#stanley easterman

firstly i’d like to say i am not in any way shape or form trying to claim this as canon !! i am simply Mentally ill and spend a really absurd amount of time thinking about Dr. Easterman. I choose to see the unused dialogue as not canon, believing it was unused for a reason, so this is solely for fun. a headcanon if you will ! also, slightly Neurotic disclaimer haha but writing is not my strong suit!!! if anything needs clarification or to be expanded upon, please let me know! 🎉

these were manically written at 5am so i fear they might not clearly communicate everything i was trying to say .... here are some bluntly stated facts for your convenience \(^_^)/

- Tallulah has unrecognized BPD in the 20s DEAR GODDD HELL ON EARTH. this of course makes her a reactive emotionally dependent person.

- Samuel is implied to come from money. i haven't yet figured out what it is that he does, but it must require him to be away from home a lot.

- Samuel chases the challenge until he's tamed it, (married and had a kid with her) then she's boring again. He uses work as an excuse to never be home unless absolutely necessary. When he is home, the boys are granted 'harsher discipline' that they couldn't get while he was gone. basically, he'd beat them, and his work as a father would be done and he could screw off. He officially leaves and never comes back sometime when stanley is 16 and hendrick is 10.

- Stanley is implied to be some sort of neurodivergent. i haven't yet fleshed it out, but i imagine he's very spacey and distant. When he's not angry, that is. I imagine he's a lot like his mother when angry. escapism and dissociation are his best friends.

- Tallulah really, really really really wanted a daughter, if you couldn't tell. She is constantly emasculating hendrick and stanley because of this.

- I think Hendrick physically takes after his maternal grandmother the most :) though, the older he gets, the more he starts to look like his father. he doesn't know how to feel about that.

- Tallulah has frequent outbursts of rage and takes it out of the boys. Postage stamp sized patches of scalp by the hair and all that. After his birth, she becomes emotionally reliant on Hendrick, using him as a replacement for his father. emotional incest to a T (q_q) i think that this would tie a lot into Adult Hendricks need for control and stability. it things were out of control or unstable at home, that meant something was wrong with his mother, and then it became Hendricks responsibility to fix it.

(While writing this i thought, "Why not Stanley? What makes Hendrick so special?" and i think it all goes back to Samuel. After Stanley’s birth, Samuel was still somewhat there, even if trying to escape. He completely screws off after Hendrick is born. By this time, Stanley is too old for Tallulah to mold around her needs, so she has Hendrick. Also, taking their temperment into account, i think Hendrick was a lot more eager to please. A byproduct of his mothers abuse, of course, but in my mind Stanley did what he wanted regardless of her feelings towards it. I think they butt heads a lot. Not Hendrick, though. Her sweet baby angel boy Hendrick always listens :) of course she’ll shun him for days at a time if he doesn’t.)

- Tallulah was going to get a degree in psychology. She is very very painfully embarrassed of the fact that she’s the only one of her siblings to not finish college, and that manifests in resentment, as most things with her do.

OKAY I BELIEVE THATS IT. if you’ve read this far you are a beautiful trooper. THANK YOU for listening to me!!! i appreciate your dedication. (^_^) do you agree with my interpretation? is it actually the opposite of what you think? do you have something to add or point out? PLEASE LET ME KNOW !!!! ^.^ this post is not so much a statement as it is an open discussion !!! i hold so much love in my heart for Easterman and i'd like to talk about him with others.... again, thank you for reading, and if this does well expect more haha!!! some easterbunnies for your troubles ⬇️⬇️⬇️🐇

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

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

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

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

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

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

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