slowly becoming the designated DIY guy of my household not because of any skill or training but because im the only person with the hubris to say 'fuck it hand me a drill how hard can it be." highly reccomend it because it gives a butch thrill that cannot be matched. i understand why suburban dads are like this now. im unstoppable.
I wanted to thank you for your recent post about Eddie’s repression. I’ve always been a bi!eddie truther but totally respect other views, but it’s been increasingly frustrating reading takes about Eddie that blame his every thought and action on him being repressed about being gay. We don’t have to look too hard in the show to see that most times when Eddie has acted in his desires, the audience sees something bad happens. Eddie decided he was ready to make it work with Shannon again and she asked for a divorce and then died! And like you said, Eddie blames himself for driving Chris away because he pursued Kim. Eddie doesn’t think he deserves to have desires or happiness because he thinks those conflict with Chris’ health and happiness. It has nothing to do with Eddie potentially being attracted to men.
I do think Eddie knows he’s in love with Buck but he’s not going to try anything (yet) because he doesn’t think he deserves it, not because Buck is a man.
Exactly!! I'm not sure why the gay!Eddie crowd specifically seems to be particularly convinced of Eddie's internalized homophobia, because he could just as easily have internalized homophobia about being bi, but yeah, it's frustrating because it does feel like attributing his repression to that is ignoring a huge part of his on-screen characterization and struggles. Like you said, we've SEEN the storyline play out. We've heard from his own mouth many times, including in this last episode, that he thinks the last time he "looked at a woman" he drove his son away. These things clearly have nothing to do with being secretly gay.
Now, I'm not saying people can't headcanon him as a gay or that it's not still a possibility. I just caution people seeing everything through that lens, because yeah, it just ignores a huge dimension of who he is and how he feels.
911 for some reason: It's important that you all explicitly know Eddie wears tighty whities in more than just the risky business scene.
imagining just for a moment if eddie had spoken to anyone at the club, even unsuccessfully, and how buck might have felt. because like, yes it is 100% so interesting that we didn't see eddie talk to a single woman and what that means for him, but we also sidestepped a situation where buck, by his own design, had to look at eddie flirting with someone else in a world where the idea that buck could have feelings for him has now been introduced
#no but this is so interesting#because yeah despite this outing originally being about eddie he didn't approach one single person#not even briefly#so we were spared buck's reaction to that happening#which almost certainly would have been unhinged#and it feels very intentional that we DIDN'T get to see that#like they were showing so much without actually showing anything - @semperama
YES exactly re: Buck acting unhinged about Eddie's attention is something we have experienced multiple times over and feels like it should have been an almost inevitable outcome of this scenario. Like, I know there's a lot of frustration out there re: how Eddie's storylines don't stay fixed on Eddie, but to me Buck meddling in Eddie's love life, had it stayed on Eddie, would have almost invariably circled back to Buck's feelings anyway - but instead we skirted a Buck jealousy scenario where he would have had to reckon with why he felt so terrible when it was his idea to push Eddie in the first place? even though that would have been a great way to push him past denial? so they definitely wanted us to get something else for Buck first
meanwhile, for Eddie, I think it matters that this is the first time we've seen him attempt something he has explicitly said feels like a performance since shaving his mustache in Confessions - since unmasking. THIS could be the audience seeing Eddie, facing down the barrel of how he feels about romance and dating again, but without the mask he's been presenting to the world, possibly for the very first time.
I need us to all get on the same page that Eddie does not care if he's attracted to men or not. To the extent that Eddie's repressed, it's not because he feels ashamed about desiring men or even a specific man. It's that he feels ashamed about having any desires at all.
Like, as a former avowed gay!Eddie truther, I'm coming around to seeing him as bi simply because I feel like seeing him as gay is forcing people (even sometimes including myself) to see his actions through the lens of him running from attraction to men specifically. But this runs the risk of making people assume he has some kind of internalized homophobia (completely unsupported by the text) or religious guilt (even LESS supported by the text). Reducing his repression to specifically homophobic in nature really flattens him as a character and fails to acknowledge one of his most important traits: that he is first and foremost a martyr. His hesitance around women and dating is canonically about one specific thing: he thinks the most important thing is that he find someone who is good for Christopher. This is the running theme since he refused to let Shannon back in Christopher's life in season 2 and has been a major factor in every single relationship since. It may be that he's repressing his attraction to men, but only because I truly don't think he has thought about what he wants in a partner at all, only what kind of partner he thinks would be good for Christopher, which means someone that can approximately replace the mother he lost. (Who Eddie blames himself for driving away btw, and therefore also blames himself for her death.) It doesn't help that the one time he did give in to his own desires, specifically his desire for closure with Shannon in pursuing Kim, he drove Christopher away, only further reinforcing that he should not want things. Even Buck sees this and mentioned it in the last episode, pointing out that Eddie uses Christopher to reinforce his "mental chastity belt".
I just think it's very important to see that Eddie's reasoning for self-denial is not some kind of societal or religious guilt or norm. It's because of very specific personal trauma. Eddie thinks it's wrong to have desires, any desires at all, specifically because he connects his own desires to hurting people or driving them away.
