#waynemancer

Abby has posted an empty bg of Reese's room before (either on the patreon or her blog, I can't remember), and not having anyone there caused me to notice two very specific pieces of art I hadn't before

The hands reaching down from his window are fascinating in and of themselves, but especially in context of the drawing to their immediate left, which I've talked about before in my bigass theory post -- tl;dr, I think whatever's possessing Sam Wayne's corpse is a physical creature like a mycelium network due to the yellow tendrils coming down from the window in that picture looking like the yellow thing you see pop out of Wayne's sleeve when he hurts Beese's shoulder with a Keen Eye run.

The hands coming down from the window here don't look exactly like that, obviously, but it does make me wonder if the things that come to Reese's window at night (ditchings, Wayne, etc.) aren't just there to look in on him. I wonder if they were trying to pull him out somehow, to undo Doc Kelly's precautions and set Reese free.

If so, why? What would that do, besides maybe just leading to general chaos around town if Reese is in a manic morb?

I thought that Reese felt hunted or persecuted by these hands, hence why he drew them there, until I spotted this:

That... is very definitely a being with a sheet over it.

So this adds a new layer of complication to my previous speculation on Reese and Wayne's relationship: Wayne obviously openly hates Reese, and doesn't even consider him human, calling him a "waste of flesh" and a "weapon."

But since a lot of Reese's paintings seem only semi-allegorical (that's obviously him going Beese Mode morbing out in a lot of them), I was left to wonder... was that always the case?

I see this potentially going two ways:

1. Wayne maybe tried to nurture Reese for a while, or was at least more compassionate toward him -- then something went wrong, Reese refused him somehow or rebelled, which led to his current acrimony.

...actually I lied, I see this maybe going three ways:

2. The Thing Controlling Wayne (here onward "The Thing") came to Reese in the body it had before it took over Wayne's, hence why it looks different - I'm not saying it was wearing a full sheet, but we can at least agree it's not yellow and gross, so it could represent a previous incarnation. Obviously, the relationship has soured somehow since, possibly for the same reason above, and we have two pictures possibly of the same thing representing two emotions, love and fear.

3. As I suggested in my bigass theory post, there's another entity out there (possibly "The Entity" that Avery played in Charlie's show) that possibly fathered Reese, and that The Thing/Wayne have beef with it. So maybe the subject of that particular painting is The Entity, as opposed to The Thing/Wayne. The hand is very distinctly different to The Thing/Wayne's yellow tendrils -- the hands reaching down from the window are brown, but also have fingers. It's a tentative connection, but I'm just throwing spaghetti at the wall here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

here are the paintings I talked about in my previous post, as compared to the above:

(jesus, these look downright blurry compared to Abby's.)

the same drawing as the above just over Reese's shoulder (you see why the window hands were obscured), but then also to his left in that stack, we see (back to front) a study of his morbed mouth, what's obviously Wayne/The Thing (short, stained sheet), and then Reese being devoured by his morbed self.

see here, among lots of physicality studies, another painting taped to the wall of the yellow lightning/mycelium network. there's also what looks like a hand study taped directly under it, which at first made me think it was the yellow Thing growing/embodying hands. With the context of the hands under the window... hmm.

(...the critter with long hair and wrapped eyes gives me pause, bc it doesn't look like anything else in the room. Or anything we've seen so far. I'm wondering if that could be The Entity? I mean, it also could be just a random study Reese did, but everything else seems so purposeful.)

Finally!! This bigass painting of Reese in front of a window with the yellow lightning/mycelium network, with a ditchling right beside.

it's worth pointing out that while the majority of Reese's paintings explore his own pain, trauma, and relationship with his body... the second most common subject seems to be Wayne/The Thing.

what does this mean? there's definitely some sort of relationship there, and while we've only had glimpses of it in that one horrible night in the clinic, I feel like it's going to get a lot more fleshed out in the next chapter or so.

...mostly bc I've seen the sprite Abby put out on the patreon of our boy in the next chapter, and. it leaves me even more questions.

primarily based the fact that his tail now looks a lot like that of the Tailypo from the story in the library, but I need to play through again to take those screenshots.

anyway!!! thoughts appreciated, let me know what people think, I read everything even though I'm slow as molasses to reply (short term memory issues, mea culpa :'D).

two parting shots of the art down the walls of the clinic, and his baby/school kid photos bc those are adorable:

him and his mom in matching overalls! the cute little toddler pose!!! baby's first anatomical heart!!!!