title sequence from HBO. A never-skip. Paul Bunyan, the Standpipe, Keene’s Pharmacy, the storm drain, Juniper Hill, Neibolt, the Bradley Gang shooting, the Kitchener Ironworks… I loved every second of that, every week. It never got old and it never will. 

Now… for the rest…

First of all, this entire freaking show is just exposition monologue after exposition monologue after exposition monologue. If you have to depend on exposition that much in film/television to get your point across or make sense of your plot, that is a sign of poor writing. A little here and there is necessary sometimes, but god… it was SO much in this show. Especially with the government stuff and the pillars and the history and all that. I know IT is already a hefty, convoluted story but it wasn’t necessary to add so much MORE exposition than there already had to be. Some stones are better left unturned. Have just a tiny bit of faith that your audience can piece things together from what they’re shown!! Not everything needs a long explanation.

I liked Pauly’s death scene but hated it at the same time because tell me WHY Pauly got a more heartfelt and somber death scene with Leroy than Eddie got in Chapter 2??? Like, okay Andy, so you ARE capable of being serious with a comic relief character (not that Eddie should have been that, but, y’know), you just actively chose NOT to do that when it really mattered. Thanks a lot!

As much as Dick and Leroy grew on me, and despite the fact that the military had to be a built in backdrop in order for the Black Spot to even exist, the whole “military wants to harness the power of Pennywise” plot was INSANE (derogatory). First you think that the military wants to use Pennywise to fight communism, which is stupid enough. But then it turns out that no, in fact, the military wants to use Pennywise to fight… political disagreements? By making everyone afraid and therefore peaceful somehow? Operating under the assumption that Pennywise will only eat ‘certain groups’ and not, y’know, everyone? So we’re just going to free Pennywise into the rest of the country and hope for the best? Because obviously fear and hatred have worked so well in Derry! Like, I get what Andy was trying to say. I do. The U.S. government has, historically, tried to use fear to keep people in line, and it is a decidedly stupid tactic that typically backfires, as it does in the show. But the execution of this idea was… not good. First of all, why would anyone outside of Derry know ANYTHING ABOUT DERRY or the evil that resides beneath it? I get that Dick’s powers led them there I guess (I honestly forget, too much exposition), but the whole thing was so messy that it ended up making no sense at all. I mean, I guess man’s hubris strikes again! Shaw thought, for whatever reason, that Pennywise would agree to work for the U.S. Government (lmao?) and had a true Leopards Ate My Face moment in the end. I hated every single second of the military subplot. 

Periwinkle. That whole… thing. It just felt like fanservice for a certain subset of the IT fanbase. Andy read the Mrs. Kersh part of Bev’s walking tour and RAN with it. I don’t have much to say about this other than Ingrid was a dumbass, like girl why did it take you so long to realize Pennywise wasn’t really your dad?? He’s out here eating kids for half a century without aging a single day and that’s all fine and dandy until NOW? Be serious. 

One of the more serious issues I had with the show was the handling of the Black Spot fire. The cinematography of those scenes was well done, but the lead up, the execution, and the aftermath of it was just NOT acceptable. In the novel, Will describes it as a kind of random event - a racist attack for racism’s sake. He’d been North and South and racism was everywhere, but the ‘conditions’ of Derry, the soil of Derry, caused the fire more than any one thing in particular did. He says, “I don’t know why it happened here; I can’t explain it, but at the same time I ain’t surprised by it.” And that’s just it - the original story was commentary on racial violence happening just because. Because of hatred, because of ignorance, and because people knew they could get away with it. So my first issue with the handling of the Black Spot fire is that the people responsible for it were given a “reason” to do it. They were after Hank Grogan, and Ingrid tipped them off that Hank was there so that she could see her “Papa” again. Of course the persecution of Hank was rooted in racism too, but it didn’t really sit right with me that Andy gave the attackers a seemingly "noble" motivation - wanting to smoke out a presumed child killer - rather than just letting it be what it was originally, the ‘soil’ in Derry exacerbating hatred that already existed across the country.

And then, when the fire actually happened, the focus ended up being on… Marge and Rich. Not the dozens of black people who died. The event that was supposed to be commentary on how violent racism impacted the black community of Derry (essentially wiping it out, which is why Mike feels so alone decades later) ended up being about how these two decidedly NOT black characters and their friends were affected by it. Yes, their scene was sad and very Titanic-coded, but like… really? Now’s the time for this? This horrific tragedy that traumatized Will and stayed with him until he was on his death bed (never mind the fact that in the movie-verse, Will survives this only to die in a separate fire way later), an event that was meaningful for Mike as well because his own experiences with racism, was basically just used to establish Richie’s name origin. And like, in the aftermath of it Charlotte was the ONLY character that I can recall having a real reaction to ALL those people dying in the fire. Everyone else only reacted to Rich. Literally!! Who allowed this? Who wrote this and filmed it and edited it and never once thought ‘hey maybe we should shift the focus back’? Really left a bad taste in my mouth. 

Anyway, that brings me to the finale. That whole episode was a fucking mess, and I DON’T know why it’s rated so highly on IMDb (not that those ratings can be trusted anyway). Start to finish I was baffled and annoyed. Why is this dagger acting exactly like the One Ring or that fucking locket horcrux from Harry Potter? Half expected Ronnie to pick Lilly up like “I can’t carry the dagger, but I can carry you!”. Why does everyone around seem to know exactly how IT functions and how Derry works? Why does Will inexplicably know that people forget each other when they leave Derry?!? Why is this a thing so many people are aware of at all?? Why does Pennywise know everything that’s ever going to happen? Why is the plot of this series apparently going to be ‘Pennywise travels further and further back in time to stop his own death from happening’? What is the POINT of adult Mike having to embark on a quest to painstakingly unearth all of Derry’s history and figure out how IT works and the timeline of it all if these are things that everyone in town just knows about? How is Andy going to explain why Marge presumably has no memory of these events despite living in Derry her entire life and never leaving? The town itself being evil doesn’t really hold up if everyone, including the entire government, just knows about the monster in the sewers and chooses to stay anyway?? Kids start disappearing once every 27 years and everyone in town just pretends not to know why? Like... come on. 

And FINALLY, last but certainly not least, why the FUCK did Andy take THE Eddie quote and rip it away from him to pointlessly give it to Marge, word for fucking word? It wasn’t enough that he took away half of his character arc and gave it to Richie. It wasn’t enough that he took away killing Henry Bowers and gave it to Richie. It wasn’t enough that he took away all of the emotional depth and self-acceptance of his death scene and gave it to Richie. It wasn’t enough that he straight up massacred Eddie’s character in Ch.2 and made him an angry coward. It wasn’t enough that he made Eddie’s dying words a your mom joke. He just had to reach into the depths of that novel and steal one of Eddie’s most important realizations and hand it over to a character he basically invented to repeat in a scenario that isn’t even contextually relevant to the quote. That quote is Eddie specific. It comes at a turning point in his life - a moment, after some major realizations, when he finally takes control, rejects his mother’s influence, and accepts that the only truth in his life is how he feels about his friends and how they feel about him. Andy could have done literally anything else for Rich's eulogy. Literally ANYTHING! But no. More evidence that no one hates Eddie Kaspbrak more than Andy Muschietti.

So that’s it. Full thoughts on S1 of this god forsaken show. I’ll leave y’all with the cast signing, as a palate cleanser:

Okay, so we all know that Eddie feels a ‘rot’ inside him and that’s why he relates to the leper and goes back to Neibolt to put himself in the leper’s shoes before IT shows up.

I’ve written about this a few times over the years, so I don’t need to get too deep into it, but Eddie’s fascination with Neibolt only begins after he finds out that the leper doesn’t actually have leprosy but syphilis, at least according to Richie, and that the STD can be transmitted between men, not just men and women. It’s only then that his experience with the hobo transforms from a scary encounter with sexual overtones to something he identifies with in a way that’s confusing to him. He takes the feeling of ‘badness’ he’s had his whole life (see: church/toilet anecdote and shoplifting sign anecdote) and applies it to something he can actually visualize - physical rot, like he witnessed on the leper. He subconsciously associates the sexual nature of the leper’s disease with his own feelings - the rot is tied to sexuality, which IT used to target Eddie. The reason all this is relevant to THIS post is that Eddie is never able to express his thoughts and feelings in a way that is helpful or healing for him - he spends his entire life subconsciously repressing his sexuality, and thus is never able to rid himself of that ‘rotting from the inside’ feeling.

Which brings me to the scene I want to actually write about: the scene where Bill and Richie talk about Georgie’s death.

Like Eddie, Bill is weighed down by something rotting inside him - his feeling of guilt over Georgie’s death and thinking he’s responsible because he’s the one who made the paper boat. Unlike Eddie, Bill is able to voice his feelings, and voicing them allows him to let them go. He unloads on Richie, and subsequently receives some comfort, albeit not the best comfort because Richie is not very nurturing. Specifically, Bill feels clean after that release, which I’ll come back to in a bit.

On the same page, still on the subject of Georgie, Bill expresses that maybe Georgie didn’t know that Bill never meant for him to die, to which Richie responds:

This idea that death is like a window and everything becomes clear when you die, including knowing what others think and feel, seems like a relatively unimportant line at first glance. It definitely seems like Richie is making shit up - the closest line I could find to what he’s talking about is in Corinthians I, but that verse isn’t about death, it is about love and doesn’t mention any windows, only a mirror. Richie is just talking out of his ass. To be honest, I never paid this quote any mind any other time I’ve read or listened to the book. This time it jumped out to me because —

The concept returns upon Eddie’s death! Now, obviously Eddie’s death is incredibly important and meaningful because it symbolizes self acceptance in his last moments, but I never realized before that the window imagery had come up in the text previously.

As Eddie’s dying, both the ‘clean’ feeling Bill felt and the clarity Richie described come into play. This is the first time in Eddie’s life that he feels the ‘impurities’ leaving him. His death is cleansing him of his rot, allowing him to accept himself in a way he never has before. In addition, he’s able to see through a clear window and bask in the light of it, which, if what Richie said is true, means that he now has a true understanding of what others think and feel about him. This adds another layer to Eddie’s death that I never realized before - he is suddenly aware that the other Losers love and accept him for who he is, because he has that death clarity, and not only does that allow him to let go of his own pain and confusion (the rot), it almost allows him to voice his own feelings.

Richie loves him. The other Losers do too, but Richie is the one talking to him, the one he’s looking at in this moment, the one whose face he touches before he dies. He wants to voice his own love, because now that he’s let go of his self doubt he finally CAN, but dies before he’s able to.

The full Corinthians verse Richie MAY have been referring to before is often read at weddings:

Now, Richie was obviously inventing shit when he was comforting Bill, but there is something to be said for this verse re: Eddie’s death. It was not just about self acceptance, it was about accepting love from others and giving it in return.

After the fight is over, after ‘but he knew well enough’, when the Losers are back outside, this moment occurs:

Love overcomes everything, it’s the only thing that lasts, the thing that allows for full clarity and ‘knowing’.

Today on “Infinity Train things that will eternally fuck me up”: the contrast between this interaction and the memory of it later that Simon broadcasts. Grace is nervous and trying to figure out how to protect Hazel, and even when she does smile a little it’s to reassure her. Hazel is scared.

Okay so I’m all for Eddie losing his arm in fic. Disabled representation is great and fandom absolutely deserves more of it.

But why just Eddie?

Why not also lop off Bill’s leg, or give Ben an eyepatch or something?

Why is the gay guy the only character in your story who suffers a new permanent physical disability as a consequence of the events of the film? That feels iffy to me.

Like, you wrote a fix-it fic, supposedly as a fuck-you to the homophobic filmmakers, right?

This doesn’t feel like a fuck-you to me.

This feels like you’re trying to negotiate a compromise with the homophobic filmmakers. Like you’re trying to haggle them down from killing gay characters to just maiming gay characters.

Even the playing field a little.