#(owens voice) you son of a bitch!!! (me finding more patterns of 4 connected to Max)

[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 👍