#the first shadow

[aemiron-main]

Does Flaying Combine People With Their Alternate Timeline Selves?

So, today I was thinking about how Will’s S1 missing poster said that he had brown eyes:

Versus S2 Will not having brown eyes-

-until he gets flayed/the flaying progresses:

And then I was also thinking about how flayed TFS Henry has all of these Edward references surrounding him, but still doesnt seem to entirely be Edward, and how he also speaks about “us,” and says “he’s right here,” when Alice asks where Henry is:

Point is, he speaks as if he’s two people in the same body.

Which makes me wonder: does being flayed result in a person being merged with their timeline counterpart?

Ive theorized before about the idea that the hivemind transcends timeline/dimensions (ie a person flayed in 1959 might be simultaneously mentally connected to a person that got flayed in 1983, two flayed people in separate timelines might be simultaneously mentally connected etc etc), but now I wonder if that goes beyond just a connection, and instead, ends up merging a person with their alternate timeline self, maybe if both selves are flayed.

Like what I mean is that because two flayed versions of a person from alternate timelines (ie Henry and Edward) are connected to the hivemind, theyre therefore connected to eachother, right? But what happens if you connect the “same” person to themselves? Like if we think of the hivemind as being sort of like a computer, then what typically happens when two identical files are put in the same folder? One of then gets overwritten.

So, I wonder if that’s what’s happening here- if one version of a person is overwriting the other (but not as smoothly/quickly as it happens with computer files), and if that’s why Will’s eye colour changed as his flaying progressed- he may have been “overwritten” by the alternate timeline brown-eyed Will, just as TFS Henry may have been “overwritten” by Edward or vice versa.

This would also explain why Flayed Billy’s eye colour doesn’t change to brown- because the alt timeline Billy still has blue eyes.

This could also explain the emphasis on “weakness” in TFS and why Henry gets so upset when Brenner calls him weak- because the “weaker” version of a person might be the one that gets overwritten.

Anyway! Lots to think about.

[therainscene]

There upon a rainbow is the answer to a Neverending Story: Will's time-travelling coming-of-age

[Spoilers for The First Shadow ahead, though they don't begin until after the cut. And obligatory disclaimer that I haven't seen the play for myself yet.]

Will Byers is a character haunted by his past.

I mean, obviously, right? After the awful events of S1, Zombie Boy finds himself getting literally hunted down by a giant metaphor for trauma; by S3, when all his friends are starting to grow up, Will is still clinging pathetically to childhood escapism while that trauma metaphor continues to bristle under his skin.

That's not to say that Will's refusal to conform to other people's ideas of what growing up means isn't one of his strengths -- but there's a difference between that and refusing to grow up at all, and Will is very much digging his stubborn little heels in when it comes to the inevitable changes of adolescence.

Because Will is also a character haunted by his future.

As a gay boy growing up in an era that despises gay men, Will's fate has been quite clearly spelled out for him: if he's lucky, he'll just be looked down upon as a pervert; if he's not, he'll get murdered or become an AIDS statistic.

It's hard not to be a late bloomer when you know how quickly undesirable flowers get pruned.

So the prickling at the back of his neck doesn't just flare up in moments that remind him of his past, but also in moments that remind him of his future.

The dark intimacy of the cinema and the sweltering eroticism of the sauna remind him that his feelings for Mike are developing into something new and terrifying...

...while Milevn's heteronormative antics remind him of how unlikely it is that Mike would ever want that sort of future with him anyway.

Even his debriefing on the Mind Flayer's return hints towards his struggle to accept this truth about himself:

Will describes his encounters with the Mind Flayer as like being frozen in place, and I think that applies to his timeline too: the Shadow surrounds him on both sides, boxing him in, preventing him from moving forward or backward.

The only temporal direction open to him is sideways... towards that equally frozen realm the Shadow came from in the first place.

And he's not the only one in this predicament.

-------------------

Like Will, Henry was trapped in an alternate dimension as a child, and like Will, the Mind Flayer followed him home and possessed him -- allowing past and future to torment his adolescent self in tandem.

Brenner pressures and manipulates young Henry to give in to the dark urges demanded by the Shadow, sending him helplessly down the path towards becoming Vecna.

It's the classic self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms many a "difficult" (traumatized/neurodivergent/queer) child whom the adults in their life have no idea how to handle: Henry is deemed too broken to be worth treating with patience or compassion, and when the abuse finally does break him... well, that's just proof they were right about him all along.

The Shadow possessing Henry in 1959 somehow presents not as a formless cloud of particles, but as the spider monster he himself would shape twenty years later...

...and I think this is evidence of a predestination loop.

El didn't just banish Henry to Dimension X, but sent him back in time, allowing him to create the same monster that possessed him as a child. The Shadow was never an alien -- it was a manifestation of Henry's worst possible future, bootstrapped into existence by Brenner's meddling.

Note that this means El is also trapped in a self-creating loop:

If El hadn't used her powers to send Henry to Dimension X, then he never would have been able to sabotage his own childhood... which means Henry might never have become an asset to Brenner, which means Terry would never have been injected with Henry's blood, which means El would never have been born with powers.

To be clear: I'm not saying that El or Henry brought this on themselves.

This is all an allegory for the cycle of abuse, so the self-sabotage going on here isn't about these characters literally being to blame for what Brenner did to them, but about how they self-blame: internalizing the abuse and perpetuating harm in turn.

Let's return to Will and consider one of the show's biggest mysteries: why was he taken in S1?

The play heavily implies that Henry's powers were acquired in Dimension X, and outright states that the lab kids' powers came from Henry's blood, so it's unlikely that Will was born with powers.

Maybe Will was just in the wrong place at the wrong time... but then why was it so important that this random kid be spared from Vecna's plans to kill everyone in S2? Perhaps something happened during his week in the Upside Down that made him an asset to Vecna... but given the similarities between Will's connection to the Mind Flayer and Henry's, I propose an alternative explanation:

Whatever made Will a target in S1 is something that won't happen until S5. Because Will is also trapped in a predestination loop.

If predestination loops are what happens when a self-sabotager is linked to the supernatural, then frankly it's almost impossible for Will not to be trapped in one.

Every season since returning from the Upside Down, Will has sacrificed himself to help his friends fight the horrors... and all three of those sacrifices have been deeply entwined with his feelings for Mike.

In S2, Will was willing to die to save his friends from the Mind Flayer after Mike's heartfelt monologue broke through his possession.

In S3, Will bottled up all the pain he was feeling after his fight with Mike and refused to address it again once he realized the party was going to need his help with the Mind Flayer.

And in S4, Will pretended that his painting was actually from El in an attempt to support Mike -- and save the day once it started to look like a S2-esque monologue from Mike was needed once again.

Over and over, Will takes the love he feels for another boy and channels it into The Greater Heteronormative Good as though he's trying to atone for something. But the older he gets, the less effective that becomes:

S2's sacrifice was crucial to saving the day.

S3's sacrifice was helpful... but like... his role was to be a glorified Geiger counter; he didn't exactly need to shut down emotionally to pull it off.

S4's sacrifice did fuck all to save the day, and he definitely didn't need to meddle with Milevn's relationship by injecting a lie into it -- the painting could have passed as platonic if he wanted.

If this pattern holds, then we can expect Will's next move to start causing harm.

I usually interpret Troy's above line as Vecna foreshadowing... but what if it's actually foreshadowing how Will's nearly-adult self is going to start the chain of events that lead to 12 year-old Will's kidnapping?

Homophobes often accuse gay men of being a threat to children, which is rich because homophobia is the actual threat to children. In his desperate efforts to suppress the desires that make him a target to homophobes, all Will has accomplished is to hurt himself on homophobes' behalf. He's become a homophobe.

And thus he dooms an innocent child to needless horrors.

It's tempting to believe that Will's S5 coming-of-age is going to involve breaking the loop and undoing all the horrible things that happened...

...But I don't think this is likely to be the sort of time travel story in which the past can be undone. For one thing, Will breaking the loop would also undo the entirety of Stranger Things; for another, this show isn't really about defeating abuse so much as surviving it.

My bet would be that Will can't destroy the loop any more than he can destroy 80s homophobia. But once the loop completes, he'll also be free to leave it in the past and take a brave step into the future -- one in which he fully accepts his right to be in love and lust with a boy.

As scary as that future is...

...he might be pleasantly surprised by what he finds there.

[strnger1985]

how did he turn into this

[aemiron-art]

curtain call

[kidovna]

got to watch the first shadow again yesterday and i noticed a few small changes they made that i picked up on:

spoiler warning⚠️:

lonnie byers is 25 when joyce is 17-18 and they’re in a relationship (just when i thought i couldn’t hate him more!)

ted wheeler’s father eloped with bob newby’s mother

they had the chapter title card with the theme song play after the interval during the previews but they’ve removed it now (idk why they did, that i genuinely enjoyed it the first time around 😔)

henry and patty were so much cuter together in their interactions (but i can’t tell if it’s because i just had a better view of them this time since i was closer to the stage)

karen childress volunteering to read lines with patty so she gets to kiss her (i’m not sure if this is a ‘karen likes girls too’ or ‘karen likes to kiss’ kind of situation)

eleven with henry at the end is around 4-5 years old and no longer a baby

[moonlitdark]

[kassy-munson]

omg - joe keery seeing the stranger things play in london 😫

[starsarefire824]

I need them to record the play and release it as a Netflix special 😭😭

[greenfiend]

A little break from requests (will continue those soon!)

This is inspired by all the discourse lately on Henry and his ships… hehe. Did I basically put him in his own Twilight poster? Yes. I did the same with Mike previously.

My thoughts? I haven’t even seen the play (I want to tho!) but ship him with whoever you want. Just keep Brenner away from him!!!

[coldninjaruins-blog]

I'm sorry but they nailed with Lonnie's cast, like that's a Byers right there.

[tryingonametaphor]

//the first shadow spoilers

i am once again convinced that they set up byler in s4 to be a foil to hentty and give will the happy ending henry could’ve gotten with patty if things went right. will’s love for mike, his friends and family, and himself are going to be the key to the finale. if they miss out on byler after this and if they don’t give will powers then it’s just inconsistent writing.

i also think will’s powers are going to be very different from henry/el. my theory as of now is henry/el being destruction and will being creation, but that’s a lot to hope for. i do know that el and the other kids have henry’s powers because they got it from his blood, but will is a completely unique entity who has had his own personal interactions with the mind flayer and we have no idea what that means.

i wish they weren’t so subtle and quiet about will’s importance to the plot in s3&4 because the potential they have with this character is phenomenal.

[aemiron-main]

A Boy Like Me- Over A Shot Of Karen Wheeler? Ft “Henry” Creel is Not A Chick & Swapping Places: What’s With Lipstick and Gender Swaps In ST?

So, these shots of Karen are very interesting to me:

Because why is the lyric “a boy like me” playing over Karen Wheeler while she puts on lipstick?

Especially with the TFS scene where Walter says that Henry Creel “isnt a chick/hes not a chick,” versus Henry complimenting Patty’s lipstick (which is the same colour as Virginia’s lipstick and as Karen’s lipstick here) right after that “not a chick” scene. (and then there’s also the whole “henry vs henrietta” swap in fringe where a character named henry becomes henrietta due to a timeline change)

So, right now, we have two instances of lipstick being connected to weird gender swap references- we have Henry’s line about how he “likes Patty’s lipstick,” right after Walter says that Henry “isnt a chick,” and then we have Karen putting on lipstick while the lyric “a boy like me,” plays.

And then further connecting the lipstick to weird gender swap stuff, we have Patty’s lipstick scene versus the whole “Patty” vs “Patrick,” thing- so that’s three instances of lipstick being connected to gender swap stuff.

And just regarding gender swaps in general, not only do we have Owens mistaking Max for a boy, but Max also has a whole scene associated with a song about a man and a wonder swapping places (Running Up That Hill), versus Karen’s gender swap scene also involving a song/the “a boy like me” lyric.

What’s going on??? What kind of weird timeline gender swap Matrix-esque trans allegory stuff is going on here??

[therainscene]

Ohohoho, the First Shadow spoilers trickling in certainly have me thinking thoughts.

Specifically, thoughts about my Mind Flayer origin theory.

Major TFS spoilers ahead. Bear in mind that I haven't seen the play for myself; I'm relying on opening night leaks, which may or may not be accurate. Do what you wish with that information.

------------------

Looks like I got the powers part of my theory totally wrong, but that's fine, because that part wasn't really necessary for the theory to work.

The important question is whether or not the black cloud was created by El when she disintegrated Henry in the lab... and whether I got that right or wrong hinges on a particular detail I'm dying to learn more about.

[Source]

I need to know what he drew.

If he drew a formless cloud, then I guess the Mind Flayer really is just some evil extra-dimensional alien that always existed and has nothing to do with El. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But if he drew the spider monster. In 1959. When we know Henry wouldn't create it until at least 1979?

Then we've almost certainly got ourselves a predestination paradox -- the perfect vehicle for telling a story about the cycle of abuse. Let's recontextualize what S4 showed us:

------------------

Young Henry gets trapped in Dimension X and is possessed by the Mind Flayer, granting him powers. Later, he draws the monster that possessed him.

Adult Henry, driven batshit fucking insane by his decades-long enthrallment to both the Mind Flayer and Dr. Brenner, slaughters the lab kids to absorb their powers and tries to encourage his favourite to join him in super-villainy.

She refuses. He tries to kill her.

Terrified and desperate, Eleven uses the powers she inherited from him to turn him into a mass of black particles and chucks the whole sorry lot into an alternate dimension.

Henry finds the cloud of black particles in Dimension X.

He immediately recognizes them for what they are, and realizes that he and the particles haven't just been sent back to Dimension X, but back in time.

The thing possessing him had been his older self all along.

He fashions the cloud into the monster he saw as a child -- becomes the predator he was always born to be -- and lies in wait, like a spider in its web, for the cycle to repeat.

[rogueddie]

"The strangest place to start your family's future"

[aemiron-art]

“Festering”

[bebx]

Henry Creel meets Henry Creel