Please Don’t Get Eleven’s Tattoo From ‘Stranger Things’

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Please Don’t Get Eleven’s Tattoo From ‘Stranger Things’ | The Mary Sue

This week in regrettable fandom news and TikTok trends, people are apparently getting numerical tattoos in the style of Eleven’s from Stranger Things. Don't.
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Please Don’t Get Eleven’s Tattoo From ‘Stranger Things’ | The Mary Sue

archived 6 Jun 2022 07:48:35 UTC
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Please Don’t Get Eleven’s Tattoo From ‘Stranger Things’​

You are not a number, and you shouldn’t want to be.​

By Kimberly TerasakiJun 3rd, 2022, 4:58 pm

This week in regrettable fandom news and TikTok trends, people are apparently getting numerical tattoos in the style of Eleven’s from Stranger Things. Even Stranger Things’ official Instagram account posted a picture of several wrists marked with a multitude of numbers. The problem? The tattoos that appear in Stranger Things were meant to be direct links to the dehumanization experienced by Jewish people during the Holocaust.

As @sapphicvoid puts it on twitter:

Screenshot_347.png

And the show knows this. Eleven is literally given a number rather than a name because she is just one subject of many at the Hawkins lab. Despite Dr. Brenner’s occasionally affable exterior, he did not care for Eleven or Kali or any of the other children beyond what their abilities could do. She was stripped of the name her mother gave her in the same way she was stripped of her hair and her freedom.

This isn’t even the only time Nazi connections have made their way into the show, either: Season 4’s Russian Prison scenes were filmed at a former Nazi prison in Lithuania, which has now been converted into a Stranger Things-themed AirBNB. Because that’s where we are as a society.

Of course, this isn’t the first time fandoms have regretted tattoos. Some Harry Potter fans got their tattoos removed in the wake of J. K. Rowling’s transphobia and some Game of Thrones fans say they never would have gotten their tattoos if they’d known how the show would end.

At the same time, getting a fandom tattoo can be empowering; our own Rachel Leishman has written about how she doesn’t just get tattoos of heroes that she loves, but of characters who meant different things to her in different stages of her life. They are a reminder to keep moving on, a source of strength for her. Other Game of Thrones fans state that the show’s ending doesn’t take away from the community they’ve made or the original symbolism of the tattoos, for them. For those fans, the tattoos have transcended the piece of fiction in meaning for them.

The difference is that many of these tattoos are specific to the fandom, whereas the Stranger Things tattoos intentionally call back to the dehumanization of Jewish people during the Holocaust. There’s been plenty of other Stranger Things tattoos that feature much cooler and more relevant iconography to the show. Season 4 character Eddie Munson has tattoos that perform a similar function of showing individuality and a general desire to rebel against those who would prefer to enforce conformity.

At the end of the day, your body = your choice. But before you go and get a tattoo intentionally resembling something literally used to identify the dead at Auschwitz, think about what the tattoo will mean to you five, ten, eleven years from now.

Will it still have the same meaning?

Or will it be overshadowed by regret?
 
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Interesting social media snippet OP, because I’m pretty sure there are a fuckton of Holocaust survivors getting reparations who don’t have number tattoos.
 
The Foxtrot said:
This is something that irritates me every time the Juden cry "OMFG WE FOUND A NAZI IN HIDING!!!!".

No, you found a man that's in his 80s/90s, who managed to start a family in the decades since the end of the war, who may or may not have been involved with any part of the Final Solution almost a century ago, and therefore you're snatching up a great-grandfather at the end of his life who couldn't give a shit what you do to him. Any of the actual perpetrators who actually envisioned and planned the Final Solution have long since perished or been executed. Any of the actual hardliner members of the NSDAP (the ones who could have actually restarted a serious National Socialist movement) have long since perished, been executed, or have renounced their beliefs.

Let's face it, the only "real Neo-Nazi" organization that's actually doing something being being lolcow material is the Azov battalion in Ukraine, and they're being pumped up by the West solely to fight Russians.
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We have in the past addressed the fact that not all literal Nazis were involved with or even aware of the atrocities committed by the Reich, but we have apparently gained amnesia and forgotten about that now. Before harassing some 'hidden Nazi' that's really just a half-dead old man trying to live his life, we should at least be sure he even did anything worth punishing. Dude could have been an informant or a guy who looked the other way and pretended not to see anything when he'd come across an undesirable. Not every single person who did something like that became famous or known, any more than the opposite. It's much more likely he was just a random dude on the battlefield or military police somewhere that did nothing of consequence, good or bad, but we've apparently twisted Nazis now into a singular unit of evil with no separation or individuality at all. and so basically did the exact same thing to the Nazis that the Nazis did to the Jews.
 
Allanon said:
We have in the past addressed the fact that not all literal Nazis were involved with or even aware of the atrocities committed by the Reich, but we have apparently gained amnesia and forgotten about that now. Before harassing some 'hidden Nazi' that's really just a half-dead old man trying to live his life, we should at least be sure he even did anything worth punishing. Dude could have been an informant or a guy who looked the other way and pretended not to see anything when he'd come across an undesirable. Not every single person who did something like that became famous or known, any more than the opposite. It's much more likely he was just a random dude on the battlefield or military police somewhere that did nothing of consequence, good or bad, but we've apparently twisted Nazis now into a singular unit of evil with no separation or individuality at all. and so basically did the exact same thing to the Nazis that the Nazis did to the Jews.
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Exactly. Let's also not forget that from 1943 onwards, even the SS was conscripting people, and a lot of SS units were "Non-Aryan", so odds are just as high (perhaps higher) that this "HIDDEN NAHTZEE!!!" was some poor guy in the Reichskommissariats who got told by the Gestapo one day he was going to fight for Hitler. Or drive a truck, or walk around a fucking warehouse with a pen & clipboard, or any other number of tasks an organized fighting force requires. What's next? Are we supposed to persecute Hitlerjugend, literal boys, who were handed real weapons and told to go fight? Maybe some women who served as auxiliaries, AKA manning AA guns and driving trucks?

Where does the mindless persecution end?
 
The Foxtrot said:
Exactly. Let's also not forget that from 1943 onwards, even the SS was conscripting people, and a lot of SS units were "Non-Aryan", so odds are just as high (perhaps higher) that this "HIDDEN NAHTZEE!!!" was some poor guy in the Reichskommissariats who got told by the Gestapo one day he was going to fight for Hitler. Or drive a truck, or walk around a fucking warehouse with a pen & clipboard, or any other number of tasks an organized fighting force requires. What's next? Are we supposed to persecute Hitlerjugend, literal boys, who were handed real weapons and told to go fight? Maybe some women who served as auxiliaries, AKA manning AA guns and driving trucks?

Where does the mindless persecution end?
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This is sadly probably exactly true. The fighting aged men are about to all die off. If we're to continue this mindless Nazi hysteria and find 'hidden Nazis' they have no choice but to soon go for the ones who were children at the time. They'll either pretend nobody can do math and figure out how young they'd have to have been at the time, or reason that because their parents must have raised them to be good Nazis, they are basically the same thing. It's absurd because we tore down their government, ripped away all the land they took, and put everyone we even suspected of having to do with it on trial except the scientists and businessmen we pardoned to ensure that everyone possible was brought to justice for the war and the war crimes. There should not be ongoing persecution because justice has already been served.
 
The only cool tv tattoo is Angelus'.

imagen_2022-06-06_235055809.png

But you should still not get it unless you 1. have the body of David Boreanaz or 2. your name starts with an A.
 
There’s been plenty of other Stranger Things tattoos that feature much cooler and more relevant iconography to the show. Season 4 character Eddie Munson has tattoos that perform a similar function of showing individuality and a general desire to rebel against those who would prefer to enforce conformity.
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There's something funny about using phrases like "individuality" and "desire to rebel against those who would prefer to enforce conformity" when recommending to copy the tattoos of a television character.
 
To think that there are better things people could be doing with their lives instead of writing holier-than-thou articles telling members of a fandom how they should and should not display their love of that fandom. When I was growing up we were raised to mind our own fucking business and that being a nosy busy-body who bosses everyone around is a bad thing.
 
Not cool, Marysue dot com, it's my body my rules. As liberals and progressives you aren't supposed to shame me for my body choices OR police how I express myself on the canvas that is my skin. This is regressive and conservative!
 
The Foxtrot said:
This is something that irritates me every time the Juden cry "OMFG WE FOUND A NAZI IN HIDING!!!!".

No, you found a man that's in his 80s/90s, who managed to start a family in the decades since the end of the war, who may or may not have been involved with any part of the Final Solution almost a century ago, and therefore you're snatching up a great-grandfather at the end of his life who couldn't give a shit what you do to him. Not some hardcore, fearsome war criminal. An old man who's likely already dying anyway.

Any of the actual perpetrators who actually envisioned and planned the Final Solution have long since perished or been executed. Any of the actual hardliner members of the NSDAP (the ones who could have actually restarted a serious National Socialist movement) have long since perished, been executed, or have renounced their beliefs.

Let's face it, the only "real Neo-Nazi" organization that's actually doing something beyond being lolcow material is the Azov battalion in Ukraine, and they're being pumped up by the West solely to fight Russians.
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"You there, old man, we have a question to ask. You were once a member of the Kiwi Farms/SoSe/MPC/reddit/a twitter slapfight, is that correct? Yes? You are responsible for the death of six million trannies and will be tried for your crimes on social media."
 
"Please cling to your diminishing hope that the people in charge like you personally and want you to be happy"

Life is more sensible when everybody realizes they're just a name and a number. Or just a number.
 
Smaug's Smokey Hole said:
"You there, old man, we have a question to ask. You were once a member of the Kiwi Farms/SoSe/MPC/reddit/a twitter slapfight, is that correct? Yes? You are responsible for the death of six million trannies and will be tried for your crimes on social media."
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"I regret nothing, and you'll never take me alive!"
explodes
 
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