- Eddie is a barback at the Hideout (rundown bar) where his band plays sometimes. He doesn’t sell drugs until the end. At 18, he moves in permanently with Wayne and starts dealing to help with the bills.
- Lots of people in town call Eddie “Junior” for his likeness to his dad and he hates this. He calls himself Junior condescendingly when he’s doing something that lives up to his dad’s criminal reputation.
- Steddie writers, when Wayne is conveniently absent from the trailer, he’s not always at work. He goes to a bar called the Attic on Fridays with guys that Eddie considers nice and upstanding.
- Eddie lives alone in his dad’s house, but throughout his life, he’d stay with Wayne when Al disappeared. The first time, Eddie was 8, he fell asleep by the window waiting while he was left for days with little food until Wayne got him. At the start of the book, Eddie’s 18 and has been there alone for months. Wayne checks on him and brings him food. But Eddie is stubbornly independent, since 3rd grade he thought he could take care of himself.
- Eddie likes metal, but also rock, Chicago blues, country and bluegrass bc of his mom. His dad taught him guitar, but he learned to love music through his mom (Elizabeth Munson neé Franklin), who passed when he was 6. He still listens to her records, mostly Muddy Waters. He has memories standing on her feet dancing to that record. It brings him to tears once.
- Eddie’s dad Al is charismatic, Eddie calls it Munson Magic but doesn’t think he has it. “I inherited his hair, his van, and his guitar picks. But nobody’s loving Eddie Munson on sight.” Still, Eddie’s worst fear is being like his dad. Al only shows up to manipulate Eddie into helping him with schemes. Two of which get Eddie held at gunpoint twice and hit in the head with a shotgun. Al screws ppl over and gets their house burned down, with Eddie’s mom’s records.
Some additional personality analysis:
- Eddie has an avoidant attachment type because of his dad’s abandonment throughout his childhood. He is fiercely independent and doesn’t like relying on others; he often feels the need to help or serve others instead, which is simultaneously a way to keep them at a distance and prevent them from helping him. When he feels negative emotions (shame, embarrassment, fear), he avoids by physically escaping the situation or by lashing out at the people closest to him. His quick temper and anger help to mask those more vulnerable emotions. His best friend and his uncle receive the brunt of this in the book.
- Eddie also doesn’t receive acts of kindness well; he doesn’t know what to do with them. He’s used to having to earn favor (cleaning teachers’ classrooms in exchange for Hellfire using the space, working at the Hideout so Corroded Coffin can play there), which to me stems again from Al’s treatment of him. He seems to tolerate but somewhat separate himself from Wayne’s acts of kindness by being a little gruff and distant when he talks about Wayne bringing him groceries, and denies wanting or needing to stay with Wayne until he has no other choice. This is not to say he isn’t grateful; it just makes him feel awkward because he doesn’t feel intrinsically like he deserves that kindness.
- Wayne has a green thumb. He reads Gardener’s Weekly magazine. It doesn’t say what he grows, but it says he buys vegetables from the store so I’m going to say that gruff old man Wayne has the prettiest petunias in the whole trailer park.
- Eddie sneaks into the Hawk with his best friend Ronnie to watch action movies and thinks Snake Plissken, Han Solo and Conan the Barbarian are cool.
- Eddie talks for hours about the intricacies of Elven politics in Tolkien.
- Eddie read comics as a kid and hid them all over the house “like a little squirrel” under the bed, behind the nightstand, under the rug. Wayne found his Uncanny X-Men in the freezer between stacks of tv dinners. Also, “Hellfire Club” comes from these X-Men comics.
- Floor time! There’s a part where Eddie is literally just lying on his back on his bedroom floor counting down from a million. When Wayne comes home, Eddie army crawls on his belly to the doorway to see him.
- Eddie reads Gormenghast paperbacks, gothic fantasy novels. It mentions that Wayne saved them from the house fire along with Eddie’s guitar. It never says how/when Eddie originally got his guitar.
- Eddie says lots of cc’s original songs have D&D references. It’s implied that he writes them. One is called “Fire Shroud” after a spell
Here’s my piece for the @steddiebang ! It was such an honor to work on this project and I had so much fun making art for it! This scene is probably one of my favorites so having the opportunity to draw it was just- ugh a dream come true!
If anyone wants to read the fic, I’ll add links after the post is up at the top. Please check out the wonderful author and give them some love!!
so what did we learn? don’t try and delete a sideblog on the mobile app or tumblr will give you the boot entirely <3
hi. it’s cj. or vampeddie, if you never learned my name. accidentally deleted my whole blog, had a category 5 autistic meltdown about it, cried for an hour. yknow, the works. still not okay. i’m mourning so many posts and fics that are now gone forever :’)
but if yall could give this blog a follow and reblog so i can at least try to get all my mutuals back, i’d really really appreciate it. just the thought of having to start from complete scratch without a baseboard sucks and it scares me.
ftm trans Eddie Munson gets turned into a chew toy for hell bats and rescued in the 11th hour by his friends who don’t know he’s trans, who have to run some triage first aid and can hardly make sense of the blood and gore that used to be his body as they cut off his shirt and pants to get access to the worst of the wounds, who definitely aren’t in their right minds well enough anyway to think of anything other than stopping the bleeding and getting him to a hospital, which they do, and miraculously Eddie finds himself blinking awake in a bright, fluorescent room feeling exactly like he imagines a chew toy for hell bats would feel in the aftermath which is to say: like shit. Even more miraculously, he finds hometown hero Steve Harrington posted up at his bedside with greasy hair (!!! Eddie never thought he’d see the day) and bags under his eyes.
The overwhelming relief on Steve’s face when he sees Eddie is awake is touching, the misty eyes and cracking voice when he says god, i thought you were toast, man are downright flattering and, let’s face it, giving Eddie all the wrong ideas that he figures he has an I-almost-died pass for at the moment so he rocks with it, let’s himself indulge in the fantasy for a moment. Then, gradually, Steve’s relief becomes more and more obviously some brand of deeply felt pity (or sympathy, but Eddie’s never been good at distinguishing the two), which bursts his bubble enough to call him out.
“I know I look like what comes out the business end of a meat grinder, but I swear I’m good, dude. They definitely have me on the good shit, I hardly feel it. I’ll be good as new in no time.” Big fat fucking lie, by the way, but he’ll say whatever if it gets that wounded puppy look out of Harrington’s eyes.
“I…yeah, Eddie, I’m glad.” And whatever it is he doesn’t want to say, whatever is putting that you poor motherfucker look on his face, he’s absolutely the opposite of subtle about it.
Eddie can hear the manifestation of his panic on the heart monitor.
“What? What is it? Is everyone- is Dustin-?” He can’t say it, can’t even think it, would rather be slowly torn to shreds all over again than know he failed at his one fucking task to keep the kid safe.
“No! I mean, yes, he’s fine, they’re all fine. Henderson’s got a broken ankle and both of Max’s arms are broken but the docs say they’ll be fine in a few months with physical therapy.”
The release of tension in Eddie’s body hurts almost as much as the relief soothes him. “Okay then, what the fuck are you not telling me? It’s fine, I’m a big boy, Harrington, I can take it.”
He sighs, looking sick with it. “Eds…I don’t know how to tell you this.”
Oh god, what the fuck. Eddie’s right back to freaking out because Steve looks inexplicably guilty, pained in the face like he’s about to deliver the worst news he could imagine but if everyone’s fine then-
“It’s your dick, man. It’s- it’s gone. The bats-”
And Eddie laughs so hard he tears about a dozen stitches, immediately stops laughing, and throws up over the side of the bed and thankfully not all over his freshly reopened wounds as Steve shouts for help.
Eventually, when he’s all stitched up again and barely hanging on to his hard earned lesson to not literally bust his gut laughing about the look on Steve’s face (he has to force himself not to tell Wayne the specifics of how he ended up back in the OR, because he’s absolutely gonna crack up and Eddie will definitely be unable to help himself from laughing with him), he realizes he’s going to come out to all his friends in the very near future because holy shit, he has to tell everyone about Steve’s utterly devastated expression at the news of Eddie’s Ken doll-ification by way of demobat.
“Please please please please pleeeeease,” Dustin whines, tugging hard on the hem of Steve’s shirt.
“Dude get off me.” He slips the last of the leftover containers into the fridge, slams the door shut, and turns to glare at Dustin, who oh-so-conveniently had to step out after dinner to ‘walkie Lucas about a homework question’ and left Steve and Eddie to do the washing up.
In the absence of a Henderson buffer, the air between them had pretty immediately gone stale. Hesistant and charged, overly formal; fucking weird. Eddie moves like a weirdo, sways his hips out of the way of counter corners instead of walking a straight path, like some swaggering drunken pirate, and he spent the last ten minutes awkwardly traipsing around the perimeters of the kitchen as if Steve were a landmine he might set off at any time.
So yeah.
Steve’s feeling a little ungracious at the moment. “Seriously, what is so important that you can’t just show it to us tomorrow?”
“Ummm, scientific discovery? Wonder at the natural world around us?? Where’s your sense of adventure, Steve?”
“The last time I followed my sense of adventure out to your cellar I almost got—” His eyes cut sharply to Eddie, who’s doing a terrible job of pretending not to eavesdrop. Steve scrambles for a way to end his sentence that isn’t eaten by a creature with a razor flower for a face. “—uh, mauled.”
“Mauled?” Eddie asks, eyes bugging out. “Henderson, I’m not following you into the woods to get to turned into some feral thing’s chew toy, man.”
“It was fine,” Dustin insists, covertly kicking Steve in the shin.
Steve thinks of his NDAs and plays along. “Y-yeah. Totally fine. It was just, like, a rabid raccoon or something.”
“That… does not sound fine.”
“It’s cool,” Steve tries to reassure him (no idea why, really; that cellar’s nightmare fuel.) He throws a dish towel over his shoulder, nods his head decisively. “I’ll bring my nail bat with us.”
“You’ll fucking bring your what?”
—
Steve drags his nail bat through the leaves on the narrow trail, the wood thudding along behind him as they make their way to the cellar, a detached storm shelter at the far edge of the lot. It’s dark out here. And cold. His breath hangs in a puff of wet fog when he mutters, “Seriously, Dustin, this better be Noble Prize worthy stuff.”
“It’s Nobel,” Eddie says.
“Huh?”
“The, uh- the prize? It’s No-bel.”
“….Well, that’s stupid.”
“Why would it be Noble?” Eddie snorts, but his eyes are curious and kind.
“Because— because you have to be Noble to earn it? I don’t know!” Eddie laughs like he finds the answer cute. Steve doubles down. “That makes perfect sense, and you know it. A Noble Prize for a Noble Effort. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” Dustin grunts as he unlocks the cellar doors. “Now come on.”
—
The cellar’s just as creepy as Steve remembers: low ceiling, dusty cement blocks, a single, sad lightbulb dangling on a string. He eyes the dark corner on the far side of the squat room, bricked up now but it wasn’t before; there were tunnels under here, once, vast networks like blood vessels to the beating heart of a monster Steve still can’t fully comprehend. He grips the bat a little tighter.
“—Shit,” Dustin says suddenly, cutting himself off mid-ramble about how cool his latest science project is, how it puts Cerebro to shame. “I forgot the remote.”
“You want me to go get it?” Steve offers.
“No!” Dustin says it in a rush, then stammers, “No, that’s okay. You won’t know what to look for.” He seems nervous. Jittery. Maybe the cellar creeps him out, too. “Be right back, just wait here.”
“Grreeeat,” Eddie replies as Dustin jogs back up the stairs, cupping his hands around his mouth to call sarcastically after him, “We’ll just be loitering in your murder basement, then; take your time!”
With Dustin gone, there’s nothing to do but stand there metaphorically twiddling their thumbs. Steve’s idly swinging his bat in a wide sweep around his calves, and Eddie’s staring at the ground, scuffing the toe of his shoe into a streak of dirt, arms crossed over his chest, head bowed. He’s humming something that Steve can’t quite make out, but it doesn’t sound like the stuff he usually blasts from his van. It’s softer. Easy. Almost pop.
“Hey, wait a sec…” Steve holds up a finger, turning his good ear toward the stairs. The leafy crunch of footsteps isn’t getting any quieter, and now it sounds like there are two pairs, getting louder; circling back. “You hear that?”
Eddie nods. Looks serious and spooked. Steve raises his bat, a sudden spike of fear; he creeps over to the stairs. “Hey,” he calls to the darkness. The rustling noise picks up, a swish of movement through the brush, and then the crrrrroak of something metal. Something heavy, groaning on its—
Hinges. Hinges. Son of a bitch, the cellar doors. “Hey!” he shouts, breaking into a run. “HEY—!”
BOOMMMM.
The doors slam shut with a heavy crash and the grating clink of more metal scraping metal. Steve bolts up the stairs, shoves with all his strength against the slanted doors above him. The doors don’t budge. “What the fuck?” Eddie shouts from the bottom of the stairs.
Steve pounds against the doors. “HENDERSON?”
Eddie comes up to join him, using his forearms like battering rams to try to bash the doors open. His voice cracks when he hollers, “Henderson, for real, man! I-if this is some kinda- some kinda sick fucking joke it isn’t funny!!”
“It’s for your own good!!” a voice that isn’t Dustin yells through the gap in the doors, and Eddie squawks, “MIKE?”
Mike?? MIKE?? Oh, that goddamned ungrateful, conniving little—
“We just wanted you two to talk to each other!” Mike says.
Dustin adds, “For real this time.“
“Yeah, for real this time!”
Steve punches the doors, and Eddie bares his teeth like he can scorch a hole through the metal with the heat of his glare alone. “Wheeler, you are SO dead!!”
