morb1us_enjoyer

she/her ao3 & twitter: morb1us_enjoyer full-time henry creel enthusiast

[whatsitsballad]

The Laundromat

This is a crack fic based on Laundromat Creel who we all dearly miss x

inspo: laundromatcreel on tiktok

I hope I made it as lore accurate as possible ❤️

Warnings: not proof read so this is just like a stream of my consciousness and idk how laundromat’s work

🫶✨🫧

Y/N arrived at the laundromat at 8:59am, she sat on a bench outside, worrying if she stood too close to the door she’d look like a pestering and desperate customer. To her surprise, the minute the clock struck 9am the laundromat employee opened up and greeted her with a smile so white and bright she wondered if he’d put his teeth through the washing machine too.

“Hello Dear, I’m Laundromat Creel.” the laundromat man announced. “Come over to the front counter and we’ll look at what you need cleaned!” He spoke with much enthusiasm.

“Ooo so you own the place? Creel’s Laundromats?”, Y/N began to make small talk and she followed him over.

“Yes I sure do!”, Laundromat Creel confirmed himself as the owner, the sentence was decorated with pride.

“Okay well, I… have a lot of clothes. It’s okay if there’s too many you can totally send me out the door for giving you such a big job.” She pulled out 5 large bags of laundry for Laundromat Creel.

She felt so embarrassed, that was until she finally felt brave enough to look him in the face again and she saw his smile get even bigger.

Laundromat Creel felt so excited he spun in a circle. “Wow! You’ve provided me with a wonderful start to the day! For that I’m going to give you a discount.” He said, still grinning.

“Are you sure, I’ll promise to tip.” Y/N responded.

“Absolutely. 50% off for my new favourite customer.” He exclaimed, looking at Y/N with a twinkle in his eye.

“Thank you so much Laundromat Creel.” She responded.

Y/N began to admire him, the way his light blonde hair fell around his face so beautifully. She thought it was endearing, how much he loved his job. She’d never met a man so passionate and joyful before.

Y/N paid and he told her to return to the laundromat in about 3 hours.

🫧

3 hours passed and she was glad to know she’d have some clean clothes to collect after letting her laundry pile up so much. More importantly though, she was also excited to see Laundromat Creel again.

As she walked in he greeted her with that same shining smile.

“There’s my favourite customer, right on time.” He announced her arrival with glee.

Y/N looked at the bags of washing he had already cleaned and dried and… it looked like he had even ironed them.

“Wow, laundromat Creel.. these look amazing. Thank you.” Y/N spoke as she lifted a white shirt out of the bag. “How on earth did you get this so white? I was going to sell it on Vinted but I couldn’t get the pomegranate juice I spilled on it out for the life of me!” She asked him in pure shock.

“Oh it was nothing. I’d give you the laundry details but most people find them boring.” There was a slight sadness in his eyes. Y/N couldn’t stand to see it.

“No please tell me, you’ve helped me so much. The least I could do is let you teach me the tricks of the trade.” She encouraged him to talk about the laundry.

Laundromat Creel could see it in her eyes that she was sincere, she seemed to really be interested in his laundry process.

“Well it is quite quiet today.” He smiled shyly. “I suppose I have time to spill a few laundry secrets.” He pointed to the seating in the corner of the laundry mat. There were 2 comfy seats placed in the perfect arrangement for a conversation about laundry.

“You sit down. I’ll go make some tea and then I can talk about laundromat facts.” He walked off into the back of the laundromat.

Y/N sat and waited, watching the washing machines spin. Did she really care enough about laundry to be sat here waiting to talk about it? No. Did she also have a date to get to in about half an hour? Yes. That matter she did not care about though. All she cared about right now was the cute, tall, and friendly laundromat owner who was currently making her tea.

When Henry returned he had a silver tray carrying 2 cups and a selection of biscuits.

“Thank you for the tea.” Y/N thanked him and smiled.

Laundromat Creel sat down in the seat beside her.

Laundromat Creel began to talk about the proper laundry process. How good clean clothes always start with a good clean washing machine.

“You can follow the proper processes but if you don’t have a perfectly clean machine you’ll never have pristine clothes.” He looked like he was in another world as he scanned the room talking about laundry. Y/N also looked like she was in another world admiring him.

When he was done talking about the proper way to get good clean laundry and how to get whites perfectly white again, Y/N began to ask more personal questions.

“It’s all very clever. So what started your passion for laundry then, Laundromat Creel?”

“Well laundry has always been a special interest of mine. I knew it was my destiny to move to Iceland and open a chain of laundromats. The world needs their clothes washed and I love washing clothes.” He answered with pride.

Y/N smiled. “You’re very heroic for chasing your dreams Laundromat Creel. Most people give up on them.” She praised him.

“You’re very kind Y/N. My parents never saw it the way you do. They thought my love of laundry was odd, they said I was broken, and that something was wrong with me.” He looked down, suddenly sad.

Y/N instinctively placed her hand on his. “You’re a laundry hero Laundromat Creel.” She spoke with so much admiration for the Laundromat man.

“You can just call me Laundromat, if you like. That’s what my friends call me.” He smiled.

“Of course Laundromat.” She said as she smiled back at him.

“I think I must get back to the laundry now, Y/N. But I do hope to see you here again soon.” Laundromat spoke as he stood.

“I will be sure to stay loyal to Creel’s Laundromat’s for the rest of my life.” She responded.

Laundromat Creel leant down and kissed her on the cheek before swiftly turning away.

Y/N blushed and sat there for a beat before getting up with her clothes and walking out beyond the threshold of the laundromat. She looked at her watch. The time read 5:55, she couldn’t believe her and Laundromat had chatted for 5 wonderful hours about laundry. Y/N had plans to make a mess down her clothes every time she ate from now on, just so she could see Laundromat Creel and talk to him again.

[morb1us-enjoyer]

internet friends are so fun. like, yes, let us bond over this doomed fictional man

[morb1us-enjoyer]

i drew this a while ago and just realised that it could escape the confines of my desk and wander into the internet's trenches lol (please ignore the paperclip marks)

[jollycheesecakedragon]

So i have thoughts about that ending scene "we are one". And the fact that its been said Henry didn't entirely believe it. I think he could have fought it, I think that if he wanted to he could've fought off the mindflyer like he'd said. but i think that his physical body was so far decomposed by then that there would be no chance for him to end up going back, and I think that was a big deciding factor in not trying to put up a fight. because at that point he knew he was too far gone, he was the monster that everyone believed he was and at one point in trauma you get told you're something so often you end up just giving in and becoming that thing. ofc there are people that fight it, move past the bad thing but a lot of the time it ends up consuming people to the point of no return. and when you've had no support system to get you away from the bad thing, you've had no one to contest the ideas that have been fed to you, and your body is literally falling apart and the only thing keeping you alive is the bad thing you end up choosing the bad thing out of fear of what'll happen if you lose your connection to it. the fear of the unknown is far greater than the idea of being free.

Anyways i kissed this brick before I threw it I hope y'all know that.

[shadowheartwolf2]

In the show, Henry paints himself as a born predator—a lonely boy who always hated humanity and identified with spiders. But TFS showed us a completely different Henry: a terrified kid who had a school life, friends, a sister he cared about, a girl he loved (Patty Newby), and a version of Joyce, Hopper, and Bob.

​How do we bridge this gap? Is it just lazy retconning?

​No. The answer is far more terrifying, tragic, and psychologically profound. Kate Trefry themselves dropped the ultimate clue when she stated that Henry is an unreliable narrator in Season 4. Henry isn’t lying to Eleven. He genuinely, 100% believes his own monologue. And here is the exact, step-by-step breakdown of how his mind—and the Mind Flayer—fabricated his false past. To understand Henry, we must understand his autonomy. As both Louis McCartney and Jamie Campbell Bower have heavily implied in interviews, Henry’s monologue is the culmination of a lifetime of severe abuse. He hates humanity because of what humans actually did to him in the lab.

​Unlike Will Byers or Billy Hargrove, Henry was not a helpless puppet under a violent host in Season 4. His relationship with the Mind Flayer is a toxic, symbiotic partnership. The Mind Flayer supernaturally groomed him. It fed on his anger, amplified his isolation, and provided a dark cosmic lens through which Henry began to view the world. ​But to completely sever Henry’s ties to his own humanity, his good memories had to be systematically destroyed. This happened in two brutal phases. I think ​the turning point of Henry's psychological collapse happened right around the time the Soteria chip was implanted. ​When Brenner locked his powers away, Henry was left entirely defenseless against years of dehumanizing laboratory torture. At the same time, he was carrying the unfathomable guilt of his mother and sister's deaths. To make matters worse, Patty Newby was gone—either severely injured, dead, or simply unable to find him in the Void anymore. Henry, trapped in his sterile cage, believed Patty had abandoned him.

​When a human mind undergoes that level of relentless trauma, the contrast between a happy past and a miserable present becomes physically unbearable. Remembering Patty’s love or another kindness didn't bring comfort; it brought agonizing pain. Henry didn't bury his good memories because he wanted to be evil—he buried them to stop the hurting. He locked his own humanity away just to survive Brenner’s hell. ​Once Henry buried his human connections, the Mind Flayer stepped in to finish the job. We already have hard, on-screen canon proof that the Mind Flayer can alter memories. In Season 2, within just a few weeks of being flayed, Will Byers began forgetting his own life, completely losing his memory of Bob Newby. ​Now imagine what the Mind Flayer could do to Henry Creel over decades trapped in Dimension X.

​The Mind Flayer didn't just erase the remaining fragments of Henry's good memories; it rewrote them. It gaslit Henry into believing a false, dark history:

- It erased his school days, his classmates.

- ​It demonized his family, making him remember his parents as pure, hypocritical monsters to justify their murder.

- ​It replaced his tragic childhood with a chilling, manufactured narrative: You were always a predator. You were always a spider. You never loved anyone.

​The Mind Flayer acted like a twisted scientist performing a psychological experiment. It realized that if you strip a human of every single memory of joy, love, and empathy, leaving only pain, fear, and torture—that human will naturally want to watch the entire world burn.

​This perfectly explains why Nancy Wheeler’s visions of the Creel house in Season 4 were so relentlessly dark and gothic. Nancy wasn't seeing an objective historical playback of 1959. She was seeing the visions generated directly from Vecna’s Mindscape.

​Because Henry’s "emotional software" had been completely overwritten by the Mind Flayer, the illusion he projected to Nancy was his own corrupted reality. This is why Patty, Joyce, and the school are entirely missing from Nancy's vision. They were already dead and buried in the deepest, darkest corners of Henry’s subconscious. This is why the official canon ending of simply "destroying the monster" feels so devastatingly hollow. Henry Creel is not a one-dimensional, born-evil CGI demon. He is the ultimate, brainwashed victim of both the US Government and a cosmic parasite.

​In his final moments, the Vecna armor shouldn't just break; his false memories should shatter. He needs to be forced to look past the Mind Flayer’s lies and face the absolute horror of what he became, returning to his true, 100% state: the terrified child from the cave, sobbing and begging Joyce for his life. ​By treating his ending as a simple physical showdown, the writers chose a lazy checklist over a psychological masterpiece. Henry didn't just deserve to die; his stolen humanity deserved to be remembered.

​Let’s establish the first absolute truth: The monologue in the Season 4 finale is Henry’s own voice, not a Mind Flayer ventriloquist act.​As Louis McCartney and Jamie Campbell Bower have heavily implied in interviews, Henry’s misanthropic, nihilistic speech is the raw, bleeding culmination of a lifetime of severe, systematic abuse.

​He was locked in a sterile environment.

​He was dehumanized, treated as a government weapon, and forced to kill when he was just a little boy.

​His hatred for humanity didn't drop out of nowhere—it was forged in the fires of the Hawkins Laboratory. His monologue is a massive, twisted trauma response. He is venting his real pain, his real fear of not fitting in, and his desperate, broken desire to find a connection with Eleven. So yes. The Mind Flayer wouldn't care about a little boy’s childhood trauma or a connection with a human girl. This speech belongs entirely to Henry Creel. However, human trauma alone doesn't turn a person into a world-ending, reality-tearing cosmic god. This is where the brilliant, terrifying synergy between Henry and the Mind Flayer comes in.

​It is canon that Henry always had a "dark side"—a natural spark of resentment, a strange connection to predators, and an intense vulnerability. But the Mind Flayer didn't just leave him to process his trauma. The Mind Flayer fed on his agony and amplified it to an industrial scale. ​Henry’s relationship with the Mind Flayer isn’t a violent, unwilling possession like Will’s or Billy’s. It was a slow, supernatural grooming process. The Mind Flayer took Henry's existing dark side, took his very real anger at Brenner and the government, and used it as a foundation to build something infinitely worse.

​Here is the ultimate proof that Henry retains his autonomy, and it comes directly from the Stranger Things VR game. In the VR canon, we literally witness a brutal psychological and supernatural struggle between Henry and the Mind Flayer over who is actually directing whom. They are constantly wrestling for control over the hive mind.

​Why? Because their ultimate goals are completely fundamentally incompatible:

​Henry's Vision: Henry doesn't just want mindless destruction. He is obsessed with order, balance, and structure (just like his fixation on spiders acting as predators to keep the ecosystem stable). He wants to conquer humanity to build a New World—a reshaped reality under his design.

​The Mind Flayer's Vision: The Mind Flayer is an entropic, ancient cosmic force. It doesn't care about Henry's aesthetic of a reshaped world; it wants total consumption, absolute assimilation, and a return to a dark, chaotic void.

This ideological clash spawned incredible fan theories that Henry would eventually turn against the Mind Flayer once he realized he was being used as a cosmic battery. Tragically, the main series completely abandoned this built-in internal conflict, giving us an unsatisfying physical showdown instead of exploring a literal civil war inside the Upside Down.

And let’s not forget one crucial, devastating canon fact: when Henry was permanently locked away and handed over to Dr. Brenner, he was only 14 years old. He wasn't some adult, evil mastermind making conscious choices—he was a literal child. His emotional development was completely frozen in survival mode. Spending your entire adolescence being tortured, dehumanized, and treated as a government weapon is what forged that hatred for humanity. The 4x07 monologue isn't the birth of a monster; it's the raw trauma response of a broken 14-year-old kid who never stood a chance.

[shadowheartwolf2]

The fact that Jamie Campbell Bower pitched a line for Vecna’s final moments where he would look at Joyce Byers and whisper, "Please, don’t."

The Duffer brothers cut it. But the sheer fact that Jamie wanted this tells us everything we need to know about Henry’s true, canonical psyche. A lot of The First Shadow fans wanted a classic Hollywood redemption arc for Henry. They wanted him to break free from the Mind Flayer, sacrifice himself to save Eleven or Will, and die a tragic hero.

But Jamie’s pitch proves something much darker, much more realistic, and infinitely more heartbreaking: Henry Creel never wanted to die. Even after everything, he wanted to live.

Think about what Henry went through. He was tortured by Brenner, infected and puppeted by the Mind Flayer, ripped apart by Eleven, and left to rot in the Abyss where his physical body became a mangled monster. He spent decades in literal hell, carrying the belief that his actions killed Patty Newby. By all tropes, he should have welcomed the sweet relief of death. But he didn’t. When death looks him in the eye in the form of Joyce Byers holding an axe, he begs for his life. Redemption requires a stable psyche and a choice. Henry’s mind was systematically broken since childhood. If the Duffers kept the line, Joyce’s execution of Vecna wouldn't have been a cheers-and-applause Marvel moment. It would have been a devastating tragedy. Joyce would have realized she was decapitating a terrified classmate, a child the universe failed to save.By silencing Henry’s final plea, the writers took away his last shred of human dignity just to give the casual audience an easy, black-and-white "hero kills the monster" ending. Jamie Campbell Bower understood Henry better than the writers did. Henry just desperately, painfully wanted to exist.

[morb1us-enjoyer]

Repeat Shuffle Tag Game

Rules: shuffle your 'on repeat' playlist and list the first 10 tracks, then tag ten people

thank you @nocasdatsgay (twinnijer) for the tag <3

kinky love - pale saints

few options with little time - ridgeclub

stars - pinkpantheress

n side - steve lacy

pepper-tree - cocteau twins

rolling papers - odd future

alter ego - tame impala

house of balloons/glass table girls - the weeknd

answer - tyler, the creator

televisions - current joys

tags (no pressure - just trying to make some new friends on here :D): @vvitchfangs @spectrestrings @starlitcreel @creelcutter

[whoreiaki-kakyoin]

“Aren’t you worried ai could replace you someday” oh like ai could replicate the level of mental illness I achieve over this fictional man

[sorcerersdragonfly]

i just saw this edit and it made me think about henry's monologue in season 4.

because when you look at it with this context then he's 100% right. but in the show he was the villain and he used this as an excuse to kill people.

and i think it sucks how they tried to make us think the reason he's a villain is because he dislikes society and recognizes it's flaws.

it makes it seem like the people that recognize how cruel and evil humans can be, opposed to the other animals, are villains that just hate humanity. but no. actually the ones that have this mindset love humanity and want it to stop destroying itself while also destroying nature and everything else. they want humans to actually be able to be happy because they recognize that the way our society is formed is really harmful.

however the ones that love how our society is and don't think it has flaws are the ones that are greedy and that don't care about people dying everyday because of money, they're the ones that create wars and commit genocides, the ones that commit femicide, the ones that kill people because of the color of their skin etc.

so no, in general the people that kills other humans are not the ones that think like henry. it's the other way around.

in season 5 we learned that the actual reason henry is a villain is because of the mindflayer. which also means the only reason he was thinking that is that he was possessed by an evil extraterrestrial being that actually hated humans. and i hate the message it sends.

yes humanity is beautiful and yes our society is awful. you actually can recognize both at the same time. henry wasn't a villain for thinking our society was harmful. no matter what the d*ffers brothers think.

[mcrdvcks]

when he carried the entire season

[morb1us-enjoyer]

i think watching the get out scene genuinely changed my life

[j1gsawz]

henry creel quick get behind jamie campbell bower, louis mccartney, and kate trefry they’ll protect you!!