#along with a handful of other bday hints in s4

[chirpsythismorning]

tbh. birthdaygate makes no fucking sense

There’s a lot of foreshadowing hinting at it, even a couple hints going back to earlier seasons.

If you hate birthdaygate, you can just say that 🤣

[kaypeace21]

Just a weird thought/s4 crack theory...

I just had a thought... Like the mf is still in the upsidedown. umbral (shadow form) is just a d&d wizard spell which gives wizards the ability to shapeshift into a giant shadow. And I mentioned before how I think the mf is Will the wise (a wizard). With all the doppleganger imagery like the doubles of Billy or all the dopplegangers in the st s4 films.  I just had a weird thought...maybe Will isn’t captured by Brenner-but the mindflayer in his true form (Will the wise) is. In s1 , Brenner looks like he tried to go to the upsidedown to get Will- maybe after s3.... he manipulates mf to go into Will the wise form and captures/emotionally manipulates him?

In the st comic it shows a fire wielding twin under brenner's control who always feels cold, hallucinates living in a dark world , has nightmares of the the demogorgan (in d&d demogorgan means “deep father”). And they refuse to use their fire powers until someone at the psych facility (cough...pethurst) tries injecting a needle in their arm against their will (like what happened to the mf in Will's body in s2).Than they dissociate/escape and light a easter drawing on fire (with sunflower/bunny imagery-we also saw a bts s4 school calender with easter on it). She even has a fire sword-sort of similar to the s3 Will the wise drawing (where in 1 hand he has a sword and in another a fireball)...

 After this, fire powered twin, and her non-powered twin, along with their older brother get into a car and all of them escape. 

I mean technically I’m reaching but the twin without powers looks like they sort of have Will’s s4 bowl cut. XD

So yeah maybe that body double wasn’t el but Will the wise?? We did see a guy who looked suspiciously like Noah on the Penthurst set.

And yeah the double in the van looks like a girl and of course it could be el or another female number. But if they wanted to preserve that plot twist just having a gal as a distant body double with baggy clothes and a buzzcut would certainly throw us theorists off.

That would mean that whole- Billy (aka William) doppleganger scene in s3 was foreshadowing for s4?

Even Will’s birthday hints at the possibility- since his bday is associated with fire and the god (Mars- which is what Martin ,Brenner’s first name, means).

March 22nd is also associated with the shadow god-ketu .

 Although,I do think even if this is true. El and kali will also probably  be captured by Brenner at the end of s4. I feel like both gals will definitely teamup/ face Brenner at some point-like s2 hinted at. And there's multiple alternative penthurst theories i have- other than this one. I just decided to mention this will the wise theory, just in case...

Also, I mentioned how st mentions the xmen comics in every season. And 1 x-men hero reminded me of Will (Billy Kaplan) . His nickname is Billy ( real name William)- he’s gay, has lightning/ fire/ ice powers and the ability to warp reality. He also has tracking abilities ( although unlike his other powers ,required intense concentration-cough tracking Hopper in s2) . He’s called wiccan (like a wizard- Billy’s real email is literally “actualwizard666@supermail.com”). He accidentally opens a portal and releases an interdimensional monster called ‘mama’ (again demogorgan means ‘deep father’). Billy is possessed by the dem-iurge (which looks like the d&d version of the mindflayer) and Billy even spits up a slug the demiurge placed in him (like Will spitting up that slug the dem-ogorgan placed in him). And like the st comic, Billy meets his doppleganger at a hospital/facility which held mutants  (who Billy didn't know existed,  and who was k*dnapped for his powers) .

* Billy also had telekenesis (and in d&d mindflayers have telekenesis too... and the ability to steal powers from others -like s3 with el’s telekenesis perhaps?) And Billy had healing abilities- which are common for d&d clerics (like Will)

[kaypeace21]

Will’s fear of clowns

*Ps -not mine. this is a submission from an anon. tw: for s.a. It’s an interesting submission. ANON-please make a tumblr account already . I’m begging you XD

Hi! It’s me, Lonnie Meth Anon. Back with more depressing thoughts about Lonnie!

I just read your post on Jonathan’s ab*se at the hands of Lonnie, and I second it all. It breaks my heart. But it also got me thinking deeper about Will’s fear of clowns. I think you’re right that part of the horror for Will is that the clown attacks in bed. The bed is, obviously, like you say, a common site for s*xual assault. (Doesn’t El’s picture of “three legged Brenner” also have a bed in it? In a picture with not much else?) The fact that Will needed Joyce to sleep with him for a week suggests he was specifically feeling unsafe in bed, or at night. 

But maybe it’s not just the location of the attack in Poltergeist that Will found so harrowing. Maybe it’s the combination of that location with the fact of a clown being the attacker. 

I think Lonnie might have dressed up as a clown for Will’s birthday one year, and something happened. 

In this instance, I don’t think Joyce would know what happened. I think the incident in her mind would be something like “Lonnie dressed up and Will was scared of the costume”. She might even have thought it was cute. Just a typical little kid fear of something mundane. When she teases him about Poltergeist, she doesn’t actually say the movie was the START of his fear of clowns. Just that he was afraid of that particular clown. The general fear of clowns could have been an older one, going back to when Will was even younger.

Maybe Will even liked clowns, before whatever happened with Lonnie turned them into a source of fear for him. Will has a lion plushie (lions are commonly found in the circus) and the circus seems like the kind of vibrant, colorful environment full of outcast, that a young gay kid would really enjoy. If Will did like circuses and Lonnie poisoned that for him, that’s just another reason to hate Lonnie. But it definitely seems possible. 

Lonnie is a deadbeat dad in general, but we’ve seen before that he’s capable of faking the “family man” act in front of Joyce and their neighbors. We’ve also seen that even though he treats Will horribly, he would also try and keep Will on his side with father son bonding activities, like baseball. And Will’s birthday is one of the few occasions Lonnie makes a half-assed kind of effort, even when there’s nothing directly in it for him. He sends that card, even though it’s late. Maybe Joyce made called him up and made him send it, but she always seemed happy to keep Lonnie out of the picture. She didn’t even want to involve him when Will went missing. And we know Jonathan would never try and facilitate more interactions between Lonnie and Will. So it seems like Lonnie did this of his own accord, when he realized he’d missed the day. Kind of weird. And it’s classic abuser behavior, to make contact on an anniversary date, reminding you they exist and you can’t escape them. Reminding you to keep quiet. Or hoping you’ll miss them, remember the “good times” when they made an effort, and let them back into your life. (Ugh.)

So, anyway, back to my theory. Young Will likes circuses, and the Byers family are poor, so they can’t afford to take him to one, or throw him a party at an ice cream parlor or a bowling alley, like other kids. It makes sense that they would have a party at home instead, and that the family themselves might dress up. We know Joyce made Will’s Ghostbusters costume in season two, and a clown is a pretty easy costume. Most of it is just make up. It’s possible the whole thing was Joyce’s idea, and she made the costume, and Lonnie just went along with it to look like a good dad in her eyes. 

Remember how we see Bob (Will’s new father figure) dressing up in costume for Halloween? Joyce loves it. This is a thing good dads do, to have fun with their kids. That’s also the same episode we see Will scared by a guy in a clown costume, and Jonathan is hyper-protective of him that night. School is okay, but he doesn’t want him trick or treating. (Like he knows that school is a safe environment, but in other contexts, costumes and parties might be a trigger for Will.) Jonathan is convinced to leave Will and “let him have fun” and what happens? The clown attacks. Later that night Jonathan goes to a costume party himself, where he finds Nancy upset and takes her safely home.  Maybe this is how Will’s birthday party ended - with Jonathan finding Will upset, and trying to comfort him. The whole night could be playing out like a parallel to that birthday party, from Jonathan’s perspective. 

What actually happened with Will and Lonnie is up for debate. It’s possible there was a s*xual assault, and that’s why the clown scene in Poltergeist was such a trigger for Will. Or maybe Lonnie thought circuses weren’t “manly” enough for his son to like, and actively tried to scare Will, so he wouldn’t like them anymore. It’s hard to know. Something would have happened though, and probably something pretty formative, because the fear of clowns lasts a long time. 

Something else interesting is that when Mr Clarke is talking about the Upside Down in season one, he uses the metaphor of the flea and the acrobat. Acrobats are a main act in the circus, and, well … fleas. Flea circuses. That’s a thing. Maybe it’s a hint that the trauma that created the Upside Down was circus / clown - related?

Kali, El, and their gang wear clown masks too, when they’re going to confront their childhood trauma, and the child-like Alexei is surrounded by clowns when he is killed at the fair. 

Clowns are just so associated with birthday parties and little kids, that it doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me they’re Will’s biggest fear. Especially as the show keeps dropping hints about Lonnie and Will’s birthday. It feels like there’s more to the story. I have a horrible feeling SOMETHING happened. 

RESPONE (kaypeace):

I think it’s very possible-that maybe he did dress as a clown for Will’s birthday and something happened. We have alexi (paralleled to Will) playing carnival games with kids. Then he's attacked by the Lonnie-look alike : and alexi looks at his wound then stares at all the clowns laughing around him. Joyce and Murray find Alexi bleeding/dy*ng next to a clown statue. As joyce looks in horror and Murray says to her, he was “only gone for a second” (which sounds like something you’d say in relation to a kid you were supposed to watch-running off ). We also had sarah at age 7 die while wearing a gown with clowns on it (Will: it was a 7 the demogorgan it got me). Death of innocence symbolism? Hopper also describes his depression as a cave- he goes through the carnival ride where it mentions a "cave of horrors", which had decor of a tiger and a clown painting. So yeah... whatever happened probably isn't good. So- there may be some symbolism there in relation to Will’s past. Not only because (like I and you have mentioned before) Lonnie is highly associated with birthdays. And canonically we know he mentally scarred jonathan on his b-day. But also, s4’s ‘victor creel’ may be an easteregg to the xmen character victor creed- who had a tradition of tra*matizing family members specifically on their bdays

As another alternative:I could also totally see Lonnie “ruining” circuses for Will because it’s not “manly” to him. Like how Jonathan liked thumper the rabbit-from the film bambi. in the film, Thumper is bambi’s bff, and the hunters are the bad guys who k*ll Bambi’s mother and terrorize all the wildlife. SO yeah- making Jonathan become a hunter, and k*ll a rabbit ,despite this fact, is really messed up. And shows Lonnie has already tried to ‘ruin’ things the boys like. By mentally scarring them in one way or another…

I also mentioned how Will’s bday could even be a trigger for jonathan in a diff post.

if the s4 bts calender hinting it’ll be near Will’s bday and easter it could be relevant to Jonathan.we know in s1 el has tra*matic flashbacks when seeing certain things- coke, closet, cat, etc. And Will in s2 has his ‘anniversary effect’ where memories flood back based on the time of year.But like … Easter has bunnies - could seeing rabbits jog stuff up for Jonathan? El seeing a cat made her have a flashback of brenner trying to make her kill a cat. Would Jonathan seeing like Easter bunny decor jog up a flashback of lonnie making him kill a rabbit? (It happened on his bday too). So Will’s b day being around easter would only fuel that memory. (heck even popped balloons may trigger gunshot symbolism idk). And then for Will there is clowns that could be a tr*gger at a party.

The flea and the acrobat analogy (in relation to Will and circuses is very interesting) and could be foreshadowing- it’s even a title for an episode so I feel like it’s narratively an important hint to …something. similar to a s1 ep being called “the bathtub”.  Also, Will was compared to a circus flea- which were placed in an enclosed space, where heat was applied as they jumped  and tried to escape the increasing temperatures as they burned .Which could relate to my theory about Will having a se*zure due his body overheating due to Lonnie injecting him with m*th.

 If Will’s bday is in s4- I feel like Lonnie will come back in some capacity (flashback or literally). The ‘sorry, I forgot you b day’ card from Lonnie in s2, in Lonnie’s shed Joyce mentioning Will’s b day, the rainbow ‘happy birthday cup’ placed next to Will at Mike’s -while Will explains the supernatural, Lonnie already tra*matizing Jonathan on his bday, etc…