#summary: I accidentally made Irene necrophiliac and cucked easterman

[sid-sn]

My Darling Irene

my Irene headcanons below cuz someone asked <3

all interpretations of characters are my own and it’s not historical or canonical accurate, will change based on the future canon updates

contains certain explicit content so please see the tags, outlast itself is a warning tbh

According to the voicelines she’s drugged and hypnotized by her husband and most of the time is just a very obedient trad wife. But they also mentioned she would argue with Easterman and wants to leave him after discovering he’s been drugging her. So in my headcanon her mental state is very unstable, she’s drifting in and out of the drugs effects, she’s not entirely lost and is constantly fighting against the manipulation of her husband.

But as the time settings is in the 1960s so the general environment is pretty misogynistic. She’s confused about the social role of a woman that she often questions wether this abusive marriage is expected to be normal or she’s going insane. (That’s when Avellanos comes in and change her entire worldview with lesbians sex)

As for the self harm wounds that’s solely because Easterman loves to have power over ppl so he makes her harm herself under drugs or hypnosis. (according to his conversation with Wernicke I assume he’s repulsed at hetero sex, probably because of his own gender dysphoria. So yes that misogynistic freak gets off to her pain is hardly a surprise) Irene usually doesn’t remember the process, so she mistaken those are because of her own alcoholism and depression. She hates herself and those wounds, would use bandages to hide them.

I headcanon she comes from a decent wealthy family, provided her with enough sense of self and knowledge but not enough to let her see beyond the social gender discipline. She met Easterman and his brother Stanley in high school, their relationship is kind of like the langermanns and Jessica situation in O2. Stanley secretly had a crush on her but unfortunately Irene only views him as a friend back then, too blinded by the feigned maturity of Hendrick and her family probably favors Hendrick over Stanley’s soft and pessimistic personality anyway. Both of the brothers are not mentally stable as they both grow up in an abusive household, unlike Hendrick who is good at hiding his fucked up mentality Stanley is very aware of his inability to provide her with a healthy relationship, but still he cares for Irene deeply. She later developed some feelings for Stanley after she’s stuck in the terrible marriage.

But then again we know too little about the brothers, the whole Easterman family is a giant mess. To elaborate on my headcanons on Easterman’s family will take another wall of text so I will skip that here, but I’m also very interested in that topic.

Anyway we know what happened to Stanley next(actually we don’t) Irene is absolutely devastated, would often see him in her dreams and drugs induced hallucinations. Sometimes Stanley appears to her in an unspeakable way(my explanation for the uniform kink, that police line is irrelevant to me idc), she’s terrified of her own infidelity but it’s a comfort to her nonetheless. She’d see him appearing as a corpse sometimes but he’d never been scary to her. Everything about Stanley is a comfort compared to her reality.

Her feelings regarding her husband is mixed. Deep down she hates his guts but the environment around her is making it impossible for her to leave, so her mind would probably develop a self protect mechanism that’s build around the fond memories with him before marriage, which leads to her thinking she still loves her husband. Also the drugs and hypnosis aren’t helping.

In conclusion she’s not a blank trad wife character to me, and I don’t think that’s what red barrels wanted her to be either.