Tommy’s Self-harm Scars.

Thomas Hewitt Medical Analysis / Headcanons?? Because I love him

TW: Self-mutilation, Hoyt mention {very very brief}, typical canon activities, self-harm?, skin conditions,

Very poor editing, my apologies -

Speech:

I’ve seen many people assume that Thomas either A.) Doesn’t speak by choice; B.) Can’t speak from vocal {cord} issues; Or C.) A combination of the two / his facial deformity. I agree with everyone else but I’d also like to add a potential reason: I’m pretty sure Thomas was diagnosed with ‘metal deterioration’ of some sort in the introduction scene {2006/The Beginning}, and considering this was the mid-late 1900’s, knowledge on mental health was very little compared to now, especially in such a small town. Thomas could possibly be neurodivergent, maybe high-function autism but even then, Thomas could simply have a condition called Speech Apraxia/Apraxia of Speech/AOS/CAS. “In CAS, the brain has trouble planning for speech movement. The brain isn't able to properly direct the movements needed for speech. The speech muscles aren't weak, but the muscles don't form words the right way.” - Mayo Clinic. This could’ve been amplified by his facial deformity. I don’t think it’s irrational to think Thomas can speak, or speaks scarcely, but it’s also not irrational to think Thomas just doesn’t speak. I don’t think it’s a vocal cord issue as Thomas can make sounds pretty well {Considering he screams/yells/yelps at times in the 2003 remake, and even ‘howls’ in the 2006 version after he gets stabbed by Chrissie.} This is just a thought though, I could be wrong.

Skin Condition:

In a behind-the-scenes video {which can be found on youtube}, one of the crew members said Thomas had an extreme form of skin cancer. Now, this could very well be true, but if it was a real-world condition, Thomas would either be bed-ridden, hooked to a machine constantly, or dead. This condition could be made up, but I’ve found two possible real-world conditions which Thomas may have. 

Cutaneous Lupus {CLE}. “Cutaneous lupus is one type of lupus — an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in different body tissues. “Cutaneous lupus,” which means skin lupus, affects your skin. Inflammation in your skin causes a variety of symptoms — most often a red, scaly rash. These symptoms are triggered by sunlight exposure.” - Cleveland Clinic. This, as most skin conditions, can be localized, meaning they’re only in one area. In Thomas’ case, this is his face. This could also occur in his scalp, neck, and ears for all we know. CLE is also not contagious.

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What is CLE? 

“Cutaneous lupus, or skin lupus, is an autoimmune disease that affects your skin, causing skin rashes. Autoimmune diseases happen when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own body tissues. In cutaneous lupus, your immune system attacks your skin cells, causing chronic inflammation in your skin. This manifests as a recognizable rash, often with related symptoms like itching, irritation or swelling.” - Cleveland Clinic

2. Pustular Psoriasis. Now, this diagnosis doesn’t make the most sense until you see the actual ‘photo’ of Thomas’ face. A photo {Which is shown below} is from the 2006/The Beginning behind-the-scenes’ on youtube. This looks A LOT like Pustular Psoriasis to me; Though I could be very wrong. “Symptoms of pustular psoriasis include pustules (white or yellow, pus-filled, painful bumps) that may be surrounded by inflamed or reddened/discolored skin. The pus in pustules is caused by inflammation and is not contagious. People with plaque psoriasis or other types of psoriasis may also develop pustular psoriasis” - The National Psoriasis Foundation. Common placement of Pustular Psoriasis includes the hands, feet, scalp, and face. It usually affects the hands and feet {Palmoplantar pustulosis}, but not in all patients.

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What’s the Difference?

“Pustular psoriasis is a type of psoriasis that causes skin plaques with pustules or blisters anywhere on your body. Palmoplantar pustulosis, which is also known as palmoplantar pustular psoriasis, is pustular psoriasis that affects only your hands and feet.” - Cleveland Clinic

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What is Pustular Psoriasis?

Psoriasis is an auto-immune disease, as is CLE: “Your immune system keeps your body healthy by defending itself against foreign invaders like bacteria. These invaders can make you sick. If you have psoriasis, your skin immune system becomes overactive and releases inflammatory molecules that cause healthy skin cells to divide and replicate too quickly, which causes dead skin cells to form on the surface of your skin as scales or flakes. This state of immunologic over-activity also causes certain cells from the immune system called neutrophils to collect in the most superficial layers of the skin, which causes pustules.” - Cleveland Clinic

Photo for Reference:

I’m not joking, this is an actual screenshot from the Behind-The-Scenes at around 32:17. Now, I don’t think Thomas’ condition AS SEEN IN THE FILMS is as extreme, but this might be what a flare-up looks like for him. That being said, there’s a significant feature Thomas has that we haven’t addressed yet,

How Did Thomas Lose His Nose?

In The Beginning {2006}, we can see Thomas’ nose cartilage rotting off from multiple open wounds. Just based on this information, it’s safe to assume it just rotten off, right? Not necessarily. Looking at Thomas’ face reveal in the 2003 remake, we notice the nose is cleanly cut off right where the ‘rot’/wound was in the 2006 version. Combine this with his tendency of self-mutilation, this leads me to assume he {or someone in the family} cut it off. Now, I’ve researched this a bit {hyperfixation running rampant rn} and cutting off your nose doesn’t hit any major arteries and isn’t life-threatening on its own. However, your nose is part of what’s called the ‘Triangle of Death.’ The Triangle of Death is a part of the face featuring the nose all the way down to the corners of the mouth. Because this area is so close to your brain as well as openings in your face, infections can be deadly. So cutting off your own nose could kill you from infection, not the act itself. Obviously, Thomas didn’t die from this as he’s in the damn movies with a fully-healed 'nose'. Anyway, going back to observing his face, we can also see the nasal bone. Finally answering the question: It’s safe to assume Thomas picks at his skin alot. Combine this with poor hygiene and wearing his {very dirty} mask all the time, his wounds most likely got infected. This caused him to literally rot from the inside out, which caused necrosis. Thomas most likely cut his nose off because of an infection that had the potential to be fatal. Lord knows Luda Mae was probably horrified and I’m sure Hoyt wasn’t too thrilled either..{Monty’s snoozin’ 100%}

Anyway, apologies for the poorly-edited and non-coherent rant. I see so many theories and get a bit intimidated to comment under most of them so I decided to post this instead. :)

comfort character who hasn’t had a day of comfort in his life

breaking down the texas chainsaw massacre: the beginning (2006) opening credits

as i promised, here's a post going through tcm 2006's beginning credits frame-by-frame. buckle up, this is pretty damn long.

[3:59] first shot is one of thomas’ baby photos, it’s in black-and-white and very blurry and there’s no date provided, but it looks like he has a unilateral cleft lip on the left side of his mouth (his left, our right).

remember to take this with a grain of salt due to the fact that the fucked-up cgi baby that luda mae picks up out of the dumpster doesn’t seem to have a cleft lip, and his face reveal in the 2003 movie seems to be lacking one too. so this is something that you can choose to include or exclude from your writing imo.

there seems to be a dark line going down from the left corner of his mouth and down his face??? but it could be something superficial on the photo itself.

[4:01] the same photo of thomas shown previously. here the cleft lip is shown in much better detail, and as you can see, it doesn’t extend up to his nostril. this implies that his particular birth defect isn’t all that extreme, which is why i headcanon him to have a unilateral incomplete cleft lip.

looks like he has his “skin disease” by this point, judging by the markings around his mouth. he looks to be merely an infant in this photo, maybe less than one year old.

that mysterious dark scar (?) remains.

[4:05] thomas’ first medical files are shown, unknown date. the text is partially cut off, but i can make out “deteriorating flesh” and “disfigurement” written with circles drawn around the lower left half of his face.

“disfigurement” can be referring to both his cleft lip and whatever birth defect his affecting his lower left jaw.

[4:09] a picture of an older thomas, i’d say between the ages of 3–5. his face is being covered completely by someone else. i’d argue that those are “man hands”, but honestly, it could go either way. i doubt it’s luda mae, due to her fondness towards thomas, but i do believe it’s a hewitt. this would imply that at least one hewitt was ashamed of thomas in his younger years, and didn’t want him to be visible in pictures.

[4:13] more medical files. roughly reads “patient: thomas hewitt, age: 3, [date of] examination: 7/20/??”

if thomas is three years old, it can be assumed that the year is 1942.

[4:15] another picture of thomas, but this time he’s hiding his face on his own. age is harder to discern here, but he’s definitely under 8–10 years old. he’s already learned to be ashamed of his face.

“age: 6” flashes on screen at [4:19], which can imply that thomas was six years old at the time that the previous photo was taken.

[4:20] first live action shot. thomas is touching his face, which looks to have an open, bleeding wound. initially, this shot looked like some sort of scrape or even bite to me (with the torn skin and all), but it may be psoriasis that’s been scratched at, causing the wounds to reopen over and over and become more severe. this would be the beginning of thomas’ self-harming behavior.

[4:24] yet another photo of thomas, older and with his face uncovered. cleft lip doesn’t look present but as i stated, the filmmakers seem to forget about that fact every now and again. he does, however, seem to have scarring on his left cheek from his skin condition. he’s looking away from the camera.

[4:26] more medical files. from what i can make out, they say “… boy suffers from a degenerative facial disease. … birth defect”

[4:29] shot of thomas picking up some sort of blade with the words “tedency towards self-mutilation” popping up on screen. this seems pretty self-explanatory.

[4:37] longer shot of thomas raising the blade to his face and slicing into the flesh of his cheek.

from [4:41] to [4:51], you can see thomas’ face being wrapped up in some sort of guaze/bandage. due to the bandages covering nearly his entire head, i believe that his wounds were far more extreme than the footage actually shows.

during this time, you can here a voice (presumably charlie’s, though r lee ermy also played what we can assume to be luda mae’s husband in the very beginning of the film) telling thomas “don’t worry about it, tommy. you don’t have to look pretty to work down at the slaughterhouse.” this tells me a couple of things: 1.) if this is charlie, this is the first instance of him comforting thomas, which he continues to do throughout the film (while still manipulating him). this shows that charlie, from at least this point on, is a kind older brother figure to thomas. 2.) it’s already being ingrained in thomas that he isn’t pretty, even if that fact is being delivered through reassurance. 3.) he’s already being set up to work at the slaughterhouse, somewhat implying that he drops out of school to start working. with the hewitts’ poverty, i wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.

[4:58] shot of an empty road. “age 9” is overlayed on top of this image, implying that thomas was no older than nine years old when he injured himself and presumably got drawn out of school.

[5:00] very very quick snapshot of a dog (?) carcass, looks like roadkill. thomas is then shown to take interest in the corpse, dragging it away by its tail.

from [5:07] to [5:26], you can see thomas going through the process of creating his first leather mask out of that roadkill. he moves with intention, he doesn’t seem to be skittish or queasy when it comes to corpses and death. there’s a shot of his reflection at [5:20], with only his nose and eyes being visible. they look pretty normal, and you can see that he’s out of his bandages by this point.

[5:28] “12 yrs. old” flashes on screen, again implying that thomas was no older than twelve when he began wearing masks to cover his face.

the frames between [5:31] and [5:37] are hard for me to fully make out, but there looks to be a blade, some sort of flesh, and machinery.

i believe he’s already started working at the slaughterhouse by this point, as at [5:38], you can see thomas trace his fingers over the still blade of a chainsaw—something he later steals from his job in 1969.

his fingers look like they belong to his older self, but i can’t tell exactly when this takes place.

[5:43] thomas takes his apron off of a rack in what i can assume is the slaughterhouse. he’s in his older teens or beyond at this point, i think—his forearms are thick and hairy here, so it’s clear he’s aged significantly.

[5:47] newspaper dated friday, june 9, 1967 flashes on screen, followed by an outside shot of the lee bros meat plant. thomas would be 28 by this point in time.

the meat plant processes not only cows but poultry as well, and was established in 1929.

[5:50] friday, june 9, 1969. exactly two years after the last shot (though in reality, june 9th was a monday that year, but it’s a simple error). here’s what i can read:

MEAT PLANT CONDEMNED, HUNDREDS LEFT JOBLESS

lee bros. meats, fixture (?) of fuller for forty years

unemployment rate near 76% according to mayor clayton

devastating three-year drought has far reaching consequences. some proclaim “second dust bowl”

CLOSED FOR GOOD lee brothers processing plant was … by … on wednesday and forced to suspend all activity on thursday. drought related illness in cattle is sited as the cause of stomach ailments throughout west texas

note: travis county is closer to central-east texas than west texas, so that’s another inconsistency… at this point i don’t know where exactly fuller is.

from what i can understand, a drought had been affecting fuller since 1966. this drought brought sickness to the cattle and other livestock, likely due to undernourishment. this meant less business for the slaughterhouse, which meant less work for the people who worked there, which meant mass unemployment. by the time we reach 1969, there’s over 75% unemployment in fuller and the meat plant finally shuts down.

the article also mentions the meat plant being condemned, which implies that there were underlying safety issues within the building that contributed to its closure.

a dead cow flashes on screen shortly after the shot of the newspaper.

[5:54] okay, this is where the timeline starts jumping around and i don’t like it. according to the friday, march 9, 1968 article of “the fuller bee”, the meat plant is condemned and the town has offically DIED in big, capital letters. this doesn’t make sense, given the article shown literally seconds before and the fact that the audience knows thomas is dismissed from his job in 1969, so i’m choosing to believe this is merely a mistake.

[5:57] newspaper with no date provided, with the headline “DRAFT MORE TROOPS”, likely in reference to the war in vietnam.

shortly after, another headline flashes on screen: “REINSTATED FOR VIETNAM CONFLICT”. this article is dated saturday, december 1, 1969. this is a historical error, as i can’t find anything about the draft being reinstated in 1969. according to wikipedia, the deferment of married men ended suddenly on august 26th, 1965, but that’s the only big change to the draft that i know of around that time. also, if the article was accurate, then it would be reciting events after the film, which takes place in july 1969. you can see why this doesn’t make sense.

from [5:58] to [6:33], thomas can be seen slamming his fist against his baby photos before going on to burn them, with his diagnosis of mental deterioration flashing on screen. i believe this implies that he volunteered for the army, which i already wrote a whole post about here.

these shots are also spliced with scenes of thomas making what i assume to be a new mask. it’s very obviously raw flesh, which by now i know that’s not how leather is Made, but he’s a little freak so what can you expect. maybe this is meant to show thomas leaning in to his shame after being rejected from the army.

this is the longest “scene” by far, showing how the writers really wanted us to know just how much thomas hates himself.

and that’s the end of the opening credits, cutting to july, 1969.

OKAY SO, what have we learned??? here’s a rudimentary tl;dr—

thomas is born 1939 with a cleft lip and possibly an additional birthmark/defect. his “skin disease” looks to be present at birth/in his infancy.

he is diagnosed with “deteriorating flesh” and “disfigurement” by the time he is three years old.

by the age of six, thomas begins showing signs of self-consciousness and low self-esteem.

by the age of nine, thomas has begun engaging in self harm and cuts into his face with a blade, leading to him presumably dropping out of school to work at lee bros. meat processing plant.

by the age of twelve, thomas has begun to use the flesh of roadkill to craft leather masks for himself. i believe he’s also confirmed to be working at the slaughterhouse by this point in time.

a drought hits fuller in 1966 and lasts for at least three years. this drought causes the livestock to become ill, which leads to the closure of the slaughterhouse in 1969. other safety concerns also factor into this closure.

sometime between 1965–1969, thomas volunteers to fight in vietnam but is denied due to his “mental deterioration”. he burns his baby pictures in response.

as we all know, thomas is formally fired in july of 1969. he looks to be the last one left at the slaughterhouse, clinging to the job he’s had for almost twenty years.

i literally went through this fucking film frame-by-frame for this info. i hope this helps at least one of you in your writing!

Some behind the scenes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Beginning and the 2003

I think I figured out Thomas Hewitt's disease

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I just realised something, Thomas might have lupus (SLE). This isn't confirmed, nor do I believe that Thomas's disease is actually real. However, it's good to think of the idea that it was actually inspired by something or at least make sense.

The majority of lupus patients experience skin issues, including blisters or rashes. Sometimes, lupus simply affects the skin, while other times, it affects other bodily parts as well. Cutaneous lupus refers to skin issues that are unique to lupus patients. Three primary categories exist:

Chronic cutaneous lupus (also called discoid lupus) causes round, disc-shaped sores, usually on the face and scalp. The sores can cause scars or changes in skin color.

Subacute cutaneous lupus causes a red scaly rash or red ring-shaped sores. It usually happens on skin that gets sunlight, like the neck and arms.

Acute cutaneous lupus causes a butterfly-shaped rash on the cheeks and nose that looks like a sunburn (called malar rash). Sometimes it affects other body parts, like the arms and legs.

Other skin-related issues that people with lupus may experience include: Loss of hair Calcinosis: calcium accumulation resulting in hard, white lumps beneath the skin Mucosal ulcers (mouth, nose, or vaginal sores) Blood or visible blood vessels on the skin can also be problematic for those with lupus. Here are several examples: Raynaud's illness, which causes numbness and white or blue fingers and toes in response to stress or cold Livedo reticularis is a purple or blue pattern that appears through the skin and resembles fishnet stockings or lace. Palmar erythema (redness in the palms of the hands) Petechiae are little red patches on the skin that are brought on by thrombocytopenia, or reduced platelets in the blood.

A good thing to mention is that lupus skin problems are not contagious. You can’t catch them or give them to someone else. It only occurs when you'r body's immune system attacks its/your own tissue and organs. The thing about lupus is that it creates a slouth of unexpected symptoms. It can take a while for it to be diagnosed, and once you have done that, it can be incredibly stressful. Lupus is like a disease that can really flare up, physically and even psychological causes can cause lupus to flare up.

So here comes the question that people are first thinking about: Is it cureable? Unfortunately, lupus has no cure, but medicines and lifestyle changes can help treat and manage it.

See a physician on a regular basis. Seeing a doctor on a frequent basis rather than only when your symptoms get worse may help your doctor avoid flare-ups and address common health issues like stress, nutrition, and exercise that can help prevent complications from lupus. Be astute. Wear protective clothes, such as a hat, long-sleeved shirt, and long pants, and apply sunscreen with an SPF of at least 55 whenever you go outside because UV light might provoke a flare. Engage in frequent physical activity. Exercise helps lower a person's chance of heart attack, maintains strong bones, and improves your general health.

Avoid smoking. Smoking can exacerbate the effects of lupus on your heart and blood vessels and raise your risk of cardiovascular illness. Consume a nutritious diet. Whole grains, fruits, and vegetables are the main components of a nutritious diet. One may occasionally be subject to dietary limitations, particularly if you suffer from kidney impairment, high blood pressure, or gastrointestinal issues. Find out from a doctor if you require calcium and vitamin D supplements. Supplementing with vitamin D may help persons with lupus, according to some studies. To maintain healthy bones, you can take a calcium supplement to help you reach the 1,000–1,200 mg daily dietary intake, depending on your age.

Now, I'm not a professional. All I have done is going through multiple sites for research purposes in order to figure this mystery out. If you don't agree with me, that's totally fine. I want to know your opinions and own theories/takes on it cause I don't think there's ever going to be a clear answer. Not unless the original directors or any actor from the remakes states it to us.

Hugging this man is not a desire, it’s a necessity.

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THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING jonathan liebesman, 2006

wait how did he go from having curly/wavy hair to like completely straight hair

someone explain