but he knew well enough

someone new has been reading &tfat and leaving lil comments. i am touched but also having a good time just really tearing it apart in my own head and wanted to share some of my further thoughts:

i feel like one of &tfat’s greatest strengths is also one of its greatest weaknesses. i considered &tfat to be a jumping point off of the experiment i ran in writing the foundations of a sphere, which is actually where i sat down and i wrote that first chapter where they play the same game with the same exact dialogue, in 7 different perspectives, and then chose one to be the starter. the point of it was to attempt to approach the storyline with the same weight in my head given to each and every character so that even the most minute details pack a punch. i had gotten feedback before that in academia about brevity, so i was really just experimenting with getting out a point with very few words.

&tfat was overwhelmingly more ambitious, because i attempted to do that very thing with literally everybody. like actually think of them as a person, who they are, what their day looks like, before introducing them as a character. so, of course, the kids, obviously, but also: the parents, their coworkers, etc. ange, georgie, sharon, wentworth, patty, rick, jo, EVERYBODY!

i vividly remember writing a very dramatic heart to heart with jo and bill, and then re-reading it and being like “why would jo be doing this? jo doesn’t have time for this. she is an entertainment manager for a renn faire. she would be like like shut up bill do ur job” so i scratched it and rewrote it.

fucking EXHAUSTING. in my re-read, i’m noticing i “know” way too much about certain people, katie & emily, who were literally just there for the kind of wrap-up theming we still haven’t gotten to, and like NOTHING about other characters who are actually plot-relevant.

ben’s mom is never seen or mentioned but in a phone call.

i never actually committed to mike having one or two grandparents and the mentions of them are incredibly vague.

and i’m really reading this being like “of course i never finished this. i literally had no where to go. this ends with mike, mike’s plot wrapped around his family, and we as a reader know absolutely nothing about them in reality. only from mike’s monologues. we don’t even know the reasoning they’re insisting he stays on the farm. it’s perfectly reasonable to sell a family business when children have no interest in it, like why are they like this? we don’t know who they are at all. they lost at least one of their children, that’s absolutely devastating to a parent, and i’ve treated their character with pretty much no respect other than plot filler for mike’s story.”

your comments & art are prolly the reasons there is stuff to read from me rn. u could prolly deadass be like “for me?” if u saw an update on ao3, and i would be like “yes!”

and although i was very embarrassed by it but i did not want to ret con it either, i am seriously glad i know!! like genuinely wholeheartedly.

i remember my strategy for writing the losers club was write the scene naturally, leave it alone for a day.

come back and take half of the punch lines away from richie and give them to anyone else.

He knew something in him didn’t want Eddie going into that house alone. Not that one. Not Eddie.

i hate the sequences that occur after the restaurant in the movie. i’m not even going to get into why it’s stupid. the introduction of the artefact thing is when i went from “this isn’t going to be a very faithful characterization adaptation of a character gold-mine book” to “this is going to be a bad movie.” what in the goosebumps was that. do we also need to find the map to treasure island. i don’t feel like explaining why i feel like if you get it you get it.

i am stoned as hell there is so much i wanted to tackle in this it is insane. how to hold a mirror to the first chapter, as the book does, without directly or senselessly repeating it. i find the sequel bizarre in its choices. i really do. why do we spend SO long retconning the clubhouse. what the fuck are we doing. why are we doing this. the kids are adorable, and i understand the desire to shove em back in there. but i genuinely think it lacks confidence in the adult cast. a film that doesn’t trust its ability to win the audience over with just the story they have to tell is a narrative that hasn’t been well thought through. because genuinely. the entire sequence added absolutely nothing of narrative value. also. it’s a retcon. just didn’t happen, and i guess they regretted it?

also i love my sweet little guy ben but how the FUCK did he build that.

he didn’t, he just didn’t. even “reinforcing the walls” those walls are at least 6 ft tall. there’s… there’s just no fucking way… by himself?? if we were gonna do this why not be like… plausible about it and be like “oh yeah this is what we did Together after the events for the sake of ~healing~ energy and we still had plenty of people in town that don’t like us” that would have been fine? i guess bc bill moves away at the end of the movie. maybe they did it in like the three days they had till bill moved? i don’t know. it was dumb. all around.

also.i feel characterizations are off in this entire sequence. stan and the kids with the bonnets felt like an unnecessary attempt at being wholesome. forced? maybe? i really want to stress i think the kids acting abilities shined with the material given.

the inclusion of eddie breaking the toy? weird. out of character. wonder why it was included. wonder if they were looking to recreate that improv magic that made that first movie so special.

i, obviously was absolutely taken with the storytelling of chapter 1, and i wanted to know everything. i did as much research back in the day as i could on the topic. i was fascinated by that these sent those kids to camp. i hadn’t heard of something similar in a project in a while, and i thought it was genius. (obvious nod to child actor ethics, hope they were being observed, etc etc etc) but i went to camp as a kid. camp is fucking magical for friendships. i’ve tried and failed many many times to write camp based fics because like the friendships and the feelings and experiences you have when suddenly untethered from your home base is crazyyyy. i had some of my deepest feelings of trust during my friendships at camp… like to this day. genuinely

the young cast chemistry in the first film is insane and it is what makes that movie and it is heartbreaking to accept that it was… literally never coming back. even if you mimiced the process however long later. a lot had to have happened to, around, between those kids in that time elapsed. that’s going to change whatever dynamic they had before. that’s perfectly fine, but when you literally coattailed that script on JDG and FW’s backs (i still laugh at “suck the wound!! get in there!!” in my head sometimes) and let dialogue come naturally as a result of the experience and the environment… you should accept you cannot script its continuation. love love love the kids. still think giving them the scene like that was a mistake. it was time that should have been utilized to fall in love with the adult losers before we start scaring the shit out of them.

gonna say it… not a huge fan of the scripting of richie. we’ll get into it later. the book makes it a point to say that richie as an adult is not a cruel man. the apology moment is IN the book over a joke that surprises him. being in derry brings him back to a part of himself he’s deeply uncomfortable with. having his dialogue have a bit of a mean streak with zero exploration of it bums me out.

now to the second part of this: shitting on the book, which of course i do reference several times in this now literal fucking essay as of course… ultimately it’s the holy book. it is canon, to me. IT is the book. these movies are adaptations. i’m going to be real here: i respect stephen king as an author. though my jokes may suggest otherwise. etc. it is his story and that has to be commended. these are his characters and plot and original ideas and that’s a fact.

the second act of the book is a mess. in order to kill an entity, you have to explain what it is. that’s… that’s just da rulez. you cannot end existence without at least ?? rationalizing it ?? i suppose ?? to your audience.

i think that’s why king won’t touch this book with a ten foot pole. i’ve seen him show a lot more interest in projects around some of his other books. his general regard seems to be like “go nuts don’t ask me to write a script” because he knows. i don’t want to bring drugs and shame into all of this but like let’s be real… the book doesn’t really make sense when it comes to what pennywise actually is, and it doesn’t even really seem like he tries that .. hard to make sense. yes yes shapeshifter… get it. but he also makes balloons and shit appear from thin air. fact of the matter is he bends not only his own form but the reality around it.

and yes : i get it. i understand that if you’re a fan of stephen king, and you understand his universe, it all becomes less convoluted. i genuinely understand that.

but the task at hand is to write a horror movie for mass-appeal. i’m gonna take a crack at explaining what it is, why it’s so fucking powerful, and how it can be killed.

(honestly the ending of the movie, i know i know we’ll get there, but i was literally holding a hand to my mouth trying not to laugh. remember kids, if you’re ever being bullied, get more people than your bully and bully them.) we also didn’t do any of the metaphysical stuff in the first movie… so… sending bev to the deadlights instead of bill was interesting… obviously i think the interpretation of what she saw was weak as hell idk just see where i’m going with this. i’m trying to do a lot all at one time for no reason!

mike asks them if any one of them had less than $95,000 listed on their annual tax return and none of them could say yes. (mikes annual salary as a librarian is 10k) for reference: