#rockfight

[b-rainlet]

Henry Bowers and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Summer

[bit-club]

my notes for week six!

three great chapters this week!!! the apocalyptic rockfight, the album, and the smoke-hole are all really fun especially as they establish the dynamic of the losers as kids.

i really liked the focus on mike and bill in chapter thirteen, splitting perspectives to show bill’s struggle with leadership and mike’s history with henry bowers. bill’s side of the story follows the losers around on the fourth of july, hanging out and looking for a place to shoot of some of stan’s fireworks, having a good time despite the ominous circumstances (massive eyes watching from a ‘morlock hole,’ real piranhas in the river). even as they’re having fun, bill’s anger and guilt weigh on him:

he does not want to be a leader but has that quality that makes the others look up to him, expect him to know what to do (i like how bill is the only one of the losers with a sibling; his loss of georgie only adds to this stress over how they respect and trust him). later in the chapter he also feels guilty over dragging the others into his personal desire for revenge, even though all seven losers have felt that something like fate or destiny is the true driver of their actions at some point.

the other half of this chapter is about mike and henry, and how henry and his gang ended up chasing mike down to the same place the losers ended up that day. i really liked mike and his dad’s conversation about the bowers in this chapter, which includes this bit:

like i genuinely love will hanlon, he’s not a huge part of the book but moments like this are important for mike! this is also the ‘know when to take a stand’ conversation, which of course had an impact on mike fighting back with the losers at the end of the chapter. there’s also this much deserved great moment:

the two perspectives collide at the rockfight scene as bill and the losers decide to help mike fight back against henry; their resulting win is huge for them, and it seems like a good sign, a good indication of their strengths as a group. i also liked this bit towards the end:

to be fair this next chapter is not one of my favorites, mostly because i’m not a fan of the repeat on the photo album scare that was used so effectively earlier, but nonetheless there’s a lot to enjoy here, again mostly in regards to mike and his dad. i like that will hanlon is so interested in derry, and that mike’s reasoning is both because will wasn’t originally from derry, and because derry naturally has a lot of interesting history (in part due to pennywise). i liked this part, as the kids are looking through the photo album, especially since this scene happens almost right after that apocalyptic rockfight and seems to imply the worst is yet to come:

the smoke-hole chapter is my favorite of the three though! like many instances thus far we get another question as to how much of the losers actions are theirs vs this higher power they all feel, though at this point we’re unaware of what this higher power might be. i also like the comparison of it to an adult, an unwelcome one at that, it emphasizes the importance of the fact that the losers are kids with no real power outside of themselves and their friendship.

this part was also really nice, i really love richie’s inner monologue since his appreciation for his friends always shines through, and i like how counted in is what matters to him, how being a part of something is so important to him.

but my absolute favorite part of this chapter has gotta be the smokehole scene— the pennywise lore is CRAZYYY and i’m obsessed with it. this brief glimpse we get into it’s origins is so interesting, and i really like the comparison to the ark of the covenant (this scene actually reminds me of the one where the aliens arrive in dreamcatcher, although i prefer this one by far).

i think the whole scene is so interesting, and i love that this happens outside of pennywise’s influence, as opposed to almost everything else strange and hallucinatory the losers have encountered. did they have an honest to god vision, or was there some sort of divine intervention— mike and richie physically left the clubhouse during this scene, so i’m more on the side of divine intervention. still! i love the lore, and i love how much this idea of otherworldliness seems to raise the stakes even higher for the losers.

[brain-empty]

*throws rocks at you too*

forget artfight, this is rockfight >:3

[chapter-title-tournament]

Round 2, Match 26

Strange Sounds on a Strange Night (Inkspell, Cornelia Funke)

The Apocalyptic Rockfight (IT, Stephen King)

[usagirln12003]

Michael "Mike" Hanlon: Hogwarts AU

Michael "Mike" Hanlon is a Half-Blood wizard that was born on the 3rd of July 1976 and started attending Hogwarts on the 1st of September 1987, being sorted into Hufflepuff House.

He has a Chestnut wand with a Unicorn Hair core.

His Patronus is Non-Corporeal.

His favorite subject is Herbology and his least favorite subject is Defense Against the Dark Arts.

He is one of the Hufflepuff Prefects of his year.

Mike is hated by the Slytherin Henry Bowers, solely on account of his skin color and blood-status. Henry went beyond picking on Mike every chance he gets. Henry's hatred for Mike was so great that he poisoned Mr. Chips, a dog owned by Mike. Most of Henry's racism comes from his father, Butch Bowers, who psychotically resents Mike's father, who owns a successful tree farm down the road from the Bowers' farm. Butch, a traumatized Third Wizarding War veteran, blames all his troubles on the Hanlons.

Mike encounters a Boggart resembling a giant, prehistoric-like bird when exploring Honeydukes. He hides in a smokestack until the bird goes away. Pennywise reveals that Mike is afraid of this form from a very early memory of a crow pecking him when he was only 6 months old.

Mike went to Church (on account of his mother being a devout Baptist). Mike is the last to join the Losers Club, bringing them to lucky number 7. While Henry and his friends are chasing Mike through Hogsmead Henry throws a firework at him. The firework explodes right next to Mike but he is miraculously uninjured. The Losers Club comes to his rescue in what comes to be known as The Apocalyptic Rockfight. The Losers beat Henry's gang, and Mike becomes a member of their group.

Mike brings old newspaper clippings to the Library and shows the others that a clown like vampire has been stalking Hogwarts for years.

When The Losers use the Room of Requirements to try out Divination to get a vision Mike and Richie see Pennywise getting bit and turned a long time ago.

[gaylittlerichie]

coming out as a 2017 movie rockfight hater. Not apocalyptic enough

[spirit-of-the-hollow]

Nah im getting revenge this is gonna turn into an affectionate rockfight

Reblog to affectionately throw a rock at your moots

[pandasaurio-espacial]

Ben: All women are queens!

Henry: If she breathes, she's a THOT!

Ben: *charges*

[empirically-possible]

Reasons to love the 90s Miniseries

- included more scenes from the book- the dam in the barrens, georgie’s photo album, stan birdwatching in bassey park before he sees it for the first time etc.

- stozier’s friendship, like their intro in the barrens is just the best

- the scene where the losers are watching a horror movie: especially when richie ends up pouring soda over the bowers gang to distract them from eddie 

- “we.  what if we do it” 

- the aftermath of the rockfight and the fact that Mike kept the photo they took 

- bill refusing to move more than a metre away from the hospital door and being the one they send in to see mike (and their whole conversation) 

- bill and mike and silver (young and old were both some of the best parts of the miniseries) 

- all the reddie content

- everyone’s reactions at the reunion 

- richie collapsing onto the sofa and throwing his arm over his face 

- beverly marsh

- the losers sitting around the townhouse and filling each other in on their lives 

- bev, richie and eddie sitting under a blanket on the couch

- reddie lying in front of the fire

- eddie kaspbrak’s various outfits

- richie drunk in the library 

- every single casual shoulder touch, hug or hair ruffle between any of the losers 

- mike’s little summary at the end explaining what became of the losers now they’re forgetting again because he can finally get out of derry

[myownprivatcidaho]

#the significance of houses as a fearful smothering place for eddie#contrasted with that quote:# ‘no good friends no bad friends; only people you want need to be with. people who build their houses in your heart’#because the losers are a home existing inside himself rather than somewhere IT and his mother are dragging him into - @troxk

It (2017) & Transitions: Eddie being carried out and away from the house on Neibolt street by the losers cuts to Eddie being pulled away from the losers towards his own house next to his mother. 

[theempirewrites]

THE PICTURE PAINT

The metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterflyThe survival of a caterpillar in hot red pepperAnd deriving it’s foodThe thole and humility of the donkeyPaints a picture of hope for tomorrow From dawn to duskBreaking boulderCracking rockFighting lockDigging groundRacking brainPraying for rainStriving to have the lock Propitious seasonSodden seasonBreaking boulderCracking rockFighting…

[bit-club]

another great week of it! obsessed to say the least with the rockfight and the pennywise lore in these chapters! but where would we be without losers club adventure safari 🙏

pick a loser to follow thru the wilderness

check out my notes here!

[chapter-title-tournament]

Round 1, Match 52

Six Phone Calls (IT, Stephen King)

The Apocalyptic Rockfight (IT, Stephen King)

[benverlyharsh]

I always feel so salty about how late Mike joins the losers, but they waited for him.

There are so many times in the book when they think back to their summer and feel a hole where Mike is meant to be.

He was just as destined for the group, but they felt his absence so much until the rockfight.

I love you, Mike Hanlon 😭😭😭😭

[frischkasekuchen]

How does the loser club meet each other?

Seborga is Ben Hanscom, he would have ran into them escaping Henry Bowers.

Ladonia(Bill Denbrough), Hutt River(Stan Uris), Molossia(Richie Toizer) and Kugelmugel(Eddie Kaspbrak) would have already been on friendly terms.

Wy(Beverly Marsh) would have formally joined the Losers after getting attacked at the Aladdin Theater, with Seborga and Molossia, by Henry.

Vanya and Mikhail(Mike Hanlon) would have been chased through the Junkyard, to the Barrens and meet the Losers. Then there's the rockfight.

[prdzx]

I'm thinking now about the rockfight one summer's afternoon long long ago when I was staying with my Aunt Caroline up near Hell Gate. My Cousin Gene and I had been corralled by a gang of boys while we were playing in the park. We didn't know which side we were fighting for but we were fighting in dead earnest amidst the rock pile by the river bank. We had to show even more courage than the other boys because we were suspected of being sissies. That's how it happened that we killed one of the rival gang. Just as they were charging us, my cousin Gene let go at the ringleader and caught him in the guts with a handsome-sized rock. I let go almost at the same instant and my rock caught him in the temple and when he went down he lay there for good and not a peep out of him. A few minutes later the cops came and the boy was found dead. He was eight or nine years old, about the same age as us. What they would have done to us if they caught us I don't know. Anyway, so as not to arouse any suspicion we hurried home: we had cleaned up a bit on the way and had combed our hair. We walked in looking almost as immaculate as when we had left the house. Aunt Caroline gave us our usual two big slices of sour rye with fresh butter and a little sugar over it and we sat there at the kitchen table listening to her with an angelic smile. It was an extremely hot day and she thought we had better stay in the house, in the big front room where the blinds had been pulled down, and play marbles with our little friend Joey Resselbaum. Joey had the reputation of being a little backward and ordinarily we would have trimmed him, but that afternoon, by a sort of mute understanding Gene and I allowed him to win everything we had. Joey was so happy that he took us down to his cellar later and made his sister pull up her dresses and show us what was underneath. Weesie, they called her, and I remember that she was stuck on me instantly. I came from another part of the city, so far away it seemed to them that it was almost like coming from another country. They even seemed to think that I talked differently from them. Where as the other urchins used to pay to make Weesie lift her dress up, for us it was done with love. After a while we persuaded her not to do it anymore for the other boys - we were in love with her and we wanted her to go straight. When I left my cousin at the end of the summer I didn't see him again for twenty years or more. When we did meet what deeply impressed me was the look of innocence he wore - the same expression as the day of the rock fight. When I spoke to him about the fight I was still more amazed to discover that he had forgotten that it was we who had lolled the boy: he remembered the boy's death but he spoke of it as though neither he nor I had had any part in it. When I mentioned Weesie's name he had difficulty in placing her. Don't you remember the cellar next door ...Joey Kesselbaum? At this a faint smile passed over his face. He thought it extraordinary that I should remember such things. He was already married, a father, and working in a factory making fancy pipecases. He considered it extraordinary to remember events that had happened so far back in the past. On leaving him that evening I felt terribly despondent. It was as though he had attempted to eradicate a precious part of my life, and himself with it. He seemed more attached to the tropical fish which he was collecting than to the wonderful past. As for me I recollect everything, everything that happened that summer, and particularly the day of the rock fight. There are times, in fact, when the taste of that big slice of sour rye which his mother handed me that afternoon is stronger in my mouth than the food I am actually tasting. And the sight of Weesie's little bud almost stronger than the actual feel of what is in my hand. The way the boy lay there, after we downed him, far far more impressive than the history of the World War. The whole long summer, in fact, seems like an idyll out of the Arthurian legends. I often wonder what it was about this particular summer which makes it so vivid in my memory. I have only to close my eyes a moment in order to relive each day. The death of the boy certainly caused me no anguish - it was forgotten before a week had elapsed. The sight of Weesie standing in the gloom of the cellar with her dress lifted up, that too passed easily away. Strangely enough, the thick slice of rye bread which his mother handed me each day seems to possess more potency than any other image of that period. I wonder about it ...wonder deeply. Perhaps it is that whenever she handed me the slice of bread it was with a tenderness and a sympathy that I had never known before. She was a very homely woman, my Aunt Caroline. Her face was marked by the pox, but it was a kind, winsome face which no disfigurement could mar. She was enormously stout and she had a very soft, a very caressing voice. When she addressed me she seemed to give me even more attention, more consideration, than her own son. I would like to have stayed with her always; I would have chosen her for my own mother had I been permitted. I remember distinctly how when my mother arrived on a visit she seemed peeved that I was so contented with my new life. She even remarked that I was ungrateful, a remark I never forgot, because then I realized for the first time that to be ungrateful was perhaps necessary and good for one. If I close my eyes now and I think about it, about the slice of bread, I think almost at once that in this house I never knew what it was to be scolded. I think if I had told my Aunt Caroline that I had killed a boy in the lot, told her just how it happened, she would have put her arm around me and forgiven me - instantly. That's why perhaps that summer is so precious to me. It was a summer of tacit and complete absolution. That's why I can't forget Weesie either. She was full of a natural goodness, a child who was in love with me and who made no reproaches. She was the first of the other sex to admire me for being different. After Weesie it was the other way round. I was loved, but I was hated too for being what I was. Weesie made an effort to understand. The very fact that I came from a strange country, that I spoke another language, drew her closer to me. The way her eyes shone when she presented me to her little friends is something I will never forget. Her eyes seemed to be bursting with love and admiration. Sometimes the three of us would walk to the riverside in the evening and sitting on the bank we would talk as children talk when they are out of sight of their elders. We talked then, I know it now so well, more sanely and more profoundly than our parents. To give us that thick slice of bread each day the parents had to pay a heavy penalty. The worst penalty was that they became estranged from us. For, with each slice they fed us we became not only more indifferent to them, but we became more and more superior to them. In our ungratefulness was our strength and our beauty. Not being devoted we were innocent of all crime. The boy whom I saw drop dead, who lay there motionless, without making the slightest sound or whimper, the killing of that boy seems almost like a clean, healthy performance. The struggle for food, on the other hand, seems foul and degrading and when we stood in the presence of our parents we sensed that they had come to us unclean and for that we could never forgive them. The thick slice of bread in the afternoons, precisely because it was not earned, tasted delicious to us. Never again will bread taste this way. Never again will it be given this way. The day of the murder it was even tastier than ever. It had a slight taste of terror in it which has been lacking ever since. And it was received with Aunt Caroline's tacit but complete absolution. There is something about the rye bread which I am trying to fathom - something vaguely delicious, terrifying and liberating, something associated with first discoveries. I am thinking of another slice of sour rye which was connected with a still earlier period, when my little friend Stanley and I used to rifle the icebox. That was stolen bread and consequently even more marvellous to the palate than the bread which was given with love. But it was in the act of eating the rye bread, the walking around with it and talking at the same time, that some thing in the nature of revelation occurred. It was like a state of grace, a state of complete ignorance, of self-abnegation. Whatever was imparted to me in these moments I seem to have retained intact and there is no fear that I shall ever lose the knowledge that was gained. It was just the fact perhaps that it was no knowledge as we ordinarily think of it. It was almost like receiving a truth, though truth is almost too precise a word for it. The important thing about the sour rye discussions is that they always took place away from home, away from the eyes of our parents whom we feared but never respected. Left to ourselves there were no limits to what we might imagine. Facts had little importance for us: what we demanded of a subject was that it allow us opportunity to expand. What amazes me, when I look back on it, is how well we understood one another, how well we penetrated to the essential character of each and everyone, young or old. At seven years of age we knew with dead certainty, for example, that such a fellow would end up in prison, that another would be a drudge, and another a good for nothing, and so on. We were absolutely correct in our diagnoses, much more correct, for example, than our parents, or our teachers, more correct, indeed, than the so-called psychologists. Alfie Betcha turned out to be an absolute bum: Johnny Gerhardt went to the penitentiary: Bob Kunst became a work horse. Infallible predictions. The learning we received only tended to obscure our vision. From the day we went to school we learned nothing: on the contrary, we were made obtuse, we were wrapped in a fog of words and abstractions. With the sour rye the world was what it is essentially, a primitive world ruled by magic, a world in which fear played the most important role. The boy who could inspire the most fear was the leader and he was respected as long as he could maintain his power. There were other boys who were rebels, and they were admired, but they never became the leader. The majority were clay in the hands of the fearless ones: a few could be depended on, but the most not. The air was full of tension - nothing could be predicted for the morrow. This loose, primitive nucleus of a society created sharp appetites, sharp emotions, sharp curiosity. Nothing was taken for granted: each day demanded a new test of power, a new sense of strength or of failure. And so, up until the age of nine or ten, we had a real taste of life - we were on our own. That is, those of us who were fortunate enough not to have been spoiled by our parents, those of us who were free to roam the streets at night and to discover things with our own eyes. What I am thinking of, with a certain amount of regret and longing, is that this thoroughly restricted life of early boyhood seems like a limitless universe and the life which followed upon it, the life of the adult, a constantly diminishing realm. From the moment when one is put in school one is lost: one has the feeling of having a halter put around his neck. The taste goes out of the bread as it goes out of life. Getting the bread becomes more important than the eating of it. Everything is calculated and everything has a price upon it. My cousin Gene became an absolute nonentity: Stanley became a first-rate failure. Besides these two boys, for whom I had the greatest affection, there was another, Joey, who has since become a letter carrier. I could weep when I think of what life has made them. As boys they were perfect.