Reddie Fanart

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.

(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

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.

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 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. 

1) everyone who hates soft eddie can cry about this, but in book eddie is by canon a soft boy, unlike the movie

2) he IS a spitfire still. Book Eddie killed Bowers, was the first to fight against the monster cookies in the reunion, and was the person who led them in and out of of the sewers (expect for after he died). Unlike the movie, where he constantly froze, book eddie was the first of the losers to spring into action when it mattered.

3) movie eddie is constantly shutting down richie. And book eddie DID banter a lot with richie, it was their thing they banter. But he was also the one who laughed THE MOST at his jokes. And the hardest. And would constantly try to hide his smile when telling richie to shut up.

4) book eddie was the first one to say beep beep richie when richie made a joke too far. He would laugh the hardest at richie, but was also the person who kept him in check the most (book richie honestly crosses the line a lot, movie richie doesnt).

There was a genuine empathetic and sincere connection between Richie and Eddie. There’s a scene in the book where they’re alone reading comics in Eddie’s attic and Richie is just telling Eddie about all his goals and dreams for the future and Eddie’s just dazed by how amazing Richie is. They’re REALLY close and in the movie, it seems like Eddie can barely STAND Richie.

Richie KNOWS Eddie’s potential for bravery. The most sincere part of Chp2 was the “you’re braver than you think” which was immediately ruined by its connection to fat mom jokes again. Richie doesn’t need to add a punchline to every nice thing he says, and he believes so much in Eddie, and he’s endeared by Eddie’s attempts to seem “weak” while also ignoring them. Ie; after Eddie fights the Eye in the sewer Richie literally HUGS him and is like god I love this boy 

Richie is the second in command to the Losers. He’s Bill right hand man and that means he gives a FUCK about the group as a whole. It makes sense he would be in love with hands down the BRAVEST and most selfless of the Losers re: Eddie. Eddie who doesn’t need to be told to risk his neck for his friends. As mentioned above, we see Eddie overcoming his fear constantly for the sake of his friends. Richie no doubt LOVES that.

I definitely think their banter was lost in translation because in the movie it just comes off as borderline antagonism when really in the book it’s extremely flirty since a lot of it is often accented with Richie calling Eddie cute, “Eddie my Love” or “Eds” (which in the book ONLY Richie called Eddie Eds....I hate that they changed that because it was such an intimate RichieandEddie only thing). 

The Real Eddie Kaspbrak would NEVER have let Richie nearly have his face ripped off by spider Stan. The REAL Eddie Kaspbrak wouldn’t just flounder on the rocks while Bev gets pulled under the water and everyone else dives in but him. The REAL Eddie Kaspbrak wouldn’t be constantly irritated by his friends, by Richie. Eddie’s a soft, loving, compassionate character whose loyalty prevails his abuse and is the one healing gift from his friends. Eddie is THE most loyal, THE most loving of the Losers, and if ur gonna look me in the eye and insinuate that Richie Tozier isn’t in love with him for those reasons? You’re a liar and don’t understand Richie Tozier or Eddie Kaspbrak at all.

The real Eddie is brave and the first to leap into action (Ch1 captured this wonderfully but Ch2 just... forgot about it). Richie loves him for his bravery. And he loves that he’s the one who can get Eddie to open up and laugh. 

The real Eddie is soft and empathetic and would die for his friends no questions asked, no pep talk needed (again, Ch1 captured this, Ch2 did not). Richie loves him for his selflessness, this tiny delicate-looking boy who isn’t delicate at all and doesn’t stop to worry about himself if his friends need him. 

The real Eddie encourages Richie’s dreams and ambitions more than anyone (AGAIN, Ch1 captured this - ‘you’re brilliant!’ - and Ch2 absolutely did not)! Richie loves him more because he’s endlessly supportive and more importantly safe to be himself around. 

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.

like i knew – i agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY with everything you said. what prompted my initial post was: someone shared a quote from the book, mike explaining who adrian was, gay and asthmatic, and eddie reached for his inhaler which is one of SO MANY PIECES OF EXPLICIT GAY CODING. and somebody in the replies said “lmao ok whatever floats your boat” or. something dismissive like that. i clearly got frustrated enough to post and then i was like “hm. why does this upset me so much. he is Fictional”

looking at it all - GOD you’re SO RIGHT – comments like these are SO dismissive. we get so much of eddie’s thoughts, he basically shits poetry as an adult, it’s so hard – impossible without being just. homophobic – to say “no sorry i’m going to ignore him” ESPECIALLY for a character as important as him

(1. book written in the 80s 2. he IS flamboyant and NOT straight passing.) unfortunately there is a reason bowers and co. called him certain words and while that’s not okay he EMBRACES himself right as he dies and god. which is another reason why ch2 rips so much away from him - and his important character arc too. yeah sure. we get gay richie. we see the external/internal homophobia and then acceptance. but with book eddie …. we get so much. he is so strong, and proud, and yknow what?? andy muschietti come at me - i fucking KNOW people assumed eddie would be the “token gay adult” after ch1 based on THOSE IMPORTANT STEREOTYPES you talk about eshli because i’ve SEEN people fuck around with it (on tik tok but. shhh). and guess what ???? it would’ve been OKAY to play into those stereotypes instead of going ! surprise ! ignore the book - it’s actually the bisexual who’s gay (which. is bi erasure but that’s something else.)

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

Again, I GET how hard it is to take a fucking behemoth like It and turn it into something palatable for a mainstream audience that isn’t literally 10 hours long, but they cut so much of Eddie’s character from the book. And I see people portraying Eddie as like. This prickly asshole who is just kind of…mean and grumpy all the time and very stingy with his affection. Which, to be fair, is mostly how he’s portrayed in the movies. I can’t blame anyone for that given that a lot of people have only seen the movies, it just sucks because Eddie’s characterization in the book is SO much more than that. Eddie LOVES his friends, and I just really, really do not think this comes through in the movies enough. Yeah, he ribs them and banters and yeah he’s loud and hyperactive and high-strung, but he also has quotes like this one:

Which is genuinely one of my favorite quotes of all time! And he has SO many quotes like that. Eddie has pages and pages of inner monologue about how much he loves his friends. He is, in every sense of the word, a Lover. That image of his cast would be SO much more evocative if they’d continued with that characterization! I think JDG hit the nail on the head in this part of Eddie’s letter:

(If this is hard to read, it reads “I would die for my friends. They are my everything.)

One of the main things about Eddie’s character that is SO important to me is that he endured YEARS of abuse-he knows the world is cruel. He’s been exposed to that cruelty for literally his entire life! And he comes out on the other end just as soft, and loving, and kind as before. He’s not naive, he’s not dumb, he knows how the world works! He’s always known-

But he CHOOSES to be loving, he CHOOSES to be kind, he CHOOSES to be willing to do anything for his friends, right up to and including laying down his life for them. But they erased so much of this from his character, and in doing so detracted a LOT of the payoff of his final sacrifice. So, okay. They needed to make it effective and moving anyway. And they had to work with what they had at that point. So they went the “Oh He’s Not a Coward, Actually!” route.

Obviously they had to make Eddie’s death a final show of bravery in order to get any semblance of the emotional payoff that they were going for, and the natural lead up to that is for him to be portrayed as…not brave.  But he’s NOT weak, he’s never been weak! He was GENUINELY one of the strongest, fiercest, bravest kids in the first movie! 13 year old Eddie Kaspbrak jumped into a creek to have easier access to the bullies he was throwing rocks at because they said something about a girl he barely knew!! 13 year old Eddie Kaspbrak got the call that his friends were in trouble, confronted his abusive mother on years and years of systematic control and manipulation, and just DIPPED on out of there to go save his friends. With one arm! He hung up, yelled at his mom, and literally jumped off the porch because “my friends need me.” 13 year old Eddie Kaspbrak climbed down a well with one arm, was once again confronted with his biggest fear, and literally fucking kicked the ancient entity that just threw up on him in the fucking face anyway! To quote the book again,

Eddie grew up in an environment that was NOTHING but suffocating, all-consuming fear and paranoia, but even so he spent his entire life ACTIVELY fighting that. Eddie has NEVER been anything but brave and ready to die for his friends at any given moment! And okay, maybe I could buy the idea that years of emotional abuse contributed to that regression, had Eddie’s entire storyline NOT been reduced to a joke. But it was! It was, and therefore ANY possible emotional payoff that they could have ostensibly played off of at this point was reduced to a moment of comedic relief. Including his literal death! His ACTUAL last words were a cheap joke and I will NEVER be over that fact.

I could genuinely go on about this for probably a hundred pages, but what it boils down to is this. The original source material for It is…a lot. And a lot of it is profoundly and unequivocally just Not Good. But, for me at least, the parts that were good, the parts that struck me so much that I’ve been on about these characters for more than 3 years now, is just that- the characters. The genuine depth that is afforded to these characters has literally carved a permanent place in my heart for this story. There’s all these little gold mines of heartfelt portrayals of friendship, and emotional sensitivity, and love. It’s just…surrounded by unnecessary reminders that Women Have Boobs Actually.

And when they plopped this source material on the cutting board to trim it up for a screen adaptation, they did the equivalent of like. Spending forever cutting up a pomegranate and scooping out all the seeds and then throwing them away and serving the outer rinds instead. There is SO much filler in that book that is just not necessary, and if they’d spent less screen time focusing on, I dunno, Bill and Bev’s misinterpreted residual feelings from childhood crushes and more on genuine characterization, it would be so much more compelling to me. And in the end, if Eddie HAD to die, it would have been MUCH more palatable had they actually put effort into expanding upon his character instead of making him ½ of the comedic relief duo even as he was dying.

Reading Eddie’s death SUCKED. Like It Sucked! But it WAS emotionally compelling to me, because it expanded upon previous characterization and it finished up his arc in a way that. Okay, obviously wasn’t satisfying in the slightest, but at least made sense? Like here’s his monologue right as it’s happening: 

And this is something that simply does not translate into the movie WHATSOEVER, because Eddie’s own perception of himself, of his flaws and impurities aren’t even TOUCHED on. I won’t even go into the amount of gay coding that was erased from his character, that’s been expanded upon enough and it honestly just makes me incredibly angry, but even after removing THAT lens from this passage it’s an important insight into his character. It creates an emotional payoff that couldn’t possibly be replicated in the movie, even if they HAD given him his actual last lines (everybody knows them, I just need to include them anyway because this comparison makes me furiously angry):

But they didn’t even give him THAT, they gave him another joke! Another moment of. Whatever they were going for there. They erased SO much of the tenderness and genuine love and emotion that Eddie’s character is so intrinsically tied into that they couldn’t even give him that moment of emotional reflection as he DIED! This is literally my supervillain origin story. 

This is incredibly long and has somehow morphed into another long-winded TED Talk by Me, entitled Why I Love Eddie Kaspbrak (And Why You Should To!) BUT tl;dr It Chapter 2 put too much effort into reinforcing the rigid characterization that they reduced Eddie to rather than spending it developing him as a person, and as a result his most compelling traits were completely neglected; doing so made it almost impossible to consume his character’s ending with anything but anger and dissatisfaction. 

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.

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.

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.

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.