It is not as powerful as it appers to be

[marty400]

what are Its weakness?

[fushingfeef]

A lack of fear. Also it seems to be stuck in Derry, and unwilling to take on groups of people above ground.

[ZBliss]

I wouldn't say IT had a lack of fear, because it was in fact of afraid of the Losers, which explains (to a degree) why it didn't want to take on the group. Probably more so a lack of belief that the Losers could actually kill Itself, and that united belief was one of the things that held their connection together. So I'd say it's biggest weakness was having hunger, which comes with form it had to inhabit.

[marty400]

who would be an example? i see it trying to take the group down one by one but what would be an example?

[Rand]

I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this thread, since there are no opinions at all presented in the top post, and the only thing I can think of is... When is your homework paper due?

What do you think it's weaknesses are?

[marty400]

i dont know? i dont get why he cant just finish them off? i know he tries to get them 1 by 1 but i dont know why he cant just kill them all.
is he weak because you have to believe in him in order for him to be able to kill you?

[GNTLGNT]

Every evil has it's foe, and Bob Gray or Pennywises's weakness is it's own vanity...

[Rand]

i dont know? i dont get why he cant just finish them off? i know he tries to get them 1 by 1 but i dont know why he cant just kill them all.
is he weak because you have to believe in him in order for him to be able to kill you?

As I brought up in another IT thread, IT's power is primarily telepathic, or psychic if you prefer. IT preys on people unaware of him, unaware that he's pulling the stings or planting these thoughts and images in their minds. Until the endgame, he doesn't directly hurt anyone. He can't. What he does is manipulate people into hurting themselves, or manipulate other people into hurting his targets for him.

The losers became aware of his existence - or of the existence of some kind of malevolent force. Unlike the others in the town, they looked at things going on and questioned how they could be happening, how they could be allowed to happen. Through Bill, they managed to pool their experiences and realize there was one common force behind everything they'd experienced or observed. IT.

Once known, IT's power over them lessened. Drawing strength from the knowledge that they weren't alone, their ability to resist was increased. The group's ties enabled them to resist the thrall of IT's song individually and, when together, they were able to ignore and fight that siren song.

Their fights against IT were battles of will laced with a psychic force that bordered on magic. Nothing had real power over IT except their belief in things. All the things they used were representations of their own willpower, manifested as psychic or magical power. An asthma inhaler filled with a placebo had power because Eddie decided it did. Stan used bird names to defeat IT, because to him those had power, the power of the rational to defeat the irrational.

The silver slugs they made weren't weapons, they represented the power of a weapon. When Bev shot IT with the slug, she didn't hit IT, she hit the projected mental manifestation of IT. IT wasn't there physically, only it's thoughts were. What happened in that scene was the losers projected their willpower at the psychic invasion projected by IT, and their will was able to "hurt" IT's mental projection.

Unlike the losers, IT was tied to it's mind force in the sense that what hurt it's thoughts hurt it's entire being. The exception was Stan who, at the beginning of the book, no longer had the strength of conviction to match his rational beliefs against the irrationality of IT, so actually IT killed Stan through it's only real power - manipulation.

When it was defeated, it was all done on the psychic plain. Bill put the power of his mind, bolstered by his love for and belief in his friends and his wife, against the power of IT's mind, and came away the winner. The only physical part of the whole losers vs IT fight was when they destroyed the eggs, and I'm don't think the eggs were real either, they were just a psychic manifestation of the idea of reproduction.

Okay, lots of words there, but the short version is that IT's weakness was that it had no real existence in our world, possibly had no physical existence in any world. It wasn't a rampaging monster, it was an immaterial being that needed to overpower the minds of it's victims. When it encountered minds that weren't so easy to overpower, it was in trouble.

[Dull Dull Boy]

[QUOTE=Rand;372746]As I brought up in another IT thread, IT's power is primarily telepathic, or psychic if you prefer. IT preys on people unaware of him, unaware that he's pulling the stings or planting these thoughts and images in their minds. Until the endgame, he doesn't directly hurt anyone. He can't. What he does is manipulate people into hurting themselves, or manipulate other people into hurting his targets for him.

You wrong on that part. It can physically harm people and does so multiple times. He pulls off Georgie's arm, knaws through most of Adrian Mellons and even in its final form kills eddie. To the OP it is simply vanity. It didn't fear the Losers enough till they had banded together and their love had become powerful enough to defeat it.

[Reactor]

As Rand skillfully pointed out, IT has its own weaknesses. She is powerful, has amazing abilities - regeneration, teleportation, reading in minds, creating half-real illusions - but she is FAR from being indestructible.

First of all, IT can be wounded, IT can bleed - seen in several cases. The Bird scene, the flying leeches, the giant eyeball. As long as IT is not invulnerable to attacks, brute force can be a threat to her, even if she can regenerate herself somewhat quickly. She did when Bill headshot her with the Walther - this would kill any normal human being. At the case of IT, the gunshot only slowed her down.

IT doesn't have the power to mimic anything. Just like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, IT couldn't copy, for example, machines, although IT could disassemble herself to many different beings, seen at the Amana-incident, or Eddie's encounter at the baseball course. IT also couldn't take the shape of something which they've seen before (this is stated in the book).

Powerful as she is, IT couldn't mind-control or hypnotize anyone. She had influence on people, but could not give'em any orders directly. The victim may or may not obey.

IT didn't had any effect beyond Derry's limits, though she sensed happening at the whole country.

IT was sleeping through 26-27 years, staying only 1 year awake. Which means, if someone founds her lair while she is sleeping, he could easily final her in, like, 2 seconds. Not with bare hands of course.

IT had little effect on those with a strong will. If someone sees through a magic trick, it's not entertaining anymore. Without the question "how the hell did he do it???", all magic tricks are cheap scams. Same goes for the illusions IT created.

In many cases, IT left a "backdoor" for the victim to use. Exception may be the water tower scene with Stan, where she sealed the entrance. But otherwise, there was always a chance for the kid to make a run for it - seen in the Mummy scene with Ben, Eddie and the leper, and the Neibolt st. scene. This gave me an impression that IT merely toys with their victims, as a cat plays with a mouse, and never calculates the fact that the victim could defend himself, thinking that "hell, I can regenerate any time I want! Besides, I can teleport away, change my shape and stuff. Why would I need to worry?" This is when IT made her first mistakes.