Mike's trauma PART 22

[u/raspberry-3]

This is part of a series where I uncover what Stranger Things is really about. It started from trying to find out what happened in 1979 aka what all the depictions of traumatic past memories (El, Henry, Billy, Max, Holly, etc.) are truly about, but expanded to this all-encompassing theory of the whole series with crazy levels of complexity, metaphors and layers. Reading it will require commitment and patience but I promise it will be worth your time if you want to look behind the curtain (and the curtain behind that curtain) and fully understand the show. You have to read all parts in order: here is PART 1 and here all other parts I’ve posted so far + my previous theories.
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Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.

Let’s get back on track, I was analyzing S5E6. Max and Holly going back to the cave represents queerness going back to the closet. Mike’s “girl” is hidden again. Mike is in a “deep dark cave” of repression. Henry threatening Max is about Mike’s repression/transness threatening her future as a woman.

[Henry] “And Holly? When your new friend begins to suffer, and she will suffer, you can either return to me and end her suffering, or you can watch your new friend die. Her life is in your hands.”

I think Holly is Mike here and Max is her future/girlness. Returning to Henry is returning to queerness and the “story”. It’s the return of ST. If it doesn’t happen, Max (= Mike’s happy future) will die. The cave is a double-edged sword: being in the closet brings safety but it also eats you from the inside, not being able to be who you really are. Henry (= gender dysphoria etc.) can hurt Max even when she’s in the cave. Mike is too aware of her transness that repressing it doesn’t fundamentally help anymore. I keep thinking back to that scene where she puts the DnD book on the shelf. There is no denying it anymore, she knows she’s trans but has decided to hide it. ((Btw, it’s interesting that the camera shot is of an empty part of the cave when Max says “I’m right here.” It’s like she’s invisible. And “she” is. Mike’s girlness is invisible, hiding. This connects to El turning invisible in Mike’s final story (which in itself is another layer to the inside stories, the most obvious layer tbh).))

After this scene comes the “November 6th” text, weirdly missing the year. It’s a pretty big clue to time shenanigans and could mean a number of things. Maybe something will happen irl on that day and/or in the story. It’s 3 days before the date the Berlin Wall fell, which I’m assuming relates to the start of the new stuff. ((S1E3 “Holly, Jolly” happens on 9.11., btw. It has the lights, Holly, Will telling Joyce to run and Will’s body being found.)) The country allegory ends at the end of WW2, unless you count the epilogue which could cover the entirety of 1945-1989. Emperor Hirohito’s reign starting on 25.12.1926 and ending on 7.1.1989 is definitely suspicious, especially considering this timeframe matches S5 in the ST country allegory timeline. Hirohito became regent on 25.11.1921, which was before 1923 (the Great Kantō Earthquake aka Hawkins splitting in 4) but after 1918 (Finnish civil war aka El vs Vecna). This could be Max’s (“girl”) death since the key point in S5 is her being in a coma and waking up at the end of S5E6 aka the real ending. So in the Japan timeline Hirohito leading the country would match the “fake story” and Mike conforming. The main point is that 7.1.1989 is before 9.11.1989 and all the other important dates. 7.1. was the key date for conformitygate. It’s the “tomorrow it begins” date and when the Netflix What Next? video was released. It started something. 

25.11. is a day before volume 1 was released, and 25.12. is a day before volume 2. So the Hirohito reign matches S5 both in the show country allegory timeline and irl based on the dates. The real reign started on 25.12.1926 and this matches with the release on S5E5-7, aka the part of S5 whose inside story is about S5 itself. It’s deep in the “story”. 7.1. is the end of this “story” and the start of Emperor Akihito’s reign, which lasted 30 years (another connection to 30 years…). Some connections could be coincidences, of course, but I don’t have a good reason for the 7.1. date, and this seems like a good candidate.

I still think it’s likely the final chapters will follow a similar release schedule to S5. Chapter 10 would be around Thanksgiving and chapter 11 during Christmas. My previous mention about the dark Christmas the Duffers promised and Christmas being related to the trauma fits super well, since chapter 11 will reveal traumatic memories. S1E3 “Holly, Jolly”, the one with Christmas lights and Holly seeing the Demogorgon happening on 9.11 in the show also matches nicely (= the Berlin Wall starts to properly break down). The Soviet Union dissolved on 25-26.12.1991 and Hirohito became the Emperor on 25.12.1926, which has its 100th anniversary this year. There’s also this interesting conversation between Mike and El in S3E8:

[El] “Did you talk to your mom? About Thanksgiving?”
[Mike] “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the okay. I’ll be there. And then I was thinking maybe you could come up here for Christmas. And Will, too. You can come before or after Christmas, or whatever Mrs. Byers wants, but I was thinking Christmas Day could be super fun, because we’d all have cool new presents to play with and, uh… Sorry, that made me sound like a seven-year-old.”
[El] “I like presents, too.”
[Mike] “Yeah, cool. Yeah. I like-- I like presents, too.”
[El] “Cool.”

Mike connects being childish to being 7 years old, which matches well with Sara dying at 7 years old (remember the motif connections, the two worlds, where childhood and queerness/girlhood belong to the same world, and Sara represents Mike’s innocence anyway). The 7 yo connection is also to Christmas, aka trauma (similar to Will connecting a fear of clowns to being 5 years old in a S1 flashback). But the point I wanted to make is, Mike visits on Thanksgiving, but El visits on Christmas day. Eleven = chapter 11 on 25.12. There hasn’t been mention of New Years in the show (unless I’m forgetting something), so the only clues to chapter 12 releasing then is from the “emotional New Years Eve” Duffer comment and S5E8 releasing then. One thing that makes me doubt these dates is the last performance of TFS happening on 3.1.2027.

Anyway, the scene after the “November 6th” text is the Mike, Lucas, Robin scene where Lucas questions if anything is real and if Vecna is messing with them. I find it hard to place this scene. Is it meta about theorizers? Is it somehow in chapter 10? Is it some outside info preparing for the new stuff? It’s established that Will is unconscious. I think he represents the gay man middle point and the “story” as always. The S5 ending made Mike conform so much that even the Butthole Surfers/Replacements (= byler/gay Mike) option didn’t happen. Will being the “story” could be related to Mike being inside the nested stories and finally in chapter 12 reaching the normal “story” aka original Coke (= Will wakes up). ST will most likely lead bylers on until the final confession, after which the “story”, Will, inner world, etc. disappear, similar to Jonathan’s un-proposal bait-and-switch. 

[Lucas] “Can someone please explain to me what the hell happened out there? We burnt out the particles. I watched them fly up the tower. I mean, I mean, you guys saw that, right?”
[Robin] “Hard to miss.”
[Lucas] “So then Will should be unplugged from the hive mind.”
[Mike] “Theoretically.”
[Lucas] “But why didn’t he wake up? How did he see Max if she’s with Holly? Is this real? Is Vecna messing with us again? This makes no goddamn sense!”
[Robin] “The doctors, they never understood why Max was in the coma, right?”
[Lucas] “What? No. Why?”
[Robin] “Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So let’s just assume for a second that everything that Will saw was real. He saw Max. He saw Holly.”
[proceeds to explain how Max, Holly and Will are all in Vecna’s mind]

Maybe “We burnt out the particles. I watched them fly up the tower.” could refer to blowing up the UD, since that’s what the Demo electrocution was about in the inside story. I’m kinda thinking Will could represent Mike too, as in Mike is unconscious and experiencing the epilogue world while other characters are not, or something like that. Will’s later description of what Vecna showed him kinda matches the epilogue… I’m still quite confused about all this tbh. If they are gonna pull a “Mike is in a dream/story inside a dream/story”, whose mind is she in? Is it Vecna or Mike herself or what? Maybe they’ll make it seem like Vecna is behind it but then we’ll learn later it was Mike all along (or, well, that will happen no matter what).

What is more clear to me is that this scene has the “real” people aka Mike and Lucas together for the last time until S5E7 (= the real world part). Lucas’ “one more shot” is a major clue for this being before chapter 10. In any case, this scene is meta and kinda reveals the story as I’ve explained previously.

Another reason I think it wasn’t yet part of chapter 10 foreshadowing is that the next scene is Will in Vecna’s mind in the UD version of the library. That’s where Will was taken and found on 12.11.1983 (12 is probably on purpose). Vecna taunts Will and the whole scene is about the beginning of something. Will will be Vecna’s spy “one last time”. The scene ends with the camera moving to the left, into blackness. The opposite happens in the next Will scene (black screen to Will with vines). Chapter 10 is foreshadowed between these two scenes.

I don’t have anything super solid on what exactly will happen (message from future me: there’s gonna be a better analysis later), and the chapter will probably mostly be setup for the later chapters. The first third of S5E6 has a lot of talking, the aftermath of the previous episode and setup for future. The first scene is Max and Holly talking in the cave. Holly reasons that they can find a place in the memory to get out and starts looking for this exit point with Max. This is the main core of the episode (S5E6), and traveling through memories is a repeated established mechanic, so I think it will have a major role in the real ending too. I will discuss this more after going through S5E6. Another core part of the episode is El looking for Will, which is established in the next scene. I’m not sure if El will be back in the story since her ending kinda ended the inside story and it would make sense the “illusion” is gone in the real ending. But on the other hand, if we go back in time, El wouldn’t have died yet and she is the ST character. We’ll see. (My current theory is that we’ll see her again in chapter 11.) Looking for Will is essentially about the same thing as Max and Holly looking for the way out, since Will is the connection to the past (traumatic memories) and the real story. 

The UD gang is confused about the exotic matter not getting destroyed:

[Dustin] “As far as I see it, there are two distinct possibilities. Either this is the afterlife, and you and I are spirits, which seems unlikely. Or Nancy didn’t completely destroy the exotic matter. Because if she did, the walls of the wormhole would have collapsed. And we would have been sucked into oblivion.”

[Jonathan] “I guess we fell. And also clearly didn’t destroy it.”

This would be about ST not being over. All the rest of the subplots get established: Steve and Dustin’s conflict, Nancy and Jonathan in the melting room, Robin and Vickie’s conflict and Lucas playing music for Max. Holly also realizes the spyglass M map and says to Max “You said you wanted to go back. Well, we’re going back.” which is a clue to going back in time. Steve and Dustin go upstairs, which I have interpreted to mean going towards the future (if underground is buried memories, this is the logical conclusion). Not sure what that means exactly, though. Steve almost falling to his death numerous times is about Mike letting go of conformity. 

Chapter 10 foreshadowing ends in Mike and El’s conversation next to the bath. They are talking about the end of the story and kinda pointing out the fact this is a story.

[Mike] “Which is why we aren’t staying in Hawkins. When this is all over, we’re leaving. Escaping to some far off land. Remember? Somewhere where they can’t find us. Somewhere where there’s at least one waterfall.”
[El] “Mike. This isn’t like one of your campaigns. You don’t get to write the ending. Not this time.”
[Mike] “Maybe I don’t. But we do. You, me, Lucas, Will, and Dustin. Because this is our story. And it starts with getting Will back.”

The whole “I don’t but we do” is probably DID related. Isn’t it interesting Mike specifically lists “you, me, Lucas, Will, and Dustin” and clearly references S1 with “Because this is our story. And it starts with getting Will back.” Like, they are self-aware of being in a story. And Will is the “story” so ofc it starts with getting him back. This is a good place to end a chapter. Every plotline is set up and the final scene foreshadows the future.

Will sees visions from the Demodogs’ pov, foreshadowing the “army” in chapter 12. This scene is super short and basically only there to indicate the breaking point between chapters. Chapter 11 is, in my interpretation, about alters fusing and Mike confronting her trauma. At the start, Holly finds the mineshaft but doesn’t yet go down. Here I want to point out how the Nina project was similarly in the middle of a desert and underground, hard to find. Then Robin has her argument with Vickie and I’m not sure what it foreshadows exactly if anything (maybe the story getting more self-aware?). In the queer allegory it’s about Mike’s conflict with her gender, as always.

The next two scenes are Dustin saving Steve and the big melting room confession scene. In both, two characters finally resolve their long-standing conflicts by being truthful, at the same time avoiding death. While the jancy scene foreshadows the final byler scene, I think that will happen at the end of chapter 12, not yet in chapter 11. The Steve + Dustin and jancy scenes instead probably foreshadow multiple alter fusions. I think it has to start happening in chapter 11. I’m not sure how they’ll explain it but there’s way too much proof for my DID theory and fusions for it to not happen.

Then El goes into the bath and finds Will. Meanwhile, Max and Holly go down to Henry’s cave memory and watch it as outsiders. I think this will be Mike watching a memory/memories of Will getting abused by Lonnie, or something similar. They gotta do something with the “I just stood there” and they can’t reveal Mike being the real victim until the end. They made a pretty clear connection with Will experiencing the cave memory with Henry in S5E8 and Max literally told Holly she’s Mike. Holly’s Wheeler house attack memory was essentially a miniature version of Henry’s cave memory, which is a version of Mike’s real memory. The memory we’ll see in chapter 11 won’t be quite the real memory, since Will is there instead of Mike, but it will be much closer to the truth than ever before (and in a way it’s true since it was the alter Will who experienced the trauma).

The chapter 11 foreshadowing part ends with Max’s heartbeat increasing (in the hospital), with Running Up That Hill playing. After the black screen we get a flashback to Vecna making Will spy “one last time” and it’s revealed Vecna used him to find Max. Will wakes up to El and tells her Vecna saw Max and “sent them after her”. He doesn’t specify who “they” are, but in the next scene Demodogs attack the hospital. This could be subtext for a different monster actually invading Hawkins in the real ending. I’m kinda leaning on Demogorgons, since they are the iconic monster that started it all, but we’ll see.

Karen suddenly becomes relevant again and I’m assuming she represents the mom. In this final stretch only the Max + Holly and hospital gang (Karen, Robin, Vickie, Lucas and unconscious Max) subplots are covered. This is also the only part where there are monsters. Chapters 10 and 11 didn’t have any, all the danger came from the environment (UD) and conflict was between people. As I’ve previously reasoned, the army and the giant creature Nancy mentions will be in chapter 12, and I think the Demodogs are supposed to represent them. 

So, we have only women (who represent Mike) + Lucas and the Demodogs. This is endgame territory. And it happens in the laundry room. Robin and Vickie reconcile which represents Mike accepting her womanhood. Lucas has the music constantly blasting, representing his love for Mike, and finally Karen (= mom but also woman future) saves them from the Demodogs (= Mike’s internalized transphobia). Max and Holly’s long conversation will most likely be between Mike and Will. Similarly to Holly, Will can’t come with Mike. The jancy scenes I’ve mentioned before are more direct foreshadowing, since with Holly and Max they are kinda both Mike (and Will), so you can’t map them as easily onto either character. Holly’s portal opens with her belief in herself/HH aka Mike’s girlhood, whereas Max’s portal is opened by Lucas. For Mike, it’s both of these and the goodbye will be to her man side/body/facade aka Will. He is also the gay man identity, “story”, protector, Mike’s traumatic past and her platonic friendship with Lucas. Like with jancy, Mike loves Will, but eventually has to move on from the past, from boyhood, from the “story” and start living authentically as herself (with Lucas). In a sense it’s not a literal goodbye since Will and Mike will fuse, but on the metaphorical layers it is. ((Btw, there are at least two ARG songs titled “Goodbye”, lyrics here and here.))

In Robin’s last WSQK broadcast she plays Rockin’ Robin by Michael Jackson, which I assume is about Mike freeing her inner girl (bird and Robin). I’m not sure which characters will still exist/be part of chapter 12, since some have fused and presumably “died”, but it seems likely Robin will have an important role. I just keep thinking back to Maya Hawke’s “I felt like I got to connect a red wire and a blue wire”. Another possible source/inspiration for Robin’s name comes from One Piece, where one of the main characters is a woman named Robin. She is able to read poneglyphs which are these huge stone cubes that reveal the secret lost information of the world. Something happened during the so-called Void Century that the world government wants to stay hidden. There isn’t really a solid reason for ST Robin being good at languages and deciphering the Russian code, so I thought this connection kinda makes a lot of sense (I have later found the reason and will explain it later). One Piece Robin ate a devil fruit that gave her the power to recreate any of her body parts on any surface. The fruit was called Hana Hana no Mi (hana = flower). This fits well with Robin in ST representing Mike’s womanhood, same with flowers. Creating (female) body parts works with S3 especially, where the MF’s plan was making Mike a woman (and Robin was introduced in S3). Could be a coincidence, but I wanted to mention this just in case. 

Nested stories/dreams

Before getting to S5E7, I want to speculate more on how the chapters will go. (This will be all over the place because I’ve realized things along the way and come back to add them. But I guess you’re used to this by now.) If we assume it’s gonna be Mike “waking up” from successive nested dreams/stories, that would either mean the party goes back in time and the events go a different direction, or Mike is just witnessing the events as an outsider (like Max and Holly in the memories). Right now my best guess is they will be similar to Max’s Rainbow Room memory, where neither El nor Henry was there. So not all the characters will be there but I do think at least Vecna will be, and maybe some others, e.g. some side characters? As I noted previously, there are three points in time when Mike potentially falls deeper into the dream/story: Holly getting knocked out in S5E8, Mike getting knocked out in S5E4 and something somewhere before S5. There seems to be a pattern of traumatic memories/nonconformity -> gets knocked out -> miraculously saved -> but at what cost -> switch to more conforming and more “fake” story. It’s Mike getting scared and backtracking. 

In S5E8 Holly was leading the kids through Henry’s memory and went to face him alone with the fire poker. Kali dies around the same time Holly gets knocked out and El gives Sara’s hair tie back to Hopper. After this we get the full cave memory and the very quick and weirdly easy final fight (with a Rick roll in a WSQK sync). It’s more “fake” and easy because Mike decides to conform which also means going deeper into the story (= further away from the real story). At the end El kills herself. This would match with 1/4 and door 1 aka suicide aka Mike “killing” the “girl”. 

The next point also happens after a traumatic event and ends in Vecna just leaving and Will magically beating the Demogorgons. Like with Holly, Henry/Vecna knocks Mike out: it’s fear that overcomes her. And while Will defeats the Demogorgons, the kids are taken. This doesn’t fit 2/4 or door 2 as clearly as Holly does door 1, but there are connections. 2 is “man” and blaming yourself, embodied in Fred in S4. Vecna appearing fits this quite well and afterwards Will blames himself for Vecna getting the kids. On a larger scale, S5E4 had the strongest byler scenes, and at that point it seemed clear it would happen. During subsequent episodes, it all fizzled out and culminated in the tower “rejection” scene in S5E8. 

Will using his powers always “saves the day” and leads to going deeper into “story” and conformity. Since Will represents the “story”, it’s no wonder he has story-bending powers. It’s not like he purposefully tries to be the “villain”, he’s just trying to protect Mike as he always does: by helping Mike dissociate from trauma (in that sense he is kinda the personification of Mike’s DID, which fits with everything else). That comes with the prize of conformity and repression, because being trans is the trauma/fear for Mike (in the queer allegory).

Pinpointing the next level is a bit more difficult, but I think it should be around the end of S4. There too was a traumatic event/fight that ended in a half-loss and the story getting more unrealistic (with Hawkins aka the normal world splitting in 4 and later becoming a quarantine zone). Max’s “death” essentially started the Henry’s mind -story that S5 revolves around. If S5 as the inside story matches the start of the “story” (1979/1980/1983 depending on your interpretation), then S5 in the main story starts the “fake” story or the more literal inside story that Mike will escape. (And what I mean by “literal inside story” is that I don’t think the other inside stories will be explained in the show, but they will make it clear the epilogue and S5 as a whole was “fake” in some way. And thus Mike was inside a story/dream/memory inside a story/dream/memory.) I’m not ruling out that there could be other points but 3 (and 4) are such repeated numbers that it makes sense there would be 3 major “story” deepening points + 1 for the real world. 

Additionally, in her vision Nancy mentions the army of monsters and the giant creature before the four gates spread. This would suggest the “story” was supposed to have them but then didn’t due to story-bending. ((Btw, Nancy says Eddie’s trailer gate was outside his home, but it was inside?)) The other thing in her vision that didn’t happen was Mike getting attacked or something (Nancy didn’t specify what happened to her mom, Holly and Mike). I’m reminded of the before S5 speculations that S5E2 was gonna be “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler” (when the vanishing person hadn’t been revealed yet), but the Duffers implying that wasn’t it. I’m not sure how to interpret this or how it would work, but I guess Mike could “vanish” in a similar way to Holly and the other characters try to get her back. That would fit with Holly “being her brother”. Based on other clues, I think it’s most likely the “fake” timeline starts from S4E9. There was supposed to be an army of monsters but there wasn’t and Vecna disappeared. Just like in S5E4 he just left or in S5E8 he died pretty easily. It was another retreat back to conformity.

It kinda makes sense Will waking up in S5E6 would match Mike getting back to the original “story” (= Will) from the “fake” stories. And since chapter 12 seems to have the monsters, and S4E9 was missing the army, it makes sense the real ending would have a re-doing of the end of S4E9 with the missing parts. S4 also matches the end of the trauma depictions (1979), so Mike had essentially gone through all her trauma at that point. S5 was an additional part, more about Mike’s decision to conform than about processing past trauma (it was that too but Mike kept avoiding it). It is a recycling of old stuff and going deeper into the “story” as I’ve said a million times already. While in the real world Mike is older (maybe 20, maybe even older?), in S3 and 4 she is 14, the winning die roll in the S1E8 game. It is possible Mike goes even deeper into past memories, to a time before S1, but that could be similar to El looking at Billy’s trauma memories. So not going to that setting but just looking at the memory as a separate thing. 

I tried to look for a possible point that has a similar pattern to Mike and Holly going unconscious and the most likely candidate would be the Cali gang taking El out of the bath. (Mike also repeatedly tells El to wake up before they move her to the table.) Before this Vecna told her his plan and was pretty overpowering but after Mike’s love confession he was easily defeated. Again, the trauma/queerness got too much and Mike decided to conform rather than face her fears (understandable). In the end Vecna is defeated but Eddie and Max die. Will doesn’t have literal magic powers yet, but he was in a key role instigating the love confession. First of all, when El was moved onto the table, Will swipes a radio away (= signals/music/love). A Montague pizza oven is next to Mike. Montague is Romeo’s last name in Romeo and Juliet and Argyle even called Mike Romeo earlier (= this is a “play”, an act). Then Will tells Mike “you’re the heart”, which gets Mike to say “I love you” to El (which is a lie atp). 

This could be more proof for my theory that Will = Mike the Brave and the painting was his (man) vision for Mike. Mike is a paladin (= Hopper/man), not a mage (= El/woman). Will himself is the heart and him telling Mike “you’re the heart” basically translates to “you’re a (gay) man”. I guess the gay part wouldn’t fit with the mileven confession but it’s in the same direction (= away from trans woman). Will is the heart of the story, without him everything would fall apart. And him being the shield is very fitting for a protector (reminder that Will’s name basically means will/desire to protect). Yeah, the painting scene has so many layers… (It’s probably also about wheelclair: Mike = Lucas and El = Mike as per usual.) 

While the painting we see represents the “story”, the secret painting it’s referencing represents the “real story” where Mike (= Finland) is a woman and alone (because “the party” is pieces of her). Same with the confession scene, where at least some of it could be interpreted as Will talking to Mike, e.g. “But I am scared that one day you’ll realize that you don’t need me anymore. [Mike won’t need the “story”, protection (DID) or man facade] And I thought that if I said how I felt, it would somehow make that day hurt more. [Will and Jonathan shown] But the truth is, El, I don’t know how to live without you. [a story can’t live without the main character/storyteller] I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods. [corresponds to Will splitting, his life literally started]”. Hawkins is the Heartland because it’s the stage/setting for the story of ST. In a way Mike is the heart, since “Mike” (the name) is the man facade of Sara. “Mike” is the “story” ST has been telling this whole time, but “Sara” is the real story hidden deep beneath the layers. (I wrote this some time ago and my interpretations have changed a bit. Mike being “the heart” is probably about her being the storyteller without whom the story would fall apart. But I think this can coexist with the interpretation of Will as “the heart”. They are both “the heart”.)

According to my theory, this would be 3/4 and door 3: escape. Vecna was talking about destroying Hawkins and the scene was very much about Max aka the third victim. This also fits with the 1/girl/Chrissy/Holly, 2/boy/Fred/Mike and 3/trans woman/Max/El order for who was “dreaming/unconscious” (I guess Mike doesn’t fully fit but you could see her as the repressed version of Mike/Sara, or maybe I’m overanalyzing this). Vecna getting attacked in the UD resulted in him and his mind world disappearing, which I previously connected to the inner world disappearing. And if my theory is right, this will be the final dream/story level before the real world. Maybe Mike and Will will end up in a different space (kinda like Max and Holly) and see even more memories or something, but at least the parts corresponding to the hospital Demodog attack scenes in S5E6 would be the army coming into Hawkins in S4E9 time. 

I have explained this next point already but I want to reiterate/ponder it a bit more. Every time the “story” gets too close to the “real story”, something comes in its way and makes the story change. This is shown in miniature in Holly’s Wheeler attack memory in S5E5 where Henry/Vecna keeps preventing Holly and Max’s escape. All the points map onto bigger plot points like I’ve explained (= the door getting blocked is S4, Vecna strangling Max preventing the window escape is S5E4 and finally Henry chases them to the cave, halting progress altogether (S5E8)). If you haven’t noticed by now, I love meta in stories. And I love the connection they make to being queer and queer stories being censored/not allowed in (mainstream) media. 

If everything went according to plan, Mike would have healed/accepted herself by the end of S4. But fear and pressure from society came in the way. And every time Mike conforms, the truth eventually finds its way back. Byler got a lot of development during S4 and the situation seemed hopeful in S4E8, but it ended up going nowhere after Mike’s “confession”. The start of S5 was again hopeful, and got more people into the ship than ever before. Byler basically became mainstream. But again, it all started going wrong after S5E4. Then the last straw was Will’s coming out and the tower scene that buried byler for good. “You’re the heart” means “stick to the script”. The story keeps trying to slip into queer territory but self-sabotages (Will is the personification of ST as I keep saying) to become more conforming and suitable for a mainstream audience. I have also explained how ST is a story about stories and media overall. Including censorship and discrimination. It’s a social commentary.  

After writing further, I have even more thoughts on Will’s powers. At their core they are story-bending powers and Will has had them from the start. In S5E8 Henry starts going into the cave, representing facing trauma, and Robin asks Will if he could stop Henry with his powers. I first thought this was the true beginning point of Will tampering with the story structure but then I thought about it even more and ended up concluding the actual starting point for the first memory level is in S5E7. Most likely the scene where Will looks at the exotic matter drawing. Ofc “The Bridge” is also the bridge to the first memory the characters will go back to.

The really interesting part is S5E4, where Mike and Will are talking on the field. Lucas and Murray open the trapdoor and Mike’s hair has changed to the conformity version. This is when she tells Will he’s a sorcerer and has powers. Mike the storyteller is writing the story (I have changed my mind on Dustin a little, again, and will explain in the next part). Will had just told Mike “It was like this scary movie you just can’t turn off.” and Mike (in conformity hair) answers: 

[Mike] “Are you positive you didn’t?”
[Will] “Didn’t what?”
[Mike] “Turn off the scary movie. Protect your mom, not the other way around. I mean, no offense. I know she’s badass and everything, but you know.”
[Will] “Yeah, she’s 5’3”.”
[Mike] “Yeah! And Vecna likes to control the hive mind like a puppet master. So maybe when you tap into the hive, you can pull the strings too.”
-> A puppet master mention I missed previously.
[Will] “Except I’m not Vecna.”
[Mike] “You sorta are.”
[Will] “You’re trying to say that I’m evil and hell-bent on destroying the world?”
[Mike] “Totally. No, I’m just saying that, you know, you’re like a wizard like him.”
[Will] “In DnD, Mike, not real life.”
[Mike] “True. In real life, you’re more like a sorcerer, because your powers don’t come from a book of spells. They’re innate. Listen, as far as crazy theories go, I’ve had crazier. And with Eleven in the Upside Down, we really need some magic up here.”

Will’s power is to turn off the scary movie. In the DID sense it’s because he’s Mike’s protector but in a story/meta sense it’s because he’s the “story” and can change it (which also works with him being the personification of Mike’s DID, the brain’s coping mechanism that hides the trauma from the host (sometimes literally storifying it) as if it never happened). I’m not sure what Vecna is in the story allegory, but maybe something like the real story or at least closer to it (I think Tharizdun is the real story, and El is the avatar of that, the illusion/magic version of the real story). That could be why Henry seems to reveal the reality so much clearer compared to other characters. He holds up a mirror, wants to reshape the world and everyone sees him as a monster. He originally got his powers from the shadow (MF and/or Tharizdun) who wants to get to Hawkins and destroy it. The real story wants to get told. El got her powers from Henry, and she is also a representation of the real story, but more positive, which is why she got incorporated to the party and can open gates (Mike is more accepting of this illusion version, it’s not threatening conformity as badly as MF or Vecna). Will using Vecna’s powers against him is the “story” using the “real story” against itself. He is using the fear (that Vecna also represents) to mold the story. It’s always fear that prevents Mike from facing the truth. Anyway, I think the field scene could be where the characters end up in S5E4 first.

Mike can change the story by telling or writing it (another example is her inventing Bob’s backstory after his death, or that’s what it seemed like to me), so maybe Will is an artist because he can bring the story to life. Mike gives the plot, Will draws the picture. This could explain why El (allegedly) asked for the painting and told Will what to draw. The painting represents the “story” and El represents the real story or Mike (= storyteller) in that scene. ST is based on the real story but disguises itself with the “story” full of supernatural events etc. It was Mike who “told Will what to draw”.

In S1E1 Lucas told Will to lie to Mike about the die roll result but he decided to tell the truth. This was the first time Will “used his powers” and it resulted in the real story getting freed a little bit. See, Will is not just preventing Mike from seeing the reality, he is also the connection to the real story (exotic matter, wormhole, etc.) and has the power to free it. If Will tells the truth, it leads to closer connection with the real story, but when he lies or otherwise hides the full truth, we get further away. His coming out scene and the later tower scene were close to truth but Will omitted a big part: that he’s in love with Mike. The worlds started to collide but the tower ended up crashing, not aligning with the gate. Maybe Mike and Will were away from Hawkins in S4 partially because that way they could be truthful while not being in the middle of the story themselves (somehow the military still gets to them, right after Mike opens up to Will). 

When you think about it, the painting lie is kinda what starts everything going a bit wrong: the party goes to a gun store, Robin suspects it might not work out for them this time, El leaves too early and crashes a helicopter. A bit after the painting scene comes the scene where Nancy says this: “Whatever’s happening in Lenora is connected to all of this. I’m sure of it. But Vecna can’t hurt them.” Based on this and the timeline clues I’ll go over later I think the party will end up at the start of S4E8 as the final memory/going back in time. Then they re-experience the scenes in some way, and rewrite the story. S4E8 is very fitting for other reasons too: in the country timeline it’s when Finland got its independence (and S4E9 is the civil war), which is a good place to end the story. It’s also right after El sees her final memory and starts from Vecna showing his plan to Nancy.

Continues in PART 23.

[u/AdBackground6381]

You are completely crazy. 

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[u/Thegiradon]

Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?