#pretty sure the power lines / wall sockets thing is just a palatable way to say electrocuting people

[givehimthemedicine]

🧲 let's talk about power and magnets and soteria real quick

not feeling super coherent tonight but *gestures vaguely* constant symbolic and literal connections between psionic power and electrical power and magnets, and to power being surged / shut off / drained / stolen. I don't even have enough room for screenshots of Joyce's whole magnet plot.

according to this article, Brenner's MKUltra experiments on Terry Ives involved not just drugs and sensory deprivation, but electromagnetic stuff. by ~1970 he's not just making random shots in the dark - he already knows what forces are involved with strengthening psionic powers because he already knew how to suppress them in ~59.

soteria isn't magic, it's something ordinary old Brenner was able to develop using ordinary old science - and it didn't take years of research after obtaining Henry, either (I figure he had to have it already in the tattoo scene or the restraints wouldn't have mattered). my money says it involves magnets interfering with Henry's electromagnetic blablah or maybe just creating a small but constant drain on his battery. maybe his powers aren't shut off, just weakened, like he said?

as for tracking him - if he's telling the truth about that part - idk what GPS technology was like in `59, but if soteria has magnetic properties, I wonder if Henry could be tracked in the same sense as Dustin's compass needle deflecting to the gate?

now about Will:

admittedly this is based on a shaky series of assumptions and limited understanding, but just to toss the thought out there -

HNL took scans of Will's brain when he was possessed in season 2. IF these are MRI images, and IF I'm right about soteria involving a magnet, that seems to me like a vote against the idea that Henry put soteria in Will's neck while he was in the UD.

that thing made a distinctly metal noise when it hit the floor. if you've ever had an MRI, you know you can't go in there with any metal on or in your body, because an MRI is a REALLY powerful magnet, and if you have anything metal in you, it could get dislodged or pulled out, and/or the metal thing can heat up and burn you, and/or it can screw up the image.

if Will had an MRI not knowing he had soteria in him, it could have gotten ripped out like El ripped out Henry's, or at least pulled on his skin painfully enough to alert him to it. there are kinds of metal that are nonmagnetic and MRI safe, but the whole point of this thing, I'm theorizing, is that it involves a magnet so

even aside from soteria, I'm curious about the possible effects of a super magnet on Will while he has the MF in him.

actually wait one last tangent. anyone who cares, can you check out the particles-coming-alive scene in 3x01 (try about 11:30)? I'd gif it but the detail is too fine.

is ALL the debris I'm seeing throughout the scene shadow particles, and the particles are just not totally homogenous? or are the ones we first see shimmering on the floor metal bits (this being the floor of an abandoned steel works after all)? once the shadow takes shape, I'm sure I see distinct areas of shadow-cloud and other shimmery reflective stuff. am I to understand this as metal shavings being swept up with the shadow? in other words does it have a magnetic pull?

imagine Will's body being thoroughly infused with magnetic particles and going in an MRI tube lol