look. i know the symbiote is possessive as fuck, so i understand why fics always show them as adamant about being enough for Eddie — which often includes keeping Eddie from interacting with anyone else, besides maybe Annie and Dan and Mrs. Chen. but Eddie is the kind of guy who strikes up friendly relationships everywhere; it’s a big part of who he is. i have to think that one of the compromises he makes with his symbiote is that he has to be allowed to reach out to other human beings for the friendly banter he’s always partaken in.
the symbiote is possessive, yes, but they’re also very curious about earth life, and they’re eager to learn how to be good, and they chose Eddie — they accept and even seem to love everything about who Eddie is. well, a big facet of Eddie’s personality in this film is his friendliness towards people that most people of his social status pass right by. Mrs. Chen the small storeowner, Maria the homeless woman, Richard the lobby guard….making friends with these folks is a big part of who Eddie is. he wouldn’t be Eddie, the kindhearted disaster who’s passionate about exposing the injustices of the world and protecting the vulnerable from getting screwed over by those with power, without his tendency to strike up connections with those people whom most of us overlook.
so Eddie pushes back when the symbiote makes claims about them not needing anyone else and tries to pull Eddie away from casual acquaintances.
“Yeah, i know we don’t need anyone else babe, but i like to meet new people. i like making friends. you can feel my emotions, my thoughts — you know that none of these people are a threat to you, to us, to what we have. i’m not gonna leave you behind just cuz i ask a sanitation worker how his day is going.”
so the symbiote grudgingly accepts…and then comes to really enjoy the small interactions their host has every day: with a woman on the subway who’s struggling with a fussy baby; with the kid at the coffee shop who’s always getting grumbled at by their boss; with the homeless guy with the harmonica who starts frequenting Maria’s old spot.
the symbiote finds they like observing Eddie’s conversations with these people because they learn so damn much about how this planet works that way! but even more, the symbiote discovers a warmth building inside them, brighter and brighter with each chuckle Eddie draws from a harried employee, each handshake Eddie offers to a homeless person. the symbiote gradually realizes it’s pride for their host, pride that the human they chose cares about others so damn much, and is so good at encouraging people and making them feel listened too. the symbiote remembers all too well the intense, gnawing, terrible loneliness of their time Before Eddie, and they can’t help but fall even deeper in love with Eddie for his efforts at keeping others from that same kind of loneliness.
Eddie reaches out to society’s “losers,” and how can the symbiote fault him for that? losers have to stick together.
rather than death of the author i subscribe to a critical framework i like to refer to as Schrodinger’s Author where the authors intentions are important except for when i dont like them
Random Headcanon: Link’s androgyny isn’t just an artefact of the Zelda franchise’s art direction - and neither is it particularly unusual. Sexual dimorphism among Hylians is legitimately much lower than among real-world humans; if Link and Zelda swapped clothes, you’d never be able to tell who was the girl and who was the boy.
Consequently, Hylian society depends heavily on clothing to establish gender roles, to the extent that it’s a severe faux pas to question someone’s gender presentation. If they’re dressed like a girl, then they’re a girl - even if they were dressed like a boy yesterday. That’s why nobody ever remarks upon the fact that Zelda and her heroic alter-ego Sheik are different genders; it’d be gauche at best to bring it up.
Good post op
explains why i can be banned from gerudo town, change clothes in front of the guards, and then be welcomed with open arms
shit, this absolutely provides an explanation for it that isn’t just “lazy game mechanism” and is honestly such a solid demonstration of how people should approach genderfluidity.
doesn’t matter if the first time you met the person they presented as male, if they present as female now that means they’re a woman and they’re welcome into gerudo town no questions asked
Also, Link and Zelda 100% do swap places often and you can’t tell me otherwise.
“Princess Zelda, Ganon has made his way into the kingdom! What should we do?!”
“HYAH”
Holy shit this is a good fucking post and additions thank you OP and company
why does everyone think eddie’s apartment was a shithole? huge open floorplan, enormous windows, tall ceilings, hardwood floors, exposed brick, and some great countertops.
i would literally murder someone to live in a unit that sweet.
if that’s what “rock bottom” looks like to this dude living in the
gentrification capital of the west coast, i wanna hit his all time low.
To be fair you need a big apartment just in case a big action scene breaks out.
do you know how hard it is to shoot a scene in an actual tiny shithole apartment?
okay but it’s in the tenderloin neighborhood of sf, which has been pretty resistant to gentrification, partly because its earned reputation of being…kind of a skeezy place. it’s the area of sf where the crew were issued hazmat boots because the rain meant all the used needles floated down to the filming area. also the tenderloin has zoning policies in place that mean that high rises and luxury condos can’t be built there because residents in the 70s and 80s organized to prevent gentrification. <— big reason for the lack of it. people are working on cleaning up the tenderloin, figuratively and metaphorically, but it’s still not a place to walk alone at night. it remains to be seen whether making it a nicer place doesn’t come at the cost of its affordability
an apartment like that could be a repurposed old hotel – which means it’s likely a historic building and can’t be torn down for high rent housing – and eddie probably pays his rent weekly. it’s unusual in that it has an actual kitchen area, but a lot of the tenderloin is rent controlled, meaning that while eddie probably doesn’t have central heating or ac, his rent could be as low as $400 a month, but it would take a lucky break. there a lot of non-profits in the tenderloin who bought realty when it was cheap and they run most of the affordable, rent-controlled housing. if eddie had connections with anyone involved in the non-profits*, they might have been able to get him into one of the SRO or otherwise rent controlled housing.
*eddie has probably covered things like gentrification, resident evictions, and housing problems in the city as well as the shitty politics behind it
it’s not outside of the realm of possibility for eddie to have such a place and for relatively cheap; it opens up a wealth of possibilities for fic and meta
So for a while I’ve had this headcanon that certain members of the Bureau of Balance correspond to the Seven Birds, whether just for literary purposes or for in-universe Lucretia missing her friends and surrounding herself with people who remind her of them. Some are fairly self-explanatory, Magic Brian and Taako, Leon and Davenport, Killian and Avi and Magnus, and some require a bit more digging like Lucas and Barry, two scientists who are passionate and willing to do anything for family, and Robbie and Merle, both laid back and seemingly stuck in their own world but ultimately they have their passions and are good at them. However, there was one wrinkle in this theory and that is for the life of me, I could never find Lup. That is, until my last relisten.
Lup is undeniably a very unique character. To quote her own breakdown of her character, she has “definitely some lust, some gluttony probably, pride for sure, hella wrath” but is also “pretty on her grind”. She’s emotional, full of anger over her situation, full of dissatisfaction with her situation and desire to be more than she is, but she’s also incredibly talented. She’s in canon a prodigy in her field and she only grows in power during The Stolen Century. She does everything she can to try and save her and her friends from this cycle of death and living, but in the end she regrets what she’s done and even dies trying to fix it. And on the surface, it’s hard to parallel that to anything until you find another character who is full of emotions, full of potential and talent, but also feels trapped. Sound familiar?
Lup’s BOB parallel is Johann. For starters, they’re both insanely talented, “the best violinist basically ever” and the one who “did this world already and kind of crushed it”. However, both of them take seemingly ambitious projects on and end up trapped, unable to move forward in life and frustrated. And then, their arcs become direct contrasts. Lup uses her power to create something and puts it out in the world and is stricken by the destruction and harm it causes everyone and tries to hide it away. Johann creates something that is destroyed and forgotten and can never be recognized and regrets not being able to share it with others. Lup lives clinging first to Taako and then to the rest of the Seven, terrified of losing the only people she has, and Johann lives in obscurity terrified of not being remembered for his work and forgotten.
To quote @tazdelightful (who graciously listened to my rambling), “Lup and Johann are the forgotten”. Johann lives forgotten by the world and Lup dies forgotten by her friends. However, in the end, Lup returns to life and becomes remembered by those who matter the most to her, and Johann dies and in doing so his memory and songs are spread to the entire world and everyone around. Their character arcs compliment and contrast to one another, and they are both The Forgotten and in the end, The Remembered.
