In the novel, the Losers don't spend every second hunting the killer clown. Part of the charm of the novel is that it explores and expands on pretty much everything but the Killer Fucking Clown in the corner - yet for most of the book it's also made very clear that It is almost always near the children.
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.
and anyway that's my thoughts for today
