#but anon i agree with you - ch2 and events afterwards are unfortunate

[beldaroot]

omg thank u for that bi richie list. i know majority of people either love/like gay richie, think it’s okay, or don’t care, but i need to get this off my chest even if it’s unpopular: i don’t fuck w gay richie AT ALL, i hate it sm honestly.

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.

as someone who has read gay richie fics and enjoyed them i will say that i will always prefer bisexual richie. richie, in my mind, will always be bi because the bi subtext for him in the novel is so apparent. i know people think that we should be happy with any sort of gay representation in media, especially in the horror genre, since it's so rare, but it really does feel like people are just settling for the bare minimum. i mean, what good is gay rep if it isn't authentic to the original source, was robbed from and mixed with another character, and perpetrates stereotypes that gay men will always be either repressed, sad, dead, or never find happiness with who they love? this type of gay rep might have passed in the 80s, but in 2019? yeah, no let’s move on. 

i don't get how people still defend andy when he has explicitly stated that he didn't think richie had “enough” going on, so he just took from eddie. he pretty much said that richie was too simple as a character on his own, basically ignoring all the bi coding and all the incredible individualized characterization he has! maybe if richie was actually written well in the movie i wouldn't be complaining as much, but he was really reduced to sad, repressed gay who isn't ambitious enough to write his own jokes and will abandon his friends for his own selfish needs, WHICH IS LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE OF BOOK RICHIE?! and don’t get me started on how badly eddie was written, oof. eddieway... i hate how those bad and often switched characterizations bleed into fandom works because i’ll read a reddie fic and be like “that's... not richie” or “that's not eddie” or “why is richie doing that bc that's eddie's issue.” it’s just sad :(

and taking eddie's gay coding and giving it to richie is such a disservice to BOTH of them. i've said it before, but their sexualities and stories are connected and intertwined but they are NOT interchangeable! they are unique to the specific character. eddie’s sexuality cannot be removed from his storyline; it is absolutely vital to understand him as a character. the fears richie face and his personality and actions as a whole, imo, only make sense if he is bisexual. 

andy & co really thought they were being so big brained by making richie canonically gay and adding minor subtext about eddie’s sexuality when all they did was tarnish characterizations for a gay plot line that wasn’t even coherent. and what's the most frustrating is that andy obviously thought both eddie and richie were gay and in love but he just did such a bad job actually showing that!! if so many people came out of the movie thinking it was a one-sided romance, or were confused about r+e at the end, or the only true confirmation we have that “richie is gay” is from interviews done after the movie came out, then that's an issue and it's your fault you can't tell a story properly! i hated how fans previously said the story only seems bad because wb made him edit the gay stuff out, because that still doesn't explain how badly richie or eddie were written in the movie. it's bad gay rep objectively, and i know we’ll make fun of it as a joke or whatever, but it's actually so disappointing and very concerning that people are willing to settle and accept it. 

also, i've said it before, the book is not very good and has a shit ton of issues in it. i'm not asking people to read it if they don't want to or even like it if they do. but when book readers say the book had better characterizations since the movies did them so dirty, it isn't an attack, it’s just a fact? we've come to cherish certain characterizations from the book and we wish it was adapted properly and our characters were given justice. i find it so funny how movie stans were like “so you're going to defend sk's writing then?” and like..... no one is doing that, lol we literally hate that man (unlike your fave andy who is literally obsessed with him and made two movies that were practically bad fanfic of an already bad book lmao). 

and like you pointed out in the other scripts, it's like every writer did not comprehend the individual issues of each loser so they just thought it would be best to mix them around. it's really bizarre, especially when you see the racial implications and other forms of discrimination present in these god awful characterizations. i mean i know it's a big book and obviously you can't adapt every part of it, but it's so weird how when you're reading these scripts or watching these movies it feels like it's nothing like the book? it's totally fine if the writers want to make changes, modernize it, etc., but it's disappointing that these drastic changes make the losers not even seem like the losers! and you're right, after it 2017 we were willing to go back to the book as a source to fill in the parts that the movie missed, but i feel since it 2019 came out, people are less inclined to do that and think the movie is the only valid form of canon because it has actual gay rep. no canon is perfect so we've always picked and mixed together what aspects of canon we liked, but i feel like nowadays it ch2 will always be the main form people derive from and i think that's the most unfortunate thing about this whole situation :(

#again sorry for the delay in this answer #none of this is coherent any way too i'm sorry it was just me ranting #but anon i agree with you - ch2 and events afterwards are unfortunate #these characters deserved better as individuals and as a collective #and i'll never not be bitter about it!! #anyway the losers belong to me only and i don't trust anyone else with them!!! #if you disagree with any of this pls talk to a wall lol i don't have energy for discourse #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #the losers #it #Anonymous