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bumblingbabooshka · 1 year

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id love to hear about your ideal tuvok-seven and tuvok-b'lanna relationships!!!!

THIS IS VERY LONG AND /ALL/ OFF THE DOME PLEASE FORGIVE ME. Seven&Tuvok: Tuvok is the first person on board who Seven forms a friendly bond with. They understand one another’s methods of communicating very well. They’re both seen as cold and unsocial by others. Tuvok is excused from this because he’s Vulcan but Seven is constantly told she’s wrong for this because she’s human. Perhaps a bit of resentment from Seven about this but it’s not a huge problem. Tuvok is one of the few people Seven feels she can relax in front of

(B’Elanna too - though they argue more than Tuvok/Seven that’s another kind of relaxing. She can talk to her like a friend where they’re on equal footing rather than the Doctor or Janeway who tend to talk ‘down’ to her by which I mean they present themselves as being a mentor figure and Janeway is also literally her boss).

Seven does not need a father figure or another mentor in my mind. She has enough of that, EVERYONE is that. I know people view Tuvok showing care for Seven as fatherly but I personally view it as more friendly concern. In my mind Vulcan parenthood or Tuvok’s particular brand of fatherhood seem to stem more from teaching. (Ex: The children from Innocence or his lessons with Kes). Tuvok does obviously care about Seven but not in what I perceive as a fatherly way. It’s far more interesting to me that Seven is often helping/protecting Tuvok or that they’re often in some kind of dangerous situation together. I think it’d be interesting to lean into that more. Like, it’d be sort of sweet if the relationship Seven finds confidence in caring for someone else in was with a Vulcan. I know they have that whole borg children thing, I couldn’t care less about that honestly. The Naomi-Seven relationship is cute enough on its own!

Both Seven and Tuvok go to and through hell for each other.

My personal favorite Tuvok-Seven moment other than Comfortable Silence one we all know and love is the one where Seven believes the borg are calling her and she tells Tuvok to get out of the shuttle so he won’t be assimilated. Tuvok then says no, he’s not leaving her. It’s just so fucking sweet to me. Both of them. Seven’s like ‘I want to spare you this’ and Tuvok’s like ‘I’ll walk headfirst into this for you’.

I see both Seven and Tuvok as traumatized people, both of whom would probably deny this citing either ‘borg’ or ‘vulcan’ as the reason this is so. However they both seem to suffer a lot, especially when it comes to their minds. Tuvok even parallels Seven’s initial trauma in being fully assimilated into the borg yet this never comes up between them. Look more into that!! What was that like?? They both suffer traumas, in some cases even similar (Repression, Retrospect) or the same traumas but the reaction of the crew to those traumas is very different with Seven being badgered about her emotions & reactions and Tuvok being left alone with his. I just think it’d be nice for them to have a certain solace. Tuvok would have a shoulder to lean on Seven would have someone who wouldn’t be expecting anything out of her.

Regarding the Borg thing: If ANYONE could understand how being part of an interconnected network of minds would be comforting it would be Tuvok. If ANYONE could understand how being suddenly and traumatically separated from that network via the actions of a certain captain Janeway could be confusing and painful it would be Tuvok. Not that I think Tuvok blames Janeway, I don’t at all. He’s Vulcan (it would be illogical) and also Kathryn’s #1 stan so I think that could again be a point of friction between them. Tuvok doesn’t push Seven in any direction but doesn’t ever admit that Janeway could be wrong. I think at one point in Year of Hell he literally tells Seven she shouldn’t disagree with her? But just Tuvok’s general behavior in the show (like not commenting on her attempting to torture information out of a guy and going on a bloodthirsty quest for vengeance in Equinox) shows that despite what lipservice the show pays to him being her ‘moral compass’ in earlier seasons he mostly just agrees with her after that one instance of him going against orders. He has a tremendous amount of faith in her and would probably encourage that same faith in Seven. That or he’d just excuse himself from the issue by saying he’s Vulcan and can’t really comment on what it means to be human.

Long story short Tuvok is in desperate need of characters he’s not seen as a mentor figure for and Seven is in desperate need of characters that aren’t trying to mold her into what their vision of a good human/starfleet officer is. I think they could and should find that in one another.

B’Elanna & Tuvok: Both B’Elanna and Tuvok have a lot of similarities in their backstories that are unexplored. They both at one point wished they were not the race they are (for different reasons and to differing degrees as Tuvok grew out of this and B’Elanna still has it). They were both sent to a temple to better connect with their heritage. They both quit Starfleet (at different times). They both are seen by people chiefly with regards to their species ‘It’s because [s]he’s Vulcan/Klingon’ and they have both taken issue with it in the past. They both seem like they have had a complicated relationship to humanity with B’Elanna lauding it and Tuvok loathing it (not actively in canon I mean in the past for Tuvok).

B’Elanna from a young age viewed humanity as Good. Full stop. No matter how much humans hurt her the lesson she seems to take away from it is that she needs to change, not that humans should change. She covered her ridges, she lies about not knowing Klingon, when she knows her baby will be born with her features she’s TERRIFIED of how her daughter will be treated and tries EVERYTHING in her power to “fix” (HEAVY air quotes) her and make her socially acceptable to humans.

Tuvok on the other hand, when faced with similar (though not as dire, sustained or internalized as B’Elanna) issues went the opposite way. He grew to really resent how humans pushed their own beliefs and values onto him. I think it’s interesting how he mentioned humor specifically, implying that Tuvok has and had his own sense of humor - of personhood - that humans didn’t understand and thus ignored or viewed as lesser.

Now for how these elements would interact…B’Elanna in her dreamscape in Barge of The Dead places Tuvok as the arbiter of What is a Good Klingon which I interpret as meaning she views him as very upright and traditional. This makes sense as we see Tuvok is a very staunch person. In canon he doesn’t struggle at all with his cultural identity. He is Vulcan and he’s at peace with that no matter what anyone has to say about it - unlike B’Elanna. He even has a holoprogram of a temple which is interesting when you take into account the fact that B’Elanna denies her cultural spirituality.

I think B’Elanna would see Tuvok as a bit intimidating and very frustrating. He’s stubborn like her and I can’t imagine them working well together. They don’t interact much but the two times I can remember him doing so he says something that could be interpreted as very hurtful (though the narrative hates B’El- doesn’t see it that way).

1 After B’Elanna tells him a painful story about her past in which she was bullied to the point of snapping and attacking another student Tuvok immediately uses the same jeer to incite her to anger yet again. After he intentionally does so he criticizes her for being angry and says she’s too easily riled up.

2 After B’Elanna is acquitted in Random Thoughts Tuvok says something along the lines of “You know for a brutal and illogical Klingon you actually control yourself somewhat well.” and B’Elanna says “Thanks??” which…B’Elanna…you can punch him, it’s okay. I know you don’t punch people but you can do it just this once. Again, I don’t see them being either father/daughter or mentor/mentee. (I assume them having a father/daughter bond is just conceptual as Tuvok IS a father and B'Elanna has a bad relationship with her own) They don’t interact with one another much and seem like they would aggravate each other as they’re both stubborn and kind of similar. I think in fact that Tuvok constantly being relegated to ‘Mentor Figure’ is side-eyeingly similar to the ‘Magic N*’ trope by which I mean Tuvok is used in both canon and fan narratives ONLY to advance other characters’ stories, give them advice etc but his own personhood remains unexplored or seen as unimportant.

I think B’Elanna-Tuvok could really bring that out. Both of them being just two people. B’Elanna and Tuvok arguing, learning about one another, coming to respect each other. B’Elanna questioning Tuvok and his ideas and Tuvok being unused to that, caught off guard - and through that questioning and response we learn more about both of them as people.

Tuvok, at the end of the day, is not a therapist. He’s just some guy who’s part of a culture which is known for controlling themselves. He doesn’t even seem to really WANT to do what little exercises of control he does with B’Elanna (he says Chakotay insisted). Tuvok is not a people person and doesn’t seek out interactions with others. When he talks to others they often view him as either cold (perception of Vulcans) or superior (Tuvok-specific trait) neither of which I think B’Elanna would jive with well.

I think it would be very interesting if B’Elanna called Tuvok out on how he’s implied to view Klingons. I think she’d be way more likely to do this with Tuvok because he’s not a human. Like, imagine if after rising tensions Tuvok makes one little comment too many and B’Elanna’s like “Hey. Do you remember when you were an ensign and people kept making these comments about YOU??? Do you think maybe you’re doing the exact same fucking thing right now to me???”

ALSO one last thing I find interesting is (I’m sorry) LITERALLY ONE line in Innocence that’s NEVER brought up again. Tuvok saying that he used to believe in the concept of a katra and the Vulcan afterlife but “in recent years” he’s begun to experience doubts. Let B’Elanna and Tuvok talk about spiritual doubts.

At the end of the day I DO ABSOLUTELY want them to be friends. I want them to stick up for each other when a human makes a little comment. I want them to have each others fucking backs. Maybe it's not the fact that I'm Vulcan or You're Klingon that's the problem.....maybe it's the whi- humans...that are wrong. This could also connect to Seven's personal journey with humanity. Seven seeing that two people she cares about have been hurt by humanity and humanity's perception of them could be an interesting thing for her to notice and think about in regards to what sort of person she wants to be.

#SORRY.#THIS IS.......SORRY #kind anon #Anon (sweet and unsuspecting): Hmm Bea hasn't answered my ask in a long time maybe he's not interested #Bea (lunatic): I'm too interested to even TRY to reply. Let me just -WRITES AN ESSAY-#st voyager #B'Elanna Torres #Seven of Nine #Tuvok #these are just my personal ideas.......alotofthem..........sorry #Tuvok is interesting to me in part because he used to be rebellious and wilder but now he's so by-the-book and uncompromising #there's a LOT A LOT that could come from that in my mind especially in his relationships towards both B'Elanna and Seven #thank you everyone who sends me asks I really do love them #sometimes I love them so much I can't answer them right away v_v please bear with me

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desiccatedwithering · 2 years

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Eddie & Steve parallels (and the pointlessness of Eddie’s death)

this was originally going to be a comment on this post: https://www.tumblr.com/whookami/688603046879657984/the-steve-proxy-a-discussion-of-an-unfulfilling

but then it became so long and unhinged that I didn’t want to inflict it on others unprompted lol

Anyway, I’ve been rewatching parts of previous seasons, and it’s been making me even more infuriated about the Eddie & Steve parallels (and how pointless Eddie’s death was), so have roughly 5k words of (probably incoherent) ranting:

Honestly, Eddie’s whole storyline is basically a shittier version of Steve’s in season one, with some parts of seasons 2 and 3 thrown in for flavor. As I said in a discord server, the Duffer brothers fucked up by letting Joseph Quinn make Eddie an appealing character comparable to Steve post season one, while sticking to their plan to treat him like season one!Steve and kill him off in Steve’s place.

[[Also, it was pointed out (by brid in the fruity four discord) that it’s very obvious how the writers wanted Eddie to be a bully, given the way Jeff, Gareth, and [unnamed dude, because they couldn’t be bothered to think of one (1) more name] act like Eddie’s lackeys.]]

Quick partial season 1 recap:

Steve and Jonathan have their fight in episode 6. In episode 7, Steve calls out Tommy and Carol for being assholes, and as he’s driving away, Tommy shouts, “That’s right. Run away, Stevie boy! Run away! Just like you always do.” [I bet you can see where this is going]

Steve goes back to clean the graffiti off of the theater and then heads to Jonathan’s house to apologize to him. He finds Nancy injured, incorrectly assumes that Jonathan hurt her, and barges in to find the house set up for demogorgon hunting, which is when Nancy threatens to shoot him to get him to leave. [side note: incredibly weird dialogue in vol 1 when Nancy said “You almost deserved it” about nearly shooting Steve. Why? Because he was understandably freaked out by the suspicious injury, insane Christmas lights, nail bat, gun, and the smell of gas, so he didn’t want to leave?]

Anyway, the demogorgon shows up while Steve is still in the house. The three of them run into Will’s room to try to lure it into a bear trap, but it disappears without stepping on the trap. They venture back into the living room, where Steve has a little freakout about how crazy this is (which Eddie’s freakout after seeing the bats for the first time parallels) and tries to call for help before Nancy snatches the phone out of his hand and throws it across the room and tells him that he needs to leave right now. [side note: Nancy will also fling the Byers’ phone in season 2, which is so funny. Nance, you could just unplug the cord. You don’t have to keep breaking their phone.]

And here’s the part that makes me truly insane: Steve runs. Nancy tells him to leave, and he listens. He’s got his car unlocked, the door open, about to get in, when he notices the lights flicker inside the house.

And he realizes that running was the wrong choice. He goes back in (completely unarmed!!), grabs the nailbat that Jonathan dropped (fucking insane that he even saw it, given the flashing lights and enormous monster getting ready to eat his girlfriend), and hits the demogorgon until it backs into the trap and they can light it on fire.

He is rewarded for choosing not to run, for choosing to stay and fight.

The second he makes that choice, he gets his Big Damn Hero moment. He saves Nancy and Jonathan, and his choice actually impacts the story. If he had left, one of them (or both) would’ve died. There’s pretty much no question about it; Jonathan was prone and the bat was out of his reach. Nancy shooting the demogorgon was enough to get its attention and make it leave Jonathan alone to target her instead, but the shots didn’t actually seem to do any real damage, and she was out of bullets anyway. Maybe Jonathan would’ve been able to get up and grab the bat to protect himself, but I doubt he would’ve been able to do it fast enough to stop Nancy from being killed.

Steve runs three times in season 1: Once from confronting Nancy when he sees her and Jonathan in her room at night and assumes that she’s cheated on him. A second time when the cops show up to break up the fight, leaving Jonathan to be arrested for a fight that Steve instigated. And a third after seeing the demogorgon for the first time.

All three times, it is the wrong choice. Running away either ends up hurting people or has the potential to do so. Each time, he has other options, which he finally realizes with the demogorgon.

Eddie also runs three times: Once after Chrissy dies. Second when the jocks find him. And finally to distract the bats.

At first, Steve was dealing with normal human problems and the consequences of his own actions; Eddie, on the other hand, was dealing with supernatural murders (and Chrissy was already dead when he ran; there’s nothing he could’ve done for her) and jocks literally out for blood.

And that third time, Steve was running away from danger, from a monster, leaving Nancy and Jonathan to fend for themselves alone. The third time Eddie runs, yes, he’s technically running away from monsters, but he’s drawing them away from Dustin and the others.

The writers gave Eddie a worse version of Steve’s season one arc by trying to make it seem like Eddie needed redemption for running/needed to take a stand and be brave, when he didn’t actually do anything wrong and didn’t have any other options available to him. And then they gave him a poorly-conceived moment of “bravery” and punished him for it. Eddie is killed for making that same choice that Steve did: to stop running and fight. And it doesn’t even have the same narrative justification. There are no consequences if Eddie continues to run, but people will literally die if Steve does.

Eddie never actually puts anyone else in harm’s way by running. He wasn’t running from the fight at the end of season four. In fact, he was running into danger. Volume 2 seemed to remove a lot of the teeth from the Upside Down, at least as far as the characters are concerned (see: Steve letting Robin go off ahead without an ounce of worry), but it’s still a world full of monsters and toxic spores, and Eddie was willingly running deeper into it, further away from the gate and safety. Steve ran from the demogorgon to protect himself. Eddie ran from the bats to protect everyone but himself. He was already being brave and trying to help the others, so he had no reason to stop running and try to fight the swarm.

And he had been brave even before that! He had already followed everyone else into the Upside Down and helped fight the bats (which Steve tried to point out, before Eddie was possessed by the Duffer brothers to tell us that we should all be shipping Stancy again), and then he chose to return to the Upside Down and act as the distraction, an objectively dangerous job. Depending on how you look at it, it might actually be the most dangerous option (excluding Max baiting Vecna, but that’s not something anyone else could do), since the Vecna team was going to be hitting him when he wouldn’t be able to fight back right away. And Eddie had seen the aftermath of a few bats attacking Steve, so he knew the damage that a whole swarm could do.

The way the writers treat Eddie’s decision to run isn’t even coherent within the narrative of the season! In episode one, during the D&D game, Eddie says, “There is no shame in running. Don’t try to be heroes.” The kids refuse to run. They decide to continue the fight, and they win. Then the Duffers proceed to shame Eddie for running constantly (instead of… idk being found with a cheerleader’s mutilated body and thrown in jail? being murdered by jocks?? genuinely don’t know what the alternatives are here, guys), but also kill him the second he decides to stop running and fight back. Like, it makes sense for Eddie to have hang-ups about running away—he’s been through something extremely traumatic—but the narrative presents that (almost) completely unchallenged. But then it also punishes him for making the “right” choice and no longer running, which is just incomprehensible.

(Also, all four of the older teens run away from the bats at the Lovers’ Lake gate, but no one is claiming that that was cowardly or the wrong choice or a mistake. They were clearly outnumbered and unprepared, so running was the only thing they could do. It was the smart decision. Sometimes you just have to run, regroup, and then tackle the problem.)

To circle back to season one!Steve for a second, it’s interesting that Tommy does call Steve out for always running away. I feel like, coming from Tommy—an outside perspective—the words hold much more weight than when Eddie talks about how he’s a coward (most people are their own worst critics, after all). Sure, Tommy and Steve were fighting, so he could’ve just been making shit up to get in Steve’s head, but it felt more like he was picking at an insecurity that Steve already had. And, honestly, Steve probably does often run away from things and avoid conflict. We know he doesn’t like violence and would rather avoid it whenever possible (highly recommend that you go read werewolfsteve’s posts about that, if you haven’t already).

Meanwhile, in season 4, we have a character who’s whole arc revolves around Running Away vs Not Running Away, yet the only person who actually talks about it is Eddie, the dude who’s been jumping from one traumatic experience to the next. He doesn’t have an accurate assessment of himself or the situation.

Steve’s tendency to run away is less obvious at first glance (because the writers trusted us to be able to connect a single line of dialogue with what we had watched, rather than have the characters remind us of things every thirty seconds). But it’s also significantly more satisfying when Steve bucks that trend and takes a stand.

Also, “buying more time” is such a nebulous concept to risk your life for. More time for whomst? Presumably Team Flambé Vecna, but does Eddie actually know that they need more time? How will he know when their mission is completed, and he no longer needs to be a distraction? Is he just banking on the hope that killing Vecna will kill all the monsters (something there has been absolutely no evidence for so far)?

Honestly, I don’t know why Dustin and Eddie were even waiting around in the trailer in the Upside Down after they successfully got the bats’ attention. They could’ve climbed back through, and then if it seemed like the bats were losing interest, they could’ve jumped back down to resume being the distraction. They assumed that the reinforcements they added to the trailer would be strong enough to keep the bats out, so it’s not like they were standing there to defend the gate (evidence: the fact they only decided to bail after the bats started to break in).

[[Multiple people have made the argument that if Eddie had followed Dustin through the gate, the bats would’ve gone as well. Which might be the case, but we don’t actually have any super compelling evidence to support that. The bats could’ve gone through the gate at Lovers’ Lake at any point, but they didn’t.

But say that is the reasoning for why Eddie goes back out/why the two of them were just hanging out in the Upside Down trailer: Working with the information they have, there’s a decent chance that the gates would’ve closed up after killing Vecna (since we saw Chrissy’s and Fred’s closed, and Nancy would remember that the gates the demogorgon made also closed on their own), so even if some bats managed to fly through into our world, they would’ve died once the gates closed. And they would be unlikely to do widespread damage in the time it took to kill Vecna.]]

You know who does have a good “create a distraction to give others enough time to complete the mission” plotline? Steve in season 2!

When Steve and the kids go down into the tunnels to set the vines on fire, it’s not to vaguely “buy more time.” It is, very specifically, to draw the attention of the demodogs just long enough for El to reach the gate and close it (while they hightail it out of the tunnels so that they’re not killed in the process). They had a plan and an exit strategy, and that was from a pack of feral thirteen year olds and their extremely concussed babysitter, who only woke up when they were basically at the tunnels. But Eddie, infamously tough DM, who had significantly more time to prepare, couldn’t come up with a better contingency plan than “idk start running and hope the bats miraculously die before they eat me”?

Sure, Steve and the kids could’ve tried to outrun the dogs to prolong the distraction, but they knew that was an unnecessary risk. The rewards didn’t even come close to outweighing the consequences, since you’re never going to be able to sprint faster than a dog-esque creature (or, for that matter, a bat-esque creature). They just had to trust that El would be able to get the job done with the extra time they were able to give her while staying (relatively) safe themselves.

And another parallel between Steve and Eddie: Setting the tunnels on fire leads to Steve and Dustin being the only two in danger. All the other kids make it up the rope before the pack of demodogs reaches them, but Steve and Dustin don't have time to. They don't stupidly refuse to get to safety; they have no choice. Just like with Eddie and Dustin in season 4, they’re the only two in immediate danger. Except, in season 2, the dogs just run right past them, completely ignoring them in favor of getting to El. Neither of them are bitten even a little bit.

And their distraction was necessary to the plot. Even with it, the walls by the gate were swarming with demodogs, and they nearly overwhelmed Hopper. If Steve and the Party hadn't set fire to the tunnels, El wouldn't have had time to close the gate, which would’ve led to everyone dying.

Steve and the kids go against the agreed-upon plan (since they should’ve been staying on the bench), but the narrative makes it clear that they made the right call, that it was the right decision to put themselves at risk to help the others.

Meanwhile, Eddie putting himself in the line of fire is justification for him to be killed off. And it’s not like his distraction even mattered!

Eddie’s choice was pointless to the outcome of the battle. It didn’t accomplish anything. The bats were already distracted, and even if they hadn’t been, they all died minutes after taking Eddie down. Sure, he had no way of knowing that in-universe, but if we’re talking about creating a satisfying narrative (and not just blatantly ripping off Steve’s plot from previous seasons, except worse), it’s an abysmal writing decision. There are countless other ways that he could’ve been killed off that would’ve been more compelling. Because as it is, his actions literally did not matter one way or the other.

If he had kept running, the rest of the plot would’ve been exactly the same, because it was Murray with the flamethrower that actually killed the bats. Even if the bats had lost interest in him and started flying back towards the Creel house (which would’ve at least been a reason for Eddie to stop running), they wouldn’t have made it back in time to hurt anyone. (Also, in-universe, Eddie had no idea they were about to die, so him continuing to run would’ve made more sense with his stated goal of distracting them and buying the other team more time, since the bats would’ve stayed focused on him, rather than killing him and just returning to the house.)

[[Tangent: It's baffling that the demobats all just drop dead like that. When the tunnels were set on fire in season 2, that didn't kill any of the demodogs. There's no reason why it would. Sure it's a hivemind, but that doesn't mean that killing one monster kills all the rest. It just means that the rest know where you are and will probably be drawn to you. The tunnels and the dogs were both in Hawkins, and the dogs were completely unharmed by the vines being set on fire. But I'm supposed to believe that Murray setting a few dogs on fire in Russia would kill an entire swarm of bats in the Upside Down version of Hawkins? The demogorgon that is also in Russia and also set on fire doesn’t even die from that!! It makes no sense!!!

[sub-tangent where I’m deluded: Sure, maybe the bats were killed so that Dustin could get to Eddie and they could have that final conversation (which seems unlikely since, while heart wrenching, it was pretty redundant. Eddie was just repeating things he'd said before. Except for telling Dustin he loves him, but that was improv, so not a reason for the Duffer brothers to need them to speak again). Or maybe they were killed so that they wouldn't eat him completely, keeping his body mostly intact. Like, Bob got completely fucking torn apart. Billy got stabbed by six tentacles (or whatever we're calling those things) and then got stabbed in the middle of his chest. Also, he was soaked in blood. If you look at Eddie, there are a few spots, but honestly nothing that screams “this man will die of blood loss.” (Pretty sure there’s roughly the same amount of blood on Steve’s bandages as Eddie's shirt when he dies, and Steve's injuries certainly don't slow him down at all.) So unless the bats have some kind of venom (which is pretty unlikely, given that Steve was also gnawed on), what is Eddie dying from, exactly? It’s all pretty suspicious, if you ask me… 👀]]]

Now that I’m (temporarily) done being deluded, I’m gonna veer even more off topic and rant about how Eddie’s death was truly just shock value. Like, he didn’t even fit the template of previous characters who were brought in just to be killed. Because in previous seasons, the characters that died did so after accomplishing their goals, or at the very least, in a way that moved the plot forward. Both Bob and Alexei were vital to the plot, getting the main characters just close enough to their goal to be able to figure out the rest on their own.

In Bob’s case, he solved the mystery of the tunnels by figuring out that Will’s drawings were a map of Hawkins, and he calculated the distances and figured out Hopper’s location, so they were able to save him. Then in the lab, Bob knew what he was risking when he stayed behind, but it paid off! His knowledge of BASIC allowed everyone else to make it out of the lab safely. His sacrifice wasn’t in vain. And he died while trying to escape as well, rather than doing something stupid and pointless (though he and Eddie both decided to stand still knowing there are monsters nearby, like fucking idiots). And his death then inspired the kids to be brave and go down into the tunnels and create the distraction to give El more time to close the gate. He had knowledge and skills that no one else in the group had, which were necessary for the various missions to succeed.

Alexei had insider knowledge from working on the device that was opening the gate. He told them how the machine could be shut off (and how it could be destroyed), where the keys were, and that the code to access the keys was Planck’s constant. He gave them all the pieces they needed, so even though he died, they were still able to successfully break the machine. Sure, Scoops Troop had been down in the base, but they didn’t have any idea of how the machine worked. They didn’t know where the keys were or what the passcode would be. The information that Alexei was able to provide before his death was vital to stopping the Russians and subsequently killing the flesh monster mind flayer. And his death led to both the introduction of Suzie and the Hopper-in-Russia plotline.

Eddie… didn’t do anything like that. The plot just sort of happens to him, rather than him making contributions that move things forward (aside from stealing the RV). For a season where music was the solution, the musician did a remarkable lack of saving the day. We all expected him to play Nancy’s favorite song to break her out of Vecna’s curse. But nope. No one even suggested that, and Vecna just let her go. Sure, Eddie played the guitar to distract the demobats, but his presence wasn’t actually vital. Electricity works in the Upside Down well enough for them to use a drill. They could’ve just hooked up some speakers to play music. Or anyone could’ve just strummed some random notes on the guitar; it didn’t actually have to be someone playing a legit song.

Hell, even Billy accomplished more with his death, and he’d spent two seasons being an antagonist and most of season 3 literally possessed. But he still saved El by sacrificing himself, which also led to Max’s season 4 character arc.

Eddie’s death did nothing. It changed nothing. Hardly anyone cared. The kids talked about and mourned Bob. The adults took a moment to acknowledge and visibly regret Alexei’s death. Max sobbed over Billy’s body with El and Mike right beside her and then spent a whole season grappling with her feelings about his death. Even the fake out deaths were acknowledged more: Murray asks Joyce about Hopper, and then El gets to read his speech. When El disappears, the boys all scream for her, and we see Mike sobbing in his mother’s arms. We get a lingering shot of the blanket fort still set up in the basement, and just a few minutes later, Hopper puts some eggos in the woods, all but confirming that she’s not dead anyway.

Eddie got what? Dustin crying as he died, and then Dustin talking to his uncle two days later. None of the other cast even mentioned him in passing. [excuse me while I become delusional again for a second: unless I’m remembering wrong, this is the only actual major character death seen by a single character. The only other exceptions are Hopper and Max’s fake-out deaths. (Excluding the characters that die to kick off the Upside Down stuff, like Chrissy or the guys from the newspaper in season 3.)]

Arguably, Brenner’s death fit the “new major character dies to push forward plot/character development” pattern established by previous seasons better than Eddie’s. Sure, he's not actually a new character, but he was reintroduced after being presumed dead for two seasons. And he helped El get her powers back, which let her go fight Vecna and save Max.

Honestly, I’m probably reading too much into this, but I kind of feel like they were going for a parallel between Brenner and Eddie’s deaths with “I need you to understand. Please tell me you understand. Please.” and “Say ‘I’m gonna look after them.’ Say it.” (Which would be wild since one of them is a villain and the other is one of our heroes, but whatever.)

But the closest parallel is actually Max's fake-out death.

Someone they love holding them: check. Explicitly stating or implying that they don't want to die (Eddie saying that he was finally going to graduate; fight me on this): check. Only having a single character present for the death (at least physically, since El was also mentally with Max): check. Dustin telling the others: check. (He’s actually the only one who tells other people about Max and Eddie; he tells Will and El that Max is at the hospital and Wayne about Eddie's death). [Another instance of weird dialogue: Dustin saying, “Oh God. You don’t know,” after Will and El are concerned about Lucas being in the hospital. Yeah, no shit they don’t know! They just rolled up in a random pizza van, and you have no idea that El has her powers back. Literally how would they have known about Max being in the hospital?]

And then Steve and Robin never mention either of them. Which is insane! Nancy at least gets to go to the hospital to see Max (where she and Jonathan just lurked in the back of the shot while the boys (minus Dustin) and El were by her bedside, so not really much acknowledgement, but more than we get from Steve), even if she completely ignored Eddie’s death.

Robin didn’t want to tell Eddie bad news earlier in the season because she didn’t want to see him sad. But two days is enough for her to completely get over whatever reaction she had (if any) to finding out that Eddie died? And I know we haven’t seen her interact with Max much in the show, but, really? Absolutely no concern about the teenage girl who they know died long enough for the gates to open?

And Steve Harrington! Steve, the dude who's been protecting these kids for three seasons and would rather (literally) dive head first into danger than let someone else get hurt in his place. That Steve wouldn't go to the hospital to see Max, a girl who literally died on his watch? He wouldn't even ask Dustin how she's doing? We know that they’re close. Max wrote letters to the rest of the Party, her family, and Steve. None of the other young adults got one, not Robin, not Nancy, not Jonathan. Just Steve. And Max already had a brush with death in the graveyard. And we saw how worried Steve was, how devastated he’d be if he lost her. And then we’re supposed to believe that he doesn’t bother to visit or at the very least ask about how she’s doing?

He was the adult, the oldest person there who had experience. Keeping everyone safe was his responsibility. But he wouldn’t feel any guilt about Eddie being killed and his body (presumably) being left in the Upside Down? Even if he and Eddie hadn’t bonded, he still knew that Eddie and Dustin were close friends. He knew that Dustin looked up to Eddie. And he wouldn’t even feel bad about how losing Eddie would affect him? [[unrelated, but why was Dustin, the kid with the injured leg, the one limping around giving people water? Steve, you were flipping around with open wounds in your stomach; take over water delivery and let the poor kid stand still and sort some clothes. Don’t get me wrong; I love Steve Looking Supportively At Queer Ladies, but like. Should Dustin be walking around right now??]]

[[Honestly, they’re all behaving bizarrely fine for a group of people who 1. are living in a town that has a bunch of hellmouths that opened after three to four teens were brutally murdered, killing more people and swallowing houses in the process, 2. have a friend hospitalized, in a coma, with many broken bones because they failed to kill the man psychically torturing her fast enough, and 3. had a new member of their group—who had already been unfairly blamed for murders he didn’t commit and then hunted by a mob led by his classmates—get eaten alive in a hell dimension they led him to. Genuinely cannot tell if this is just terrible writing (almost certainly) or purposefully incredibly suspicious behavior (perhaps…?)]]

tl;dr This is all an extremely long-winded way of saying: 1. There are an insane number of parallels between Steve and Eddie because the Duffer brothers said “Hey! Remember how we were gonna kill Steve in season one? What if we did that now, except create a character arc using aspects of Steve’s plotlines from seasons 1-3, let the actor give him post-s1!Steve level personality, and make it a Steve stand in so people don’t actually hunt us down and kill us.” 2. Somehow in the process of ripping off Steve’s plotlines, they managed to make them worse at every turn. 3. Eddie’s death is a Significant departure from the norm in several aspects and also parallels Max’s fake-out death, which allows me to be extremely deranged and convince myself that he’s not actually dead.

#stranger things #st meta #eddie munson #steve harrington #st s4 #s4 vol2 #eddie meta #does this make any sense?#are these the ramblings of a lunatic?#me [shaking the duffer brothers]: let people react normally to things for ONCE!!!#also killing the new character isn't shocking and doesn't raise the stakes when you do it Every Single Season #I saw eddie stop running and i was like whelp! he's dead! so i guess max will be fine #max: [bones start breaking] me: damn that's gonna suck to recover from #my post #my meta #st negativity #st s4 negativity #my writing #technically?

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