#it thoughts

but not always maliciously.

the Losers often observe during make-believe games down in the Barrens that what is supposed to be pretend becomes real at the very height of the game.

Think of it like this: Seven unusually powerful children spend hours every day focusing their psychic energy into fantasy adventures across 'the Amazon'. IT is a critter that feasts on those powerful bands of energy and also amplifies them.

There are moments when the kids think that there may really be piranhas, waiting in the river to eat them alive, but they allow that fear to exist in the periphery of the game.

They essentially allow IT access to supplemental feedings - perhaps, if the data existed, you might even see correspondingly lower death rates depending on the psychic potency of the Losers per cycle.

The moments when piranhas seem possible, or they spot a tiger passing through the shadows, are moments when It crosses paths with them, but isn't paying them much mind or, at least, is not aggressively seeking food.

Theoretically, it could be comparable to a fat, content housecat playing gently with a misplaced shrew.

Now, the Barrens are obviously a hotspot for It anyway due to the abundance of sewers that empty into the marshland.

But, dear friends and neighbors, there's another thing at play.

IT (AKA Pennywise the Dancing Clown) is canonically described as "required to obey the laws of Its chosen form."

This is how the Losers (the Final 7, let's say, with respect to prior cycles' Losers) pushed It into a terminal checkmate.

This is also why It fucking shreds through adults when It has to deal with them. Your average human adult loses 95% of the psychic potential they held at the age of 10. Adults don't mean anything to It.

Do you know all the different brands of your least favorite soup flavour? Hell no. Why would you even remember that?

Anyway, this rule is why the kids actually do some massive damage to It early on - even coming very close to killing It in Neibolt Street when they got It to assume the werewolf form again and shot the fucker with silver slugs.

The kids are their own worst enemy against It, because it's only through their fear that It manages to piece together a form. It doesn't give a single righteous fuck about humanity - to the point that It can't even pull off a shape without a specific thought to anchor to.

Patrick Hockstetter was a sociopathic boy with the psychological inability to register other people as 'real'. When It attacked Patrick, he couldn't make out a face or any features when he looked at It. It had nothing to pull from his mind that was even remotely human so It didn't even bother trying to cobble together a people face.

Because It is a dumb clown who literally cannot remember anything that It isn't directly staring at in a human brain. Besides that one clown he saw that one time 80 years back.

So when the kids are playing in the Barrens, they're indirectly hampering It's lethality in their surety that they won't fall into the river and get eaten by piranhas, or that the tiger doesn't see them and therefore isn't going to harm them.

Kids control their play absolutely, to the point that even the fucking Murder Clown is obligated to play It's fucking role and not argue.

I never thought I would watch It, because over the last 10 years haven’t been able to watch anything scarier than M. Night Shyamalan, but over the course of three days, with the lights on, a sibling next to me, and a rule that we couldn’t watch it just before sleep, I accomplished the unbelievable. Frankly, even the edited version of It was still terrifying! But what I was NOT expecting were the layers of depth and encouraging message It illustrated!

Prior to this, I knew nothing about the story, except that it had a creepy clown. So for those not in the know, basically “It” is a mix between a boggart and a dementor, and the story follows a bunch of muggle middle-schoolers having to confront it. “It” turns into people’s fears, because it feeds off fear.

But the story is about SO much more than that. The creature is called “It” by the characters, because they don’t know what “It” is. However, the characters and the whole town feel the effects of “It.” “It” is basically the embodiment of fear. When we don’t know what It (our fear/trauma) is, we can’t actually confront and overcome it. We can sweep it under the rug cause we don’t want to deal with it, we can turn a blind eye to it (or be literally blind to it), we can be deaf to evidence, and we can mislabel it, but we still feel the effects of our unnamed (subconscious?) fears. This pretty much embodies the town. Kids keep going missing, but people don’t actually want to look at, acknowledge, or confront It. Yes, they still feel the effects, but no one actually wants to face It (fear) head-on and get to the root of the problem. I mean, it’s hard and terrifying.

And as human beings, we do this sort of thing all the time, not wanting to address what is causing us terrible pain, even though we deal with its consequences repeatedly. Sure, if we ignore it, It might go away for a season, but It’ll come back.

But when we choose to have love within our hearts, and have the support of loved ones, we are able to confront our fears and are empowered to defeat them. Because when love and support exists, fear loses its hold. It’s much harder to do on your own—to the point it’s overwhelming. But when we bind together, we’re stronger. Whether that means confronting the clown of your worst nightmares or standing up to your abusive parent.

It’s funny, some people think if something has dark content, it must be bad, but really, you can have something as terrifying and dark as It, that ultimately teaches something uplifting, while you can have something as light as Rainbow Fish, that actually has questionable teachings. (That’s not to say, though, you need to consume content you can’t handle to have good teachings in your life, of course.)