#like idk the movies never call richie’s impressions Voices with a capital V so. you know how it is seventeen layers of autism

[chemicaljacketslut]

sorry to be a nuisance but you’re like the resident IT expert that I follow and Google is not giving me a straight answer. I gotta fucking ask, in the book did the losers just fucking bully pennywise to death like in the movie? Huge let down if so ngl

okay first of all this is NOT a nuisance to me every time someone asks me an It question i vibrate at an audible speed. thank you

the short answer is no but also yes kind of a little bit. don’t worry i WILL elucidate.

the way the Losers defeat pennywise in the book is, granted, really convoluted and difficult to adapt to screen. it’s basically an altered version of something called the ritual of chüd. in the universe of It, the ritual comes from a forgotten himalayan tradition where a holyman and their equivalent of pennywise, called the taelus, bite each other’s tongues and tell each other riddles/jokes until one of them laughs. if the taelus laughs first, it’s banished for 100 years, and if the holyman laughs, the taelus steals his soul. but all of this is like a super psychic crazy metaphysical battle, not a literal biting of tongues and joke-off. funnily enough, in the actual ritual the losers execute, the first one to laugh is the one who wins, both times.

so as kids, bill does this ritual of chüd with pennywise, but they just have this whole dramatic psychic conversation instead of telling jokes. essentially, bill calls upon the power of positive childhood belief to kill It, since negative belief and fear is what feeds It. so after some help from maturin the cosmic turtle who vomited up the universe, bill chants his tongue twister (“he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts”) and thinks this whole thing:

(Chüd, this Chüd, stand, be brave, be true, stand for your brother, your friends; believe, believe in all the things you have ever believed in […] that there is a Tooth Fairy who lives in a huge enamel castle, and Santa Claus below the North Pole, making toys with his trove of elves […] believe in yourself, believe in the heat of that desire)

He suddenly began to laugh in the darkness, not in hysteria but in utter delighted amazement.

“OH SHIT, I BELIEVE IN ALL OF THOSE THINGS!” he shouted, and it was true. […] He turned his face up, and suddenly he felt power rush through him.

and thus he psychically defeats pennywise. but it was like they’d won the battle but not the war, because as we know, It returned ~26 years later.

as adults, the Losers—minus stan (dead) and mike (hospitalized)—confront It again, and again bill begins the ritual. except when he tries to spiritually bite Its tongue, he misses. but richie comes in clutch and swoops in and bites It, and then he starts kind of joking to himself and laughing and doing his Voices (impressions) at It, which hurts It a lot. he manages to find bill in this psychic realm and he saves him. but that means It is shaking them loose. so as bill and richie are returning to reality, eddie jumps in and, while he doesn’t really engage in chüd, he does hurt It.

[Eddie] leaped at It, triggering the aspirator at the same time, and for an instant all his childhood belief in the medicine came back to him […] It was good medicine, strong medicine, and […] he triggered the aspirator into one of Its ruby eyes.

He felt-heard Its scream—no rage this time, only pain, a horrid screaming agony.

and then, well. It fatally tears his arm off. eddie’s death gives bill and richie the motivation to push through and kill It. bill has georgie to fight for, richie has eddie. actually though richie ends up having more focus/motivation, because It distracts bill with his wife, who is being held captive.

“That’s Audra!” Bill shouted desperately. “Thuh-That’s AUDRA!”

“I don’t give a shit if it’s the Pope,” Richie said grimly. “Eddie’s dead and we’re going to kill It, if It’s still alive. We’re going to finish the job this time, Big Bill. Either she’s alive or she’s not. Now come on!”

ben destroys the eggs It laid (pennywise’s truest form that humans can see is a female spider that was pregnant, it’s a whole other thing) by just. physically stomping on them. and bill and richie go up and simultaneously psychically punch it and then they just. start beating the shit out of it and tearing it apart (psychically? physically? both i think) until bill rips Its heart out and crushes it. and finally It is dead.

so like, i didn’t include the quotes here but all of the Losers who speak to It during these battles do scream some form of “fuck you” at It and richie especially bullies It a little bit, and this does definitely hurt it at some points (especially with richie’s whole battle), but that’s not really what defeats It.

tl;dr, the power of love and friendship is basically what killed pennywise in the book, which is kind of what the whole book is all about.