Work Text:
GOOD FOR DROWNERS OUT NOW
@BrightToothBatBait
Glad you all liked the Sun-Bleached Bones music video. MVs for In Legalese, Ice Rings, and Entwined will come out over the next week. Plus lyric videos for Lady Jane and Letters for the Bold.
(112k likes, 74.5k retweets)
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r/brighttoothbatbait
WHAT HAPPENED IN HAWKINS, INDIANA? [Masterpost]
u/throwaway2453484938439 | 13 April, 2018
(Throwaway, because I don’t want the US government to come for me.)
Hi, I’ve been stalking the Reddit for a few weeks now and I see a lot of people asking about Hawkins, what happened there, and what it means for the music of BTBB, NBB, and IP. I wanted to make a bit of a masterlist of everything we know about Hawkins, Indiana.
1. Who lived in Hawkins?
The first pretty crazy thing about Hawkins is how many famous (or at least semi-famous in their fields) people there are from Hawkins. Of course there’s Steve Harrington; his dad who is really big in property in Indiana; his mum not much on her Wiki but she was on the town council of Hawkins during a couple of the weird things that went down; Steve’s wife Robin Harrington nee Buckley; Eddie Munson and Gareth Hutch and Jeff Peel the guys from Indiana Panic actually met and grew up with each other in Hawkins; Jonathan Byers a photographer for The New Yorker; Nancy Byers nee Wheeler a free lance journalist; this poet called ‘Ash Smithe’ is theorised to be a Hawkins resident under a fake name; Lucas Sinclair the basketballer of The Indiana Pacers (yeah, that guy) and his wife Max Sinclair nee Mayfield; Carol Perkins the food critic; Tammy Thompson the singer (why haven’t we had any projects with Tammy, that would be so fun); and finally Dr Dustin Henderson the biologist and astronomer.
2. Who died/didn’t die in Hawkins?
There are several weird things that happen in Hawkins. A lot of it is secret government stuff in the late 70s to do with missing kids, see this article on Teresa Ives whose mind was destroyed by something (sister claims LSD and strange trials by the US Government when she was pregnant see more here on those trials) and who is still looking for her daughter Jane.
In 1983 this kid called Will Byers goes missing, younger brother of the New Yorker photographer Jonathan Byers, and his body is actually found ( see this old article ) but then (and this is where it gets weird, because his mother, brother, and several other witness confirm that the body is Will Byers) Will turns up alive after a week and a half, after being buried. There’s also something that happens at the middle school ( this article ) but it’s kinda unclear what it was, reports say flooding but it’s still weird that it happened the day he came back. Barbara Holland is also declared missing and later dead, her body was never found.
And then in autumn of 1984 Bob Newby (boyfriend of Will Byers’ mother) dies. There’s also an expose you can read here by journalist Murrary Bauman that shuts down the Hawkins Laboratory which is where a lot of the weird 70s stuff links to. There’s also a lot of weird articles about rot this year and rats, very weird stuff if you look deep into those.
In summer 1985 some really weird shit happens. Twenty-four known people die, three randomly in the hospital but it says here in this article that the deaths were weird and then the rest die on Independence Day as far as I can tell but it’s really weird shit one of them is the Chief of Police Jim Hopper (who comes back alive a year later), another is Billy Hargrove the half-brother of Max Sinclair, but there’s also another John Doe found shot (execution style) at the fair on Independence Day. Also the mall burns down (where Steve Harrington and his wife, Robin, worked). There’s a lot of weird stuff about the people who die this eye-witness report says that they all suddenly left the fair “as if possessed”.
1986 is where BTBB really get involved. Eddie Munson is suspected of serial murder in March. It starts with Chrissy Cunningham and then Fred Benson and finally Patrick McKinney . This was at the height of Satanic Panic in Indiana, which could explain why Eddie was implicated, also Cunningham was found dead in his trailer and he had gone missing. Eddie doesn’t really answer many questions on this subject but he has been quoted saying “it wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re asking, you twat” here . This also could link back to the Hawkins Creel Murders which is really gruesome, I won’t go into it here. The serial murders of ‘86 are still unsolved (this is my favourite Buzzfeed Unsolved episode and it’s on this topic). There’s also an awful earthquake and a lot of evidence is destroyed, some sources say a “huge canyon” opened up through Hawkins and the town was evacuated for almost a whole year also the rot from 1984 seems to return. Weird.
3. Hawkins in lyrics
Honestly, they don’t talk much about Hawkins. In this famous 1996 interview Steve says “i t was a bit of a shit town, sometimes, but you couldn’t help but love it” and Eddie says “the beautiful bits and the ugly bits of Hawkins find their way into my songs” to which Steve nods. So, I think we can safely assume that the bits we think are about Hawkins are about Hawkins.
First, though, I wanted to talk about Tammy Thompson’s song ‘Let in the Light’ which is one of my favourite 90s pop songs but I think it’s also about Hawkins. Tammy has said this about Hawkins in a 2001 interview “oh, I don’t like to talk about it, I left as soon as I’d finished school to pursue my dreams of becoming a singer, though I must admit I wasn’t very good then! I’m glad to see a lot of us made it out, colleagues in the industry and out… there was a lot of death and strange, dark things, for a town so small” (she’s just so eloquent! I love Tammy Thompson almost as much as BTBB) and in ‘Let in the Light’ (1998) there are several lyrics I think that relate to this. “there’s a rot babe, growing down deep // in the dark places we don’t dare look // please let in the light, babe // or let me out”. I think this is about her then boyfriend who was her penpal, she moved away from Hawkins to Nashville to live with him so I assume that was him “letting [her] out” of the dark place that Hawkins had become.
Hawkins and what happened there has deeply affected all music from IP, NBB, and BTBB. In fact the first song Eddie wrote for IP — ‘Small Town Satan’ 1991 — seems to be about 1986 and the witch hunt for him — “gotta run from myself // if I wanna outrun Matthew Hopkins // got blood on my hands // but I swear it’s from holding my own guts in” ( Matthew Hopkins was a famous English witch hunter) — and it declares his innocence once again. This whole song is very interesting though a little less polished than the later songs he composed, go and check out the Genius page for STS because there’s some really detailed little bits
the first two songs Steve wrote for NBB also seem to be about Hawkins. 1992’s ‘ Car Trunk’s Bloody ’ is less obviously about Hawkins but he does literally mention MK Ultra (honestly this and MK Ultra by Muse as the basis for a USA war crimes playlist) and there’s this line “we got out // but I’m still wringing out bloody clothes // got weapons crusted black // in the trunk of my car” and I really want to know what Steve’s bandmates (none of them are from Hawkins) think about that LMAO like… what does he tell them? I want to be there for that conversation. And then I’m sure everyone knows 1993’s ‘Grand Canyon Through Town’ is about Hawkins, specifically about that earthquake and there’s some really beautiful imagery in there that I love, honestly just listen to the whole song while reading the lyrics, on the face of it it’s about leaving home but when you look deeper… it’s pretty drastic, all the Hawkins residents were refugees for a year… insane
there’s obviously a lot of stuff we’re never going to know if it’s referencing Hawkins or not seeing as we don’t know exactly what went down but… and stay with me here, there’s a lot of references to monsters in IP, NBB, BTBB, and Tammy Thompson’s discography and I know monsters are pretty common as a metaphor in music… but there’s just something when you put all the stuff we know about Hawkins together… I don’t know. Just read this (it’s a conspiracy theory about the children of Hawkins Lab) and this (autobiography of this guy who claims to have worked for the US government in Hawkins during the 80s) and this (Russian love letters and radio transmissions intercepted by the CIA in 1985 that were recently leaked on Discord). Let me know what you think.
4. further reading and watching
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the Lucas Sinclair documentary
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research by Dustin Henderson into alien biology or here dumbed down on YouTube
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Ash Smithe’s poem ‘Flower Mouth’ and this post about the identity of Ash Smithe
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Jeff Peel talks Hawkins small interview he did for a documentary on Hawkins
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autobiography of Jason Carver the boyfriend of Chrissy Cunningham, you can buy it off Amazon if you like (it seems like he sells them out of his garage, not a traditional publishing) or you can read the PDF here because he’s one of the witch hunters and you might not want to give him your money
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and finally here is the self written obituary of Murray Bauman the journalist who got Hawkins Lab shut down, it’s almost 20 pages but it’s well worth the read and he hints several times about stuff he’s “not allowed to say because the CIA told me not to, the motherfuckers”
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Flower Mouth
By Ash Smithe, annotated by Lucille Aarons for Hawkin’s Post’s ‘Hawkins in Memory’, 2000
God, but it got me, round the throat with talons,
Pulled me down below the Anti-Christ Salon 1
And didn’t give up till I was dead and packed with straw
Like I was in a manger. And then the Chasm 2 opened up
And all memory of what I was and wasn’t fell into it
Eaten up by the stranger monster 3 we call home.
1 ‘ Aunty Christie’s Hair Salon’ was on the high street of Hawkins, Indiana, from 1974-1986; there are very few rhymes in ‘Flower Mouth’ so Smithe intends to draw our attention to this by the almost rhyme with “talons”
2 ‘The Chasm’ was the first way the Hawkin’s Earthquake Event was referred to in the newspapers, it has since been called ‘The Ravine’, ‘The Canyon’, and ‘Hawkin’s Gorge’
3 Once again Smithe uses rhyming to draw our attention, “stranger” rhymes with “manger” a few lines up and both midway through the lines, ‘Hawkins St. Rangers’ (colloquially called the Hawkins Strangers) were the Church boy’s soccer team from 1966-1985, their badge logo was the manger below a star.
Note by Lucille Aarons
: Ash Smithe has never been confirmed as a Hawkins resident but many theorise that they are one, using a fake name for whatever reason.
Some believe Ash Smithe to even be Will Byers, who went missing in 1983 and, after a body was found, was discovered alive again.
Regardless, ‘Flower Mouth’ is a beautiful poem that definitely relates to our experiences in Hawkins, whether or not that was in the intended message.
Editor’s note: Hi, Lucille! Thanks for sending your poem pick and annotations, we’ll be publishing this in the Friday edition. I’m going to edit out your sentence about Will Byers, if that’s okay, we can’t really make claims like that in a newspaper. Thanks! Sharon.
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harrinson
anyone else love Legalese??? I could talk about it all day
#is it about hawkins #idk why I’m asking it definitely is #because that would be so good #three people who escaped it #can’t believe they haven’t collabed with TT before #she’s an icon #and I’ve never heard her on a song like this #but I hope she does more like this #because damn #angel #still thinking about how the last line is taken straight out of NBB’s Grand Canyon #ow
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(Copyright 2023) (Blood in the Water’s Good for Drowners)
In Legalese: Can’t Tell You More ft. Tammy Thompson
(Tammy Thompson)
What did you say to me, hello? That the fires burn yellow?
Now I’ll take you by the elbow “baby, forecast says snow”
You say it’s August, you doing blow?
(Eddie Munson)
I’ll say it’s this town, baby! This fucking town!
Fires burn black and snows year round
And dead don’t mean dead until you see it first hand
(Tammy Thompson)
What did you say to me, hello? That the fires burn yellow?
Now I’ll take you by the elbow “baby, forecast says snow”
You say it’s August, you doing blow?
(Eddie Munson)
Blossoms open with teeth and tongues
And the bats are really vampires, baby.
I can’t tell you again, it’s this fucking town.
(Steve Harrington)
In the snows
With vampires
And petal maws
This fucking town
(Eddie Munson)
Don’t ask me on air
(Tammy Thompson)
(Oh babe, please don’t)
(Eddie Munson)
Can’t say more, babe
Don’t ask me on air
(Tammy Thompson)
(Small print, baby)
(All together, almost harmonious but eerily)
In the snows
With vampires
And petal maws
This fucking town
When the gorge opens up
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Interview transcript, 2023 | Tammy Thompson, Steve Harrington, and Eddie Munson on ‘In Legalese: Can’t Tell You More’
TT: They wrote it (Laughing) I’m pretty sure you can tell, it’s not my usual style, I really love how it turned out though, might have opened a new door for me artistically. I mean, I also wasn’t there when the uh… wait, quick conference boys, what does the legalese say we can talk about in regards to the…
SH: You can mention the Canyon.
TT: Okay, yeah. I wasn’t there for the Canyon. I was in town the beginning of that spring break but I went back to Nashville right afterwards due to… complications.
EM: Me shaped complications.
TT: Well, no. It wasn’t really you, it was more a hole you had been stuffed in after the fact, and then someone splashed red paint on you. I don’t know.
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Robin Harrington
@WifeOfRockNRoller
I used to have a crush on @TammyThompson Lovely to see how far she’s come <3
(67.9k likes, 29.6k retweets)
[reply]
Tammy Thompson
@TammyThompsonOFFICIAL
I’m sure you were the only one! I couldn’t even sing! I sounded like a muppet! Thank you anyway, lovely, it was great to finally work with your boys! <3
(95.4k likes, 35.9k retweets)
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Robin
Link
Robin
I’m fucking crying. She called me lovely. She ratioed me. She also thinks she sounded like a muppet. Should I tell her my coming out story?
Steve
LOL. Shame you have a girlfriend now. Imagine what could have been.
Robin
Dude, shut up
Robin
Me and my gf are VERY HAPPY I do not need Tammy Thompson
Steve
I’ll be home Wednesday
Robin
Okay love you, the woman helping me cuckhold you says break a leg tonight
Robin
Tell Tammy she’s amazing
Steve
Will do! Love you