#stranger things st5

[landoscarenthusiast]

Mike WAKE UP

[sophieinthewaste]

Did anyone else feel like Dimension X seemed like such a cheerful place for a picnic? It’s giving golden hour?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, Dimension X? Thou art, weirdly, kind of lovely and temperate?!

[sophieinthewaste]

Stranger Things, Worldbuilding, and Worldview

To write a story, you have to have a worldview. That’s what a story inherently is, an expression of a worldview. The Duffers claimed to have a worldview about individuality, celebrating outcasts, and defying conformity, but it seems like they didn’t actually know what their worldview was or at least didn’t know how to convey it. Forget the overt failures of their claimed ideology for a minute (like writing a marginalized gay character only to make his love into a bandaid for the problems of a straight couple, for example); worldview is manifested in the literal WORLD you create. But tell us, Duffer Brothers:

- What would it have looked like for Vecna to succeed in his plans? For example, he hates Time; would he have somehow been able to tamper with Reality to undo or redesign the nature of Time?

- If the wormhole had brought the worlds together, what exactly would have happened? Would Earth have immediately just become an extension of Dimension X? Would the planets have crashed and both of them would have been destroyed? Or was the wormhole just a glorified elevator for the Mind Flayer to reach Earth? (For that matter, how did Vecna travel between Dimension X and the Upside Down, can he fly?!) Some of this might come down to me not knowing wormhole science, but I’m probably akin to the average viewer; don’t rely on us understanding complicated physics and paint us a picture. What EXACTLY are we afraid of happening here?

- Speaking of the Mind Flayer, what would it have done if it got to Earth? Would it have killed everyone or would it have possessed everyone to do its bidding? And what would its bidding have actually been? How does the Mind Flayer operate, does it feed on human flesh or human soul energy (hence plugging in the kids to its ribcage?), is it made of spores or flesh or WHAT? If the Mind Flayer can just possess people, then why didn’t it just possess the crew during the finale to make them stop fighting? If it can take spore form, why didn’t it get out of the physical spider body before the body was destroyed, and why did it need a physical body in the first place?

These and a thousand more questions needed to be answered, not just for an interesting and developed plot, but because that’s where the worldview is, where the MEANING is!! If the Mind Flayer is a physical representation of the Conformity that’s “killing the kids,” you have to USE your metaphor to tell us about the nature and dangers of Conformity!!

For instance, some ideas (not trying to answer all the questions but just get it started):

- The Mind Flayer could be a spider specifically because spiders weave webs and the Mind Flayer wants to weave a new Fate for the world (à la the Fates of mythology with their cosmic thread.) This shows us that Conformity is also spider, weaving the web that traps humans into its prey and feeds on their life force. (This also evokes weaving a web of lies, and we see that Vecna/the Mind Flayer often lie to people to get them to despair.) But for this to work, we need to see the Mind Flayer weaving, maybe spinning a web out of the Upside Down vines; if it's just going to loom or crawl around, it could have been a monster of any shape. If they weren’t going to lean into spider symbolism, the should have just gone for the Thessalhydra which was more related to the D&D world-building already established and could also symbolize Conformity (a creature that has multiple heads but the same hive mind force animating it, a la people conforming and technically being individuals with their own heads but having no unique purpose or agency). No matter the shape of the monster, they should also have leaned into the gaping mouth imagery (Conformity as a gaping mouth that will CONSUME you, perhaps especially if you CONSUME too much of the culture that is trying to brainwash you.) We saw the spider’s mouth for like two seconds in the finale and no one was in danger of being swallowed as El jumped straight for its heart instead. Missed opportunity.

- If Dimension X’s reality would have somehow overlayed on top of Earth and thus erased it, this annihilatory merging could symbolize how Conformity erases the individual’s mind when it is merged with the mass mentality. But then, if this was to be explored, Will’s individuality needed to be destroyed (or at least under threat) by his connection to the hive mind; the microcosm of the merging of Will with Vecna’s mind mirrors and plays out the macrocosm of the merging of Earth with Dimension X, and thus Will’s connection to Vecna should have had way more drastic implications in vol 2/the finale. Drilling down into this metaphor would have explored Conformity as a kind of union that causes erasure (as opposed to the kind of union which allows the individual to blossom, as in true love and community).

By failing to flesh out their world, the Duffer brothers failed to present their worldview, and thus failed to convey meaning. And a story without meaning is just an itinerary, events happening in a sequence without a true soul driving its trajectory. If storytelling is weaving, there are two kinds; you can take threads of character, plot, and setting to weave a tapestry of meaning that sets people free, or like Vecna (like a spider) you can use threads to weave stories that trap people and drain their life force. I think people aren’t wrong in aligning the writers of this show with Vecna via conformity gate; of course the ending could have been a lot worse or a lot more sinister, but in the end, they weren’t really able to make meaning, and instead even reinforced the kind of messages that Vecna might use to prey upon the minds of vulnerable characters (e.g., El as an abused girl must disappear or even die to end the cycle of abuse, Will as a gay boy in the 80s was delusional to think his friend could love him and must uproot his life and leave town to have even a chance at acceptance, etc.) Being a world builder is a big responsibility, because, as we see with the world of Dimension X, worlds have power and they can change and shape the mind; the Duffers asked millions of people to step into the world they created and they failed, in the end, to make it a good one. A potent reminder that writers=weavers=worldbuilders=powerful!! Use your power for good, friends!!

[sophieinthewaste]

You know what? I actually don’t think Mike Wheeler ends Stranger Things turning into his dad. I think he ends the show as one of us—a fanfiction writer. We watch him literally write fanfiction headcanons of where his and his friends’ lives are headed. And I think that being a fanfiction writer is actually a profoundly hopeful thing to be. Even if he’s not great at it right now, it could lead him somewhere healthier, help him explore his own feelings in a way he wasn’t able to before in the midst of all the trauma and pain. The scene of him writing sadly in a basement is his vision of his future self in that particular moment at age 18 when he’s depressed and grieving; he can’t imagine a brighter looking future yet, so he writes a bad story for himself. But if he actually starts writing then he’ll get better at it, and then he might get better at writing his own story too. Writing about his past might help him work through it (maybe realize who the painting on his wall is really from?) and flexing that muscle of imagination might help him imagine a better life for himself, maybe one where he’s the heart again instead of isolated from his friends. (Maybe even one where he realizes that sorcerer character had meant a lot more to the paladin character than he’d ever allowed himself to acknowledge before).

I don’t know, I just know that writing fanfiction has been a healing experience for me and I’ve learned a lot from it. Mike writing fanfiction about his own life gives me hope for him; his hollowness in the last seasons of the show maybe reflects his lack of an ability to process what was happening in the moment both externally and internally. So now he has a chance to process, and in returning to the past, he might even stumble upon a young version of himself who loved every part of himself and reminds him that he has all the answers, and maybe then Mike can stop being so fucking scared and break out of the conformity that keeps him from flying.

The show ends playing out the headcanons of a high schooler who is lost and hurting and who is turning to fanfiction for hope. I think he might find more hope there than he can even imagine. I know I’ve been there.

(It’s also a reminder that our fan fiction/headcanons are just as legitimate as the stories Mike told to the group. He’s like the equivalent of one AO3 account; we can appreciate his imagination/version of things AND also click on other stories if we choose. All the different stories are valid, and we decide which ones to focus on because they nourish us the most.)

[sophieinthewaste]

Why did the date November 6th matter? Why did Vecna choose Will in the first place? What did he even do to Will in the Upside Down, what did he really accomplish in that week? Why did Vecna wait four years to bring down Dimension X? What did the high school play that Henry was in have to do with anything? What is the difference between the spore mind flayer and the physical one? How did the kids actually function inside the body of the monster, why did he need kids specifically, why did he need 12 specifically? Why have Vecna appear to Hopper but not MIKE?!

[sophieinthewaste]

It would have made so much sense for there to be some question of whether Will would die because of his connection to the hive mind, but we get NO resolution or even acknowledgement with that. We don’t even see black spores come out of him the way they come out of the kids once they’re freed. Like “neither can live while the other survives” would have been such low hanging fruit here and they refused to do ANYTHING interesting?!

[sophieinthewaste]

Who was the traitor? Am I missing something? Someone help me out please I feel dumb

[nyleve-exists]

WHERE IS VICKIE??????