hi, call me ghost. i'm literally just a nerd, gamer, 2d/3d character artist and writer. 29. she/her. 🚧 account under construction so it looks like crappp
001creel on twt // 001creel001 on insta // ghostmpr on reddit
Henry and [REDACTED] Brenner (Stranger Things VR game spoilers inside!)
Pretty much just crossposting my Reddit post (would've added link if tumblr didn't think that's sus) cause I'm sure some of y'all appreciate this more ahaha... hi tumblr i haven't been here in ages.
Hey guys! I'm finally gonna try to put some of my findings and theories out there that I've dug up during my deep dive into Dimension X via the Stranger Things VR game. As the title implies, the post will primarily focus on, well, what the title says.
Some general info: There seems to be no mention of Henry having been to that dimension before, as opposed to what is told in The First Shadow. It seemingly follows the timeline established by the series: Henry is twelve years old when he’s brought to the lab by Dr. Brenner. Virginia Creel reached out to him in her effort to find a place where he might be happy, somewhere she hoped he’d have a chance to be normal. It’s implied Henry k-worded his family to "escape the doctor". The 'Soteria' device is implied to have been implanted from the start.
To start off, I first gotta explain a vital thing about this [REDACTED] version of Brenner, so the spoilers are right there from the start.
Last chance to back out...? No escape now!
So we’ve been given more or less two main theories: It’s either the Shadow/Mind Flayer controlling Henry, or it’s Henry as the one in control.
But the game gives us a glimpse at just how much more complex and nuanced it could really be.
In the game, upon first awakening in this strange new dimension he'd been banished to, Henry starts to explore the environment. He eventually comes across some wildlife, namely the bats, then a demodog and he decides it's going to be his dinner – very brave choice in my opinion – so he starts to hunt it. He injures it and follows its blood trail until he finally catches up after it collapses dead. The earth shakes violently, and he's suddenly swarmed by those dark particles.
At first he hears the voice of his sister, Alice, calling out to him. After demanding to know who’s there, the voice switches to that of his mother, Virginia, and the particles even take on the silhouette of her. At this point, Henry figures out that, whatever this is, it’s in his head and trying to get to him. The particles briefly switch to Victor but very quickly realize that isn’t going to work, either, and a new shape is taken: that of Dr. Martin Brenner.
Henry’s less than thrilled, but this is the birth of Shadow Brenner.
Brenner, as a whisper: “No. No, that’s not right. Language fails me. But… we will grow together. I am… the leader of this lab…”
(Henry gasps as the particles take on the shape of Dr. Martin Brenner, in a much more solid way.)
Shadow Brenner: “You can call me Dr. Brenner—”
Henry, immediately: “No.”
It is important to note that there’s no connection to the real Dr. Brenner other than what the Shadow could get out of Henry’s memories. It is the person that the shadow realizes Henry associates most with "authority", and that Brenner's form would be the ideal guide for Henry… and the ideal way to study him and all his memories that he wishes to "digest".
Shadow Brenner: “Good. Here, I can savor you further. I have absorbed everything in this world. But you are new material. I crave to know you further.”
Henry: (tense and agitated) “You won’t keep me here. I am not a thing to be studied!”
Shadow Brenner: “Well, your memories say otherwise. Shall we review your past?”
A struggle for control ensues. Shadow Brenner forces Henry to relive different memories, and Henry learns how to escape those projections. Everytime he does, he starts to dominate wildlife and plantlife alike within the hivemind, one mind at a time, until the Shadow finds him again and pulls his mind back into yet another round of memories. (To be honest, the gameplay gets a bit repetitive here, but the different environments are so icky and gross and different and alien, it’s great!!)
Through the memories, we get some glimpses into Henry’s past at the lab. We get to see him demonstrate how he can read minds and is tasked with k-wording a bird with telekinesis in another. (In the tutorial phase of the game, we get to see Henry use remote-viewing to find a Russian spy in Hawkins, among listening in on a lady talking to her dog and somebody ordering a burger with no pickles for his wife at Benny's.)
What I find interesting is the Shadow’s reaction to Henry escaping and begining to take control over more and more of the hivemind. At first it just discourages him to escape, to ignore the rifts (which are the game's way out of the memory replays), claims he would bloat from taking in too many minds and explode eventually, then later retracts that statement as a lie. It discourages him then from becoming too powerful by consuming more minds and eventually suggests they need to have a chat:
Shadow Brenner: “I’d like to propose a truce. We have always been at the top of this world. And now, we must yield or become irrelevant. Your ruthlessness is as admirable as your escape attempts.”
Henry went far enough for it to discuss a truce.
From this point on, the Shadow just tries to get Henry to consider something resembling a partnership in this endeavor. I just can’t quite read if it’s doing so because Henry actually has the power and/or potential to subsume the hivemind entirely, if it would actually suffer from being dominated (there’s instances when it says it would lose its will to spread, would become stagnant or it would go back to being 'wild and primitive') and Henry actually doesn’t understand that... or if it has a completely different agenda.
Henry claims that he would absorb the Shadow and take its power, to which Shadow Brenner replies: “Oh Henry. You could never consume us completely – we are multitudes.” Henry responds that he had “already mastered this world”.
Shadow Brenner counters: “Mastery requires control. But it is you who is controlled (pause) by fear.”
I included that pause in my transcript, because it really throws me off everytime I encounter that scene. And it’s one of the reasons why I really just can’t tell the Shadow’s agenda or who really controls the other. Especially the last big confrontation between the two leaves me wondering what the Shadow’s goals are and how Henry fits into it all:
Henry: “Did you think I became an explorer of your world and found nothing? I have let you in. Only to learn how to devour you. To become you. And now, now I will crush you.”
Shadow Brenner: (laughs) “You can not… from the moment of our first contact, You were one of us: symbiotes. We were drawn to you and your desire for revenge. Your hunger which has merged in us. Is so like our own. We wish to devour… everything. In this world and the next. Within us, your power could be ultimate. Surrender and we will help you take revenge. But first, you must follow our lead. Don’t you want to reset the clock on those inferior beings? To release them from the shackles of time? They will be free in our possession. Just as you are free now, to hunt down that girl.”
Shadow Brenner: “You need us Henry, and we need you to infest new worlds. To spread until everything is us and we are omnipresent and ubiquitous. We know what you most crave, and we will not leave you unsatisfied. We are a parasite meant to find new hosts, new worlds on which to feast. And you will be our vessel.”Shadow Brenner: “If I can continue this study on all humanity, I will allow you to think you are in control. Because you are the most magnificent thing I have ever encountered.”
That “moment of first contact” is the only reference that could be drawn to Henry having had contact with this dimension before as touched on in The First Shadow. Or it was simply that first contact after Henry hunted that demodog.
If being a 'vessel' could be what we’ve come to call the Flayed, then it’s either lying to Henry to lure him in or it can actually choose to have a vessel retain some form of agency. In Chapter 6, we get to see the perspective of a Flayed: Billy. And he's just driving his car while the Mind Flayer gets his business done, so there's not much control there.
Either way, Henry doesn’t go for it and takes control, finally escaping the hivemind and finding himself back in his own physical body and the dimension as a physical world. Shadow Brenner is enraged and confused, and Henry just tells him that he has waited while it played doctor and would now make this world his. Shadow Brenner goes back to pleading, seemingly growing really desperate to dissuade Henry.
Shadow Brenner: “You resent him. Maybe you fear him. Is that why you ruined our experiment? We are coming to override you, Henry. Stand still and do not defy us again or you will never get revenge on the monster that ejected you from your world. If that child could defeat you, it should be easy to devour you whole right here. Until you understand the natural order of things, we can’t yield control of our minds. We will waste our will to spread and we will simply become stagnant, confined to your mind. But our hunger is more expansive than revenge. We wish to possess everything. Your desire is narrow. It can’t satisfy the will of multitudes. Do you really mean to reign us in? When one day, …”
…
Shadow Brenner: “Henry. Perhaps, I should have taken a different approach. Don’t be hasty. Think about this. You and I, we could be partners. You are uniquely fascinating. Capable. We could continue. This study on all humanity. How about you take some time to think about it.”
…
Shadow Brenner: “Henry. You are not thinking rationally. What will happen to this world, if we are pulled apart? It will go back to being wild and primitive. You will wander and waste away. Never achieving your revenge. Let me help you. No, no, let me teach you. Together, we could rule this world and the next. Together, we could devour everything. Together, we could satiate our hunger.” (sounding increasingly desperate) “Henry?”
It is then that we reach the scene we get in the series, where Henry twists the particles into the shape of the Mind Flayer. And I absolutely love that it had only come to this after a lengthy battle as opposed to the short version we got to see in Season 4. Shadow Brenner's last two "Henry" pleas sound like absolutely pathetic whines.
Henry’s and Shadow Brenner’s relationship is shown as a constant back and forth, an ongoing war for absolute control and who’s on top. A partnership unified mainly by similar goals and dependency. Including a lot of instances where Henry/Vecna just tells Shadow Brenner to shut the hell up. (Can we blame him? It really likes to comment on things a lot, and not always nicely.)
In general, the Shadow’s behavior is really interesting. I’m certain that 'Shadow Brenner' is highly influenced by the original, but it’s just… so damn petty, for lack of a better word. Earlier in the game, when Vecna gets as it says 'emotional and distracted' by what’s happening around Eleven, the Shadow uses that focus slip to actually wreck Vecna’s carefully crafted mindscape just because. It’s impatient, doesn’t understand why Henry is so tied up with his past and remembering, the trophies.
At one point during Chapter 5, when Henry is getting increasingly angry, Shadow Brenner pulls him into its “office”, standing beside a flipchart with the 0-10 smiley pain scale on it. Shadow Brenner then literally asks Henry to use the chart to help it understand how he feels, and asks: “Would you say what you’re feeling is… the most extreme frowny face?”
If I were Henry, I would’ve fucking flipped at him for that. The Shadow's got attitude.
But seriously, this game has so much lore material, and not just for Henry. I knowww, we have no idea how canon it is, but it shows just how nuanced this could be instead of settling for Henry = BBEG or Henry = controlled but good. What if Henry is doing this willingly and had to partner with the Shadow to be able to achieve his goals? What if he simply wants to be in control of his life for the first time ever, after all this time of having every aspect of his life controlled by others? (Or, as noted by Shadow Brenner: controlled by fear?)
One last thing I wanna touch on a bit: All this takes place in Chapter Five of the game, Shadow Brenner forces Vecna to relive this chapter of his life after his failed attempts in 'Chapter Four – The Spy'. Not going into those chapters in detail here, but it basically revolves around Vecna failing to infiltrate Mike, Lucas and Dustin’s minds via his 'spy', Will. He's beaten by kids, again, and Shadow Brenner ridicules him for it. I think it could be taken as a parallel or even mirror to the NINA project, where Eleven too goes through the past to find her powers again. (Aside from it being an interesting narrative for the game.)
Through the memories we get to see thanks to Shadow Brenner, we of course also get a look at Henry’s relationship with the real Dr. Brenner during his time at the lab, and even some glimpses of what his life as an orderly was like – he cannot sweep floors well, or can't be bothered to and his co-workers are annoyed. All these scenes where we see just how little control Henry ever had.
A scene I wanna highlight simply for Jamie’s supreme voice acting (all throughout, but this is one of the stand-out performances for me; Jamie I love you, also shoutout to Matthew for an equally amazing performance) and just how interesting it is: Dr. Brenner takes Henry to have his tattoo re-inked, but just wants to have a chat and catch up, likely assess how he's doing mentally. Directly from my transcript:
Henry: “Do people often get their tattoos reinked?”
Dr. Brenner: “On occasion. But in truth, I’d simply hoped to speak with you as we used to. Just you and I.”
Henry: “Oh?”
Dr. Brenner: “It has been quite some time, hasn’t it?”
Dr. Brenner: “Seems the other children have grown quite fond of you.”
Henry: “Well, I am one of them after all. I could teach them so much, if you let me.”
Dr. Brenner: “The experiment isn’t over, Henry. The chip will have to stay in.”
Henry: “No, you’re not understanding. You keep trying to teach them things that— concepts they can’t even access, because they’re so young, haha…” (Brenner goes back to tattooing after having paused to listen) “... I get what it’s like to be them. You don’t.”
Dr. Brenner, sitting back a bit to look at Henry, deceptively calm: “Is that so?”
Henry: “Half of them can barely bend a spoon and you–you wonder, you keep telling them to ‘focus’ and ‘clear their minds’ like that will fix anything. We aren’t monks meant to do the same thing over and over and over again with no feeling–” (tensions mount, Henry gets more intense and Dr. Brenner turns away, putting aside his tattoo gun and getting up off his chair, he stands by the desk) “–no investment.”
Henry: “But you don’t know that, do you? You can’t.” (Brenner touches the old fan on the table) “You’re a supporting character needing validation from children because it’s as close as you can get to the real thing.” (this seems to hit quite hard, Brenner straightens, tenses) “You’re normal.”
Henry: “Being in close proximity to special people doesn’t make you special. Controlling greatness doesn’t make you great.” (Dr. Brenner now turns away fully, back turned on Henry as he stands by the opposite wall) “It just shows everyone that you’re a parasite. You forgot that fact. So hey, take it out, okay?” (that was said gently, before turning harsh again) “Take. It. Out.”
Henry yells, losing composure due to lack of reaction: “BRENNER!! WHY AREN’T YOU LISTENING TO ME??” [memory ends, since Henry didn't escape this one, Shadow Brenner thanks him for his cooperation]
Y’all, we just know he got punished for that one. Because that must’ve cut deep. But it once again shows how little control Henry ever had over his life and how little he could actually do against it. He could thrash and rebel against his bonds placed by authority, and it would amount to nothing. But when he resists Shadow Brenner, it actually does something.
I hope this post didn’t turn out nearly as convoluted as I fear it is. TL;DR I think Vecna is Henry’s way of finally gaining control over his life, and partnering with the Shadow/the Mind Flayer was his best shot at succeeding – especially when stuck in another dimension. But I don’t think there’s any actual trust there. And judging by how smart Henry is, I don’t think he’s without a plan to break off that business agreement and go his own way if it comes down to it.
Thanks for enduring my HENRY Talk. Honks my clown nose. And please check out the game, it’s underrated.
titsay
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
baratheonpilled
