reddiefanart

[reddiefanart]

eddie really is so soft hearted and caring and that’s why it makes me so upset that there was a time where his character was boiled down to just angry because he deserves more credit than that. i’d be as bold as to say that he was the most caring character in the entire book. 🧸

he truly is!! and it also makes me very upset how dirty he was treated in the movies and in the fandom. it’s really upsetting how muschietti&co read the book and saw these moments where eddie is so emotionally vulnerable because he has these outbursts of defensiveness born from anxiety and thought that he was just this angry, cowardly person who yelled at his friends and wouldn’t risk his life to protect them. it’s just so apparent that they did not understand eddie’s character at all... that he was this child of abuse and taught so many lies and manipulation by the adults in his life, but in spite of all of that, he still wanted to be good. he is by no means perfect and definitely has flaws like every character, but given all the negativity and cruelty he faced, he instinctively cares for and protects the people he loves. he didn’t take all the awfulness that was given to him and manifest it into being bad or angry himself: he wanted to be better than that, even if he didn’t really know how to. this naive, confused boy, who is always in a constant struggle to understand what is good and bad, still has this big, soft heart with space for people to build their houses on it. it’s actually crazy how much he cares for both the people who love him and hurt him. hello, he cares so much that he ends up dying because of it!! it truly boggles my mind how all these interpretations of him lose such a central trait of his. eddie is a complex character who has many sides to him, but fundamentally, at his core, he’s an affectionate, nurturing, and brave soul. it’s disheartening to see people reject this soft version of eddie because they think it makes him weak or feminine or whatever bullshit. especially when in reality, the softness of eddie is what makes him so strong. i wish people understood him more :(

[reddiefanart]

omg thank u for that bi richie list. i know majority of people either love/like gay richie, think it’s okay, or don’t care, but i need to get this off my chest even if it’s unpopular: i don’t fuck w gay richie AT ALL, i hate it sm honestly.

to me, it’s a painful reminder of what was ripped away from eddie and the missed opportunities w richie’s bi coding they could’ve used from the novel. i see gay richie and i go “that could’ve been eddie if the scriptwriters had possessed at least one brain cell. eddie deserved that” and my bitterness goes through the ROOF. it drives me crazy that andy literally admitted gay richie is a direct result of robbing eddie cause richie wasn’t angsty enough??? how did they miss the self loathing over his adhd, hiding behind masks, the fact that richie’s the only one who sees himself as the monster. hello??? and w/out eddie to rob from, they just think richie’s str8, cause bi people??? what’s that???? and we’re left w what’s essentially a watered down version of eddie’s gay coding in richie, when we could’ve had something so rich w both of their different queer stories in tact. ugh it’s rlly damn depressing that bi richie used to be everywhere and now it’s almost nonexistent :(

plus if u look at past scripts, u can easily see the writers have an annoying obsession w moving around important character traits/roles. mike and stan are the other ones who fall victim to it, two guesses as to why. starting w the dumpster fire that is the 2010 script, richie is gay and has the bj leper scene instead of eddie, mike and stan are out of the entire narrative, bill stays in derry as the librarian instead of mike. the 2015 script, stan is bill’s pet goldfish while richie is now jewish and still possesses eddie’s gay coding on top of that. and then ofc, u get to chap 1 and ben is the historian while mike gets paid dust. sickening. at least during that time u could fall back on the fandom, who was willing to restore what was taken away and add depth by looking towards the book. but that’s not the case anymore. and the story is finished in the movies so there’s less incentive to read or know the novel. the way everything played out is just so unfortunate.

ok, get that off your chest!! sorry this took so long to reply, i wanted to answer this appropriately because i feel a lot of your frustrations and can totally understand your opinions even if they are considered “unpopular” by fandom.

as someone who has read gay richie fics and enjoyed them i will say that i will always prefer bisexual richie. richie, in my mind, will always be bi because the bi subtext for him in the novel is so apparent. i know people think that we should be happy with any sort of gay representation in media, especially in the horror genre, since it's so rare, but it really does feel like people are just settling for the bare minimum. i mean, what good is gay rep if it isn't authentic to the original source, was robbed from and mixed with another character, and perpetrates stereotypes that gay men will always be either repressed, sad, dead, or never find happiness with who they love? this type of gay rep might have passed in the 80s, but in 2019? yeah, no let’s move on. 

i don't get how people still defend andy when he has explicitly stated that he didn't think richie had “enough” going on, so he just took from eddie. he pretty much said that richie was too simple as a character on his own, basically ignoring all the bi coding and all the incredible individualized characterization he has! maybe if richie was actually written well in the movie i wouldn't be complaining as much, but he was really reduced to sad, repressed gay who isn't ambitious enough to write his own jokes and will abandon his friends for his own selfish needs, WHICH IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE OF BOOK RICHIE?! and don’t get me started on how badly eddie was written, oof. eddieway... i hate how those bad and often switched characterizations bleed into fandom works because i’ll read a reddie fic and be like “that's... not richie” or “that's not eddie” or “why is richie doing that bc that's eddie's issue.” it’s just sad :(

and taking eddie's gay coding and giving it to richie is such a disservice to BOTH of them. i've said it before, but their sexualities and stories are connected and intertwined but they are NOT interchangeable! they are unique to the specific character. eddie’s sexuality cannot be removed from his storyline; it is absolutely vital to understand him as a character. the fears richie face and his personality and actions as a whole, imo, only make sense if he is bisexual. 

andy & co really thought they were being so big brained by making richie canonically gay and adding minor subtext about eddie’s sexuality when all they did was tarnish characterizations for a gay plot line that wasn’t even coherent. and what's the most frustrating is that andy obviously thought both eddie and richie were gay and in love but he just did such a bad job actually showing that!! if so many people came out of the movie thinking it was a one-sided romance, or were confused about r+e at the end, or the only true confirmation we have that “richie is gay” is from interviews done after the movie came out, then that's an issue and it's your fault you can't tell a story properly! i hated how fans previously said the story only seems bad because wb made him edit the gay stuff out, because that still doesn't explain how badly richie or eddie were written in the movie. it's bad gay rep objectively, and i know we’ll make fun of it as a joke or whatever, but it's actually so disappointing and very concerning that people are willing to settle and accept it. 

also, i've said it before, the book is not very good and has a shit ton of issues in it. i'm not asking people to read it if they don't want to or even like it if they do. but when book readers say the book had better characterizations since the movies did them so dirty, it isn't an attack, it’s just a fact? we've come to cherish certain characterizations from the book and we wish it was adapted properly and our characters were given justice. i find it so funny how movie stans were like “so you're going to defend sk's writing then?” and like..... no one is doing that, lol we literally hate that man (unlike your fave andy who is literally obsessed with him and made two movies that were practically bad fanfic of an already bad book lmao). 

and like you pointed out in the other scripts, it's like every writer did not comprehend the individual issues of each loser so they just thought it would be best to mix them around. it's really bizarre, especially when you see the racial implications and other forms of discrimination present in these god awful characterizations. i mean i know it's a big book and obviously you can't adapt every part of it, but it's so weird how when you're reading these scripts or watching these movies it feels like it's nothing like the book? it's totally fine if the writers want to make changes, modernize it, etc., but it's disappointing that these drastic changes make the losers not even seem like the losers! and you're right, after it 2017 we were willing to go back to the book as a source to fill in the parts that the movie missed, but i feel since it 2019 came out, people are less inclined to do that and think the movie is the only valid form of canon because it has actual gay rep. no canon is perfect so we've always picked and mixed together what aspects of canon we liked, but i feel like nowadays it ch2 will always be the main form people derive from and i think that's the most unfortunate thing about this whole situation :(

[reddiefanart]

i know a lot of people hated that some of the reddie scenes in chapter two were leaked ahead of time, especially the r + e scene, but honestly if i didn’t know what was coming when i watched the movie the first time, i would have been so confused because there was absolutely no build-up or reasoning for that scene lol

[reddiefanart]

Reddie Analyses

(Occasionally updates when I find new posts.)

Reddie

Screenshots of Reddie content from the novel

Eddie’s last words

He Really Knew Well Enough - a corrected meta

The two different ways Richie and Eddie’s feelings manifest for each other

Eddie’s death scene

Eddie’s shoes

More convo on Eddie’s shoes

Reddie MBTI analysis

Textual Reddie & Queer!Eddie: A Masterpost

a post about benverly & reddie

Reddie and Benverly parallels in relation to Bill

The moment(s) in the book where I first put two and two together

The way Richie reacts to Eddie and Bill

Eddie doesn’t recognize his feelings at first

Richie’s actions in the sewers are entirely his own

Eddie getting super defensive

They are really good at being there for each other

Different journeys

Richie and Eddie bring out the best in each other

Eddie’s Homosexuality

Some things in the book that may point to Eddie being gay

Eddie Kaspbrak is fucking gay folks

How marrying Myra screams compulsory heterosexuality

Anthony Perkins

Adrian Mellon

Adrian Mellon and Charlie Howard

“What are you looking for?”

Eddie Kaspbrak and Faith

Crickets

A breakdown of the major pieces of subtext

The evidence isn’t coincidence + Eddie didn’t love Myra

Eddie relating to the hobo

Eddie’s “crush” on Greta

IT as Greta vs IT as Belch

An Analyzation of the Text: Eddie Kaspbrak is Gay

thinking about how eddie called myra ‘marty’

Richie’s Bisexuality

Subtext

More subtext talk

Bi instead of gay / Richie’s interest in women

The teenage werewolf

Direct Quotes: Richie’s Bisexuality in the Book

your gay feelings for one person being Deeper than your straight feelings for other people does not invalidate the latter

Rationalizing

Richie’s bisexuality vs Eddie’s homosexuality

Stephen King’s intentions

Maybe Richie’s bi coding was intentional

Suppression, not repression

The monster part is bisexuality itself

More About Eddie

Eddie Kaspbrak is not weak

Myra Kaspbrak is an abusive spouse

More on Myra and Eddie

Counter: Myra isn’t an abusive spouse; Eddie and Myra are both manipulative to each other

Counter: The toxicity went both ways

Reasons why Eddie Kaspbrak is a Gryffindor

Bill is Eddie’s father figure

Bill and Eddie filling the empty roles in each other’s lives 

Eddie’s healing aura

Panic attacks, not asthma attacks

Hot-headed, yes. Angry, no.

About Eddie’s ring(s)…

The Lobster Train

Eddie isn’t the most vulnerable Loser

Suffering in silence

Why I support Eddie as a Scorpio

He’s really NOT a germaphobe

Eddie is the biggest threat to IT

“She’s not the leper, please don’t think that, she’s only eating me because she loves me”

Eddie is not a natural liar or a very good one

Transportation was always a symbol of freedom for Eddie

Two major reasons why I like to associate Eddie with pink

Pink represents Eddie the best

Eddie’s voice of reason

Naive, trusting, and always acting with his heart first

More About Richie

Richie’s depth

ADHD

Richie is very smart and very motivated

Intelligence

Richie as a Slytherin

Richie Tozier + music

Music meant so much to him

I’m not saying that Richie Tozier was a Hippie

Richie Tozier’s Role in the Losers Club: a (very biased) meta

Richie and the Bible

Richie was a pretty smooth character

Why Pisces works for Richie

Richie wants to forget again

Richie fears himself

Why Richie had the fear of how others perceived him

Richie cares

Richie isn’t a quitter

Maggie and Wentworth Tozier

His parents aren’t abusive

It’s alright to like book Richie

Emotionally constipated

How Richie comforts people

Violet/purple represents Richie very well

[reddiefanart]

Reposting now that tumblr decided to give me visibility, because I think y’all need to see this.

[reddiefanart]

why did james ransone ruin eddie for you? not trying to be mean but i joined the fandom after itc2 and I don't mind his eddie (like it obviously could be better) I'm just curious to why 👀 lmao

whew chile i got more asks about this then i’ve gotten in months. yeah totally fine to ask ofc. i’m gonna answer all the asks because i have a lot to say about it. first i should say, a lot of this is personal, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. eddie is a character a lot of people relate to and that’s really important. (please read through all of this, sorry for any typos)

i got diagnosed with anxiety when i was 15 after struggling with it for most of my life. i feared diease to a crippling degree at 8 years old (swine flu was the biggest thing when i was a kid, adults told me to worry about so i washed my hands until they bled). i was bullied by other kids, i worried about little things they didn’t. but i hated the conflation of my anxiety with being a coward. i knew i was brave. my heart racing and my palms sweating didn’t mean i was a coward. i stood up to my bullies, knowing they were stronger than me.

when chapter one first came out, i was 16 and i hadn’t read the book. Meeting eddie in the theatre was almost an ethereal experience for me. never before had i seen my kid self embodied so perfectly. Eddie was the most anxious kid, but he was also the bravest. so much care went into this character. i related to him down to his fast, impassioned speech pattern. eddies anxiety was realistic to me, because it wasn’t his personality , like i’d seen anxiety portrayed in other movies. it was something he was battling, it wasn’t all of HIM. it also showed the physical symptoms in a way i could relate to. my anxiety made me feel sick and weak. but i wasn’t because eddie wasn’t.

when i got home, i spent all night on tumblr looking through the It and eddie tags. i ordered the book the next day. i also learned that apparently, book eddie was heavily gay coded. it occurred to me briefly while watching, but i thought i was just projecting because at 16, i knew i liked girls, but i was so guilty and twisted up about it. eddie helped me process it. eddie was scared, i was scared too.

i also have a very complex relationship with my mom, it’s a little better now, but sometimes it’s really toxic for reasons i won’t go into. eddie helped me process this as well.

i bring up all of this not to be like “i was an eddie kinny and james ransone wasn’t to my taste :(“ but to explain how eddie helped me to feel empowered in everything i was going through like no other character had before.

but what’s crucial to eddie the fact that he’s not a one dimensional character. The writers and the actor have to spend the time and skill developing these traits so eddie’s truth shines though.

2019 eddie is written like he doesn’t have trauma with his abusive mom. he’s written to have an odepius complex. 2019 eddie isn’t written to be a deeply closeted gay man, he’s straight washed (so we can give the queer arc to richie bc we can only have one i guess). and most heinously, eddie isn’t written to be brave in spite of his anxiety, he’s written to be the sacrificial cowardly dude who has to be convinced by his friends to do the right thing once and than dies.

2019 eddie lacks the complexity that makes eddie eddie. is a lot of that due to the writing? yes. but if we praise jdg for his enhancement of eddie, i gotta Criticize james for the lack of understanding of eddie. James’ eddie doesn’t bring any depth, i think maybe 2019 eddie was written to be defensive the way book eddie is, i can see that in the script, but james’ eddie performance comes off as sincerely comfortable in his 9-5 job, his mom-wife, etc. his mannerisms and quips come off as mean rather than going toe to toe with the other losers. in fact. the losers don’t even seem to really like him???

most importantly, book eddie knew what he was doing when he made that sacrifice for the group. is eddie cautious in his life? sure, but for the losers he doesn’t not hesitate. 2019 eddie’s death seems foolish, accidental on eddies part. his last words are a joke. he doesn’t even get emotional complexity in his dying moments.

now james isn’t to blame for all of this, but actors should be fighters, advocates for their characters. i don’t think james understood eddie enough to be his representative. the eddie who helped me and others through everything deserved better than that.

[reddiefanart]

EDDIE IS SOFT AND HE LOVES HIS FRIENDS BUT THAT DOES NOT MAKE HIM FRAGILE OR ANY LESS STRONG IT'S WHAT MAKES HIM SO BRAVE AND STRONG

YES. Eddie is kind and strong, he can one punch Pennywise while screaming at the Losers to get their asses in gear one moment and cry while looking at birds the next. He's so much more than just an angry gremlin.

I think this is an unfortunate side effect of there being 3 different versions of canon, with one being more widespread and therefore deemed the "real" canon. But let's face it, the reddie dynamic in the book is very different from the movies. It's not this vitriolic "shut up, Richie" "fuck you, bro" "your mom lmao" best buds relationship, it's an amiable flirtatious teasing one. Book!Eddie is prone to hero worshipping other men. He's fascinated and befuddled by Richie and isn't afraid to call him out when he's being thoughtless or rude (in a much more subdued "*fondly rolls eyes* you're a turd" way rather than "shut up, Richie >:/" way), but also frequently gets flustered/blushy from his teasing. Book!Richie is uniquely flirtatious and teasing with Eddie (not in a juvenile "your mom" way but in an out and out "you're a cutie, Eds ;)" way), but is also so good at hiding his true self or avoiding having to think more deeply about his own feelings. And idk, this is the dynamic that made me ship reddie in the first place and it's near and dear to me. It's unfortunate that a good chunk of the fandom isn't willing to let book peeps just create content that caters to their interests :/

[reddiefanart]

this has probably been talked about before but Richie wasn’t ashamed of his sexuality, in my opinion (well, he obviously would’ve a bit. it was the the 50s. But still). He was a pretty horny dude, and I think he just accepted his horniess for other dudes to be another one of those things he couldn’t fix (like his undiagnosed ADHD). He was ashamed of what his attraction to other boys made him do, though. Richie often makes a fool of himself in front of Eddie and Bev because he had crushes on them both. He pinches Eddie’s cheeks and calls him cute because it’s the only thing that stops him from exploding with all these feelings he doesn’t understand yet. He does dumb voices without thinking. RICHIE IS ASHAMED THAT THIS BEHAVIOUR, THAT HE CAN’T CONTROL, CAN COME ACROSS AS PREDATORY. He sees his actions similiar to those of a monster. Or, more specifically, a werewolf.

That’s what Andy Muschetti didn’t understand. Richie didn’t think his secret was dirty; he thought his actions were. Stripping Eddie of his gay arc and giving it to Richie doesn’t work for either of the characters. Their own fears and experience with bullies can’t be swapped over (or erased completely) simply because they’ve both got queer subtext. It’s insulting if that is actually what Muschetti thought.

[reddiefanart]

hey there! i am curious about your opinion regarding the different approaches to eddie's death in every media. you mention it in some metas but i don't think i've ever seen an individual post directly talking about it. i dunno, i'm just really interested! 💕

I think by far the most well done version is in the novel, mostly because it focuses entirely on Eddie during his death scene. It’s told from his POV, it’s focused on his story arc and the things he needs to overcome and accept about himself, and it’s honestly really beautifully written. Eddie’s death is about Eddie, as it should be. 

I mean... with prose like this:

“Far away. Unimportant. He could feel everything running out of him along with his life’s blood . . . all the rage, all the pain, all the fear, all the confusion and hurt. He supposed he was dying but he felt . . . ah, God, he felt so lucid, so clear, like a window-pane which has been washed clean and now lets in all the gloriously frightening light of some unsuspected dawning...”

And this:

“Fading, fading back. Becoming clearer and clearer, emptying out, all of the impurities flowing out of him so he could become clear, so that the light could flow through, and if he had had time enough he could have preached on this, he could have sermonized: Not bad, he would begin. This is not bad at all. But there was something else he had to say first.”

.... There’s really no competing with it. Absolutely nothing any adaptation tries to accomplish could ever match it; Eddie’s poetic acceptance of himself, and the washing away of his fear and doubt.

In the novel, Eddie makes the choice to do what needs to be done to severely wound IT, even if that means sticking his whole-ass arm inside its mouth. He knew what could happen. He’d known it since before he even got to Derry. He’d known it since he was a child, that he’d die for his friends if that’s what it came to, if that’s what they needed from him. That Eddie is facing IT head on when he dies is a display of his agency and his bravery, and he does enough damage to make it possible for Bill and Richie to finally kill it for good.

In the miniseries his death is kind of a joke, tbh. Like I get it, they couldn’t have much gore, they had a small budget, and were limited by the special effects at their disposal. But IT literally barely touches Eddie and then he falls like two feet and gracefully dies. The most that could’ve happened to him is maybe a couple of cracked ribs and a bump on the head. But that being said, the miniseries also had Richie carry him out of the sewers slung over his back like a Big Strong Hero, which gives it major points. And because of that, it actually leaves room for an alternate ending: that Eddie simply fainted, was fine, and the comedy partner that conveniently looked exactly like Eddie actually was Eddie. Obviously. 

Ch.2... well, it made Eddie’s death entirely about Richie’s pain, not Eddie’s self-acceptance. Eddie wasn’t even facing IT, wasn’t allowed to make the decision to perform self-sacrifice, because the filmmakers wanted to make his death more traumatic and shocking for Richie. The entire thing is centered on Richie, and while Bill Hader certainly acted it very well, it was just a continuation of the same trends the entire film had been following: pushing Eddie’s arc aside, forcing him to take a backseat to Richie. In the end, he assumes the roll of Dead Love Interest, a character who serves no purpose other than to be Fridged in order to fuel the protagonist’s revenge/pain. And on top of that, Eddie died for nothing anyway because all the Losers actually had to do was, apparently, bully IT to death. 

I get that it’s hard to translate text to film sometimes, especially for a character whose development happens primarily through inner monologue, but if they had given Eddie’s character arc any weight and attempted to stay true to his book characterization at all, his death would have been a lot more meaningful. If they had developed Eddie as a character instead of just... y’know, letting Ransone play JDG and JDG play himself, they could’ve really done something. And if they had bothered to develop Reddie at all throughout the movie, rather than leave it for a post-mortem reveal, Richie’s reaction would have hit harder too. 

[reddiefanart]

the bottom line of what went wrong with Reddie is that book!Richie would never have fallen in love with the Eddie that was depicted in Chapter 2

[reddiefanart]

going off of my post .... why do you think you (we) are protective of eddie’s gayness

CRACKS KNUCKLES. Okay I legit thought about this all day and now that I am ignoring my homework I figured…It is Time.

So to be perfectly honest……I feel people such as you and me feel defensive of Eddie’s gayness is because…Of a few things. I’ll break it down.

1. I think that people rely on Eddie’s gayness as a form of critique to his character way, way too much. I genuinely find it more problematic  that people insist that it’s “problematic” to say that Eddie is gay because “it would be stereotypical” because this is so dismissive of gay men like Eddie who actually exist. The implication is that it would somehow be BAD or negative for Eddie to be gay just because some people feel it caters to “stereotypes“ and they act like gay steroetypes are negative even though the gay stereotypes Eddie fulfills are DEFINITELY not the harmful ones that have been weaponized against gay men in the past. Harmful gay stereotypes for gay men are things like THE PREDATORY GAY or THE GAY WHO IS SICK or THE GAY WHO WANTS tO CONVERT YOUR STRAIGHT BF. Like those are usually the “harmful” gay stereotypes media has relied on to perpetuate gayness in a harmful way to straights.

However the gay stereotypes that Eddie fulfills, such as being a mama’s boy or into fashion or more emotional or gentle are things that HETEROSEXUALS have criticized of gay men and have weaponized against gay men. These are stereotypes that gay men have EMBRACED and often used as a form of empowerment to defy rigid gender norms and heteronormativity. People being uncomfortable by the Flamboyant Gay Trope are…kind of weird to me! They seem a little backwards. No, not all flamboyant men are gay, but many are and that’s always kind of been the point. It’s a big cultural thing just like how it’s a cultural thing for many lesbian women to identify as “butch.” To me, a flamboyant gay man is really no different than bisexuals on this website who laugh about how bisexuals always wear like leather jackets and plaid shirts or whatever, you know? These stereotypes that LGBTQ+ people have created out of their OWN identities shouldn’t really be seen as “negatives” and while I understand and respect people’s desire for “diverse” gay representation..I just gotta wonder……my second point………….

2. Why do people think that Eddie is a common gay trope character? I honestly want to know even ONE example of a character identical to Eddie. Literally just one. As someone who legit studies Queer Theory I cannot think of any gay male characters like Eddie. Eddie’s so uniquely flamboyant/stereotypical to his gayness that it mostly just, to me, comes off as an incredibly empowering source of his character arc. While King writes Eddie’s trauma and issues with his sexuality as being evident of anxiety he feels about homosexuality, I also felt like King balanced this out really well by making it clear that Eddie literally feels his absolute best / most empowered / his strongest version of himself when he is ALLOWING himself to BE himself (be gay). Examples include how he’s evidently empowered by Richie’s nickname for him “Eds” being some sort of secret identity that parents have no control over, how Eddie literally DIES HAPPY because he lets himself open up to Richie, even if in an incomplete way, lets himself recognize that he’s not impure at all.

I wrote an essay about how if you remove Eddie being gay from his narrative, he has a failed, incomplete story arc. Because ultimately, he dies with no “growth” if you take out him being gay. But if you acknowledge his gayness suddenly his death actually serves a completed point to his narrative in that he DIES FOR A MAN he’s in love with FOR his sake, and he’s HAPPY to make that decision and it really shows Eddie’s one moment of “overpowering” ITs fear held over him. Imo it’s even more important than him challenging his mother since clearly his mother had dictated his entire life, so to let him have The Final Say in his death scene by LETTING him be in love with Richie, by LETTING him accept himself? Idk that makes his story 100% more powerful and more logical.

Between these two points I Think that when people try to insist that he’s anything outside of gay, you’re really stripping away a lot of his narrative. And to be honest, there really is pretty much no proof of him being interested in women. IF anything he’s one of the ONLY male characters I have ever seen portrayed THAT ACTIVELY points out MULTIPLE TIMES his dislike of the idea of sex with women - so I always find it lowkey …dismissive of the fact when people try to imply he likes women whatsoever when he literally…does not. Like?

I think this is frustrating because in fandom spaces we seldom have characters who are queer-confirmed and we rarely have characters who have AS MUCH evidence as Eddie Kaspbrak to being gay. Like most of the time in fandom spaces we have like one sentence or one indication or a flippant scene to go off of, but with Eddie there’s literally SO MUCH PROOF that he’s gay-coded that it’s wild to me that people would think he’s anything else. And as I stated earlier, he’s SUCH an uncommon character and if he is gay, he’s DOUBLY uncommon cause there’s just no gay characters like him and I think to take that away from him is a little insulting to the integrity of his intended sexuality (idgaf what king says- his intended sexuality is 100% gay lmao)

Like the ONLY ONLY sexuality I accept outside of him being gay is legit him being a demisexual homoromantic because he does seem to struggle with sex, but that’s legit the only sexualtiy I could see outside of homosexuality for Eddie.

I saw a post recently that was like “Eddie Kaspbrak is not straight passing and it is insulting to imply he is” and I fucking LOVED it because it’s true!!! Eddie is NOT straight passing. He’s BULLIED for being “stereotypical” and he’s bullied for his percieved sexuality and to completely discredit that by acting like he is at all straight-passing or even, honestly, just into women is just kind ??? of?? Idk it always feels really dismissive to me for some reason.

I understand and empathize with people who feel they identify with Eddie who want to see him as bi and I’m not gonna take that away from anyone, but I do think it should be considered that Eddie…IS gay-coded. The only sexual incidents he has with women are ALL non-consenting. He has BLATANT repulsion towards sex with women and to brush that off is a little..IDK MAN..Like people are obviously allowed to headcanon what they want to, but I do think that Eddie Kaspbrak is a rare example of maybe be considerate of the majority opinion because the majority opinion here is based on some pretty significant material and it IS important. Because like….No, there aren’t a lot of gay characters like Eddie represented in media. This is a gay-coded character with significant childhood trauma, mental health issues that are literally debilitating, and an indication towards possible disability (re: if people write him post-canon surviving) like …Those things are SO rare for gay characters. Gay men in canon are almost NEVER given that kind of depth. Like, yes, they absolutely exist, but it IS really uncommon, and I think it is important to acknowledge all that.

And when you count in Richie to the factor -there’s even FAR LESS gay and lesbian characters who DO get to meet their soul mate/ someone they love as a child AND later on meet them again as an adult. I  can’t even think of one queer childhood romance story that carries through to adulthood (tho if anyone can think of one please let me know cause i’d pay good money) like I know the Goldfinch kinda does that but also kinda not so lmao. POINT IS.

Eddie is an uncommon character. He’s more uncommon if you add in him being gay, and i Think that could be why we feel defensive of his sexuality. I also find it problematic sometimes when people get so mad that a guy doesn’t want to have sex with women. Like…some dudes just don’t want to sleep with women idk what you want. I actually feel I see people pressing non-gay/non-lesbian narratives at gay/lesbian men and women a lot more often and it’s kind of…uncomfortable to see people constantly wanting to strip away people’s clearly coded or canonically confirmed gay/lesbian sexuality. like it’s p disrespectful imo? Idk man idk!

I hope this makes some extent of sense and maybe explains it a bit. I have a lot of feelings about gay!Eddie Kaspbrak and I’m so disappointed that Chp2 seemed to encourage a wave of ppl who, for no reason, think Eddie is interested in women cause that is just…a really…Unusual thing. AGAIN. People are allowed to but generally speaking……………Anyway.

Thank you for the ask ;o; This was so fun to answer.

[reddiefanart]

I know we all love and talk about Eddie and how much of a bitch he can be but can we also talk about how much of a lover he is too. He’s so kind and loving. He cares so much. He’s a fighter AND a lover.

aha, look, my favourite subject to talk about and also the one that makes me angriest

Cause that’s the thing, I don’t generally like to talk about Eddie being bitchy because it’s not.... a characterisation I personally agree with? I know ch2 Eddie was very angry, but frankly ch2’s writing and handling of Eddie can eat dogshit. Especially when ch1 gave us a sweeter, more heartfelt Eddie who clearly cares about his friends and is closer to his book characterisation. Book!Eddie has THIS crowning moment

look at this kid. Look at him go

And we’re introduced to ch1 Eddie with him decisively expounding on what happens at a Bar Mitzvah like he has ANY CLUE what he’s talking about, he’s just as naïve as the others, it’s hilarious. I love what we can infer from all the moments like that, or the whole Ben’s Room scene where he’s being just as much of a eager beaver dumbass as Richie about morbid shit. Eddie’s THE FIRST ONE to jump into dirty water, closer to his tormentors to defend the honour of Mike and Bev who he barely knows!!!! And we’re supposed to accept that this is the same Eddie who’d be the only one not to dive into the cistern to save Bev in ch2 with the others? Fucking what?

Book Eddie IS a lover and a fighter and he’s brave and he’s curious. He licks Richie’s popsicle after casually saying “I’ll risk it” about the germs. He has a great sense of direction and dreams of riding the rails, he has a capital R Romantic little soul, he’s funny and perceptive enough to manipulate his mother when he breaks his arm, and he’s all these things IN SPITE of being terrified that he’s actually just rotten underneath!! When he proves all the time that he’s not!!! He’s the best!! He’s so much more than “bitchy germaphobe!” There’s a reason he was my fave when I read it 10 years ago and he’s still my fave now! I yell with @lemon-wedges constantly about Sweet Enthusiastic Adventurous kid Eddie all the time because they have the best headcanons ever and I want to cram them all into one fic about turtles if they let me

This is why I always stress out about how I write Eddie, because I don’t like to write him being humourless, or unreasonable, or like nothing Richie does is ever good enough — I worry that I’m not making him recognisable as fanon Eddie, y’know? Like, yes he CAN and DOES fire back Richie’s shit just as good as he gets it, which is why I like to think Richie likes him so much, but he’s not cruel about it constantly. Nobody’s bitchy 24/7. Eddie experiences so, so so so sososooso much cruelty in his life and all he ever does is Love and Fight instead of becoming cruel himself. Ffs he changes his cast to say Lover. What 13yo boy does that if not one who’s entirely kind at heart

anyway this is totally incoherent bc it’s been six months and Canon Treatment of Eddie Kaspbrak still riles me up. Here is a v good meta post by @thotfuss with added tags by @jwilliambyers about this whole thing

and here’s another one by @dear-wormwoods

I leave you with a snippet, because you used the phrase “fighter and a lover” and I did the same thing in a WIP a few days ago because I love him. I love spagheddie kaspbonara

[reddiefanart]

#god i'm crying in both sadness and frustration and relief bc this is exactly how i feel#like you can hm and hah and say andy's intentions were there and it was all bad editing and a supercut is happening#but fundamentally.... this movie ruined eddie in every way#like even if major edits did happen it doesn't change the fact that eddie's characterization in ch2 was so inaccurate#you used great examples op but truly any excerpt of eddie in the book shows how caring and introspective he is#i would say that he is naive but he still recognizes good vs bad and does it utmost to differentiate the two even when he is confused#and like you said - he was abused his whole life - and he's still this soft wonderful person in spite of that#he didn't try to brand his trauma with humor - that was richie - so to make him this comedic relief was so wrong#i've seen people try to defend his prickly aggressive attitude by saying he's just so repressed and traumatized#but like NOOOO - his whole character is trying to find the good in the world:#he was faced with so much cruelty in his life he would never want to put that cruelness on others unless they deserved it#(like killing henry which he deserved to do in the movie!!!!)#sure he has flaws and can be narrow-minded - but almost all of his perspectives and issues stem from that abuse#and what's great about him is that he Knows but he's so used to comfort and fears change that it's hard to move forward#that's why his death is so critical - it does complete his arc of accepting himself and finally being 'pure'#he's incredibly multifaceted - brave and soft and so so so so emotional#he's a lover!! and a fighter!!#he is the losers' navigator!!! he is their guiding light!!!#god i just love him so so so so much i really am crying no joke#i wish people really saw the real him when they created content for him#bc book eddie is by far the most superior and deserves all the love#andy calling him a coward is literally my supervillain origin story#andy muschietti i'm gonna pull a harley quinn on you and break your kneecaps when i see you!!!!!#anyway this is basically what emily and i rant about in dms bc we're so frustrated by such ooc eddie interpretations#thank you op for writing this#i love you seriously - sorry i got away in the tags lol

—tags from @jwilliambyers

Every effort Andy Muschietti made to create some sort of emotional catharsis with Eddie’s death was invalidated the minute he decided to portray him almost exclusively as an anxious,high-strung spinoff of the “I’m a Man so I’m sarcastic instead of having feelings” idea. In this essay I will-

[reddiefanart]

i know in the book eddie comes off as so repressed he’s in denial about his sexuality. how about richie though? i see the consensus is that he’s more afraid of people’s opinions than anything else and he does make that pointed ‘going gaily in bareback’ comment to eddie but i have no idea tbh and i love to read ur opinions

Yeah I wrote about the internal vs. external thing back in September (x, x, x) and I guess it caught on a bit, or idk, maybe it popped up elsewhere organically and caught on that way. Regardless, yeah, I think it’s clear that Richie is comfortable with himself on a personal level but is concerned about the way other people perceive him and respond to him. He wants to be liked, he wants to make people laugh, and he wants to project a certain image and persona(s). 

That’s part of why I dislike Andy’s interpretation. To me, Richie does not come off as sexually repressed like, literally at all. He SUpresses his emotions, but he doesn’t REpress jack shit. Richie has a hard time connecting with people because he actively chooses not to do things like cry or open up about himself. But that is not necessarily correlated to the way he might act on his sexuality, y’know? He makes comments about having unprotected sex and says that Sandy was surprised he hadn’t fathered any kids on accident, so he’s definitely in the free love mindset. I think that Richie would ultimately be fine with exploring his bisexuality by hooking up with men, but only on the DL, because again - it’s not about his personal life, it’s about his public image. If he doesn’t want people to know he sleeps with dudes too, people aren’t going to know. It’s not even necessarily shame-related, he’s just being pragmatic - it’s the mid-80′s, he’s on the outskirts of celebrity culture, and he knows exactly how the public would react. 

Eddie spends the novel fighting against himself, this compulsive, intrusive thought that there is something rotten about him that can’t be cured. But that’s not who Richie is. Richie knows himself, he’s just secretive. The shame he feels as a kid is based on him allowing societal attitudes to get to him, it’s not coming from within the way it does for Eddie. Even the werewolf isn’t about personal shame, it’s about being labeled a monster the same way the teen wolf was. Richie knows that he’s a “regular guy” most of the time but that there is a part of him that people would see as Bad if he were to outwardly display it, so he’s not about to outwardly display it. Instead, he chooses what parts of himself to display for others. This is suppression, not repression - one major difference between Richie and Eddie is this. 

IT wearing a Tozier letterman jacket during the walking tour and shouting in a booming, giant’s voice in the middle of a public park that Richie ought to invite both Bev and Eddie down to the sewers to party and causing Richie’s eyeballs to burn is literally Pennywise saying a big “fuck you” to Richie’s privacy. And it works - Richie says “fuck you” right back and then bolts.

Ch.2 almost got there, and could’ve done it well, but they missed the mark by misinterpreting Richie’s whole Deal and turning his external issues into both external and internal (and erasing other things but I don’t feel like beating a dead horse right now).

[reddiefanart]

Wait how did ch2 backpedal on Sonia? Because Eddie was trying to save her in the basement? I wouldn't call that backpedaling, it's just normal for even an abused kid to still feel affection for and want to save his parent. I think I'm missing what you find disappointing, would love to hear your thoughts.

Sonia was an enormous presence in Eddie’s adult life well after her death - she was the thing the haunted him and controlled him and she was the fear that he had to deal with and overcome during the final battle with IT. The reason he feels cleansed and pure as he’s dying is because he was at last able to overcome her voice in his head. She wasn’t physically there in his adult life, but she was still very much present, which didn’t come across in Ch2 at all.

By only including her in flashbacks, Ch2 gives the impression that her impact on him wasn’t permanent - that the ‘hypochondriac’ thing is just who he is, not a lingering tie to her. Andy had an amazing opportunity to address her in Eddie’s adulthood by making her something he had to overcome during the final battle and it would have been a perfect parallel to adult Bev having to overcome her father’s memory again. That he didn’t go that route and instead chose to make the Pomeranian joke... to me, that’s making light, that’s backpedaling in the sense that to them, apparently, Bev’s abuse is serious enough to warrant revisiting but Eddie’s isn’t.

Eddie should never have been given bravery via pep talks from other people, he should have found his bravery by facing his mother in those sewers and overcoming her influence on his own. That was a crucial part of his death and Andy had the opportunity to make it visual and tangible and really cool, but instead he made more jokes. In Ch1 Sonia was a scary presence but in Ch2 he decided she no longer needed to be. Even the way IT portrayed her in the flashback wasn’t scary at all. All of that is what I meant by backpedaling.

[reddiefanart]

I feel like the indifference by the directors of both IT adaptations towards Eddie's abuse is indicative about how Eddie's form of parental abuse isn't taken as seriously by society? Situations like his are treated as a joke or not something seriously damaging, like "haha look at this pathetic emasculated momma's boy lol oedipus complexes are funny XDDD" and it's gross

Exactly. In general psychological abuse isn’t taken as seriously, and the indifference is absolutely made worse by the fact that it’s maternal abuse on a boy. On top of that, the reason people like Sonia get away with what they do is because they’re so good at acting sympathetic - they’re just very worried and have their sick child’s best interest at heart - and equally good at guilt tripping - it must be all their fault for not being a perfect parent. They say things like that to get others to tell them that no, of course they’re doing the best they can, of course they have every right to be worried!! The entire disorder is built on sympathy fishing at the expense of someone else’s well-being.

And like, Stephen King made it really blatantly clear that Sonia isn’t just a worry-wart who only wants Eddie to be happy and healthy. He couldn’t have been more obvious about it. But for some reason that’s kind of what the writers/directors chose to do? Because it’s easier to be like ‘Eddie’s sheltered because his fat mom is weird lol’ than to actually portray factitious disorder and emotional abuse believably.

Every time I think about how Eddie’s entire life was played for laughs in Ch2 my blood BOILS.

[reddiefanart]

I hate how personality-wise, 90s Eddie is the closest to the book, but then appearance-wise, movie Eddie is the closest to the book, but then neither addressed his mother's abuse properly like you said. Ugh, I just wish we could have a perfectly adapted Eddie.

I’ve given up on ever getting a perfectly adapted anything. Not that IT should ever be perfectly adapted because... it should not be... but like... it’s apparently useless to expect even the bare minimum when it comes to Eddie in particular unless the actors themselves do all the heavy lifting. I give Dennis Christopher almost all the credit for 90’s Eddie and same with JDG for 2017 Eddie. They just went above and beyond by either pushing for certain things, having their own headcanons that fit him well, or doing improv that reflected Eddie in a sincere way. The writers/directors just historically don’t understand the character and don’t see his trauma as important or a story worth telling, nor do they see his sexuality as directly tied to his arc just because it’s not made explicit.

Like unless Eddie Kaspbrak literally wills himself into existence and writes his own ideal adaptation and also stars in it as himself, it’s never going to happen.