If I recall, T’s original idea was for Shanna and Meighan to be strung up inside Head Alien’s ship by spiderwebs.  I was like, yeah, okay, that’s certainly creepier and more effective, but Head Alien opts for the simple duct tape, yo.  That’s how he do.  And so here we are.  That’s probably why Meighan’s upside down.  The upside-downness seems like it’s more a deliberate choice when it’s duct tape on a table, but spider-webs have a mind of their own.

and yeah my bad guys aren’t very outwardly threatening, giant robot monster gorilla besides

HEY T GIMME SOME WORDS

One time, when I was thirteen or so, I didn’t listen too carefully when my mom described, multiple times, what I should expect at the dentists’ office that day. So what I thought was a regular checkup was instead an appointment to extract a couple of stubborn molars, which involved a lot more pain than I was expecting. I have no one to blame for that surprise but me, but since then, I’ve had a phobia of the dentist’s chair, and my time in there this week tells me I probably always will.

But the hardest part is the anticipation. Before I get into the chair, there’s a wide margin into which I can scribble my irrational fears, but it shrinks once actual information starts filling that space. “Okay,” I thought during this week’s visit, “she’s cleaning those back teeth, so guess what that means? Means she’s not going to surprise-yoink them out, you dumbass.”

This has been a roundabout analogy, but I’m sure you can guess where it’s going. Shanna’s experiences have left her weirdly both more and less vulnerable as a POW: jittery as hell before the experience begins, but wise to a lot of the tricks once they start coming. If HA had stuck with his plan of maintaining silence in front of his abductees, just for a bit, it would’ve gotten Shanna’s imagination working against her. But as it is, her reaction is pretty much inevitable.