#givehimthemedicine analysis

[givehimthemedicine]

El traded herself for Max in the void: a timeline switch crack concept

I'm not saying "theory" because I'm not 100% serious but hear me out anyway because there is something here, I'm just not sure what. if nothing else I get to inflict an angsty scenario on you

so you know how Two Days Later El's behavior irt Max is just so weird?

after everything that happened, you'd expect El to already be screaming "IS MAX OKAY?" as the van door is sliding open. instead, she doesn't ask about her at all.

even when Dustin says Lucas is at the hospital, El goes "is he hurt?" as if Max isn't crossing her mind at all as a reason for him to be at the hospital.

Will's casual inquiry of "where's Lucas" is weird in of itself. Will was there when El hatched the whole "Protect Max" plot and literally spoke to El while she was in Max's memories/the void. he knew Max being in danger was the whole thing. he definitely would've asked about Max before he asked about Lucas.

then Lucas says how it was a miracle that Max's heart started beating again, and Mike and Will give El this look. the obvious interpretation being that they assume El is somehow responsible but didn't say a word about it. (classic El behavior)

call me crazy, but doesn't it kinda fit to say that Two Days Later El does not have Void El's memories?

the El who arrives in Hawkins is NOT acting AT ALL like someone who watched her best friend die, brought her back, and ended the interaction with her in a dubiously-alive-critically-injured state.

this El is behaving like one who succeeded in rescuing Max and therefore isn't especially worried about her current status. maybe even a version where Lucas never got beaten up, the tape never got broken, the plan worked. who never told the boys she revived Max, because she didn't.

there's just something about El being all dirty and bloody during Max's death scene and then visiting Max two days later still wearing the same outfit except a still-clean version of it. like none of that happened to this El.

there's just something about Dustin's "oh God, you don't know." maybe this El doesn't! she looks lost af.

there's just something about Mike's "we came as soon as we heard." El was there and saw it all, but you just now heard it from Dustin? I know El is tight lipped but you're really saying she got out of the pizza freezer and into a TWO DAY LONG van ride and the conversation never got around to, like... how the mission went?

yet as of the cabin end scene, suddenly Mike and Will both know stuff that only El could've told them. so.. she did talk in the van? but didn't mention the Max stuff? that's even weirder.

let's talk about Vecna's 4th gate

so gates open on the exact spot of Vecna's victims' bodies, right?

here's where the Max gate starts to open in the UD attic, corresponding to exactly where Max is lying dead in the RU attic.

except that absolutely cannot be.

because they showed us what instantly happens if even a small part of the gate crack passes beneath a person. it looks like this:

so if that gate originated exactly under Max's body, Lucas would not have any warning. the only way he would've found out about it is by seeing at least a section of Max's corpse suddenly get vaporized Jason-style. (if not also his own body!)

instead, Lucas has time to see it starting to form and pull Max to safety. which means it couldn't have started forming exactly under Max.

the forming gate that Lucas is looking at as he drags Max away is actually sorta between Max and the spider shrine.

now look where El was sitting.

what if the 4th sacrifice was El, not Max?

we never actually saw the results of whatever El did when she put her hand over Max's heart. the easiest assumption is she just did magic cpr and started Max's heart again. but what if she was doing something to trade places with Max?

"but wtf are you talking about, because El continues being alive for the rest of the episode?"

for this concept I'm borrowing an idea from @heroesbyler that's had me clawing the walls of my cell lately - in case you missed her recent big brain posts, she pointed out some weird discrepancies in actual vs void versions of scenes throughout the show, suggesting that when El visits the void, she could actually be looking into different timelines. I'd definitely submit the Creel attic as another example.

so when I say what if El traded herself for Max, I'm talking Void El and Void Max.

I'm talking something about Max's death, or revival, or the opening of the gates, throwing some kind of trolley dilemma train tracks switch between timelines. idk there are too many details to iron out before I pitch this in seriousness but idk I just. I swear to you Two Days Later El and Void El aren't lining up.

some discrepancies in the real vs void Creel attic (not all. this could be a whole post itself)

void vs UD:

according to the UD shot, the origin point of the death gate is perfectly centered relative to the rug, and, say, a foot away. here's my hasty approximation of where I'd expect it:

this is why I'm not taking the L about how honestly El's location doesn't perfectly align with the UD origin point - because neither does Max's.

void vs RU:

IRL, Lucas is cradling Max across his lap. his legs are more or less parallel to the spider shrine while Max is angled at, very roughly, 45 degrees to it. the bug lamp is centered on it.

in the void version, the bug light is far towards one end of the table. while Lucas and Max's positions feel fairly consistent, their placement relative to the SS is not.

if you follow the lines of the floorboards in the IRL shot, his butt is aligned nearly with the far right edge of the SS. but here, don't they all seem decidedly further towards the left of it?:

as soon as Max dies, things get differenter. now they're further right again, only Lucas and Max's positions are more spoony, pointed the same direction. she's nearly parallel with the SS now. her feet also seem jacked up at more severe angles.

overhead shot also makes that bug light's off-centeredness very clear.

also you notice how we don't see El hearing Max in the void? I mean, she must have, otherwise she wouldn't reply "No, you're not going", but it's just odd how WE don't see that.

I've talked before about how Max says both "I don't want to die" and "I don't want to go," which are two different concepts in ST universe, and that Lucas and El each get to respond to one of them. so why not show us El hearing the one that's hers?

IRL Max is begging for her life, but when we switch to the void, she's abruptly silent and much more still. El only hears Lucas. back to IRL, Max is still more actively struggling and vocalizing a little before she dies. the energy doesn't match super well.

other bits

on the subject of El's "No. You're not going." if you really wanted to, you could interpret that in a "- because I'm going instead" way. I know, she didn't especially say it with that inflection. but it does have me thinking about how incredibly in character it is for El to be willing to trade herself like that.

it made me think of this moment:

yeah we've all demanded to know what was the reason for having Owens assume Max was a boy. but has anyone talked about how El, in her reply to that very line ("no, do not send your men. send me.") does the same thing? Owens just said "people". El assumes they are men.

there's just something about El saying "do not send your men[?], send me" immediately after Owens referring to Max as a him[?]. it gives kind of a "don't take Max, take me" flavor.

there's also something about how Max wasn't supposed to be the 4th sacrifice anyway.

and by this point El has heard the monologue about how all this time, it's all been about getting to her. so she's definitely feeling that Max is dead in the crossfire because of her. you don't think that if she only could, she would take Max's place and face Vecna directly, whatever that entails? whether it's death or some ambiguous awful fate?

can you tell me this kid

wouldn't trade herself for Max?

also just curious that the very first time they played Running Up That Hill, it actually began on a shot of a distraught El walking down her school hallway before it transitioned to Max walking the opposite way down her school hallway. with the song edited to skip straight from the opening to the chorus about swapping places.

don't worry I'm sure there's no way that means anything 👍

finally, El is distraught not to be able to find Max in the void when she goes looking for her. but it's weird because El has located corpses, flayed people, and inanimate objects in the void before. there's no reason she shouldn't be able to locate Max due to her being in a coma/"trapped".

what if it's not Max who's offline? what if El can't see into that timeline anymore because she's dead in it?

#this is crackpot but also there's something here #elmax #<- kinda #givehimthemedicine analysis #mine #and yes there are issues about how an El-gate should form where El was sitting when she revived Max which is a different spot #but if I'm entertaining alternate timelines I can also entertain time backing up a minute

[aemiron-main]

my life has not been the same since realizing that the grid imagery in ST are webs, however long ago that first realization was.

the following screenshot is from @givehimthemedicine ‘s mirror post and I have many thoughts on that post but setting those thoughts aside for now, there’s smthn totally separate I want to talk about with this shot that demonstrates that I’m not talking out of my ass when I say that the grids are webs.

So. This shot looking through a one-way mirror after El throws Two against it. We’ve obviously got the grid on the floor and the walls, but look at the shape of the crack in the glass- it’s very, VERY spider shaped. like cmon that can’t be an accident. you’re gonna tell me that right after El uses a powers technique (focusing on a bad memory/using her emotions to fuel her powers) that she learned from a guy who talks repeatedly about how he’s just like a spider and is literally associated by constant spider imagery, a hilariously spider-shaped crack shows up in the glass in front of El, as a RESULT of her using that new technique she learned from Henry, and I’m supposed to believe it’s a coincidence? NO! It’s intentional, it basically has eight legs even, come on!

It’s literally a spider in the web/grid and El is caught in the web by the spider (Henry influencing her.) the grids are WEBS!!! THEYRE WEBS!!!

#stranger things #byler #st analysis #st grid/web imagery #st set design #st cinematography #also wait this sounds confrontational and I know I tagged givehimthemedicine but my sarcasm is not directed at you LMAO

[henrysglock]

The Creels And Their Changing Doors

If you know your Creel analysis history, you'll know that @givehimthemedicine has spoken about the changing doorknob on the Creel house's front door and the lock setup in the lab. (Absolutely slayful posts, mind you. Doing the Lord's work.)

So. I want to talk about another changing Creel door. Nat said this irt the Rainbow Room single doors:

And she's 100% right! This post isn't me correcting anything.

I'd like to make a timeline-fuckery addition.

Check this out. Double deadbolt plus a barrel lock, both plainly visible:

Track the scene a little further. Double deadbolt and—Wait. Where'd the barrel lock go?

What makes this all even funnier? This is the scene where teen El turns around twice:

They hide the door from us when the camera spins around El while Brenner talks.

Then the lock comes back, after Brenner has spoken about Nina, and after El says "This isn't real":

(I'm going to ignore the color grading change because I took one set from Loom and the other set from my iMovie library, so I can't say it's important without making another screen recording.)

The lock stays...

And then they go back to hiding the door from us completely until 1979 Brenner arrives and the scene changes:

(Don't get me started on all the "through the mirror" stuff that happens here, especially with the way teen El and baby El only sometimes match up perfectly.)

tl; dr: This gives us two different NINA sets for teen El already, which tracks with Em's post about the second rainbow room through this same door:

#the duffers & co really had a category 9 autism event when they made the NINA sequences huh #st nina project #timeline theory #st set design

[emblazons]

(Once again) making an El-In-Every-Episode set and I literally cannot stop thinking about this moment.

Every so often I think back to that 200/10 analysis by @givehimthemedicine talking about how El's use of the word pretty is not attached to her perception of attractiveness but normalcy and goodness, and looking at the framing of this shot solidifies that for me...along with realizing its a shot we're meant to take as a development of El's identity and one of the core pieces of her ongoing development.

In this single shot, we see El's "ideal life" (as it develops over several seasons anyway) reflected back at her: namely, herself feeling feminine, her having long hair, her surrounded by life/flowers (noting the nearly identical pattern on the wall to the white shirt she has on in S4) and Mike, who represents "the boy" in the idealized romantic relationship she begins to associate with a life she wants to live over the course of S1-S2 especially. She's also wearing Nancy's dress—the dress of someone who we saw her not two episodes before stare at longingly, because Nancy represented the kind of idealized girl El wanted to be.

El in this moment is experiencing the literal ST equivalent of looking into the Mirror of Erised—seeing her deepest longings reflected back at her at once, and smiling because it's here that she begins holding onto the idealized life that she is fighting for every moment after this. Even though we have slowly watched her embrace a new identity and sense of self the more she leans into her relationship with Max (+ watched her realize was impossible to maintain the life she idealized here without lying about who she really is as of S4), this is still the moment when we see El realize there is something she wants in the world beyond her lab experiences—and what we see her start to pursue (to varying degrees of success) as we move into later seasons.

El is calling the image she sees in the mirror here "pretty" and "good" in the same way she does other home-y, warm, feminine things over the course of the show…and her smile shows us that the thing she's looking at now (however idealized) is what she will try to pursue in her pursuit of normalcy after all the trauma she experienced being in the lab. It's the childish projection El begins with at the start of our journey through her self-actualization, and what she is now having to reckon with in reality as we move further and further into her character arc.

Ironically enough, all of the things in this idealized image are the things that are taken from her in S4, the season we are meant to see characters "lose;" she loses her hair, her idealization of her relationship with Mike, and even the flowers/plants we see in this frame, along with the one person who inspired her to look past this idealized fantasy life and into a world where she makes her own rules, Max.

TL;DR: this moment is core to understanding El's character. She is looking at the idealized version of her life as her childish self understands it, and as we've grown alongside her throughout several seasons, she (right alongside us) has realized that the ideal life she saw here is both unattainable while being authentic + not really what she wants in her heart of hearts anyway. Yay, complex character growth!

#I hope this made sense? I am so tired but I HAD TO SAY IT?! pls someone understand what I'm meaning lol #anti mlvn #its not really but kinda #el hopper #in this house we love el hopper #my st commentary #st analysis #st commentary #stranger things #my gifs #the me tag

[nowmemoriees]

THE LACK OF WATER IN THE UPSIDE DOWN

So, I started to think of the silly question "how did Will survive in the upside down if there's no water there?", and, after thinking about that and reading some of your analysis, everything got weirder than it already was.

Let's start with a basic acknowledge: the human body can survive with no water for just 3-5 days.

Will has been stuck in the UD for a week.

Erica pointed this out specifically in the show: if the human body doesn't get water it'll die.

As we know, there's zero water in the upside down. (we saw the gate at the Lover's lake, and there was... no lake)

And, that first question, still doesn't have a single answer. It leads to more questions.

Before mentioning them, I should say what the Upside Down is. The creators defined it this way: The Upside Down is a region that exists outside of space and time-a terrifying, colorless underworld overrun by death and decay and populated by faceless monsters.

- from "Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down"

and, this is how they described Will's dissappearance.

There are three options/theories: At first, we thought of the fact that time is frozen. We know that time is, somehow, fucked up in the UD. We don't know why, but it's frozen in the past.

- time's wrong? by @stranger-chichka

-> Does it mean that time does not run there? If that's it, that's the answer. Will was never that amount of days in that dimension. It's like, I don't know, Narnia for example, where the kids spent MONTHS in that world, but when they returned, no more than a few seconds had passed (in this case, it would be the opposite)

-> But if time does run in the UD... how did Will survive?

The second option is: Will was never in the UD, or at least, not for most of that week. Here is were we go back to the theory that says that Will was a lab kid and they were the ones who took him away. Them, not 001 and not a demogorgon.

-> gonna leave some posts of those theories here because I'm not gonna talk about them in this post.

• will is a lab kid thread

• one of lonnie's theories

• will has powers theory

If he was in the lab, he could survive because he was still in the -normal- dimension.

The third option is: Water is a way to get through the UD, we know this because the only thing we can see in the void is water. so, Will may have spent a lot of time between dimensions (he created a portal, so he almost makes it to the real Hawkins / he could also see and touch El in the void, which means that he was probably there too)

-> if you notice, will's hair is wet.

Maybe that was his water source. Apparently, every person who was phisically taken to the UD, coughed water, so that means that before getting to the UD, they've been through the void.

-> this information is from this post by @givehimthemedicine and @booksandpaperss

But.. as I said, this question just creates more questions, so, what do you think? Is this the watergate?

#stranger things #st4 #will byers #will byers has powers

[himynameis4]

Max Mayfield as the Instigator of Flickergate.

Imma be so fr with you, i am not at all familiar with flickergate. But if someone in the stranger things crew is gonna be outside of time/traveling through time to send messages, communicating via dreams, etc… i think it makes sense for it to be max.

@givehimthemedicine ‘s big analysis had a really good argument for the process of “being vecna’d” basically unlocking psychic powers (ie venca traumatizing his victims w bad memories to make them emotional the way he had El use her bad memories to unlock HER powers, and then using that power overload to open gates, killing victims in the process)

So… if max has just had a power overload… and she’s in a coma & el can’t find her consciousness… max accidentally sending her own consciousness back in time w her newly-unlocked powers could work.

I kinda love the idea of max mayfield travelling throughout the years, messing with the lights & futilely trying to spare her friends some pain/save billy etc. Max being the one to try and stop Will from leaving Mike’s house by messing with the lights that night? Maybe Max messes with the lights during the sauna test with Billy to try and warn them earlier? And Max mentioned in canon that the lights in her trailer flickered—what if she was trying to warn herself?

🤷 idk enough on flickergate to rlly speak on this lol, but i rlly like the concept. what does everybody else think?

#max mayfield #max mayfield has powers #stranger things #stranger things theory #flickergate #kinda #time travel #idk what else to tag lol

[givehimthemedicine]

excerpt from my RR analysis because I can't take it. so you know how 4x1 and 4x8 give us that same shot of baby El turning around in front of the mirror. some elements (little El's body / the camera track) seem identical in these two shots but other stuff is different.

not only is the gate missing in 4x8 as @henrysglock pointed out forever ago, but I lined up both shots and grabbed an equivalent frame to compare, because I could swear El's vibe was slightly different in one from the other but I couldn't put my finger on it without making it a gif:

look how much they changed her face/demeanor between these two versions of events. open the gif, I made it pretty big so you can see detail in her expression, the lighting, blood, even different reflections in her eyes.

it's subtle but they definitely made 4x1 gate-El look more angry/sinister.

and then.. the mirror. I want to know how these shots were made, because why not just recycle the entire shot and slap a gate on it in one but not the other? why did not only her face but the reflection of the rooms need to be slightly different? what is the dark thing reflecting in the top right of 4x8?

well see because these are entirely different Els and Rainbow Rooms and that mirror isn'[gets tranquilizer darted in the neck]

#givehimthemedicine analysis #mine #analysis #4x8 El is kinda neutral but 4x1 El is like 'I'll fuckin do it again old man'

[givehimthemedicine]

I synced El's and Brenner's massacre POVs and you need to check it out.

they have really similar trips down that hallway, so I decided to line them up starting at the moment they emerge from the test room doorway. and...

the one thing I wanna point out in case it's not apparent is, you know Brenner somehow hears a snippet of Two-dying-noises when he walks into the Rainbow Room? well those noises align perfectly with when El hears them.

its_like_old_memories_in_the_back_of_my_head_only_they're_not_my_memories.wav

#forgive me being a hair off of a perfect sync this was me trying to hit play on 2 programs as quick as I could #analysis #givehimthemedicine analysis #massacre stuff #lab stuff #KEEP YOUR MEMORIES IN YOUR OWN HEAD OLD MAN

[givehimthemedicine]

NINA and the magic of VHS ✨📼

I think I just figured out a big part of how NINA works. here's how Brenner is "altering" past events.

something just hit me about this footage that's been staring me in the face this whole time.

before I come to my Big Point, let me establish a few things:

the camera codes don't match

s4 keeps giving us camera POV footage that's labeled per camera. we see codes like CAM 071, CAM 039 and CAM 114.

what's weird about that? nothing, except... here are what the tape labels in the NINA library look like:

alphanumeric codes like CAM B2, CAM A5, CAM TR2. not a single one with just the three-digit numerical codes.

k, put a pin in that.

the NINA library is so spotty

Brenner tells El, "Everything that took place in my lab was captured on video tape. Every success and every failure."

but the dates we saw in that closeup are so sparse. it takes only a dozen tapes to span a month of footage leading up to the massacre (a time period you'd think they'd save every second of):

CAM B6 08-10-79 CAM B5 08-12-79 CAM A2 08-20-79 CAM B5 08-25-79 CAM TR1 09-2-79 CAM RR2 09-4-79 CAM C6 09-6-79 CAM RR1 09-6-79 CAM C4 09-7-79 CAM B5 09-7-79 CAM TR2 09-8-79

no idea what a lot of these camera codes denote, but it's not too hard to guess RR means Rainbow Room.

I can tell you off the top of my head that there are four cameras in the Rainbow Room. and one in each corner of the training rooms, at least one apiece in test rooms, bedrooms, hallways. at least one apiece in observation chambers of test rooms - otherwise the One banishment footage wouldn't exist (is that a bit odd now that I think of it?).

and that's not including the tripod cameras with which are recorded close up footage like plinko and the cat.

so, why so few dates and camera angles?

@lilly-flowerr once kindly calculated an estimate about how many VHS tapes would be produced from 100+ cameras' worth of continuous footage for the duration of the HNL program and the result was in the ballpark of several million.

tbf, Brenner never claimed this was all the footage. so I figured, likely, this library actually just houses a pared-down selection of footage relevant to the massacre.

but the problem with that idea is... consider how when we see El get NINA'd with RR footage: she's being shown four views of the room at once. that's already impossible, based on the selection we see available in the library. there aren't even four RR camera views represented on that shelf, let alone all from the same day.

pin that too.

live feeds vs playback

I thought hey, if those camera POVs had dates and everything on them, why isn't that stuff on El's NINA videos? are they hiding that data to facilitate screwing with her?!??

which, yeah. but here's the One banishment footage that Brenner watches alone. no dates on that either:

so I went to look for other times we've seen lab playback to see if there are ever dates.

Hopper checking out the pipe in season 1; Owens reviewing Will's checkup:

that's actually a plot point on the Hopper one because he decided the lab was lying to him about which night that footage was of - if the tapes showed dates onscreen, that wouldn't have been an issue.

so then I thought, ok, if that data doesn't appear on playback, it must only display on monitors showing live feeds, and that stuff doesn't actually get recorded onto it. right?

well here are some live lab feeds: El and the cat; detained Nancy and Jonathan; scientists watching Will's checkup; Owens directing Bob to safety from demodogs. no dates anywhere.

so... if there's no data on live feeds or on playback.... where ARE those dates on the NINA cameras being displayed? there's no internal viewer on those security cameras, like looking through a camcorder viewfinder, so it's not like it's merely "the camera's view" unseen by any actual entity.

so like... who's seeing that? how are we seeing that?

pin that too. I promise we're getting close.

OSD (on screen display)

quick bit of context for those who didn't grow up with VHS.

in VHS days, your video camera (if you had it configured to do so) would put the date onto your home movies. it wasn't a separate layer you could turn on/off after the fact, like DVD subtitles. if that feature was turned on while you were filming, that date was forever fused onto the footage itself. any time you ever played that tape back, you would see that date. there's no way to get rid of it.

osd however - PLAY PAUSE FFW and all that - those labels aren't fused onto the actual footage. they appear momentarily only as you navigate the tape with your VCR. DVD players do the same thing, you're probably familiar.

you can watch the osd labels appear/disappear as Joyce investigates Will's Halloween tape, while the date stays put.

they give us the live camera view of Bob (which has just the date) vs Joyce playing it back on her VCR later (which has the date and also osd). why the timestamps are different is a whoooooole other post.

so now that we're all on the same page about how dates vs. osd works on VCRs,

I'll bring you to the only time I DID find dates on lab playback:

4x6 when Brenner pops this tape in his VCR.

"who's even seeing those ?" Brenner. yeah, that's not my stunning realization. but look what we see up in the top left corner: osd. PLAY.

so here finally is my point: if PLAY appears on the screen as a result of Brenner hitting play on his VCR....

let me direct your attention to the upper left corner of that other footage:

those camera POV shots all say 🔴REC.

those aren't recordings.

they ARE recordING.

Brenner is taping these past events, live, during NINA.

"how do you explain Little El showing up in some of the camera povs? brainwash her all you want, but she would show up big on a tape being recorded in 1986."

indeed! which is why I'm not going so far as to claim Brenner is recording The Actual Past. what I do believe is that he's recording El's memories of the past, in which she is Little El.

"and how are you gonna say Brenner is able to record El's memories right out of her head with a VCR? yes this is fiction, but VHS technology isn't. c'mon."

it's not actually that far fetched! El canonically has a very similar ability - it's been swept under the rug in comparison to the glamor of telekinesis, not used since season 1, but it's well established:

she not only can hear people remotely, but also relay what only she is hearing via radio/intercom to where others can then hear it.

Brenner was filming this test on a tripod camera, which wouldn't have been affected by the cut in power that happened when El started relaying. so he walked away from this moment with a recording of something only El was able to hear.

which is exactly how NINA works. add video technology, and there ya go. if it didn't already exist in 1983, this scene was Brenner discovering the concept.

onward:

Brenner's tapes aren't the tapes El is being shown.

watch this in 4x7: he inserts this tape, hits play, and then we cut to El in NINA, watching all the monitors flash to life with footage of herself in the infirmary for her bullying concussion.

the implication from the editing is that this particular VHS yields that particular footage for El to watch, but that's a false assumption they want us to make.

first, playing one VHS doesn't result in several screens with different footage rolling all at once. one VHS only holds one camera feed. all NINA's monitors can't be fed by one VCR.

second, "Infirmary" would most likely be abbreviated "I" or "IR". the tape he played said CAM TR2, which could stand for either Training Room or Test Room. El experiences 9/8/79 "memories" of both, so I'm not sure which this would be. regardless, it's not Infirmary.

third, as we've covered before, all the lab footage El is shown inside NINA is devoid of dates and cam codes. that's not characteristic of the tape we saw Brenner play in his VCR.

fourth, as we also covered before, not all the camera angles El's seeing are even represented on that shelf of massacre-month tapes.

so Brenner may indeed have captured everything in his lab on video tape, but the VHS library we and El are shown while he says that? pretty sure that's NOT what these tapes are.

it's implied that he's popping tapes into his VCR at the same time El's off in her memories. but if it's not for the purpose of showing them to her.... what is he doing with his?

"but nat, his finger hit play, not record."

well they're not gonna SHOW us him hitting record or we'd guess!

he's hitting play to get the tape queued up to the right spot to record on, which you gotta do with a VHS or else you could overwrite something important that's already on there.

if Brenner is recording whatever El is seeing, wouldn't that help explain:

the varying appearance of El as both big and little within the camera povs. at this moment, El is big because she's aware she's her current self (she's fully conversing with Brenner). this is definitely not really past footage, because it's not like Little El stood up on a chair and yelled into a camera in 1979. after this point though, she accepts what's going on and submits to the "memories" in which she is little, so she's seeing herself as little, so from then on she appears as Little El on the fresh tapes.

the different camera labeling within NINA and its library of tapes - they need to differentiate between old/real/fake/new camera views.

the sparsity of the VHS library - maybe only key moments need to be overwritten

this camera-yelling moment actually is a potential match for one of the tapes on the shelf. it's Sept 4, 1979, and it's in the Rainbow Room. CAM 071 09/04/79 could be the overwriting of CAM RR2 09-4-79. on the other hand, if that were true I'd expect to also see 09-4-79 training room and hallway footage to match those other povs we saw, and I don't, so idk.

the light circle game is the only NINA footage we ever get to see both live camera POV and playback of (although it's not actually the same moment, the dates and cams are different). the numeric camera code on both of these is part of my support for the numeric camera codes representing new footage.

regarding the date and cam code being different on those two bits of nearly identical footage…. what if I... plugged this into Multiplayer NINA theory real quick and said that maybe CAM 126 is fake-old footage that's been more recently rerecorded in someone else's NINA? that maybe that's what's on all of Brenner's tapes before he records El's new stuff onto them?

so here's my current thinking of how NINA works:

decide how you wish El remembered an event and compile cherrypicked real footage and/or staged footage supporting your version of events.

manipulate and gaslight El so that she doubts the veracity of her own memories.

drug her and throw her in a sensory deprivation tank where your selected footage clockwork-oranges her into "fully re-experiencing" your version of events.

presto! the most powerful person in the world now believes your version of events is true because she genuinely remembers it.

by means of El's electronic relay abilities (induced with a buttload of drugs), these false memories that only El is seeing, inside her mind, are displayed for all to see on monitor in NINA's control room.

pop a plain old tape into a plain old VCR and hit record, capturing whatever's on the monitor.

presto! now you have irrefutable original video footage of a past event that never happened.

now you can show that proof to someone else - the government, the media.... or perhaps more importantly another NINA subject, as an ingredient in your tampering with their memories.

so. I can't prove the ol' MindFucker4000 is also a time machine, not in this post, but I do still feel like there's time stuff involved as well. because I can't think of a way right now to claim that recording someone's manipulated memory of the past actually changes that past, meddles with timelines, etc.

can you? I don't have all the nuts and bolts ironed out, but I welcome your thoughts while mine gel!

#long but I promise this is worth reading #the Henward / Victor memory tampering implications. #I know it sounds crazy it IS crazy.wav #analysis #givehimthemedicine analysis #mine #this post aged me #lab stuff #nina stuff

[givehimthemedicine]

how 4 sets the scene for Blind Max

another reason I suspect she'll have a blindness arc continuing into/through 5 is that I've been thinking about how Max's season 4, from its very first to very last second, lays groundwork de-prioritizing sense of sight for her and often shifting importance onto hearing.

on the surface, this is all just aspects of her depression/curse experience this season, but it all has the side effect of helping prepare her for blindness.

let's go:

do you wanna hear about the deal that I'm making? 🎵

Max's s4 begins with her shutting out the world around her to focus on her music all the time,

and that's before it's revealed to be a very literal lifeline. the special power of music here places enormous importance on sense of hearing (which has also benefitted Will, Victor, and the other Pennhurst inmates)

(deaf Vecna victim: "guess I'll die")

Lucas's basketball game

Max not wanting to attend the game was about not wanting to be seen by Lucas, rather than not wanting to see Lucas. she has no problem seeing Lucas - check out those heart eyes at the pep rally but only when he isn't looking.

she doesn't not care about him. she's just hiding from him.

so they could easily have established Max secretly caring via a scene where she does attend, watching but staying out of sight. maybe it turns out she refused his ticket because she actually already had one. or maybe she gets a ride from Eddie and gets to the gym and reaches for a door handle and hesitates and goes home instead.

instead they chose for her to keep tabs on Lucas without seeing the game at all, by listening instead. (looked upon by a poster with giant eyes lol)

not only tasty as a foreshadow, but a great little touch to set up Max knowing that her connection/enjoyment of her friends and awareness of what's going on doesn't depend solely on her ability to see.

bonus: her only line in that scene? "alright, I hear you" (because that dog barks)

shutting her eyes

Vecna doesn't blind his victims (well. not at the beginning) but instead forces visions upon them, so instead of their actual surroundings they see horrifying things, both literally and in a depression-metaphor way.

anyway, how does Max escape Vecna in DB? she shuts her eyes to the darkness he's forcing her to see, and focuses on the light - the love of her friends - which she knows to be the truth.

that worked the first time, and it worked again to escape the Creel house vision.

where it failed was at the snow ball, I think because Vecna got too much in her head by talking to her, and she couldn't concentrate. (the other two times he didn't talk to her while she was trying to hide in her memories, but this time he won't shut up).

after that, she seems to have given up on shutting her eyes, maybe because Vecna has figured out to target her hearing. because at the next attempt, her eyes stay wide open, and I think she would've been killed except for El interrupting. the third time, her eyes stayed open and she was killed.

avoiding eye contact

4 Max carries on a considerable chunk of her conversations staring off to the side, especially when the topic is herself.

not that this is unique to season 4 or to Max - people just tend to avoid eye contact when uncomfortable. for example, Max barely looks at Lucas throughout the s2 heart to heart on the bus either. this is just part of Sadie's portrayal of Uncomfortable Vulnerable Max, and Max is just that way a whole lot more in 4 than in prior seasons due to being depressed.

still, the end result is Max having her most important conversations with limited visual emotional cues from the other person - a trend that will obviously continue if she's blind.

relatedly, Max was able to deliver two deeply emotional and personal monologues (a supremely uncomfortable task for her) no doubt aided by the fact that her audience wasn't there to make eye contact with:

and like I've talked about before, right after her first Vecna survival, Max grabs and holds Lucas, and hears/responds to him, but it always struck me as weird that at NO point in this scene does she look at anyone:

hm.

relying on her friends' sight

thanks to the visions, Max is starting to find her sense of sight unreliable. so although nothing is currently wrong with her eyes, this puts her in a position where she's already learning to stop relying solely on her own sight, and to consult with her friends and listen to what they say they're seeing when she's unsure.

which she'll be doing a lot more of if she's blind.

not to mention the big plan with Lucas - his whole job is to keep an eye on her and "call in Kate Bush" when it gets too dangerous. so, literally trusting her life to his sight and her hearing.

losing her sight

in the end of course we arrive at literal blindness. Max can't see or feel anything but apparently can hear Lucas.

not sure what to make of potential paralysis (I don't think they'd both permanently blind and paralyze her) but that's where we stand now - with hearing as Max's last known working sense.

which is why we end on Lucas reading to her in hopes that she can hear it. if Max does wake up blind, you can bet that being read to will become one of her primary sources of entertainment. I could totally imagine Max not being ready to withstand a lot of heavy personal conversation, but still wanting to take comfort in her friends' voices.

anyway. losing her sight would be devastating of course, but I like that they've had Max placing major value on her hearing while she still has her sight instead of leaving the entirety of the conversation for when she's blind. and I like that they've had Max already start learning to trust those around her for support.

#max mayfield #blind max mayfield #character analysis #here's how El can still read Max a WW comic in 5 #givehimthemedicine analysis #analysis #mine #long post

[givehimthemedicine]

ok so Satan's Baby (the explosives) killed the flesh monster by giving Eleven ("Satan's" baby) time to kill the flesh monster by giving Joyce time to use the keys to explode the machine (aka "the key") that was keeping the gate open and the flesh monster alive so Lucas and Max were both right [waterbed water guy voice]

and El is a key/explosive device with which someone was pregnant after being cracked open and glued ba[gets shot]

bonus: you are like Papa

#observation room. head in hands. call 911 they're killing me #mothergate is just a crack theory right. right?? #can i be pregananant??? #👹👶🧨🫃 #we're mixing analogies like ammonia and bleach but so are they kinda #truly where does one end a post like this when everything relates to everything else #me obsessively rearranging the order of these screenshots as if there's a way it's coherent to more than 4 people #analysis #givehimthemedicine analysis

[givehimthemedicine]

soo. you're saying the massacre is mostly just the s1 demogorgon finale shoved in a blender?

ok I need to break this chunk off my other analysis because it's getting long and creeping off topic, so I will definitely be addressing more aspects of this in my coming-soon portals post but.

like okay the demogorgon/One banishings were an obvious parallel since the second we saw it, but I never realized how many similarities there are throughout the whole finale especially when you include the flashback part:

I hope my editing is mostly self explanatory but some notes -

El walking down a dark hallway with particles floating towards her towards a glowing red exit hole = visually similar to El's trip down the birth canal [so specifically the 4x7 massacre version with the vaginal birth memory]

El turning around with the crack in the chalkboard behind her = El turning around with the crack in the RR wall behind her [so specifically the 4x1 version of this shot because that's the one with the gate]'

the party taking El into the classroom = Brenner being in the test room for lessons with Ten when the massacre starts [this being a Brenner-only scene sorta rules out this being purely based on organic memories of El's? unless El = Ten]

at the end of the school part, El is "born" into a stark white school hallway that, even upon a s2-era watch, seemed a bit labby. but post-4 we can really appreciate this set design... horizontal stripes wrapping the walls and a corresponding pattern in the floor tiles? blood smeared all along the floor like somebody got dragged? El, covered in a nasty substance, falling perfectly centered onto the floor pattern after "experiencing" her own birth? that's pure Rainbow Room, baby.

I'm not trying to construct a narrative with that video, I'm just matching shots that reminded me of other shots, so its parallels are all out of order and roles switch around (but then, ditto the actual massacre).

had to kinda shoehorn in El getting dragged because we don't see how those blood trails happen in s1 but you'll forgive me. (someone else getting dragged through blood here vs us seeing El get dragged in the massacre smth smth multiple els in the massacre)

also.. where are the bodies?... disappearing/moving massacre bodies... MPs wouldn't drag their dead down the hall, they'd pick them up. so the demogorgon dragged them? creature massacre theory save me

there of course are a lot more things in NINA that could be other remixed memories besides the s1 finale, but I'll expand that into another video later.

anyways. losing my mind 👍

#givehimthemedicine analysis #video #analysis #mine #massacre stuff #the longer I would sit here the more clips I would think to add but I'm hitting post now and moving on with my life. you get the idea

[givehimthemedicine]

El, can you hear me?

(video analysis because I'm not doing 100000 gifs)

During the monologue, Mike says I love you 8 times.

He also says can you hear me 7 times, placing virtually equal importance on hearing and love. So I got to thinking about these two hearing each other.

Over and over we're shown El hearing Mike, even when he doesn't want her to.

Over and over we're shown Mike not hearing El, even when she desperately wants him to.

And in that light, the one and only memory of El that Mike shares in the whole monologue is an interesting choice.

#oh yes mf she heard you. that's why she's dumping your ass #milkvan #monologue #byler #one of yall can take it from here with clips of mike hearing will #bc i'm just here for anti milkman but I know there are at least a few examples #but uh well there it is ianmalcolm.jpg #video #analysis #mine #character analysis #givehimthemedicine analysis #bestof

[givehimthemedicine]

house arrest and boarded up homes

I was thinking about how the only times we ever see Vecna anywhere except at the Creel house (I mean literally in Vecna form) it's in visions, right? which he's conducting from the UD attic, really? can he leave the house?

so then I got thinking about all the "trapped at home" themes on ST and especially the boarded up exits in visions. far from a new revelation, there's not really gonna be anything "new" in this post - but I never realized how extensive it is (this isn't even attempting to be a complete roundup due to photo limit) or thought about what that means for him

OKAY Creelers, your homes are prisons... we got it... smth smth Karen trying to trap her kids at home and in turn being trapped there herself by allying with Brenner...

anyway onto the actual horror boards thing - not all Vecna visions have them.

Fred's visions, Chrissy's clock and bathroom visions, and Max's clock, mom and Billy visions do not have the boards imagery. those are also all the ones which happened outside of or not involving their homes, both in terms of the vision's setting and where the victim physically was while experiencing it.

but the visions set inside of homes got boards [and those are all also the ones experienced while inside of homes irl, though not necessarily those same homes] - the Cunningham house in Chrissy's final vision, the lab in Nancy's (not a house but was technically his home for most of his life, and is referred to as home by Brenner), and ofc Max's in the Creel house.

(honorable mention for Victor's war vision, which wasn't boarded up in the sense of the others, but it was both experienced from and set in a home, and there is some very similar blue-lit-boards imagery in the bombed house. I know there's some question as to who actually did this one but it sorta works)

and when we get to the actual Creel house, whoooboy do we go hard on the boards thing. both in the sense of the IRL house being all boarded up so that the kids have to pry plywood off that door to get in, and of the actual horror boards vision being so much more extensive than Chrissy's or Nancy's.

btw guess how many different boarded up exits Max encounters in her vision? 4. teehee get it

ok, any more homes/boards stuff outside of the st4 visions?

this is kinda Will trying to escape his house, the UD of it anyway. and depending in what way Will's UD experience was affected by what went on in the RU, consider the impys of Lonnie "repairing" that hole, from Will's pov. even if Will didn't literally get the horror boards treatment in there, as a result of this, still. Themes TM

and then much later we have Jon and Nancy boarding up the broken cabin window. yeah I know this is to stop bad guys getting in, not good guys getting out. but is it giving "horror boards but from the wrong pov" again? is this any support for the idea of the final scene being Will's Vecna vision?

and then of course there's the way that that cabin was El's former home, yet also very much a place she wanted to escape from - as was every other place El has ever called home, however briefly. in most cases the word "prison" actually does pop up eventually:

and then there's the mind lair being the fubar Creel house, and the fact that in no mind lair scenes do we ever see Vecna set foot outside of the bounds of the house, right?

in the Dear Billy vision, when it was Vecna in Max's head, he was able to chase her all around the graveyard when she ran. but when Max somehow got into his head, and then Kate Bushed it outta there, he just stood there looking grumpy and tried to stop her by making house parts fall on her, like he couldn't follow her.

[side note: if he HAD scored a direct hit, what then? send a vine out to drag her back? he stopped her that way before, why didn't he just do that again? can his vines not reach beyond the bounds of the mindscape house either?]

even the Piggyback moment where El comes-to and sees him carrying Max in (which. WHY?) he's already well within the house area.

thematically it makes sense that he would be trapped in his own mindscape. psychologically stuck in his trauma... prison of his own making type of thing.. etc etc

image limit. go on without me:

"they're still with me (taps head) in here"

Vecna getting trapped against one of those pillars in his own mindscape by El

boarded up doors imagery vs Flayed Billy and VecnaChrissysmom "open the goddamn door" (not to mention a trillion other instances of "open the door" and door imagery)

Victor telling the story of their home and his trauma from in an actual prison cell (nvm the whole Hopper prison plot)

Kali / Brenner / festering

Pennhurst "can't they just escape?" "they could, but the vast majority choose to be here"

leave your train station

and the only time I can think of that we see Vecna physically outside his house in the UD is when Nancy shoots him though the (boarded up) attic window, after which he disappears somehow. was whatever happened there (at least in part) a consequence of having gone out-of-bounds?

lab duels / if you leave your circle, you lose

Terry stuck reliving her trauma in her dream circle

you have already lost / no you have... etc etc

on first watch I figured he could do whatever and go wherever he wanted but chose to stay at home (like how Will hid at home in the UD)(actually ig I'm basing that on a lot of assumptions) but actually I don't see support for that unless I'm missing something huge.

anyway. just me rolling in the themes like a dog in poop 👍

#bro was forced to touch grass and it killed him. rip #but the prison references. constant. it is CONSTANT #givehimthemedicine analysis #mine #analysis #(owens voice) you son of a bitch!!! (me finding more patterns of 4 connected to Max) #vecna

[givehimthemedicine]

🛁💧 Moms, bathtubs and fear of water

today I'd like to dig into some support for the Virginia/Henry/bathtub theory, most notably a Will/Henry parallel I've not seen discussed before, and some thoughts on the rabies thing.

for those just tuning in, we have hints that something awful happened involving Virginia, Henry, and a bathtub of hot water. (that idea is aemiron-main's, you can read the original here)

where there's a tub, there's a mom

let me start by seeing how many ST bathtubs can be tied to mothers. (much of this will have been pointed out before, but I have a couple observations I think are new)

starting at the top: Virginia's vision (turning on the hot water tap and spiders fill the tub instead of water):

Karen soaking in a hot bath listening to "Memories" before milfing it up with Billy, a minor, a boy her daughter's age. check

Will and Joyce "he likes it cold" you better believe that's a paddlin

we saw the Byers' tub before. when El saw it in the mirror (lol) and went to tell Joyce (Will's Mother) about her water tank idea. ok she was addressing the group but Joyce is the one who actually engages. I'm counting it. ps when they do set up the bath for El, Lucas uses a thermometer to make sure the water is the right temperature

this is a tiny one, but Nancy goes to sit on the tub and cry after excusing herself from Barb's mom at the KFC dinner.

that scene where El and Max find Billy's tub with ice bags?

darn, nothing immediately motherly in this scene. but what if we check the last dialogue in the prior scene? or the first dialogue in the following scene?

both hits! mom/age-inappropriate-sexual-knowledge + mother/son combo.💀

next up, FOR WHAT REASON was I made to see Murray get naked and get into a tub full of ice while on the phone with Joyce in 4x01?

let's also toss in a shot of Joyce being weird in her front yard, prompting a neighbor child to dispense a line of dialogue involving mothers.

but seriously. after all the flayed/ice tub imagery throughout s3, why kick off s4 with Murray in an ice bath? no, I'm really asking.

we've got a dash of sexual inappropriateness, or so Joyce thinks - Murray happens to plop into the ice at the exact moment that she observes the Russian doll has nipples, which makes her think his reaction is about that:

the only tub scene I'm struggling to tie super directly to mothers is Heather. you could say it's that Joyce appears in the next scene, but that's weak. or that Flayed Heather later drugs/kidnaps her mom. eh.

as em pointed out, the tub Heather's in here is extremely similar to Virginia Creel's. is that sufficient?

so anyway, some of those are def stronger than others, but they all provide some combination of: mothers, bathtubs (esp with attention drawn to water temperature), and fear/ sorrow / discomfort / sexual inappropriateness.

am I forgetting any other bathtubs?

now let's talk more about fear

what started me on this post was how possessed-Will's reaction to the bathtub is so explicitly labeled as fear - NOT by Will, but by Mr. Clarke's voiceover:

yet what sparked One's strength was a memory that made him "sad, but also angry" - which, if the implied tub incident indeed happened, would totally fit the bill.

sad and angry. not afraid. I guess it makes sense that fear isn't one of the emotions he would draw power from later upon recalling this event, but he undoubtedly would've been afraid in the moment. he didn't say that though.

not in that scene.

now, idk if he's referring to The Incident here, or his early lab life or what, but. oh I'm at my image limit. ok well his lines leading up to this are (close up of dead kids) "why do you cry for them, Eleven? after everything they did to you? you think you need them, but you don't. you don't."

why exactly would El "need" the other lab kids? according to NINA, they treated her poorly. tbh kinda sounds more like a projected reaction to the death of an abusive mother.

anyway. apart from that "I was scared once" reference to some past turning point, man will not say he is or was scared. he'll imply and project but he won't say it:

you know who else won't say they're scared? Will.

Will has never said once on the entire show that he's afraid. ever. throughout all the utterly HORRIFYING situations he's been in. he undoubtedly has been scared, and other characters say that about him many times, but Will has never said, in his own words, as far as I can find, that he's afraid.

he dances around it and veils it and teeters on the edge of it, but he will not actually say I Am Afraid.

"how did you feel?" "it felt like when you're scared" boy what.

but Will has not always been fearless!

wanna know what the very first mention of fear on the whole show is? Will assuring Joyce he won't have nightmares from seeing Poltergeist because:

is it not giving "I was scared once too" ?

now here comes my favorite part:

Joyce replies with the "my witch" thing, and she doesn't actually finish the sentence, but I think that last word can be guessed pretty accurately:

cook him up in your what?

your cauldron? cauldron, kôl′drən, noun: 1. A large vessel used for boiling?

so like... have I got this straight? our earliest flashback of Will involves his mother playing an evil character who's gonna put him in a large vessel of hot liquid?

I ask you again: is it not giving "I was scared once too"?

I'm tacking my red conspiracy yarn in at "Henry was five years old."

now, just wondering, what was the turning point that made Will stop having nightmares from movies and "getting scared like that"? Bob_one_day_the_nightmares_suddenly_stopped.wav

now let's talk about rabies

Robin proceeds to list some rabies symptoms and what's funny about that (besides the fact they're standing in a mysteriously dry lakebed) is she left out possibly the best-known symptom: fear of water.

in fact, rabies used to be called hydrophobia ("fear of water").

hydrophobia in rabies stems from paralysis of throat muscles making it difficult or impossible to swallow, and so sufferers will panic at the prospect of drinking or even the mere sight of water. excessive salivation + inability to swallow it leads to the other pop culture rabies symptom, the appearance of "foaming at the mouth".

pretend here I put in screenshots of El and Barb spitting up water when they wake up in the UD and that unnecessary shot of Billy drooling when El is levitating him

Robin's isn't the only reference to rabies on ST. it's come up in two other seasons:

so every time rabies comes up, it's in reference to demodogs, demobats, and flayed rats. all critters that are part of the hive.

ostensibly controlled by one guy, who is afraid of water.

misc honorable mentions:

what do you wanna bet Dart not only doesn't need water, but would hate water like he hates heat?

Dart grew up to be a demodog, and demodogs dug those tunnels - the ones Bob figured out were a map of Hawkins because the "roads" outlined recognizable bodies of water instead of crossing over them.

when Bob said that, he didn't know the "roads" were underground, and therefore it wouldn't be crossing over water but rather crossing through water. if your tunnel breached a lake or river, it would flood. the demodogs were avoiding water.

also: no one in the water, you say?

speaking of Hawkins Pool, there's also the thing I've mentioned before, how it seems incredibly relevant that One chose Billy as his s3 host - a lifeguard whose one possession-busting happy memory involved his mother warning him not to drown.

also: Hopper saying that jumping into the quarry would result in the water "breaking every damn bone in your body"

and Jason asks Patrick, right before Vecna breaks every damn bone in his body in Lovers Lake:

I'm going to think of more as soon as I hit post but that's all I have for you today.

I want real answers on the Murray ice thing btw

#btw in this and any analysis please mentally insert 🥁 any time I use the word 'one' #in disbelief that they've not yet worked the phrase 'getting into hot water' into the show somewhere #analysis #givehimthemedicine analysis #mine #btw what's the water table like in hawkins #where you can dig tunnels right along the perimeter of lakes and it stays dry in there

[givehimthemedicine]

I think we've had "pretty?" all wrong

You know how it's annoying that Eleven is written to randomly care about her attractiveness to Mike as a kid straight out of the lab? I just found a new way of looking at this where it makes so much more sense and doesn't suck.

All the prettys that ever get talked about:

El touches the picture of Nancy and says "pretty".

Mike tells El she looks "pretty. good. pretty good." and she looks in the mirror and repeats it, evidently reveling in the sensation of being deemed attractive by a boy.

Later, missing the wig that had enabled Mike to consider her attractive, she asks him "still pretty?" and he's like "yeah, really pretty!" and she seems relieved.

El piggybacks Billy's memories, sees his mom on the beach, and reports to the rest of the gang that she's a babe.

Pinned down by flayed Billy intent on feeding her to the meat monster, El's thoughts return to how pretty his mom was, and she tells him so, and this somehow saves the world.

But the one I overlooked, because it really doesn't fit with the others in that she isn't referring to a person, is when El runs away to her mother's house. 12 years too late, she enters the nursery room meant to be hers, reaches into her crib and pulls out a teddy bear and says, in a sad little whisper, "pretty."

This is the one that decodes all the others.

Eleven has a poor grasp of language and has been using this word in her own way. Visual attractiveness is a mere pinch of salt in her recipe for "pretty," where the key flavors are good. comfort. happy. safe. normal. soft. home. loved.

That soft happy teddy bear is something that should have belonged to El and comforted her as a little child beginning a normal life. Immediate previous dialogue for context:

Becky: [ Your mother] always believed that you'd come home one day. El: Home? Becky: Yeah, home. El, picking up the teddy bear: Pretty.

The Nancy "pretty" being the first one establishes that it's El's word, not one she got from Mike.

Nancy's prettiness represents normalcy and happiness to El, the kind she worries will never be hers. There were also family portraits including Mrs. Wheeler (who El could've been drawn to as a friendly mother figure) and toddler Holly (who El could've been drawn to as a reminder of her past self) yet she made a beeline for Nancy. This makes me think El's interest in Nancy relates to her hopes for her own future.

Not long after that is the scene where she seeks out Nancy's bedroom and looks with tragic reverence upon the soft comfortable space and belongings of a normal girl, and what it might look like to be loved. I can't think anything is going through her mind except that this is the future that's been denied to her, and wondering if she can or will ever have something like it.

Billy's mom is conventionally pretty, but El is really describing her vibe as warm, involved, happy, loving. I can hear the delivery of "I think she's looking at me" as a bit wistful, as El would like to have a happy nurturing motherlady to look at her that way. (She does know her own mom at this point, but she's catatonic or whatever so they can never really have an interaction like this)

Billy doesn't not kill everybody because El complimented his mom.

El: She was pretty. She was really pretty. And you were happy. (and then she touches his face and it's presumably the only genuinely compassionate touch he's felt in years and he deactivates)

It's right there in the dialogue that El gets through to him by painting a picture of his happiest memory. But I always thought "pretty" seemed like an annoyingly shallow thing to place so much emphasis on here, until I thought about pretty in this context. Pretty + happy are a single concept to both El and Billy.

Billy, to a lesser extent, also had normal childhood stolen from him. Due to his abuse and abandonment he shares El's longing for a mother, safety, warmth and love, and "pretty" spoke to him in a similar way. Watch his face, he's clearly changed before she even adds the happy part. "Pretty" is Billy's Running Up That Hill - it isn't a magic incantation that makes the monster drop dead, but it does give him a moment of clarity that he can use to fight.

So now let's look at those classics again. Although I've always found it endearing on a "lol, linguistically stunted child misunderstands slang" level, I suddenly see a lot more in it.

"You look pretty good." He's talking about her looks.

"Pretty. Good." She's talking about her worth.

Made-over-El stands in the mirror and thinks, here is a normal-looking girl, she is pretty and good, Mike said so. In the wig and dress, she understands herself to be someone else entirely. Mike, who has only recently named her "El, short for Eleven", reinforces this by re-naming her Eleanor while she's dressed like this, even though the name Elle would not have raised Mr. Clark's eyebrows for any reason.

Later when she's on the lam in the woods, she looks at her reflection in the water with and without the wig, and screams at herself because it hurts that the real her isn't "Pretty. Good."

So when she calls back to this, she still doesn't really care if Mike thinks she's attractive, because she only ever thought he meant her definition of "pretty" in the first place.

She's not asking am I good-looking with no hair? She's asking, me, too? the real me? do I belong with nice loved happy soft? and when he gives an enthusiastic yes, look at the little look she gives herself in the mirror. It's not f yeah, a boy finds me desirable. It's maybe there is hope for me.

And the next thing out of Mike's mouth is "I'm happy you're home."

Season 4 gave us one more sneaky one:

El: I am twice as happy now. You are right. It just takes time. I think I have finally adapted. At first I missed all the spring flowers, but now I find it pretty here too.

At this point, El has the life that that hopeful little girl in the mirror dreamed of: normalcy, a home, a mom, a family, a boyfriend, long hair, her own bedroom full of her own stuff and important little mementos like Nancy's. And the gnawing truth is, it still isn't making her happy. But this was the dream, so she's just trying to fake it til she makes it. Pretty here is not just about Hawkins vs Lenora scenery but the sense of home, wholeness and happiness that she's trying to fool both Mike and herself into believing she feels in her new life.

Here they are in order for your evaluation. thank you for your time

#perhaps ive judged you too harshly #eleven #stranger things #el hopper #jane hopper #pretty #analysis #long post #character analysis #givehimthemedicine analysis #best