IT au where all the boys' parents force them to compete in a stupid male beauty pageant cause they think it'll be cute but it just gets weirdly intense and competitive for no reason 😭.
Canal days has had the derry prince and princesses pageant since 1929 and has since continued this proud tradition with no signs of ever stopping it's grand wholesome legacy... even if they had that explosion that killed all those contestants that one year.... and that one year where the judge kidnapped both the winners and killed them in a basement... and the other year where the Derry princess got pigs blood dropped all over her. Okay, so maybe the pageant has a gorey history, but it's still a fun way to get kids involved in the community, and the winner gets to be in tv commercials, and on posters around town, and they win six hundred dollars in assorted gift cards!
Ben surprisingly is one of the few boys who wanted actually wanted to be in the pageant. His mom won miss Texas and she's always seemed sad that ben wasn't born a girl so she couldn't enter him in toddler pageants. He thinks that by participating in this he could make his mom happy, and he also thinks it could just be kind of cool to have someone more heavy set win a pageant.
Bill also did this of his own volition, but mostly just to get his parents to pay attention to him. He really just wants his parents to be stunned he's doing something like this, maybe then they'd have more of a reaction to him than just blank stares and vague praise.
Poor Eddie was doomed the moment he was old enough to participate in that stupid contest. Sonia's lil angel is the miss america of cute boys after all, and wouldn't it be just so precious to see him preforming up there in a little hand sewn outfit?
Mike's dad first suggested he try to be Derry days prince as just a joke, but the more he brought it up the more mike seemed surprisingly receptive to the idea. William also realized that given all the small town publicity Derry prince brings (like the aformentioned local commercials), it might be good for business to get mike on the stage. Plus... william is a very good farmer and a fairly well liked man in spite of how racist derry can be. Maybe he can pull a few strings, although he doubts mike needs nepotism and connections to win. Just look at that winning smile.
Richie absolutely does not want to do this. The only reason he's here is because wentworth signed him out up with out asking. He just thought "what? You get to preform, you love to preform!". He is right about that, but just because he likes to preform does NOT mean he wants to get on a stage in a silly outfit and do impressions for all the hicks in this town. He doesn't even get what the big deal is, what are you even becoming a prince of? A hotbed for drunks and burnouts? A bunch of endless fields full of cowshit? Buildings with missing posters covering their windows? Seriously, it's nothing to get hyped over. He does like the prospect of money though.... and playfully teasing eddie about beating him.
Stanley was perfectly content to just sit back and watch the rest of the guys do this. His parents don't often force him to do embarrassing things, and they're not ones for pageantry. Unfortunately richie thought it would be funny to sign him up for it so they can all look ridiculous together. Stan's doesn't even care enough to get super mad about it though, he's just pissed it made his parents super confused. They were like "since when does stanley like to get on stage? Is this his way of rebelling against us". Ugh.
Henry Bowers was also very happy to just sit around and call all the guys gay for this, until Butch caught wind of william hanlon entering mike with the hopes it'll boost business and he just HAD to beat him. Now butch and william are going full pageant mom over their kids and it's real embarrassing. All of henry's freinds rag on him about it and he too acts all "guys i swear i'm not into it, it sucks" but deep down he's having fun. He may not like being fancy but he sure does like being a winner. He cannot deny it would be wonderful to beat all the losers at something. Besides, this is the most time his fathers paid attention to him in... well ever. He doesn't even buy him christmas presents usually, but he bought him a suit (it came from a funeral home right off of a dead guy, but hey), he got him tap shoes, he even took him to the dentist and got him some veneers! Don't get it twisted though, this is just to one up mike and william, not because he loves henry.
Bev just kind of watches this all happen mildly amused, she doesn't wanna enter the derry days princess competition (she thinks its dumb and a little archiac and competing against greta keene sounds like a very strange form of torture. She's gonna win no matter what, she always does.), and her dad wouldn't let her even if she did. Mr. Marsh doesn't want bev to get gawked at by a bunch of dudes snd let her flaunt off her body. It doesn't matter how innocous derry days is, he hears the term pageant and immediately thinks it's just preteens in bikinis.
She gets a good laugh out of how high strung all her friends are about it. She makes a lot of quips about everyone being future miss USA and going to regionals. It's all very silly.
The talent portion of the competition is as humiliating as it is strange.
Mike plays his stupid trombone from the book and he's not even very good at it. Bill and georgie do an """adorable""" brotherly comedy act his parents made him do. Eddie is forced to do a monolouge of a poem sonia wrote for him how about how much he adores his mother, while dressed like he's 30 years older than he really is cause sonia thinks it's so cute when he looks like a tiny adult. Stan brings out a bird on stage and basically just prattles off bird facts for ten minutes. Ben plays the water glasses and he has to repeatedly remind his friends not to drink his talent before he goes on stage. Richie does dogshit comedy stand up in a suit that looks like it would give you hay fever from the pattern alone. Henry does a strange pig call/obstacle course thing with his pet pigs bip and bop while dressed in a ridiculous cowboy costume with banjo music in the background. He's actually pretty good at it, good enough that bill suggests to stan that they pruposefully throw the contest and let henry win since the only people who care about winning is ben and mike. Stan says he'd rather die than see Henry bowers win anything ever, at least not if he lived to gloat about it afterwards.
As if things couldn't get any weirder, there's a couple city slickers here to write about the culture of derrytownship for some kind of thesis or expose- honestly nobody is quite sure. But they interview each of the prince/princess contestants to give some insight into the whole process. Lots of candid interviews, stories about growing up in derry, and in henry's case- very flagrant trauma fumping disguised as trash talk.
If you're curious how everyone placed after, Ben ended up winning, Mike was runner up, Henry was third runner up, and Richie came dead last. This caused a massive chaotic fight to break out, spurred by henry trying to tackle Ben and take his crown, sonia, william, and Butch getting into a classic pageant mom fight, and all of this culminating in henry tumbling off the stage and breaking his nose.
Yeah, the derry prince and princess pageant just kinda turned into one big old mess at the end.
But hey, at least no one died this time.
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