Didn’t Herbert West technically TECHNICALLY try to baby trap Dan in Bride of Reanimator?
Thoughts?
(Im sorry this took forever to respond to. life got in the way, of my silly little words)
technically, yes. The main intention was the same. But "Baby Trap" does not even start to explain the shit Herbert pulled in Bride of Reanimator.
thoughts? you want THOUGHTS? alright how about let me break down exactly what Herbert did here:
That man stole Megan's heart from an evidence locker and stored it in his fridge. When Dan tried to leave Herbert, He offered the heart to Dan with every ounce of reverence he could deliver without getting down on one knee.
that is to say, Herbert anticipated that Dan would leave him and saw that he loved Megan. So his reaction was to steal Megan's actual physical HEART, and give it to Dan as an offering to force him to stay.
He vaguely explained that he was about to baby trap him with it, to which Dan agreed because of his blind love for Meg, and his blind love for Herbert, and because, in the words of Bruce Abbot, "no one will ever get rich overestimating Dan's bad taste."
(This could maybe be because the world of Reanimator uses weird sci-fi logic where the heart contains the person's personality or life or whatever, and it'd actually bring Meg back (even though these movies seemed pretty brain-focused thus far), in which case, pretty good manipulator leverage! nice job, Herbie! Otherwise, its either because Herbert knew Dan would like this weird creepy gesture of love, or because Herbert thought this weird creepy gesture of love was a normal and good idea, and coincidentally Dan was that same wavelength of out-of-touch freak as Herbert, because they're just meant for each other or something. That last option is my personal favorite)
So, then Herbert goes around the hospital STEALING more body parts off corpses (former patients who also presumably received some form of care and attention from Dan), trying to create Dan's perfect woman based on his shallow perception of whatever it is that straight, allosexual, relatively neurotypical men like (maybe since Herbert can't be what Dan wants romantically, he can create it for him and earn love that way (that cannot be good for His internalized transphobia)).
so then he meticulously assembles a woman like an Ikea cabinet and proceeds to give Dan the worlds most sensual elevator pitch, using... a line that he heard Dan use with his girlfriend when he was eavesdropping on them having sex. He tries to explain why this is the perfect woman for all your woman needs! Like uhhh sex, and... sex, and lawyering? maybe murder? (I guess he thinks it'd be nice to have a woman who can kill for you and defend your crimes in a court of law. That does sound useful in their situation)
Then he watched the Bride fight Francesca like some sort of underground girlfriend fighting ring, as if the larger and stronger girl would win ownership of our poor pathetic Dr Cain. Unfortunately Herbert's creation broke down to nothing when it removed its own heart to give it to Dan in the same exact gesture with which Herbert showed Dan the heart earlier.
Pure heterosexual coincidence, of course. There is absolutely nothing odd about Herbert's gift to Daniel being a grotesque amalgamation of everyone Dan loved instead of him and everything those people had to offer Dan, fueled by the pumping of Megan's heart (whom Herbert had hated and competed with), a heart both stolen and offered willingly, one both frozen and thawed, both beating and dead. There Dan stays, too close, yet too far. (am i reading into it- You Bet)
Yup. Pure coincidence. And also nothing suspicious about it being a creature created of such concentrated love, reverence, devotion, and bitter fear of rejection, that at the moment of being pushed away, it entirely self destructs because its only purpose was to love Dan and be loved by him. Its only purpose was to be perfect for Dan, to be enough for him, to be some action of Herberts blood sweat and tears that could ever be wanted by him. But of course Herbert doesn't understand Daniel - understand people - as well as he hoped too. Dan is horrified. No clearer rejection than that. If we see her as an extension of Herbert, it's obviously the last straw. Herbert truly did everything for Dan, not only was he still unlovable, but repulsive, an affront to... what have you; god, nature, some simple short-sighted ideal of what a human should be. Above that Dan could see the seams of the uncanny imitation of his past loves, and the love that laid beneath was too much for him. Too loud, too fast, too raw and bloody. So it dies. The heart is given, and thrown away.
What I'm trying to say is that shit was crazy. Herbert could have done a much more cut and dry baby trap. He could have reanimated some random kid, forcing Dan to stick around and protect it. That would have been its own special kind of fucked up and is probably a good fanfic prompt. But noooo, Herbert had to do the most psychosexual, convoluted, batshit, traumatizing, bloody, gory, and frankly unnecessary declaration of love that could be achieved by one little scientist with nothing to his name but a little green potion and every mental illness. I for one think it was a fantastic idea.
No tldr, ur just gonna have to match my freak on this one. Hope my mad ramblings made some sense. Peace and love
