i donât know how anyone could read It and not come away with the knowledge that richie was a pretty smooth character. he was the one who spoke up when bullies got in his or his friendâs faces even though he knew heâd get his ass kicked. i especially liked when he told belch that they âcould cut off his ears and make cauliflowerâ or whatever the line was. he wasnât afraid to mouth off to adults (the owner of freeseâs, officer nell). his friends found him to be enchanting and charmingâdirect quote from the bookâhowever exhausting that charm was. they beeped him when he was too extra, often while they were crying from laughter, and they honestly all roasted each other, a lot, but it was all in good nature. stan was def the most annoyed by richie out of everyone. i love the scene in the barrens where stan has one hand on richieâs arm, ready to squeeze hard if richie mouths off to officer nell (which he does anyway, and stan just is like âgrow up, richieâ grow up, lol they were 11).
his parents werenât abusive, but they were somewhat emotionally unavailable, especially his mother, which explains why he is not forthcoming with his own feelings and uses humor to cover them up. (golly, SK is really good at developing characters and understanding what different parenting styles do to kids, yall)
and richie wasnt a bumbling dork like most of the fandom wants him to be. when he walked he âjived,â like bopping along, head high. he loved rock music, jerry lee lewis in particular, not because jll was the best piano player, but because he scared richieâs mother (punk ass attitude). he told ben âyou canât let them run your life, manâ when ben was scared of the bowers gang. not to mention the whole âyou know about fucking, dontcha eds?â i loved when he took a smoke break on principle when they were digging the clubhouse, even though he had no smokes. he was even joking when he got pulled out of the smoke hole half dead, after he puked and was like âanyone hungryâ or whatever. humphrey bogarting bev and asking her to marry him until she blushed. he was the only one of the lucky seven who didnât want to exclude bev from going in the smoke hole because she was a girl. his telling marcia fadden and that other boy âmaybe iâll see your motherâs girdle.â âdead. like⌠he was the cool friend, the one who always had a scathing comeback, the one they all went to when they wanted to know something âadult.â and he grew up to be the most famous out of all of them, blowing coke and hobnobbing with people in hollywood.Â
he wasn;t cool all the time though, because no one is. he was real cool until he was scared by It, and then he was a huge baby, screaming and freaking out the loudest. eddie was the opposite of that: anxious as fuck most of the time but when it really came down to life or death, he could draw from deep inside himself to fight. thatâs one of the many reasons reddie complements each other so well. richie navigated life confidently and there wasnât anything he couldnât fix by getting a little foolishâthat was, until he came face to face with It. eddie navigated life by constantly overthinking and worrying about everything, about what his mother would think, but when his friends really needed him he got down to business.
richie was always looking out for eddie, too: he didnât want to let eddie go down into the sewer with a broken arm, he was apprehensive about letting eddie into the smoke hole, he put the aspirator in eddieâs mouth for him and hit the trigger. protective-over-eddie!richie is canon, itâs not âgay stereotypingâ or âfeminizingâ eddie, itâs literally exactly what was written. eddie might not have needed  his protection, but the sentiment was always there, and i will never not write it in my own stuff.
if people want to write richie as the popular fanon view: an inept, dumb, wimpy nerd that all his friends actually hate, thatâs their right as content creators. everyone can write whatever their little hearts desire! thatâs the beauty of fan FICTION. you can write the characters however you want. iâm just sick to death of seeing posts where people are aggressively trying to tell others what to write, especially when most of what they want to see is either vastly different than what the original characters were on paper, or blatantly erasing certain aspects of the character and magnifying others simply because they said so. if you donât like the characterization in a fic, you can just bounce on it and keep it pushin, fam. every rant you put in the world about how youâre tired of seeing a certain characterization is hurting someone who spent hours and weeks and months writing free stories. possibly someone who is already insecure about their writing and is trying their very best to do the character justice. keep that in mind, maybe?
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