#i want to love you but i don't know how (*kaspbrough)

[antisociallilbrat]

Reddie Vs Byler

Okay I am once again here with a take that may not be that popular but I think it's worth a conversation. If you have a different opinion please feel free to comment on this post or inbox me.

So I've said this before but I'll say it again: I have been in the It fandom since the beginning of it, Sept 2017, and I crossed into the St fandom later that year but didn't start actively posting about it until about a year ago.

Point is I've seen some shit.

I've compared these two fandoms before and their behaviors but I want to specifically talk about Reddie and Byler, two ships that are the biggest in their respective fandoms. (I know Byler's spot for the number one ship may be rivaled by ships like St Steddie but they're still up there in popularity.)

Reddie in the It fandom has been big since the beginning, and only grew bigger (maybe 'exploded' is a better term) after the 2019 movie. You can see why it's popular, it features two of the most loved characters in the fandom, the dynamics are fun, and it inspires great fanart/fics. Look, I've never been the biggest Reddie shipper but I can recognize this as fact.

Let's talk about the shippers real quick. There are a lot of Reddie shippers that are great but the ship is not without people that cause discourse- especially in the early days of the It fandom. I think any big ship has these people, it comes with the territory of being a 'big' ship.

Back in the early days of the It fandom, when the fandom was more alive, there were Reddie shippers who didn't like Kaspbrough or Stozier and would make that known. Those ships are the two that would rival Reddie the most so it makes sense those ships weren't liked by some of them. Also Kaspbrough which features Bill and again, some, Reddie shippers did not like Bill but that's another conversation.

But here's the thing: even if Reddie had a few of those...problematic shippers, the overall ship space of it was relatively safe. There has never been shipping discourse in the It fandom like how it is in the St fandom. Here's a post I made on why that probably is a while back, but to some it up; it's just widely accepted that all the Losers love each other and every ship is valid and because of that there's never been a lot 'anti certain ship' rhetoric.

Now onto Byler. There is so much anti ship rhetoric and a lot shipping discourse but to say it's all the Byler shipper's fault would be frankly ridiculous. Shipping discourse and the Stranger Things fandom walk hand in hand at the this point, despite how much I wish that wasn't the case.

No matter what you ship in the St fandom, there are going to be people who hate you for it and focus all their energy on talking shit about the ship and trying to bully down shippers of it. I truly don't understand these people because why focus on being a dick and tearing people down for shipping a ship you don't like instead of focusing on the ship you do like? I don't get it, why be a jerk?

Yes there are Byler shippers like this but the same can said for every ship in St fandom. You can't really point a finger at a ship and call all it's shippers bad because it's a moot point. Also to look at couple bad seeds and then call the whole demographic 'bad' it's so...dumb and wrong.

But the point of this post is to compare Byler and Reddie. I can't really talk about the shipping discourse around just Byler because I would have to talk about it around every ship in the St fandom and how it all connects and intertwines...that's just another post in itself.

The only reason I brought it up in the first place was to highlight the shipping discourses with Byler vs how it is with Reddie. Moving on.

There is one huge difference with the Reddie and Byler and that's Reddie is canon. Keep in mind it's only firmly canon in the movie canon, but canon is canon.

Byler on the other hand has yet to become canon. It feels like the natural progression of Will and Mike's story arc depending on how they handle it but at the end of the day, we simply don't know what will happen with the 'canon' of this ship.

You could equate Reddie's 'boom' of shippers after the 2019 movie because it became canon. Who's to say the same won't happen with Byler after season 5? If it becomes canon?

Another thing- Reddie shippers for the most part didn't expect the ship to become canon, it just didn't seem like a thing that would happen honestly. That being said they also didn't care if it didn't become canon, that wouldn't take away from the enjoyment of the ship for them. There wasn't a ton of concrete 'canon' build up to it, just speculation and theories that paid off when Reddie surprisingly became canon. When you look at Byler, there is some 'canon' buildup for it so it's not unreasonable for people to think it can happen. Reddie happened didn't it?

But let's take 'canon' out the equation real quick because I want to get to the point that started the idea of this post in my head.

Unlike Byler, Reddie has never had a real ship it was pitted against. It didn't come from a fandom where ship vs ship was common unlike Byler. I mentioned Stozier and Kaspbrough and the few bad seeds of the Reddie shippers but even with that it still didn't really happen. Probably because *romantic* Stozier and Kaspbrough were only popular in fanon and not canon.

Byler shippers do have a heavy ship they're pitted against, which honestly is a fandom issue, and that's where so much of the discourse comes from. They have justifications for wanting their ship to be canon and sometimes they have to beg to be heard.

On the other hand, the 'bad seeds' of the Byler shippers are much more numerous than they ever where with Reddie shippers and they contribute a just as much as any other St ship's 'bad seeds' to the shipping discourse and the reason for that is simple. Byler has a bigger mainstream audience, it's a so much bigger than Reddie even when Reddie was in its hayday. Logically, the more people who ship a ship, the more bad seeds there's going to be.

Okay I'm done, I ended up rambling a lot and I'm sorry. Thank you if you actually read this.

[diedbrave]

Things that have come up in the past two IT chapters (Ben Hanscom Takes a Fall and Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil) that are less head canons, and more things that I want to like remind people of that I absolutely play up in my version of Eddie.

Eddie is absolutely a cry baby. I know in the new movies we don't really see him cry much, instead he tends to cover it up with anger. But my Eddie loves to cry. He is literally referred to as the weeper in Ben's chapter before he knows Eddie's name, so. When my Eddie gets frustrated, he's going to cry. He might cuss about it a little and try to cover it up, but he's soft.

Eddie is into mechanical things. I definitely think he would be a great car mechanic if it wasn't for the grease and germs of it all, so I imagine he does that stuff as a hobbyist. He's the one who basically makes Silver fully functioning, and Bill praises how good he is at fixing things up. Let's not forget this is such a part of Eddie's character, especially since we don't really get that in any of the movie renditions.

Eddie goes to the emergency room twice a week. There's a line in the novel that says that Sonia should start paying rent to the orderlies, with how often her and Eddie spend in the hospital. My Eddie tries to go to a hospital as a very last resort nowadays because he spent so much time there as a child that it's an easily triggering place.

More head canon or popular assumption, but I think we are all pretty aware Eddie doesn't actually have asthma. I'd argue (though it isn't downright stated) that what he is having are panic attacks. I think he still has physical symptoms - tight chest, hard to breathe, etc. - but it always happens when he's in moments of genuine panic. You cannot tell me that Eddie Kaspbrak isn't diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or even Panic Disorder.

This is more head canon, and I'd have to talk to my lovely girlfriend to see if she agrees, but Eddie is the only Loser actively allowed to talk about Georgie. I say this because it really seems that Eddie is the only Loser that really knew Georgie on a personal level, and Eddie approaches Ben once Bill leaves the barrens and basically lectures him about never bringing up Georgie around Bill. I think this last part is obvious, but it's the fact that Eddie is the one giving this information (which is kind of protective and really sweet). Eddie is also the only one to note that "Bill stuttered significantly less before Georgie died", so as the only one that truly knows Bill prior to all these incidents....I just have lots of opinions on that and that's why I ship Kaspbrough, okay?

Eddie has low esteem. I think all the Losers obviously do, but it really hit me when Ben says "you guys are really cool" and Eddie gets this look on his face and says something along the lines of, "Yeah, well, Bill is." This of course plays into his hero-worshipping of Bill, but Eddie will never see himself as anything more than the asthmatic hypchondriac loser, and even though I'd argue they reclaim the word loser to be a good thing, Eddie still struggles with seeing himself as anything remotely cool.

[eddiespaghettti]

tag dump haaa

[the-angry-pixie]

You don't like Reddie, right? You've gone out of your way to argue against posts that talk about meaningful moments between them in the past and have reblogged posts that bash the ship. Yet you also ship OT7? How does that work if you don't support all the relationships therein or actively minimize the strength between one combination of them? I'd also be interested to know why you dislike the ship so much considering you're into massively popular ships that take up a whole fandom like (1/2)

Cherik. I bring that up because the common argument I see used against reddie is that “it’s overrated and too popular when there are other interesting ships in the fandom”, which is literally applicable to Cherik in the XMen fandom. This probably sounds more accusatory than I intend for it, I’m just interested in the rationale behind all of this. It’s absolutely fine that you don’t like reddie, but I’m confused on how that works when you support OT7 (2/2)

Hoooookay. Lets break this down shall we?

- First and most importantly (i think) of all. Whether I like a ship or not has nothing to do with how popular within the fandom it is. It has everything to do with whether i find the characters and their dynamic interesting. So your mention of Cherik doesn’t really check out in this instance because I would have liked Cherik whether they were a rarepair or the most popular ship. Because I love their relationship dynamic. Thats it. Simple.

- Same goes for Reddie and my non-interest in them as a ship. I don’t dislike them as a ship. I just don’t find their dynamic together particularly interesting. Has nothing to do with them being a popular.

- I like what I like, what I like, what I like. There’s probably deeper meanings to my preferences buuuuuut. I gave up writing essays when i finished uni so sorry, you’re not going to get any bigger explanation from me than that. Here’s a post where I attempted to explain (not very well, but I tried) my disinterest in Reddie if you want to read that.

- You’re right, I do ship OT7 and that means I really do like Reddie as a ship just as I like all the “combinations” that come out of shipping 7 people together. But I don’t think that means I have to ship all those combinations equally.

- And I don’t. I definitely have favourite pairings (ones that I ship even outside the OT7 context) - I’m a total slut for Stozier, Bichie, Kaspbrough, Steddie, Stanscom. Why do I like those ones over other ones. I DUNNO. I honestly don’t think about it all that much. Its just preferences man.

- And on the flipside of that I have combinations that I’m not all that interested in, but still ship in the OT7 context. Like I don’t seek out fic or coo over moodboards for these pairings like I do with others - like Reddie, Stanlon, Stenbrough, Benverly, Kasplon. It’s not that I dislike those ships - they just don’t interest me as much as others do.

- And I also think that its important to differentiate “the fandom” and “the ship”. Cause I tell ya, Reddie fandom gets on my nerves a lot. But I try not to generalise, there are lots of individuals in that fandom and its probably only a small chunk that are “too silly” for me to deal with

- In conclusion, you seem to have the impression that I dislike Reddie, which is not true. They just don’t interest me enough to actively ship them outside of a poly-losers context. I also don’t think I’ve ever bashed them as a ship. Maybe side-eyed or been disparaging towards the fandom… but like I said above, thats a different thing.

p.s. I happen to have a surprisingly prolific Reddie tag. Who knew? ha ha