Puzzlegate x #LoveWinsGate
🍓 Wild Strawberries: Free Association 🍓
**PUZZLEGATE: NETFLIX PUZZLED THEORIES MASTERPOST**
It's the Fourth of July today -- a day meant to commemorate and celebrate the USA's 250 years (ignoring the dicier aspects of her past), while trying to convince us there's a bright future ahead for this country (is there?)
Can you tell I'm not someone particularly moved by this holiday as of late?
ANYWHO -- I meant to post this around the time I did that sushi/egg roll post, but better (semi) late than never.
Here is a repeating motif I'd been spotting on Puzzled that I knew already -- strawberries.
A while back on one of my Bobgate posts, I referenced @junos-orbit's incredible ElMax theory about how the two characters are related (maybe even biologically) through the Cherry-Strawberry motif, with El being the strawberry and Max being the cherry (speaking of 7/4, George Washington and the Cherry Tree anyone?)
Along with the apple, two forbidden fruits, you could say 👀👀
However, like the title implies, this post is less a theory and more a thought experiment re: associations with *strawberries* throughout the ages.
I'll start with some biology --
Beginning with the fact that strawberries technically aren't berries -- they're what's called an "aggregate accessory fruit", meaning it's a fruit whose tissue comes from several plant organs other than the ovary, and it's the product of several ovaries that merged and were then separated in a *single flower*.
Similarly, you have El, who is the product of several individuals, both spiritually and biologically.
Per the book Suspicious Minds, El is the biological child of Terry Ives and Andrew Rich, but canonically received genetic material from Henry Creel/the MF, which is how she got her powers. Meanwhile, she was raised by Papa, then Hopper, then Joyce.
And let's not forget, she is likely also MG/Tharizdun made flesh.
You might also be interested in the fact that strawberries are part of the Rosaceae, or rose family.
#babygate is alive and well...
The rose family also includes apples *and* cherries. [So point for @junos-orbit about El and Max being related!]
Finally, the "seeds" we see on the outside of the strawberry aren't seeds either, they're achenes, the *actual* fruit of the strawberry.
In other words, the strawberry -- the lovely red "berry" we know and love -- is actually a *vessel* for the actual fruits/seeds.
A flower that can carry or transport other fruits...
From Mike's S1 DnD campaign:
Moving on...
The scientific name for strawberries is Fragaria* due to its fragrant aroma that has been captivating humanity for millennia. [Compare that to the horrible smells our characters complain about throughout the show... especially in S5A]
The strawberry's scent is so powerful it mended the love between the First Man and First Woman. At least, according to Cherokee legend:
The First Man and Woman initially had a blissful marriage with everything they could want/need, until they began quarreling over small things, chores left unfinished... It gets so bad the First Woman leaves her husband (you go girl).
When the Man wakes up to finds her gone, he expects her to come back... except she doesn't.
He starts to track her down, only Woman had a major head start and she has not stopped walking, she's that pissed. He's screwed.
The Sun, who has borne witness to both sides of this, asks Man if he's still angry. He is not. The Sun asks if Man wants Woman back. He very much does. The Sun takes pity on his ass and decides to help.
At first, the Sun plants huckleberries and blackberries on the side of the trail to get the First Woman to stop. None of it entices her. She keeps on walking.
Finally, Sun thinks outside the box and creates strawberries, something "so vivid, so fragrant, and so delicious" that Woman can't help but feel her mood improve and stop. When she takes a bite of the strawberry and sees its red heart shape, she's flooded with happy memories of all the good time she shared with her husband.
Because of this, the First Man finally catches up to the First Woman, sitting with her. She offers him a strawberry and just like that, all is well. They go back home together, bringing strawberry plants with them as a reminder to not be quick to anger and more importantly, to forgive.
Could El be the strawberry that brings Byler back together both literally and metaphorically???
Strawberries also held great symbolic power in medieval Catholicism, specifically the perfection in God's creation.
Its three-part leaf represented the Holy Trinity, while the five petals of its flower symbolized Christ's five Wounds [like the five points of the pentacle on Sir Gawain's shield].
Per this article, "The Strawberry: A Symbol of Perfection & Righteousness" by Elaine Jordan, St. Francis de Sales commented on how, despite the strawberry constantly falling victim to serpents and the creatures that crawl the earth, it has never grown poisonous, or even bitter to taste. It maintains its softness, its sweetness -- its "innocence" -- despite the hardships it endures.
Does that sound like anyone we know?
In fact, during this time, strawberries became affiliated with the Madonna -- Mary, the virgin mother of Christ. [For those who haven't read Pt 31 of Bobgate, Mary is a name/figure associated with Mother Goose/Tharizdun in ST]
This painting is called The Madonna of the Strawberries
Eventually, strawberries would go from a fruit symbolizing innocence to symbolizing promiscuity and sin.
Back to forbidden fruits --
Although Virgil pre-dated Christianity, he did write, "Ye who cull flowers and low-growing strawberries, / Away from here lads; a chill snake lurks in the grass" -- a warning that inspired artists to associate strawberries and, by extension, women with deceit and treachery.
And "The Garden of Earthly Delights" too -- as you see above in the aptly-titled triptych by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, where strawberries feature prominently in very sexual contexts, which is where people began to get the idea that strawberries, like apples and cherries, were a sexually-charged "forbidden" fruit representing temptation for all sorts of "earthly delights".
A scapegoat for society's twisted projections
Alas, society slaps all women, even "good girls", with the "wicked" or "slut" or "queer" label eventually...
So why bother being "good", when you can be "Red and Wild"?
That's the theme of the Strawberry Social in the iconic queer film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995).
When NYC drag queens Vida, Noxeema, and Chi Chi land in Snydersville (mistakenly referred to as Spidersville fyi) in the Middle of Nowhere, USA, they arrive in time for the town's annual gathering where, "We all bake strawberry pies and bring them to the center of town, then we eat the pies... and then we go home."
By the time the queens show the townsfolk a thing or two about style and class, the pies become beside the point. Instead, the Social becomes just as much a celebration of self-expression as one of community and acceptance in the face of homophobia and conformity.
Hopefully El will end S5B finally finding the community and acceptance she has always wanted...
While pies are a major code associated with Mother Goose via the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Six Pence", El is less a strawberry pie and more...
Strawberry Shortcake
It always comes back to Bob... plus, peep Annie, a role played by Sadie Sink, further linking the Strawberry and Cherry...
Like My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake also had her run in 80's children's television, beginning with The World of Strawberry Shortcake 1980 special.
The Sun must really love Strawberry, because he rallies all her friends to throw her the best birthday* ever!
*Speaking of birthdays, El's birth month of June (Pride 🏳️🌈 ) also coincides with the Strawberry Moon.
Unfortunately, Strawberry's friends planning a surprise party leads her to believe they've all forgotten her birthday (cough-#birthdaygate-cough)
There to take advantage of Strawberry when she's low, her nemesis --
The Peculiar Purple Pieman*
A shoddy baker who spies on Strawberry and her friends up in his tower through his magic pie tin and continually sends his army of birds to steal their berries.
*Brenner and/or Mr. Clarke?
Fortunately, there's this magic tree that scares the birds off 👀
Unfortunately, the Peculiar Purple Pieman -- in disguise -- tricks Strawberry into getting a magic watering can that ends up flooding the berry patch Strawberry and her pals all live in.
The PPP strong-arms the kids into giving him all their berries so he'll reverse the flood, but in the exchange, they accidentally send Apple Dumplin', the baby sister of one of Strawberry's friends, into PPP's domain.
The Holly of it aside, if I had a nickel for every time an 80's children's cartoon had a character with the name Apple in it ending up in the villain's clutches, I'd have two nickels -- but it's weird that it happened twice. + Will is totally the Apple to El's Strawberry and Max's Cherry
The only hope Strawberry has to get Apple Dumplin' back is a birthday wish from Mr. Sun -- which Strawberry uses to create an army of magic trees to stand up to The Peculiar Purple Pieman. They defeat the Pieman and get Apple Dumplin' and their berries back. Hooray!
However, that's not the end to Strawberry's adventures. In 1981's Strawberry Shortcake in Big Apple City, Strawberry leaves home to compete against the PPP in a televised bake-off and makes a friend along the way...
A painter named Orange Blossom, who Strawberry bonds with on the swings (my Miwi heart rn 🥺)
Switching gears
While Fragaria encapsulates all strawberry varieties, the scientific name for the modern supermarket strawberry we consume on the regular is
'Fragaria x ananassa.'
That's right -- X -- because it is a hybrid of two other strawberry varieties. And it has now become so over-bred to maintain a long shelf life and bright red color, that it's losing its iconic aroma and flavor.
The best place for flavorful strawberries is in the wild...
This 1957 classic by Ingmar Bergman, is a roadtrip movie about Isak, a "cold", curmudgeonly old man who is to be celebrated for his 50 years as a doctor, but spontaneously decides to travel to the ceremony by car after a bizarre dream where he finds himself alone in a place with clocks that have no hands, reminded of his own impending death.
He is accompanied by his daughter-in-law Marianne*, who is estranged from her husband due to a disagreement about her unexpected pregnancy. While she wants the baby**, Isak's son is frightened by the prospect -- his own parents' loveless marriage haunting his past while seeing only death in his future, much like his father.
*Fyi, this combo of names (Mary + Anne) are both associated with MG, and it's also the name of the Immortal Man's long-lost love in Something Very Bad is Going to Happen.
**For those following my Shavian analysis about Creative Evolution and the Life Force, you'll be tickled to know Isak's son, Evald, describes Marianne's desire for a child as a "hellish desire to live and to create life."
Nevertheless, the voyage ends up being a much-needed trip down memory lane.
Along the way, Isak stops by the summer house his family frequented in his youth -- and the smultronställe, or wild strawberry patch, there.
While smultronställe literally means wild strawberry patch in Swedish, it's also an idiom for a "pleasant place with sentimental value."
Apt for the elderly doctor, given he associates this wild strawberry patch with Sara*, his first love (and cousin, but we'll skim over that). Though as fondly as he remembers her, these memories are also laden with pain, since he lost Sara to his more passionate younger brother, Sigfrid.
Isak is pulled out of his reverie by a different Sara, a young woman who just so happens to be a dead ringer for his Sara, and needs to hitch a ride with her two male companions, Anders and Viktor, a romantic minister-in-training and pragmatic would-be doctor, respectively. While Sara is going steady with Anders, both men are in love with and fight over her, and God's existence.
*Could this be Sara Hopper's namesake?
Along the way, the travelers also come across a married couple who hate each other and remind Isak of his own cold, unfaithful marriage; this same couple makes an appearance in Isak's next dream, where he is told straight-up that he is incompetent as a doctor (and as a human being), and found "guilty of guilt." He is reminded that his first duty as a doctor is "to ask for forgiveness."
When he finally arrives to his destination, he tries to help his son and daughter-in-law mend their relationship, only to learn his son has accepted Marianne's desires because he cannot live a life without her.
Isak also makes a rare apology to his loyal housekeeper, Ms. Agda, who he pissed off that morning by deciding to take off on this road trip in the first place. She looks at him like he's gone crazy, but accepts the apology.
Isak finally goes to sleep content with his life -- reconciled with his past and accepting of his future, including death.
Tbh, I think this may be an allegory for Jim Hopper's arc.
I'll wrap this post up with one final story that ties quite well with all this -- a Zen Parable (also called koan) called:
The Tigers and the Strawberry
(I kid you not)
In it, a woman runs from a band of tigers chasing her and subsequently falls off a cliff to get away. She manages to grab hold of a vine, but sees another band of tigers waiting below. To make matters worse, mice begin to gnaw at the vine, meaning she won't have much time to decide what the next step is.
The woman freaks out over what to do, until she finds a bushel of strawberries growing on the cliffside. The woman looks above at the tigers, below at the other tigers, at the mice gnawing away, and thinks, Fuck it. Still holding onto the vine, she goes for the strawberries, eating and more importantly, enjoying them.
Moral of the story? Why worry about the past, the future, how much time you have left -- when you can still enjoy the simple pleasures staring you in the face *right now*?
Perhaps that is the lesson for our young characters and for us (okay, me) to internalize...
Perhaps it is foolish to spend the limited time you have on this earth worried about what you did or will do -- about the sins and hurts of the past, or the obstacles lurking around the next corner. Ashamed by what was or fearing what may come...
Sometimes, the best thing to do, is to love and appreciate the "strawberries". 🍓
To those who celebrate, have a safe and happy Fourth and --
Stay tuned.
