#it's not my fault ci's amazing and their child has a vice grip on my heart

[specterchasing-a]

Eddie Carridine & Dani Edwards

A first attempt at analyzing Eddie’s relationships.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Depression, suicidal ideations (in the form of disregard for their own lives), and generally heavy topics such as loneliness and death.

At first glance, Eddie and Dani don’t seem to have much in common. She’s a dedicated slayer with a strict code, someone who values the importance of supernatural secrecy above almost all else. He’s a loose-lipped kid with a camera, preaching about how wonderful supernatural beings are. Needless to say, they clash—hard, but dig a little deeper than surface level and these two have more in common than they might ever know.

SOCIAL LIVES

Dan’s moms kept her on a rigid training schedule with little room for interpersonal relationships to develop. Eddie’s parents, albeit with vastly different motivations behind their actions, tried their best to keep him quiet and obedient. As one would assume, this kinda fucked them both up in a major way. Neither is particularly well-versed in navigating social situations, though that disadvantage presents itself in different ways between them. Dani keeps her emotions to herself and prefers to keep people at arm’s length while Eddie throws himself at whoever shows him an ounce of kindness. Different, yet alike, you feel me?

VIEWS ON DEATH

As a slayer, Dani’s gift is death (sorry, not sorry, for the Buffy reference) and Eddie, being a medium, has been surrounded by death since childhood. They cope with grief in different ways but both view death as something inevitable, maybe they even think that’s a good thing. Dani’s purpose is to die for the sake of humanity. If she doesn’t, she’s a failure. Eddie believes he doesn’t have a purpose outside of shepherding the dead and exposing the truth. Beyond that, he’s just a corpse waiting to happen. Neither Dani or Eddie view death as something to be afraid of. It is what it is, and it’ll probably come sooner rather than later.

STUBBORNNESS 

Yes, Eddie and Dani hold directly opposing views on the subject of supernatural secrecy but, more than that, they’re both assholes about it in the same way. When they first reunited at the grocery store and Dani saved Eddie’s life, Eddie blew up at her. He told her exactly what he thought and didn’t pull punches. It was not the first time Dani had been assaulted with narrow-minded stupidity and probably wouldn’t be the last. Initially, she bit back as she asserted her own views. Neither listened to the other, not really. Both of them were dead-set on believing the other was wrong, leaving no room for growth or understanding. They were like two unfortunately similar magnets pushing each other away.

IDEALS

Another instance of Dani and Eddie being alike, yet different can be seen in what motivates their actions. Clearly, they go about things with oppositional methods, but they are both driven by a need to make the world a safer place. Dani, rough-n-tough slayer that she is, is more interested in protecting humans and ridding the world of supernatural threats. By doing her job, she literally makes the streets of White Crest safer for its squishy, mortal  inhabitants. Eddie, on the other hand, wants the world to be safer for supernatural beings. He sees them as outcasts with targets on their backs, bogged down by unwarranted prejudices and falsely spun bad reputations. In his idea of utopia we’d all hold hands while we sing ‘We Are The World’ and outgrow things like murder and human sacrifice. If you ask me, neither of them have realistic expectations for how the world should treat supernaturals, but what matters is that they firmly believe they’ve got it all figured out and that the rest of the population needs to catch up with their massive brains. I realize this echoes a lot of what I said about their stubbornness but this is my impassioned rant about two idiots and I’ll be redundant if I want to.

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Dani, considering she was raised to be a murder machine with a quickly approaching expiration date, doesn’t see love as a possibility for herself. For other people? Sure, but such luxuries shouldn’t be wasted on someone with a terminal birthright. Eddie, though this is quickly changing in lieu of his budding relationship with Alfie, never saw himself as someone who would fall in love either. Because of repression and guilt, he wanted to be right, too. Romantic love, whatever shape it took, was wonderful for everyone else. Let them fall into each other’s arms and make five-year plans together, Eddie would keep himself busy memorizing gravestones. Love scared him, so he left it alone. From what I can tell, Dani’s not scared of love—it’s just inconceivable to think she might experience it. Still, recent growth on Eddie’s part aside, they used to both be resigned to going through life alone.

LONELINESS

Okay, yeah, they’re resigned to going through life alone but, unfortunately for them, human beings are social creatures. Dani, I believe, might not always be aware of how much she needs other people but, at times, she reads as an exceptionally lonely character. On dash, characters have reached out to her after crises and her initial responses were always heartfelt and, most importantly, crossed out. Her first instinct is to show affection and concern because she does, in fact, know on some level that she needs people in her life but… that’s not supposed to be in the cards for her. Dani shelves her unfeigned distress in favor of lukewarm receptions. Some exceptions might be with Athena or a few other characters at times but, for the most part, Dani tends to isolate herself.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Eddie. If someone says so much as one nice thing about him, he’s prepared to commit atrocities in their name. He’s not shy about it, either. He loves deeply and without prejudice. Recently, people have shown up in his life that give him countless chances to show-off how much devotion spills out of his heart on a daily basis. But it wasn’t always like that. For most of Eddie’s life, the majority of people he met made him feel like a freak. High school was hell for him, not that he’s unique for that. His fellow students tormented and ostracized him, his parents wanted nothing to do with him, and he struggled for a long-time trying to figure out how to love himself when no one else seemed to. That particular obstacle is still an issue but it’s thankfully becoming more manageable. However, even with new friends and old relationships being galvanized, it’s hard for him to believe the past won’t infect the present and future. Yesterday’s heartache comes back to him in aftershocks of loneliness and fear. No matter what, Eddie cannot  completely escape feeling alone. So, he and Dani sadly have that in common as well.