#though I am admittedly very biased I have a huge soft spot for kids

[curedigiqueen]

Listen, I understand why Suite isn't a popular season. Generally speaking, the best parts of it are generally done better in the two seasons that precede it. It in many ways is just a weaker frankensteining of Fresh and Heartcatch. But Fresh and Heartcatch are fantastic, so just because it's worse than those seasons, doesn't mean its bad in my opinion. And to be fair, it does deserve many of its criticisms.

But it's also one of my favorite seasons, and I think some of it's criticisms are more a matter of taste. There's just a lot I love about Suite.

Hibiki and Kanade

I also know a lot of people aren't huge fans of the whole fighting thing Hibiki and Kanade have going on. And I agree, it's not the best executed and some things don't make sense. I also understand that many people are not fond of the vitriolic best buds trope, but I don't think that makes their relationship inherently bad just not to everyone's taste. For what it's worth, we haven't had a pair of cures like them before and since and it's a tragedy to me personally because I am quite fond of vitriolic best buds, duo cures and childhood friends. We have so many cure duos and aside from these two, none are childhood friends. The CLOSEST is the fact that Saki and Mai met once, when they were 9. Several trios of childhood friends (Fresh, Doki Doki and Happiness Charge), but they're the only true childhood friend duo. I honestly want more cures like these two. They get the learning to understand each other that the new friendships have, with the wealth of intimate knowledge about each other stemming from their childhood friendship. Despite spending a year "apart", the years they spent together still mean something, and they can't seem to stay away. They're mad at each other but there is still a comfortable familiarity in the way they aren't afraid to fight with each other. They say they aren't friends but they still call each other by first name.

Their hearts naturally fall into perfect harmony. The have like the same sense of style. Kanade likes to bake. Hibiki likes to eat. Souta refers to Hibiki as "Hibiki-Nee-san", and otherwise treats her similarly to his own sister. They have a flashlight code that they use to communicate across town at night. Neither one realized that there are two entrances with Sakura trees at their middle school or tried to talk about it for a whole year. They're both so stupid.

They take after Nagisa and Honoka a lot too. Nagisa and Hibiki are both athletic redheads who are good at sports and have black as a main color in one of their outfits (Cure for Nagisa, Civ for Hibiki), and generally use pink in their outfits. Both like to eat. Both can be prone to grumpiness and disagreements with their family members. Honoka and Kanade are both white Cures with fierce tempers and a strong sense of responsibility, able to handle domestic things like cooking. Both have more academic strengths, but are relatively graceful. There are some twists of course, Kanade has the little brother who she bickers with (their little brother's even both end their name with "ta"), Hibiki is the one with a parent who is often abroad. I really like how the two called back to the original duo without at all feeling like a copy.

To be fair not communicating is the name of the game in Suite. And so, I do 100% understand not liking this plot. I really do understand it. It's more than fair. All of the plots basically revolve around miscommunication. That is like. The entirety of Suite. Miscommunications, and the breakdown and subsequent healing of relationships. A very very valid complaint. One that I can overlook, but understand if others cannot.

Siren and Hummy

So, Precure's second heel-face turn Cure (if we don't count the Kiryuu sisters). She's a shapeshifting cat who can sing. The original one.

While normally I dislike the "Brainwashed to be evil" trope. It can be very effective. Go Princess used it to great effect in which there was a level of tragedy to the years that had been stolen away from Towa, and how her motivations had been twisted. I think it has similar effect here, where we kind of get both. She was brainwashed, and I do think that does cheapen Siren's motivations and redemption a bit, but she also had genuinely negative feelings towards Hummy, that she acted on in refusing to practice with Hummy. She still has to face Hummy head on, and as much as she tries to pretend that she's hard and strong enough to live in her bitterness. Siren isn't actually mean enough to keep facing her friend and betray her over and over again.

Hummy being better at singing than her caused her to lose a piece of her identity. The most important singer in all of Majorland. The one who sings the melody of happiness. So Siren doubles down on that identity. She becomes Minorland's singer. But she also, due to her shapeshifting, spends that time adopting different identities. Testing things out, even if she doesn't realize it. Ultimately she has to completely let go of her old identity (losing access to her original form) and everything associated with it and forge a new sense of self, in order to find happiness. But she doesn't completely lose everything.

Despite not liking to be called Siren anymore, she still lets Hummy call her that. She turned her old identity of Siren into something bitter, so she had to cast it off to redefine herself. But Hummy is the only one who ever saw the real Siren through everything Siren tried to become. Hummy may have been the one who took her sense of worth, but she's also the one who always saw Siren's value as Siren. Hummy gets to use Siren because her relationship with Hummy is the only thing that survived Siren's evolution. The two have to forge a new relationship to a certain extent. But it's built on what came before.

I also just think it's fun that the bulk of this emotional arc is on Hummy. It's cat drama. Fairy drama. Usually this is the kinda of stuff that happens between the pink and the heel-face cure. But not this time. This time it's the cat fairy, and the pink is dealing with her own friendship drama. I think it also ties right back into Suites continued echo of healing relationships, actually listening to people in order to harmonize with them. Hibiki and Kanade have to resolve their bitter feelings from their estrangement. Siren has to get over her jealousy to let Hummy back into her life. And Mephisto and Aphrodite have to stop fighting a war against each other.

Major Land's Royal Family

I mean really, no one bothered to tell Hibiki and Kanade at any point that Mephisto was the brainwashed former King of Major Land and that Major Land had a princess who was in hiding? Just locked out of the loop. Both Kanon and Majorland are entirely made up of people who can't communicate.

Anyway, Ako is my all time favorite cure. I rather unpopular choice, I know. But she fits right in with many of my other favorites, characters such as Hikari Yagami, Takeru Takaishi, King Clawthorne, King Ezran, Anya Forger etc. I love kid characters. I especially love messed up traumatized kids who don't always deal with it in great ways. And kid characters with heaps of responsibility on their shoulders. Like chosen ones and royalty.

So Ako is the epitome of what I look for in my favorite characters. She's a 9 year old with high future expectations, that she can't even begin to try and live up to because she's been sent away from everything she's known and loved. Not just moving to a new town, but a new world, where the rules of what is and isn't normal are different. In addition she was forced into physically altering her appearance, wearing unfamiliar clothes, and cutting her long hair. Not only that, she now has to keep everything about her secret. Her hometown, whatever music magic she has, her real future career plans, everything that made her her, has to be suppressed and kept secret. And she was like. Six. That's tiny. And she has to construct a whole new fake identity?

No wonder she's grumpy and keeps to herself? Her alternative is just trying to keep up a bunch of lies all the time. And keeping to herself, means few friends, and trying to keep people away, because this is supposed to be temporary to some degree. She has back home eventually, she's their future queen. She really has no choice BUT to be a grumpy brat. To keep from getting found out and to keep from getting attached. Like sure she doesn't have to be a brat to Hibiki and Kanade, but she's kinda right half the time, and honestly her tempering that brattiness into being just unpleasant enough to be left alone without being so obnoxious she draws people's ire involves way more socio-emotional intelligence than should ever be expected from a nine year old. And at a certain point, after years of it, it became part of her real personality. The sweet optimistic little princess is still there. But it's under a layer of cynicism.

Ako wants her family back. So she gets the power to do that. And things still don't go her way.

I've joked to people before that Ako is one of 4 cures with divorced parents. Her parents are effectively divorced, but extra. They're not just trying to fight over a house and custody of her, but over not just an entire kingdom, but the fate of the world. And her father doesn't even know who she is anymore. Her parents are actively at war, and her mother honestly shows no qualms about letting her husband be potentially killed, not bothering to tell the people she's sent after him about their relationship and his true nature. (And then her mom asks Mephisto to kill her to protect their kingdom, Ako can't catch a break).

This ties back to a fact that is kind of brushed over in the show. Ako is the princess. In the show she's honestly just the princess because it puts her in between Mephisto and Aphrodite's drama. But we see in show that Mephisto and Aphrodite are constantly putting their kingdom's needs above their own. A- monarchs (points deducted for getting brainwashed), but like. B- parents tbh. They love Ako so, so much, but simply can't raise her themselves. In fact, Ako's parents won't look after themselves, so Ako has to look out for them instead of the other way around. We see this a lot with Mephisto.

Sometimes Ako makes absolutely stupid decisions, like releasing notes, because she doesn't want to go against her dad, even if he isn't himself right now. Because she's a child whose parents are fighting, seemingly to the death, and if she can spread out the fight, she can hopefully drag out the arrival of consequences.

Ako does eventually learn to use the power as a cure, so she can balance the needs of the many over the needs of her loved ones. So she can do both. But she has to learn to make the hard choices and be willing to stand against her loved ones.

Also Ako also gets the miscommunication based friendship breakdown with her and Suzu, and to a lesser extent her and Souta in the movie. Suite really goes hard on the whole healing relationships thing.

Ako is really a direct foil to Yuri who precedes her. Missing evil brainwashed dads. Present throughout the whole show, but only join the team in the last quarter (the latest of any Cures). Semi-awkward friendship with one of the other cure's siblings in part because their friend doesn't know about all their magical girl trauma. Already looped into the magical girl stuff before any of the other cures, so has a preexisting relationship of some sort with the grandparent mentor. Ako is pretty much just a baby Yuri, but who has just now gained the power to try and fight after years of inability to do anything, instead of having just lost her power, and having to face down her own failure and keep going. So she's an angry elementary kid rather than a depressed high schooler. How can I not love her?

[bwaldorf]

ramasha do you have any bollywood movie recs?? 🎤

omgggg em im so honored you thought of me!! 🫶🏼🩷

tbh i've sorta been on a journey of watching more bollywood (and south asian cinema in general), since there was a huge chunk of my life where i just never really kept up with releases and was sorta discouraged from watching it so my taste isn't the Most diverse (in terms of genres and years) but i'm working on it 😭 that said, here's my attempt at giving you a lot of different options, so hopefully there's something here that strikes your fancy hehe :3

lots will be under the cut bc im a huge YAPPER.... sorry. also, some of these haven't really aged that well and are sometimes more of just a nostalgic fav and/or ones i think are iconic so... take some of these recs with a grain of salt

some of my bigger personal faves:

om shanti om (2007) — it may hit more if you have a bit more exposure to bollywood cinema and its industry bc it references it a lot, but i still think it's an enjoyable movie regardless! (yes i am biased bc this is one of my fav bollywood movies ever + a huge nostalgic fav. plus SRK and deepika padukone.. can't go wrong there!)

haider (2014) — this movie is SOOOO good! i highly rec it 💞 it's an adaptation of hamlet, set within the backdrop of the 1995 kashmir conflicts. this is actually a part of trilogy of shakespeare adaptations by the director: the other two are maqbool (2003) which is macbeth and omkara (2006) which is othello

main hoon na (2004) — another SRK nostalgic fav

ghajini (2008) — it rips off christopher nolan's memento but i think it adds a lot of its own stuff too and i have a soft spot for it 😭

andhadhun (2018)

kahaani (2012)

tumbbad (2018)

amar singh chamkila (2024)

3 idiots (2009) — the most likely one that non regular bollywood watchers will know and deservedly so imo

gully boy (2019)

hum saath saath hain (1999) — okay not objectively the best movie.. but its a hugely nostalgic and comfort movie for me and i think its great if you wanna watch something that's heartfelt and doesn't have a ton of high stakes conflict

maine pyar kiya (1989) — same as above ☝🏼 i watched this one a lot as a kid

jab we met (2007)

devdas (2002) — worth it for at least the beautiful cinematography, costumes, and gorgeous talented cast

fanaa (2006) — plot is kinda messy at times but it was a real angst machine for me as a kid 😭

photograph (2019)

sir (2018)

bulbbul (2020) — tw for a rape scene though. sorry for the spoiler but it was genuinely really harrowing for me to watch so i think its important to mention

misc other movies i've seen:

qala (2022)

dil bole hadippa! (2009) — admittedly, i haven't rewatched this one in a long time so i can't totally say it holds up. it's a rip-off of she's the man, but … better….. TO ME. yes im speaking from nostalgia bc this is the one i saw first

badhaai do (2022) — this is technically a 'sequel' to the similarly titled movie badhaai ho (2018) but they're actually total standalones

gangubai kathiawadi (2022) — i have such mixed feelings about this one but it's a movie that really stuck with me ever since i watched it soooo yeah

raees (2017) — SRK looks unbelievably fine in that movie. need i say more?

koi mil gaya (2003) — it's a mix of both ET and close encounters of the third kind... but in my very biased, nostalgic opinion: better 🫣 there's also a few sequels, but i only really remember seeing krrish (2006)

josh (2000) — another entry to the SRK looks super gorgeous in this movie 😭 this is basically a desi west side story

go goa gone (2013) — not the best to me, but its a bollywood zombie movie! which was a very new concept to me in that industry so ofc i had to throw it in there

chennai express (2013)

mohabbatein (2000)

dilwale dulhania le jayenge (1995) — had to include this for SRK reasons and also bc it's a massively impactful movie in the industry so i'd be remiss not to

andaz apna apna (1994)

ek ladki ko dekha toh aisa laga (2019)

jaane tu.. ya jaane na (2008)

aaja nachle (2007)

munna bhai mbbs (2003)

gangs of wasseypur - part 1 (2012) — i've only seen the first one in this series but if you want a somewhat slower, meditative, gangster movie this one def fits the bill

what's your raashee? (2009) — can't remember how well this ages (i think it was pretty mid?) but the concept is fun! priyanka chopra plays 12 girls: each personifying a different zodiac sign as the main guy tries to find his soulmate 😭

taare zameen par (2007) — you'll also see this listed as 'like stars on earth' sometimes

amar akbar anthony (1977)

don (2006) — villainous SRK? sign me up! he actually has multiple movies where he's this sorta antihero/"antivillain" type character. and even a few where he's a straight-up villain. i've been trying to get through all of those bc i just love his range

anjaam (1993) — an example of the aforementioned thing ☝🏼 SRK plays a genuinely terrible guy here, and i love how it actually challenges a lot of the tropes that bollywood tends to use in its romances and shows how creepy and stalkerish they actually are (despite it being typically framed in the narrative otherwise)

partner (2007) — i recently found out it was basically ripping will smith's hitch 😭 i haven't seen that one so i can't say which is better, but if you enjoyed that one, you'll probably be into this one too. it's very unserious and not the Best. but i watched it a lot as a kid

aaja nachle (2007)

roadside romeo (2008) — okay this is a very unserious, low budget animated movie rec. it's soooo so silly and dumb but if you're in the market for smth like that, this is an amusing one for that

welcome (2007) — i gotta rewatch this one bc i don't remember a lot but it seems like a lot of tomfoolery and shenanigans

my name is khan (2010) — another one i gotta rewatch for its politics but i figured i'd throw it in regardless

black (2005)

kal ho naa ho (2003)

kuch kuch hota hai (1998)

sholay (1975)

hungama (2003)

some from my watchlist that i haven't seen yet:

(as if this list needed to be any longer.... but anyways! including these bc i think they seem promising/interesting and i think they introduce More variety of genres/time periods than the ones before)

ijaazat (1987)

thappad (2020)

udaan (2010)

merry christmas (2024)

chhoti si baat (1976)

hindi medium (2017)

the lunchbox (2013) — heard LOTS of good things about this one!

lipstick under my burkha (2017)

neerja (2016)

queen (2014)

rajnigandha (1974)

kaagaz ke phool (1959)

anand (1971)

paheli (2005) — it's a mainstream bollywood remake of duvidha (1973)

baadshah (1999)

monica, o my darling (2022)

madhumati (1958)

raaz (2002)

satya (1998)

highway (2014)

oh darling! yeh hai india! (1995)

pyaasa (1957)

sardar udham (2021)

awaara (1951)

shree 420 (1957)

kaminey (2009)

mahal (1949)

chandigarh kare aashiqui (2021)

bunty aur babli (2005)

talvar (2015)

duplicate (1998)

lootera (2013)

mughal-e-azam (1960)

baazigar (1993)

trapped (2017)

fire (1996) — a hugely significant movie in explicitly showing a wlw relationship in bollywood. i believe it was the first in that regard?

stree (2018)

piku (2015)

english vinglish (2012)

umrao jaan (2006) — there's also an earlier version of this movie with the same title that came out in 1981! i haven't seen either yet so i can't say which is better

jodhaa akbar (2008)

darr (1993) — big movie for villain SRK enthusiasts if that interests you too like it does me 🤭

zindagi na milegi dobara (2011)

dil dhadakne do (2015)

dear zindagi (2016)

special 26 (2013)

badla (2019)

mardaani (2014)

raman raghav 2.0 (2016)

peepli live (2010)

drishyam (2015)

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

stephen king’s ‘it’: a rant-review

Alternatively titled: an almost verbatim account of the 12-page rant I wrote in my diary after being driven to a catatonic rage by the 1100+ page monstrosity that was IT.

WARNINGS: spoilers, blood and gore, violence and general icky stuff, death, suicide, demeaning descriptions of women, both adults and underage, mentions of child pornography, my two brain cells trying to make me sense of this damn book

I fell in hate with IT the way you fall asleep; slowly, then all at once. The beginning reeled me in- it was great, that perfect first sentence all writers strive for- it’s got a compelling start, and it gradually gathers momentum onwards. The writing’s good, nice diction, nice use of words, a bit too much exposition, but what’s a few hundred more pages of ultimately worthless crap if it keeps you engaged?

And then it starts to go downhill.

The book’s too long. I got really, really bored by around page 800, because the book was dragging on for way too long and there was no sign of it ending anytime soon. There’s so much extra crap you could’ve straight up cut out from the story and it wouldn’t’ve made any difference to the final outcome.

The back-and-forth between the past (1957) and the present (1985) was pretty interesting- I much preferred the past accounts to the present ones, admittedly.

There’s a fuckload of characters the book could’ve done without. Way too many people my lizard brain couldn’t keep track of; yeah, sure, you can include the people Pennywise made a meal of by name- but you could easily lop off a few pages’ worth descriptions of characters that don’t play a bigger role than becoming clown chow in the course of the story.

The Losers are pretty much your everyday group of misfits: you’ve got the ringleader William ‘Stuttering Bill’ Denbrough, Stan Uris, Richie Tozier, Ben Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak, Beverly Marsh and Mike Hanlon- alias the self-insert, the Jew, the guy who makes offensive jokes but gets away with it because ‘that’s just the way he is!’, one of the few characters in this entire book that I don’t want to punch the living daylights out of, the hypochondriac, the tiddies and the black guy.

It’s painfully obvious that Bill’s a self-insert. Everyone and their grandma know that the moment there’s a character in a book who’s an author, they’re going to be the self-insert. Middle-aged cis het white male author? Now, whoever could that possibly be based upon, Mr. King?

And hey, despite all my mediocrity, I’m guilty of doing the same. I’ll write a story about someone who likes to write, and then suddenly the character’s a woman with dark hair and brown eyes and horrible myopia.

And yet, there’s something about Bill that makes it impossible for me to like him. I liked him well enough as a kid; he had a very Peter Pan role with the rest of the lost boys + person with boobs, and everything he did was a bit too perfect (because Big Bill- yes, they really called him that- had ALL the answers) for me, but I’m willing to let that slide.

(I’m not, I’m really not. Please give me flawed characters, not Characters with One Singular Flaw Who Do Everything Else Perfectly.)

I don’t think calling Bill a Mary Sue would be too far of a stretch. Also, he cheated on his wife with Beverly- big surprise there, I called it way before it happened- and characters who cheat will never be redeemable for me.

And then we have Stanley Uris. It’s been a couple of months since I last read IT and I’ve already forgotten what greater purpose Stan served for the story. I might be wrong- remember, lizard brain, goldfish memory- but I honest to god cannot, for the life of me, remember what Stan meant for the plot. Except, well, to die a couple pages in.

(According to my quick Google search, his suicide was sacrificial. As a wise woman once said, “Wait… what.”)

Richie’s actually not a character I hate, despite what I said about him. He’s comic relief for the most part at the beginning, and there are loads of things he says that would immediately cause #RichieTozierIsOverParty to trend on Twitter had he existed in 2020, but he’s an interesting character all the same. He’s got some amount of depth to him, more personality outside of being just another kid who encountered Pennywise.

I have a soft spot for Ben, I’ll admit. I’ve been the Designated Ugly Fat Friend of every friend group I’ve been in, so maybe I’m a bit biased, but I find him a lot more likable than a lot of the other characters I encountered in the book.

About Eddie, I’m not actually sure what there is to write. I remember more about him than I do about poor Stan, but aside from Eddie marrying a woman who’s a caricature of his overprotective mother, there’s not much that comes to mind. I’ve heard that Eddie and Richie had some #moments- my dumbass didn’t notice while reading, I’ve read IT only once and I’m awful at reading between the lines- though the boys more or less ogled Beverly all the damn time (poor girl couldn’t even wear a pair of shorts, but I’ll get to her later) so I hadn’t really considered the possibility of them being anything other than Raging Heterosexuals.

Beverly is straight out of r/menwritingwomen- if I took a shot every time her breasts were brought up, I’d have passed out midway through the book. I find it interesting (no, I don’t, I find it demeaning) how every time there’s a female lead with ‘flaming red hair’ in a group with mostly men, she’s described as this fierce, bold, brave Bad Bitch whose actual Badness doesn’t get half as much as screen time as her boobs. And I get that Beverly’s attractive, you don’t have to constantly remind us that BEVERLY MARSH IS FUCKING HOT OKAY GET THAT IN YOUR HEAD SHE’S A GODDAMN SEX SYMBOL WITH HER FIERY HAIR AND VIRIDESCENT ORBS AND GIGANTIC ASS AND BOOBS SO BIG THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE CALLED UDDERS SHE’S THE HOTTEST WOMAN YOU CAN IMAGINE ONLY LIKE A GAZILLION TIMES HOTTER DON’T YOU DARE FORGET THAT BEVERLY MARSH IS HOT (DON’T FORGET THE GIGANTIC BOOBS).

I think we got that the first time around.

And the constant sexualization isn’t just adult Beverly. As if every man in her vicinity staring at her wasn’t enough to drive the point home, we are treated to delights the likes of eleven-year-old (!) Beverly’s ‘budding breasts’; ‘milky white skin of her flat stomach’; ‘her long, coltish legs’; ‘shorts barely long enough to cover her panties’ (which were yellow, in case you were wondering about the underwear choice of a literal child); amongst other lovely descriptions of someone who literally just passed the fifth grade. She’s sexualized by her own father, and I know those things happen in the real world, but what with all the sexualization we already have of Beverly, it doesn’t sit right with me. I think it’s just creepy and unnecessary.

Also, cis woman to cis woman out here, but those ‘sweet pains of womanhood’, am I right?

Mike’s the final one in the trinity of Losers I don’t hate with burning passion/completely forgot about. The fact that he has such a big role in the story but we don’t meet him properly until we’re hundreds of pages in confused me, but he’s an okay enough guy. He didn’t seem like too much of a Token to me, but maybe I missed it. His backstory’s pretty interesting, too. I would’ve preferred him as a main character- his interludes, though unnecessary and adding more weight to an already obese book, were intriguing- and I liked him better than Bill, sue me.

And then we have the Big Bad, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, It, whatever the fuck it is. After all the terror, the Teenage Werewolf, the Crawling Eye, finding out that ‘It’ was essentially a pregnant, mutant Aragog… I can’t be the only one who went, “That’s it? That’s It?”

After Pennywise being Its most common form, it was jaunting, but in a bad way, to find out that It was just some Daddy (Mommy?) Long Legs who was Fucking Shit Up. An invertebrate, a measly invertebrate, was Its ‘Earth Form’? Was there some symbolism, some subtext there that I missed before Pennywise embodied the spirit of the Other Mother from fucking Coraline?

Apparently not, according to yet another one of my quick Google searches. I tried to see if there was any sort of hidden meaning behind the cosmic clusterfuck in IT, but came up short. Maybe I watched too much BEN 10 in my Youth for aliens to scare me.

I’m gonna get really nitpicky here, but: judging by the huge fern forests the kids saw during the arrival of It, It must have arrived at some point in the Paleozoic Era. To my understanding, It is essentially a Boggart-Dementor hybrid; It manifests into your fears and feeds on that. But humans didn’t appear until the Cenozoic Era, if my memory serves me correct. How did It survive until then? Does It have the ability to feed off of animals and their fears? So many questions, Mr. King, and so little answers.

Pennywise was sinister enough as a killer clown. Giving It a completely different ‘final form’ was unnecessary. No one cares, Mr. King, just finish the damn book. Some ideas are best left unwritten.

Henry Bowers was genuinely one of the best-written antagonists I’ve ever read about. He evoked a visceral rage within me, but I was also downright terrified whenever he popped up, because that motherfucker was unhinged. He was even better of a villain than It, because It killed to survive. Henry was insane.

Also, Mr. King, too much blood. He really dumped it in bucketloads- the first few times were scary, but afterwards, whenever ‘dripping blood’, ‘pools of blood’, etc. came up, it felt contrived and like a tacky fairground horror house.

The Losers’ final battles with It (both as children and as adults) confused me. Maybe I’m too much of a simple-minded fool because some of that cosmic galactic science-fiction bullshit went right over my head. And I don’t mean grazing the top of my hair, I mean several thousand miles above it.

I won’t go too deep into it because I’m still not sure what happened exactly, but it came off like a last-minute addition to the book, because it just doesn’t fit in with the mood of the rest of the story. At most, I expected some contrived demonic exorcist bullshit on par with The Conjuring films- instead, I got some weird outer space (?) opera. I’m confused too, dude, but let’s just roll with it.

I didn’t get the metaphorical tongue-biting; I could only imagine a repulsive French kiss. Who the fuck was the turtle? Why did it choke on its own vomit? What were the deadlights? What the fuck went on in those last few scenes? Am I just stupid- don’t answer that.

And then we have The Scene. The biggest fucking yikes I’ve ever yiked. I’ve read my fair share of fanfiction with scenes of questionable morality, but this was just… ugh.

It’s child pornography, that’s all there is to it. I refuse to believe that Stephen King ‘didn’t think too much of it’ while writing, and I’m disgusted by people who say, ‘it’s just one scene, it’s not a big deal’. That’s easily the worst thing I’ve ever read in a published book, and it amazes me I the worst kind of way when I see people who think it’s excusable. It’s not, it’s really not.

For the people I’ve seen arguing that ‘it’s just a couple of paragraphs’… that doesn’t erase the fact that it happened. You might argue that it has some deep metaphorical connotations about ‘the Losers growing up’ and ‘Beverly taking her sexuality into her own hands’… they’re eleven, you cunt. They’re literal fucking children. Sure, they’ve been through crap no one, not even adults, have been through. And that sucks. But how does that justify an orgy between ELEVEN YEAR OLDS?

And we get a nice little tidbit about the boys’ dick sizes; thank you, Mr. King, I really wanted to know which fifth grader had the biggest penis. The constant sexualization of child-Beverly was bad enough without that scene- that was just the nail in the coffin.

To sum it up: the writing’s good, the pacing’s geriatric, the characters are horrible, the story’s meh, and I’ll probably never read it unless I’m at gunpoint. On second thought, maybe not even then. Stephen King can suck my dick.