#oh eddie

[kazsspirals]

both edmund and ophelia have no idea what’s wrong with themselves and are too scared to find out btw

[grungyfudgykid]

Pick your Vedder.

Ed in Different Moods. 💕

[livingincolorsagain]

he’s still alive in there……………. can you hear him banging on the walls………… begging to get out…………. can we get him out…………..

[pairofraggedclaws]

(this is @ your other anon not you) i don’t think eddie getting mad at someone for calling him “princess” has to have anything to do with him being “not secure in his masculinity.” i think it is actually very normal to get mad at homophobes for being homophobic lol

well...you get an answer from me anyway! ofc it's normal to get mad at bigotry. but eddie isn't like "fuck off, homophobe", he is defensive of his masculinity. he gets physically in the guy's face, trying to intimidate him (the other guy being taller feels quite deliberate in that way - eddie's a tall, strong guy, but he's not physically imposing in this situation). he says "why don't we take this outside and i'll show you princess" like...is that what you say when you mean "you are a bigot"? because to me, the only realistic interpretation of that is "fuck you, i'm no princess, i'm a man and i'm gonna prove it." eddie doesn't say "keep your homophobic comments to yourself" he doesn't say "you're a piece of shit" he DOES NOT SAY "leave my friend alone." he starts off with getting up to be like "the fuck did you say?" and when that doesn't work, when his masculinity isn't respected in the way he's used to, he escalates to literally trying to fight the guy, and it STILL doesn't shift the dynamic, which is what's so disorienting for him. like idk if you watch that scene and see "man gets mad about bigotry" then i think you're straight up missing the point of the scene. eddie's (canonical) issues re: masculinity and gender roles aren't his whole being. and they are a spectrum - it's not one, across-the-board opinion. AND they are influenced by his specific culture. but they're real. it doesn't mean he's a bad person. it doesn't mean he's not trying to improve or that he's hypermasculine in every aspect. it just means he's a human being.

[pairofraggedclaws]

it sometimes feels like there's a piece missing in discussions of eddie's relationship to masculinity, where him doing ballroom dance is positioned like it's outside of gender norms, and therefore shows that both he and his family are comfortable with gender non-conformity. but ballroom dance really doesn't carry the same implications as for example, a boy doing ballet. ballroom dance is quite traditional, with clear-cut, rigid gender roles. it's a partner dance with a man leading and a woman following, with specific acceptable clothing for each partner based on their gender role. the fact that the man's outfit has things like bright colors and dramatic cuts really doesn't change this fact! like i can't stress enough that ballroom dance is quite a traditional scene.

and this plays into something else which is that people often impose their own cultural values onto eddie. yes, for some cultures a man or boy doing any kind of dance would be considered effeminate, absolutely. specifically in white cultures, which eddie is not; he's mexican, a culture where men DO dance, and where masculinity has different definitions than in white american culture. gender non-conformity is cultural, not universal.

and no one has to agree with my interpretation of eddie's relationship to gender and sexuality! i'm just speaking to how this particular part of his backstory is being interpreted.

[warningsine]

[iwtv1976]

Been doing a s8/s9 911 rewatch and they’ve got me crying in almost every episode

[pairofraggedclaws]

It's weird because people are generally more willing to admit that Eddie is dealing with comphet and like....... that's internalized homophobia, baby!

He either actually thinks he's straight or at least has been deliberately representing himself as straight, which people really only do if there's a real danger in coming out (not the case here) or they have some unresolved issues about it. You literally cannot square Eddie being totally self-aware and okay about his queerness/what that means about his relationship with Buck with any of his actual behavior around the subject in the show.

And guys who are totally secure in their masculinity don't threaten to beat someone up in a parking lot for calling them 'Princess'. They roll their eyes and walk away.

yeah, i think maybe not everyone has heard the term internalized homophobia before? and they interpret it as like, overt homophobia but just directed inwards, rather than being about the way your worldview was formed by a homophobic society. but you're right comphet is literally one type of internalized homophobia!! and yeah idk, again people are welcome to their own interpretations and headcanons but at a certain point they're just ignoring what happened in the show. like looking at the scene - eddie is the one of the two directly addressed by the homophobes. not buck at any point. eddie is the one who gets upset - and not only ignores buck trying to break it up, but gets combative with buck too for it (no, buck, why don't you sit down!) - then when they're in the car, buck apologizes to eddie. all of that clearly centers the scene around eddie and his reaction (i think if it was about buck, we would have had a scene in the car where eddie said something like "hey man, sorry i got in those guys' faces, i think i made it worse for you" or something), and his reaction isn't "okay, whatever, asshole" the way we've seen him react to racism, but immediate and very emotional. i just don't see a way to understand this episode in a way where eddie is not threatened by the comments about his masculinity and his dynamic with buck. i'm open to it! but so far i haven't really seen any meta arguing for it in a way that makes sense to me.