#st hawkins lab

[aemiron-main]

you don’t wanna hurt me: an analysis of the “nancy in the tattoo chair” scene

Not loving the Implications of the fact that we just saw young Henry strapped down in the tattoo chair and Vecna pretending to be Brenner and then we got Nancy in Young Henry’s place and Vecna coming towards her.

Long story short, I think there’s subtext in this scene that indicates Brenner sexually assaulting Henry in the lab, specifically regarding oral sexual assault.

Especially considering the theme of “swapping places,” that’s present in S4- and the fact that Nancy literally swapped places with Young Henry and Vecna Henry swapped places with Brenner.

So basically in this whole tattoo chair scene with Nancy, it seems like Young Henry = Nancy and Brenner = Vecna Henry. So, try and picture Nancy as Young Henry throughout this analysis and Vecna as Brenner. 

And then, what also haunts me is the parallels between this scene vs Billy and Heather’s s3 scene.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.” versus “Don’t be afraid.” This scene between Billy and Heather is extremely sexual-assault coded, to the point where even the GA kept pointing it out.  And the writers went out of their way to make sure that the “nothing to be afraid of,” was directed at Young Henry, and not Nancy, as Brenner then turns to Nancy and says “is there, Nancy?” 

Brenner wasn’t talking to Nancy when he said the “nothing to be afraid of,” line, he was talking to Henry, that sexual assault coded line is directed at Young Henry. 

We have Billy-Heather parallels that not only occur between Brenner and Young Henry, but also Vecna and Nancy- but the Vecna and Nancy ones are still between Brenner and Young Henry in a way, as like mentioned previously, Nancy and Young Henry have swapped places and Brenner and Vecna have swapped places. 

Nancy struggles against the tentacles in an extremely similar way to how Heather struggled against the ropes. 

And now, there’s also the fact that Henry’s Vecna hand very much resembles a facehugger- which in and of itself is 100% confirmed to be intended to represent homosexual oral rape (source). I’ve posted before about the resemblance between Henry’s clawed hand and a facehugger but here’s some examples:

And let’s also look at some Alien vs Predator scenes and some Prometheus scenes- granted, these two creatures aren’t technically facehuggers, but they’re from the Alien franchise, they’re related to facehuggers, and they’ve got the exact same sort of oral sexual assault imagery.

And continuing on with the “Henry’s hand vs facehugger parallels,” the facehugger literally has fingers and resembles a pair of hands. And Henry’s clawed hand literally latched onto a victims face and then tilts their head upward, exactly like a facehugger. Henry doesn’t just grab his victims’ faces or set his face on top of their face- he whips his hand forward, latches onto their face, and tilts their head back, all exactly like a facehugger. Look at these gifs as an example the similarities between the motions:

Now that we’ve established that Henry’s clawed hand is definitely intended to resemble a facehugger, let’s go back to that lab vision scene between Vecna and Nancy and the idea of Nancy representing Young Henry and Vecna representing Brenner. 

So, hypothetically, Young Henry was in the position of being attacked by a facehugger, and Brenner was in Vecna Henry’s position- but wait, Brenner doesn’t have a clawed hand.

But let’s remember what the facehugger represents- homosexual oral rape, which is something that, unfortunately, Brenner is most definitely capable of.

And we also have shots like this lingering shot of Brenner with a suspiciously phallic coat fold pointed directly at Joyce’s face.

Also, Vecna’s other victims don’t tend to speak once he had his hand above their heads/sunk into their heads- but Nancy? Nancy continues to shout “no,” repeatedly- why make that choice? Why add that dialogue for Nancy when it’s not there for other characters? Well, Nancy’s scene has one thing that the other scenes don’t- she’s meant to represent Young Henry. This choice is made to emphasize the nonconsensual aspect of it and tie it back to Young Henry being sexually assaulted by Brenner. 

And going back to swapping places yet again, look at the lyrics of “Running Up That Hill”: Do you wanna feel how it feels? Do you wanna know, know that it doesn't hurt me?  Do you wanna hear about the deal that I'm makin'?  And now look at Henry’s dialogue with El:

“You can’t hurt me more than they already have” And then going back to the lyrics of “Running Up That Hill”: You don't wanna hurt me But see how deep the bullet lies

Look at how deep the bullet lies- bullet, like the bullet-shaped soteria that’s buried deep beneath Henry’s skin? In the scene where El is afraid of hurting him? 

And the wording of the lyrics with “you don’t wanna hurt me, but see how deep the bullet lies”- the use of the word “but,” implies that due to the bullet being deep, the person is question is going to be forced to hurt the other person- just like how El was forced to hurt Henry because of how deeply embedded Soteria was.

Like, Henry doesn’t say that it won’t hurt/El isn’t going to hurt him- he says that  no matter how much she hurts him, she can’t hurt him more than the lab has. These scenes tying in to “Running Up That Hill,” reinforce the idea that the theme of “swapping places,” also applies to characters like Henry and Brenner, which reinforces the idea of the “swapping places,” that occurs during the tattoo scene, where Nancy swaps places with Young Henry and Vecna swaps places with Brenner, implying that what’s going on between Nancy and Vecna has subtext regarding things that have already happened between Young Henry and Brennner (the oral sexual assault subtext). 

Also, there’s constant references to Brenner “hurting,” Henry, and it’s interesting to me that El mentions the fact that Brenner “hurt,” Henry when she’s talking to Vecna Henry in the mind lair:

Why is this interesting? Because Henry already knows that El knows that Brenner hurt him, at least in the context of Brenner hurting Henry by electrocuting him. They had a whole conversation about it in 1979 after El saw Henry being electrocuted:

And even if El didn’t initially remember the 1979 conversation, she JUST relived it via nina, so she absolutely remembers it by the time that the conversation in the mind lair happens. So, why does El act as if she’s aware of something that the audience isn’t aware of? Why does she act as if there’s some other “hurt,” that she’s referring to? Because there is. Because “hurt,” in this context is referring to sexual assault. At some point, I’m going to do a deep dive into the use of the word “hurt,” in ST in general, but considering that during the mind lair conversation, El is referring to some sort of “hurt,” beyond the electrocution scene, some sort of “hurt,” that wasn’t shown to the audience onscreen, I think it’s likely that there’s sexual assault subtext here when it comes to the word “hurt,” especially considering how often that word is used specifically regarding the lab, and how frequently Kali talks about being “hurt,” by lab staff and how she was “just a child,” and all of the “loss of innocence,” themes that surround Kali.  So, so far, we have a scene between Brenner and Young Henry that references a deeply sexual assault coded scene between Billy and Heather, and then we have the scene between Nancy and Vecna with tons of “Alien,” imagery that canonically represents homosexual oral rape. And we have Nancy literally swapping places with Young Henry, and Vecna swapping places with Brenner, while homosexual oral rape imagery is literally shoved in her face as she yells “no”. And next, look at this excerpt about Freddy Krueger’s clawed hand (keeping in mind that Vecna’s clawed hand is confirmed to have been inspired by Freddy Krueger’s hand):

And the scene that Englund’s referring to? The one that he ties to being an oral sex innuendo? 

I don’t know about you guys, but that scene looks pretty familar to me: 

So, that’s yet ANOTHER piece of oral sexual assault imagery that’s present in this scene- a scene where Nancy has literally swapped places with Young Henry, and a scene where Vecna has swapped places with Brenner- hell, not only has Henry literally swapped places with Brenner by discarding the Brenner illusion and appearing in its place within the tattoo scene, but the scene of Vecna walking up to Nancy is a direct parallel to Brenner walking up to Henry’s bed when Henry first wakes up in the lab.  And like I talked about in this post, even just that brief scene of Brenner walking up to Henry in the bed has SA parallels, so for ST to then parallel that bed scene in the tattoo scene in ADDITION to all of the oral SA imagery that’s present in the tattoo scene? It paints a pretty horrifying picture. 

Like, going back briefly to that screenshot of the tentacles around Nancy’s arms and legs, it’s interesting that the tentacles have replaced the leather restraints that were previously being used on Young Henry. 

Why is this interesting? Because there’s SO much sexual assault imagery tied to those tentacles, and specifically oral sexual assault imagery when we look at scenes like Will being rescued from the UD:

So, when to comes to Nancy in the chair, even the restraints in the tattoo chair have been replaced with something that’s tied to oral SA imagery in ST. And the fact that Henry had to be restrained and wasn’t just sitting willingly adds to the subtext regarding nonconsent here. And this gets into more speclation territory, but the way that Nancy fights against the restraints (something that we don’t see Henry do) is interesting, because it brings up the question- why WASN’T Henry fighting? He was clearly in pain, so why wasn’t he fighting? Well, he was possibly drugged. We don’t know what all they had him hooked up to when he woke up, and he seems generally out of it and disoriented during the tattoo scene, and he doesn’t seem to fight back physically, or with his powers, and it seems pretty early for him to have gotten soteria’d (and even if he was soteria’d that early, he still isn’t fighting back physically or even verbally).  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nancy scene wasn’t just showing us what happened between Brenner and Young Henry, but specifically was showing us what happened between Brenner and Young Henry prior to the tattoo scene- Henry likely woke up in the tattoo chair after being drugged, struggled and panicked, was sexually assaulted, and “cooperated,” out of fear of being assaulted again and because the drugs hadn’t fully worn off.

Long story short: the tattoo scene uses Vecna-Brenner parallels and the theme of swapping places (and literally swapping Young Henry with Nancy and Brenner with Vecna) to convey subtext of what happened to Young Henry when he was in the lab with Brenner (oral sexual assault).

[byler-alarmist]

W H O I S P E T E R

[aemiron-main]

RIGHT????? But even though it’s not a jamie thing or a young henry thing, we HAVE seen it before. With Billy after he was flayed:

He’s got the exact same bright, over saturated and bloodshot eyes.

I’m also staring directly at the “eldritch power thrumming” subtitle:

And the fact that 001’s eyes are bloodshot and bright blue during the eldritch thrumming:

AND he’s reaching out to 002 just like how he reached out to the shadow particles:

AND the fact that there’s so many constant parallels between Hawkins Lab during NINA vs the Russian prison sequences- and how the shadow particles escaped and went into the demodogs etc and resulted in the massacre of a bunch of people:

Now, this is speculation territory, but- we know that prior to the massacre, we see fewer versions of 001 than we doing during the massacre. It’s like new versions with new jumpsuits came out of nowhere.

But when we look at the prison, they had demodogs in tanks that were brought to life by the shadow:

And I wonder- did they have multiple Henries in tanks? Henries that would have possibly been brought alive by the shadow particles? Henries that would go on to have a scene with eldritch thrumming, eyes just like Flayed Billy’s eyes, and a scene where a Henry kills 002 in a parallel to a Henry reaching out to the shadow particles?

After all, we don’t know what HNL had in that lab, nor do we know if El sending 001 to superhell was the first time a gate opened.

“They tried to recreate me” what do you mean tried? Did it fail? Did the ofter versions not come to life initially?

Smthn smthn 8flix Nick talking about Brenner being “half demogorgon,” smthn smthn the demodogs in the tanks/coming to life vs multiple henries and the henrygorgon from s1 and brenner supposeldy being part demogorogn and just. Something is there

We’ve also got another parallel between 001 vs the demodogs with the HNL security cameras vs the Russian prison ones, with demodogs on one camera, and 001 on another:

Why do you have such a drastic eye color change 🤨

it’s not a powers thing, otherwise it would happen in the young henry sequence at some point:

And it’s isn’t a Jamie thing:

so it’s definitely post-production…

[lokiiied]

i literally cannot with this scene. i decided to count how many times there’s a steddie glance/eye/contact and i just cannot believe what a fucking gold mine it is. first up: double side glance from eddie

(please excuse my own shitty gifs) then we have mirrored full head turn:

next up: (my personal fave) is we noticed eddie’s hand on steve’s shoulder AFTER the moment was over but I have just realised that eddie’s hand was ALREADY there before they were celebrating the “hi” -> you may need to look closely here but trust, eddie’s hand does not move from steve’s shoulder this entire duration. and then we have steve touching eddie’s shoulder for a moment - which means their arms are definitely overlapping/there’s mutual contact- ITS THE LITTLE THINGS OKAY ??

just gonna drop this much better quality gif (from @jeysuso) here as well for the moment eddie & steve both realise his hand is still there and eddie immediately becomes self conscious and doesn’t touch him again lol.

and then of course we have this moment where they’re being dustin’s dad’s but then eddie is also just gawking and the way the scene cuts between their two lines looks like there was definitely a take where they were looking at each other the whole time lmao and basically i’m really mentally unwell okay you guys. i’m just. they are down bad. this whole scene (including robin and nancy)…? is just a fruit salad.

[will80sbyers]

STRANGER THINGS 4 •

Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab

[byler-invested]

Domino’s “Mind Ordering” app

aka a clear reference to Manifestation Theory.

there’s A LOT to analyze in this video and also in the app itself.

[aemiron-main]

GOD THIS IS SO. “One of the good Ones” that phrasing is giving me some vibes in terms of the multiple Henries/Ones that we see during NINA. Staring at the whole “papa says one doesn’t exist,” thing vs Henry talking about “spending years with One in this very room,” which is also an interesting phrasing choice because why not just say “One does exist,” or “I knew him,” why such an elaborate “lie” about him and One being two different people and being in the rainbow room together?

Staring directly at this….

"best only"? "one of the good ones?"

we gonna talk about how Owens basically just looked at the camera and said hey btw there are other psionic players afoot. that there are other ONEs.

@aemiron-main have you been here already

[jazy3]

More BTS! The ST broadcast channel shared videos of a crew member bringing Millie an iced caramel latte in her trailer! In the video the crew member walks past the lab building and the Hawkins Power & Light van from Season 1 which likely means they're filming some kind of flashback. This makes me wonder if we're going to see flashbacks from El’s escape or maybe Brenner's perspective of the events from Season 1.

[bebx]

Our Lord and Savior @twihs-blog

[erikiara80]

I’m rewatching Kali’s scenes in S2... After S4 that girl is so sus. Not saying she’s evil. But I think she has secrets.

We know now that Henry is associated with spiders and illusions. So it’s interesting that that’s the first thing she makes that guy see when she meets El. 

Then I noticed something. I get that she is surprised to see El, but when El calls her sister, Kali hesitates. I never noticed that before. She looks at her for a moment, and I feel like she just repeats what El said. She’s like, what? Really? Hm, ok. Sister. Sure.

There’s more. 

The first thing she asks El: “And this memory your mother shared... that is your only memory of me?”

When I watched S2 for the first time, I thought Kali was just sad that El didn’t remember her at all. But now I feel like she was trying to find out how much El remembered. And if that’s true, I really wonder if Kali has secrets. And what kind of secrets.

She makes El see a butterfly. After the spiders, the second illusion she creates is of an insect that spiders eat. Ok.

Then, when El asks her if she too has a gift, she says: Yeah, but different. I can make people see, or not see, whatever I choose.

And during the episode we see what she means. We see that the cops couldn’t see them. So, when she was still at the lab, who knows how she used her powers? Just to escape or maybe she made El, or Terry, see, or NOT see, what she wanted (or what they told her to make them see)? 

Kali must come back. We saw her name in the opening scene of S4

Then the 8 Magic Ball. Henry mentioning her. And then this. Interesting that this toy is behind El. I wonder if it means: don’t trust what you’re seeing. Like Henry said, this place and these people are not what they seem

[aemiron-main]

Scott Clarke, Creelarke, The Thing, The Defibrillator, Sensory Tanks and Nina: Why The Hell Is Scott Connected To Everything All The Time?

Something that always gets me is the fact that the scene from The Thing that Scott was watching in S1 is specifically the defibrillator scene:

Which becomes much more interesting when we consider El being revived with with the defibrillator during NINA and how that parallels The Thing:

And Scott going on to talk about sensory tanks (which is what the NINA tank is), right after watching The Thing’s defibrillator scene:

Dustin’s wording here is also interesting- how to build ONE:

And speaking of One, we know that Henry also has a white NINA style sensory tank suit in his costuming wardrobe.

It’s also very interesting to me that Scott immediately starts explaining/debunking the scene- explaining how they faked it:

Which is interesting because of all of the weirdness surrounding NINA with the moving/changing bodies and Henry’s changing bloodstains and the multiple Henries pre-massacre and the fact that the Truman Show is on the S4 board- the Truman Show, where everything is faked.

And the fact that Scott is watching a VHS tape of The Thing, and then explaining that what’s on that tape is fake and that there’s SO much weirdness with the tapes during NINA, including one of the tapes showing a different date for the exact same scene when Brenner plays it compared to when we saw the camera recording it, and also showing a different camera number (114 vs 126) despite both shots seemingly being the exact same camera from the exact same angle/location:

And to really drive home the connection to NINA, Scott has his “ten o clock” line which parallels Henry during NINA:

And Scott also talks about a “wrong number,” when the phone rings, and not only was the Cali gang struggling to figure out how to call the NINA number, but a.) the number Will initially read out loud to Mike in the phonebooth before they edited it post-production is different from what was on the paper and b.) the number that suzie types on the computer is different from the one written but seemingly the same as the one Will said verbally (thanks to @i-love-sweet-william for pointing out and recording the number Will said verbally before it got changed):

And there’s also the “wrong number,” in the sense of all of the weirdness with the multiple Henries/Edward/001s/rhe lab kids being numbers and literally the “wrong number”/“wrong one”/“the wrong kid”/“which one” (something I touched on in this post).

And then we also have Dustin saying to Scott that they’re building the tank for ��fun,” versus Henry telling El during NINA that she’s going to “miss out on all the fun”:

Long story short: Scott is not only constantly connected to the UD via his knowledge of parallel dimensions and the S1 vecnagorgon fight happening in his classroom, but he’s also constantly connected to NINA.

Which, speaking of the Vecnagorgon fight, the fact that the s1 Vecnagorgon parallels Henry/Edward/001 during NINA *and* the fact that the Vecnagorgon fight happens in Scott’s classroom *and* the fact that Scott has so many connections to NINA is interesting as hell. Again, Scott is not just tied to Henry/001/Edward, but specifically tied to NINA too:

We also see the Vecnagorgon standing in the same place as Scott repeatedly- the Vecnagorgon comes out of that paw print mural, right where Scott was standing earlier, and is not only in his classroom later, but specifically standing RIGHT where Scott always stands beneath the clock:

Why is Scott so connected to not just Henry, but also to NINA? And why is he paralleled to the Vecnagorgon so often?

[byler-alarmist]

Screaming and shitting myself because in 4.07 when Eddie tells Steve how the two ladies came in right after him, Steve looks over at them and they literally showed Robin and Nancy walking closer and closer together and filmed it in a way that looks like they are holding hands

[shadowedvales-gone]

jane has a very warped, toxic relationship with the void, which stems particularly from her time with her friends, in the early days, opposed to her time in hawkins lab. she expects punishment in the lab for noncompliance, which is why she does everything papa asks of her, in fear for what may happen if she refuses. she soon comes to believe that her only use in the party is to find will, or they'll “send her back to pennhurst or wherever she comes from.” it’s a different kind of punishment, but the pressure to comply is the same. jane gets her first taste of freedom in season one, but still spends it imprisoned and in a role where so much of her is demanded physically and mentally. the scene especially in episode seven, when they're all around joyce's dining table, talking about her like she's a machine, proves this tenfold. at this point, she is off in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror, crying because she can't help these people. a twelve year old girl who has never been outside in her life, crying because she's letting these strangers down… and they're doing absolutely nothing to help her along with it. to make her feel secure and safe.

mike: but she's drained. dustin: like a bad battery. joyce: well, how do we make her better? mike: we don't. we just have to wait and try again. nancy: well, how long?!

it's all well and good when joyce tells her that she's right there for her when jane enters the void, tells her she is brave. but they are all, for the most part, willing to sacrifice her, her feelings, her safety, to get will back. they don't know the void, and while jane is physically there with them, they have no idea what it could do to her. i understand joyce is his mum, of course she'll stop at nothing until will is returned, but it doesn't justify the way jane is treated and spoken about like she isn't even there. joyce should be on her hands and knees thanking jane for traumatising herself to find her son. and hopper literally selling her out to the hawkins lab people, putting her back in brenner's custody don't even get me startedddd. like she isn't a little girl, like she matters less than will does. she is basically treated like a metal detector for the better part of the season. [like a dog. like a makeshift girlfriend. she's placed into so many different roles and uses by these people, and is never given a chance to determine what she may want.] i understand that no time could really be wasted in terms of finding will, but if even one of them had asked her how she felt, if she needed to take a break, it would have made all the difference. she would have pushed herself regardless, but at least it would have shown that not only will mattered.

but no one did ask. and it leaves jane feeling like it's okay to sacrifice herself to the void; it leaves her treating the void like it's less dangerous, less unknown than it really is. they are her friends, she loves these people, so if they say it’s fine for her to do this, then she believes it, and never stops believing it. this ties in so nicely to the debate between max and mike regarding her powers in season three: mike thinking jane should limit herself to keep safe, and max arguing that it's up to jane, that she knows her own limits. where in reality, she doesn't know any limits, because she was never taught to have them. [i don't specifically blame the boy's in this instance, because they were just kids in season one, but joyce and hopper, even nancy and jonathan, could've stepped up.] if anyone told her back then, when she was even more impressionable than she is now, that if she was scared, if she didn't want to do it, she didn't have to. she still would have, of course, but then and there it would have instilled the fact that she had choices. so when mike proclaims that it's not good for her to be in there for that long, jane thinks nothing of it, because she should have been told these things three years prior. it leaves her using the void like it's no big deal, never taking a minute to consider how it could be affecting her body and mind.

[will80sbyers]

STRANGER THINGS 4 •

Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab

[itswhatyougive]

Eddie contradicts himself.

In one breath, he tells Steve he would "never have jumped into the lake to save your ass under any.....normal circumstances".

Then in the next, he tells him that the only reason he jumped in was because of Robin and Nancy, and he just didn't want to feel ashamed to be the only one who stayed behind.

But he already told on himself. Because he could have either said :

"I would never have jumped in that lake under normal circumstances" (does not mention Steve was the cause)

or

"I would never have jumped in the lake to save your ass. i did it for the girls" (implies Steve would never be the cause) and left it at that.

But the line as it is implies that he did jump in the lake to save Steve's ass!!

The only reason he wouldn't have jumped in the lake under normal circumstances is because he believes he would've been too scared, as evidenced by the next line when he talks about how he's not a hero and was disappointed to learn recently that he runs in the face of danger

Despite what he was saying about all the reasons he has to dislike Steve or be jealous of him, those are not the "normal circumstances" that would have stopped him from saving Steve.

Another fun bonus to this is that being "normal" in the series is often contrasted with being "different," which also holds the connotation of queerness (as Will's van monologue demonstrates).

So one could also say that Eddie wouldn't jump in the lake to save Steve under "normal" circumstances......because his circumstances are, in fact, "different" (queer). 😹

[jazy3]

New set pics from Ross Duffer!!!