#but as a fictional character who i am analyzing there is a compelling distinction

[dashiellqvverty]

thinking about when the episode with the alt right guy happened and everyone was like roman girlies lost tonight 😔 like no??? are you a roman girlie because you LIKE HIM?? as a PERSON??? a character i enjoy watching reached the inevitable endpoint of the disgusting path he’s been on since the beginning of the show i WON

[strangertheory]

Will and El are technically the same person? Along with Hopper? Did I get that right? This is so confusing.

Hello there! Thanks for Asking.

My current hypothesis regarding what might be happening in Stranger Things is that we are following a story about a DID System and that many characters in the series are perhaps alters and hosts (separate states of consciousness and identity within one human mind) dealing with trauma memories and seeking to learn to work together to protect one another and the DID System as a whole.

The short answer to your question is: only if you perceive of alters (different states of consciousness that have their own individual sense of identity and self) that are sharing the same human mind as being “the same person.” Generally those with DID will refer to themselves as being “multiple,” as being hosts in a DID System, as being alters or as having alters etc. Each alter will have their own distinct memories and life experiences that they’ve lived (both in the external world and the internal worlds that might exist in their mind) and that are part of who they know themselves to be just as individuals with a single state of consciousness have built their sense of identity over many years of lived experiences.

kaypeace21 and I might be (?) the only two bloggers on Tumblr analyzing the concept that El, Will, and Hopper (and potentially many other characters) are all sharing the same mind and are part of a DID System (but if there's anyone else I'd enjoy following their blog!)

@kaypeace21‘s hypothesis is that the writers of Stranger Things are telling a fictional sci fi / fantasy story that, like in X-Men or Akira (etc.), involves characters with superpowers and psychic abilities. Her theory is that because Will has both dissociative identity disorder and psychic / supernatural abilities that he has unintentionally and subconsciously brought his alters, his trauma memories, and his internal worlds to life and they’ve escaped his mind and are now in the real world and in Hawkins.

Although I do consider @kaypeace21′s hypothesis that everything has been brought to life and has emerged from Will’s mind into Hawkins by supernatural means (like David Haller’s / Legion’s alters do in X-Men) to be a very well-argued theory and analysis of what might be happening in Stranger Things, I have recently pushed my own hypothesis regarding what is happening in the story towards questioning whether the supernatural events and superpowers of Stranger Things might exist exclusively within internal worlds in our characters’ subconscious. I’m unsure of how much of their “real” physical world we have seen yet in the series if I follow this train of thought, and how much of it is memories that are symbolically playing out in an internal world of their mind. In short: I think there might be a certain level of consciousness and wakefulness at which they’re all still in the same body that we have perhaps not fully seen or realized yet because of the creative way that the series is telling the story (although this might have been imaginatively represented in season 2 when Will and/or the Mindflayer are conscious/unconscious at the Lab with Dr. Owens.)

Perhaps El and Will only appear separately and can only interact with one another in internal worlds, while co-conscious, or within liminal spaces between wakefulness and unconsciousness because Hawkins is not always their “real” world but is an internal world in their shared brain. Maybe Hawkins is similar to the Upside Down, which I also believe is a mental construct, but more comfortable since it’s meant to be a home for alters to live rather than a place that trauma has been hidden away. I think that El is a gatekeeper in the DID System. And I currently hypothesize that Hopper is also possible part of that same DID System and that Hopper is a protector and potentially also a gatekeeper. (Hopefully I will find the time to write a new post about Hopper sometime in the near future.)

The questions that I keep asking myself are: what if some moments in the story are not actually taking place in the ‘real world’ even within the Stranger Things universe? What if many moments in the series so far have been fantastical because they were moments in characters’ lives that were re-imagined by their subconscious mind in order to cope with trauma? Not hallucinations (because as Hopper says “these aren’t nightmares, it’s happening”) but imaginative re-workings of "what happened” in their life that are easier for their mind to process. PTSD and internal flashbacks and also reworked memories that manifest themselves more symbolically and metaphorically within fantastical internal worlds.

Many movies on the Stranger Things 4 Video Store Friday movie list encourage me to continue questioning the boundaries between Stranger Things characters’ physical lives and what they might be experiencing as flashbacks or as memories within internal worlds and different states of consciousness. A few films on the list which inspire me to question what might be going on in Hawkins and what Hopper, El, and Will (and many other characters) might be dealing with include Altered States, The Fisher King, The Matrix, Inside Out, Inception, The Truman Show, What Dreams May Come, Drop Dead Fred, The Cell, The Neverending Story, and many others.

The first season of Stranger Things had a lot of artistic and thematic strength in its mystery and layers of ambiguity, but I suspect that once Stranger Things was renewed and they knew that they could have multiple seasons they began planning how to reveal what’s going on behind the curtain of mystery in a meaningful way by the end of the story.

The big question is: what has been happening in these characters’ lives? Am I “overthinking things” as some of my friends have told me? Is it really “not that deep?”

Here are a few blogposts that I have written on this topic in which I explore some of my thoughts regarding what might be happening in the series if Stranger Things is about a DID System, internal worlds, and alters dealing with trauma:

🧠 What is going on with the eerie parallels between Will and El?

👀 My response to an Ask: "Do you think there’s any relation or symbolism between a Brenner and Lonnie other than being shitty/abusive father figures?"

🦸‍♀️ My response to an Ask: "What are the source of their powers?" in which I share my "first layer" and "second layer" meta theories/thoughts (re: The DID Theory) + a brief follow-up Ask regarding the concept that El's powers might only exist in internal worlds if she is a fictive alter

🏞 My response to an Ask: What do you think is going to happen with the Upside Down especially if Will and El's connection grows? 

In this post I briefly address how El, if she were a teenage girl alter that exists in an internal world of the mind but who is sometimes conscious in Will’s body in the “real world”, would have experiences comparable to those of a trans girl

Truthfully: I am at the point that I speculate that nearly all of the characters exist as alters either exclusively or are introjects which are alters based on people that the DID System knows that exist in the external world. But I realize that would be quite the plot twist and might push the question of “what is real?” farther than some fans might be willing to go.

I recognize that this is a lot of information and theoretical content and blog links to provide to you in response to your general Ask but I wanted to offer you reference points and direct you to other blog posts regarding this theory in case you wanted to learn more about the evidence and analyses that led me and a few other bloggers to these hypotheses. If you have any other questions regarding my theories regarding what might be happening in Stranger Things (whether that’s this topic or others) please don’t hesitate to send me another Ask or to DM me directly. I always enjoy talking about ideas with other fans. :)

If this concept interests you I know that kaypeace21 would greatly enjoy sharing her own theories with you and answering any questions you have. I highly recommend that you visit her blog, read her posts, and message her if this topic interests you because my thoughts are often very different from hers and you might enjoy reading both of our blogs for two different theories based around the same hypothesis: that Will has dissociative identity disorder and that this influences all events in the series. If you are interested in reading about her current analysis that hypothesizes that superpowers are real in Stranger Things, that Will has dissociative identity disorder, and that both monsters and some other characters have emerged from Will’s subconsciousness into the “real world” of Hawkins then I recommend reading these two blogposts that she wrote: 🧠 Part 1: Will Created the Mindflayer and Upside-Down Theory + Part 2: Some of your favorite characters are Will’s split personalities (psych/narrative analysis) CW: abuse, sexual assault, psychological trauma (a content warning is also noted before the section in the post itself.)

I do agree with many aspects of kaypeace21′s theories and I think she explains how dissociative identity disorder might influence many events of the story so far in a way that I do find compelling, but the critical difference between our hypotheses is that kaypeace21 currently proposes that Stranger Things features characters with DID that also have superpowers (like David Haller in X-Men) but I currently think that the vast majority of what we have seen on screen in the series so far is “not real” and exists only within characters’ minds and I do not believe that El has any superpowers except when she is within internal worlds. (And that’s a fairly notable difference.) I also don’t think that the Mindflayer exists as a blobby mass of melted people except within internal worlds in their mind. I wonder if the vast majority of season 3 took place entirely in an internal world version of Hawkins and when Will said “what if we locked him out here with us?” to El that he might have been more accurate if he had said “what if we locked him IN here with us?” in very simple terms: I want to know if Will has actually woken up yet from being sedated in season 2 at all, or maybe whether he's sometimes present in the external world but then sometimes switches back to the internal world, etc. (But perhaps the events of season 4 will invalidate this thought of mine. I look forward to seeing what happens!)

Thank you again for your message. I hope my response wasn’t too rambling, that I didn’t repeat myself too much, and that it remained coherent in spite of how late at night I am writing this. I might return and edit this in the morning. (I’m wrapping up this reply at 12:56 AM but I started writing this at 10PM. Time flew by! Time for sleep.) Goodnight :)