taeniurus:

D2 – shaking hands

There is a strange feeling in Eddie’s intestinal tract.

Usually, the causes of Eddie’s various nerves firing are obvious. If he is careless while removing the hair from his face Venom will encourage the blood cells to clot, to scab, to rebuild. If Eddie is nauseous, all it takes is a subtle nudge to block serotonin production, until the cause of the nausea passes. They know Eddie’s body inside and out, have studied and catalogued every cell, have memorized actions and reactions until most responses are automatic; a gentle shift of a dream towards something more pleasant, a steadying tendril when they lose their balance, an unknotting of muscles along their spine after sitting too long. Eddie is theirs, and they will protect him. But this-

Venom takes another pass along the inside of Eddie’s stomach, along the interior of his esophagus and back down into his intestines. There is nothing out of place, nothing to heal, nothing to fix-

Eddie’s stomach clenches tight- but it does not. But it does. Venom growls in frustration.

Explain.

Eddie jumps a little in his seat. His coffee cup wobbles precariously on the edge of the desk. Venom nudges it back on. Clumsy Eddie.

“You’re gonna have to, uh,” Eddie glances around, always checking for prying eyes, “elaborate on that.”

Venom emerges enough to perform an outside inspection, curling around Eddie’s stomach under his shirt and pressing into the yielding flesh, searching for an explanation for this feeling. It is like something is pressing into their stomach, weighing them down, making them feel restless, on edge. They do not like it.

Eddie is rigid in his chair. He gently swats at Venom’s appendages.

“Would you-” Venom squeezes tighter, expanding their reach down towards Eddie’s thighs “- jesus.” Another feeling now- something similar to adrenaline, but different. Hmm. The sinking feeling is still there. Not good, not good. Something is wrong and they don’t know what.

“Would you calm down,” Eddie whispers at him, muscles taught as he whacks at Venom’s prodding again until they slink back inside his skin. “What’s gotten into you?”

Bad feeling, but nothing is hurt.

“Oh.” Eddie feels guilt now, and the sinking sensation increases in its intensity. Venom wraps themselves around Eddie’s stomach, just in case. Human bodies can be.. unpredictable.

Eddie sighs, slumping further in his chair. Venom gently nudges his back into a better posture. The bad feeling is getting worse, spreading from his stomach up into his rib cage. A pathogen? Disease? They give Eddie a full ten seconds before pinching the skin on the back of his neck to get his attention.

Eddie, explain. How do we fix it?

A feeling of restlessness settles over them, twisting into Eddie’s limbs and sticking like a stubborn tater tot on the pan. Eddie raises his hand to rub at his temple. Venom checks for any head aches, but finds none.

“You can’t fix it, buddy,” Eddie begins, his fingers tapping against his thigh in an uneven rhythm. Venom growls in annoyance.

We can fix anything.

That makes Eddie’s lips quick in a small smile. He pats his thigh absentmindedly. “Not this. This is just- anxiety.”

Anxiety. Venom does not know the word. They reach for Eddie’s memories, flipping through them like pages of a magazine, but the term remains illusive.

Do not like anxiety. How do we kill it?

Eddie glances at the screen on his desk, reaching to the circular wheel on the mouse to move the words. Venom can feel him swallow, can feel the way sweat starts to form under his collarbone.

“You can’t kill it,” Eddie says, eyes flickering over the words without really paying attention. Venom shifts to get a better glimpse of the screen. “Life is very good at making people anxious.”

They can make out the words now. Dollar signs, something about money being overdue. Bills, then. Eddie has already explained the concept of payment for goods and services, like chocolate and Netflix. They bristle around Eddie’s ribcage protectively.

If this screen is causing anxiety we will eat it.

“No-” Eddie puts his hand on his chest, right above where Venom is resting. It pleases them that Eddie can detect them so easily now. “Don’t do that. It’s not the computer, it’s just-“ Eddie sighs, running a hand through his hair. He gestures around them vaguely. “Life.”

The feeling deepens, seeping up into Eddie’s lungs and causing his breaths to become too short. A feeling, not a disease. Emotions are something Venom has only started to understand. Human brains make certain chemicals that correspond to different feelings. Things like happy and sad, hungry and full; these are easy to comprehend. Some are more tricky, more hidden. If they can just find the right one, can turn it off-

Eddie rubs at the back of his neck. “V, it’s okay. You don’t have to-” they brush over a stray memory, something about a rooftop, a cold breeze, and a feeling of indecisiveness. Eddie shudders. “You don’t have to poke around in my brain. It’ll go away as soon as I can find something to distract myself with.”

Not if I kill it first. Venom swirls around the inside of Eddie’s skull, gently encouraging his brain to produce more serotonin. They can’t grow it themselves, and the human body is slow and easily confused. What kind of organism tricks itself into feeling bad when there is no injury? Stupid.

When they surface again Eddie is hunched over his desk, head in his hands. His fingers tremble, but they are not cold. Confusing. They reach outward from Eddie’s elbow to inspect the tiny appendages, tendrils softly weaving between the digits. They like Eddie’s fingers, all long and thin. Perfect for hitting the microwave buttons when making potatoes, or for feeding them chocolate from the box.

Eddie jumps a little in his chair, the support squeaking as he settles. He is.. surprised? But not a bad surprise. Pleasant surprise. Venom stretches his tendrils more firmly around Eddie’s hand. A good surprise: another feeling they like. They will have to think of ways to make Eddie feel good-surprised again. Eddie’s fingers begin to settle. Venom pets the back of his hand in encouragement.

Something else, also.

Anxiety is dying, they say smugly. Told you we could fix it. If all Eddie needs to not be anxious is for them to hold his fingers, it will be easy to manage in the future. Maybe more good surprises will make the anxiety not happen at all. They will have to do research, later when Eddie is sleeping. Eddie types questions into his little screen and it gives him answers; there’s no reason they can’t do the same.

Eddie snorts, pushing his head out of his hands and flexing his fingers curiously. Venom doesn’t let go. What if the anxiety comes back? Too risky.

“Well look at that,” Eddie says weakly, shoving his hand into his hoodie pocket to hide his hands from the other humans. “Guess you did.”

Should not doubt us, Venom purrs, stretching themselves to rest protectively over Eddie’s heart. We will always protect us.

Eddie’s fingers flex around them, and finally the anxiety is gone. Something else takes its place- a warm feeling. Like happy feeling, but softer. They like this feeling, too. Eddie smiles.

“Yeah, we will.”

fuckyeahisawthat:

I know I and other people have riffed on this in other places, but I think it needs its own post.

If Eddie Brock has one problem in the first act of the movie, it’s impulse control. He does dumb shit without thinking about the consequences. It fucks up his career, his girlfriend’s career, their relationship…pretty much every aspect of his life that we see going well in the opening minutes of the movie.

The whole first act of the movie, people (including the audience) are like, Eddie, for the love of jeebus, please do not do the thing. Even when doing the thing comes from a good impulse, like trying to rescue someone you know from a weird creepy lab…Eddie, you didn’t really think that one through, did you?

Enter the Venom symbiote. What is Venom? A bunch of impulses. Hungry? Chomp some heads! Doesn’t matter whose! Want up? Climb the thing! Tree, building, doesn’t matter! Threatened? Defend yourself and your host! Who cares what gets smashed along the way?

So you’re taking the protagonist’s main problem, magnifying it, and making it a character. Which is a great way to externalize and literalize someone’s internal conflict. And now Eddie’s the one who has to argue–with someone much more powerful than he is–not to do the thing, and explain why we should not do the thing, that it would be bad, that it has consequences. And if you follow this metaphor, the resolution of the movie is learning how to be in balance with your impulses. Which doesn’t mean squashing them down completely. It means knowing when they’re useful, even life-saving, and when they’re destructive and need to be reined in.

For a movie that has some pacing problems and clearly was cut all to hell, this is actually a pretty solid narrative arc. Like, on a basic story structure level, it holds together, and is a lot cleaner and neater than some of the structurally clunky blockbusters that have come out recently. (I’m looking at you, several recent Star Wars movies that are 40 minutes too long.) I think there are places where the scene-level editing could’ve been improved to make certain character beats clearer or land with more impact, but by the standards of current studio filmmaking this is…not a bad movie, on a storytelling level, and I’m starting to think lots of critics just didn’t bother trying to understand what it was, when it wasn’t what they expected from the marketing.