#zach's answer to the eiffel's favorite book question was '... eiffel reads?' lmao. so. such confidence in him.

[commsroom]

One more Eiffel question: do you think Eiffel likes reading? He references books fairly often but does he enjoy it? If yes what kind of stuff would he like.

... it's complicated! eiffel references books, but notably he references a lot of classics with movie adaptations. there's no way he wasn't a "i watched the movie; good enough" book report kid.

when someone asked gabriel urbina what eiffel's favorite book would be, he suggested either splinter of the mind's eye (first star wars EU novel) or something "unpretentious, like a pulpy 80s action movie of a book." and he said eiffel might like something like fight club or high fidelity, which... yeah, those are books he'd pick up because he's seen and likes those movies.

like, eiffel has read books. he is capable of reading books. he even wants to read them, sometimes. but, i think there are way, way more books he's picked up, read a few chapters of, and never went back to than ones he's read cover to cover. he likes reading out loud; he'd love to read to someone, and do character voices. i think that also helps him process it more easily; if he's reading quietly on his own, he's absolutely spacing out and realizing he doesn't remember anything from the last couple of pages on a regular basis.

(when he's reading hui's lovecraft book out loud in lights out, he says "it's no r. l. stine", which is a typically flippant eiffel remark, but also does not necessarily bode well for the last time he read regularly.)

as an aside, i think sometimes people defend eiffel's intelligence in the wrong way. like, he's smart! he's good at some very difficult, very technical things. he thinks very quickly, he makes connections, he's a lot more capable of understanding complex ideas than he makes himself out to be. but he's not an academic. he's not book smart, he does not have a four year degree in anything, and he's not reading a lot of classics for fun. (though, i think he could like vonnegut.)

in my opinion, that ties into something else gabriel urbina said - when someone asked about eiffel referencing casablanca, and whether he likes it. eiffel has seen a lot of older movies he's not even necessarily into because he was an unsupervised "tv is my parent" kid, and, as gabriel urbina said. if it's a choice between going to bed or watching casablanca, that's not really a choice at all. a lot of the classics he references are science fiction, and he'd watch a lot of those film adaptations on purpose, but others? might've just been on tv.