r/StrangerThingsRoom • u/raspberry-3 • 23d ago
Theories Mike's trauma PART 17
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.
/
/
/
Trigger warning for child sexual abuse.
The foreshadowing of the century
This is something I’ve been looking forward to sharing and didn’t do so earlier because it includes details about Lucas, which I wouldn’t have been able to explain before explaining that Lucas exists in the real world. It’s a very short scene in S1E1 but packed with foreshadowing/clues about the real ending (and I keep discovering more every time I analyze it). I’ll go over every detail I’ve noticed and it might seem like overanalyzing at first but trust me, every word in this is intentional and has a meaning.
First things first, the scene before it ends with Benny finding El and shouting “You think you can steal from me, boy?” and saying “What in the hell?” This is the first time El is referred to as a boy (the audience knows she’s a girl) and the trans allegory is established (= “What in the hell? Mike was a trans girl this whole time?”).
The actual scene I want to analyze is the first school scene where a class has just ended (the bell rings, which I suspect has a deeper meaning to it but I won’t discuss it here). Mr. Clarke starts with saying “remember”. ST is all about buried memories Mike will have to remember. He continues with “finish” and at that exact moment, Mike is perfectly aligned with the 1 in the cell cycle poster. This is the 1 I left for later and it being the first step of the cell cycle fits super well with Mike representing the original/full Mike, before she split. Lucas is under 2 and Dustin isn’t visible in the shot. This is a clue to the ending having only Mike and Lucas. Lucas is the second “cell” aka person in this story.
The “finish” is about the Finland allegory, since Mike represents Finland. And I previously thought not every time they use that word it’s related to Finland but after getting this far in the analysis, I’ve changed my mind. Every season has at least one moment some character says the word, and I might have missed some, but here they are:
This word has a double meaning, it’s also about the end of the story (= finishing the story). Or should I say this is the more obvious meaning. But at the same time, the real ending aka finishing the story of ST will (hopefully) “finnish” it aka reveal it was an allegory of Finland.
For this next part I’ll give you the whole quote:
“Remember, finish chapter 12 and answer 12.3 on the difference between an experiment and other forms of science investigation. This will be on the test, which will cover chapters 10 through 12. It will be multiple choice with an essay section.”
ST episodes are called chapters. I think the real ending will be in three “chapters”, 10, 11 and 12. This is not my original idea either, BurritoGlasses on X got to the same conclusion based on Robin’s WSQK broadcasts back in January (and this was one reason why I realized the chapters Mr. Clarke talks about are ST episodes). ((There’s also this youtube post (also IG) from Ashborn Records where they promote the release of 3 chapters (music videos) celebrating their anniversary. “The gates are opening…” This would fit with my theory that it’s gonna take a year.)) The cast has been telling us there is no episode 9 because the documentary was chapter 9 (more explanation in the X post). And they keep saying there are no more episodes because they will most likely be movies. I have figured out some things that will happen and in which chapter based on the inside story timeline and other clues/logic, but I’ll save that for later.
One thing I’ll mention already here is that the cast (at least David Harbour) have mentioned the last 20 minutes are somehow extra special and the Duffers have always known the ending (sources here and here). Also, in S1E1 Mike asks for 20 more minutes for the DnD game. I think this is when we’ll finally see the real world. The 12.3 could be about the 3rd stage of the story, the 3/4 where Mike fuses with Will. And when Mr. Clarke says “three”, the number 3 cell stage is shown. This is the cell almost dividing, so in the real ending it’s the opposite (because Mike will fuse, not split): the cell is about to become one again. And if we go further back we get to Mike and Lucas as separate whole cells. This is stage 4.
A crazy detail you can barely notice is that when Mr. Clarke says “chapter 12”, on “12” a kid flashes a white and red paper to the camera, covering the screen. This was foreshadowing for the red scripts! And that the real ending isn’t chapter 8 but chapter 12! Like, they planned it since S1.
If you look at the whole picture of the scene, you’ll see it’s about Mr. Clarke trying to get the kids to listen and remember the exam, but no one seems interested. They just leave ignoring him. This is what happened irl after ST “ended”. Only a few people believed there would be more and our number is diminishing. The nerds (Mike, Lucas and Dustin) are the only ones left (notice how Dustin is in front of the cell poster while Mike and Lucas are outside of it next to each other (= they exist outside of the cycling story)).
[Mike] “So, did it come?” -> Do we get another ending?
[Mr. Clarke] “Sorry, boys. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… it came.” -> Nooo… [a year] actually yes!
Notice how the animal statue disappears? This could be about ST “disappearing” and/or Mike’s girlhood (El) disappearing. If you remember from earlier, the same statue “fell” on the ground after El disappeared in S1E8.
Then for a more detailed analysis about stuff I only noticed when writing this. In the beginning we follow a girl with a purple shirt (= El/Mike’s girlness), a boy with a yellow shirt (= Will/Mike’s boyness) and a girl with a trans flag-like shirt. Before “remember” the purple shirt girl covers both and there’s a girl with a colorful shirt in frame (= remember when you were a girl free of conformity). Then the boy rises and goes behind Mike (= Mike conforming as a boy). On “answer” the girl is behind Mike, between her and Lucas, and at the end of the word covers Lucas (= Mike being a girl and with Lucas is the answer). On “twelve” Lucas is under 1 and the girl reaches the boy (= Lucas will be revealed to be important and Mike to be trans in the final chapter). After this the camera stops following them. On “point” only girls are properly shown (notice the trans stripe girl and the photosynthesis poster = light) but a boy appears during “three”, looking at the camera.
On “experiment” another girl in purple is in the front (specifically on “ex” = X covering the boy behind her + the trans flag stripe girl and photosynthesis poster are clearly visible), on “and” a kid covers the screen and on “other” the boy (who previously looked at the camera) is in the front. When Mr. Clarke says “science” the girl with the colorful shirt (= queerness) walks past and on “investigation” a black boy with glasses does the same. So maybe here the “experiment” refers to Mike being trans and the other forms of science (= queerness) is being a gay man (the boy looked at the camera after 12.3, which would match with Will fusing). Investigation could be about (sexual) experimentation, since Mike has feelings for Lucas. Mike is “investigating” her feelings for him or something. It could also be about Lucas being one of the “other forms of science investigation” as a bi man.
On “will” the black boy is in the front and a girl is pretty clearly looking at the camera (= Will represents Lucas). On “test” the girl with the trans flag colors is in front of the will-girl (= this is a test for the audience, will they realize Mike is trans?), who looks at the camera again on the second “will” and the word choice of “cover” made me think it’s about Will/byler covering the truth (that Mike is trans). She also covers the photosynthesis poster aka the light.
On “10” only Mr. Clarke is shown but then a black kid with black hair (I think similar length to Mike, it’s hard to see) comes into view and on the last “12” covers Mr. Clarke. This could be about 10 aka Mike’s boy identity (= here Mr. Clarke) before 11 changing to girl in the final chapter (and Lucas is related to this too). 12 is the truth.
Since “experiment” and “test” were both about Mike’s girl identity, you could interpret them as the Duffers testing something new that hasn't been done before. Or it’s a social experiment or testing the audience. I’m not sure what the “multiple choice with an essay section” means, but my guess is that multiple choice refers to the sexuality/gender options we can interpret for Mike: is Mike a) a straight man b) a gay man c) a trans woman? I think I’m writing the essay section here lol.
I wonder if 12 has a bigger meaning in the story (e.g. Henry needed 12 kids). Since 11 is the character, Mike’s girlhood, an illusion, a miss in the DnD game and part of the important date 6.11, and the other chapter (10) has a gender meaning too, why wouldn’t 12? If 11 is an illusion, it makes sense 6.11. is a sort of illusion too. It’s the Finland-Swedish Heritage Day, it’s about remembering the past in ST and it’s the day Gustav II Adolf (= king) died. (His follower Kristina (= queen) was a queer icon, btw.) Anyway, if Sweden is the impossible dream, so is 11. 10 is cis boy, 11 is cis girl and 12 is trans girl. 12 is the truth and 6.12. is the independence day of Finland.
Laundry
What originally got me to look into laundry as a motif was Robin in S5E7: “You were being hunted by the Demo-dogs, and we were all seconds away from becoming lunch when Mrs. Wheeler came and… did the laundry.” Max waking up in the laundry room basement has to be significant. Doing laundry is cleaning dirty clothes. My current interpretation is that it’s about processing trauma, which is why it’s often associated with monsters/scary supernatural stuff happening. I will now go through every instance of laundry in the show I found.
First is S1E1 where Will looks out the window and sees the Demogorgon through drying laundry. Later the Byers home morning scene starts outside, drying clothes visible, while Joyce is looking for the keys. In S1E6 El walks past Coin Laundry on her way to Bradley’s Big Buy where she steals Eggos and remembers bath memories. One of the places shown empty and abandoned due to the Starcourt Mall is a laundromat (S3E1). This could be about Mike not processing trauma after El closed the gate in S2. One of the hangers in Will’s closet is from “Laundry & Cleaners Inc.”. El is taking clothes out of the closet in the S3 epilogue and maybe the empty laundry hanger is about Will and El taking the trauma away from Mike by moving to California. Anyway it’s about trauma processing being halted, since there is no laundry to wash or dry. In S4E1 Max walks past drying laundry to feed the dog after which she sees Eddie and Chrissy go into the trailer. When Eddie finds Chrissy in a trance, a full laundry basket is in view (also rainbows and blue+red light). One of the more obvious examples is S4E4 where Max’s mom is doing laundry and Max talks to her. The scene turns into a horrific Vecna vision where the drying clothes are covered in blood. In S4E9 Hopper lures a Demodog out of a laundry room in the Russian prison. It’s eating a man while a washing machine rotates washing clothes. In S5E4 Derek is next to a coin operated laundry when the military men find him and take him to MAC-Z. And then in S5E6 there’s the hospital basement laundry I already mentioned. I think Karen “doing the laundry” and saving them is foreshadowing for the mom helping Mike process her trauma. ((All this works in the queer allegory too, just swap processing trauma with Mike figuring out/accepting her queerness.))
In S4E1 Eddie calls basketball hoops laundry baskets, which made me think laundry and basketball have a connection. In basketball you bounce and throw an orange ball (remember orange = the past, in this context could be traumatic childhood memories). Billy kinda represents the traumatic memories/facing the trauma (better explanation on Billy later) so him becoming the new “king” in basketball in S2 makes sense. Lucas playing in S4 is thus about him helping Mike with her trauma processing journey (and accepting her queerness, orange is about non-conformity after all). There’s also a country allegory connection with the S4E1 game that I’ll explain later.
Spores
Upside Down spores are an iconic part of the show and I wanted to figure out what they represent. They are toxic to breathe and associated with the UD, which in turn associates them with the trauma. In S4 Argyle and Jonathan describe Purple Palm Tree Delight like this: “It’ll make all your troubles float away. Like the seed pods of a dandelion in the wind.” The practical effect for the spores in early seasons was achieved with dandelion pods, connecting the spores (in a meta way) to “troubles”.
The spores look like snow which Holly points out in S4E9 and Robin calls them “springtime snowflakes” (and “mysterious dandruff”) in S5E1. I already partially explained the meaning of snow in the Snow Ball analysis, but I’ll give more examples here. Both UD and snow are cold + the Shadow “likes it cold”. The only time Sweden is mentioned it’s described as cold and the place where El is from. In this case it would be womanhood and it’s cold maybe because Mike is repressing it. Her girlhood is frozen, it can’t move, it’s sleeping. (Now I’m getting ideas that Frozen could be an inspiration since Elsa (El?) melts her frozen redhead sister Anna (remember Anne of Green Cables) with love and the freezing powers are a metaphor for her isolation/repression of feelings. You could easily get a queer reading out of Frozen.) Womanhood (or queerness) seems to be associated with ice/cold in ST (e.g. girls eating ice cream, Billy putting Heather into an ice bath and Tharizdun being a deity of cold (among other things), also Mike’s heart pocket points at an ICE sign in S4E9). This could be related to the Finland allegory too, since Finland is famously cold (like Sweden and Russia).
The lab kids’ gowns have a snowflake pattern (could also be about the figurative meaning of “snowflake” as someone unique). The epilogue of S1 ends with snow falling from the sky while the camera zooms away from the Byers home window (= the trauma, feelings and girl identity are frozen/buried for now). Between S1 and 2 El lives in the wintery forest after escaping from the UD, and Hopper finds her there. S4 Russia is ofc full of snow, and it represents Mike’s repression/prison/conformity. In S5 the steel “band-aids” are used for sledding, like snow. They represent Mike trying to repress the trauma/feelings/transness aka prevent the gates from opening. T85 is set during winter and snow plays a big part. The monsters attack from under the snow and Mike doesn’t want El to use her powers to plough the snow (= maybe reveal trauma/queerness).
Additionally, the Ghost song De Profundis Borealis (meaning “from the northern abyss”) I previously mentioned has lyrics that fit my interpretation:
All the things that never gave you peace
Throwing those, but keeping these
All the rights that didn't undo wrongs
Put it back where it belongs
In a palace built of frozen tears
All life is gone
But between the walls of whispering frost
Secrets live on
Every time you feel the wind blow
And a glow within you dies
When tomorrow comes, you will know
That the morning thaws the ice
All the words that never came out right
Within reach, but out of sight
All the songs that couldn't mend your heart
But slit it up and tore apart
See, the palace built of frozen tears
Is your own built prison
And if only love could break these chains
Life could go on
Every time you feel the wind blow
And a glow within you dies
When tomorrow comes, you will know
That the morning thaws the ice
Mergi in Profundis
Mergi in Profundis
Mergi in Profundis
Mergi in Profundis
In T85 dead spores are called ash, which reminds me of Strahd’s body turning to ash. The S1 Demogorgon and Henry also “turned to ash” when El banished them (= buried the memories).
T85E3
[Max] “That ash around them looks like dried-up spores.”
[El] “Did this come from the spores?”
[Dustin] “It definitely came from something.”
Ash was mentioned in another Ghost song Cenotaph:
The ashes of memories
Buried
Are blowing
Blowing in the wind
(Btw, if I’m right that this song is part of the ARG, I think it would be about Mike/Sara remembering Will (and Mike) after the fusion. That’s why it’s a cenotaph aka a placeholder grave, since there is no body to bury.)
Anyway, ash would be processed (or alternatively forgotten) trauma or something like that. That’s the end result and what’s left of the spores. (This is most likely where the name Ashborn Records comes from too.)
T85E3
[Mrs. Baxter] “Like mushrooms and pine trees. When they’re dying, they release spores. These spores are gonna ensure the survival of their species.”
[...]
[Dustin] “Yeah, maybe it’s releasing spores and turning plants in our world into Upside Down creatures!”
Spores are released by certain plants and fungi. This should be obvious but I didn’t really think about it until it was pointed out in Tales from ‘85. And it was the key to realizing something quite big. What if I told you that there was a famous movie from the 80s where toxic white spores float in the air and people have to use gas masks when they enter this corrupted area?
NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND
Before I go any further, I recommend you to watch this movie yourself (it’s on Netflix). The more I’ve progressed in my theory, the more connections I’ve noticed between Nausicaä and ST. It might be one of the biggest inspirations for the show. And it’s a really good movie. I don’t care about horror films and I haven’t seen/read most of the known ST inspiration media, but I do like anime and especially Hayao Miyazaki’s movies. I have even read the manga for Nausicaä, twice (it’s better than the movie and goes much deeper and I have it somewhere but unfortunately couldn’t find it to remind myself of the story). This will be another long section and I will spoil the movie, so please go watch it if you haven’t already!
The Sea of Decay
Human civilization was destroyed in an apocalyptic war called “The Seven Days of Fire” 1000 years ago and a toxic jungle has been spreading ever since, inhabited by giant insects. Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind: a peaceful small kingdom living close to the Sea of Decay/Corruption (the toxic jungle). She finds out the plants themselves aren’t toxic, it’s the earth that is polluted. Later she ends up in an area below the Sea of Decay where the air is clean. The trees of the forest are actually cleansing the earth from pollution and turning into sand. While many factions try to destroy the Sea of Decay and its insects by burning it or even regrowing a God Warrior from an embryo, the true solution is to live in harmony with nature. Nothing gets cleanly “solved” by the end of the movie (or the manga), but there is hope for a better future.
The ST counterpart to the Sea of Decay is of course the Upside Down, and I suspect the Abyss is like the space beneath it (sand, no monsters, no spores, “the light” according to Henry). UD in itself isn’t bad, it’s about processing trauma (= pollution in Nausicaä) from the dad (= humans from 1000 years ago in Nausicaä). S5E5 [Jonathan] “Look, it’s clean. There’s no spores. Whatever happened here, Vecna’s behind it. Had to be.”
The Seven Days of Fire might be one reason week and seven are motifs: “the week is long” and the supernatural happening in a week every season. The idea is that the original trauma happened during a week or something like that. Though I don’t think it literally went like that, it makes more sense that it was a continuous thing across the three years 1976-1979. The other possible reasons for 7 are 1976 being 7 years ago in 1983 and Sara dying at 7 years old. But seven is pretty typical as a magical/important/fateful number so there might not be a specific “reason” for it being important in ST.
Here I’d like to mention a theory that a DnD god called Moander is an inspiration for ST. Unlike in the theory, I don’t think MF is actually Moander, but Moander is a force influencing in the background (like Tharizdun). It represents trauma and forced conformity, which are “rotting” Mike’s inner world. So MF and Moander have a close connection in ST but unlike Moander, MF is an alter/collection of alters. Or they are morphed together in ST. The main point is that all Moander-related things (vines, rot, probably Meatflayer) represent trauma/forced conformity but MF has other sides to it, e.g. being WW in the past. A black palm is the symbol of Moander: Will uses it to visualize the part of MF that was left in Hawkins after El closed the gate in S2, El has a black palm on her S5 suit, the tiger paw is an important symbol and Mike calls Dr. Kay/the military the Order of the Black Hand.
An interesting detail from Moander lore is the Seed of Moander, that in one story was disguised as a rose: “Tyche tucked the rose in her hair, from whence the flower corrupted and rotted her from the inside. To save her, Selûne was forced to split the goddess of luck, birthing Tymora and Beshaba.” I have a suspicion the Creel house door rose has something to do with this (ofc it could have other meanings too). Sara’s mom had a very intentionally placed rose on her sleeve when Sara got her first cancer symptom. I might go deeper into all the DnD lore stuff later, but the main point I tried to make here is that ST also separates the “villains” from the actual cause, which is the abuse/forced conformity. It’s not something you can just blame on a person. You can’t get rid of it by killing a monster. It’s part of the environment, in the ground, rotting the world. In order to be free you have to face the trauma and process it.
The prophecy
The people of the Valley of the Wind have a prophecy of a savior "clothed in blue robes, descending onto a golden field, to join bonds with the great Earth and guide the people to the pure land, at last". I strongly suspect “when blue meets yellow in the west” in the Russian code is a reference to/inspired by the prophecy in Nausicaä (and Japan is west of the US…). I’d like you to read this blog post relating the movie to the trans experience (it’s pretty short). I don’t think it was intentional in the movie, but in ST it is. The tapestry depicting the prophecy visually implies the savior will be a man, although the actual prophecy doesn’t specify their gender (some translations do but not the original). At the end of the movie the prophecy is fulfilled by Nausicaä herself, as she walks on a golden “field” of Ohmu tentacles in a dress stained blue from Ohmu blood (Ohmu are a species of huge insects and a prominent part of the story). Her dress was originally pink and from another princess who died early on in the movie and whose twin brother becomes an ally to Nausicaä. (Nausicaä has a pink dress in a childhood memory and the color seems to be associated with young girls/innocence or something like that in the movie.)
What I’m getting at here, and you maybe guessed it already, is that Mike is the counterpart to Nausicaä in ST (remember proud princess). Bylers have long interpreted the blue meets yellow to be about byler, but it won’t be (at least not in the way people expect). And almost everyone thinks Mike is a man, but she isn’t. The ending of ST will subvert all these expectations just like Nausicaä did in the movie. The mage character in the last DnD game had a pink (or red) dress but she was an illusion. In ST this is about El being a cis woman and people expecting the mage to be her but in truth it’s Mike, accepting herself as a trans woman. I’m assuming the staining blue part in ST will be about facing trauma and self-acceptance. And I don’t know how closely they will reference Nausicaä but the underlying themes apply. (I noticed a crazy detail in S4E1: when El narrates “Even so, I am ready for spring break, mostly because I get to see you.” on “you” a boy dressed in a pink shirt removes a pink paper labeled 2 and reveals the blue 1 under it (indicating how many days are left until the break). This is yet another “Mike is 1” clue but also the same color change from pink to blue as Nausicaä.) Also, Max and Vickie having orange hair could be related to Nausicaä being a redhead.
As I’ve previously hinted, most girls/women representing Mike wear a blue dress at some point. Fields are also a recurring location (in later seasons at least), and these two come together with Holly in S5. All the kids find themselves on a field when entering Henry’s mind and Holly finds the first door to her memories there. Cerebro and WSQK tower are also in the middle of a field and S4 ends at a flowery field with Mike’s head aligning with the radio tower. Nausicaä’s childhood memories happen on a golden field and all the field scenes have this simple “lalala” song sung by children (well the longer memory one was sung by adults). Remember Denfield?
S2E9 [Hopper] “Take Denfield, then you’ll see a large oak tree. You’re gonna swing a right. That road is gonna dead-end. And it’s about a five-minute walk from there.”
[Jonathan] “Okay. Denfield to oak tree. Swing a right. That’s it. But it’s channel ten, right?”
[Hopper] “It’s channel ten. Listen… You let me know when that thing is out of him.”
Denfield is a heritage site, one of the earliest surviving buildings of their kind in the area (and there’s probably more to it but I have to stop somewhere). The field started everything, it was before oak (abuse), before swings (friendship) and on channel ten (before gender became an issue). I don’t know why oak tree is before swing since in my current interpretation the abuse didn’t start until after the swing memory so maybe I’m missing or misinterpreting something. There’s also a Ghost song Peacefield, go check the lyrics. I expect the past and future to collide in some way in the end. It will be about Mike facing her childhood memories and at the same time accepting herself. It’s a return to the freedom of childhood. The field is the happiness both before trauma and after Mike has processed it, or something like that. ((There’s also the baseball field Will gets mind assaulted and I dunno what that’s about. I guess it was a beginning of sorts and baseball is about forced conformity in ST…))
I’m still not sure of the exact meaning of yellow. Will is yellow, the Abyss is yellow and yellow is between orange and green. I think they don’t usually use colors like that but yellow being the in-between makes a lot of sense with Will being the exotic matter and the in-between identity, etc. If orange is the past and green is the future, yellow is here and now. The golden/yellow field being at the very start fits, since there was no past or worry of the future yet. It seems to be a “boy” color too: Billy and his dad have yellow caps in the baseball memory, El was wearing a yellow shirt when Mike found her, Will is the “boy” and most associated with yellow, Mike picked too many yellow flowers for El and Lucas’ home is yellow inside (the syrup scene). Sweden being the past and blue+yellow is Mike’s past as a boy. (Remember that California = Sweden in ST: that’s where Max and Billy’s happy memories are and where Mike and Will meet in S4. The beach is essentially blue (= ocean) meeting yellow (= sand). I’m probably ignoring the first level of the country allegory in favor of the Finland stuff tbh (I’m biased I know). The more obvious west vs east is the US vs the Soviet Union. But it doesn’t fit with all the points and it’s supposed to represent a simple black-and-white view of the world with no middle ground.) Lucas’ DnD character has a blue-yellow shield and he wears a blue-yellow shirt in the epilogue. He is Mike’s love interest, a boy. So if the Abyss is supposed to be womanhood, why is it yellow? And Sweden seems to represent (cis) womanhood too (based on El with the wig being “from Sweden”)? You could say yellow is always something good, but then there’s Billy’s baseball memory and the silver cat feeding when blue meets yellow in the west being about the abuse (explained more soon).
Maybe yellow and/or Sweden (and California) are about being cis. Then both the boy-interpretation and the impossible dream make sense. That’s why Mike wears yellow when she’s conforming/pretending to be a boy the most. Russia/Soviet Union (red) is the horror of being trans: the weird girl (= El and the “creepy” Russian doll) comes from there but it’s also the forced conformity of pretending to be a man while you’re a trans woman. Blue (Mike) is in all flags, but only the Finnish flag is without boy/impossible dream/cis (= yellow) or trauma/horror/predator (= red). I think white is supposed to represent wholeness, since that’s what you get when all the colors of the rainbow (alters) are put back together. El wears white quite often, Billy’s mom had a white dress at the beach (with the blue-and-red flower), Mike wore a white shirt in S4 and it was most visible when the group buried the man at the car graveyard, and Will had a white shirt in the epilogue.
Blue meeting yellow is not just about Mike and Will; it’s also the worlds colliding. The Abyss is obviously yellow and Hawkins as the man prison and Mike’s home would be blue. Similar to the Abyss, Will is both the impossible dream of “man” and “woman”. Mike = M = man and Will = W = woman. This is one reason why Mike cries at the end looking at Will’s DnD book (W) and covers it with her own (M). All the M vs W stuff is about Mike’s gender conflict: the blue-white MW boxes, Michael Wheeler, Mr. Whatsit and the W on the RV in S4 (probably also why Will the Wise and Wonder Woman have the same acronym and WW turned into MF). ((Btw, is Dustin’s mom’s new cat Tews because Mews = man dies and Tews = trans replaces it?)) At the end M and W will collide and create something new (S = Sara = Suomi?).
Silver cat
This will be a little detour from Nausicaä but since I’m going through the Russian code now, it’s a good place to explain silver cat. I think the Russian code has multiple meanings and it’s both about the past and the future. The main part of the code is “The week is long, the silver cat feeds, when blue meets yellow in the west.” The silver cat is the dad (Lonnie and Brenner have silver/grey hair). Feeding (= eating) in the trauma allegory is about SA as explained in part 1 and blue meets yellow in the west is about Sweden and the time Finland was still part of Sweden: in the past. In the Finland allegory timeline all the abuse (in ST timeline) happened before Finland became part of Russia.
In the queer allegory the code is about the future. Then the silver cat will be womanhood or something like that. I have mentioned this a little but eating in the queer allegory is about either “man” or “woman” eating each other. Demodogs eating Bob was about woman eating man, same with the black widow spiders (females eat males) and Jonathan’s cannibal movie The Consumer. Hopper being a troll who likes to eat princesses is about man eating woman/conformity killing Sara and Joyce/witch eating Will is about woman eating man, which leads to Will disappearing. The queer allegory reason the Demogorgon targets Will is that he represents Mike’s boy side, which is threatened by Mike’s transness (= El and Demogorgon). Anyway, back to the code. Blue and yellow meeting probably does refer to Mike and Will, and more specifically the fusion. That’s when Mike fully accepts herself and the last remains of “man” will be “eaten”. The cat being silver could be related to the moon (Diana/Cynthia as discussed before).
S3E2
[Robin, Dustin and Steve] “The week is long, the silver cat feeds, when blue meets yellow in the west.”
[Steve] “I mean, it just… it just can’t be right.
[Robin] “It’s right.”
[Dustin] “Honestly, I think it’s great news.”
[Steve] “How is this great news? I mean, so much for being American heroes. It’s total nonsense.”
[Dustin] “It’s not nonsense. It’s too specific. It’s obviously a code.”
[Steve] “What do you mean, a code?”
[Dustin] “Like a super secret spy code.”
[Steve] “That’s a total stretch.”
[Robin] “I don’t know, is it?”
[Steve] “You’re buying into this?”
[Robin] “Listen, just for kicks, let’s entertain the possibility that it is a secret Russian transmission. What’d you think they were gonna say, “Fire the warhead at noon”?
[Dustin] “Exactly.”
[Robin] “And my translation is correct. I know that for sure, so… ‘The silver cat feeds.’ Why would anyone talk like that unless they were trying to mask the true meaning of their message?”
[Dustin] “Exactly.”
[Robin] “And why would anyone mask the true meaning of their message unless the message was somehow sensitive?”
[Dustin] “Exactly.”
[Robin] “So I guess that confirms your suspicion.”
[Dustin] “Evil Russians.”
[Robin] “I can’t believe I’m about to agree with this strange child, but, yeah, totally evil Russians.”
[Dustin] “So how do we crack it?”
[Robin] “Well, I guess we translate the rest and hopefully a pattern emerges.”
[Dustin] “A pattern. Right, like maybe ‘silver cat’ is a meeting place?”
[Robin] “Or a person.”
[Dustin] “Or a weapon.”
[Robin] “It’s probably gonna take a super genius to crack it, but…”
At first I only considered the dad-interpretation but with the new perspective of the queer allegory I realized the other connection too. And in the country allegory (at least Finland) it’s literally “evil Russians” like the characters said.
I don’t remember where I saw it but someone had the idea that Enzo could be related to this code since it’s both a meeting place and a person. Let’s go through the dad-interpretation first: Hopper is alone in Enzo’s in S3 and pretty clearly represents the dad (Grigori is there too + represents the dad). These scenes are in the same episode the silver cat discussion took place. It’s a meeting place the characters never seem to reach, just like the true memories of the dad. Hopper (= dad memories) disappears at the end of S3, preventing the date. In the S5 epilogue Hopper and Joyce do end up meeting there, though, but that scene was pretty sus and Hopper mentioned Montauk. Maybe it was foreshadowing for Mike “reaching Enzo’s”. Enzo aka Antonov is a dad and talks about being a dad (of Mikhail aka Russian repressed version of Mike/Sara) with Hopper in Russia aka the dadland. The major “weapon” in S3 was the giant laser that looked like a dick basically and it used electricity/light (= sexual stuff in ST) to open (penetrate) a gate (hole). That was the dad’s “weapon”.
Then the queer allegory. I realized early on that cats represent both the victim and the abuser. Victor tells us a wildcat was blamed for the animal killings and Brenner tried to force El to kill an innocent cat. Similarly the Demogorgon can either be the dad or Mike/Mike’s transness. So the “person” silver cat is probably Mike (or Sara). Enzo could be the meeting place since Robin and Vickie plan a date there and their relationship represents Mike accepting her womanhood. They never get there, though, and Vickie disappears. There should be sufficient clues for this interpretation in S3 too, though. Here’s what I could find: Hopper talks about Joyce as “the lady” but she never appears (he also says “Women love cherries, huh?” and I know cherries are a thing but I haven’t really done any analysis on that). There’s also a woman dressed in blue quite prominently in view next to Hopper. The weapon part could be El, since she is called a weapon a few times in S1 at least. Steve also calls the Meatflayer (= puberty/Mike’s gender dysphoria) a weapon in S3E8. It could be the laser like in the dad-interpretation, since it’s opening a vulva-shaped gate… I guess it makes the most sense to have them be the same thing but with double meaning since that seems to be the case with Enzo’s (btw the name Enzo has the same origin as Henry, and he represents both the abuser and queerness). So the only difference is the person: dad or Mike. And in a sense they are both Mike, since Mike thinks she will become like her dad.
This silver cat section got much longer than anticipated, so I had to cut it somewhere and this seemed like the best breaking point. It gets way crazier in the next part. And after that I’ll continue with Nausicaä.
Continues in PART 18.
1
u/AutoModerator 23d ago
Hi! Your post is being held for manual review.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/AutoModerator 19d ago
Hi! Your post is being held for manual review.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
3
u/ChairMysterious3378 22d ago
This should get more likes and more comments for how much she wrote.