I guess this is a Reddie analysis blog now

It mostly has to do with her relationship with her mother and the whole period thing (yes yes King has a preoccupation with periods but that’s beside the point). Bev’s fear of menstruation is symbolic for her fear of womanhood and the sexual objectification that comes with it. Carrie opens with Carrie getting her first period and being taunted for it because she panics, having never been told it would eventually happen. So Carrie isn’t afraid of becoming a woman like Bev was, because she’s too sheltered to even know that’s what’s happening to her - which is where the Eddie and Sonia part comes in.

Carrie’s mother is fanatical (in this case it’s religious fanaticism) and leads Carrie to believe any form of intimacy will make her dirty, that her period happened because she sinned, etc. She controls and manipulates Carrie’s perception of herself and severely limits her exposure to the world so that she can further control her. This is like a combination of Bev’s dad berating her for having sex when she wasn’t even doing that, and Sonia sheltering and manipulating Eddie into believing he is dirty and sick when he isn’t either of those things, but with a more religious twist (though religion does factor into Eddie’s story too).

Furthermore Carrie is bullied at school for being weird and unfashionable, like Bev was (especially in the book where she couldn’t afford nice clothes), and for being sheltered and having a Known Crazy as a mother, like Eddie (at least in part).

Of course Carrie ends up killing her abuser and her bullies, but she also dies wishing she had her mom because King loves to highlight the complexities of attachment and love in abusive parental situations. Despite everything, despite already having killed her mom, and despite the fact that Carrie is only dying because her mom deemed her bad and attacked her, she still wants comfort from her in death. Just as Eddie and Bev both have complicated feelings about and attachment to the memories of their parents.

It’s really something that is left up to interpretation, tbh. He has opioids and other addictive prescriptions, but his level of dependency on them is really left up to headcanon.

Personally, I do think he uses some of them recreationally and is probably an addict.

This paragraph definitely implies that he uses these pills to get high. Also the fact that he hides the quaaludes in a Sucrets box makes me think that this is something he doesn’t even want Myra knowing about. He can explain away pain medication and antidepressants, but it’s a lot harder to come up with a medical reason for using a popular party drug that had already been classified as Schedule I by the CSA at the time the novel takes place. Eddie knows there’s no medical use for it - it’s literally illegal to prescribe - but he has them anyway and is secretive about it, so it’s safe to assume he’s only using them to get high.

Even aside from the quaaludes, the medications on that shelf are almost all addictive and shouldn’t be mixed together. Having multiple prescriptions like that at the same time is highly suspect - what kind of doctor would prescribe someone a benzodiazepine (Valium) and oxycodone (Percodan) and Proproxyphene (Darvon) and a tricyclic antidepressant (Elavil)? Where is Eddie getting these scrips from? Who is he lying to or scamming to get all this at once? He’s not taking them for any real medical reason, because if he was he’d be more careful about combining medications that specifically, by name, warn against taking together or while consuming alcohol (which he also does). On top of that, he still thinks he has severe asthma, but he’s out here taking multiple hardcore medications that shouldn’t be taken by asthmatics, per the warning labels.

Imo he is dependent on these pills and is well aware that he’s using them for their side effects, not for their intended purpose. He doesn’t care about his health as much as he pretends to. He’s just using this stuff to float through life. He implies as much when he thinks “she understood and condoned his remedies in the medicine cabinet because she kept her own in the refrigerator” - in this comment, Eddie is projecting his own understanding of their situation onto Myra. Eddie understands that they are both addicts, Myra with food and himself with pills. He knows that they’re both ‘treating’ their respective issues in unhealthy ways. He accepts her methods because she doesn’t question his, and he’s aware that neither of them are any healthier for it. He assumes that Myra, like himself, is simply choosing not to comment on it because it would mean bursting both of their bubbles and she wants to continue down her own path of self-destruction. Whether or not that’s actually how she sees it is irrelevant - this is how Eddie views this unspoken agreement. I mean, he calls her stupid in the same sentence, so I’m sure he believes he’s put more thought into it than she has. The point is, he’s created an arrangement where he can continue to lie - to himself, to Myra, to his doctors - in order to get high and he’s thankful that Myra doesn’t question it.

There’s also the fact that “Greta” comes to him and tells him that she died while high on reds, which most likely refers to Seconal, another widely abused sedative similar to the ones Eddie uses. In this scene, in stark contrast to “Belch” taunting Eddie sexually, IT is using Greta to tap into Eddie’s subconscious fear that his medication abuse will actually kill him.

And to be frank, I’m pretty sure he had to have been high during the final battle with IT. His arm is broken and not in a cast but he barely complains about crawling around on it and has a pretty chill time while dying, too. I love Eddie to death, but that dude definitely made good use of his bag o’ medicine sometime between killing Henry and leaving the hotel. It doesn’t diminish his heroism or the self-actualization that came in his dying moments, it’s just what I tend to think.

i remember in the book when richie was comforting bill, he put his arm around him and patted his shoulder awkwardly while telling him to stop crying like a baby in a way that sounded like a joke, like him trying to lightly shrug things off, but was probs closer to a genuine request bc he didnt rlly know what to do in that sort of situation and seemed uncomfortable. but then he was also understanding and when bill told richie not to tell anyone he was crying richie was like yeah of course but if i was in your situation i’d cry too. so like, he’s empathetic and reassuring but when it comes to actually executing that by comforting someone he struggles and resorts to physical touch instead, his verbal comfort hidden under his attempts to lighten up the situation. 

he was a sheltered little white kid raised and reared in a small Maine town. he said things he shouldn't have and didnt always know why he shouldn't have been saying them. he also idolized Fats Domino and Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the black musicians who could rock and dance better than anyone.

he dreamed of boppin' till he was blue and dancing till he was black because fuck it, Buddy Holly wore glasses and he was a rock star, so Richie could be, too. he could be the first ever rock and roll star from Maine!

and maybe when True Love Ways came on the radio, he'd spin Eddie around and press their cheeks together and sing to him in his best imitation of Buddy Holly's soft, crooning voice with his pubescent vocal chords, and Eddie would laugh and giggle and tell him how bad he sounded, but let himself be twirled around and around and around while Richie sang to him that sometimes we'll sigh, sometimes we'll cry, and we'll know why; just you and I know true love ways.

this bit stands out to me so much in regards to how richie views boys and girls, and how he differentiates what’s okay to feel about girls and what’s okay to feel about guys and how he tries to rationalize the fact that sometimes he gets the two confused because he feels similarly about both.

i keep thinking about how easy it is for him to consider bev a “pretty guy”. how it’s a concept he fully accepts when it’s bev because that’s what boys do, they think about girls being pretty. it’s almost a way to trick himself and he doesn’t even realize it.

just the fact that he phrases the comment about wondering about someone’s underwear in the form of a question is !!!!!!!!!

this is richie! king of holding his cards close to his chest! he is purposely thinking in a questioning way, trying to brush it off, reassure himself that nah, you don’t think about guys like that! but bev is a pretty guy and he thinks about her underwear. so if he feels about bev the way he feels about the guys - because she’s a pretty guy - then maybe he can feel about the guys the way he feels about bev? he’s not going to give himself a definitive answer. it’s just a question.

can you think about guys the way you think about girls? if bev is a pretty guy then that’s one step closer to letting himself admit there’s a such thing as a pretty guy. and you can think about a pretty guy the same way you think about girls.

Everyone and their mother has shared an opinion on them but here I am. I personally really like them and in this essay I will-

I’m gonna immediately start with how Richie is described even by other people his age as a difficult child. He has very obvious ADHD, and in the 50s it wasn’t well known about, and it was just seen as a child who misbehaved.

People claim Richie’s parents are distant and neglectful but it’s easy to find that they’re portrayed incorrectly there by comparing them to how the denbroughs are written. They’re directly described as disconnected, Maggie and Went are never like that in their description.

So Richie already used his entire allowance before Friday. So he goes begging his dad for movie money, and Went is playful with him instead of shutting him down.

He keeps joking with his son and he even mimics the voices with him! He’s mildly annoyed but keep in mind how Richie acts and how this is him asking his dad for extra. And he still finds it to be jokey and poke fun with his son.

We all know Richie complains about receiving only two dollars for mowing the lawn. We all would wouldn’t we? But again, keep in mind the time, I did a quick search to show how much Went was really offering

20 dollars is a pretty good deal, especially after he’s already gotten his allowance for the week. Allowance usually stems from chores anyways, but his dad gives him another chore and thus gives his son more money. I’m pretty sure the toziers aren’t the richest, so this is a nice gesture.

The thing about Eddie is that he’s really NOT a germaphobe. He like, thinks he is? But only because he’s been raised to be. When push comes to shove though, he’s constantly playing in dirty water, mud, dirt, the fucking garbage dump... like, he cares long enough to complain and consider the risks, but not deeply enough to actually abstain from going along with whatever the group is doing.

The whole thing about Eddie is that he’s only really a hypochondriac and a germaphobe when he’s under his mother’s care and influence. When he’s not around her, when he has other influences, it doesn’t take long for him to forget that he’s “supposed” to be that way. He’s not naturally like that. He’s fussy, but it’s only surface level fussiness.

So, I think his discomfort over sex wouldn’t have much to do with the physical act. Outside of not wanting to catch any STDs, he wouldn’t shy away from sex in a physical sense. Eddie’s discomfort with sex is entirely mental, because of the way he associates his sexuality with sickness and damnation. It’s not really about germs, the leper being gross was a metaphor for this inherent “wrongness” he feels in himself. Once he’s able to overcome that, he’d have no issue with being physical. It’s a mental hurdle that isn’t really connected to the kind of germaphobia he displays in the movies. It’s more about him needing to be comfortable with himself, not other people.

tl;dr Yes, Richie loved, was aroused by and dated women and loved Eddie. Eddie has a weird relationship with his wife and may have loved Richie and even Bill. Also these people have a lot of in depth stuff better than mine if you care for longer reading.

Richie dated a woman for at least two years, sharing passionate moments with her on all levels, especially intellectually, a woman he got the snip for to keep up his side of the pregnancy prevention and a woman he grieved for when they broke up which happened only because they had future plan differences and neither was willing to give up their dreams (which is valid). Richie has pined for one man, Eddie, a pining which has many degrees of subtleness whom he did not confess to or engage in romantic or sexual activities with (to our best knowledge) but had a lasting love for that spanned a good few decades. He also had a small crush on Bev, or at least found her physically attractive. He has a scene where he’s getting aroused over porn mags of women. Not everyone dates a lot, and some bi people only ever seem to date one sex but are still bi. This is absolutely valid of Richie as bi.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone off on here, but here goes nothing... it’s not just anti-reddies that do this, and it’s infinitely worse when it’s not them. 😕 So I’m going to address this from the pro-Reddie angle because what antis say doesn’t matter to me. They’re just being willfully wrong.

Richie teases Eddie but it’s innocent and flirtatious, not anything that makes Eddie genuinely upset or uncomfortable. He’s not a cruel person, he literally says he’s a lover not a fighter. Yes he can be a dick with his words, but his insults are always only directed at people like Henry and his gang. And his voices and jokes, some of them are really offensive and wrong, but I do think he’d listen if anyone ever actually sat him down to explain that to him (beep beep isn’t exactly explanatory). Point is, he’s not out here trying to be mean to people, especially not people he likes. Especially not Eddie. And more importantly, he’d never try to control or manipulate Eddie.

One of the main reasons why Reddie is a good pairing is because Richie is symbolic of the freedom Eddie needs. He’d want Eddie to make his own choices and be independent. Maybe he’s not aware that what Sonia does counts as abuse, but he’d still want to help Eddie gain agency and be free from control!

As for Eddie... I far more often see people (both pro and anti-reddies) say (or portray in fic/art) that Eddie is mean to/bullies Richie, which has even less basis in canon if we’re talking about the book and not Andy Muschietti’s AU. Eddie... is the sweetest person in the universe and would never consistently tell Richie to shut up, call him an idiot or an asshole all the time, or threaten to hit him (like, excuse me??). Eddie tells Richie to beep beep once, and tells him off ONCE for being mean to Stan... the meanest thing Eddie says to Richie is “you’re a real turd sometimes”. People need to seriously stop writing him or drawing him as a raging asshole, it’s not cute or funny like at all.

The second main reason why Reddie is a good pairing is that Eddie genuinely thinks Richie is funny and brilliant and amazing in his own way. Eddie is the person Richie feels comfortable enough with to confide about his ultimate goals and dreams. And for good reason! Eddie lets Richie be Richie without judgment (and when Eddie does tell him off re: being mean to Stan, it’s in an empathetic way). Richie would absolutely point blank never fall for an Eddie that was an asshole, to him or in general. It’s just out of character.

but as an adult, eddie’s voice of reason switched to richie…

and i think it’s also important to note how in the initial fight against It as kids, eddie breaks out of his paralysis because he sees bill in danger

but as an adult, during the final battle, eddie forms a specific telepathic connection with richie, and his last sacrificial act is to protect him and bill.

i just think this parallel shows the immense complexity and growth eddie had as a character. as a child, eddie idolized bill because bill was his first friend who was kind to him and didn’t bully him. he saw bill as someone who was very brave, and because eddie didn’t think he was brave himself, he used bill as the voice inside his head to get the courage he needed to overcome his fears. however, as he grew up, he was able to distinguish that the way he loved bill was like a “big brother…or a father” and his hero-worshipping of him diminished. then instead, richie became the voice inside his head, not because he hero-worshipped richie, but because richie was the one eddie wanted to impress and prove himself to as an adult. 

This is a complicated question because I do think a lot of the pink Eddie trend started with a lot of people in fandom wanting to fit him into the ‘soft boy uwu’ mold at first. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the case with everyone, especially not now that time has passed and people have had the chance to think more deeply about the character.

For me personally, I like to associate him with pink for two major reasons. The first is that it’s a rejection of gender norms and a way to embrace his more flamboyant/feminine side in a way that he was never able to do in the novel because of his fear and denial. I like the idea of Eddie rebelling against his mother’s homophobia and the expectation that he fit into a certain mold by being loud about his identity in really subtle ways - one of those ways being his choice in clothing styles and colors. He’d secretly enjoy the way his personal style would upset his mother, and he’d absolutely enjoy defying expectations on either end of the spectrum - by appearing delicate and soft and proving otherwise with his bravery and skills, and also by shirking traditional masculinity by being a more nurturing and compassionate person.

The other reason is that, in terms of color theory, pink simply suits his personality. Pink symbolizes unconditional love and tenderness, intuition and compassion, healing properties, youth, positivity, and innocence. Eddie’s character is defined by his intuition and his compassion, as well as his sincere and limitless devotion to his friends. He’s idealistic and naive, and retains his childlike innocence well into adulthood due to the nature of his sheltered existence. Even when he’s in a bad mood or trying to be cynical, he still has that touch of hope and belief in goodness. On top of that, the gemstone that shares the baby pink color associated so often with Eddie is rose quartz, the top healing crystal, which is supposed to bring about love, acceptance, and clarity, ward off anxiety and illness, and ease one’s passage into death with spiritual healing, if physical healing isn’t possible. When Eddie dies he experiences this total lack of anxiety, a final and resolute self acceptance and clarity of mind, and dies feeling at peace with his identity. He might as well be a walking rose quartz gem tbh.

i’ve always associated eddie with the color pink! particularly the salmony pink that matches his tiny train shirt in chapter one :) i know color theory enthusiasts probably understand the color’s meaning better than i ever could, but for me, pink is the color of sweetness, nurturing, and love. pink is the mixture of red and white - red is usually connected with bravery and boldness while white can be seen as purity and light - and eddie being a combination of those two just fits perfectly because he is a lover and a fighter! also, i think pink is a more muted version of red’s passion and intensity because it adds in white’s softness and compassion. i’m sure people won’t like the idea of eddie+pink because pink has a lot of ‘negative’ connotations: in the past, pink was used as a targeted mark for gayness and nowadays is associated with femininity. but i think it’s important to recognize that those stereotypes were the reasons eddie was bullied and called a “sissy queerboy.” so, in both stereotypical and non-stereotypical ways, pink represents eddie the best.