#btw in this and any analysis please mentally insert 🥁 any time I use the word 'one'

[givehimthemedicine]

🛁💧 Moms, bathtubs and fear of water

today I'd like to dig into some support for the Virginia/Henry/bathtub theory, most notably a Will/Henry parallel I've not seen discussed before, and some thoughts on the rabies thing.

for those just tuning in, we have hints that something awful happened involving Virginia, Henry, and a bathtub of hot water. (that idea is aemiron-main's, you can read the original here)

where there's a tub, there's a mom

let me start by seeing how many ST bathtubs can be tied to mothers. (much of this will have been pointed out before, but I have a couple observations I think are new)

starting at the top: Virginia's vision (turning on the hot water tap and spiders fill the tub instead of water):

Karen soaking in a hot bath listening to "Memories" before milfing it up with Billy, a minor, a boy her daughter's age. check

Will and Joyce "he likes it cold" you better believe that's a paddlin

we saw the Byers' tub before. when El saw it in the mirror (lol) and went to tell Joyce (Will's Mother) about her water tank idea. ok she was addressing the group but Joyce is the one who actually engages. I'm counting it. ps when they do set up the bath for El, Lucas uses a thermometer to make sure the water is the right temperature

this is a tiny one, but Nancy goes to sit on the tub and cry after excusing herself from Barb's mom at the KFC dinner.

that scene where El and Max find Billy's tub with ice bags?

darn, nothing immediately motherly in this scene. but what if we check the last dialogue in the prior scene? or the first dialogue in the following scene?

both hits! mom/age-inappropriate-sexual-knowledge + mother/son combo.💀

next up, FOR WHAT REASON was I made to see Murray get naked and get into a tub full of ice while on the phone with Joyce in 4x01?

let's also toss in a shot of Joyce being weird in her front yard, prompting a neighbor child to dispense a line of dialogue involving mothers.

but seriously. after all the flayed/ice tub imagery throughout s3, why kick off s4 with Murray in an ice bath? no, I'm really asking.

we've got a dash of sexual inappropriateness, or so Joyce thinks - Murray happens to plop into the ice at the exact moment that she observes the Russian doll has nipples, which makes her think his reaction is about that:

the only tub scene I'm struggling to tie super directly to mothers is Heather. you could say it's that Joyce appears in the next scene, but that's weak. or that Flayed Heather later drugs/kidnaps her mom. eh.

as em pointed out, the tub Heather's in here is extremely similar to Virginia Creel's. is that sufficient?

so anyway, some of those are def stronger than others, but they all provide some combination of: mothers, bathtubs (esp with attention drawn to water temperature), and fear/ sorrow / discomfort / sexual inappropriateness.

am I forgetting any other bathtubs?

now let's talk more about fear

what started me on this post was how possessed-Will's reaction to the bathtub is so explicitly labeled as fear - NOT by Will, but by Mr. Clarke's voiceover:

yet what sparked One's strength was a memory that made him "sad, but also angry" - which, if the implied tub incident indeed happened, would totally fit the bill.

sad and angry. not afraid. I guess it makes sense that fear isn't one of the emotions he would draw power from later upon recalling this event, but he undoubtedly would've been afraid in the moment. he didn't say that though.

not in that scene.

now, idk if he's referring to The Incident here, or his early lab life or what, but. oh I'm at my image limit. ok well his lines leading up to this are (close up of dead kids) "why do you cry for them, Eleven? after everything they did to you? you think you need them, but you don't. you don't."

why exactly would El "need" the other lab kids? according to NINA, they treated her poorly. tbh kinda sounds more like a projected reaction to the death of an abusive mother.

anyway. apart from that "I was scared once" reference to some past turning point, man will not say he is or was scared. he'll imply and project but he won't say it:

you know who else won't say they're scared? Will.

Will has never said once on the entire show that he's afraid. ever. throughout all the utterly HORRIFYING situations he's been in. he undoubtedly has been scared, and other characters say that about him many times, but Will has never said, in his own words, as far as I can find, that he's afraid.

he dances around it and veils it and teeters on the edge of it, but he will not actually say I Am Afraid.

"how did you feel?" "it felt like when you're scared" boy what.

but Will has not always been fearless!

wanna know what the very first mention of fear on the whole show is? Will assuring Joyce he won't have nightmares from seeing Poltergeist because:

is it not giving "I was scared once too" ?

now here comes my favorite part:

Joyce replies with the "my witch" thing, and she doesn't actually finish the sentence, but I think that last word can be guessed pretty accurately:

cook him up in your what?

your cauldron? cauldron, kôl′drən, noun: 1. A large vessel used for boiling?

so like... have I got this straight? our earliest flashback of Will involves his mother playing an evil character who's gonna put him in a large vessel of hot liquid?

I ask you again: is it not giving "I was scared once too"?

I'm tacking my red conspiracy yarn in at "Henry was five years old."

now, just wondering, what was the turning point that made Will stop having nightmares from movies and "getting scared like that"? Bob_one_day_the_nightmares_suddenly_stopped.wav

now let's talk about rabies

Robin proceeds to list some rabies symptoms and what's funny about that (besides the fact they're standing in a mysteriously dry lakebed) is she left out possibly the best-known symptom: fear of water.

in fact, rabies used to be called hydrophobia ("fear of water").

hydrophobia in rabies stems from paralysis of throat muscles making it difficult or impossible to swallow, and so sufferers will panic at the prospect of drinking or even the mere sight of water. excessive salivation + inability to swallow it leads to the other pop culture rabies symptom, the appearance of "foaming at the mouth".

pretend here I put in screenshots of El and Barb spitting up water when they wake up in the UD and that unnecessary shot of Billy drooling when El is levitating him

Robin's isn't the only reference to rabies on ST. it's come up in two other seasons:

so every time rabies comes up, it's in reference to demodogs, demobats, and flayed rats. all critters that are part of the hive.

ostensibly controlled by one guy, who is afraid of water.

misc honorable mentions:

what do you wanna bet Dart not only doesn't need water, but would hate water like he hates heat?

Dart grew up to be a demodog, and demodogs dug those tunnels - the ones Bob figured out were a map of Hawkins because the "roads" outlined recognizable bodies of water instead of crossing over them.

when Bob said that, he didn't know the "roads" were underground, and therefore it wouldn't be crossing over water but rather crossing through water. if your tunnel breached a lake or river, it would flood. the demodogs were avoiding water.

also: no one in the water, you say?

speaking of Hawkins Pool, there's also the thing I've mentioned before, how it seems incredibly relevant that One chose Billy as his s3 host - a lifeguard whose one possession-busting happy memory involved his mother warning him not to drown.

also: Hopper saying that jumping into the quarry would result in the water "breaking every damn bone in your body"

and Jason asks Patrick, right before Vecna breaks every damn bone in his body in Lovers Lake:

I'm going to think of more as soon as I hit post but that's all I have for you today.

I want real answers on the Murray ice thing btw