was listening to Master of Puppets on repeat to have the motivation to change my bedsheets and started thinking about like, if season 4 went pretty much the same way except Eddie survived, what relationship he'd have with that song
people have discussed this to death already with every idea from him listening to it on repeat and finding it weirdly calming to never being able to listen to it again without flashbacks
but I'm just thinking wouldn't it be interesting if it turned into a sort of half-serious, half-joking talisman/protection spell almost, like "if I can survive that I can survive anything"
I feel like it would start out as a joke, maybe he even is finding it difficult to listen to or play the song without it being triggering but he hates that and tries to reclaim it through humour. And it's difficult and for a while it isn't working and he's just kind of lying to himself and everyone else about how he's coping, but then it starts to work, he can listen to it without spiralling into a panic attack and then even eventually play it without needing to recover afterwards.
So he keeps playing it, and keeps up the joke, because why shouldn't he? it's his fucked up near death experience he gets to do what he wants with it.
But the more he jokes about how the song and associated experience is proof he can survive anything, maybe even he's invincible, the more it starts to not be a joke. Master of Puppets was already one of his favourite songs of all time the moment he first heard it and decided he needed to learn how to play it immediately, now it's also a highly personal memory and possibly the most dramatic thing to ever happen to him (possibly, had to be either that or finding out Steve was not only a pretty good dude but had been fighting monsters for years alongside the kids like some sort of weird, suburban, midwestern d&d campaign). He starts to use it to give himself a little extra confidence whenever he needs it, before the start of a new ambitious d&d campaign idea, before a job interview, when he realises his crush on Steve may not be hopeless after all and has to figure out what to do about that.
And it works! The campaign goes great, the job interview goes better than he thought possible (half the town still think he's a murderer, reliable employment did not seem realistic but somehow he gets it because the record shop owner seems charmed by his "uniqueness"), and when he shows up at Steve's door, van speakers blasting Master of Puppets at volumes at serious risk of getting the cops called on him, he only even stumbles over his words (and his feet) a little bit while asking Steve on a date (only to realise he didn't think beyond that to actual date plans once Steve says yes, luckily Steve already has enough date ideas for a lifetime and is happy to take over the first one if Eddie plans the second).
Somehow, this one song he learned in under a month after it came out and then almost died while playing on a rooftop surrounded by hell bats follows him through his life, backing track to all his best achievements and most important moments (Steve figures out the day he's going to propose before it happens, because Eddie spends all morning playing it over and over, and he listens to it on headphones on his way to the stage at his first ever music awards show), all because he refused to let his trauma and the upside down take it from him, and accidentally turned it into a good luck charm in the process
