#so this might just be me rambling to justify my preferences lgkdjfkljd

[magniloquent-raven]

Y'know, the more i think about hellcheer, like, as a ship, the more i veer away from anything that has Eddie putting Chrissy on any kind of pedestal (even in a joking, petname sort of way where he calls her princess or angel or anything like that)

Like. Eddie could very easily have pulled out the kid gloves when interacting with Chrissy, she's physically small and emotionally fragile, it's not hard to let that kind of shit cloud the way you see someone. Genuinely, everyone in Chrissy's life seems to hold her to this weird Good Girl standard. See: Jason's outright refusal to believe she would've stooped so low as to associate with Eddie and willingly do drugs. See: the way her mother talks about her during her eulogy, not like she was a person but like she was some light-bringing saint.

But Eddie just kind of. Treats her like a person. And that seems to be what she likes about him.

Plus, he's doing it on purpose, as far as i can tell.

He saw something was off, in the beginning, she was acting weird, and he tried to validate her feeling like the whole situation is strange by dropping his "queen of Hawkins High" line, but then when this was her reaction to that:

He immediately shifted gears. He got a lot more theatrical about the whole thing—something he seems to only do around his friends—and started trying to connect with her by bringing up the fact they knew each other in middle school. Like he was trying to reassure her that he didn't just see her as the person she became in high school, the Important Cheerleader Girl, because clearly whatever reputation she's cultivated isn't all that comfortable for her.

Like a good 40 seconds after he fails to get a response to the Queen Chrissy comment he calls her a freak instead and

My girl is here for it, okay. She's into it. They're making googly eyes at each other and suddenly he's inviting her to see his band and showing her the tattoo on his chest even though he has SEVERAL on his arms he could've just pointed to instead, like. Okay, slut.

My POINT is, this isn't some cliche Good Girl Is Taken In By Local Bad Boy love story where she's not really a person and he treats her like an object because she's so pristine. Chrissy's been living this life that has her holding herself to impossible standards, where the stress of it has her seeing a counsellor and throwing up in the bathroom and keeping horrifying hallucinations to herself because she can't tell anyone in her life that she's struggling. And then Eddie comes along and goes "Yeah, I mean, life is kinda fucked isn't it," like that's just normal, because it is, and she can't help but want to know what it's like to be that comfortable.

And while she's being drawn in by the idea that maybe it's okay to be a little fucked up, he's realizing that she really isn't that Good Girl Cheerleader archetype, she's a person with struggles and quirks and he'd really like to maybe get to know more about that because she isn't judging him by his reputation either and she remembers what his band is called and he's just a little bit extremely infatuated but it like, in the normal adorable "I made her laugh I can die happy now" sort of way not the weird "She's literally a perfect angel" kind of shit that seems to pop up a lot when girls are blonde and nice.

Idk I'd just like to see more Eddie giving Chrissy increasingly nonsensical petnames to make her laugh. Them getting high together and Chrissy finding out she kinda hates it but she just kind of giggles her way through a rambling explanation of how weird it is before passing out. Or her practising cheer routines while Eddie hangs out because she just likes having him around, despite the fact that him (obnoxiously, loudly) cheering on her cheering is super distracting. Etc. Just. Y'know. Them being weird and messy and silly with each other. Fuckin' around being dumb, because they feel safe with each other.