User blog:Jacked Maverick/It Lives In The Woods: The Tragedy of Noah Marshall

The following contains spoilers for It Lives in the Woods and minor, minor ones for It Lives Beneath.

Happy Halloween, Berrypickers!

It Lives is a favorite of mine. It Lives In The Woods was a book I had no expectations of, neither good or bad. I played it on a weekly basis as it was coming out and I thought it was great. That’s all I have to say. I thought it was a great horror book and the sequel was just as good. Based on my ranking with Beneath being at #6 and Woods at #7, that should let you know how much I love this franchise. It may barely not make my top 5, but it still has that highly covenant “S” rating from me.

Even though I liked Beneath more, Woods has more stuff to talk about. The cast, the setting, the actual story. Today I want to talk about the hardest choice to be made in this duology: deciding whether your character or Noah to take Redfield’s place.

On one end, it’s more merciful to let Noah “die”. His home life is a mess and if he lives, he will be a wanted man. Never settling down; always looking over his shoulder.

But I say that’s a good thing for his character. As evident wanting to still wanting to leave a tip for a waitress who has shown him a shred of kindness at a time when he had none despite police entering the restaurant. Maybe he only did it because the waitress’ name was “Jane”, same as his late sister. But even so, he is still a good person deep down despite getting a fate he arguable did not deserve.

Even if you say he did not deserve to be wrongfully accused for what he did if you sacrificed yourself, his path to redemption was a necessary evil. He had to suffer to be the best version of himself. He will swear to right his wrongs. To do whatever it takes to help your character out of the Redfield state.

To me, Noah is the most interesting character in this franchise. After playing with supernatural forces as kids, it took the life of his sister. While everyone else seemed to move on many years later, Noah seems to be the only one still stricken with grief. How could he? His household is toxic; his family not moving on either. While the rest of the world moved on, his own personal environment never healed. In his grief he wanted to get some type of closure with Jane.



Only when the Woods gang find out Jane never “died” is when we start to sympathize with Noah. Not his actions, but his intentions. Redfield was not an obstacle anymore. He, or rather “she” was just a scared little kid. Something Noah saw since the very beginning and wanted to help.



After the events of Beneath, he decides to stop being a hermit and start trusting people again after deciding to join forces with Conner and Jocelyn. People who don’t judge his past actions and are willing to unite under a common goal. Even during Beneath, he was willing to come out of hiding and show his face in Westchester again to help out Tom Sato and "Harper". Tom shows some hostility to him at first after what he did, but then appears like he appreciates Noah helping him despite still being a wanted man.

Shame how we’ll never get to see Noah Marshall's story end in an It Lives 3…



=End Card=

Sorry this was a shorter blog.

I want to get back in the habit in making occasional essays. At the moment it looks like I’ll be making an essay every two months. When I create my own YouTube channel I’ll upload and write essays more frequently.

My next essay will probably be holiday related as it’s already a given it will be released for December.

I surprisingly don’t have much to say about Noah as I thought I did. I like him as a character and I feel he should have been the main character instead of a defaulted “your character”. I wanted to do something special for Halloween to please people who like reading my stuff and to provide an update that I’m still alive and I am still passionate about writing.