#i reaaally want to talk about lovelace too but i simply do not have the eloquence to really say what i want to say

[popsicle-stick]

having a thought about eiffel where, like, despite being desperately alone and seemingly in charge of himself for most of it, his whole life just seems to have been guided by a series of choices-that-are-not-choices in any real sense of the word. be stuck where you are or join the air force out of high school. rot in prison or go to space and help your daughter. allow everyone and everything you love be destroyed by the very people you worked for or sacrifice your memories of everything you’re trying to save. even in plot, things are often just…..happening to him! pushed from one thing to another, no real agency. i think this is why i like the open choice he’s given at the end*: if his emotional ties are gone, if he really wanted, he could be someone else. live a different life. no pain. few regrets. but the hard thing to do is to go and be douglas f. eiffel. and is hard: his life was, well. an awful mess. it’s significant that he doesn’t have to do that, per se, but that it’s an active choice for him to make, should he choose it.

*it’s also interesting to note that on a meta level, that agency is also passed to us, as the audience, at the end. we’ve been through this whole journey with eiffel, and now he’s released from the grip of the narrative, so are we - we’re free to make our choices about what happens now. which ties it all in nicely, i think