Richie Tozier (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gofuckmyself) wrote2020-03-09 12:52 pm
gofuckmyself) wrote2020-03-09 12:52 pm
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lastvoyages
User Name/Nick: Gwen
User DW:betterdeadthanred
E-mail: isthereair[at]gmail[dot]com
Other Characters: Cal Kestis
Character Name: Richie Tozier
Series: It (2017) & It Chapter Two
Age: 40
From When?: While the other Losers are trying to drag him away from Eddie's body as the lair under Neibolt is collapsing.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Although Richie is an enormous pain in the ass, he's a loyal friend who is generally a pretty moral person who can also be quite selfless when called upon.
Item: An inhaler
Abilities/Powers: As much as it pains me, this version of Richie is a normal human, with no indication that he's got any particular supernatural abilities or inclinations after tangoing with Pennywise the same way the book versions of the Losers kind of do.
Personality: Richie Tozier is a tough guy to miss. Ever since he was a kid, he's been loud, obnoxious, and almost constantly searching to be the center of attention. The easiest way to do this, he's found, is to talk a lot and almost constantly make everything into a joke. Whether it's a "your mom" joke, dick jokes, talking about being in Mastrubators Anonymous, or something genuinely clever and funny doesn't matter to him: said jokes are often rapid fire and relentless... and are a really convenient way for people to stop trying to get him to open up about himself or talk about anything serious.
That being said, it is possible to shut him up. When really called out on doing something inappropriate (like making everyone think Pennywise had turned up in the clubhouse), he puts a lid on it and tries to keep things on task. He's an asshole, but not a total asshole, and often a well meaning asshole.
The thing is, his reasons for being like this are pretty different from what most people would assume they are, and even from what Richie himself would tell you he's trying to do if you asked him. He's incredibly good at projecting a very intense level of self confidence, that he's like this because he's fearless and happy with himself and having a great time, but in reality he is desperate for people to like and accept him. He's willing to do just about anything for a laugh because it means people don't totally hate him, and he kind of totally hates himself. Despite being smart and a decent person at heart, there's also definitely a part of him who thinks the only thing people like about him or that he really has to offer to anyone else is that he's funny, so his life plan is essentially "lean really hard into being a comedian and maybe people will keep you around until you wear out your welcome." Nine times out of ten, he's genuinely trying to make people laugh and have a good time rather than being annoying for annoying's sake.
A huge, huge part of this need to be liked and seen as funny and for people not to question the self image he puts out is that he's deeply uncomfortable with being gay, isn't out to anyone, and there's a big part of him that wants to take that secret to the literal grave. Richie is quite literally terrified of being outed, and deflects and deflects and deflects by making jokes about wanting to bang Eddie's mom, general discussion of genitalia and hot women, or otherwise just trying to be so aggressively straight you guys to keep people away from the truth. This fear is absolutely a hang up from childhood because growing up in a very conservative small town in Maine during the AIDS crisis is a really, really bad environment for a LGBT kid regardless of if there's an eldritch horror who bullies you about being gay while trying to eat you and your friends, but part of adult Richie's issues with it is also tied up in the memory loss. In the Derry Amnesia Years, Richie definitely still knew he was gay and was attracted to other guys, but had this lingering terror over people finding out about him and thinking he was diseased or bad. As the years went on, he definitely knew it was kind of irrational to be that scared as the conversation around being gay shifted, but he still couldn't let go of the fear or accept himself because Pennywise is a dick.
This is something he struggles with even during and after defeating Pennywise a second time. When the Losers are offering up their tokens during the ritual, Richie is the only one whose token (a literal token from the arcade where he was kind of outed by their homicidal middle school bully and said bully's cute cousin in front of a bunch of other kids) has a meaning that isn't immediately obvious to the rest of the group, and he offers no explanation as to why it's personally significant. In his mind, it's genuinely better for them to think he's a shallow idiot who just really liked playing Street Fighter than telling his five best friends that he likes dudes. After Eddie dies, Richie doesn't admit that his death is hitting him so hard because he was in love with him, and again seems pretty happy to just let everyone think he's upset because Eddie got hurt rescuing him (which is also true) and because Eddie's his best friend.
I also 100% believe it's part of why most of his stand up material is ghostwritten or completely bullshit. He can't be honest with himself or other people about who he really is, and honesty is a huge part of comedy. Having very little memory of your childhood and some of your teen years is also part of the problem - having a giant black hole in your memory that you're low key not even aware of makes it hard to have people connecting with your material because you don't have any stories about your dad pulling up to a McDonald's drive through and ordering one black coffee when you were ten. Both by choice and thanks to magical amnesia, Richie prefers not to open up about himself, so it's in some ways easier to get up on stage and lie to the audience even though he's aware of how shallow and stupid it is.
Richie has always been pretty self protective, and as an adult pre-Derry could be difficult to get close to since so much of his energy was devoted to both making people like him and also not letting them get to know him in a meaningful way. A fan's perception of Richie Tozier is probably a comedian who's having pretty much the time of his life constantly, but in reality he has no close friends as an adult, isn't close with his family, and hasn't ever had a meaningful romantic relationship with anyone. It's been a pretty lonely existence since his family moved away from Derry even if it hasn't been a terrible existence, and it's also been going on for so long that Richie's so used to being low key lonely and sad that he probably doesn't even realize how depressed he's actually been.
But despite his pretty terrible self esteem and self image, Richie's actually a pretty good guy to get to know and have on your side. As a kid, he's more than happy to follow Bill into the sewers after school gets out, is reluctantly willing to enter the Neibolt House with Eddie and Bill, and directly confronts Pennywise when it's holding Bill hostage and offering everyone else a chance to go free. As an adult, he's definitely less brave because like most grown ups, he's got a better sense of his own mortality at forty than he did at thirteen, and while he does try to abandon the group multiple times, he always ultimately decides to stick around and see this through for his friends. He axes Bowers in the head while he's trying to kill Mike, dives in after Bev when It grabs her in the sewers, and starts pelting rocks at Pennywise to distract it from killing Mike before getting blasted with the Deadlights.
One of the reasons why Richie leans so hard into comedy to create that wall between himself and other people is at heart, he's an idealist and a romantic who is terrified of rejection or actually being made fun of. Those good traits are still there under the mask of oversharing and crude humor, and they're apparent when people actually manage to push past the mask and get to know him better. He's empathetic and supportive of his friends, particularly when they really need help or a reality check. Richie runs his mouth a lot, doesn't have much of a filter, and often blurts out exactly what he's thinking without thinking it through, which can mean he accidentally hurts people's feelings, but he's rarely intentionally cruel or hurtful to his friends. His falling out with Bill in the first movie after their first encounter with It at Neibolt Street is driven by Eddie and Ben being badly hurt and alarm that they all could have died, which frankly is a reality check that Bill kind of does need to hear. But Richie's also the first of the Losers to comfort Bill when he finds Georgie's rain jacket in the sewers and finally coming to terms with the fact that his brother's dead, sitting down next to him and giving him a hug which the other Losers all pile in on. During their first encounter at Neibolt, while Pennywise is approaching him, Bill, Bev and Eddie, who was almost eaten and has a broken arm, Richie's first instinct is to comfort and distract Eddie instead of flipping out like the other kids. Similarly, as adults, he's the first one to comfort Eddie after they're attacked by Stan's head in the house, and gives him a pep talk before they go down further into the sewer, being serious for once and boosting him up instead of joking around. (Well, a little joking around. Can't be too serious or Eddie will be able to tell he's in love with him!)
He also likes to tease his friends - like Tinkerbell, he needs constant attention or he will die - but it's very much a "that's only okay when I say it!" situation. When Stan is telling Eddie all the plants around the drain pipe are poison ivy, getting him all worked up about getting a rash, Richie tells Stan "Not every plant is poison ivy, Stanley!" He's also encouraging of both Eddie and Ben after Ben gets cut up by Henry Bowers in his Richie-brand annoying way, and is more than happy to participate in the rock fight. As an adult, he similarly tries to use humor to diffuse the tension as a way to make things lighter for his friends before shit gets real and he feels like he needs to get out of town. Despite their bickering, Richie really loves and values his friends and wants to do right by them in his own weird, oftentimes annoying way.
As a fun piece of Richie characterization trivia, the younger cast wrote in character letters to their adult counterparts, and Richie's letter is short but sweet. He uses humor to get through tough situations, loves his friends more than anybody, and really, really doesn't want to come to terms with his sexuality. Another fun bit of ephemera from the movie is the full text of Pennywise's obituary for him, which perfectly distill's Richie's terrible sense of self worth and worry that everyone hates him and thinks he's disgusting.
tl;dr Richie likes to pretend that nothing bothers him and he doesn't care about anything but he actually cares A Lot about many, many things and definitely needs therapy.
Barge Reactions: Well, upon first arriving, Richie is going to be pretty beat up and devastated because it turns out going toe to toe with an inter-dimensional horror and getting dropped like, thirty feet onto rocks after having your brain fried by said horror's Deadlights only to watch your recently remembered best friend/love of your life get stabbed to death in front of you is traumatic. He's going to be smelly, covered in blood, and pretty shell shocked.
But Richie is pretty good at repressing repressing repressing and pretending like everything is fine, so will likely fairly quickly try pulling his shit together and getting out to explore and get to know the Barge. Like most people from roughly 20th century Earth, he'll likely be surprised and interested to hear from characters who are from worlds he knows of as fictional (might definitely geek out about certain superheroes and Star Wars folks because he's a giant nerd), but shouldn't be a huge pain in the ass about that because he's a celebrity and understands that people gushing at you gets old fast and you just want to be treated like a person.
Similarly, floods and other bizarre occurrences will be met with loud surprise and possible alarm at first, but Richie's pretty emotionally tough when push comes to shove and likely won't be traumatized if he spends a few days as a raccoon. More violent events will be a little tougher on him if only because his monster fighting experience is extremely situation specific and limited, so while he might not be scared and definitely isn't unwilling to help out, he's a 40 year old slightly out of shape comedian, not Batman.
As a warden, Richie will likely feel a little out of his depth with anyone whose experience is vastly, vastly different from his own (an alien with a completely different moral code, for example), but will do his best to give any inmate he's assigned to space or attention as needed. He's a good fit for someone who's looking for a buddy who's there to empathize or give the occasional truth bomb, and could do well with someone who needs to be encouraged to get out of their shell or be less anxious/walled off.
Deal: I'm going to shock everyone who saw this movie by saying Richie wants to make a deal for Eddie since he famously hated him and could've cared less if he died.
(I'm kidding obviously, sandbox love never dies.)
History: Wikia Link, which is admittedly really confusing because it discusses the book, miniseries and films all on the same page, so here's a hopefully more accurate summary:
Richie's parents are Wentworth (a dentist) and Maggie Tozier. In the book, he says he's been raised Methodist in narration and Catholic while talking with Eddie and Stan, and nothing in the movie contradicts this, so I'm going with he grew up Catholic to sprinkle in that good old Catholic guilt as another reason he's spooked about being honest with his family.
Although fandom loves the idea of Richie's home life being neglectful or abusive, I really dislike that interpretation because it's not confirmed at all in the movie, isn't supported by the book, and is usually just a tool for tween fanfic writers to generate more angst in an already pretty depressing universe (which like, no disrespect, I too was once a melodramatic tween writing fanfic about my favorite characters going through bad stuff). Some fans are now trying to argue with the obituary featured in Chapter Two (linked above) that this interpretation is canon, but they're not understanding that the obit is meant to represent Richie's fears, not to accurately reflect the thoughts or feelings of anyone who actually knows him, so I'm sticking with his home life being pretty decent, especially compared to his other friends.
I think both Went and Maggie are - as in the book - ultimately good parents, but as a kid and especially as a teenager, Richie started feeling like a disappointment and a freak because he was pretty hyperactive, rude, getting in trouble at school because he was hyperactive and rude, and also gay in a conservative small town in Maine during the AIDS crisis, so he started putting some walls up and actively distanced himself from his parents. He is absolutely not out to his mom or dad even as an adult and still thinks of himself as a disappointment because he didn't go into a more conventional career or tone down his obnoxiousness much.
In the first movie, when Richie teases Eddie by asking if a cabinet full of medicine is full of birth control pills, Eddie quips back at Richie "Yeah, and I'm saving them for your sister," which is a really weird thing to say if Richie doesn't have a sister, so I tend to assume he's got an older sister he also doesn't hate but isn't especially close to.
It's shown Richie and Stan have a particularly close friendship in the films, so I've assumed they met first in kindergarten or younger (especially as Richie's parents are also at Stan's Bar Mitzvah, it's possible the Toziers are family friends with the Urises), and then they met Eddie and Bill in elementary school, so the original foursome have been good friends for a long time before the events of the first film. This is in contrast to the books, but I think is supported by the films because all four kids are immediately a unit as school ends, Eddie's mom already knows who Richie, Bill and Stan are when they stop by after school, and in general, they seem more comfortable/familiar with each other than their book counterparts do at a similar point in the timeline.
Georgie Denbrough goes missing in the fall of 1988, and the events of It take place. With flashbacks that are revealed in Chapter Two, it's shown that when the Losers split up after Eddie breaks his arm at Neibolt Street, Richie was harassed at the Capitol Theater arcade by Henry Bowers who threw homophobic slurs at him after Bowers accused him of flirting with Bowers' cousin, and ran off to Bassey Park, where Pennywise makes the Paul Bunyan statue come to life, taunting Richie about being gay before trying to kill him. At some point after the events of the first film, Richie also cut his and Eddie's initials into the Kissing Bridge.
At some point probably early in high school, the Toziers moved away from Derry and Richie forgot basically everything about his childhood because Derry magic. He went to college for a bit, dropped out, became a comedian, has enjoyed success as a comedian, but has been living a pretty hollow, miserable existence in the 27 years between the films when you actually stop to take a look at things because he hasn't been able to come to terms with his past or himself as a person because he literally can't remember some of the most formative things that happened to him. While he started his career doing his own material, at some point he got a ghost writer to further refine the kind of gross jackass comedian persona.
And then he gets a phone call from Mike and It Chapter Two happens.
Sample Journal Entry:
Okay, so. Staying awake obviously isn't working.
[Richie looks and sounds tired, less defeated and more pissed off. He rubs his hands over his face, pushing his glasses up on his face, digging the heels of his hands into both eyes. His hair's standing at odd angles - he's obviously been running his hands through it, and he does it again as he continues, scratching at the back of his head and avoiding looking at the camera.]
You know, shit like this almost makes me wish I still had amnesia. It was so much easier being like "hey, everyone must wake up thinking some slobbering sleep paralysis monster is about to eat them, you're not a total fucking freak."
Although apparently that's like, just totally fucking normal here. Get some therapy, assholes.
[Yeah, yeah. Pot, kettle. Like Richie gives a fuck. He's already dreamed about getting chased through the hallways of hotel by a fire hose turned snake, and one that has to be about Theo's dead sister. This place is crawling with people who need therapy. And sleeping pills.]
Anyway, if anyone's been dreaming about some shapeshifting asswipe clown trying to eat them or throwing out a bunch of lame jokes about being a four eyed little nerd- [Or, you know, gay, but Richie figures he's never going to be able to admit that out loud to anyone, let alone broadcast it on a public network, and seriously fuck this flood for opening up the possibility of someone getting a memory or nightmare like that.] That's mine. Sorry.
I'd tell you how to get over it, but apparently that fucker's the whole reason I still dress like I'm thirteen years old, so you're on your own.
Sample RP:
It's fucking cold. Richie knows what cold is - he grew up in Maine, where winter started in October and didn't end until May if you were lucky - but he's been huddling in the parka the Admiral had donated to him with all the bitterness of someone who moved as far away from the cold as they could. Which is what he fucking did as soon as he could. The miserable, hazy days of summer in LA, wildfires and earthquakes included, are sounding pretty good right about now.
Also, this hotel is definitely fucking haunted. Richie isn't psychic, but Maggie Tozier didn't raise no fool, this ain't his first rodeo, on the Barge or otherwise, and he just knows a deserted hotel in the middle of the mountains spells Trouble with a capital T. It's just a matter of time before whatever ghost or wendigo or Jason fucking Voorhees pops up and starts making their lives a collective hell.
It's the third sleepless night listening to the wind beat against the windows where things start really going downhill. Richie gets up and stalks through the hallways, sights set on the the kitchen or bar in the hopes of finding something to distract him until the sun comes up (not that they've seen the sun since the first day, with how hard the snow's been coming down outside), and ho boy, does the murder palace, built-on-an-Indian-burial-ground hotel start to deliver on its generally creepy as shit vibe.
Richie.
Immediately, he jerks to a stop in the middle of the hallway, the hair standing up on the back of his neck. It makes him think of - turning away from Bill and seeing Eddie waving at him behind the draped furniture all the way down the hallway, wondering how the fuck he got over there, why he hadn't answered when they were calling his name earlier, walking towards the room almost like he was sleepwalking - how Eddie had sounded after it, after it happened, and he looks over his shoulder expecting- what?
There's nothing there.
Except a door to one of the rooms is cracked open, dim light spilling out into a hallway that's only illuminated by Richie's iPhone flashlight. And again, like he's not totally in control of himself, he walks over to it, carefully placing the palm of his hand on the door and pushing it open.
Sitting on the bed, because of fucking course, is Stan. His dead best friend - pale skin splotchy with rot - turns, grins with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, and then his head rolls off his neck, tumbling to the floor, and the fucking spider-legs-
"Oh, fuck this shit," Richie swears emphatically, slamming the door.
Special Notes: TDM links: one, two, three
User DW:
betterdeadthanredE-mail: isthereair[at]gmail[dot]com
Other Characters: Cal Kestis
Character Name: Richie Tozier
Series: It (2017) & It Chapter Two
Age: 40
From When?: While the other Losers are trying to drag him away from Eddie's body as the lair under Neibolt is collapsing.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Although Richie is an enormous pain in the ass, he's a loyal friend who is generally a pretty moral person who can also be quite selfless when called upon.
Item: An inhaler
Abilities/Powers: As much as it pains me, this version of Richie is a normal human, with no indication that he's got any particular supernatural abilities or inclinations after tangoing with Pennywise the same way the book versions of the Losers kind of do.
Personality: Richie Tozier is a tough guy to miss. Ever since he was a kid, he's been loud, obnoxious, and almost constantly searching to be the center of attention. The easiest way to do this, he's found, is to talk a lot and almost constantly make everything into a joke. Whether it's a "your mom" joke, dick jokes, talking about being in Mastrubators Anonymous, or something genuinely clever and funny doesn't matter to him: said jokes are often rapid fire and relentless... and are a really convenient way for people to stop trying to get him to open up about himself or talk about anything serious.
That being said, it is possible to shut him up. When really called out on doing something inappropriate (like making everyone think Pennywise had turned up in the clubhouse), he puts a lid on it and tries to keep things on task. He's an asshole, but not a total asshole, and often a well meaning asshole.
The thing is, his reasons for being like this are pretty different from what most people would assume they are, and even from what Richie himself would tell you he's trying to do if you asked him. He's incredibly good at projecting a very intense level of self confidence, that he's like this because he's fearless and happy with himself and having a great time, but in reality he is desperate for people to like and accept him. He's willing to do just about anything for a laugh because it means people don't totally hate him, and he kind of totally hates himself. Despite being smart and a decent person at heart, there's also definitely a part of him who thinks the only thing people like about him or that he really has to offer to anyone else is that he's funny, so his life plan is essentially "lean really hard into being a comedian and maybe people will keep you around until you wear out your welcome." Nine times out of ten, he's genuinely trying to make people laugh and have a good time rather than being annoying for annoying's sake.
A huge, huge part of this need to be liked and seen as funny and for people not to question the self image he puts out is that he's deeply uncomfortable with being gay, isn't out to anyone, and there's a big part of him that wants to take that secret to the literal grave. Richie is quite literally terrified of being outed, and deflects and deflects and deflects by making jokes about wanting to bang Eddie's mom, general discussion of genitalia and hot women, or otherwise just trying to be so aggressively straight you guys to keep people away from the truth. This fear is absolutely a hang up from childhood because growing up in a very conservative small town in Maine during the AIDS crisis is a really, really bad environment for a LGBT kid regardless of if there's an eldritch horror who bullies you about being gay while trying to eat you and your friends, but part of adult Richie's issues with it is also tied up in the memory loss. In the Derry Amnesia Years, Richie definitely still knew he was gay and was attracted to other guys, but had this lingering terror over people finding out about him and thinking he was diseased or bad. As the years went on, he definitely knew it was kind of irrational to be that scared as the conversation around being gay shifted, but he still couldn't let go of the fear or accept himself because Pennywise is a dick.
This is something he struggles with even during and after defeating Pennywise a second time. When the Losers are offering up their tokens during the ritual, Richie is the only one whose token (a literal token from the arcade where he was kind of outed by their homicidal middle school bully and said bully's cute cousin in front of a bunch of other kids) has a meaning that isn't immediately obvious to the rest of the group, and he offers no explanation as to why it's personally significant. In his mind, it's genuinely better for them to think he's a shallow idiot who just really liked playing Street Fighter than telling his five best friends that he likes dudes. After Eddie dies, Richie doesn't admit that his death is hitting him so hard because he was in love with him, and again seems pretty happy to just let everyone think he's upset because Eddie got hurt rescuing him (which is also true) and because Eddie's his best friend.
I also 100% believe it's part of why most of his stand up material is ghostwritten or completely bullshit. He can't be honest with himself or other people about who he really is, and honesty is a huge part of comedy. Having very little memory of your childhood and some of your teen years is also part of the problem - having a giant black hole in your memory that you're low key not even aware of makes it hard to have people connecting with your material because you don't have any stories about your dad pulling up to a McDonald's drive through and ordering one black coffee when you were ten. Both by choice and thanks to magical amnesia, Richie prefers not to open up about himself, so it's in some ways easier to get up on stage and lie to the audience even though he's aware of how shallow and stupid it is.
Richie has always been pretty self protective, and as an adult pre-Derry could be difficult to get close to since so much of his energy was devoted to both making people like him and also not letting them get to know him in a meaningful way. A fan's perception of Richie Tozier is probably a comedian who's having pretty much the time of his life constantly, but in reality he has no close friends as an adult, isn't close with his family, and hasn't ever had a meaningful romantic relationship with anyone. It's been a pretty lonely existence since his family moved away from Derry even if it hasn't been a terrible existence, and it's also been going on for so long that Richie's so used to being low key lonely and sad that he probably doesn't even realize how depressed he's actually been.
But despite his pretty terrible self esteem and self image, Richie's actually a pretty good guy to get to know and have on your side. As a kid, he's more than happy to follow Bill into the sewers after school gets out, is reluctantly willing to enter the Neibolt House with Eddie and Bill, and directly confronts Pennywise when it's holding Bill hostage and offering everyone else a chance to go free. As an adult, he's definitely less brave because like most grown ups, he's got a better sense of his own mortality at forty than he did at thirteen, and while he does try to abandon the group multiple times, he always ultimately decides to stick around and see this through for his friends. He axes Bowers in the head while he's trying to kill Mike, dives in after Bev when It grabs her in the sewers, and starts pelting rocks at Pennywise to distract it from killing Mike before getting blasted with the Deadlights.
One of the reasons why Richie leans so hard into comedy to create that wall between himself and other people is at heart, he's an idealist and a romantic who is terrified of rejection or actually being made fun of. Those good traits are still there under the mask of oversharing and crude humor, and they're apparent when people actually manage to push past the mask and get to know him better. He's empathetic and supportive of his friends, particularly when they really need help or a reality check. Richie runs his mouth a lot, doesn't have much of a filter, and often blurts out exactly what he's thinking without thinking it through, which can mean he accidentally hurts people's feelings, but he's rarely intentionally cruel or hurtful to his friends. His falling out with Bill in the first movie after their first encounter with It at Neibolt Street is driven by Eddie and Ben being badly hurt and alarm that they all could have died, which frankly is a reality check that Bill kind of does need to hear. But Richie's also the first of the Losers to comfort Bill when he finds Georgie's rain jacket in the sewers and finally coming to terms with the fact that his brother's dead, sitting down next to him and giving him a hug which the other Losers all pile in on. During their first encounter at Neibolt, while Pennywise is approaching him, Bill, Bev and Eddie, who was almost eaten and has a broken arm, Richie's first instinct is to comfort and distract Eddie instead of flipping out like the other kids. Similarly, as adults, he's the first one to comfort Eddie after they're attacked by Stan's head in the house, and gives him a pep talk before they go down further into the sewer, being serious for once and boosting him up instead of joking around. (Well, a little joking around. Can't be too serious or Eddie will be able to tell he's in love with him!)
He also likes to tease his friends - like Tinkerbell, he needs constant attention or he will die - but it's very much a "that's only okay when I say it!" situation. When Stan is telling Eddie all the plants around the drain pipe are poison ivy, getting him all worked up about getting a rash, Richie tells Stan "Not every plant is poison ivy, Stanley!" He's also encouraging of both Eddie and Ben after Ben gets cut up by Henry Bowers in his Richie-brand annoying way, and is more than happy to participate in the rock fight. As an adult, he similarly tries to use humor to diffuse the tension as a way to make things lighter for his friends before shit gets real and he feels like he needs to get out of town. Despite their bickering, Richie really loves and values his friends and wants to do right by them in his own weird, oftentimes annoying way.
As a fun piece of Richie characterization trivia, the younger cast wrote in character letters to their adult counterparts, and Richie's letter is short but sweet. He uses humor to get through tough situations, loves his friends more than anybody, and really, really doesn't want to come to terms with his sexuality. Another fun bit of ephemera from the movie is the full text of Pennywise's obituary for him, which perfectly distill's Richie's terrible sense of self worth and worry that everyone hates him and thinks he's disgusting.
tl;dr Richie likes to pretend that nothing bothers him and he doesn't care about anything but he actually cares A Lot about many, many things and definitely needs therapy.
Barge Reactions: Well, upon first arriving, Richie is going to be pretty beat up and devastated because it turns out going toe to toe with an inter-dimensional horror and getting dropped like, thirty feet onto rocks after having your brain fried by said horror's Deadlights only to watch your recently remembered best friend/love of your life get stabbed to death in front of you is traumatic. He's going to be smelly, covered in blood, and pretty shell shocked.
But Richie is pretty good at repressing repressing repressing and pretending like everything is fine, so will likely fairly quickly try pulling his shit together and getting out to explore and get to know the Barge. Like most people from roughly 20th century Earth, he'll likely be surprised and interested to hear from characters who are from worlds he knows of as fictional (might definitely geek out about certain superheroes and Star Wars folks because he's a giant nerd), but shouldn't be a huge pain in the ass about that because he's a celebrity and understands that people gushing at you gets old fast and you just want to be treated like a person.
Similarly, floods and other bizarre occurrences will be met with loud surprise and possible alarm at first, but Richie's pretty emotionally tough when push comes to shove and likely won't be traumatized if he spends a few days as a raccoon. More violent events will be a little tougher on him if only because his monster fighting experience is extremely situation specific and limited, so while he might not be scared and definitely isn't unwilling to help out, he's a 40 year old slightly out of shape comedian, not Batman.
As a warden, Richie will likely feel a little out of his depth with anyone whose experience is vastly, vastly different from his own (an alien with a completely different moral code, for example), but will do his best to give any inmate he's assigned to space or attention as needed. He's a good fit for someone who's looking for a buddy who's there to empathize or give the occasional truth bomb, and could do well with someone who needs to be encouraged to get out of their shell or be less anxious/walled off.
Deal: I'm going to shock everyone who saw this movie by saying Richie wants to make a deal for Eddie since he famously hated him and could've cared less if he died.
(I'm kidding obviously, sandbox love never dies.)
History: Wikia Link, which is admittedly really confusing because it discusses the book, miniseries and films all on the same page, so here's a hopefully more accurate summary:
Richie's parents are Wentworth (a dentist) and Maggie Tozier. In the book, he says he's been raised Methodist in narration and Catholic while talking with Eddie and Stan, and nothing in the movie contradicts this, so I'm going with he grew up Catholic to sprinkle in that good old Catholic guilt as another reason he's spooked about being honest with his family.
Although fandom loves the idea of Richie's home life being neglectful or abusive, I really dislike that interpretation because it's not confirmed at all in the movie, isn't supported by the book, and is usually just a tool for tween fanfic writers to generate more angst in an already pretty depressing universe (which like, no disrespect, I too was once a melodramatic tween writing fanfic about my favorite characters going through bad stuff). Some fans are now trying to argue with the obituary featured in Chapter Two (linked above) that this interpretation is canon, but they're not understanding that the obit is meant to represent Richie's fears, not to accurately reflect the thoughts or feelings of anyone who actually knows him, so I'm sticking with his home life being pretty decent, especially compared to his other friends.
I think both Went and Maggie are - as in the book - ultimately good parents, but as a kid and especially as a teenager, Richie started feeling like a disappointment and a freak because he was pretty hyperactive, rude, getting in trouble at school because he was hyperactive and rude, and also gay in a conservative small town in Maine during the AIDS crisis, so he started putting some walls up and actively distanced himself from his parents. He is absolutely not out to his mom or dad even as an adult and still thinks of himself as a disappointment because he didn't go into a more conventional career or tone down his obnoxiousness much.
In the first movie, when Richie teases Eddie by asking if a cabinet full of medicine is full of birth control pills, Eddie quips back at Richie "Yeah, and I'm saving them for your sister," which is a really weird thing to say if Richie doesn't have a sister, so I tend to assume he's got an older sister he also doesn't hate but isn't especially close to.
It's shown Richie and Stan have a particularly close friendship in the films, so I've assumed they met first in kindergarten or younger (especially as Richie's parents are also at Stan's Bar Mitzvah, it's possible the Toziers are family friends with the Urises), and then they met Eddie and Bill in elementary school, so the original foursome have been good friends for a long time before the events of the first film. This is in contrast to the books, but I think is supported by the films because all four kids are immediately a unit as school ends, Eddie's mom already knows who Richie, Bill and Stan are when they stop by after school, and in general, they seem more comfortable/familiar with each other than their book counterparts do at a similar point in the timeline.
Georgie Denbrough goes missing in the fall of 1988, and the events of It take place. With flashbacks that are revealed in Chapter Two, it's shown that when the Losers split up after Eddie breaks his arm at Neibolt Street, Richie was harassed at the Capitol Theater arcade by Henry Bowers who threw homophobic slurs at him after Bowers accused him of flirting with Bowers' cousin, and ran off to Bassey Park, where Pennywise makes the Paul Bunyan statue come to life, taunting Richie about being gay before trying to kill him. At some point after the events of the first film, Richie also cut his and Eddie's initials into the Kissing Bridge.
At some point probably early in high school, the Toziers moved away from Derry and Richie forgot basically everything about his childhood because Derry magic. He went to college for a bit, dropped out, became a comedian, has enjoyed success as a comedian, but has been living a pretty hollow, miserable existence in the 27 years between the films when you actually stop to take a look at things because he hasn't been able to come to terms with his past or himself as a person because he literally can't remember some of the most formative things that happened to him. While he started his career doing his own material, at some point he got a ghost writer to further refine the kind of gross jackass comedian persona.
And then he gets a phone call from Mike and It Chapter Two happens.
Sample Journal Entry:
Okay, so. Staying awake obviously isn't working.
[Richie looks and sounds tired, less defeated and more pissed off. He rubs his hands over his face, pushing his glasses up on his face, digging the heels of his hands into both eyes. His hair's standing at odd angles - he's obviously been running his hands through it, and he does it again as he continues, scratching at the back of his head and avoiding looking at the camera.]
You know, shit like this almost makes me wish I still had amnesia. It was so much easier being like "hey, everyone must wake up thinking some slobbering sleep paralysis monster is about to eat them, you're not a total fucking freak."
Although apparently that's like, just totally fucking normal here. Get some therapy, assholes.
[Yeah, yeah. Pot, kettle. Like Richie gives a fuck. He's already dreamed about getting chased through the hallways of hotel by a fire hose turned snake, and one that has to be about Theo's dead sister. This place is crawling with people who need therapy. And sleeping pills.]
Anyway, if anyone's been dreaming about some shapeshifting asswipe clown trying to eat them or throwing out a bunch of lame jokes about being a four eyed little nerd- [Or, you know, gay, but Richie figures he's never going to be able to admit that out loud to anyone, let alone broadcast it on a public network, and seriously fuck this flood for opening up the possibility of someone getting a memory or nightmare like that.] That's mine. Sorry.
I'd tell you how to get over it, but apparently that fucker's the whole reason I still dress like I'm thirteen years old, so you're on your own.
Sample RP:
It's fucking cold. Richie knows what cold is - he grew up in Maine, where winter started in October and didn't end until May if you were lucky - but he's been huddling in the parka the Admiral had donated to him with all the bitterness of someone who moved as far away from the cold as they could. Which is what he fucking did as soon as he could. The miserable, hazy days of summer in LA, wildfires and earthquakes included, are sounding pretty good right about now.
Also, this hotel is definitely fucking haunted. Richie isn't psychic, but Maggie Tozier didn't raise no fool, this ain't his first rodeo, on the Barge or otherwise, and he just knows a deserted hotel in the middle of the mountains spells Trouble with a capital T. It's just a matter of time before whatever ghost or wendigo or Jason fucking Voorhees pops up and starts making their lives a collective hell.
It's the third sleepless night listening to the wind beat against the windows where things start really going downhill. Richie gets up and stalks through the hallways, sights set on the the kitchen or bar in the hopes of finding something to distract him until the sun comes up (not that they've seen the sun since the first day, with how hard the snow's been coming down outside), and ho boy, does the murder palace, built-on-an-Indian-burial-ground hotel start to deliver on its generally creepy as shit vibe.
Richie.
Immediately, he jerks to a stop in the middle of the hallway, the hair standing up on the back of his neck. It makes him think of - turning away from Bill and seeing Eddie waving at him behind the draped furniture all the way down the hallway, wondering how the fuck he got over there, why he hadn't answered when they were calling his name earlier, walking towards the room almost like he was sleepwalking - how Eddie had sounded after it, after it happened, and he looks over his shoulder expecting- what?
There's nothing there.
Except a door to one of the rooms is cracked open, dim light spilling out into a hallway that's only illuminated by Richie's iPhone flashlight. And again, like he's not totally in control of himself, he walks over to it, carefully placing the palm of his hand on the door and pushing it open.
Sitting on the bed, because of fucking course, is Stan. His dead best friend - pale skin splotchy with rot - turns, grins with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, and then his head rolls off his neck, tumbling to the floor, and the fucking spider-legs-
"Oh, fuck this shit," Richie swears emphatically, slamming the door.
Special Notes: TDM links: one, two, three