I believe that Hawkins started getting flayed after season 2, especially after the Snowball '84. Something has changed in season 3.
My main reason is that Will was slowly pushed to the edges of the supernatural narrative in season 3 and totally in season 4. His sexuality arc was more apparent in these two seasons and while I absolutely have no problem with that, it's obvious that his connection to the UD was reduced to goosebumps and the hivemind. His trauma was also not explored deeply. His connection to Vecna was only shown in season 5. Idk if this was supposed to be a plot twist though.
Anyway, we know that Will overcame the Mind Flayer's possession in season 2 when his loved ones reminded him of their cherished memories with him. His birthday, Castle Byers, Mike and Will's first meeting and becoming friends... It is essential that Will is reminded of the fact that he is loved and remembered. And that is what made the MF to lose possession of Will ultimately.
And in exactly the next season, everybody is forgetting Will and moving on with their lives? Even Mike suddenly wanted to be grown up and not spend time with his friends anymore.
I'm not trying to sideline Mike's character arc, or any other characters' journey, in any way! So hear me out.
Will was forgotten by his friends; Mike was being pretty rude to him and he was going through his trauma alone while still grasping at DnD to live a childhood he was forcefully robbed of.
Will destroys Castle Byers, which has been his sactuary for years, in an attempt to 'grow up' and not be 'stupid' anymore. And remember it's the building of Castle Byers that Jonathan reminded him about in season 2. But then... Castle Byers is never mentioned again. Never. Not even Will thinks about it. How come?
In season 4, Mike arrives at the airport on March 22nd aka Will's birthday date.
Joyce, Jonathan, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, nobody remembered it. This is yet another memory Will is reminded of in season 2. (I'm still skeptical about the exact date of Will's birthday I must admit) Everybody is forgetting him. It's highly unlikely to me that Mike just forgot his birthday. He noticed every single microexpression of Will's at the Rinkomania so he was not ignoring his boy.
Then comes the "it was the best thing I've ever done" scene... While we know that Mike was not being completely truthful in the 'confession scene', does Will know it?
Again I'm not saying that the other characters' actions ultimately lead to Will's own arc. Mike is going through his own problems, just like Jonathan and Joyce.
But the emphasis is there.
We are shown Will destroying Castle Byers as an act of self-deprecation and anger at himself. We are shown the date at Rinkomania on the recording, reminding us that it was Will's birthday. We are shown Mike and Will side by side on the same frame as Mike 'confessed' to El. We are reminded of Will and his memories, all taken from him. Leaving him vulnerable and forgotten. Like he is being erased from the narrative.
Will is constantly made to feel like he is insignificant, that he is not accepted. And isn't that exactly what the Mind Flayer wants? To take over his mind and body? To make him another Henry Creel.
One massive, legitimate way to improve as a writer or artist or in any creative endeavor really, is to become absolutely obsessed with something and to allow yourself to be weird about it. Genuinely mean this btw.
HNL is like a grid with a fence around the grid jfc like if a chessboard had chain mail over it
Those aren’t Brenner’s notes, I think they’re ~Alice Johnson’s notes~
Also all plaid and Will’s wearing stripes he misses Mike and they dress El to look like Will and then she ends up also looking like Eddie holy fuck Mike just get out of the closet or your dad’s gonna destroy it
Mike and Will singing together is actually so important to me because I know that if Mike started singing mid makeout with Will he would have joined him
Mike and Will fell to their Death on the Same Day - November 12th 1983
I'm not kidding. We all remember Mike jumping down that cliff at the quarry in S1, but at the beginning of S5 we saw Will literally doing the same thing. Climbing that tree to escape the Demo and then jumping off as he's been followed. The dates are confirmed in the show, very obviously. Can't believe we've been sleeping on that.
If you play it side by side they do everything in sync. The jump, suddenly stopping mid fall, moving again... only that Will actually fell and Mike started defying gravity.
We know Will actually died that day (yeah he came back to life ofc), but what about Mike? Max taught us you have to follow your memories back to your death to escape the maze of memories. Something that worked for Will already, since S5 started with his death... Mhh.
I fear there's no proving Byler without investigating Mike's 'death' first. And everything leads me back to this day.
But hey, just watch it yourself:
Don't ask what wrong with Troy's voice, it abstracted every single try saving the file.
If you only wanna watch the actual sequence jump to ~ 01:30, but then you'll miss Mike and Troy answering to Will's singing and El paralleling Vecna :3
Oh and El heard a ticking noise.
Anyways, Matthew Modine answered my comment on Insta today, I'm very happy. :3 Weird feeling when you call someone Papa and they actually answer for the first time in 12 years... o_O
If I had a penny after reading “the duffers aren’t that smart”, I’d have a lot of pennies, and at least it wouldn’t be that annoying every time it happens
Why Sorcerer's Ending is CG Proof(from a narrative structure perspective)
Hey guys what is so up.
So, among us CG truthers, it’s common knowledge that the ending of season 5 was made to be bad on purpose. This isn’t something that really needs any more proof, but I have another piece of evidence I haven't personally seen anyone else use that I’d like to share.
A couple months ago I made this post in which I went over narrative structure in ST, specifically the Midpoint. I described the Midpoint as something that tends to do three main things: change the narrative in some significant way(like in a twist or step forward for the characters), mark the switch where the protagonist goes from reacting to acting, and raise the stakes.
However, there’s another trait common to Midpoints that I left out on purpose so I could bring it up in this post.
Basically, Midpoints can oftentimes be a “fake out victory” or “false defeat.” They’re frequently the point in the story where the audience is led to believe that either the heroes have their win in the bag, or that they’re screwed. The fake out will tend to appear good in tragedies, and bad in stories that end happily. Not all stories necessarily have Midpoints that obviously fit this, but they’re pretty common.
As an example, in ST s1, the characters find Will’s dead body, leading them to believe that it’s over, they lost, and they won’t be able to accomplish their goal of bringing him back. It’s a false defeat, because Will isn’t dead and they do succeed in bringing him back in the end.
If they had instead wanted to end the season with Will never being found, they could’ve had a plot beat around the same point where all the characters(and us as the audience) are convinced that they had found him, or were about to, only for it to be later revealed that it wasn’t him and he was dead the whole time. That would be a false victory type midpoint.
To me, this concept gives extra proof towards CG being intentional.
Look for a second at the Midpoint of s5 by itself, which is the ending of Sorcerer. Do you guys remember the discussions people were having after s5 volume 1? I remember a whole lot of “Vecna is so cooked” type of vibes. The ending of that episode gave us both a superpowered Will and the return of Kali, which everyone assumed meant that Vecna and the MF were screwed. It also had a lot of Byler moments that had Bylers hopeful for the rest of the season. Additionally it was the point where Will comes the closest to fully accepting himself that he does in the whole series.
Hmmm… sure seems awfully victorious for an episode in the middle of the season, doesn’t it? So much hope, and then it ended… like that. Terrible, but with hints that it was that way on purpose. What else could you call Sorcerer except a “false victory?” In a way, it wasn’t just a false victory for the characters, but for us as the audience too.
It’s funny, because I remember after volume 1 thinking something like(as well as seeing others say), “Wait, but if that middle episode ended so hopefully for them, doesn’t that generally foreshadow the ending being tragic?” and then being like “nahhh why would they do that that doesn’t make any sense lol it’s probably fine.”
…Whoops.
I will say that there is one part of Sorcerer that reads as more “false defeat” than “false victory,” which is the plot point of the kids getting kidnapped. But, that moment is part of what I would argue is the one subplot that does end the season on a positive note. Yes, Holly and Derek and the other kids are possibly all still trapped in Camozotz with the rest of them by the end, but they are no longer Henry’s main target, and they are no longer separated from their friends and family. The story ends in a better place than it was in the middle, meaning that for that subplot specifically Sorcerer works as a false defeat.
But for the rest; Will’s powers/self-love arc, the crazy amounts of Byler, Kali’s rescue, all honestly could, and maybe should have been considered foreshadowing for the tragic ending just because they were all so victorious for the characters, while happening right in the middle of the season.
Making Sorcerer a false victory type Midpoint overall.
The thing I like about this evidence, is that it’s something you can’t really write off as a coincidence in the way you technically can but logically shouldn’t with most of the other evidence in season 5. You could maybe argue if you’re not thinking very hard that all the small details in the finale that point to cg were somehow done by accident but like… the basic plotline of an entire episode didn’t fall out of the sky, lmao. Like, the other things didn’t either, but this especially didn’t.
And you also can’t claim that the creators no longer understand or somehow forgot this very simple and fairly common narrative choice, because they proved themselves understanding of it not just in season 1, but literally the season before.
In season 4, the Midpoint is Dear Billy, where Max temporarily escapes from Vecna. The story leads the audience to think that Max will be fine and that her curse is broken, only for the story to end with her dying temporarily and going into a coma. It’s a very neatly written example of false victory.
Why the hell would they be perfectly capable of writing a false victory type Midpoint literally last season, and then suddenly forget in this one, but then also somehow do it successfully again anyway?
And when you think about it, don't Dear Billy and Sorcerer just feel similar in a way? At least, in the purpose they serve in their respective seasons. Hmmm. Veryyy interesting.
It’s just another way that s5 was made to be the way it is very intentionally. The entire season was written to end tragically, in the very bones of its story.
To me personally, this fact also proves LWG, because the rest of the show is not written that way. And that’s not just because of its optimistic themes and tone. In my last post I argued that the s4 finale was the Midpoint of the show as a whole. And when you look at how it progresses the narrative arcs of the characters and relationships, it just works way too well as a false defeat type Midpoint, especially for Mike’s relationships with both Will and El.
But in order for it to actually work as a false defeat, it needs a good, victorious ending that effectively proves that defeat to be… well, false.
So my question is, if they really did intend for the show to end tragically, why would the creators understand narrative conventions well enough to be able to set up the tragedy of the season’s end using its Midpoint, but then for some reason forget that very same principle when it comes to setting up the tragic ending of their story as a whole? If they really have known what their ending was going to be for so long, and did intend for it to be tragic, they easily could’ve had a false victory for the characters before s5, or at the very least not given them a possible Midpoint that is written like an obvious false defeat. The story has been set up to have a positive ending overall for a hot second. S5 doesn't disprove that, if anything it shows that they do know how to properly write and set up tragedies/potentially "cynical" endings.
I’m telling y’all, there’s a reason I’ve never doubted CG or LWG. The story has been preparing itself for it like a pregnant woman taking birthing classes for a while. Season 5 was just another step in that process. And to me, it being June now doesn't disprove that.
I was just rewatching s1ep1 and I found something very small yet very strange.
(The pics are not so high quality sorry)
Here, you can see the two coca-cola classic cans on the table behind Will.
Then we cut to Dustin, then Will, then Dustin as the kids prepare to leave.
The next shot is this where we see the New Coke can behind Will. This was strange because there is no scene break, these frames are just moments apart. There should be no reason to change cans randomly. Plus if I remember correctly, New Coke was launched in '85.
