#alicegate

[wheelercore]

First off:

Context of this creel theory are in these posts: x x x

UMMMMM Alice in Henry's version of events directly mentions the word "dream":

Nah bc it's me vs Henry right now and I'm ready to throw hands for the truth.

As she speaks they literally pan over a YELLOW stained window in the background. "Dream" as in Dream A Little Dream (Victor's song, again, about a person who hopes that their lover is thinking of them when they're gone), being associated with a "fairy tale"- with the yellow lighting being associated with dishonesty.

Alice being the one to say this, of course she's being genuine, but as a watcher you know that it's the exact opposite. The usage of words like "dream" and "fairytale" with double meanings: on the surface it's obviously just unbelievably good circumstance but when you go deeper you realize that it's being used here as synonyms with delusion. Why Alice? Why is Alice being chosen as the representation of the dishonesty (again, the yellow lighting and her solid yellow outfit later on) and the (Victor's) delusion?

This isn't the first time theyve used colored lighting to portray subtext, they did the same thing with Victor, the red lighting, and burning baby or the soft reddish yellow lighting when Henry is about to start his murder spree

I think it fairly interesting because we're playing with a lot of perspectives here. We got two recounting of the same event, Victor with his rose tinted glasses on and Henry leaving out crucial details. When it comes to the portrayal of Alice's age, I think there might be some shenanigans going on.

Now look, can the duffers do math? No. Are they consistent? Also no. But 15-14=1 isn't hard and it wouldn't be difficult for them to realize "oh shit we had Victor say he came back from the war 14 years ago but yet we have Alice down on this prop as 15 years old". But yet they deliberately included these details alongside portraying Alice with a much younger actress. Think of s1 Nancy (16) with s1 Mike (12). Now compare that to Alice (15) and Henry (12):

There is a huge difference there. Alice is clearly not meant to be portrayed as 15. Either it's extremely negligent casting or it's intentional.

Now we could wonder why the writers chose to do this, or we could be a little bit less meta and ask: why does the visual representation of Alice look considerably younger than her actual age in Victor and Henry's retelling? We know Henry may be leaving crucial details out about his family (namely Virginia and Alice) and we know for sure that Victor isn't a reliable narrator at all and will straight up imagine things that didn't happen if it meant that his family looked more "perfect" than it was. Edit: fixed some inaccuracies

Well, the thing is, if Alice had been just a year younger she would have been born after Victor came back from the war. 2 years and she would have been conceived and born after he came back. Yeah it's a bit insane, but get what I'm getting at here? It could just be an illusion. Alice looks younger because that's how Victor from his jail cell could deal with the fact that Alice might not have been his, especially after believing for decades his whole family is dead.

Mind you, Victor made himself even more blind. Literally. That's a thing he did. He wanted to be "with his family", but his "family" was never more than playing pretend. Victor will delude himself, as we see repeatedly with the inconsistencies from his version of events compared to Henry's, into doubling down on that lie.

Reminder, one of the few actual voiced lines from Henry's retelling is freaking Alice herself saying that it all looks like a fairy tale and a dream (I believe we don't get these lines in Victor's version of events, but I could be wrong please correct me).

But yet Henry directly exposes all of Victor's inconsistencies with the exception of Alice? Why?

He's deliberately lying about Alice by omission. By being vague about the nature of Virginia's wrongdoings and being vague about how he tormented Alice in particular (because Henry wasn't tormenting his family for fun, he was doing it to show them a side of themselves that was imperfect), he's intentionally leaving out what he's learnt about the two of them. In a meta sense, the writers don't want to reveal to us the truth about Virginia, and by extension Alice, until next season for whatever reason.

When thinking about how Henry phrased his radicalization, he saw his parents for who they really were and it was all a terrible lie.

He deliberately leaves out Alice from that statement. Alice hadn't done anything wrong.

But yet he does torment her. For shits and giggles? We've never seen him do anything for no reason. He does leave her a dead rabbit (was it a baby rabbit? Because my god thats even more on the nose) and give her nightmares. But those scenes are never focused on Alice internally unlike Virginia and Victor, in fact they seem to focus more on them having to comfort Alice, the physical representation of the "sin" that Victor thinks their family is being punished for.

@henrycreeltm tagging you because I feel like I'm going insane because of Alicegate or whatever this should be called and I don't want to be alone. I'm in too deep 😭

[dcgstar]

time: 7:44 PM date: 7.14.79 location: zabini estate general starter -- OPEN TO ALL

they’re not playing the right songs, sirius notes, as he wades through a stream of people. the weird sisters are good, but it’s their faster tracks where the magic happens. but there’s some benefit, at least, to their pop-y hits; the slower beat makes the marble floors easier to navigate. before this whole ordeal of pretending to be alice, sirius hadn’t experienced being this alice’s height since fifth year. he tugs at his (alice’s) dress and scowls. fourteen minutes as alice fortescue and he already understands why that girl is so wound up all the time. he’d been trying to get through to the bidding since 7:30 -- no small feat considering he can no longer see over the crowd, and that he’s been trying to avoid everyone alice knows before someone sees through the rouse. his mood doesn’t improve once he’s at the table, either. 

the next time someone needs help, sirius is going to keep his mouth shut. it’d been his surprise that had done him in, really -- that frank hasn’t sent alice onto the field yet. and the timing had been too perfect. the day he’d spoken with alice was so soon after he’d found out about the auction that sirius hadn’t thought twice before offering to switch places with alice for an hour. you can get your field experience, he’d said, and i’ll go enjoy myself. how’s that sound? i’ll even bid on a few things for you. and now, three mouthfuls of polyjuice potion later, he’s never regretted another decision so much in his life. sirius snatches a pen from a nearby table and scrawls a shoddy imitation of alice’s signature next to frank’s training hours. she had mentioned she wanted them, right? 

then, his eyes catch on something else: the statue of venus. automatically, he pulls another card from the pile and begins to write down sirius -- before he catches himself and scribbles the “s” from existence. then, he writes alice fortescue again. not allowing himself to think better of it ( though alice bidding on a black family heirloom must be a strange sight ), he walks toward the statue.