Something nameless is growing between Steve and Eddie. Steve wonders how long it'll take until this thing has a name, but for now, it's enough that it's just something. Something good. Something just for them. A secret of the most delicious kind.
He doesn't necessarily want to lie to Dustin, of course, but he doesn't really know what else to do. Not as long as this thing between him and Eddie is still nameless and Dustin is basically cornering him in the Hawkins High parking lot, way too enthusiastic about the fact that he's there to pick up Nancy.
'No, it's not a date, you little shrimp,' he repeats for what feels like the millionth time. And that statement couldn't be more true: he and Nancy are long past their weird post-breakup-end-of-the-world confusion. It's been good to reconnect with her and he's glad that they can truly be good friends, now.
Dustin shoots him an unimpressed glare and Steve groans in frustration when the boy opens his mouth to retort.
'I'm actually seeing someone else,' he says before Dustin can speak again. If he has to hear him say one more time that he should date either Nancy or Robin, he might actually punch him in the face. And he doesn't want to do that. Not really.
Dustin gasps.
'Why didn't you tell me?!'
'Because you're being annoying as shit about my love life,' Steve shoots back.
Dustin already opens his mouth for some smartass reply, but they get interrupted by a high-pitched scream. Steve whips his head only to find Eddie dramatically running towards them, limbs flailing and a huge grin on his face.
'Stevie!' he shouts out while crashing into Steve like a cannonball. Steve huffs, but is all too happy to catch him in his arms. He knows he shouldn't let his touch linger too long, not with Dustin right there, but it's really fucking difficult to pull back within an appropriate timeframe.
'What are you doing here?' Eddie looks hopeful, like he's suspecting that Steve came to the school for him.
'I'm meeting Nancy,' he admits, feeling almost guilty about it.
'He was just telling me about this girl he's seeing!' Dustin exclaims. 'Can you believe he didn't tell me? Did you know about this, Eddie?'
Eddie's smile falls off his face within a split second, and he takes a stumbling step backwards.
'You're seeing a girl?' His voice has gone cold. Betrayal shines from his big brown eyes.
'Eddie,' Steve starts, but he doesn't know what else to say – not with Dustin standing right there and hearing every word of their conversation.
'Go fuck yourself, Harrington.' He spits the words out and turns around, leaving Steve frozen and Dustin open-mouthed.
'Eddie, wait!' Steve calls out behind him, but Eddie only throws his arm up to flip him off, without looking back.
'Shit, fuck, damnit,' Steve mumbles under his breath as he runs after Eddie.
'Eddie, listen.' He grabs his leather-clad arm, but Eddie breaks himself free from Steve's grip with force. He finally looks at Steve again, tears in his eyes.
'I don't wanna hear it,' he says with a trembling voice as he reaches his van and climbs inside.
'But Dustin was–'
'Dustin was pretty damn clear.'
'No, it's all a –'
But Eddie slams the door shut while the word misunderstanding dies on Steve's tongue unheard. Steve watches helplessly how Eddie roughly wipes a hand over his face, puts his keys in the ignition as if he's stabbing someone, and drives off.
'Steve, what the fuck,' Dustin's voice says; when Steve looks to his right, he sees that Dustin has appeared next to him. 'He thought you were his friend! Why didn't you tell him about your girl?' It sounds accusatory, and Steve can't fucking deal with this right now.
'Why didn't you shut your goddamned big mouth for once in your life?' he snaps at him.
Dustin's eyes go wide with the surprise of Steve talking to him with that much venom in his voice; it's clear that he finally realizes he did something wrong.
'Steve, I – I didn't mean to – I didn't know he'd get mad!'
Steve sighs, long and heavy.
'Go home, Henderson,' he says stiffly.
He wishes that the genuinely apologetic look on Dustin's face would be enough to make it all good, but it isn't. Not as long as he still has the look in Eddie's eyes when he drove away burnt on his retina.
'I'm sorry, Steve.' And with slumped shoulders, Dustin turns around and trudges towards the bike racks.
Update: you can read pt2 here
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I saw your tags from the post a while ago about how the small details in totk Make up for the main story, and while I agree, I gotta say that the things some people say about the story being bare bones or whatever (and BOTW’s story to that extent) just…doesn’t make sense to me. Because I think the problem is with the execution rather than the writing. Like, BOTW was even more bare bones,because it was just a bunch of exposition. Not to say the story wasn’t good because it absolutely is, but it was minimal, imo. Anyway I said all that to say that I personally do think that totk has the better story, but the execution is worse and I think the open world format hurts it. And I think if people could look past that they could see how good it is. But of course that’s all just me. Neither game’s story is particularly great but I love them both. Anyway I did not intend for this to get so long but what do you think about that? I’m just curious 🙂
Sorry this took me a while to respond anon, I was trying to think of a way to respond XD
Yeah, I can definitely agree that the open world aspect hurts the story of Tears. I was thinking about this earlier, and I think Breath of the Wild's story worked because it is so barebones. The developers were able to develop the story around the gameplay, which has always been Nintendo's adjective for both of these games (and probably all of their games, though I am not too much on an expert on that in all honesty) first and foremost. And it worked, for the most part.
I do believe there can be no "perfect" Zelda game, and especially not one that can appease all Zelda fans (even the games that everyone praises to be perfect has their haters, though I guess hate is too strong of a word). I think the main downfall of Tears of the Kingdom was that it couldn't live up to fan's expectations and wants for the Zelda franchise. Tears of the Kingdom was always meant to be BotW+, since the developers had so many ideas for Breath of the Wild they had to make a second game in order to fit all of those ideas, which led to them repeating the same gameplay mechanics as Breath of the Wild.
Don't get me wrong, TotK's gameplay is good since it what made Breath of the Wild good as well, but because it's exactly like Breath of the Wild is what made it sour in the minds of players. I guess for the players who played other kinds of games in between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom allowing them time to do something else, it isn't so bad. But for the players who play nothing but Zelda games or who were late into getting into the Zelda franchise (such as myself) it can be a little... repetitive (and I'm mainly talking about the quests, shrines, and the same mechanic of unlocking a terminal in a dungeon found in both botw and totk). Hence why I was so drawn all to the other world discoveries not unlocked by doing a side quest, which I think is the greatest improvement TotK brought imo.
In terms of TotK's story... I don't hate it exactly, but I will say I will prefer BotW's better. I still kind of need to analyze the story of TotK fully for myself to draw any real conclusions for me; my biggest problem is how it completely erases BotW's story from it's story. Sure, half a dozen years has passed in between games (both in-game and irl) but surely the impact of defeating the Calamity would've left something... bigger. Like, wouldn't word have gone around that Link was the one to have defeated the darkness looming the castle? They could've at least acknowledged him directly instead of pulling a Tony Hawk and saying "oh you have the same name as that guy who defeated that evil some time ago". I will give them the benefit of the doubt, but then again everyone knows Zelda and he has never her side so, ???. Sorry, didn't mean to rant there. It was kind of a frustration I felt along with many others while playing the game. Main story-wise I don't have any real issues other than you're seriously telling me that there was another ancient civilization before the previous civilization that had even more ancient technology? It kind of pushes my suspension of disbelief (and once again repeating things from BotW).
Anyways, thank you for sharing your opinion anon! Once again I am immensely sorry it took me this long to come to it; tldr in my opinion I prefer Breath of the Wild's story over TotK's. You do make a lot of good points that I agree with, but I think it boils down to personal preference over which game is better due to how similar the games are, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on opinion.
Thank you so much for reaching out and discussing this with me!
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