okay! for years i have had a particular version of the upside down in my head which leans more into the early concepts and vibe that season one gave us… and this is it, finally published! this lore was created alongside the fantastic @gnarlie / @clehric.
this quote in season one has always been my vibe of the upside down, and i'm forever angry they took away this dark feeling. i also love the vale of shadows title (hehe hence the url.) "the vale of shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. it is a place of decay and death. a plane out of phase. a place of monsters. it is right next to you, and you don't even see it."
the upside down has no true name, no true origin, no true purpose. it is an ancient plane, having existed since the dawn of time. the realm itself is a living entity: the vines, the trees, the sky, the ground… everything lives, breathes, thinks. it's a living conscious where every inch of space is connected. it lays beneath and evolves with the real world. when a building goes up, it will go up in the upside down, too.
it's filled with strange creatures that mirror our world: men and women, animals of all types (bats, dogs, cats, deer; jungle creatures like elephants and monkeys) - even down to beetles and insects - but all twisted and vile to function inside the planet. bodies reworked and transformed to survive the toxic air - air deadly to humans. it is a home for ghouls and monsters. your typical food chain is present here, predators and their prey, and because it has been untouched by man, it remains wild and untamed. this is how the realm likes it. it keeps to itself, doesn't want to reach out to other planes of existence, content in its circle of life.
but a shadow lurks over the upside down; this creature mirrors nothing of the world on top, he is his own being. ("so ancient it doesn't even know its true origin.") he wants more than what's offered in the hollow, repetitive world. the shadow wants to touch other places, feed from them, become part of them. dominate. but he is stuck where nothing changes. where there is no hierarchy but that of the measly food chain. he wants chaos.
no connection between the two worlds has ever been made. over the centuries, small cracks form here and there, for no real reason, merely a bleed in the two atmospheres. walls momentarily breaking down. when these cracks form, they more often than not go unnoticed, but toxins do tend to pollute the earth's air. it produces viruses, some worse than others. reports of strange shadows are made across time. reports of ghastly sounds in the night. there is a history of evidence, sightings of strange things, but nothing truly solid. the cracks close up themselves, always too small to really make a dent anywhere. just a temporary rift.
these cracks give the shadow an idea. a clever creature - he realises there are ways to get topside. he investigated, he planned. the closest he ever got to breaking through was in 1346. a gate opened in europe, larger than the rest, and he took advantage of the opportunity. he released some of himself through this gate, small particles of smoke, and took hold of the first sign of life that passed. a rat. this lone rat went on to infect others. which then went on to infect people, thus beginning the black plague. but humans couldn't cope with the infection of an otherworldly toxin mixed with a regular rodent. rather than being infected by this shadow, like he planned, they died. so many people died, and his plans failed. his rats died, and the gate closed. this was the closest he ever got to breaking through.
the upside down and the void are the only two planes of existence inside this reworked canon. camazotz is instead an extension of the void, while the abyss is an extension of the upside down.
in 1979, eleven opened the very first gateway to the upside down, a gate that allowed one creature to cross between planes. this creature was henry creel. although the gate was quickly sealed - this event did not go unnoticed. not by the land below. the world sensed an intruder, it sensed contact from another species and did not like it. what plagues could this thing bring? what destruction could it cause? the upside down did not want to risk any kind of infection, so it "quarantined" the small town of hawkins, the place this event transpired, off. it created a large wall around the entire town. unfortunately, it had to sacrifice a piece of itself, but was worth it to keep this thing locked away. it didn't want this new poison to spread amongst the entire plane. in this event, many creatures died, leaving only one dog to roam about, and some bats in the sky. when this dog got bigger, to its full size, it worked to plant as many eggs as possible, to keep its species thriving.
the upside down purposely banished the great shadow to hawkins before the walls went up fully. it was sick of his antics, his attempts to create a bridge between worlds, and wanted nothing more to do with him. the shadow could wilt away in this small plane.
when eleven banished henry to the upside down, she unintentionally created a prison for him. he was a bad man, and as far as her young mind knew, bad deeds were punished by being locked away - just like her isolation room. and so, the abyss was created. a prison within a prison. the abyss exists inside the upside down hawkins, but is hidden away, like a pocket realm.
the great shadow, too curious for its own good, sought out the intruder, hoping to use it as a way to get to the upside world, but was unintentionally caught up in eleven's power. he was banished into the abyss alongside henry.
the abyss is a frozen wasteland, desolate of any sign of life. there is no sun, no moon, no concept of time and space. because it was created by eleven, through her dna and power, human life can exist there; there is no poisonous air, no ravenous creatures - you would not die in a day, though you might wish you had. human necessities would kill a person should they be stranded there with no means of escape - as starvation would consume, and the freezing temperature would, in a few days, begin shutting down vital functions.
in 1983, the mother gate was opened, which for the first time ever, allowed the two worlds to connect fully. this gate paved the way for dozens of others to be formed. within the chaos, henry and the mind flayer were freed from the abyss, and a gate inside the upside down hawkins library officially opened - this becomes the only doorway into the abyss. this gate is different than the rest, it's not a crack nor a tear, and can only be touched by creatures of the upside down, or those with some kind of psychokinetic ability.
henry and the shadow are free to roam the entire upside down hawkins, and begin reaching into the right side up.
the quarantined section of the upside down never becomes whole with the rest of the world again. time stops moving. it only moves forward if a direct connection is made. most notably, joyce connecting to will through the lights, and will using the alphabet to reply. the byers house moved because of this forced contact. whereas nancy's room does not change because nothing of significance happened there. but in 1987, when the teens connect to the kids through the lights, the wheeler house slowly evolves to catch up to 1986. but this will take years to update.
the upside down slowly loses its toxicity from 1983-1987, because it adapts to hawkins. if you went inside in 1983, without some kind of protective suit, you would not last a day. (will only lasted because henry wanted him to. more to come on this later!) as the years go on, the threat decreases, and it becomes solely a shadow realm to hawkins. its hivemind slowly dies, and those walls never come down.
unbeknownst to eleven, when she banished henry, and because of the manner in which she did so - literally disintegrating him - she gave him access to her powers, particularly her use and control over the void. from 1979-1983, while trapped in the abyss, henry was able to master this mental landscape, and use it to his advantage. in his version of the void, he is able to create camazotz, shielding it completely from eleven, despite the fact that he was only able to build it by leeching off her abilities. this plane is designed specifically to keep her out. she cannot touch it. over the years, henry spied on eleven, and she never knew he was there.
^ this then leads into the content of my s5 rewrite, which will be up in the next few days!
