#remember diplopia began as a joke and it's led me to this point

[nebulousfishgills]

Emily, Paris Paloma's "labour," and The Cacophany: An Analysis

Okay, so "labour" has been on Emily's original playlist for a long time, and I don't really think that's all that much of a surprise. I tend to liken it to Emily's inner monologue while she's trapped inside Hawkins Lab acting as a glorified babysitter to a dozen and a half children with super powers.

The ironic thing about this is that along with "labour" being a general feminist anthem, it's used very often in the context of Alicent Hightower, aka Olivia Cooke, aka Emily's face claim. That scenario uses a very literal interpretation of the themes presented, patriarchy, feminism, and womens' roles in a man's world. You could argue in circles about Alicent's treatment in the show, especially as the second season starts rolling out, but that's a very sticky conversation I'm not trying to hash out right now.

I, however, tend to slightly twist the lyrics so they're used in a more literal meaning with a slightly different context, the physical act of doing labor and the mistakes that led up to her current position. It's less about the patriarchy and more about the ways Emily has been used and abused over the years...

And then came the Cacophany variant that came out a few months ago.

When listening to that variant of the song that's virtually identical lyrically and thematically, somehow I was able to not only reapply this to Emily, but in a whole separate context...

Which made me realize that I'm actually more clever than I expected and that the story of Emily's so-labeled "Second Life" very much mirrors her original story, but with a few key differences.

So, let's break down the original version of "labour" as a baseline:

Naturally the POV character singing is Emily herself, that's a very easy thing to square away. There's only a couple of specific "characters" mentioned in the song, the POV character's husband, and this hypothetical daughter of theirs. The interesting thing is that there's no character we can easily match up to Henry, but there doesn't really need to be. Emily's very much speaking about herself in the song, but she could just as easily be including Henry within her grievances since they're shared plights.

It's extremely easy to rework the husband figure in the song into basically any male authority figure (which theoretically is the original point of the song; the husband is a representation of the patriarchy itself), so that's Doctor Brenner. The one keeping Emily stuck in this situation and who has total say over her and what she can or can't do.

Lastly, the daughter is Eleven. Again, it's not yet confirmed if it's biological thus far, but as usual I'm operating under the assumption that she is. The idea still works if it's simply a daughter figure rather than a full daughter, but we're operating under my domain of this universe, so it's a literal daughter.

Breaking the lyrics down, we can piece by piece figure out an entire story:

"this was an escape plan (this was an escape plan) / Carefully timed it, so let me go..."

Emily did not enter Hawkins Lab intending to become a human experiment, let alone be trapped for nearly two decades. She went there originally as a twelve year old child trying to run away from the storm, but also just running from being a street rat with nowhere to go and no future. But now that she knows the consequence of hiding in the wrong place, she just wants to be let out and escape.

Emotional torture from the head of your high table / Who fetches the water from the rocky mountain spring? / And walk back down again to feel your words and their sharp sting / And I'm getting fucking tired

Now, emotional torture also compounds with the literal, physical torture she and Henry undergo at Brenner's orders, tazers and solitary confinement being among the frequent offenders. Spring water isn't a literal task in Hawkins Lab, but in a broader context it represents whatever menial tasks they're told to do. Cleaning, babysitting, watching cameras, what have you, all just to do it over again the next day at risk of punishment.

If our love died, would that be the worst thing / For somebody I thought was my saviour / You sure make me do a whole lot of labour

There isn't really any love on either side of this, but Brenner kind of installs himself as a pseudo father figure for the experiments, i.e. them calling him Papa. And Emily, when she first came there, didn't know that's what was gonna happen. She thought he was offering her a genuine place to say, acting as a "savior" that turned out to be an abuser that pushes her, hurts her, makes her undergo grueling tests and experiments or acting as unpaid, overworked staff in the lab.

And the silence haunts our bed chamber

"Our" bed chamber referring to her and Henry's rooms in the lab. Yes, granted, sometimes they sneak around and spend nights with each other, but that's a very rare occurrance. Most nights they go to bed alone, in silence, and longing to be with each other because they're forbidden from carrying out a relationship.

Apologies from my tongue, and never yours... / ...I know you're a smart man (I know you're a smart man)...

When I imagine the animatic in my head (because, let's be real, we all do this), this line comes after a punishment Emily suffered for trying to resist, likely another tazing. Punished for violating Brenner's rules that he's never called out for because of this reign of terror, and yeah, he is a smart man, he's a doctor, that line's a given.

If we had a daughter, I'd watch and could not save her / The emotional torture, from the head of your high table / She'd do what you taught her, she'd meet the same cruel fate

This is about Eleven, obviously. El is under the same influence as Emily and Henry are, under Brenner's thumb and forced to follow his rules lest she risk punishment. And, clearly El's also been abused in similar ways, although probably not nearly the same amount as Henry and Emily have.

All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid / Nymph then a virgin, nurse then a servant / Just an appendage, live to attend him / So that he never lifts a finger

This, to me, is "wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die" in a different font, Emily's supposed to have all these tasks and responsibilities forced on her, in fact this list is almost entirely literal.

Therapist - A listening ear for the children

Mother - A caretaker for the children / mothering Eleven

Maid - Cleaning storage rooms, mopping up blood and other bodily fluids, she does maid's work when not watching the children

Nymph - She's not exactly expected to be a beautiful creature all the time (that's just a bonus Henry gets to enjoy), but if you retranslate it to being pushed with her powers to be a more powerful being with her abilities, that tracks

Virgin - Bluntly, she's not supposed to be fucking around

Nurse - Adds to that caretaker aspect, she's probably bandaged dozens of cuts and was told to learn CPR and other life sustaining protocols

Servant - Same as the maid section

And the rest is about just existing at Brenner's whim. He never gets his hands dirty, a lot of the time he makes other orderlies punish her and Henry or hands off menial tasks to them.

24∕7, baby machine / So he can live out his picket fence dreams / It's not an act of love if you make her / You make me do too much labour

24/7 Baby Machine is simultaneously the most interesting line here and also the one you have to twist canon around the most to make work. Canonically, Emily's physically unable to get pregnant, she's not the literal baby machine. Eleven is her single spawn and Terry Ives was the one who carried her.

But it's not that far outside of the realm of possibility that Brenner didn't at least think about it. In fact, canonically he was thinking about it, "breeding her like some prize winning race horse" as Doctor Owens said. Brenner naturally didn't follow through with this, but the only reason was because he didn't wanna deal with the ramifications of dealing with spawns of Emily and Henry specifically. They themselves are the issue because they're both so fucked up and would fight the whole way.

But, hypothetically, let's say he didn't decide against it. It's not outside the realm of possibility that Brenner would have had his precious Number 001 breed with the less powerful but no less important Number 004 to create more children with powers to experiment on. The alternate universe where Emily becomes a baby machine and incubator for superpowered babies is not a distant one.

At this point, the lyrics repeat and get louder and louder, overlapping and growing more chaotic until the song ends, but the way I see it, it's Emily and Henry finally snapping under the strain and doing the Massacre. Emily officially lost her mind in that moment and it never fully fixed itself. There's a reason why Carrie White is a huge inspiration for her character, so much so that it's even mentioned during the Massacre scene as I wrote it. Emily snapped and her psyche never fully healed.

It's all very susinct, "labour" is a perfect theme for Emily's later years in Hawkins Lab as an orderly, almost to the letter.

So how was I able to just as cleanly match the Cacophany variant to Emily's arc in Diplopia/Necrosis? It turns out that there is *heavy* parallelism between her two stories that I didn't exactly plan on when I wrote it, but it completely checks out in my mind.

The important thing to keep in mind is both the context I imagine this in and where Emily herself is at in this point in time.

My playlists for Emily are organized in a rough chronological order. In my Emily playlist for her Twilight stories, "LABOUR - the cacophany" is sandwhiched near songs like "Dream Girl Evil" by Florence + The Machine and, as dumb as it sounds, the Busted song from Phineas and Ferb. These are songs I use to represent chapter 15 of Necrosis, the chapter where Emily puts on the courtroom prosecutor pants and formally accuses Aro of murdering his sister.

At this exact point in time, Emily herself has been growing as a character, this is one of the highest peaks of her arc. She chooses the interest of the collective and greater good rather than just letting chaos continue.

What the major difference between Emily and "labour" vs Emily and "the cacophany" is in the names. Emily is speaking about herself, ultimately, in "labour" (with Henry, of course, but there's only one singer). In "the cacophany," she's speaking for the collective. At this point in time, Emily is at a point in time where she's not facing the world by herself, she has this whole entire found family that backs her up, and that she can back up in return.

I can pinpoint the exact lines of dialogue "the cacophany" reminds me of:

"You're so desperate to hang onto your power that you use fear and manipulation of others to keep yourself leading this coven that you don't deserve to direct. You're a weak leader who uses enforcers to give off the illusion of level-headed-ness, using us and our strength to give the illusion of your own. You guarded this secret because you knew that it would be your undoing. And you threaten or take out those who might spill it."

Naturally we have to re-map who represents what part of the song, and, by extension, set up Emily's narrative parallels between her and her story companions.

Emily is still Emily, that's a given. She's a transplant from one story to the other. She's the one singing the song (at least for the most part), this is her being the one to call out bullshit.

Har dee har har, let's all for once ignore the obvious and don't everybody let out your shocked gasps all at once. Henry and Caius fill the role of Emily's partner in crime that happens to operate under the same thumb she does (more on that in a second). Their shared facial structures are entirely coincidental, please direct any and all questions to my lawyers.

The hypothetical daughter that Eleven represented in the original song has equal opportunity to represent either of the daughter figures Emily finds herself with in the Volturi. Mele, her sired newborn that she taught about vampirism and helped care for, and/or Jane... her telepathic blonde (sometimes) daughter figure named Jane.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who has pointed this out, I feel like a freak as it is.

But, both Jane and Mele are these daughter figures that also fall under this commanding thumb of influence that Emily's actively trying to resist both on her behalf, but also for them.

Now, I think Emily's biggest mistake was misunderstanding who her "new Eddie" was. This is separate from the song, but the thing is that for a long time Emily assumed or probably hoped that her new "best friend" figure was meant to be Aro. The hyperactive one who got on her nerves but ultimately she saw as one of her biggest allies...

That's not the case at all. The "role" of Eddie has expanded to basically the rest of the coven. Emily's not restricted to just one friend anymore, that pool now gets to be filled by the Guard and the others who make up the "core" of the coven. If we really want to get specific with it, I'd say that Eddie's role as "Emily's Best Friend" is best filled by Heidi and, even moreso I'd argue, Sulpicia

(Sulpicia, baby, I'm so sorry you were delegated to uncredited background extra and didn't have more screenshots avaliable)

They're the ones Emily's able to be vulnerable with outside of her partner. Emily didn't have any whatsoever intimate relationship with Eddie, but that's not the role he's meant to fill anyways, even if Emily was being exploratory at that point in time. She's exploring her feminine attractions with Heidi (and maybe Sulpicia but that has yet to break into full canon), but Heidi and Sulpicia also are her people she can just... be with. Emily annoys Eddie and he annoys her, but he's the one who lets her "be her freak" and paints shirts with her while teaching her how to play Dungeons and Dragons. The "human" experiences she indulges in.

Emily complains to Sulpicia in Diplopia about dress shopping and Heidi's the one who teaches her about the "feminine" experiences Emily rejected as a human. Eddie and Heidi/Sulpicia are the best friends and close confidants who help Emily learn to be herself and indulge in experiences she was barred from, be it on her own or because of her conditions.

(This does make me want a one shot where Emily teaches the coven how to play D&D because that would be fucking nuts, but that's a separate conversation)

But that doesn't have much to do with "the cacophany" in and of itself, that's another parallel that's just tangentially related. No, because we're still missing our male authority figure.

Emily's mistake was assuming that Aro was supposed to be her Eddie, when the reality is that he's her new Doctor Brenner.

The one who only sees her value as an asset, for her power. The one who keeps the whole operation under his thumb so he can maintain control. The "smart man" who "weaponizes false incompetence... dominance under a guise," The one who lured her in and aided in the "escape" from her previous situation...

Because let's be completely honest, Emily did stay for Caius, but Aro is really really good at keeping a handhold on things he sees as valuable. Her loyalty to Caius was primary, Aro ensured through this front of brotherly affection that she would help carry out the coven's (and by extension, his) will. I can't say for sure what role Chelsea played in this, but by the end, Emily's allegiance was with Caius and the coven, not necessarily to Aro.

I'd even argue that that applies to everyone in the coven at a certain point.

Not to mention, at a more literal level, Aro and Brenner are the ones who use others to present the illusion of their own control:

"You're so desperate to hang onto your power that you use fear and manipulation of others to keep yourself leading this coven that you don't deserve to direct. You're a weak leader who uses enforcers to give off the illusion of level-headed-ness, using us and our strength to give the illusion of your own." - Emily about Aro in Necrosis

"You're a supporting character needing validation from children because it's the closest thing you can get to the real thing. You're normal. Being in close proximity to special people doesn't make you special. Controlling greatness doesn't make you great. It just shows everyone that you're a parasite." - Henry to Brenner in Stranger Things VR

Those two quotes basically state the exact same thing in different fonts.

I'm not entirely sure where that leaves me when batting around the question I often bat around in my head, which is whether or not Emily made the right choice in staying. I think they were both playing subtle chess matches against each other for most of the time, except Aro believed Emily to be a pawn he could control instead of the queen who has more movement across the board. Slowly but surely wrestling people away from Aro that he saw as pawns that she made into more powerful pieces.

It's a weird metaphor and doesn't entirely follow the exact rules of chess unless I'm misunderstanding Promoting, the act of getting the pawn to the other side to give it more power. Emily turned those Aro saw as pawns into knights, rooks, and bishops, getting control away from him and showing them that they could be more than what he saw them as.

That's kind of how I see the crecendoing chorus of "the cacophany," the entire coven with Emily's assistance and leadership speaking up against the system that had kept them controlled for years. Aro never gets his hands dirty, he sends his guard to do the dirty work. As the song progresses, I saw more and more voices get added to the animatic in my head, much like how it went in the fic. Emily starts, Caius keeps her spirits up, Sulpicia joins in, the ghosts of those who became victims in the schemes for maintaining power (Didyme and Athenodora), and then the rest of them.

"And the silence haunts our bedchamber" even works because due to Aro's bullshit, Emily and Caius couldn't spend time alone. That's one of the main reasons why Emily snaps and finally decides enough is enough. It's much like how she and Henry weren't allowed to go to bed together because or Brenner's dumb rules, which was a contributing factor to them finally snapping.

I wish I was a better artist so I could draw out both animatics in my head because I feel like that would make these explanations make so much more sense. But, give the songs a listen with these contexts and maybe you'll be able to see what I'm trying to describe.

I've been meaning to write this out for a while and it's entirely possible I forgot a few details, but there you go.