#'but why bother to include a scene that's mostly a retelling of (almost) canon?'
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shipaholic · 4 years ago
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Omens Universe, Chapter 6 Part 1
Phew! After a short break, we are back. I have had a successful day’s NaNo-ing, and this entire chapter is queued up and ready to go, so let’s do it.
This is largely based on the unfilmed episode 3 bookshop scene, set in 1800, that is available in the script book. A lot of the dialogue is taken from there, although there are some twists!
Also, I did some minor edits to the last two parts, because I set up a subplot and then ground to a halt trying to write it, so I’ve taken it out for now.
Warning for a couple paragraphs of homophobia via analogy.
Link to the next part at the end.
(From the beginning)
(last part)
(chrono)
---
Chapter 6
AD 1800
A.Z. Fell & Co. stood before him on the street corner like an unwrapped chocolate box.
The door handles were polished bronze. A placard in the front declared that the grand opening was the coming Friday. He already had some marvellous ideas about opening hours.
He pushed open his front doors and strolled inside his new shop.
It was perfect. Just a few little jobs here and there. He summoned a stepladder and picked up the nearest armful of books. This, he would do without miracles. His shelving system would be both gratifying to himself and utterly incomprehensible to customers.
While he worked, the shop bell dinged.
“I’m afraid the shop will not be open until Friday, good people,” he called down. “But we will be having a grand opening immediately after lunch.”
The voice of the Archangel Gabriel said:
“We aren’t here to buy books, Azir -”
He broke off.
Zadkiel froze.
The hardback in his hands almost toppled to the floor. He shoved it into place and jammed his right hand in his pocket, hiding the gem on his finger from view. Luckily, his sideburns concealed the serpent-shaped gem under his ear.
He aimed a smile at his visitors. Gabriel was not alone. He and Sandalphon blinked up at him. Gabriel was impeccable in dove grey, Sandalphon frumpy in beige.
“Gentlemen,” he trilled. “A pleasure to already receive some interest. Mr. Fell will be delighted.”
“Uh. Good.” Gabriel eyed him like he was a woodland creature that had turned up somewhere unexpected. “Who are you?”
“Ezra Crawleigh. I’m Mr. Fell’s assistant. How do you do?” Zadkiel held out his right hand without thinking. He yelped, grabbed the nearest shelf, and toppled off the stepladder, which broke his fall in the loosest possible sense.
“Are humans normally that size?” Sandalphon asked Gabriel in a carrying whisper.
Zadkiel leapt to his feet, dusting off splinters. Sandalphon gaped. It was possible he’d just forgotten to close his mouth.
Gabriel coughed. “Sir, we are here to speak with... Mr. Fell, was it? Is he about?”
“He’s in the back. Please, make yourselves at home. Not that at home,” Zadkiel said sharply as Sandalphon picked up a book and sniffed it.
Both angels stared at him.
“Sorry! Everything’s new, that’s all. It’s like Christmas morning, you know, before the kids start screaming and the wrapping gets everywhere. It’s great that you’re here.” His smile probably looked a bit nauseous at this point. “Just a moment...”
He edged towards the back.
“Oh, Mister Fell! You have esteemed guests!”
He tried to stroll to the back room. Definitely no running. Nope, none of that.
“That human’s a bit… off,” said Sandalphon.
Gabriel agreed. The man had a very strange walk. It was sort of… swingy.
Also, his angelic senses all agreed that the man didn’t really feel human. There was nothing celestial or infernal coming off him, which would normally indicate a human, or possibly an animal, Gabriel wasn’t the best at identifying those. But the lack of an unearthly aura didn’t feel exactly neutral. It wasn’t as if that quality was lacking, more like it was… canceling itself out, somehow. Like opposites laid on top of one another. But that wasn’t possible.
Gabriel put it out of his mind. Impossible things were, well, impossible, and thus not worth acknowledging. As an Archangel, he didn’t believe in unknown unknowns.
Zadkiel, meanwhile, made it to the door to the back room, fell through it and split apart while saying “Aaaagh,” as loudly as he could get away with.
Crowley stared at Aziraphale, wide-eyed. He flapped his arms and mouthed, “Get out there!”
“Where will you go?” Aziraphale mouthed back.
“I’ll hide! Keep them talking!”
“Pardon? Didn’t catch that?”
“Talking, Christ, Aziraphale - oh, blehhh -”
Aziraphale reappeared in the shop as if given a shove in the back. He waved to the men-shaped beings across the room.
“Gabriel - hello. Sandalphon - it’s certainly been a while.” He picked his way towards them. “Listen, if it’s about that business in Paris, um, it wasn’t my miracle…”
Sandalphon still looked baffled, but he usually did, so there was no reason to panic on that account. Gabriel frowned.
“I have no idea whereof you speak, oh Angel of the Eastern Gate.” The frown lifted slightly. “We are here with good news.”
“Oh! How lovely.” Aziraphale came to a halt. A tiny round table piled with books separated him from the two angels. Some good news would go down a treat after the scare he’d just had.
“We’re bringing you home.”
Aziraphale stared.
“Promoting you back upstairs,” Sandalphon added, helpfully.
Something wrenching and painful happened to Aziraphale. Hopes he had never voiced, even to himself, burst and shrivelled up like sickly pods under the glare of the sun.
“I’m opening this bookshop on Friday,” he said, small-voiced. “If Mr. Hatchard can make a go of it, then I think I can really…”
“It’s an excellent idea.” Gabriel clapped his hands together. “Whoever replaces you down here can use it as a base of operations.”
“Use my bookshop?”
Gabriel’s smile turned flinty. “You’re being promoted. You get to come home.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to spend five minutes longer in this world that they had to,” Sandalphon said.
“Aziraphale has been here for almost six thousand years. We must applaud such devotion to duty.”
There was a box in Gabriel’s hands.
“And it hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
The box opened to reveal a medal.
“I don’t want a medal,” Aziraphale said.
“That’s very noble of you.”
Aziraphale swallowed and met Gabriel’s eyes. The diamond was hard and searching and reflected nothing back at him.
Gabriel knew. He probably didn’t know what he knew, but that didn’t matter. Aziraphale had strayed, and he was being gently, lovingly forced back into the flock, where they could keep an eye on him. His lips felt numb. For some reason, they were still moving.
“But only I can properly thwart the wiles of the demon Crowley.”
Why. Why did he have to mention Crowley? Nothing he could have said would be worse.
Gabriel’s eye widened. “I do not doubt that whoever replaces you will be as good an enemy to Crowley as you are. Michael, perhaps.”
Aziraphale thought a very faint noise came from the back room. He hoped to God he had imagined it.
“Crowley’s been down here just as long as I have.”
Through flood and cave and lakes of wine. Through three thousand years of silence. Through everything.
“And he’s wily, and cunning, and brilliant, and…”
My other half.
For an instant, his heart stopped entirely.
Gabriel waited for the pause to become sufficiently uncomfortable. “It almost sounds like you like him.”
Aziraphale opened his mouth and tried to pull something up. A deflection, a lie. Nothing came. He stood sweating in the silence.
Gabriel crossed his arms. His expression was not triumphant, only terribly knowing.
“Where is your assistant?”
“Pardon?”
“The man with the walk. Is he still around?”
“Erm. He’s gone to lunch.”
“It’s eight a.m.”
Aziraphale’s mind swore loudly and then erased the memory of having done so.
“He keeps strange mealtimes. He’s a very… singular man.”
Gabriel leaned towards him. He looked oddly conspiratorial.
“Can I have a private word? In your back room, perhaps?”
This was it. Gabriel knew about Zadkiel. He knew Crowley was in the back. Maybe if he and Crowley ganged up, they could take him down… and then what, impersonate him to Sandalphon? What was wrong with him, he was an angel, angels didn’t attack their bosses, not unless they wanted to plummet into a lake of boiling sulphur at any rate -
Gabriel swept past him and headed for the back without permission. Aziraphale bobbed along behind him.
The little stockroom was empty. Aziraphale wanted to cast an eye around for Crowley, but held himself in. He stood to attention before Gabriel.
Gabriel looked down at him. He snapped his fingers. Aziraphale almost flinched. Then he realised Gabriel had performed a miracle to soundproof the room.
“Listen. Aziraphale. Can we talk?”
Aziraphale gave a squeak.
“Here’s the thing. I’m concerned for you. Six thousand years - that’s a stretch. It’s bound to have an effect on an angel. Maybe they’d start to get… overly attached? To someone on Earth that they shouldn’t?”
Aziraphale’s heart rate reached a fever pitch.
“Your assistant,” Gabriel said.
“Oh!”
He gaped at Gabriel.
“Now, obviously it’s happened before,” Gabriel went on. “The whole Nephilim thing, you remember that, you were there. Of course we made sure that no offspring would ever again be possible between our kind and humans, and not a moment too soon. Wow, was that ever disgusting! But, I suppose, if one were that way inclined, it would still be possible to develop certain feelings, a preference for one human in particular, say? And I need to make it plain that that is totally and one-hundred percent not allowed. Under any circumstances.”
Aziraphale’s mouth made a few shapes.
“Right you are?” he managed.
“Any. Circumstances.”
The diamond shone, menacingly.
Aziraphale fought down an urge to laugh hysterically.
“Yes,” he choked. “Yes. I - I see. Well. Thank goodness you arrived and - and set me straight. Not a moment too soon! Of course, I would never - but if I had - I would certainly feel my, er, preference dissipating.”
Gabriel clapped him painfully on the arm.
“Good man. So, you can just tidy up down here, and then come back to Heaven with me and Sandalphon.”
The air of giddy relief evaporated on the spot.
“We’re… going right now?”
Gabriel screwed up his face.
“Well, you know what? I might squeeze in a visit to my tailor first. Give us a couple of hours.”
Aziraphale nodded mutely. Gabriel waved.
“Catch you later.”
He swept out of the room. Soon after, the shop door slammed.
Aziraphale tiptoed to the door and checked they had both gone. He could feel no pulse of celestial energy in his shop. No angels here.
He closed the door and sagged against it.
A tiny black snake crept out from behind a shelf. It turned back into a full-sized Crowley. He dusted his coat off, frown lines deep between his hat and sunglasses.
“Well, then.”
“I could use something strong,” Aziraphale muttered.
“No time. You’re about to be press ganged back Upstairs.”
“So it appears.” Things were dire if Crowley’s first reaction to hearing bad news was to skip the drinking. “And replaced by Michael, apparently.”
Crowley shook his head vehemently. “No chance. Michael’s a wanker. Sit tight, angel. I’ve got a plan.”
Before Aziraphale could react, he snapped his fingers and vanished.
---
(link to next part)
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amberenigma · 4 years ago
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stream of consciousness thoughts on ( ovan’s ) will. and about graphics. this is your spoiler warning for volume 4: reconnection.
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i spent too long last night playing gu for a hot second and now i have some Thoughts:tm: about plots, ovan, and the notion of will. enjoy some 2015 levels of rambling about objectively minuscule details. 
anyway literal toilet thought but the archives have a very interesting way of creating meaningful iconography using particular design elements of characters ( mainly the infinity eight ) and minimizing it to something both unique and recognizable. namely, the epitaph pattern icons used for each player in the archives---they’ve always been really neat, unique, and it’s been something that the cc2 team has always used in their archives since _02.
ovan’s has changed between trilogy/original gu and volume 4, which i always thought was pretty neat, especially in terms of what’s actually presented.
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( but anyone with the book be like: okay but haseo has a different one too in volume 4!! and i say shshshshshshshh this came about purely because of unison skeith’s icon which uses haseo’s epitaph version since he’s.......you know.......skeith’s host. epitaph talk will come up later )
anyway excuse my 5 minute “slap a banner of images” but the difference here is obvious and i just have an appreciation for what it means with aida---mostly that aida was acknowledged and treated as a completely different entity, an anomaly that didn’t belong on ovan at all and depicted as such during the trilogy. but after kusabira fuses back with him as true neighbor ( which i always thought was a very interesting name to give tri-edge ), we get a spiffy new icon for big blue and wah-lah, aida is now cyan! YAAAA!!! whether or not ovan actually accepts her as part of him ( in which he at least seems reluctant in-game, not so much my main verse after 6 years of writing him lmao ) is rather up for debate, but here we can at least verify that she’s not there to be malicious per se ( but that doesn’t quite exclude her as a menace, see haseo’s “it’s kusabira, isn’t it. it’s that aida whispering in your ear.” ), and not to the extent of trying to completely fuck up his day. i found that slight change pretty interesting. this is where i get into the meat of what i wanted to talk about.
the notion of will in .hack---gu in particular.
but first i do wanna say that there’s this blaring fucking pothole when it comes to corbenik and the rebirth that i don’t know will ever be explained. like. if it’s a failsafe that was a one and done thing, then corbenik should have been......destroyed or severely damaged or something.....right...or at least that’s what kind of makes sense to me unless the product of the RA plan really makes epitaphs less prone to the crumbly wumblies like they were in imoq after being salvaged. although that doesn’t seem to be the case given unison skeith is a solid half corbenik/half skeith. it’s bothered me for years and canon doesn’t really lean one way or the other, it just is ( again, i’ve written something out for my corbi blog years ago and tl;dr ovan and azure kite go fish him out of the sea of data, put him together, but he lacks the ability to rebirth again--i need to tag that thread actually ). but maybe he’s never meant to truly disappear as his moniker implies. always coming back ( additionally fitting for ovan, but i digress ). 
will is an interesting concept in gu. and at least with ovan specifically, it’s a strangely powerful trait in him, which may be why part of why he has this sort of enigmatic sort of vibe to him to anyone---this notion of, “i don’t know what this guy wants, but whatever it is, he’ll get it one way or another.” and i think it may really be stronger than at first glance, pivotal almost. we see it twice in dire moments, even though he’s so, so tired.
the first ( and not chronologically, there’s obvious some other off-screen moments we can speculate, these are just two instances that come to mind clearly ) is with the fight with cubia in redemption, where 7 of the 8 are trying to break through ballsack cubia’s final AT field ( forgive me it looks like an AT field what can we expect from sadamoto okay ). yata says they can’t do it without “the epitaph of rebirth”, which always struck me as odd for quite awhile. what did he mean by epitaph of rebirth? didn’t haseo have all of the epitaph data in his pc? he data drained corbenik twice now, they should be okay, no?
but, yata wasn’t referring to corbenik specifically in this case. he was referring to ovan, and in that extension, corbenik as his epitaph. the remnant data skeith absorbed was essentially not enough in this case despite corbenik containing a metric fuckton of data between himself and aida. what skeith can’t devour is human will. ovan’s will.
in the archives, ovan’s specifically noted to have an extremely high mental resilience---it’s the primary trait that attracted corbenik in the first place when searching for a host. this could mean quite a few things, honestly, and taking into account what little of his past we actually know, it makes sense that his sense of direction is incredibly poignant, his will to be essentially unmatched ( although parallel to haseo’s in my opinion, just simply a different flavor ). the man’s just an absolute unit. it’s also noted that ovan didn’t really take into account the repercussions of activating the rebirth and purging the net, thus spawning our good friend cubia, so he truly was just ready to go sleep forever. paraphrasing aura here, the rest of the infinity eight’s praying for ovan to hear their collective voices ( admittedly it just boils down to ovan hearing haseo’s voice, gestures at lost files in the trilogy archives which is a hilarious conversation by the way; “leave me be, i’m tired. i just want to sleep.” ) is what gets him to muster up any remaining strength he has left to come help. 
it’s an interesting sequence of scenes with haseo’s cracked data just magically healing up once ovan enters the picture---his presence alone drives haseo. it’s his image and his voice that’s alongside haseo’s ( which is an interesting choice because it could have been all eight of them in this case ). his will is what catalyzes everything to it’s end, including himself. 
the second is the avatar fight with moralta, where haseo realizes that he can’t do it alone again---and ovan is still surprisingly able to put himself through that kind of strain despite being in the deep freeze for a year ( avatar and all! again! goddamn! ), combining into unison skeith and yeeting the shit out of giant slug baby once and for all. this particular encounter takes a different note compared to cubia considering we hear both of them synced up ( literally all of their dialogue is the same )---and beyond the fact this whole epilogue is about haseo and ovan, it really ends up being the sheer fact that it’s both of them together that overcome and stop moralta from fucking up [the world]. sheer will’s a strong motive for pretty much all of vol 4 though, so this is kinda expected. it’s haseo’s lament at the end that poses an interesting discussion---he couldn’t do it by himself again ( in this case he is referring to everyone as a whole as well before finding ovan, too ). for all of the power that he holds via skeith, kusabira, etc, he still needed ovan there to push to victory. i’ve always felt that was an interesting distinction the staff has made throughout the gu timeline ( in any retelling of it, actually ). even ovan has to let him know that it’s the fact he had a warband of support that got him that far in the first place despite the trauma ovan had pushed him through.
the series has been consistent about ovan’s ability to push things the extra mile, even for things that he may not personally want, even if there’s few people he’d undoubtedly be alongside. his involvement makes all of the difference, and that’s powerful in it’s own way ( he is the antihero after all ). we see the power ovan has by guiding the events of gu throughout all three volumes, but we really see just how strong he is when he’s actually on-screen the few times he’s there for more than 10 seconds. it’s kind of fucking insane such a laidback personality has that much influence on the outcome of incredibly dangerous/dire/important situations.
when he knows exactly what he wants, he knows exactly what makes people tick, and what makes the world around him change. ovan’s will is a terrifying weapon and it’s one of my favorite details about him. 
and last thing that just came to mind from playing around last night..
in one of the demo trailers, haseo’s monologue expresses the emotions he’s experienced throughout playing to that point---specific people embody specific emotions, and in ovan’s case, he’s associated with despair. despair drives ovan--haseo’s correct about that honestly even if the context of what he knows boils down to the fact ovan’s burdened with aida and saving his sister ( things we see in the archives explicitly point out that the indou parents are straight up dead ). this man has lost so much, is losing too much, and is on the brink of losing even more during the events of gu and it shows. despair is a powerful force, a reaction to the things one has experienced and an outlet for all of the things it can cause. a man with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous and the most powerful of them all even in silence---and somehow, somehow ovan has managed to keep his edge despite being on the brink of death himself in the real world. that’s fucking scary.
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gffa · 6 years ago
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Scattered Star Wars/etc. thoughts: - I’m still not entirely here, I’m mostly resting and binge-watching TV (I finished The Haunting of House Hill and I really enjoyed it a lot!) and sleeping a truly ridiculous amount, because the pain makes me so exhausted.  Give me a few more days to sort this out and then I’ll be in a social mood again! - Thanks to @jerioxy, they pointed me towards this thread on reddit where the erissays person definitely straight up copied parts of lot of my various meta posts word-for-word (I recognized at least three separate ones) and it’s sort of a weird feeling to have. I’m not particularly bothered (even if I think they kind of missed the point I ultimately wind my way towards: blaming the Jedi for Anakin’s inability to deal with his ~passionate feelings~ doesn’t work because Star Wars is about choice and if it’s someone else’s fault, then it’s not about the themes of choice anymore, as well as the Jedi’s teachings were therapeutic ways of dealing with those passionate feelings, this is why 99% of the Jedi we see in canon who actually apply the teachings work out just fine, even when they’re thrown into a dark-side fueled galaxy that assaults them on a psychic level they couldn’t have been prepared for, which isn’t to say that they weren’t eaten away at with fear and the dark side, but instead that their teachings were not the root of the problem, ANYWAY, MOONLIGHT HAS FEELINGS, NEWS AT ELEVEN, BUT I’M GETTING OFF TRACK)-- as I was saying, I’m not particularly bothered by this, since it wasn’t copying entire posts and passing them off as their own, as well as, hey, if someone is out there at least somewhat trying to fight the good fight about how much fanon and Imperial propaganda is out there re: the Jedi, I’m fine with using my meta to help. Generally, as long as it’s not copying entire posts or using it to be an asshole or write screaming diatribes against it or being passive aggressive and writing shitty ~vagueblogs~ about people (which I see plenty of, I’m just not going to respond to because that kind of poor behavior really isn’t ever worth it), I’m not too terribly fussed about these things.  It’s the same with my gifs and edits--as long as someone’s not taking entire posts without credit, as long as they’re not using them for asshole purposes, use your best judgement!  Credit is great, mostly because I want to talk to more fun people, but you don’t have to ask ahead of time if you feel shy (like I very often do), etc. - I started listening to The Silmarillion audiobook again and it strikes me all over again how it really is a book you almost have to read two or three times to really get everything.  It’s a very dry book, it’s a historical retelling, rather than a story with a strong character narrative, but the sheer worldbuilding of it it always draws me and the way fandom has really run with the characters and breathed even more life into them always delights me. Also, where is my 200k+ “Glorfindel joins the Dwarves’ Quest” fic based on that one post that goes around every so often?  Because JUST THE THOUGHT still delights me! - I’ve been listening to a lot of panels from SW authors and animators and it’s always really fascinating to hear the mindset of what goes into the projects, the behind the scenes stuff is interesting for itself, but also for this sense of a better understanding of how this all works.  That we, as fans, are operating with a different mindset than creators are (see: The Rule Of Cool is often times pretty much the entire motivation for including something, not because it’s meant to say something on a character/worldbuilding level, or also see: Animation budgets are SUCH A THING about why some elements of a story aren’t included) and it further reminds me of that Gillen quote about how he keeps an aura of mystery about Darth Vader, that to do otherwise would ruin the epic feeling of the character, meanwhile I’m over here like NO I’M GONNA DIG INTO EVERY TINY LITTLE MICROSCOPIC CHOICE ANAKIN FUCKED UP BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE I LIVE WITH THE CHARACTER. Which is a huge difference between how fans and creators approach something. It always strikes me when George Lucas talks about Star Wars, so much of what went into the movies for him was about the technical stuff, the pushing the boundaries of what he could show in a scene.  It’s not that he didn’t care about the characters and the story and the themes!  He very much did!  And you can find him talking about those things sometimes!  But he spends just as much time (and sometimes more) talking about camera angles and set designs and stuff. It’s the same for author creators who talk at panels, that I’m sure there’s more than they’re getting into, especially because these aren’t their characters and they have to be very aware of that.  They’re telling stories that are incredibly dear and important to them!  But always they have to understand that, when they approach a franchise like this, owned by someone else, these aren’t their stories, they have to be willing to give them over.  And that they have a ton of freedom in some ways, but listening to the technical challenges of a series like Rebels or listening to someone talk about how, yeah, they can use Ahsoka in their book, but they should run it by Dave first, just really illustrates a lot of fascinating stuff about a multi-creator franchise and how you can catch glimpses of how it works. (I don’t pretend that I know everything, because I very much do not!  Just that a LOT of what I’ve tried to include in my understanding of Star Wars is the acknowledgement of those elements’ inclusion, while ALSO balancing it with my own desires as a Star Wars fan and a desire to understand the bigger narrative Points.)
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rose-tylers · 7 years ago
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So, I saw IT today. Ramblings behind a read more, including spoilers and book-to-movie things. Probably don’t read if you haven’t read the book, or just really loved the movie (I didn’t hate it, but a lot of the changes bugged me, most of which I talk about here.)
If you don’t already know, IT is probably my all-time favorite book. I love the story, I usually read it at least once a year (in fact, I’m strongly considering another reread now), I used to be obsessed with the miniseries until I read the book (I still enjoy the miniseries, but it definitely doesn’t hold up as well after reading the book, though it holds up a bit better than the movie...).
I’ve been waiting for what feels like forever for them to make a proper movie version of IT, and while I know any movie version could never fully convey the depth and epicness of the book, I looked forward to at least the spirit.
The movie version of IT takes a lot of liberties with the story (most notably changing the time period from the 1958 to 1989 for the bulk of the kids’ part of the story, while the second half with the adults will take place in the present day, as opposed to 1985), but the spirit is mostly still there. Pennywise/It was also fucking TERRIFYING, much more so than It seemed in the book, and was in the miniseries (though Tim Curry definitely made a very scary Pennywise); with the magic of modern film and special effects, we get to see Pennywise take on all sorts of frightening physical changes, and become literally larger-than-life in some scenes.
On its own, the movie was great, and solid, but as a lover of the book, I can’t help feeling a bit of a disconnect, and wishing some things hadn’t been changed.
My biggest problem was Mike Hanlon’s character. In the book, he’s the only black kid in Derry, and he and his parents live on a farm outside of town, so he goes to a different school than the other kids, and doesn’t see them very much until the fateful rock fight. His parents are both devoted and loving, and want nothing more than to give Mike a good life. Mike is also the “keeper” of Derry’s history, through stories and clippings saved and given to him by his father, and he’s the one who fills in the rest of the Losers on the town’s history; this is his role in the group, as their historian. In this movie, his parents are dead (unnecessarily, in my opinion), killed in a house fire when Mike was a little boy, and he’s now being raised by his grandfather, who is not a very kind or patient man (in the beginning of the movie, Mike is hesitant to kill a sheep with a gun, though we see later, after the group’s encounter in the house on Neibolt Street, that he has been able to overcome this hesitation to do what his grandfather asks of him). Most notably, the role of the group’s “historian” is given to Ben, for reasons I can’t quite understand, and it makes Mike superfluous. He doesn’t really get to do much of anything. In the second encounter with It in the house on Neibolt Street, he brings the gun he uses to kill the sheep, but wastes one bullet during his fight with Henry Bowers, and loses the rest of the ammo down the well after loading the gun with one more bullet, and then Bill takes the gun and ultimately uses it to harm IT.
There are small references to the book throughout the movie (Richie wears a t-shirt that says “Freese’s department store,” which is a nod to his encounter with Henry Bowers and his gang in the book, we see the giant statue of Paul Bunyon, which is Richie’s first encounter with It, there’s a brief shot of the Neibolt Street church and we hear singing coming from inside, Georgie has a Lego turtle on his bedside table, which is presumably a nod to the cosmic turtle in the book), but I feel like there’s a lot lost in translation.
For one, no mention is ever made of the power that holds the group together. There’s a glimmer of it in the first encounter in the house on Neibolt Street, when the kids are able to send Pennywise away through their combined effort as a group, but in the book, there’s a constant feeling of fate and destiny, that these kids are meant to be together, and there’s no mention of it here.
For two, in the book, each kid in the group has a clear, well-defined role. Bill is the leader; Eddie is the navigator; Bev is the sharpshooter; Ben is the architect; Mike is the historian; Stan is the reason; and Richie is the comic relief. In the movie, we see almost none of this, except for Bill’s leadership, and Richie’s jokes, and I feel like this takes away from what makes this group so special.
They also aged the kids up by about 2 years, putting them in middle/junior high school, as opposed to elementary school, which brings about a different sort of dynamic between the kids, their peers at school, and Henry Bowers.
We lose a lot of the impact of the history of Derry. It’s all mentioned; the explosion at the Ironworks, the killing of the Bradley Gang, the fire at the Black Spot, but it’s just anecdotal, and doesn’t convey the true scope of It’s power over Derry, and how long It’s actually been there.
Other changes include making Henry’s father a cop (again, another change that feels unnecessary, and also takes away a large part of why Henry hates Mike so much; in the book, Henry’s father also owns a farm, which is right next to Mike’s family farm, but the Hanlon farm is much more successful and prosperous than the Bowers farm, and the Bowers’ family failure is blamed entirely on the Hanlon family; racism is definitely a factor, but it goes much deeper than that in the book, in addition to “crazy” running in the Bowers family; Henry’s father is referred to throughout the book as “crazy Butch Bowers”), though I did appreciate that Henry kills his father in the movie the same way he does in the book.
Bev also has short hair for most of the movie, while her hair is long in the book, but this is more of an acceptable change. In the book, Bev’s father’s incestuous feelings for her are very subtle, only coming to a distinct head when It “possesses” her father near the climax of the kids’ portion of the book. In the movie, it is much clearer that he has some not-so-fatherly feelings towards his daughter, and may actually be molesting her, if not outright already raping her. Bev has long hair at the beginning of the movie, but cuts it short after an early scene with her father, where he asks, “Are you still my girl?” and touches her hair and face; Bev cutting her hair off is a clear trauma response, and a perfectly acceptable shift from the book canon. (A curious change that happened in both the miniseries and this movie is the removal of Bev’s mother as a character; she’s not as influential in Bev’s life and overall arc as her father is, but she’s still present in the book, and I hoped she would still at least exist in the movie, even just sort of in passing.)
Another thing that sort of bothered me, and that I didn’t see a purpose in doing, was having It steal Georgie’s body after ripping his arm off, causing Georgie to be another “missing” kid. In the book, It rips his arm off, and Georgie’s screams alert several neighbors, who come running, though Georgie is already dead by the time the first person reaches him. It just felt... strange to me to have him be presumed “missing,” and to have Bill think that he could still be alive, rather than just having Georgie be outright dead.
The inclusion of Patrick Hockstetter seemed pointless, given that they didn’t even reference his original arc in the book, which was honestly one of the more disturbing and creepy subplots of the book. Additionally, Henry’s friends Belch Huggins and Victor Criss were much more important figures in the book, and here they were nothing more than background characters to back up Henry’s bullying.
The epicness of the group’s trip down to the sewers, and their ultimate fight with Pennywise, also felt a bit... lacking. They basically just beat the shit out of him and sent him retreating back into the sewers, and while it was satisfying, it lacked the grandness and epicness of the fight in the book.
There were a lot of things I enjoyed, though. Ben’s love of New Kids on the Block was cute, and I liked that Bev knew about it, but didn’t tease him for it, and kept it from the others, who probably would have teased him for it. I liked the soft acknowledgment of Ben’s crush on Bev, and Bev’s crush on Bill; Bev kissing Bill at the end, while not in the book, felt true to these characters as they were presented in the movie. The scene of the kids playing in the water was also cute, and felt like one of the few “real kid” moments in the movie. I’m glad they included the house on Neibolt Street; the scenes in the house in the book are the most terrifying, and here they were as well, even if the contents of the scenes were changed entirely for the movie. We didn’t see a lot of It’s different forms that were used to scare the kids (like Richie’s werewolf, or Ben’s mummy, or Mike’s bird), but Eddie’s leper was horrifying, as was Stan’s creepy lady in the painting (even though that wasn’t It’s form for Stan in the book).
Ultimately, I know I won’t be fully satisfied with any visual retelling of the book unless it’s a many-hours long miniseries for SciFi or something, but I did enjoy the movie, so long as I keep it largely separate from the book in my mind.
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