In this one I don't bring up a lot of new things, I mostly connect the many oddities that people found around s5 and the epilogue to build a working theory and expand on my "Camazotz merging with Hawkins" theory.
When looking at the wiki page for Shadowfell I found something very interesting.
"In remote corners of the Shadowfell there were demiplanes created by the Dark Powers which served as prisons to trap creatures of extreme evil to serve as sustenance.
One such demiplane was the valley of Barovia, ruled by the vampire Strahd von Zarovich, himself a prisoner of the Dark Powers."
Shadowfell is linked to Barovia where the campaign that the group plays in the epilogue takes place. And they defeat Strahd the Vampire. Dc Kay was compared to a vampire by Kali so the analogy seemed clear that Strahd was supposed to represent her in the campaign, she even had her "supression stones" that stopped magic users to cast spells. However Vecna was compared multiple times to a vampire in season 4 as well.
"It'll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his castle."
This is said of Vecna when the group discuss the plan to kill him while he's in a trance. And the Dark Powers here are the mf.
"The Dark Powers were an unknown mystical force that had the ability to pull complete regions into the Shadowfell as well as corrupt many individuals.
The Dark Powers could grant individuals, among other terrible gifts, immortality and great magical possession. The Dark Powers tailored a Domain of Dread for each of the evil individuals pulled into the Mists"
We know that Henry has received his powers from the shadow monster, a mysterious, incorporeal entity that made him immortal, unkillable and that controls him. The shadow monster in stranger things seems to be a mix of the Mindflayer and the Dark Powers in DnD. It's a hivemind that invades and controls people's mind and it's also a mysterious force that can grant them power like it did for Henry.
The analogies used in the show are never a one to one, they usually serve to understand one aspect of the phenemenons and monsters that the crew encounters. The shadow monster borrows both from the Mindflayer and the Dark Powers, and it's the same for Henry. He is both like Vecna and like Stradh in different ways. So at the end of ep8 it makes sense for the analogy to move from Vecna, an undead powerful wizard that can curse individual people to Strahd, a tyrant that made a pact with the Dark Powers and is ruling over a valley where all its inhabitants are prisoners, effectively all trapped within a massive curse.
"When One kills, he doesn't simply kill. He consumes. He takes everything from his victims. Everything they are and everything they ever will be. Their memories, their abilities."
Moreover Henry was already a little like a vampire in s4, he doesn't feed off of blood but he still consumes his victims. When he kills them he gains power, seemingly consuming, absorbing their minds/souls. He goes from a simple nondescript vampire to Stradh the Vampire.
"The valley of Barovia was the oldest and best known of the Domains of Dread. Originally a location in a forgotten world of the Prime Material plane, the entire valley was transported to the Shadowfell by mists controlled by evil entities known as the Dark Powers. The realm was a prison for its darklord, the vampire Strahd von Zarovich, as well as the entire population of the valley."
Barovia was originally a place in the real world until it was pulled into the "mists" where it was then turned into a demiplane. This fits perfectly with conformitygate as a whole and my own spin on this, the fact that Vecna is merging Camazotz and Hawkins to create a world that he alone can control. If memories and the real world fuse then his power over memories becomes power over matter. He isn't just a ghost in people's head, he would become like a god, a tyrant. Camazotz is also a prison, like Barovia wich becomes one when it is pulled into the Mists, and Hawkins would a be a prison too if it indeed fused with Camazotz (or even if Vecna recreated a version of Hawkins in Camazotz).
In the previous post I discussed the fact that trauma has the capacity to trap people in a single moment, almost like stopping time from moving forward from that point on for them.
If everyone is trapped in this Hawkins Camazotz fusion then that would explain why there is no date on the films or on the main cast's watches. Reality has merged with the mind, with trauma and since trauma "stops time" it looks like time is frozen like in the UD, or nonexistant. Henry has succeded in his plan to "free" himself of everything that constrained him, including time itself.
I've seen some posts about there being a time loop, with everything around traumatic memories looping and trapping people plus my own Camazotz-and-Hawkings-merging theory, I feel like that's definitely a possibilty. However we don't have much to go on for this theory as far as I know so I won't really get into it. It was already pointed out that the show ends the same way that it started, with the main crew, plus Max, playing DnD in Mike's basement.
But I'll add this, in this post, I theorize that the dial turning red is it going back to how it's supposed to be and that when we see it in the first episode it's not the real one. Beyond that the other two grey objects that we have seen are in Camazotz, we've never seen objects turning grey in Vecna's visions before. So it could mean that what we see in the first episode is already a memory and that the characters are reliving the events of s5.
If at the end of s5 Vecna is actually merging Camazotz with Hawkins (or at least trapping everyone in Camazotz) then he would need an immense amount of power to do so. In st magic is fuled by emotions and Vecna gets his from anger and by proxy, and from the generates terror in his victims. Since he stole Jane's power to open gates in s3, he needs to recreate the same fear that she felt the first time that she made contact with a demogorgon in order for him to open his own gates. He also needs his victims to be scared because it makes them more vulnerable to his powers and to be taken into Camazotz and he has been terrorizing Hawkins for years now, Mike says so himself in s5.
"Everyone in Hawkins is scared shitless."
As I discussed in the previous post, we know that unresolved trauma and repressed memories can act as a prison, trapping people in a loop. Camazotz is made of the memories of all the people that Vecna has cursed, so if he wants to trap all of Hawkins it's likely that he would need everyone to have bad memories that he can exploit, thus comes the mass child kidnapping and retraumatizing of our main cast.
If his goal is create and trap everyone in a collective, town-wide, time-loopy trauma prison, reenacting deeply traumatic events at the time that they happened would make sense as a way to "cast his curse". He generates fear and pain and he reinforces the trauma loop, the cycle, by doing that. And he weakens the frontier between Hawkins and the UD in the process.
And one person in particular that seems to have been the target of this campaign of fear is Mike. Will is the obvious target but when looking at the bigger picture, whilst Mike was never directly targetted, his close familly and friends always are. And we know that he was traumatized because the show tells us so in season 2.
"It's called the Anniversary Effect. And we've seen this with soldiers. The anniversary of an event brings back traumatic memories. Sort of opens up the neurological floodgates, so to speak."
In season 2 the doctor that Will sees regularly says that Will's episodes where he sees into the UD and feels this presence that wants to kill is due to his PTSD manifesting itself.
"-So what does this mean for the kid? He's gonna have more episodes, nightmares?
-Yeah, That. Maybe some personality changes. He might get irritable. He might lash out."
And right after this scene we get Mike at a dinner with his familly where Mike show theses exact symptoms, he has been acting out and the entire season he gets angry easily. He is visibly and loudly irritated by Max's presence in the group, probably because he feels that she is "replacing" Jane.
Although it's never adressed, Mike is clearly deeply traumatized, he lashes out and misbehaves, showing clear symptoms of the anniversary effect. During my rewatch of s2 I took notes about the ongoing themes and characters, mostly about how they deal with their respective traumas and the anger that stems from it. Hopper apologizes to Jane and choses to be finally honest with her because lying won't protect her, Nancy and Jonathan seek justice, Max lowers her defenses and lets Lucas in, finally becoming friends with him. They all get better (to some extent) and better themselves by the end thanks to that, and then there's Kali, and as I explained, by accepting the label of "monster" or "weapon" put on her she will just continue to hurt. But I don't think that Mike has a resolution to his own trauma.
I don't think that Mike ever healed from Jane and Will's disappearance. They both came back but that alone can't heal him on its own. And in season 5 he gets to see the same terrible things that scarred him, his sister disappears in the same way that Will did, Jane sacrifices herself in front of him and Will is possessed and in pain as Mike remains powerless to help him. He even makes the exact same face when he loses Jane the second time than he did all the way back in season 1. He relives ALL of the most traumatic moments of his life.
I think that Vecna uses the anniversary effect to make his curse more powerful, to "open up the neurological floodgates" .
It's mostly Mike that is subjected to this, Dustin doesn't relive having to see his best friend die in his arms,
He needs Will to remain scared of him, he needs him to feel powerless. He wants to break him so he hurts him and his loved ones through him and makes him feel both powerless and guilty. He even traps him into his own trauma. Mike is therefore a problem because he inspires Will, he gives him courage, comfort and safety which combats the fear. So in order to keep Will weak he needs keep him and Mike isolated because they will always want to be there for each other when they are in danger. If Vecna targetted Mike directly it would draw them together further and it would give out his plan. So he targets him indirectly by targeting the people around him, he makes him suffer, he makes him afraid by forcing him to relive the worst moments of his life.
To illustrate this I made a graph of Mike's close familly and friends suffering affecting him. I certainly forgot a few things because I haven't rewatched s3 and s4 since. With the events of s5 it makes things even more clear, his entire familly was targetted specifically.
And beyond all that Vecna might even need him for his plans, if Camazotz is built on wounds that haven't healed and repressed memories then Mike must be great source of these. He rarely, if ever confronts his own pain, instead he shuts it and burries it. He bottles up his feelings and lies, like in s4 where he refused to admit that he never said "I love you" to Jane even when confronted by her. He waited until she was about to literally DIE to admit that he was scared of losing her. And he couldn't tell her he loves either when she was about to die in front of him in s5, neither could he break up with her. He would rather double down and keep repressing his feelings than confront the truth because he is afraid of what will happen if he does.
Even in the epilogue both when Hopper talks to him and when he puts his binder in the shelf he looks like he is desperately trying not to cry instead of simply letting out his emotions flow. He looks like he is clenching every muscle in his body to stop the tears from falling. Even when he is alone that boy doesn't himself to cry !
The rare moments where he dares to be vulnerable and confides in someone it's pretty much always Will, they've always had a unique bond compared to his other relationships. Like when in s2 he feels that only Will can understand his grief of losing Jane but feeling like she's still there.
(I don't need to put it here because like, we all know but imagine that there's a montage of Mike pining for Will and looking at his lips to illustrate their very gay bond okay)
In s4 and s5 Mike is seen multiple times with a shovel. He buries a body in s4 and in s5 he uses one to fight the demogorgon and has one again in ep4. This represents him burying his feelings for Will to not deal with them, specifically in s4 where he is actively pushing Will away and refusing physical contact. And I think that he did the same thing for his traumatic memories, he just bottled them up and that's why he tends to be so protective of the people he cares about, he is still scared of losing Will and Jane again because he never delt with his own feelings so he ends up pushing them away.
And what does he find when he tries to dig his way out in episode 4 ?
His own feelings for Will. Water is often being associated with feelings in st, in this very season we have Will dropping his can of coke on the ground when he sees Robin and Vicke, and it leaks out when it hits the floor. And in this scene where both Will and Mike are trying in vain to contain the leak, to bottle their feelings, the meaning is very obvious.
The ending interestingly lacked any of Will's most important moments, despite the fact that the moments chosen for the illustrations were mostly from earlier seasons, when Will was at the center of the plot. And he literally gets erased from this shot, taken from the season where Mike starts to be associated with shovels and is actively burying his feelings for his best friend.
(It could also be an effect of the mf, maybe it's easier to erase the memories he wants to repress.)
"Nicolas Dalayracwrote an opera called Nina. It's the story about a young woman whose lover was killed in a duel.
Nina was so traumatized that she buried the memory. It was as if it never happened. Every day, she would return to the train station to await her lover's return. A return that would never be.
[...]
You'll have to find your own way out. Leave your train station. Stop waiting. Focus. Listen. Remember."
What Brenner tells Jane when she is trapped in her memories and trying to get her powers back parallels heavily Mike's journey here. He can't move on from what happened and waits for Jane's return at the place where he last saw her, where she died.
"Treasures are always hidden in the deepest depths of the dungeon."
Another X is also tied to treasure with the Hawkins lab in episode 5.
Holly, who is represents Mike, has to meet Max at the X, in the epilogue. "Finding X" takes us back to s2 where it represents Hopper being buried alive by the vines and also a "pirate treasure", X is another callback to burying things here. Mike is waiting on the X shaped monument, (in the same spot where the gates formed an X) where he buried his feelings, where he is waiting for his lover's return in a prison shaped by his own trauma. If he wants to escape he has to stop waiting and act.
Every season characters find themselves in a situation where they are told to stay put and wait for help. And every time they have to do the exact opposite. Joyce tells Jonathan that he needs to stay and watch ove the kids but he and Nancy decide to bait the demogorgon instead allowing Joyce and Hopper to find Will. Hopper wants to wait for reinforcments in s2 and s3 and both time it's a bad idea because they come in too late.
Just waiting is never presented as the solution to their problems, except interestingly right at the end where their plan is to wait for Vecna to enact his plan and it doesn't end well for them if we're to believe in conformitygate.
"Seconds, minutes, day after day. hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before. Wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die.
Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for it all to be over."
Henry also states that people like his parents, those who lead a normal, dull life (in his eyes) are just waiting for death. They pretend to lead an empty life, conforming and going through the motions just so that they can reach the end. Waiting here is just leads to death, those that wait simply accept their fate and condemn themselves to die quietly.
Holly is the one to tell Max that they have to stop waiting, she also equates waiting for Jane to come and rescue them to resigning themselves and accepting their fate. This echoes what Hopper tells Mike in the epilogue, that he has to "find a way to accept what happened". And that's what he does, he invents an impossible story where Jane is alive and living in a distant land in order to accept her death. Even though Mike knows that Jane would absolutely NEVER just leave without saying goodbye and telling them that she's alive at the very least.
Here, the lie that traps Mike in his delusion (just like Nina) is the one that he tells himself to accept Jane's "death". Her death makes no sense, neither Kali nor Jane could've used their magic to talk to him but he still lies to himself and actively choses to believe in that lie. And he also encourages his friends to believe in it too.
In order for him to leave Mike has to confront his feelings, accept himself and dig up everything that he has buried to save himself and finally break the cycle. Escaping isn't enough, Kali tried that, Jane did too but it's only a temporary solution and they knew that. Camazotz is built on lies and trauma and the only way to trully escape is through truth, love and acceptance, that's why he must find Will.
Only when he finaly opens up about how he really feels (and they adress that goddamn fucking painting) can they find the power within themselves to fight back, effectively destroying this prison of lies. For Jane that power was her mom's love that she had forgotten, for Mike it's his love for Will and vice versa.
hc that anakin would be forced to play dti and ends up getting way too invested and asks threepio and artoo for outfit suggestions, and drags obi wan and ahsoka to play with him, votes 5 stars for padme regardless of her fit (she always eats it up tho) and gets so pissy when people don't follow the theme.
also if padme doesn't make it in the top 3 he gets so vindictive and starts bullying the other people who did get into the top three by sending them angry hate comments in the chat
I've got to the conclusion I deeply dislike What's Wrong With Secretary Kim.
All the side characters are endlessly fucking annoying, especially that red lipstick girl, the main man is a narcissist that doesn't actually grow at all, still calling himself perfect in every way in episode 10, the 'mystery' is taking forever, the main girl's family are irritating as hell, there's simply no reason for the main girl to like the main guy, and what's more, she seems annoyed by him half the time, like rolling her eyes at his antics.
He would need about a year of therapy to even come close to being able to be in a successful relationship; the older sisters were taken care of by the younger sister/main girl, but still act superior, all mighty, and nosy. I've taken to fast forwarding through any of the side plot, especially asshole frugal man and new secretary lady, jesus christ. I don't know what it is, but 95% of the characters in this show do not act like people, they are caricatures, or act like literal children. The only one with sense is the main guy's best friend. He's cool.
EDIT:
So, wait, he barely apologizes for never telling her that she was the one who got kidnapped with him? And she cries is is just fine with it?
And then he tries to propose the same day?
I can't with these fucking idiots.
Oh good, the next day he forces himself into her apartment and tires to move in. This man is a child, with no boundaries, and a truly sickening amount of entitlement.
Wait. So, the older brother who got his little brother kidnapped, felt guilty or something, so he stole his little brother's experience for himself? He just took his little brother's bedroom, and screamed that he got kidnapped because of him? And the parents....went along with this? Man, fuck this kid, and fuck these parents. Jesus christ what a convoluted nonsense plot.
This is so stupid.
This is the stupidest shit I've ever seen in my life.
