concealed doors, buried curiosity, and black mirror: bandersnatch— or, how would all of this actually work?
the final boss of conformitygate theorizing has— to my brain, at least— always been the question of how this would actually be implemented within the episodes. what will this all end up looking like? what are we in for?
i’ve talked myself through parts of this before, and the copyrightgate theory has appeared to answer at least some of it, in that episodes 2-8, as we have seen them, are not their final forms. EDIT: slight correction— all episodes of volume 1 were sent for registration on the same day. episode 1 was approved almost immediately, while episodes 3 and 4 were just approved on february 28, 3 months later. this is indicative of something about them being different making them more difficult to file, since season 4 vol 1 had all of its episodes approved on the same day, and took less time overall.
but a few days ago, in our discord server, a conversation between @thebestofmyrmidons and @whispering-goat lead to the discovery that the reason these episodes have remained unregistered with copyright…may actually be because they’re intended to be interactive.
now, myr knows a lot more about copyright law than i do, and i think is planning to make her own post detailing this once she’s able, so i won’t attempt to get into that side of it too much. but the basis of this discovery, from what i understand, is this:
the only other times netflix has ever waited on registering their content with copyright past the three month window have been regarding content with multiple endings. black mirror: bandersnatch, a wildly complex interactive movie, was never registered with copyright at all, and the unbreakable kimmy schmidt, an interactive movie with multiple endings, received separate copyright registrations after the initial deadline window for each of its three separate paths (officially labeled A, B, and C). EDIT: after doing some digging, this is incorrect; kimmy schmidt was filed by universal, and delayed only by the person in charge of submitting the required documents, not the approval time itself. black mirror is british, and the uk provides automatic copyright registration for any creative work. the points below still stand, however, and a stranger things trademark for an “interactive online drama series” has since been discovered.
add on some discoveries @fixthehyper made regarding the similarities between promotion surrounding bandersnatch (in that it was largely a lot of conflicting reports until its announcement was dropped only a day before the official release) mirrors what we’re dealing with in regards to conformitygate, caleb’s “my ending was different” comment (and finn’s incredibly suspicious reaction), noah saying the story was ‘confusing,’ matt duffer’s reaction to being asked outright if there were multiple endings, and sadie saying that the word she felt represented the season was butterfly, and the possibility that this may be what we’re building towards starts to get bigger.
i, naturally, proceeded to have approximately a million different thoughts about this.
because, if you weren’t aware, you can’t actually go and watch black mirror: bandersnatch, or the unbreakable kimmy schmidt movie, or any of netflix’s previously created interactive content— they were all taken completely off the platform last year. @whispering-goat posed the idea that this could be so they could rehaul and redevelop the system that supports them entirely (since they’re pretty hard to keep running!), with stranger things being the start of it, which would mean that we’d be working with something completely different than what interactive content has looked like before.
so, then, what could that be? what would an ‘interactive stranger things season’ actually constitute?
i think i’ve come up with an answer that— to me, at least— would make the most sense. because there are, i think, a lot of immediate questions and concerns you could have upon seeing this. to both myself and many other people in our server, one of the biggest ones would be the concept of an interactive story itself.
because…the audience, controlling the characters? making decisions for them, reaching our own ‘created’ ending we’ve chosen for them? wouldn’t that end up really getting in the way of everything the story has been building up to, if it’s all handed over to us in the end? make the characters not feel like their own people?
i think it definitely could. which is why i don’t think a choose-your-own-adventure type of thing is quite where we’re headed.
because another important thing to keep in mind, is that conformitygate seems to be an attempt at saying something about media literacy, and the importance of people actually paying attention to the things they consume. so, an interactive season where you can pick whatever You want to happen would…kind of directly contradict that, wouldn’t it? ‘i don’t have to think about why mike would possibly do this specific action, because i can just make him do the one i like more instead!’ and all that.
but you know what does go hand-in-hand with media literacy?
pointing out plot holes, continuity errors, and bad writing. you know, the things everyone has spent the past month and a half doing at length? the things every ridiculous comment made by the duffers post episode 8 have only made people start doing more?
robin did say there would be a test later, didn’t she? luckily, i don’t think it’ll be one we’ll have to worry much about studying for— we’ve been unknowingly revising for it this entire time.
so my answer to the format question, based on what makes the most sense to me, is this:
the interactivity would take the form of something more akin to a spot-the-difference game. our job will be to point out things like the dial changing color, melvald’s milkshakes, new coke, etc, with a points-based system per episode that will unlock previously hidden scenes upon reaching a certain threshold. why per episode? well, this would take care of a number of potential issues:
— a story with multiple branching paths works with a movie like bandersnatch, but these are 7 separate episodes. what would happen to a story path if someone were to jump around episodes, for whatever reason? a connected, multi-ending story that has to be tracked and kept consistent across all 7 episodes seems like it would be very difficult to code, and potentially frustrating for a viewer to have to deal with if their watch place gets disturbed.
— a complete rewatch of the season would not be necessary. you’re free to play through episodes 2-7 and unlock all the flashbacks and additional context i suspect would be added, but you can also start right from episode 8 and still get the new ending. (i’ll get into what i think this would be in a second.) no one would be forced to sit through something they do not want to.
— if you remove the interactive element, bandersnatch and the kimmy schmidt movie do not function, especially bandersnatch. they cannot be viewed in their entirety, and be one, cohesive story. since i cannot imagine the duffers would ever even entertain the idea of their finale becoming obsolete or lost media should the technology ever stop working or be removed (as it currently has), there has to be a failsafe, and so the episodes should still be understandable if the game is removed. unlocking scenes that were always intended to be there rather than having multiple versions of multiple scenes would ensure this. (with what i think is one exception. but i’ll get to that!) remember that quote from maya about these episodes all being the length of feature films?
so, we’ve got a format. but what about its implementation? and how would it end up impacting the story?
i’ve got an additional thought regarding the former, but i’ll save that for later. for now, i’ll focus on the latter. what does this mean for the story?
the best way to tackle this, i think, is to ask one of the most important questions pertaining to this— how many endings would there be?
my answer might not quite be what you think it is.
an interaction between max and holly that has grown to be somewhat infamous in our community is their talk about the three doors available for you to take, when it comes to escaping camazotz. accept your fate, take your life, or escape.
now, i see the conclusion you would want to make here. hold onto it. bear with me.
the choices presented here are conscious. you choose to accept your fate, or you choose to take your life. an ending reached due to a certain combination of previous decisions made is not a conscious choice. it is a result.
according to the arg, both the characters and the audience themselves are stuck in an illusion we must actively hunt for a way to get out of. their goal, and our goal, is to choose how we wish to deal with this. right now, with the show in the state that it is, and the duffers acting the way that they are, we are still actively stuck. we are in camazotz.
and, again, the only way to deal with camazotz is to pick a door in front of you.
except…hang on. something’s happened to our options.
in dustin’s graduation speech, he narrows the typical structure of dnd moral alignments down to simply ‘chaotic good’ and ‘chaotic bad.’
when hopper talks to mike on the bench, he tells him that he has only two roads ahead of him to choose; you refuse to come to terms with what happened, and suffer, or you find a way to accept it.
if something isn’t demonstrably bad, then it must be unequivocally good. this must be unequivocally good. and if you don’t want to believe that, your only other avenue is…suffering.
the stranger things finale comes out, and people who believe that more is coming are painted as just being sad that— not wanting to accept that— the show is over. everyone else has settled on either thinking the ending was fine, and not understanding what all the fuss is about, or denouncing both the show and the duffers entirely out of anger.
take your life, accept your fate, or escape.
the option of escape, of seeking more, is being obfuscated from mike, because the epilogue is painting itself as the ‘best’ choice there is. and the option of seeking more is being obfuscated from us, because we’re being told that episode 8 is all that there will ever be.
when in camazotz, you must pick a door. we’ve been told, much like mike, that there are only two available. but that third one is out there— we, and mike, just have to want to find it.
like, perhaps…through an interactive game? where the more we acknowledge that the things in front of us aren’t adding up, the more mike will, as well?
i would like to take this moment to sincerely stress the fact that the final shot of episode 8 has mike walking through a DOOR.
which door, you may be wondering? well, great question.
i think its answer will entirely depend on you.
door one: take your life. you either gave up before this point, or watched the episode through and went “fuck it. i’m not giving this show the time of day again. this isn’t the ending i want, but that’s all i’m ever gonna get.” and so mike exits into…nothing, more or less. you haven’t accepted him staying like that, but you also don’t think there’s anything more. you’ve severed your involvement to the show, and so to you, this is where it ends.
door two: accept your fate. you think the finale is fine, and mike walks out of that door having accepted his camazotz life. to you, this is the ending to the show.
door three: escape. this option was not there before, but with the game, we can now play to uncover it. we know we’ve been in camazotz, mike has since realized that he’s in camazotz, and that shot of him will now be him finding his way out— much like we’ve also literally just done! this will be the final promise we’re left with before the real finale later.
the three endings are not existing simultaneously around each other, where debate around which one is canon could occur. they are sequential. (and even more of my reasoning on this can be found here.) death, then acceptance, and then escape. whether you want to continue forward to pursue the true ending will be entirely up to you.
because a realization that he’s in camazotz asks of mike to realize that there is more out there for him. this is not the best his life can ever be. it does exist and it can be found, if only he deigns to try. to seek out what he really wants. (and i think we all know what— or really, who— that is.) it asks of the audience to do much the same. we should want more from our media. we should ask more of lazy writers! we should look at what we know isn’t all that great, and go after ways to change it for the better!
i believe a high enough score in the game would allow mike to figure things out at some point during the epilogue, resulting in an inserted scene. now, where exactly that would go, i can’t be 100% sure, but i do think i have pretty strong evidence for one specific spot.
i don't know if it would be at graduation; dustin’s camazotz-approved “reject conformity” speech only ignites a camazotz-approved level of rebellion in our characters, where they feel comfortable in thinking they’re doing a lot without actually doing very much at all. (that’s why mike’s “sorry, girls! we’re gonna go play dnd!” remark is immediately followed by them all playing dnd for the last time because they aren’t kids anymore and feel like they have to stop, lol.)
one of the things i’ve always come back to regarding the conformitygate release format is the lost media issue. if whole episodes are replaced, where would the old ones go?
but…do you know what scenes conveniently happen to already be uploaded to youtube?
so a realization scene might be placed in the basement, sometime before that talk about el (and the dreaded epilogue boyfriend), and effectively replace it all the way to the end. the pained looks on mike’s face when he stares at will can now take on multiple meanings depending on whether he’s had his realization or not— and the litmus test theory might then actually be true! now, if a slightly different version of the scene plays, the original is still preserved online.
why is that important, aside from our failsafe?
well, that has to do with my final take on this theory:
i don’t think the game will be permanent.
i’ve been thinking about this idea a lot (if you couldn’t tell), and the game being more of a temporary special promotion rather than the Final state of stranger things 5 resolves basically every remaining issue i could see popping up:
— i could not, for the life of me, figure out a design for the ui that wouldn’t create dissonance and look/feel out of place from the rest of the (very much non-interactive) show, especially from 5x01! but this doesn’t really matter as much if the game is temporary.
— if there’s no way to switch the game off, i think this would get kind of tedious upon rewatch, especially since we’re looking at 9 hours of game to repeatedly go through. but knowing it’s a limited experience would bring a ton of people not wanting to miss out!
— the game has the potential to make less and less sense the more time passes from this resolving. like, in the moment, both we and the duffers have been vecna’d, so the game is our way of breaking ourselves out of that. four years from now, the true finale’s been out for awhile, the duffers are behaving normally, and all has been revealed. we won! so what would you need to still play the game for? i also think it works best if you’ve already seen the original episodes, and are not experiencing it for the first time with the interactivity.
this doesn’t mean that the game would have to be nuked entirely, as well. once we’ve unlocked all the scenes, restored the episodes to their originally intended state, and been rewarded with the true finale release some time later as a result, the “game” version of the episodes could be moved to the games tab, or something. or that collection with basically nothing in it! but regardless, future new viewers would now have a completely normal season of television to watch. if that original scene with the epilogue boyfriend and the binders ends up getting replaced, not as big of a deal, because it’s already been preserved for months by that point.
in terms of the format the true finale will take, that will likely be back to the usual standard. however, as per the continued ‘episode 9’ clowning— and to really cement that feeling of choosing to continue forward— i think it could be listed as a separate title entirely, or at the very least given its own tab in the series itself. (like an anime ova!) please don’t sequester canon byler, haha. though i suspect some of those unlocked scenes will be some very mwtfdydgate-coded flashbacks ;)
so, there it is! my crack at the final boss. of course, all of this is still just speculation, but i do feel pretty good about it.
and you know me by now. GAY LOVE WILL SAVE THE WORLD!
