HHHHNNNNGGGGHGHGHGGNGNGH OH GOD (x)
I couldn’t put my finger on just why the “all I have” thing was bothering me so much in the Crates run but I finally figured it out. Eddie says it multiple times, usually about the symbiote, but also once about his father. So much of Eddie’s focus in this run is how he can’t lose his symbiote because it’s “all he has”. The entire run is apparently trying to address and rectify Eddie’s “inability to be alone” but, as someone else has said, has that really ever been Eddie’s problem?
Eddie’s issue is normally that he obsesses over one person at a time. He focuses so fully on one person that he neglects other relationships and even his own health. Being alone is certainly what he’s most afraid of, but that fear is not what the problem is. The problem is that he cannot maintain healthy relationships, especially not multiple different relationships of different natures. He has a very obsessive personality in general and this makes it hard for him to properly form bonds that don’t just turn to fixation. From love to hatred, he doesn’t feel things halfway.
Which is why the “all I have” line really bothers me. Because Eddie’s feeling has never really been that the symbiote is “all he has”. It’s always been that the symbiote is all he NEEDS. It’s his everything, but not because he has nothing else, but because he would forsake everything else just to have it. The is a big thing that they deal with in Venom 2016 the Costa run. Both Eddie and the symbiote learning that letting other people in won’t tear them apart, and they’re both allowed to have connections with people who aren’t the other and that’s healthy for both of them.
The “all I have” line implies that it’s not at all that Eddie becomes obsessive over people or over his relationship with the symbiote, but that his only real obsession is not just having nothing. To not be completely alone. That that space could be filled by anyone and anything, as long as he’s not left with completely nothing. Saying the same line about his dad (who has been shown now to have been incredibly physically as well as emotionally abusive) hammers home the idea that it’s not anything that has to do with love or the importance and health of that relationship, but entirely just the fact that the relationship exist and Eddie is therefore not “alone”.
The idea that Eddie’s main goal should be to learn to be alone misunderstands the basic nature of the character. Eddie does not need to learn to be alone. He needs to overcome his fear of abandonment so that he can let others in. If the symbiote is all Eddie has, it’s because Eddie refuses to allow in anyone or anything else. Framing it that Eddie only really cares about losing it because without it he’d have nothing is a disservice both to the symbiote’s character and Eddie’s.
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