okay. about eiffel’s background. what do we know about his life growing up?
well, we know next to nothing about his parents, and i think that omission tells us enough. his dad is mentioned exactly twice, and not in any real detail. (“my dad always said i’d get myself killed if i wasn’t more careful” in the watchtower, and pryce’s “fishing with dad, how nice” re: a memory of his in the finale.)
we know he didn’t have a very happy childhood. (“that was quite a beating alison thornton gave you. second grade was not a happy time, was it?” also re: his memories in the finale.)
we know his teenage years probably weren’t great either. (“i’ve been awake for twenty-six hours straight, half of it because i’ve been sitting by the phone waiting for a call that never came. it’s like my teenage love life played out on an intergalactic scale.” from a matter of perspective.)
(gabriel urbina made a comment on his unfortunately now-deleted blog where he said he imagined eiffel was largely unsupervised growing up, the kind of kid who was “raised by television” and i think that explains a lot about him.)
we know he that despite the fact he is genuinely very good at what he does, when he cares to be, he has a spotty and wildly varied work history, and difficulty holding down a job. and while he’s certainly intelligent enough that he could’ve done well in school if he cared to, there is just no world in which doug eiffel ever applied himself to academics.
which i mention to ask another question: why is doug eiffel, a staunch pacifist who is consistently defiant of and resentful towards authority, an enlisted man?
well. i don’t exactly have an answer, but i have a feeling. here’s another fun fact i’ve saved from the ruins of gabriel urbina’s blog, the only line from eiffel’s backstory document he ever decided to share:
“eiffel was extremely hesitant at first, but desperate to become independent from his family and strapped for cash, he finally relented.”
what is this talking about? i don’t think it matters; it’s isolated to be intentionally vague. what it does tell us is that, going into adult life, eiffel didn’t have a support system, he didn’t have money, and - knowing everything else we know about him - he probably felt like he didn’t have options. that’s exactly the kind of person military recruiters go after, and the only way his status as ex-military really makes sense to me.
i try not to speculate too much, but when you take all of this together and think about it with regards to the kind of person he is… i think you can make some inferences about the type of life he’s led. at the very least, i think it paints a very lonely picture of someone who has gotten very used to not mattering that much, and. … i don’t have anything else to say about that, really. it just makes me sad.
