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tthael · 4 years

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I am so sorry, I am slow, but in the things that happen after eddie lives, and Eddie throws richie's new writing at him and it tosses everywhere.. I just (definitely personally) couldn't catch what they were thinking? Was that a bad moment between them? Did eddie think it was good? Was Richie genuinely sad? I M SO sorry, anyways I loved this fic soooooooooo fucking much

You’re totally good! That’s one of the scenes I’ve been thinking twice about since publishing TTHAEL back in September. It’s a good moment between them, despite Eddie’s failure to be vocal about his complimentary thoughts. What I meant to convey there is that Richie had a lot of anxiety about showing Eddie his new stuff, even more so than he was about showing Steve. Clearly Richie comes out in the show, and he talks about Eddie, and their childhood friendship, and he makes a dick joke about Eddie’s job.

Eddie does think it’s good. He hated all of Richie’s prior material and knew that while Richie said it and it was under his name, it didn’t sound like him; that’s why he did the triumphant “I knew it!” in IT Chapter Two (2019). After reading Richie’s draft, Eddie does think it sounds like Richie, and he shows that by kind of lapsing into their pattern of banter and childish behavior. He also starts making demands about how Richie talks about him in public--he doesn’t want anything that will make his job awkward once his coworkers find out he’s dating a semi-famous comedian, Richie’s not allowed to say anything about his shorts that he wore when he was thirteen because that sounds like Richie’s an adult man with a thing for children’s shorts (ugh), and he’s mad that Richie made that dick joke that his agent read before Eddie actually met the agent in person, because he’s going to meet Steve in person and he wanted to make an impression on his own.

Richie’s touched here in this moment (and quotes Say Anything) because Eddie’s default assumption is that this is going on a stage and people are going to show up for it. He has confidence in Richie’s own ability to draw fans based on his own work instead of his ghostwriters’. AND that Eddie’s okay with Richie talking about him in a routine--which he is--because it means that he intends to stick around--which he does. So the fact that Richie did something very emotional and vulnerable for him, and Eddie responded by troubleshooting practical concerns and setting boundaries about how he wants to be represented (the risk analyst in him interacting with the comedian in Richie)--that’s why Richie quotes Say Anything. Richie delivers the line a lot more happily than John Cusack did in that moment. He’s playing a little wounded, but he finds it comforting that his abstract emotions can translate into the real world and Eddie accepts them and validates them.

I tried to do a lot less analysis on the page in the epilogue than I did in most of the fic proper, so some of that may have gotten lost in the process. I also definitely was avoiding any actual excerpts from the routine because I haven’t written that yet and, at the time, had never even attempted to write any kind of comedy monologue from Richie’s perspective. But I promise it’s meant to be a happy moment--just buried under their usual pretense that they don’t have serious soft emotions. Richie’s pretty happy. Eddie throws the manuscript because he’s defaulting to childish throwing things, and I kept it because I liked the image of all that flying paper. Also in TTHAEL Eddie has a weakness for Richie on a bed, so I had in my head that after Eddie flings the manuscript he climbs up on Richie on the bed and there’s, like, kissing involved and stuff. Come to think of it, that’s one of the things that should have gone on the page, so we can see Eddie’s growing comfort with physicality as Richie’s emotionality gets affirmed. Ah well. More for the editing table.

Thank you so much for reading!

#my fic #things that happen after eddie lives #tthael #Anonymous

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