fenixme

if it’s not clear, I love Eddie and Bill

[itsfenixme]

I really don’t like when people say that Bill saw Eddie as a younger brother because that is quite a poor reading on their relationship. I would argue that he’s the only one of the losers to not see him as a younger brother.

The thing I want to make clear is that Bill saw Eddie as an equal, he wanted Eddie to be part of every activity that the loser club was doing, not only because he was his best friend, but because he was fully sure that he would have been able to deal with them like anyone of the others. That’s why he wanted to bringing Eddie in the Smoke Hole and later on in the sewers fighting IT.

To him Eddie wasn’t a scared child that needed to be protected, he was just a person that he really cared about.

I won’t argue that Bill was clearly protective of him, because that is true, but the reason he was isn’t that he thought of Eddie as a replacement of George, but because he loved and cared about him as much as he loved George. His trauma gave him the fear of losing people he loves and both of them ate portrayed as the most important people in his life. He wanted to protect him because he wasn’t able to do it with George.

I feel like everyone wants to protect people they love, can you imagine how much more intense it would be for a kid who just lost his brother in such an horrible way?

On the other hand, Eddie didn’t saw Bill as an equal, he saw in him an idealized version of what he wanted to be. That’s why he said that he saw Bill as a father/older brother figure, because THAT is normally who other kids his age see as their hero. Eddie has no idea what feelings you should have for a brother or a father, he just imagines them because he never had those figures in his life.

Going back to Bill, the parallelisms between Eddie and George are NOT a prove that Bill saw them both as his younger brothers, but they are there because IT wants to haunt Bill with the memory of someone he loved that he wasn’t able to save.

[itsfenixme]

Bill… is that you?

[itsfenixme]

‘Ben would have made the same wish as Bear’ ABSOLUTELY NO. It’s clear that you don’t understand anything about the character.

Ben literally spends like 2 pages talking about, even if he loves Bev immensely, what it matters to him is that SHE is happy.

He doesn’t mind that she loves Bill because he knows that it makes her happy and he also knows that no matter what Bill would never love her like he does, for Ben is enough that Bev exists in his mind to be happy.

And in the end he got the girl without even using any special wish, so he won anyway.

[itsfenixme]

I wanted to write something about this universe where the losers came back fighting IT not as 38 years old, but as 18 years old. But as I was writing down a general idea of what they were supposed to be like, Bill ended up sounding just like Jonathan Byes from stranger things…

It doesn’t help the fact that Eddie is starting to resemble even more s1 Nancy Wheeler.

At this point I should just make Richie a cheap version of Steve Harrington and call it a day lol… he’s kinda like him in s3 without the good look… so then s3 Robin is Stan while s4/s5 Robin certainly Bev.

[zeke-the-nighthawk]

BEN LIKED THE WAY HIS LAUGH SOUNDED WITH BILL AND EDDIES 😭😭😭😭😭

[itsfenixme]

I don’t want people to believe I hate reddie or that I despise people who ship them, I just can’t stand people that talk about them like if they are canon or whoever mischaracterize them just to make them sound in love (I hate it with every ship, reddie is just the most popular so those things are more common btw).

Do I decided to share a cute thing I notice reading the book that I NEVER see people talk about.

Earlier in the novel Eddie mentioned that his favorite artist is Jerry Lee Lewis (yes, the one who later married his 13 years old cousin, but let’s not talk about that) and later one, when Richie is talking about music with Mike and Ben, he of course first mentioned Buddy Holly and Little Richard (who he often says are his favorite artists), but he refuses to talk about Jerry Lee Lewis, who he calls ‘his secret obsession’.

And it’s not like he was a unknown artist: he was one of the most famous rock artists in the world at the time. So yeah, I thought it was cute.

[itsfenixme]

I want to focus a little more about Eddie and Bill’s relationship since I feel like I could have said more especially from Eddie’s perspective (they are my favorite dynamic in the group if it’s not clear lol).

I wanted to talk a little more about how they are literally codependent on one another ESPECIALLY Eddie. On this post I decided to write a couple of signs of codependency and this time even with quotes from the book.

1. Difficulty experiencing appropriate levels of self-esteem:

Eddie always brings himself down when talking about Bill who he see as this amazing figure that is so much better than him. He has an hard time even believing that someone as cool as Bill would ever be his friend because he’s such a loser.

2. Idealization

Connected to the previous one, he sees in Bill this role model who he has to inspire and that can do bo wrong. Of course that is not true since Bill os a flawed character like anyone else.

3. A mood that reflects how others feel rather than your own emotions:

There are numerous times when his mood was ruined just because he thought that Bill was a little sad to the point he literally couldn’t focus about anything else than how Bill was feeling.

4. Constant feeling of self-sacrificing

It’s not once, but numerous times, Eddie talked about how he would be ready do to everything for Bill, even if that meant losing his life. Then maybe less extreme, but still concerning are the times he say ‘For you, Big Bill’ as if everything depended on his approval. 

Like I’ve said in my previous posts, I believe that this behavior stems from the emotional incestus relationship with his mother who basically acts like if she couldn’t live without him and the absence of father figure certainly doesn’t help.

It doesn’t help the fact that Bill didn’t even realize that this is happening or maybe even encouraged it (we don’t know what happened before the story between the two). I see that very likely because he’s a very lonely boy who barely get considered at home so maybe unconsciously he made the affection stronger so that he could get that love he so desperately missed and because in that way he knew that he at least wouldn’t leave him.

Even the fact he calls Eddie his only real friend is such an important detail: he saw Eddie as the closest person he had in his life after losing George (since we know that his parents emotionally neglected him). They both believed they had only each other so they idea that they became codependent on one another wouldn’t be really that surprising.

[itsfenixme]

I HATE HATE HATE fem Eddie. Because if you believe that Eddie would ever try to resemble a woman, it’s clear you don’t understand anything about the character.

I have no problem with this happening with any of the other characters like trans fem Ben is completely fine, but with Eddie, his struggles to be seen as a man are a big part of his character.

He’s more effeminate (for the standards of the 1950s) than your average 11 year old boy and that is something often remarked. Words like ‘thin’, ‘small’, ‘pale’ are normally used to describe girls not boys, but that is the description that we are given of Eddie. Another thing Eddie is way more soft spoken than the other, and most of the tine he’s behavior is almost childlike and that is yet again not a characteristic typical of male characters. And his role for most of the story is of the one getting protected, not the other way around.

Another proof of my argument is that when the author has to compliment Eddie’s look, he doesn’t use ‘handsome’, but ‘beautiful’ an adjective that is more often associated with a feminine kind of beauty. Also let’s both forget that Henry like many other people that knew Eddie considered him queer most likely because of that.

There are a lot of other things that suggest that Eddie is more feminine than the others, but I wanna go back to why I wrote this post in the first place.

Eddie absolutely hates all of this, he isn’t intentionally trying to make himself more feminine, that is part of his internal struggle for most of the novel: he wants to be seen more manly. That it’s also why I suspect that the first thing we see him do is talking back at Henry: for once he wants to be the ‘hero’ that doesn’t sit back and just watch. Also every time he gets scared or he feels about to cry he thinks ‘Bill wouldn’t do that’ because he sees Bill as the man he wants to be.

And I believe that his need to look more masculine can be seen even in his interest: Eddie is into things normally associated with males like mechanics, trains, cars, cowboys etc.

All of this also make his death/the time be fought IT with his inhaler even more meaningful since bravery is what often is considered the most masculine of characteristic.

[itsfenixme]

I have to admit it, I didn’t come up with this on my own, I saw some people on TikTok doing this with strangers thing characters so I thought I had to do it with the loser club.

The losers as the seven souls from undertale:

Patience - Mike

Bravery - Eddie

Integrity - Stan

Perseverance - Richie

Kindness - Ben

Justice - Bev

Determination - Bill

[itsfenixme]

One of my favorite things is that in ‘Bill Denbrough beats the Devil’ there is a scene where Ben says to Eddie that he believes that he and Bill are cool and Eddie responds: ‘Bill is’ as a way to show that he doesn’t see himself anyway close Bill’s level of coolness.

The funny thing is that this chapter should be Bill’s memory about what happened that day, but the problem is that he wasn’t there and that conversation is never mentioned again (except for the ice cream part) so unless they told him exactly what happened between scenes that we don’t see (something that I find very unrealistic) or, as I like to imagine, Bill came out with this conversation in his head imagining that for sure Eddie said to Ben how amazing he is, and writing that on his diary while fantasizing about what other things Eddie could have possibly told Ben about him.

Then there are still some people that try to say that Eddie was the only one in love.

[itsfenixme]

You can’t convince me that what there was between Eddie and Bill in the book was completely platonic, especially in earlier chapters. If Bill would act the same with Richie, the boy would question his friend sexuality. AND WE HAVE THE PROOF OF THAT.

When Eddie started crying after talking about the leper, Bill immediately goes there to hug him and to calm him out (it’s also stated that the others were embarrassed at seeing them like that), but when Bill was crying the best Richie did was to put a arm around his shoulder, but he immediately took it away because he thought that people might have believed that they were homosexual if they saw them like that.

[itsfenixme]

I was rereading some parts of the book for my Richie and Eddie’s relationship analysis (it will come soon I promise) and I couldn’t help, but noticing how one sided Eddie and Richie relationship is.

Not only if you see it as romantic, but even as friends. Richie would do ANYTHING for Eddie while Eddie barely considered him at all. He’s not only kinda rude with him (most of the times, Richie deserves it) but he completely ignores him.

Eddie is my favorite character, but I have to say it: he was an awful friend to Richie, you deserve a better friend than him.

[asadwriter]

Oh, the emotionally incestous relationship that Sonia and Eddie have sickens me.

Not only did Sonia only want Eddie for herself, she didn't want him to have friends because they could steer him away from her "love", but she also made Eddie believe that his mom is completely right.

Think about it like Ed Gein's relationship with his authoritative mother, it soon turned into an obsession with power and deciding to become his mother and be fully powerful. And he did so using his skin suits made from human remains.

Now I don't believe that Eddie would go that far, but it's similar in the way that their relationship with their mothers is very problematic and shapes their view of power and relationship dynamics.

Also the isolation that both of them faced was detrimental to their emotional development and their way of viewing normal mother-son relationships. Eddie was forcibly isolated by Sonia, from his friends and school for long periods of time with the excuse of his millions of illnesses (even if he wasn't sick at all). Ed Gein was also isolated by his family, he lived on a pig farm with no neighbours and in a house that was covered in animal shit.

Ed Gein is a serial killer and a grave robber, but his relationship with his mother was his motivation to commit those crimes, building up his fantasies and his homicidal ideation over the idea that women were stronger than men and more powerful and the most powerful of them all is his mother.

Eddie kaspbrak had a chance to socialize and to have better emotional skills despite his mother's best efforts, and that was because of the losers. He wasn't fully isolated because of them, and I believe that he would've turned out so much differently if he had contact with the losers during his formative years and adulthood. Their friendship was his anchor.

[princess-glassred]

When someone says Eddie Kaspbrak is weak and not very brave:

[itsfenixme]

I was thinking about the poem ‘Monday’s child’ and you know… seven days… seven losers…

Monday's child is fair of face - Beverly

Tuesday's child is full of grace - Stan

Wednesday's child is full of woe - Bill

Thursday's child has far to go - Richie

Friday's child is loving and giving - Ben

Saturday's child works hard for a living - Mike

But the child that is born on Sabbath day, Is bonny and blithe, good and gay - Eddie

[itsfenixme]

I’ve been reminded about a topic I wanted to treat for a while now: Is Bill and Eddie’s relationship unhealthy? Even if in this post I will basically analyze every aspect of their relationship.

Eddie grew up with an emotional immature parent and for him caring about someone means basically ‘do everything to make them happy’, with Bill his obsession is even more intense because Bill for the longest time was the only friend he ever had and the only kid how treated him with some kind of respect.

Another part of Eddie’s personality is also that he’s VERY insecure to the point he believes that his friends are basically doing a act of charity at hanging around him. And that is even stronger around Bill because he can’t accept the idea that someone normal like Bill wanting to spend time with a ‘freak’ like him. He believes that he’s undeserving of that friendship.

His insecurity is very clear in Eddie’s bad break when Bill wants to sign his cast, he can only think that if he broke his arm earlier that spring nobody would have sign it WHEN IT’S NOT TRUE.

Than also he admires Bill because has a stronger personality than him (basically isn’t a crybaby), Bill ignores the bullies and mostly Bill is cool. A normal kid would do nothing about it, but for Eddie that never had a good parenting figure, he tries to imitate those behaviors to be like Bill.

Now let’s focus a little bit about Bill. Bill recalls Eddie to be the only ‘real friend’ he had during that time he was grieving his brother, so in my opinion he cares about Eddie the same of how much Eddie cares about him, he just is too scared to admit that because he believes that admitting that would make the eventual loss of him just as painful as it has been for George. And however say otherwise JUST READ ‘BILL BEATS THE DEVIL’ AGAIN.

That chapter was very much when Bill reached the bottom, he was crying over being sure of the soon coming loss of him and not even being able to leave his side to get his inhaler to save him just because he was too scare of the thought of leaving him there to die alone. Just like Georgie. And in the same chapter we see Bill risking his life just to get Eddie’s inhaler. Just like the friend he would’ve die for him.

In the rest of the novel Bill shows pretty often his caring for Eddie with little things that sure he doesn’t do for the others. Like for example he often offers to protect Eddie directly or he’s shown to worry way more about him than the others. But I will talk more about this in another post since otherwise this will last forever.

Than also we have to remember that Bill doesn’t believe he deserves to be loved since he believes he’s the cause of Georgie’s death and because of that he often tries to musk his feelings even if he’s having a very hard time grieving his brother.

All of this just to say that I wouldn’t define their relationship unhealthy in the way that is one sided, but it’s unhealthy because they rely too much on one another: Bill uses Eddie as a way to grieve, but at the same time he’s not able to admit how much he cares about him, while Eddie just wants that validation so bad that he’s ready do to anything Bill wants him to do.

That’s also why Eddie had to die to complete Bill’s arc because it represents how he finally is able to accept George’s death and grow up.

[stonedstozier]

i don’t want to be controversial, but like why does no one talk about how book eddie is literally obsessed with bill?

[itsfenixme]

EXACTLY that’s what I’m always saying.

He’s either talking about how amazing Big Bill and how he would do anything for him (even dying) or just all over him begging for his approval on anything he does.

One of his best memory of that summer is canonically Bill telling him that he’s good with directions btw.