1-800 Not My Problem

… i’m about to either blow your mind or hurt your feelings. or maybe both !! just— hear me out

the way that eiffel claims the crew treats him? like he’s supposedly a useless idiot who can’t do his job and who no one takes seriously? that’s entirely made up. he came up with that perception of himself all on his own, and no one actually thinks of him that way. and even when people ARE wary of him being able to handle something with efficiency? it’s because he has repeatedly proven that they should be through his actions.

think about it. REALLY think about it. any time someone on the crew criticizes eiffel for anything, is it anything to do with his intelligence? his ability? his necessity to the mission? spoiler alert— it’s not. what they ARE criticizing is his work ethic. his responsibility. his professionalism. which, unfortunately, are ALL things they are completely valid in questioning, because eiffel himself has proven time and time again that he doesn’t care about those things. he repeatedly blows off tasks he’s assigned (star charts, pressurizing the tanks from extreme danger bug, cleaning the wiring panels that were discussed in the paranoia game, etc), he wastes resources for selfish reasons (he literally poisoned the water supply trying to distill whiskey in space. not to mention the toothpaste.), and he’s constantly dismissive of his crew mates any time “boring” work is involved (i.e. routine maintenance tasks).

in eiffel’s defense… he has his reasons for behaving this way. he’s here practically as punishment, and doing these menial tasks only acts as a reminder of what he did. avoiding that responsibility is practically his own means of revolution, of taking back the little bit of autonomy he has left. HOWEVER. he is not the only person on that station. minkowski, hera, hell, even HILBERT’S lives depend on him doing the job he was sent there to do, of his own volition or not. those people don’t deserve to be even more miserable or at risk just because eiffel doesn’t like where he is.

there’s actually a quote in the finale that proves this point (no spoilers i promise):

a lot of eiffel’s actions are driven by self hatred. he’s never forgiven himself for what he did, and because of that he never allows himself to take credit for anything good. he’s resigned to believing himself as an evil, selfish, undeserving person, because he refuses to disappoint the people he loves ever again. because of this, any time a member of the crew criticizes him about something he genuinely deserves, he uses it to prove his own point that he will never be good enough for anything and that he’s just a terrible person, something NO ONE has EVER said to him. it’s just harder for us as the listeners to pick up on that because the story is told through his point of view.

as for eiffel being the first to regard hera as a person— that’s not true, either. in fact, the first person we see doing this (at least chronologically in canon) is minkowski (something i think is explained in the finale so i won’t elaborate on it too much). when we hear eiffel’s first impression of hera in the day one mini episode, he talks ABOUT her before he even talks TO her. in a way that she can hear, too! it isn’t hera’s fault that she is the way that she is, and for her first interaction with someone she was planning on treating with respect to be them talking about how they’re weirded out by and afraid of her? that would hurt ANYONE, human or not. and then for him to CONTINUE reminding her of how he’s put off by her and how he doesn’t see her as an equal by referring to her as things like “wind up girl” and “clippy”? it doesn’t matter that they’re just jokes to him, HE’S not the one those “jokes” are at the expense of.

as for lovelace— think about what she’s going through for a second. she had JUST learned that the last several months of her life had been a complete lie. that she was supposed to be dead. and she only LEARNED this by getting SHOT IN THE HEAD, and just. coming back! she had to feel ALL of that in a matter of days. she doesn’t know WHAT she is, or WHO she is, or what’s going to HAPPEN to her when and if she gets back home. NO ONE is more afraid of that than she is. it doesn’t matter if she’s biologically human or not, she HAS those memories. she HAS those feelings. and for someone like eiffel to continue to undermine her authority and refuse to treat her the same only serves as a reminder of all of that shit she’s dealing with. everyone else is coping with the fact that she’s an alien, too, but eiffel is the only one on her side making it glaringly obvious that he sees her differently now, despite nothing about her actually changing.

sniles sneetly