#the creel family

[henrysglock]

The fact that we can essentially prove that there are at least 2 different timelines is insane to me.

We've at least got:

Edward and Henry Creel

Richard and Martin Brenner

1 month before the Creel Massacre vs 2 years before the Creel Massacre

Creel Massacre on March 21st vs March 25th

Virginia mother/Alice sister vs Alice mother/Virginia sister

William vs Billy headstone

Will's birthday on March 22nd vs May 22nd

Henry (Edward?) turning back the infamous grandfather clock with his mind

Multiple jumpsuits and blood patterns unnecessarily made for the 1979 Massacre in NINA

Multiple different Henrys (Edwards?) in NINA in back-to-back shots

Different ages for Victor, and different dates re: when he came back from war

Different retellings look different re: ages of actors, details missing, etc.

Exorcism at the Creel house vs No exorcism at the Creel house

DALDOM saving Victor vs Henry (Edward?) passing out saving Victor

Whatever Henry (Edward?) saw from Virginia (Alice? He never refers to her by name) and the Crimson Peak inspos

~180 days of milkvan separation vs byler's continued insistence on a year

El's comment about emotions making time pass faster or slower ("we are all time travelers")

It's insane. Duffers please explain.

[0aurelion-sol0]

They're all copying my boy and y'all don't want to admit it...

[aemiron-main]

Alice Creel’s Weird Age, TFS, and Interview With The Vampire

So, Interview With The Vampire is on the S4 board:

And I’m wondering if it might be connected to whatever the hell is going on with Alice Creel’s age.

After all, Alice should be 15 in 1959 according to the Weekly Watcher:

But when we see her in 1959 in the show, she’s clearly a little girl, younger than 15:

And when we see her in the TFS promo stuff, Henry appears older than he should be (as he’s supposed to be 12), but Alice is still a little girl:

But wait- what other piece of media has a blonde haired, blue-eyed little girl who doesn’t age?

Interview With The Vampire does.

Claudia from Interview With The Vampire is trapped permanently as a little girl because she was a little girl when she was turned into a vampire- and she resembles Alice with the blonde hair and blue eyes and constantly appearing as a little girl.

And to tie this even more to TFS specifically, Claudia’s appearance in the musical/stage adaptation, “Lestat,” resembles Alice even more strongly than the movie version of Claudia does- Claudia and Alice even both have very similar yellow dresses, and I won’t be surprised if Alice’s yellow dress was specifically inspired by the musical version of Claudia (keeping in mind that TFS was being written while S4 was still in production):

And it’s also worth keeping in mind that there’s constant vampire references in ST, and specifically, vampire references connected to the Creels and Brenner.

For example, Vecna is compared to a vampire by Steve:

And Brenner, like I talked about in this post, lacks a reflection at times when he should have one- much like a vampire.

And there’s also all of the references in ST to Kas from DND- Kas, who as turned into a vampire because he spent so much time close to the negative energy plane (which reminds me quite a bit of the void from ST, and has me wondering about the ways in which the void/proximity to it affects people, including Alice, but that’s a post for another time).

It’s also worth noting that “Let The Right One In” is also on the S4 board:

And it’s another movie about a young vampire girl- and that includes a blonde middle aged woman character named Virginia Lind who is attacked by said vampire and later turns into a vampire. Virginia Lind definitely reminds me of Virginia Creel:

Do I think that Alice Creel is a literal mythological blood-sucking vampire? No. But I DO think that whatever’s going on with Alice’s weird age/her perpetually appearing as a little girl is connected to the rest of the vampire imagery in ST & the ST lore reason for all of that vampire imagery (whatever that reason may be, I’m not 100% sure yet), is the same thing that’s causing the weirdness with Alice’s age.

[videntefernandez]

Definitely keep going, onwards with general infos on the Creel family!

You got it boss

So like they're obviously very inspired by the strex family because I loved that whole thing and I'm sad it's over. I'm going on a nostalgia trip.

The dad, Richard Creel, is mexican but was born in america and has always been wealthy. He was an exchange student in germany where he met Karsten in High school and they've been best friends since then. He had a small loan of 10 million dollars from his parents and founded Creelcore which was initially just a robotics company (they made Babsy, who was the first nurse at the hospital). He had a boy with his first wife (José Luis, Joe for friends) but then divorced and married Diana. They had Diego and Diva who are 5 years apart in age.

Dick is the diplomat in the family, he's extremely social and could make friends with anyone. He's the first one to try the peaceful approach before resorting to violence, but he's also the first one to say "Fuck the rules". He's a party guy like Karsten and the backyard barbecue gets absolutely wild. This happens weekly. He also goes golfing weekly and they have family dinner and church on sundays (they say they're catholic for public image but their true patron is La Santa Muerte).

This is already super long so I won't get too deep into it. The mom, Diana Contreras is from Sonora Mexico which is a state that has a huge problem with drug cartels. Her family was killed and she was trafficked during her youth, until she executed the leader and took over the gang. She went through several people like that using her feminine wiles, which earned her a ton of enemies so she had to flee to the US where she met Dick and they fell in love. She already had a background in drugs, so she and Joe started the pharma branch of the company (running both the legal and illegal side) And they created the happy pill which makes employees like Kevin stay content and compliant at their jobs.

She's the ice queen, hates social gatherings and is having an affair with her robot assistant.

Joe is first in line to inherit the company, he's married with 3 kids and has a robotic eye prosthetic after losing his while playing as kids (he was the kind of problem child who stole cars and freed animals from the zoo only to hunt them down himself, and when Diego arrived it was double trouble). But the eyepatch is more intimidating so he also wears that. There's maybe more but this is already so long lmao

[erikiara80]

I’ve always found this moment interesting. They made it sure that the rose was in the frame. And with the police car lights flashing it seem like it’s pulsing. It seems alive. Imo a hint that things are not like they seem. 

[loathsome-cowboy]

fallen angel (art by @lydsirabella on IG)

[harringroveera]

Eddie: We can totally do this. We don’t need our stupid boyfriends to help us

Steve: Yeah! How dumb do they think we are?

Eddie: Sometimes Henry leaves me pictures of food instead of a shopping list

Steve: …

[willthewise7]

Warning: The First Shadow Spoilers Ahead!

In the First Shadow play we got to see the real perspective of the dinner scene where the Creels are massacred.

We see two versions of Henry. The real good one trapped in his mind by the Mindflayer, and the one controlled by the Mindflayer in the real world. We also see the Mindflayer hovering above the room as it is controlling everything that happened.

[apatheticlexicographer]

Where Evil Nests

Chapter 2: Saying Yes

so after i put a poll up the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of naming this AU “Where Evil Nests”. so yay!!! we have a name that doesn’t suck now :DDD

uhhhhhh, this is probably a good time to mention that will is an unreliable narrator. fair warning to the henry apologists/appreciators that this is not a pro-henry story. aha. :fuckboy_emoji: :fuckboy_emoji:

in case ur curious, or even if ur not: this AU takes place several years before canon starts. i went with the “4 years ago” date from the original montauk pitch for when joyce and lonnie divorced, which puts will at about age 8 and jonathan at like 12. anyway, that’s why ~12yo henry is so much bigger than will lol, i prommy i’m not just shit at scaling 🙏🙏

Ch1 Ch2 Ch3

@gay-stranger-things asked to be tagged in the continuation so there ya go. if anybody else wants to be tagged in future lmk i guess, tho i’m also gonna be tagging everything with #Where Evil Nests for mostly my own benefit

rambling below...

apologies for the serious inconsistency in the art, even within individual pages. you can literally see me putting progressively too much effort in with each page lmfao. a bitch been hella busy the past couple of weeks and i’ve only been able to work on this very sporadically. also doesn’t help that i had to redraw and redraw and redraw like half of this chapter. the 2nd page pains me particularly bc in my initial draft i had the door on an angle to show the rose window and spent H O U R S messing around with it to make the perspective work, before realizing the angle didn’t match the direction will was facing in and i didn’t want to redraw him. the worst part is that it looks better compositionally the way it is now ToT

hmmmm i put way too much text slanted to the left and like none slanted to the right... oh well i am not changing that i will scream if i have to touch any of these pages again

i can make no promises abt when chapter 3 will be up bc i start a formal art course soon and idk if i’ll have any motivation to draw outside of it lol

okie it’s almost 5am. again. i gotta get a better sleep schedule dude <///3

OH WAIT I JUST WANT TO CLARIFY THAT PANEL WITH LONNIE IS ***NOT*** IMPLYING C/S/A. I JUST REALIZED U COULD INTERPRET IT THAT WAY BUT THAT WAS NOT MY INTENTION. i reworded that line slightly to make it scan better but in retrospect perhaps i should have left it be bc Yikes

[cuethemulti]

OH WE REALLY ARE GOING THERE HUH

[henrysglock]

Me when Mike ends up actually having some kind of innate powers, and that’s how they reveal that Karen is the alternate timeline Creel sister (Virginia). Mike, being her son, would then technically be Henry/Edward’s nephew.

Me when it’s also revealed that El is Henry/Edward’s daughter via the lab, given that Terry was “unaware she was pregnant”…Which would make her technically Karen’s niece.

Me when…El with the wavy blonde hair…being Mike’s cousin…

Me when miIeven is so bones that it’s ashes.

[allhappyandgay]

oh yeah without a doubt

[aemiron-main]

YEP! THE CREEL MURDERS HAPPENED ON SUNDAY MARCH 22nd/THE NIGHT OF SATURDAY MARCH 21ST! Just like i talked about in this post.

How do i know this? Well.

“Local family man, Victor Creel, murdered his wife and two small children Saturday night.”

And now look at the date on this paper- Thursday, March 26th. Making that previous Saturday having been March 21st, and the bodies were discovered on Sunday, march 22nd.

The same March 22nd as Will’s birthday. This explains why Henry would want to erase that day- it was the day where shit hit the fan in his life.

EDIT FROM FUTURE ME: this is in the Edward timeline (this post was made before I figured out the Edward stuff, so where it says "henry," in this post, add "edward" . I also don't think that Henry or Edward wants to erase that day, that was just my first half awake guess at the time of posting this)

[londondziban]

I honestly don't have a lot of expectations/wants for season 5. Honestly, the only things I'm truly hoping for/expecting are Mileven breaking up and Byler being endgame

But you know what's one thing I hope doesn't happen?

Henry/Vecna/001 redemption arc.

Is he a complex villain? Yes. Do I understand why people are so intrigued by him? Absolutely. However, I don't think someone should be able to come back from killing innocent children and teenagers and putting an innocent child (Will) through absolute hell to further their own agenda

[erikiara80]

Theory: the car crash in the winter of 1976 (Part I)

You can read Part II here

I've been working a lot on this theory, and I keep finding things lol. In this post I focus on '76. In Part II I'll talk about the cars.

I think there are many hints that there might've been a car crash in the past (for example, the wheelbarrows) and that that's the event that separated El from her family, Joyce, Hopper and her brothers.

Basically, the theory is that she wasn't abducted at birth. The lab helped her parents to have her and Will (I think Jon is Lonnie's kid) because of Agent Orange. And maybe Brenner was waiting for El to be old enough to test her abilities, or maybe it's something else. Anyway, I think she lived five years with her family, then there was a car crash and powers/a time loop saved her. Or she was brought to the hospital and it was there that powers made her "crawl backwards", like Steve says to Nancy in S4 (here)

And "be swapped in the hospital (to tell you the truth)" like Karen says in S3. I have also a theory about Karen, but that's for another post. It's interesting that she says at the hospital, and not at birth, and in S4 Brenner calls the lab hospital.

I think that from that moment in 1976 it was like El was never part of the family and she became "Terry's kid" and a lab kid. "One's kid." The flashback of Sara's death could be an altered memory of what happened to Will and El after the accident. Or maybe there's even a bigger twist about Sara, but I won't talk about it here. This post is long already, lol.

@chirpsythismorning noticed something interesting. When El saves Max, the camera rotates counterclockwise. And her arm reminds me of the hand of a clock. Same counterclockwise rotation when Brenner dies.

Why in winter and why in 1976

There are many references to ice, feeling cold, frozen. The snow, connected to Hopper and El.

El saying that she comes from a bad place, and the boys saying that it's Sweden, a cold sub-zero place. Imo, the frozen lake, the reason she ended up in the other bad place, the lab.

The song California dreamin' playing the day before Will's birthday

And the last line in S4: 'It's snowing' while Max is in the hospital and Lucas and Erica, brother and sister, are with her.

There are also many hints that something bad happened in 1976.

S1: The reporter says that the authorities suspect that Will was victim of foul play and that seven years before ('76) another person drowned in the quarry (*) S2: Lucas tells Max that a very decomposed body was found there. The truth hidden in a fake story

Castle Byers flashback. Will doesn't get too scared anymore. Joyce jokes about her witch and he says that he's not five anymore ('76). Joyce's witch could be a reference to the Witch of the West. In S1 Hopper calls the lab Emerald City. Also, in Castle Byers there are a rainbow, a stuffed lion and a microscope -> connection to the lab.

Possible hint at Lonnie's involvement in the "accident" (I'll talk about the trunk in Part II) When Jon was nine/ten he made him kill a rabbit, an animal associated with El and Alice/Henry. Jon was born in 1967, so the rabbit (El?) died in '76. I also think it's not a coincidence that it's Jon, a boy worried about his brother, who sees Barb disappear in a pool. Jon says he cried for a week. He mourned that little rabbit...

Also. When he tells Nancy about the rabbit, he says that he's a fan of Thumper. And in the Nancy and Steve dialogue about crawling backwards, Steve says that what he needed was a thump on his head, to finally start crawl forward

First day of kindergarten ('76) Will was swinging by himself. Swing sets are associated with both Willel and the Creels, and one of the swings is always broken or missing. If I'm right, this is brilliant: this beautiful Byler moment could also be a hint that Will shouldn't have been alone that day. His sister should've been swinging with him.

The lifeguard at the pool: 'No one in the water until 30 minutes after the last strike. You wanna get electrocuted, go climb a tree'. A very specific line and another possible hint that someone ended up in the water (a lake) and that powers (the strike) saved them. Behind him a poster with the date '76 and the word Happy Birthday.

In 4x01, El says that they're all time travellers and that it feels like it's been ten years since she saw Mike. 1986-10 = 1976.

There's also the poster of the Salizburger Festpiele of 1976- Der Talisman. We see it as Murray and Joyce are talking about Russia and Murray is preparing his ice bath (and he was the one who thought El was a russian spy, so this is about her). Once again, connection between cold and 1976. Plus, The Talisman. Lucas read Stephen King's novel, The Talisman, a story about parallel worlds and Twinners.

EDIT 2/3/24: Ross posted a photo of A Wrinkle in Time. The book was published in 1962, but this is the cover of the 1976 paperback edition (here)

(*) In the quarry scene there's also a cool parallel with Fringe, one of my favorite shows. Mike wears the same shirt Peter wears in episode 3x15, Subject 13 (my post about Number 13 and Polivia-Byler parallel)

In that episode, Peter almost drowns in the same frozen lake where Walter opened a portal to the other universe.

And it is revealed that Olivia can travel to the other universe when she's scared. The trigger? Her violent stepfather (looking at you, Lonnie) Why would he hurt the kids? Jealousy, money, or both. A possible parallel with Billy's father, who was jealous of his wife and in Billy's memory asks her: Did you see him again?

[hawkinslibrary]

stranger things: the first shadow -- a new story live on stage, coming to london late 2023

original story by the duffer brothers, jack thorne, and kate trefry; written by kate trefry and directed by stephen daldry

before the world turned upside down... 

hawkins, 1959: a regular town with regular worries. young jim hopper’s car won’t start. bob newby’s sister won’t take his radio show seriously and joyce maldonado just wants to graduate and get the hell out of town. when new student henry creel arrives, his family finds that a fresh start isn’t so easy... and the shadows of the past have a very long reach. 

brought to life by a multi-award-winning creative team, who take theatrical storytelling and stagecraft to a whole new dimension, this gripping new adventure will take you right back to the beginning of the stranger things story -- and may hold the key to the end. 

kate trefry is a staff writer and story editor on the show, and she wrote the spy, the sauna test, and the nina project. with her and the duffers being involved in creating the original story, and then having her be the main writer of the first shadow, along with the nod to the beginning and the end of stranger things, i would assume this is going to align with the canon of the show. 

it seems henry and his backstory will be the main focus, but other characters like joyce, hopper, and bob will be making appearances. 

edit: