#st makeup

[henrysglock]

[Kazoo Kid voice] Wait A Minute...Who Are You?

ANOTHER installment of the Cracks and Mirrors series...this time tied (haha) to Brenner's ties. Yeah. Ties. Plural. This is going to be a long one. Where to begin.

#1: The Ties

If you can make sense of that, more power to you. Here's what you really need to know:

Meaning these 5 guys are different from each other:

Wonderful! I hate it here.

Interestingly enough, this guy is the only guy we see the doors to El's stairwell with:

Now, it finally makes sense why none of these blood patterns match:

BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT THE SAME GUY/SCENARIO.

All of this, of course, ties back to what I said in September about Ten's changing test room regarding shot choices, prop movements, and color grading fuckery: It's not the same room continuously.

These two, however, seem to be set in variations on the same universe:

And they both end in an infuriating camera cut to (in Brenner's case) a completely different guy. (smash cut to my post about how if El's experience is lifted from Brenner's memories, then Brenner should have seen One killing Two, like El did)

Anyway, what we can glean from this is that Running Brenner's universe is one of the top row, but not any of the bottom row:

(i.e. It's at least a variation on a) the taped version of El's first NINA experience and b) Henry's electrocution. It is not, however, any of the other versions of El's NINA entrance, as far as we've been shown...which is consistent with the multiple versions of NINA we seem to be seeing overall.)

Okay. Good? Good. Moving on.

#2: Tying the Ties (to the Rainbow Room)

As I just mentioned, the Brenner in the hallway isn't the Brenner who runs into the Rainbow Room. And as far as I can tell, Rainbow Room Brenner doesn't appear in the hallway shots:

Rainbow Room Brenner, as far as I can tell, seems to be this Brenner:

And so, of course, the part you all knew was coming...

#3: Tying the Ties (to the Cracks)

Yeah. We're fucked. We got a bunch of different guys.

If you're just tuning in, I suggest you take a peek at the original Cracks and Mirrors post (the other installments of which can be found in my pinned post)...but for time being I've lifted the most relevant portion:

Now. These cracks have associated Brenners:

No Gate and Gate, respectively.

Not only are these two Brenners not the same guy, they're also not any of the guys we saw running around or the guy who burst into the Rainbow Room:

Adding lines would make this more confusing, so just go ahead and squint at them all. You'll see what I'm on about pretty quickly, since I've circled the important bits.

But...Surprise! We now have seven Brenners! (My apologies for the fucking crunchy as hell "looks like the visual representation of an earrape video" cracks Brenners, it's just that the lighting is shit and I can see fuck all if I leave them as-is)

So. A Tale Of Seven Brenners...or so you THOUGHT. (Because fuck me, that's why.)

#4: More Fucking Ties!!

Of course, none of these Brenners are this weird fucker with blood all over his face:

Many such cases, because none of them account for this Brenner from earlier in 4.01 who's shown with a) an incorrect tie and b) incorrect hair (shown here with "correct" Brenner) either:

...Which I talked about here.

YUP. WE HAVE AT LEAST NINE BRENNERS.

Now...I still have questions about this last Brenner ^ being shown as a reflection in his mirror at home, as opposed to Brenner in the massacre who does not reflect in the Rainbow Room mirror (both in 4.01 AND 4.08, respectively):

But for now...that's beside the point.

Closing Tangential Note:

Isn't it funny how everything electronic is going super haywire...except the camera and the card reader...and the lights in the hallway that doesn't exist on any of the HNL specs we have..........funny how that works:

You could argue that the camera and card reader are on a generator/backup circuit...I just didn't think powers-usage picked and chose which circuits it affected like that.

And before anyone goes "Oh but James, there is a light flickering in the hallw—" YEAH. THE ONE SINGULAR LIGHT HENRY JUST SMASHED WITH THE BODY OF A GROWN MAN. LOOK BEHIND EL WHEN THE DOUBLE DOORS OPEN. FLASHING LIGHTS? I DON'T THINK SO.

AS OPPOSED TO WHEN POWERS ARE BEING USED NEARBY, WHEREIN ALL THE LIGHTS FLASH:

OKAY. OKAY. SO IT'S WEIRD THAT THE LIGHTS IN THE HALL BEHIND THE DOOR WOULDN'T BE FLASHING. THEY SHOULD BE FLASHING. BUT THEY'RE NOT.

It's almost like, by passing through those doors, El has entered the "plot", so to speak. Like when you hit a save checkpoint, or leave a "safe" space in a video game (staring at you, Resident Evil: Biohazard). She wanders through the safe but horrific "context" sequence, then she enters the unskippable "villain lore drop" cutscene, and then she's in the Boss Fight sequence. Babygirl, you are just a cog in the machine!!

[aemiron-main]

would like to remind the “production error/it’s not that deep or detailed” gang that the st makeup and costuming team made lacefront brows for virginia.

and also the fact that they spent a ton of time doing prosthetics and makeup on eddie that was never seen on camera just in case it would maybe show up on camera for a moment.

and yet im supposed to believe that they just forgot the blood henry’s face in closeup shots between shots and that it just reappears and disappears in time with the dead bodies also changing for no reason other than “production errors lol”. ok. mhm.

[pyromiz]

McCoy: I'm serious Jim, I've never seen Spock that angry before.

[henrysglock]

Ok whew so!

First off: regarding Test 2. I get the feeling most of HNL's test rooms look really similar.

If you take Ten's test room and compare it to El's, we're missing a whole door, when we cross reference against the end of the table

And as we know, we don't always come and go from that side door. Let's take the room Henry was tortured in, Test Room 1, for example:

No cage or anything, and it's a little rearranged, but it's got the same exact ventilation thing, same positioning in front of the 2-way mirror, they've all got the tables in them, so on and so forth, very very similar room to both Ten's and ST1 El's:

But he gets dragged out the same door that's behind Brenner, and Brenner follows them all out that door.

So I'm definitely inclined to believe that most of the testing rooms in either version of HNL look really really similar to each other. We know that it's not the ST1 testing room, and HNL itself is a completely different layout when comparing NINA to ST1 in general. It's really bizarre, esp when we account for Brenner's hair discrepancies between seasons.

Second, regarding Brenner's shirt blood.

First, there's the matter of the guy I like to call "Bisecting Brenner":

He only shows up like...once in a blue moon. He's there, though! He's there in both El's flashbacks pre-NINA and when she turns around in 4.08...and we don't get a really nice closeup on him either time. I honestly can't tell you with any certainty whether his shirt has blood on it, but it would make sense for his shirt to have blood there. We already have blood elsewhere that doesn't make sense, (hell, check out "003"s body next to him. That's not a Vecna kill, and that body is an Adult Man), so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of fuckery happening with his shirts.

What I find really interesting, though, is this concept of spliced/overlaid or faked events.

There's only one other time I can recall where someone had blood on that part of their shirt, and that's when Henry's had the shit zapped out of him and he's bleeding out his ears in Test Room 1:

Now I know he tosses his head back pretty hard in this scene, which ties into what I'm going to say a little lower down in this post, but peep behind him in this picture:

Cage. Intercom. 99% chance THIS is Ten's test room, which he's dragged off in the general direction of here:

So why is he all bloodied up all the way in Ten's test room? Why take pictures of it specifically in Ten's test room?

And something even funnier about this is that typically just zapping doesn't make you bleed out your ears. It's not powers either, since he doesn't have the Soteria blood on him.

The only explanation Em was able to come up with? A skull fracture.

What was it you were saying about blunt force impact vs blood sprays? Something about "psionic powers couldn't have made this blood spray"?

Anyway. I'm probably not making much sense. But. Much to think about there re: time and chronological-type fuckery (i.e. is El even being shown the events of NINA in order?)

a few more bloodstain thoughts: Brenner / Test Room 2 edition

(this is an easier one and there's no crime scene pics, fear not)

TLDR; main takeaways: 1) the blood on Brenner is screwy and 2) there's possible evidence of two unknown players entering Test Room 2 while Brenner was unconscious

I don't get Brenner's shirt blood any more than I get One's shirt blood

sir, why and how are wounds on the right side of your face bleeding onto your left collar? you don't appear to be injured there. like at all.

"maybe it dripped when his head was turned-" he hasn't bled enough for it to even run down to his chin. also, he woke up like that.

he would've had to be vertical when these drips happened. but the door knocked him right down, and he hasn't stood up yet, and the blood is already there.

"what if those aren't drips, but transfer?"

ok sure. could be. he does hug Ten's bloody face, after all. that's a great way to transfer blood.

but he hugs Ten into his right shoulder. and, we see it doesn't transfer any blood.

but those stains are sooo transferry. suspiciously like he already did hug Ten on his left side when the blood was fresher. blood tracks down his face and dripped onto his chest would line up decently with the Brenner shirt blood.

no matter how you explain it, the events that put that blood on Brenner's shirt are missing.

and something about them both having blood on their left collar is. idk. I mean One's is spatter and Brenner's is either passive or transfer so they def happened differently but still. I'm itchy

whose blood is on the EEG machine?

obviously, somebody fell and hit the sharp metal corner of this EEG machine.

but we saw Brenner get hit straight on by the door. his face wounds should just be from the door. he didn't spin around and hit his face on this thing too.

arrow pointing to the corner that winds up with blood on it. just to understand its position in the room.

it's possible the door knocked Brenner back and the cart spun a little and he hit his head on that corner of that thing. but the back of his head isn't bleeding. his hair is white enough that we'd see it easily.

could be Ten's blood I guess, although he wasn't very directly in the blast path. I suppose the blood puddle under the EEG net is a vote for that - OOPS no, wait, we get a very good look at Ten's head and it's not bloody, nor is the back of his gown.

can that EEG tell us anything else?

the paper feeds out continuously, in fact it's still on and feeding out a flat line reading when Brenner wakes up.

we know it flatlines when you take the thing off your head.

I'll bet some smart person could take the rate at which that paper comes out and approximate how much paper is coiled up on the floor and do the monster math about how much time has elapsed. not me tho

I'd like to know another means of measuring how much time has elapsed. because according to the RR clock, 45 minutes pass between Brenner taking Ten for lessons and Brenner coming into the RR to say "what have you done". but that clock doesn't always tell the truth. so idk.

Test Room 2 and the cat room

there is that cage in the background.

and that is the same EEG as El's in the cat scene. like the exact same one, you can tell by these dings in the paint:

@henrysglock you've just been all over Test Room 2 - what do you think about this being the same room?

I mean, It's Not. the hallways outside these two rooms aren't remotely the same, and the whole s1 and s4 labs are wholly different. but I mean like, in a timelines way...? is there anything here?

(no point really, I'm just throwing things at the wall. I don't know why but I want this to be the room El drew)

Test Room 2 doorway blood stain

in pondering james' creature attack theory I was wondering whether I could blame the same impact that blew the door in for leaving that blood stain. in other words, could a creature have physically busted that door with a swipe of a bloody hand.

I'm gonna say no, separate event, because

the door looks bent in the middle (looks at the sparks fly off that center hinge), not so low to the ground. if force at the bottom blew the door off it wouldn't have flown in top-first when it hit Brenner

if the blood goes as far in as the stop moulding, it would have touched the door too, had the door been closed when that happened. I don't see any blood on the door

so this blood got transferred after the door was off.

I wanna know who or what was bouncing from wall to wall all down these halls sooooo bloody but not bloody enough to leave blood trails on the floor.

say you're mortally wounded and dragging yourself aaaggh down the hallway, leaning against the wall because you can't stand upright, and you pass across an open doorway - wouldn't you tend to kinda fall into it?

maybe no one slid across it. maybe it fits better with someone getting dragged into it, kinda like this:

of course then we're missing other evidence that should go along with that idea though (you'd think there might be bloody hand streaks on the floor; Ten's and Brenner's hands aren't bloody) (can I blame this on El's bloody hands?)

this other doorway-oriented bloodstain also looks like someone with bloody hands being dragged towards the doorway/into the room, but once again the dead occupant's hands are clean:

we know SOMEBODY entered Test Room 2 and killed Ten while Brenner was knocked out. but the killer wouldn't be the bloody hands person, because the bloody hands person was dragged in there against their will. the killer would enter freely, voluntarily.

so if those are hand-grab-smears on those doorways, that gives us TWO unknown entities entering those rooms.

why are there no footprints?

boy they really wanted me to see what it looks like for a demodog to bust down a metal door. and granted the prison door is probably a lot heavier than the lab door, but it took him a few tries and the door didn't seem to dent.

anyway going to get that gif to compare to the Test Room 2 door caused me to notice this demodog leaving its bloody footprints on the floor. Russian demogorgon also has very bloody hands and face after killing.

we can conclude from the massacre stains that at least one person, somewhere, is VERY injured and catastrophically bleeding. if I blame this on a creature, that means said creature is also very bloody. which made me realize I don't see any creature tracks in the lab.

this is not anti-creature-theory though, because there are other creatures besides demodogs, and because whatever dragged Billy didn't leave tracks, and because I also don't see bloody shoeprints even though we know there were many people present.

like, especially this splatter in the RR for which the easiest explanation is that somebody stomped in it. where did that person's next step land?

(lol 007 please come to a full and complete stop. you are dead.)

NOBODY stepped in ANYTHING? this feels staged. I mean, it is. but staged-by-the-lab or something too.

[goddammiteverythingstaken]

lesbyler first kiss

[tequileah]

Happy St Patrick's day!☘️🍀

[a-s-levynn]

(source)

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

💋

these pics were after the show so my lips were a little smudged but hey. It held up pretty good you girls werent lying about the ELF putty primer my foundation hardly budged even after 8 hours !!

Btw shout out to

Weird Side Profile Shortys

Shine bright like diamond 💪

[webdiggerxxx]

꧁★꧂

[shopaholixs]

Turtleneck gown by Ralph Lauren. Earrings by Alexis Bittar. Metal bra top by Agmes X St. Agni.

Photograph by Vincent Van De Wijngaard. Styling by Imruh Asha. Model Imaan Hammam.

Harper’s Bazaar September 2024

[henrysglock]

Have You Gorged Yourself, At Last, In Your Lust For Blood?

No, I have not 💕 This is yet another post about the massacre of 1979 and its fucked up blood, because there's just...so much to unpack.

Namely...why does it all feel like one big copy-cat of other attacks...with a dash of Vecna mixed in for the Flavour, the way Klarbrunn tastes like fruit?

My main question for tonight: Where is all the blood coming from?

We know all the Vecna-style attacks are relatively bloodless...and I mean bloodless. He's not messy. The only blood that we see leaving the body is via the eyes. This is consistent.

So where is all this smeary, pooling blood coming from?

There's blood with no associated body, blood near a body that doesn't match that body, and blood near bodies with no visible source for the bleeding:

The only person whose psionic kills get messy, so far, are El's...

But even that doesn't explain the bloody, smeary hand prints and bloody impact marks.

Neither of them leave bloody impact marks. There is no precedent for bloody impact marks anywhere in the show.

Which, this becomes far more interesting when we consider that the blood and the cracks exist separately:

(Which is something Em noticed, and if he hasn't talked about it in depth on here yet I know he's planning to eventually!)

So that brings me back to wondering:

If it isn't tied to the impact, and there's no visible explanation for it...then where did all that blood come from?

This, then led me to pose the question:

Is it possible there's something else going on here...something unrelated to One or El circa 1979?

As we know already, many of El's flashbacks of the 1979 massacre/4.07 are shot-for-shot reused footage from Brenner's recollection of the events as they occurred in 4.01.

There are some original shots, such as this hallway:

(Brenner's recollection vs El's, respectively. Particularly, the orderly in on screen left. He's changed position, and the prop above/beside him has moved.)

But shots like these, for example, are directly copied and pasted from Brenner's memories:

Which then led me to ask: What other memories of El's, Brenner's, or both might be bleeding into NINA, intentional or otherwise?

There's one scene, in particular, which we never see any additional detail for...and I really wish we did.

It's the opening scene for 1.01:

Now, you all also know, I have many questions regarding El's supposed post-gate escape in 1983, the main of which being —

How did she get from this:

To this, the next morning?

We assume she escaped in the confusion re: the gate...which is questionable, given a number of questions and inconsistencies (Such as: What time did she escape, exactly? If it was during that morning's confusion re: the gate, then how did she get that tank open and why did she stop to change her clothes? If it was later that night and she'd been rescued from the tank/her clothes were changed by staff, then how did she manage to get out without being stopped? What were the circumstances? Did she kill her way to the tunnel? If she did, then why does Brenner look to the gate when he says she can't have gone far? )...but that's not what this part of post is about, so I'm setting this aspect aside.

I bring this ^ whole debacle in because these two guys (the guy screen right during the supposed opening of Mothergate and the guy who gets chowed on by what we assume to be the demogorgon) are the same guy...and judging by his outfit and the title cards, the same guy on the same day: The day the gate opened, which is also the day El made her escape.

We see El at Benny's Burgers the next morning, after this guy ^ gets chowed on.

That means at least one version of Brenner and/or one version of El ought to have taped footage, memories, anything for whatever inevitable collateral damage occurred between the moment the gate opened and the moment when this elevator, with the creature in it, went upstairs:

We never see what actually killed this guy, as opposed to what or who he was running from... nor do we ever see what happens when the elevator makes it upstairs.

What, did the demogorgon just teleport in to kill this one guy, and then teleport back out, leaving behind a perfectly good meal (the lab at least has a skeleton crew, we see that in ST2) upstairs? And even if it's the Vecnagorgon...again, teleporting in to kill one guy and then leaving?

I'm calling bullshit.

I want to know how and when our El really escaped, and I want to know what aftermath she and/or Brenner inevitably saw upstairs when the creature in the elevator escaped.

And why do I want to know this?

Because the 4.07 massacre of 1979 is shot, positioned, and painted just like every other creature attack in a lab/prison/hospital.

Russian demodogs, ST2 demodogs...

and as Em pointed out here: the ST3 hospital scene, which I also pointed out as having HNL gown vs General Hospital Gown fuckery.

None of these are Vecna-style attacks. All of them involve a creature. So why are they all so shot-for-shot paralleled to a massacre committed by one human man?

I mean the bodies, the hallways and door...they're nearly identical in every case, for heaven's sake!

Knowing what we know about the blood vs the impact marks (i.e. they are divorced from each other, they exist as separate marks):

Let's ignore the impact craters. Look at how the blood is applied.

It's the same smeary/drippy/sprayed application.

Both the ST2 and ST4 democreature attacks are also coincidentally watched on and/or guided through via security footage, just the same as NINA is guided via security footage (supposedly):

The only creature attack we don't have footage for is the "overwritten" overnight footage from Nov. 6th, 1983:

Truth is? We know just about nothing re: Nov. 6th, 1983.

We don't know what was in the elevator or where it went. We don't know what that scientist was running from. We don't know what the circumstances of El's escape were. We don't know what happened in the lab that day.

But we do know one thing: None of it lines up with what we're meant to assume happened, meaning they're hiding things from us...just the same as they hid the events between Henward leaving El in the store closet and when she leaves to find him.

I'm willing to bet that he knows, though, given the way he stares up at the ceiling of the elevator...

Which is where our lab tech friend was attacked from.

We also have this bloody, unexplained, intruding flashback in NINA:

We're given no explanation, the flashback skips the memories of broken-limbs children in their rooms, it leads directly to that shared creature-attack hallway shot, it's cut with Brenner's flashbacks from within the rainbow room, and it does not appear again in NINA. Anywhere.

All this to say...Who's to say that the missing footage and/or memories from that day in 1983 aren't bleeding into NINA, consciously or unconsciously?

What if all this extra unexplained blood is that memory intruding from either El or Brenner?

[aemiron-main]

creelarke analysis: why are there so many scenes with hawkins lab extras that resemble scott clarke?

Anyone else find it interesting that the scientist in the very beginning of S1 EP1 bears a striking resemblance to Scott? Especially considering that he’s, as far as we know, the first victim of the “demogorgon” in 1983.

And i’d maybe brush it off as coincidence if it wasnt for the fact that it

keeps

happening.

Like cmon that’s two separate extras both associated with the lab who both show up repeatedly in the same season where Scott shows up the most, who both heavily resemble Scott. It’s a little weird. More than a little weird.

It’s also worth noting that the moustache on the extras is very very likely an intentional costuming choice considering that they made a lace moustache for Lucas’ dad.

[a-fistfull-of-datas]

was brent spiner high when he was data?? i don’t know if it’s just the makeup, but i’m on season seven now and his eyes look more red than they have been. now i have no hate if he was or not, but i am genuinely curious. it seems in the later seasons they get a lot more up close shots of him and i just can’t stop looking at his eyes every time.

[lesbianrobin]

[henrysglock]

For tattoo darkness, it may be explained by going over the numbers several times. I have a line-art tattoo, and it did start out light and thin before they went over it again. Tattoos also definitely fade over time, my once black lines are now a dark greyish teal. So that accounts for any fading between (1959? 1960s?) and 1979.

HOWEVER. Not only is the color grading way out of wack between the two scenes, the acting and the physical tattoos are different too.

Color Grading:

The first time we see the tattoo scene, it's super washed out. Especially in comparison to the second, where it's dark and saturated. We see this weird color grading shift elsewhere:

Victor's retelling of the the Creels' stay in Hawkins is washed out (I know Em likened it to Caravaggio-style dramatic lighting). "Henry's" retelling of his childhood is darker and highly orange saturated.

Acting: As we can see above, Raphael's expression is entirely different in the second tattoo scene. He's also not gripping Brenner's hand the way he was the first time around. It could be passed off as just a shift during a single take, but it's weird to me that they wouldn't just pick up exactly where they left off, especially if they want it to feel like one continuous scene.

The Tattoo: Okay so this I had to do a little enhancing on (due to that high white content lighting), but if we look we can see that the actual shape of the tattoo is different...which shouldn't be a thing, because like you said: CGI. But also they likely had a stamp or a stencil for it. It's not that hard to exactly duplicate a tattoo. In the first tattoo scene, a shorter, wider zero comes first, and the skinnier one comes after. In the second, the skinnier zero comes first, with the wider one after. There's also an uneven tilt at the bottom of the second tattoo.

That means whoever this is?

He matches the first tattoo scene. Wide zero first, and taller, skinnier zero second. No tilt at the bottom.

Which...this is very interesting to me considering that the zeroes are, then, inverted. They're reversed.

But either way, like you said: Neither of them match Vecna.

can I talk about the 001 tattoo?

so we can agree the 001 is darker, thicker, and WAY bigger on Vecna, right? also it's got a vein running prominently right under it, which doesn't seem to match the anatomy of his wrist in the broom closet tat reveal. (idk if that's an original vein or some kind of vine nonsense tbf)

"oh that shot is dark and spooky and cluttered, maybe they just exaggerated it so you can see it" maybe but.. they can do literally anything with cg - zoom into his skin cells or whatever they gotta do to make sure we see that tattoo without having to make it cartoonishly large.

can I also talk about how Nancy sees the tattooing scene twice, and the tattoos look different?

I know em and/or james (sorry much like henward I forget which of you has said what lmao) have discussed the differences in lighting, etc. in the tattoo scenes and the fact that one is unfinished and so might be 000 instead of 001, but I wanted to touch on the Nancy aspect of it too.

just for clarity, the tattoo scenes go like this:

in 4x7 - "when Papa realized he could not control me, he tried to recreate me" we, and Nancy, see the boy getting tattooed 00(unfinished). this is the last time we see Nancy in 4x7.

4x8 picks up with Nancy watching the tattooing, Brenner wiping off a finished 001, and then turning to her with creepy eyes. she tries to run, pries some boards off the doorway, and arrives back in the tattoo scene again.

so although it's broken across two different episodes, this is all one continuous vision for Nancy (one thing split in two - isn't that fitting for a secret Henward reveal)

it's super weird that after Nancy runs from the tattoo scene, Vecna tells her "Now you've seen where I've been; I would like very much to show you where I am going" and then... sends her back into the tattoo scene?

why say that and then immediately show her more redundant "where he's been"? why not just have her bust through that doorway straight into the apocalypse vision, like Victor in wartime France?

"it's like El arriving in the Rainbow Room over and over" yes. it is! but that was El getting clockwork orange'd with HNL footage and her brain struggling to reject it. whereas this is Vecna. and Vecna, as far as we saw, doesn't usually force his victims into loops like that, right?

Max, Chrissy, Fred ran inside their visions. unsuccessfully, yes, but when they ran, they actually travelled. like, when Max ran in the graveyard, she didn't keep arriving at Billy's grave over and over. Chrissy didn't keep finding her mom in every room. so it's curious to me that the only loops are Nancy and El, both in the lab (or I should say, "in the lab" given that neither of them are actually in the lab). so Vecna deviated from his usual method because he reallllly wanted Nancy to see that tattoo some more.. it's just odd to me, IF those tattooings are truly supposed to be the same event.

why else are WE the audience shown this scene multiple times than because they need to have shown us two events, but made sure we conflated them as one? to assume that that was the same boy getting the same tattoo?

anyway, the actual tattoo:

the 00 in 4x7 seems a lot lighter in comparison to the very dark 001 we see being finished up in 4x8.

people with tattoos: do they start it light and then go over it darker? is that a thing? is the 4x7 a realistic depiction of the 4x8 tattoo in progress? because if not I have more thoughts.

btw if I wanted to get real crazy, I would point out that El's tattoo also seems to vary slightly - it seemed bigger when she was little (maybe that part makes sense. how do tattoos behave on growing children?) but also it keeps sneaking closer to her wrist. look how in s1 it's four tattoo-lengths from the crease of her wrist, and by s4 it's more like two. (does anyone know when MBB got that for real?)

anyway I'll leave you with the thought of: remember those two extremely similar and redundant El-dragged-off-to-solitary scenes they showed us in s1?

[bebx]

Jamie Campbell Bower as Henry Creel | 001 | Vecna in Stranger Things

I need to wrap my arm around his waist