#i feel like i just need a way to differentiate travel within a universe and into the multiverse ya know

[kiwibirdlafayette]

im gonna be real with yall every time that I start thinking of new visuals for non est ad astra (smp multiverse) i cant. I become obsessed with the idea of each SMP within a given universe being both like islands on an ocean and like planets in space. like jumping between s1 world and ruxomar was very much like space-like void bc different dimensions but. just imagining like. leaving your home realm, sailing for a while through a black sea that glimmers with a quiet starlight for what feels like forever. A voice whispers and suddenly a doorway opens in front of you.You walk through and its like appearing on fresh shores, and untouched world awaiting you

[erwinsprincess]

mine, always and forever: chapter 6

characters: OC (female, y/n, she/her) x Commander Erwin Smith

warning: this story will contain 18+ elements including but not limited to childhood trauma, age-gap, power dynamics, graphic sexual content, substance abuse, self-harm, death/violence/blood, and language

tags: graphic sexual content, p-in-v sexual intercourse, fingering, oral sex, mention of breeding kink elements, use of “daddy”, age-gap, power differential, strong language, mention of bodily fluids regarding sexual encounters (if I’m missing any do not hesitate to lmk)

aot semi-cannonverse (takes place in aot universe but I am taking some artistic liberties with timelines, characters, world politics, and happenings)

plot: (y/n) is a young (female, she/her) cadet (22 y/o) with a complicated past. escaping from a life of meaningless pleasures in a foreign land, y/n hopes to make a difference by giving her heart as a member of the scout regiment. with only her brothers by her side, she steps into a world of uncertainty. upon integrating herself within her rank, y/n meets a man that would flip everything she knows about herself upside down... and she likes it.

author's note: this story is my own personal delusion about meeting and falling in love with Commander Erwin if I was in the aot verse. therefore, the character is loosely based on my life experience and self-image. however, it is my hope that all of you will see something of yourself in the MC and all of you Erwin-loving baddies will enjoy our blondie in a new story. I am also new to Tumblr and it seems there are endless things I must learn, so feel free to kindly correct me if I fail to add something to my posts that is necessary for your reading enjoyment.

.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜゜・.・゜

“I love you so much”

You said breathlessly as your lips moved against his. The tension in the room was high and the temperature felt ten degrees hotter. Every nerve in your body was firing at full force and your heart threatened to beat out of your chest. Your body was pressed against his on the couch where you sat, your arms wrapped around his neck. His arms rested around your waist. His hands were eager, yet hesitant, to explore more of your body. You moved to straddle his large frame, your body trembling with pure desire for him.

“Commander,” You mewled breathlessly as his lips traveled from your lips to your neck where he was placing wet kisses in a line towards your collar bone. “I want you. Please.” His hands had traveled to your hips as you straddled him, and you felt his body tense as your hands moved to unbutton his shirt.

“Y/N.” He said as his hand gently reached to your wrist, inhibiting you from unbuttoning his shirt. You stopped to look at him, your puffy lips formed a pout.

“Yes sir?” You asked, fearful that he would deny you the pleasure you had been fantasizing about for some time now. Was he scared to go all the way with you?

“Im not sure we should be doing this. I don’t want to pressure you into doing something you’re not ready for.” He said looking up at you. Looking into his gorgeous blue eyes, you could tell he wanted you, he just needed you to give the go-ahead-and-fuck-me command.

“Please.” You pressed your hips into his, feeling for the first time how aroused he was by you. He was a large man, so you could only imagine that his cock would be proportional, but you had no idea how you would make it fit. Not to mention, you’re a virgin. Your back arched slightly as your clothed pussy finally got the smallest taste of friction it had been craving. “Please, Commander I want you. I’ve wanted you for so long, you have no idea.” He considered your words for a second before his head cocked to the side slightly, amusement evident on his face.

“Oh really? Tell me, pretty girl, how badly do you want me?” His hands moved from your waist to your thighs that were on either side of his body and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Do you touch yourself and think of me? How naughty.” His hands roamed up your thighs and traveled under the skirt of your dress. You moaned at the very sensation of his hands touching your skin, you felt as though your body was made of smoldering cinders.

“Yes sir.” His thumbs hooked under the hem of your underwear as his large, strong hands gripped your ass. A groan escaped his lips in response as you ground your hips into his, desperate for friction. You felt the wetness pooling in your underwear. “I think of you late at night and I can’t fall asleep. I fantasize about the things you would do to me.” You began unbuttoning his top button, desperate to see what he looked like under those clothes. He asked a question next that took the breath out of your lungs because you never thought you would hear it, outside of your fantasies.

“Do you want me to make love to you, princess? I’ll make you feel so good.”

His hands traveled up the back of your dress to untie the lace up back. He pulled the cap sleeve off of your shoulder to expose your shoulder and your upper chest. He traced wet, open-mouthed kisses across your nearly bare chest. “I’m guilty too, you know. The thought of your perfect body sprawled out on my desk for me, or in my bed drives me crazy.” He pulled down the front of your dress to expose your breasts to him. His eyes fixated on your nipples that peaked at the cold air in the room. He took one in his hand and took the other in his mouth. Your back arched as you unbuttoned his shirt. You rested your hands on his firm, built chest and gently dug your nails in as he sucked and rolled your nipple between his fingers. “It’s not your first time is it?”

Shit. You paused and considered lying to him that it was not in fact your first time.

“Yes sir.” He paused to look up at you. “I’ve never had sex before, but I want to be yours. Please Commander, have me any way you want. I’m yours.”

“I’ll be gentle, my beautiful Y/N.” He pressed a kiss to your chest and brought a hand back up to your cheek, caressing gently. “I love you.”

“I love you, Commander.”

“Erwin.”

“Erwin.” You smiled as he looked up at you with all of the love in the world.

But, it was time to get back to business.

He positioned you so that you were laying between his legs, your back to his chest. He kissed your cheek and jaw as you brought your legs up, spreading them wide for your commander. Your body trembled with excitement, nerves, and untethered lust for the man who was now squeezing your plush thighs and working his way to exactly where you wanted him.

One hand traveled back up to massage your breast gently and the other slipped underneath your panties. You felt his chest rise and fall and you heard a groan escape his lips as he felt how wet you were for him. He slid a finger down the center of you and your back arched against him at the sensation as he pressed his finger gently against your throbbing clit. You let out a high pitched moan.

“So wet for me already? Such a good girl.” He praised you and you felt every inch of your body feel as though it had been set alight. His honey-coated words sent shivers down your spine.

“Mmmm I’m always wet for you, Erwin.” You mewled breathlessly as he rubbed slow circles over your clit. “Working so close to you is torture.”

He chuckled. “Do you know how hard it is to hide how aroused you make me, pretty girl?” He slid a finger inside of you. His fingers were much thicker than yours, or any boy who had gotten that far with you. You adjusted to the girth of one finger and you grounded your hips against it, begging for more.

“Greedy little thing.” He mocked. “Want your commander to give you more?” He pressed kisses to your cheek as you moaned out a weak “yes sir.” A second finger slid inside of you and the delicious stretch caused tears to form at your lash line. He moved his fingers in and out of you slowly as your wetness coated them. You moaned as your commander worked to pleasure you with his strong, broad hands. Just the idea of this perfect man touching you in your most intimate places was enough to send you over the edge. You felt something building in your lower stomach as he pressed his thumb to your clit as he drove his fingers in and out of you.

“Cum for me, princess. Show me how good I make you feel.”

And that was all it took. Your back arched as you felt the release of your orgasm wash over you from head to toe. High pitched moans left your mouth as you mewled out your commander’s name.

“Oh God! I’m cumming!” You mewled out followed by high pitched cries of his name. Your wetness drenched your panties and his fingers as you came down from your orgasm. Your chest rose and fell as you looked up at him tasting your wetness from his fingers.

“You taste as delicious as you look, darling.” he said in a low voice that caused shivers to travel up your spine. The idea of Erwin tasting your juices made you feel very shy. You looked away as your cheeks turned hot. “Why the bashfulness all of the sudden?” He asked as coyly. “Aren’t you curious what you taste like, as well?” You felt a hand gently lift your head by your chin and his two, still wet fingers were placed at the entrance of your mouth. You parted your lips slightly as his fingers traveled inside of your mouth and you licked off the remainder of your juices. You groaned at the fullness of his fingers in your mouth and you wondered if you would be able to take his entire length. As he pulled his fingers out he muttered his praises to you in a way that made you want to ride him into the sunset. “Such a good girl for me.”

You sat up and turned to face him. His legs were still spread from you laying between them, exposing the bulge that threatened to pop the zipper of his pants. As you ran a hand up his thigh he let out a hiss of anticipation. Your hand traveled to the bulge in his pants and you palmed gently.

“It’s so fucking big.” You said, looking at him through doe eyes. “Can I taste you, Erwin?”

His eyes were filled with lust, pupils absolutely blown and any sense of self-control he might have had was out the window. There was no turning back now.

Erwin had always considered himself to be a man who had immense self-control. He rarely indulged in alcohol, women, or self-pleasure as he found they were all distractions from the goals he set forth for himself and his regiment. The commander was quite strong willed. That is, until a certain cadet offered her first time to him. The idea of taking your innocence and making you utterly submit to him as he made you his, was nothing short of intoxicating.

“Bed.” He said, still out of breath as he stood and lifted you from the couch to move you to his sleeping quarters. He laid you down in the bed gently and finished undressing you, discarding your dress to the corner of the room. All that was left was your underwear as you crawled towards him, hoping to get just a taste before he had his way with you. He unzipped his pants and pulled them down to mid-thigh when his arousal sprang from his briefs. You felt intimidated as you reached to wrap your hand around the tip. You gave the tip a few gentle pumps, earning deep groans from Erwin. His tip was red and leaking with precum that you leaned forward to take into your mouth. You moaned as you tasted the salty-sweet liquid on your tongue and you began to swirl your tounge around his tip.

“Y/N, darling.” He groaned as he brought a hand to your cheek, and you looked up at him. “So beautiful. I never thought I would get to see you like this.”

“You taste so good, Erwin.” You said licking your lips. “Too bad, I want you to cum inside me.”

His jaw hung open slightly at the boldness of your remark. He stammered. “Oh, Y/N-“

He’s so cute.

“Oh, are you sure? I-“

You nodded your confirmation. “Please?” You leaned back to rest your head on his pillows and spread your legs. Your panties stuck to your pussy with the juices from your first orgasm.

His jaw hung open slightly as he took in the visual of you laid out on his bed just for him. His jaw then clenched as his chest rose and fell faster than before. It was almost as though he was practicing restraint by force of habit. There would be need for that tonight.

He leaned forward to rest on his palms and with one hand, he reached out to hook two fingers into your panties, allowing his to pull them right off. You instinctively closed your legs but strong hands reached out to keep your knees apart. There was no going back from here. He had to have you.

“Erwin?” You asked sweetly, looking up at the much larger man with doe-like eyes.

“Yes princess?” He answered slightly out of breath. “Are you having second thoughts?”

The idea that he could even muster up the ability to ask you that was astonishing. This man really did have a will stronger than most, and you knew he would never put you through more than you were comfortable with, even if it meant he would have to “relieve” himself later. The idea that you were having second thoughts could not be further from the truth, however.

“Take me, please. I’m yours.” You reached a hand up to touch his face gently. “I want you to be my first and only.”

The final strand of self-restraint was snapped within Erwin. There was no longer room for deliberation.

He instructed you to lay comfortably on your back and pull your knees back. He rested a hand on the back of your thigh while the other hand pumped a few times before he lined up at your dripping wet entrance. He gently brushed the head against you a few times before slowly pushing in.

The pain was sharp and unfamiliar, as nothing larger had ever been inside of you. You looked up at him with tears already forming in your eyes.

“I know it hurts, but you’re a big girl.” He cooed. “I’ll make you feel good, I promise.”

“Yes sir.” You squeaked out as he pushed in about halfway. You felt the intense stretch from his gargantuan size and you let out a high-pitched groan. Your fingers dug into his muscular shoulders as he continued to push deeper. A bit of blood began to drip out onto the blanket.

“I’m sorry.” You said shyly. You felt so embarrassed to have bled onto his sheets even though it’s perfectly natural.

“Don’t be sorry.” He reassured you gently. “I have more than one set of sheets, darling.”

You nervously chucked as he continued to slide into you deeper and deeper until he bottomed out and paused.

“Such a good girl. You make your commander so very proud”

You moaned a response to his praises. He was so good and so gentle with you.

“S- so big, Erwin. Fuck you’re so big.” Your back arched as the painful stretch turned to pleasure. “Please fuck me, sir. I’m ready.”

He began to pull out and slowly thrush back in. He let out a low hiss as pleasure began to take over his body. His grip on the backs of your thighs moved to your waist. His large, strong hands practically wrapped around your waist entirely. He began to pick up the pace, and you felt yourself slip into ecstasy. You moaned out his name as he whispered praises to you. The pleasure was unlike anything you had ever felt before. The closeness you felt to Erwin was so new to you, yet so exciting.

“Touch yourself, Princess. I wanna see you play with that beautiful pussy.”

You nervously reached a hand between your legs and started tracing circles on your clit with two fingers. His eyes darkened with pure lust as he watched you pleasure yourself as he thrust in and out of you mercilessly. Your wetness began to drip onto the sheets below you as you felt your orgasm building.

“Oh Erwin!” You mewled out how good he made you feel. “I’m so close I’m gonna-“

Your orgasm began to wash over you before you could finish your sentence. From head to toe the most intense pleasure you had ever felt, filled your body. Your back arched off of the bed and you dug your nails into Erwin’s strong back muscles. You felt your pussy throbbing around him as he chased his quickly approaching orgasm too.

“My good girl.” He said breathlessly. “Do you have another for me? I want to see you cum for me again.”

You felt uncertain your body could muster another orgasm after the two you just had but for Erwin, you would try anything. His thrusts picked up the pace as he wrapped one arm underneath your torso to pull you up to meet him. Your lips met his and he immediately deepened the kiss, letting his tongue explore your mouth. You gently bit his lip as he pulled away.

“I want you to cum for me, Commander.” Using his official title in such a way was exciting, and you knew it turned him on. “C-cum inside me, please I want you to fill me up.” You mewled out. Your lashes became wet with tears of pleasure as the intense sensation of your next orgasm began to build. “Please Commander!”

“You’re mine, beautiful Y/N. All mine and I want you forever, Princess. Will you be mine? Be my pretty little wife and carry our babies? Would you like that, my dear?”

You didn’t even register that his words were as good as a proposal as he continued to thrust into you with everything he had. You managed to mewl out a response of confirmation but you were too drunk on your building orgasm that you couldn’t think straight.

His thrusts began to get sloppy and his breathing hitched, and you knew he was close.

“P-please daddy, feels s-so good.” You had begun rubbing tight circles onto your clit again hoping to cum with him. “Ah! Like that! Don’t stop!” You cried out as your orgasm built to the tipping point.

“Fuck Y/N, I’m gonna cum, princess.” He groaned as his thrusts became hard and irregular.

“Mmmm yes, give it to me, Erwin!” You cried out as your orgasm washed over you a third time. You squirmed underneath him as he filled you with his warm seed. The sensation alone was sinfully indulgent.

“Take it all, Princess.” He grunted out, thrusts slowing. His breathing was slow and heavy. “Take all my cum, baby.”

As you were both coming down from your high, you reached a hand up to touch his face. You were both out of breath at this point. He looked down at you, hair sticking to the thin layer of sweat on his forehead.

“Y/N, my love.”

You smiled up at him but winced as he slowly pulled out of you. He moved to kiss down your thigh and slowly moved to your lower tummy where he placed a prolonged kiss before looking up at you.

“Erwin.” You ran a hand through his now-messy golden locks. “I’m all yours. For as long as you will have me I’m yours.”

“And I am yours, Miss Y/N.”

He moved to kiss you on the lips once more before gently lifting you from the bed.

“Let me run a bath for my beautiful bride-to-be.”

[365sylviaplath]

what happens when past present and future are indistinguishable?

quantum theory if they weren't afraid to let lesbians in the room

here i am after stewing on *this* sarah schauer tiktok for a bit - which starts with "have you ever hated the patriarchy so much that you ended up teaching yourself quantum physics?" my musings on this concept reminded me that the world's true and foremost quantum physics lecture is found in relationship. hear me out.....

you can read the theories and study the concepts. but maybe nothing will move you more to researching spacetime than when you meet someone who you feel you've already met. you recognize firsthand how theoretical time and space must truly be, and you pursue answers because you're so blown away by what you're experiencing. someone has to have experienced this before. and the further down you go, the more you realize it is all cyclical. cyclical to the point of having no true separation. the theory of relativity tells us that time is not measured in an absolute way - it's more dependent on the observer. past, present, and future all coexist somehow within spacetime, interwoven without much distinction. some days will feel like 5 years ago, others feel oddly futuristic. when you let yourself dream, you can see potential universes unfolding for yourself. you will know today's date, but that doesn't mean you feel it. given that the majority of our best spacetime theories end up being some version of "yeah we can't really make solid rules about this, we're just perceiving the best we can", it's up to you to make sense of your current linear time experience. if the beauty of time is differentiated through the eye of the beholder, who else could meaningfully dictate my experience? i smell a candle in Target and it's 2015.

let's take it a step further - if matter cannot be created or destroyed (the law of conservation of mass, if you're nasty), all of these pieces have been here in infinite configurations for as long as we can conceptualize. statistically speaking, the same groupings were bound to happen a few times. given the whole time debacle mentioned above, there is genuinely no way that some of the same pieces of carbon haven't found each other before. people ask if you believe in love as first sight and you're supposed to pretend it's not universal law. here you are again - i loved you then, i love you now - now is no different from then, then is just an extension of now - i never stopped, i just needed to remember. by this same logic, i already know the great loves of my life, i just haven't remembered them yet! i already know on a physical level what it feels like to love them and to be embraced by them and to be wholly accepted as myself. on both my best and worst days, i remember i am always connected to these loves - i picture them in my head, nameless and faceless but identifiable through feeling. i know the feeling so well because it's not our first time doing this! in the meantime, i find inspiration in connecting with the feelings that seem out of place. i remember to write these love letters i will one day send.

to further complicate things, what we immediately label as romantic love in these sort of whirlwind connections often ends up to be something else, though equally as important. that instant feeling of recognition does not always work out to be a compatible romantic relationship this time around, but this isn't the only thing possible for the dynamic to serve us. love itself is much more vast than any singular romantic relationship. often, love is more about keeping you on the path you're supposed to travel this lifetime. like, "i'm back in this lifetime to remind you of what you will need to find fulfillment, in whichever way it best suits you to learn it". sometimes this apparition of love is actually the embodiment of all of your worst anxieties and fears. your relationship with this person feels so divinely triggering that you have no choice but to bear witness. you might find it easier to love your shadows when they appear to you as someone else. sometimes that entirely random person you find yourself infatuated with is the one who inspires you to find your creative medium/introduces you to a career path you’re passionate about/serves to reflect the parts of yourself you found hardest to love. these relationships are never a waste! you're continually brought closer to yourself. you feel that love, you let it change you, you set it free and it sets you free in return. isn't that what love is all about?

adding a note here- i started reading Notes on Complexity (one of the books mentioned in the earlier tiktok) and one of the first things he says is a dedication to his partner Mark. i swear, any time there is really meaningful interconnectedness theoretical physics-esque discussion that catches my eye, it will have been penned by someone queer. perhaps i am naturally biased toward finding such content, but whatever. i find it beautiful how queer love often ends up turning you into a physicist. love that demands you understand the entirety of the gravity of your situation so you can say with certainty at the end of the day "this whole thing, in its enormous complexity, transpired so i could experience your love - as i always have, to some extent, and always will - beyond this physical form". i want to learn every little detail about how we could find each other and what it means that we did. i want to learn about all of the past versions we've been and explore where we get to go this time. what will we teach each other? what is there to know?

[ponyworldbuilding]

Princess Twilight Sparkle hasn’t been seen for hundreds of years, your flank recently grew a symbol on it and now your horn casts magic! That’s right, today we’re talking about Hasbro’s “official fan fiction”, My Little Pony: A New Generation. You’re probably wondering why I call it that, and I do too! This series started in 2021 with a movie, placing itself distinctly within the confines of the Equestria of Friendship is Magic. Except it didn’t, there are differences and changes. As a sequel, I think this latest generation serves as an important lesson in fan fiction writing, retcon and universe presentation.

I stumbled across this article recently and realised that my concerns and feelings with the newly released series are applicable across writing of any narrative that is trying to exist within a pre-established universe. Like the romance that article describes, it could be made completely original without destroying its primary story. Since the very opening of its debut movie, generation five of My Little Pony has had strong and direct ties to its preceding generation. Rather than an entirely new story, it’s similar to many other “next generation” stories in various media. The debut movie was an enjoyable watch that excited fans, myself and reviewers alike. However, the generation as a whole has both struggled to follow and utilise the material its supposed to be set after.

When diverging from an existing canon, it’s important to make that clear very early on in any work. The audience is expecting to have knowledge that they can apply to the writing, insights that they can use with new information to theorise and get excited about the new direction of a story. If it is not clear early on how divergent things are, then an audience can no longer have confidence in their existing knowledge. One of the key benefits to expanding an existing work is suddenly lost.

The time travel and alternative universe tropes are good examples of this when done well. Within the first few paragraphs or minutes of this new narrative there are clear and present details that highlight change. The audience is able to clearly determine that they aren’t supposed to rely entirely on what they know. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-verse does just that. Articles and reviewers and audiences love its expressive use of style and colour to make a beautiful visual spectacle, but these techniques are also used to divide and differentiate each alternate universe.

A New Generation has been doing the opposite. In almost three years, several comics, a video game, 5 chapters of a main series and many episodes of a mini-series, I still can’t figure out whether this generation is trying to faithfully follow Friendship is Magic but has writing issues or is set within its own Equestria that looks very similar in some ways but very different in others. The most plot relevant details (no spoilers) often do not require a connection to Friendship is Magic to work, but we’re showered with smaller references and connections constantly. It feels like the writers are trying to keep me interested because I liked Friendship is Magic, rather than trying to get me to like A New Generation. Never do this with your own writing.

If a story does not need to be connected to another piece of media, DO NOT make that connection. Sequels are at their best when they expand upon what was established to make something new. Fan fiction is most interesting when it explores and expands upon what was missed or could have been different. Use the tools and world you have been given to explore to their fullest or make your own.

[puckhead97]

I've got 10 questions associated with Statictale, specifically its characters and other things unrelated to that.

1. What food and hobby does Encryption enjoy the most, aside from Thomas past cooking and watching anime?

2. I think I know which ability in my opinion is Encryption's most potent, but which ability would you consider as his grand when in base form? Be considerate of various factors, and don't just scale one singular aspect; Showcase and differentiate things that would naturally make abilities stronger or weaker than one another.

3. Is there any background information on why Encryption's first transformation is called The Guardian? If so, then why does he protect what he protects?

4. An elaborated version of how it would be if Olethros and Encryption met. For starters, how'd they'd act on first meeting, if they'd become great friends and talk a lot, etc.

5. Despite how differently our scaling systems work, it would be interesting to know your thoughts about Obatala and how a fight between him and Override would go. Also, I loved the transformation!

6. Devastation is my favorite character and so, I would love to know how an interaction between him and Zealot would go! Also, who do you think would win?

7. Does Devastation have any hidden perks gained from his parents, or anything similar to that?

8. What characters are in romantic relationships?

9. When will Hunter be Updated?

10. Would the relationship between Encryption and Zenshia ever grow into something more?

Well, Encryption has always been fond of star gazing, it's been one of his favorite past times, though it's unclear of where this interest sparked or originated from. As for a Encryption's favorite food, he doesn't really have one, saying he doesn't really need food, however, there have been several occasions where he's been seen eating Cheese Puffs, so it could be safe to assume that those would be his favorite food, or at least something he enjoys to eat.

In terms of straight up attacks, I'd probably have to go with his Shattered Temporality Rifts, given with this, he's not only able to inflict immense amounts of damage, this not being limited to ones in combat with him, but also with the verse he resides in as a whole (this most likely being limited to a Universal/Low Multiversal Scale). With these rifts, Encryption can compress the very fabric of spacetime down to a singular point, practically ripping a hole in the fabric of existence. The black hole that's formed from these rifts can usually be controlled, however, if Encryption were to lose his grasp on it, then the damage it could cause would be absolutely devastating, practically engulfing the entirety of the Universe that the black hole had originally been created within. To add to the sheer power that the ability holds, it can also be quite difficult to escape from, given black holes have a gravitational pull so significant that not even light itself can escape. In most cases, the only way to avoid or pull oneself out of the pull of a black hole would be to travel at beyond light speed, or by using some form of instantaneous transportation, like teleporting. However, I would like to also bring up Encryption's soul, this being the Soul of Transcendence, which is one of the main reasons why Encryption is able to achieve the many feats that he does, despite still being rather inexperienced with his abilities (at this given time). The Soul of Transcendence often relies on the morality of the user, as those with good intent, like Encryption, will have a far easier time managing and utilizing the Soul of Transcendence compared to those who are immoral, or are perhaps trying to use the soul for their own self gain. To be blunt, I feel that without his soul, Encryption wouldn't even be capable of using the Shattered Temporality Rifts, or if he could, they'd be far too unstable to properly utilize.

As for why Encryption's "First Transformation" is called the Guardian? Honestly, I wouldn't really consider it a transformation, as it's more or less an immense power boost while also giving him a slight appearance change. The Guardian is usually what's triggered when Encryption finds himself under extreme stress or usually a life threatening situation. We know that The Database views Encryption as a part of itself, and the Guardian is more or less a safety measure that was instill within Encryption upon his entry into the Database. Within this state, Encryption's sole purpose is to defend and exterminate the threat that had forced the Database to feel threatened. So in a sense, Encryption is really guarding the Database, or at least trying to preserve it, as upon becoming The Guardian, the initial process of Overdrive's transformation is initiated.

Honestly, I'm sure Encryption would more interested by Olethors' appearance, given to someone like Olethors, Encryption may not come off as very intimidating. However, I think after the initial, and probably awkward encounter, the two potentially probably wouldn't grow to be friends right away, as it'd probably come with time, though at the very least, they'd most likely become allies. I do see the two potentially growing to a point of being friends, though it would most likely take lots, and lots of time.

To say the very least, it would be a battle that would have everlasting affects on the very fabric of fiction itself. I do feel that in term of who would win a battle between Overdrive and Obatala would really come down to how each one utilizes their skills and how they make use of their strengths while also being able to cover up for their weaknesses. Overdrive's biggest weakness is the fact that he needs confirmation from the Database to use any of his Overdrive Series attacks, however, if given authorization to use them, that could drastically change the tide of battle. If Overdrive wasn't able to use the entirety of his Overdrive Series, then I will say that Obatala would win without much struggle, as Overdrive isn't able to be very offensive without confirmation of the Database. However, even with the Overdrive Series at his disposal, it would still be a close battle, though in my eyes, the ability that would be most likely to cause Obatala to lose would be Overdrive's Manifested Ultipotence. With this ability, Overdrive would most likely be able to greatly, and quickly overpower Obatala. In conclusion, I think the outcome of the fight would be situational.

Between Zealot and Devastation, I do feel an interaction between the two would be brief, as Devastation would most likely jump right to attempting to kill Zealot. And while the two both are on a Universal scale, which I presume means they're relatively the same in power, despite the vastly different scaling system we use, Zealot would most likely kick Devastation's ass. Devastation is incredibly reckless and careless when in combat, as he simply doesn't care for the pain he feels, in fact, it often appears that he enjoys the pain, so call him a masochist if you will. However, if Devastation were to be able to properly utilize the Eyes of Cthulhu that he has, then that would greatly alter the tide of battle, this most likely resulting in Devastation winning, however, as of now, Devastation is rarely able to properly use them. To wrap this up with a brief summery, their encounter would most likely be brief, and Devastation would most likely lose a fight with Zealot.

Devastation and his brothers all share one perk, this perk coming from Dahlia, and this perk being that all four of the brothers are part demon. Keep in mind that Dahlia didn't birth any of the four brothers, however, once their vessels had been created, Obscurity (known as Ajax at the time), had taken his own DNA and Dahlia's to make their children their own, this being why the brothers are "technically" related to Dahlia. The fact that they're all part demon doesn't do much, as it really only increases the amount of damage or destruction that they can dish out, while also making them ever so slightly more durable in terms of combat. Devastation more or less relies on his own personal skills as well as his own strength.

Currently, there aren't any official relationships known amongst the characters that we currently have, however, @zombiekitten05 and myself have been thinking of ways to potentially bring some characters together!

I do plan on returning to Hunter's wiki page as I feel he's kinda just been forgotten, buried under all my other ideas and projects. I don't actually own Hunter, as he's a character made by a friend of mine (who gave me permission to include him in StaticTale). I do plan on returning to Hunter's wiki page after I add both Lethal and Red, both of which belong to @zombiekitten05!

I'm honestly not sure, but this has been something I've been thinking about for quite some time. To say the least, Encryption and Zenshia are very close to one another, the two having been best friends for ages, and it's clear that Zenshia cares greatly for the skeleton, as she's grown quite attached to him. In my opinion, the only characters I could see being even remotely compatible with Encryption currently would be Zenshia or Red. Once the story develops or at least once more characters are introduced, only then will I be able to properly answer this question.

[isntthatwrite]

eat your heart out, neil degrasse tyson

here i am after stewing on *this* tiktok for a bit - which starts with "have you ever hated the patriarchy so much that you ended up teaching yourself quantum physics?" my musings on this concept reminded me that the world's true and foremost quantum physics lecture is found in relationship. hear me out.....

you can read the theories and study the concepts. but maybe nothing will move you more to researching spacetime than when you meet someone who you feel you've already met. you recognize firsthand how theoretical time and space must truly be, and you pursue answers because you're so blown away by what you're experiencing. someone has to have experienced this before. and the further down you go, the more you realize it is all cyclical. cyclical to the point of having no true separation. the theory of relativity tells us that time is not measured in an absolute way - it's more dependent on the observer. past, present, and future all coexist somehow within spacetime, interwoven without much distinction. some days will feel like 5 years ago, others feel oddly futuristic. when you let yourself dream, you can see potential universes unfolding for yourself. you will know today's date, but that doesn't mean you feel it. given that the majority of our best spacetime theories end up being some version of "yeah we can't really make solid rules about this, we're just perceiving the best we can", it's up to you to make sense of your current linear time experience. if the beauty of time is differentiated through the eye of the beholder, who else could meaningfully dictate my experience? i smell a candle in Target and it's 2015.

let's take it a step further - if matter cannot be created or destroyed (The Law of Conservation of Mass, if you're nasty), all of these pieces have been here in infinite configurations for as long as we can conceptualize. statistically speaking, the same groupings were bound to happen a few times. given the whole time debacle mentioned above, there is genuinely no way that some of the same pieces of carbon haven't found each other before. people ask if you believe in love as first sight and you're supposed to pretend it's not universal law. here you are again - i loved you then, i love you now - now is no different from then, then is just an extension of now - i never stopped, i just needed to remember. by this same logic, i already know the great loves of my life, i just haven't remembered them yet! i already know on a physical level what it feels like to love them and to be embraced by them and to be wholly accepted as myself. on both my best and worst days, i remember i am always connected to these loves - i picture them in my head, nameless and faceless but identifiable through feeling. i know the feeling so well because it's not our first time doing this! in the meantime, i find inspiration in connecting with the feelings that seem out of place. i remember to write these love letters i will one day send.

to further complicate things, what we immediately label as love in these sort of whirlwind connections often ends up to be something else, though equally as important. that instant feeling of recognition does not always work out to be a compatible romantic relationship this time around, but this isn't the only thing possible for the dynamic to serve us. love itself is much more vast than any singular romantic relationship. often, love is more about keeping you on the path you're supposed to travel this lifetime. like, "i'm back in this lifetime to remind you of what you will need to find fulfillment, in whichever way it best suits you to learn it". sometimes this apparition of love is actually the embodiment of all of your worst anxieties and fears. your relationship with this person feels so divinely triggering that you have no choice but to bear witness. you might find it easier to love your shadows when they appear to you as someone else. sometimes that entirely random person you find yourself infatuated with is the one who inspires you to find your creative medium/introduces you to a career path you absolutely love/serves to reflect the parts of yourself you found hardest to love. these relationships are never a waste! you're continually brought closer to yourself. you feel that love, you let it change you, you set it free and it sets you free in return. isn't that what love is all about?

adding a note here- i started reading Notes on Complexity (one of the books mentioned in the earlier tiktok) and one of the first things he says is a dedication to his partner Mark. i swear, any time there is really meaningful interconnectedness theoretical physics-esque discussion that catches my eye, it will have been penned by someone queer. perhaps i am naturally biased toward finding such content, but whatever. i find it beautiful how queer love often ends up turning you into a physicist. love that demands you understand the entirety of the gravity of your situation so you can say with certainty at the end of the day "this whole thing, in its enormous complexity, transpired so i could experience your love - as i always have, to some extent, and always will - beyond this physical form". i want to learn every little detail about how we could find each other and what it means that we did. i want to learn about all of the past versions we've been and explore where we get to go this time. what will we teach each other? what is there to know?

[kaypeace21]

Some of your favorite characters are Will’s split personalities (psych/narrative analysis)

This is part 2 of my DID analysis. Part 1 focusing on how the supernatural events of the series correlate to Will’s past with Lonnie. Before, I explain who I believe are alters of Will’s (previously called ‘split personalities’). I think I need to explain a crash course on what Dissociative Identity disorder (DID: previously ‘multiple personality disorder’) entails. And the supernatural manifestation within the show as well- Before explaining which characters I believe are alters of Will’s and why. So let’s begin.

There are 4 hallmarks of a potential dissociative disorder

“Dissociation is when instead of staying present in the face of stress you exit your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations and zone out. . It’s as if your body is a computer that reaches overload for input then just shuts down.’ It’s considered a defense mechanism in psychoanalytic theory.”

‘An individual struggling with dissociation or a dissociative disorder may only experience one of the following or may experience multiple. Each individual’s experience with dissociation can be varied. Symptoms can last just a matter of moments or return at times over the years.” 

1)“Identity confusion and alteration -When an individual forgets who they are or takes on a new personality unlike themselves.” (Aka his possession).

2)Dissociative Amnesia-”The forgetting of a major event, such as a childhood trauma or forgetting (traumatic) things happening in real-time.Many survivors of are able to “forget” until sometime later …when memories are triggered by certain events or when the body and mind are no longer able to conceal the memories.” (Aka Will’s ‘now memories’. The reason he refers to them as “now-memories” is because they are things he’s already experienced (as memories) but he’s only now remembering - because of his “dissociative-amnesia’

3)”Derealization-Feeling like the world is not real or is foggy.” (the upsidedown)

4) “Depersonalization-The sense of not being in control of, or not being connected to, one’s body.”

vocab and definitions (about DID) to keep in mind 

CORE/HOST- “The core is considered by some to be the person first born to the body. The host is the alter who most commonly uses the body (which may or may not be the core).”

ALTERS - “are dissociated self states that can be highly differentiated from each other. They can have unique names, appearances, ages, gender identities, sexualities, memories (pasts), skills, faiths, political views, abilities, and ways of viewing and interacting with the world. Alters can even perceive themselves as different species, inanimate objects, or as members of a different race, gender, age, or ethnicity/race.No one can choose to have alters or what their alters are like. Alters' creation is entirely unconscious. Most alters have their own sense of identity.  A host  cannot actually control the alter.An individual with DID has one brain and one body. Dissociative barriers between alters are not literal boundaries, and knowledge, memories, skills, preferences, and traits may bleed through.Alters usually have a role or multiple roles in a smaller system- these roles may or may not appear contradictory.”

SYSTEM-”A system is a collection of alters within one body.Subsystems are two or more groups of alters that might have developed separately, and they may or may not be aware of the other group.”

INNER WORLDS-”it could be a house, to a city, or multiple locations-where alters go when not in control of the body. The innerworld is where alters can interact with one another and where there physical appearance is how they describe .Communication between alters may happen face-to-face (in each other's respective bodies, via the internal world). Expansive internal worlds can result when highly imaginative or dissociative systems use their inner world to retreat from the outside world and so play out entire stories within their mind. Alters may be perceived as having internal lives when not active in the outside world, and these inner lives may involve travel to other internal locations. Many internal happenings may be metaphorical or highly symbolic of the core’s past. Inners worlds may also have characters  called "NPCs" (taken from the roleplaying term "non-player characters") that can interact with alters but they are more similar to imaginary constructs rather than actual alters (they can’t control the body and some are made consciously unlike alters-although that’s not always the case). These npcs can be background characters to make the world more real, and it’s not uncommon for parents, family members, or friends of alters to be NPCs.They can feel just as real as natural-born people . Different subsystems may reside in different locations in an internal world or may have non-overlapping internal worlds.”

INTEGRATION- This is essentially the closest thing an alter can do to die- but frankly I consider that comparison harsh. It’s “ when an alter permanently combines with the host or another alter.Fusion occurs when identities merge together and become a unified whole (retaining the memories and some traits of both merging identities.)  Integration into a single, individualized identity IS the goal for some in therapy.  But it is not, and does not have to be, for everyone.  It is possible to achieve full healing by processing memories, establishing communication across the whole mind, lowering dissociative barriers, and showing aptitude in everyone working toward a common goal - all without actually integrating.  Others may choose to integrate SOME parts, or "downsize", but still leave a small system to go about their life.”

“They may retain any number of independently acting alters. Reasons for choosing not to fully integrate can include: feeling that full integration is unnecessary; not understanding what integration actually entails and being afraid of "losing" their alters; uncertainty over how to navigate the world as one integrated person; being used to having alters around for company, entertainment, or support; alters having their own unique relationships that they're hesitant to lose; alters wanting to remain separate for their own sakes.”

SWITCHING-”Switching refers to one alter taking control of the body at the expense of another alter who was previously in control of body or ‘fronting’. Switches can be consensual, forced, or triggered.Switches can be slow, quick, or uncontrollably rapid. Switching can take seconds, minutes, or even days to occur.Stress (Will’s anniversary effect) or even a reminder of a trauma, can trigger a switch of alters.  * I’ll talk more about this later

ALTERS DYING-“Even if mock deaths or temporary experiences of alters “dying” from old age (or other means) have been acted out in some systems, they aren’t actually dying. You cannot kill off a collective part of the conscious mind like you can a person. Their thoughts, memories, emotions will all still be there, so they must be as well. The part may have gone into extreme hiding/dormant, been momentarily immobilized, or merged with another part of the mind (integration), but they most assuredly did not and can not disappear entirely or “be killed”.

Next we’re on to the supernatural concept they chose to use for this disorder.

We see in the first episode.  Will mentions x-men 134 which is about the dark phoenix . The show is litered with x men references like Dustin giving cerebro ( a machine belonging to professor x) to Will. Dustin also asks if El was born with powers “like the x-men.” And Mike also says  El channels Will and Dustin once again says “like professor x.” Now- does anyone know who professor x’s son (David) and the ‘shadow phoenix”are ? Well his son is considered the most powerful mutant in the world and has Dissociative identity disorder (DID).At one point some of his alters literally escape his head and enter the real world as tangible people. The ‘shadow phoenix’ is also a sibling to the ‘dark phoenix’.And this ‘shadow phoenix’ (a ‘shadow monster’ if you will)   terrorized David’s alters and forced them to integrate back into 1 personality . 

In ‘scanners’ one psychic mentions how he “opened the door” to the people trapped in his own mind in order for Daryl to be Daryl again.  While in ‘altered states’ the man (who saw flashes of another dimension) met his ‘unborn self in the crack in the void.’Similar to how Mr clarke and Alexi describes the portals of other dimensions being opened as a ‘door’. However, these doors were created before El- we see El created the one at the lab, but that doesn’t take into account the ones in the tree or the cave. There’s more portals we’re unaware of that allowed alters and npcs to escape and become part of the real world even before El opened the gate in s1. And unbeknownst to some of the characters and the audience we’ve already seen other ‘inner worlds’ of Will’s -besides the upsidedown . Which people (not part of the system) have interacted with . As Dustin in s1 said about the other dimensions / vale of shadows , it’s “ A dark reflection or echo of our world ...It’s right next to you and you don’t even know it” . 

We see both mr clarke stab a pencil into a plate and Alexi a straw into a box to illustrate this. What’s interesting is the one other time we see this motion is when Lonnie says “someone should be held accountable” (referring to what happened to Will), as he hammers into the wall and it transitions to Mike mimicking mr clarke. Implying that Lonnie is responsible and will be held accountable in the future.

-There’s also the fact the ‘dark phoenix’ mentioned in the first episode of St is highly associated with fire- having pyrokinesis (like Will the wise) and  who “had able to warp reality on a universal scale” .  It’s like how the show talks about physics often, like in s3/1 (plank’s constant or Hugh Everett’s many worlds interpretations) - and Einstein who believed quantum mechanics wasn’t real said “God does not play dice with the universe."  So since he was wrong , cause quantum mechanics is real , the quote should be “god plays dice with the universe.” Like Will does in the beginning of the first episode.Will is captured by the demogorgan (in the game) so he was captured in real life because he rolled a 7. I talked more about this more in the mf section.

- It’s similar to one of the Duffers admitted biggest inspirations for the series ‘altered states’. Who’s mental illness alters reality . He hallucinates  seeing flashes of another dimension like Will.

We’ll talk about more evidence of this concept  in the character breakdowns (mostly in the mf section). So now on to the alters (and Npcs) who escaped Will’s mind into the real world as tangible people. 

Tr*gger warning now, because of how DID is caused. “The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism - the person literally shut off or dissociated themselves from a situation or experience too traumatic, or painful to assimilate with their conscious self.As many as 99% of individuals who develop dissociative disorders have recognized personal histories of recurring, overpowering, and often life-threatening disturbances or traumas at a sensitive developmental stage of childhood (usually before age 6). It cannot form AFTER the ages of 6-9 years of age, aka 10 and up (though, once you have DID you can develop new alters at any time).DID is rarely diagnosed in children (and is usually diagnosed in adulthood or late teens), despite the average age of appearance of the first alter being 5.9 years old . ”

They’ll be brief mentions of dark subjects in this psych/narrative analysis because of this. I’ll also be listing movies said to inspire s4 of st  (according to st writers), or mentioning movies name dropped by  the cast, the Duffers ,  or in the show itself . 

ALTERS

Max Mayfield & Billy Hargrove 

When Max is first introduced - Mr Clark talks about “brain cells working together as one” (while talking next to a brain).  Similarly, dustin/mike mention mr clarke when saying what’s essentialy a did system “A collective consciousness. this is the thing that controls everything. this is the brain.” This concept about Max , is mentioned again when mr. clark discuses phineus Gage saying he had “a total change in personality that even his friends called him no longer gage.” And emphasizes max and Will in this scene- showing one in clear focus, while another is blurry, and as they make eye contact Max turns away . 

Both are poor, their bio dads aren’t around, both like horror films, comics and videogames. Both their bio dads left them . And both use bats in anger when emulating their abusers ,and both are heavily associated with rainbows. On Halloween she dresses up as a character who as a child dressed up as a clown on Halloween (Will’s fear/ what triggered him on Halloween) and whose surname is Myers (Byers?)

 Billy, like Will , have nicknames for their real name-  ‘william’. Both have abusive dads who called them  homophobic slurs, and forced them to play baseball to man-up.  Billy’s old baseball team is even tigers (the mascot of Will’s elementary school and matching Will’s tiger painting in his room in s1-2).The “it was a 7 “ vs “the wave was 7 feet”. Both hit with needles, into rock music , attracted to Wheelers ,and were the main subjects possessed by the mf. At one point the dark phoenix fails to merge with jean so goes to merge with her clone body as the next best thing. In this case the mf went to Will’s second alter William/Billy. And as Will states “another me.”  And both say about the mf “I’m sorry, he made me do it.” 

Neil and Lonnie both push Jon and Billy against a wall. And Jon tells of a time where his dad made him kill a rabbit . And Billy’s last name “Hargrove” means - “grove filled with rabbits" . While, ‘Mad-max’ her nickname is based on the male 80s film character ‘mad max’ a man being terrorized by a r**ist biker gang who attacks both men/women. It’s also possible that Billy’s appearance was based on Will seeing mrs wheeler’s romance novels? 

In the film “don’t breathe’- the reason why the siblings are from California is alluded to in a flashback of  Jon & Will.  The older sibling (with abusive parents) takes care of the younger sibling like a parent and the little sibling says she wants to be a surfer despite living in a land locked state (without an ocean, like Indianna). Older sibling says one day maybe they can live in California together  . And the Older sibling tells a friend about how their dad left them, and how they were thrown in a dark trunk by an abusive parent as kid . Which was alluded to in s1, when Jon checked the trunk to see if Lonnie put Will in there.And we see the mf (who is emulating Lonnie) doing the same thing to heather, and tom (hitting or strangling them and then throwing them in the trunk).

Certain scenes, are alters re-enacting  past scenes of trauma. “The family dynamics will be played out in a variety of ways but will most obviously be noted in the way the survivor splits off their system.Some survivors will internalize their family into their own DID system. Some alters may reenact trauma and ab*se, sometimes reinforcing ab*sers’ lessons to prevent further ab*se but sometimes serving as a permanent component of an internal flashback.“The reason, Billy acts/is racist is because he’s emulating Neil (but more accurately Lonnie) who told Will not be friends with lucas and thus recreates that moment with Max .lonnie in the s4 films is very racist. Another example, is Will has shown a fear of doors opening (in s1-2) shown by how the demogorgan unlocks the door telepathically (like El does often).And the mf opening doors by themselves in the house and arcade. Neil demands Billy opens his door. And right after Max stares at Will-Billy yells to open the door and tells Max “I’ll cut you b*tch” if she doesn’t open the door. This is because Lonnie said and did similar things to Will if he didn’t open the door.

What connects all 3 is that they all have an absent parent and have baseball associated with them mimicking a familial ab*ser. Even the mf is associated with the sport.

Alexi

Some “ alters can even speak a different language than the host. Despite, the host personality not knowing a single word of the language.’

Similar to Will who won the science fair for 4 years in a row- Alexi is a scientist who has a child like disposition . Will has a fear of clowns (a clown even triggered him on Halloween), and we see that after he’s attacked by a lonnie-look alike he dies surrounded by clowns. 

He also sees a friend strangled by the lonnie-look alike  (using 1 hand) and die. throughout the season the mf who emulates lonnie strangle people the exact same way, with one hand (doing this to joyce, el, heather, and jon). probably cause Will either saw Lonnie strangle someone or was strangled in this way. There’s also the fact when we first see Alexi - lights flicker like in s1 (illustrating a supernatural element associated with Will and others).

And stangertheory pointed this one detail out, when watching woody the woodpecker he says “can we watch loonie toons, now?” murray: ‘no’/ “can we play d&d , now? crew:no. 

Also, “woody in the cartoon is terrorized by Andy and PAPA panda. To Woody's surprise, Andy's attempts prevail, and Woody is taken away to the psychiatric hospital— but not before his captors prove to be crazier than he is” (cough s4 spoiler, but that’s a post for another day).We also have a scene where murray compares him to a child bringing shit in and tries touching his junk with a metal detector. And when Alexi says to stop, Murray says he’ll do as he pleases in his house. Probably a re-enactment .  And Murray mistranslates what he says occasionally as being “n*ked or exposed”, “penetrating a hole”. Also ‘alexi’ may also be a reference to Alexy in russian folklore. A clever-minded priest's son (Lonnie is alluded to be a religious zealot in s4 movies) who wins by tricking and outsmarting his foes and defeating a dragon by trickery. This is another connection to Will who is heavily associated with dragons- for a huge spoiler related reason - let’s just say  mf’s can create dragons, Will drew a dragon, has a dragon poster, read a dragon comic in a s1 flashback , was there for the dragon video game, and Dustin mentions a dragon in s3 because of foreshadowing.

**The mindflayer (previously known as ‘Will the wise’) -persecutor alter 

 “A child that is heavily into fantasy might have alters who present as certain fantasy creatures that the child sees as being capable of protecting them from being hurt again.All of the personalities begin as friends and allies…” We see this with Will’s first alter- Will the wise. Who Will described as having fire powers to attack smart bad guys. And who is based off the rules of d&d.

“ Persecutors are alters who purposefully harm the body, system, host, core, or other alters. Most of the literature on the development of these persecutory alters reports that they usually begin life as protectors and then, for some reason, turn on the host, becoming persecutory. Kluft, in 1985, describes the persecutors as initially "taking all the suffering for the others (alters & host). Persecutory personalities originate from the shame and anger related to the traumatic experience and to the perpetrator. “ 

‘It is usually during the transition between childhood to adolescence when childhood protectors becomes a persecutor.” And begin mimicking the ab*ser. We actually may have seen this transition at the end of s1- where WW became the mf. In d&d lore, mindflayers are created by inserting a tadpole into a human- like what we saw at the end of s1 where Will coughed up the slug from the upsidedown. Meaning all that supernatural stuff we saw Will do in s1 was actually Will the wise (ww) before he turned into the mf. While the flashbacks in s1 (and singing in castle byers) were of the Will we saw in s2-3.

Will says WW is a wizard ( writing on a music tape in s3 “will the wise-wizard mix’ and having his password for castle byers be ‘rhadaghast’- a lotr wizard.)The way they describe d&d Wizards matches Will/mf perfectly “Wizards are adepts and magicians . wizards are able to create spells of explosive fire, sparking lightning, subtle deception, and gross mind control. Their magic summons monsters from other planes of existence, predicts the future, and turns defeated enemies into zombies. Their most powerful spells can transform one substance into another, summon meteors from the sky, and open portals to other worlds”.

Nancy even accidentally calls the mf the “mind -flamer” (aka fire powers of ww ). Dustin says the mf “takes over minds using their highly developed psionic powers” (like wizards).We see Will the wise described as having fire/lightning powers and in the first ep we see him leave Mike’s house causing the lights to flicker, turn on his bike light with his mind (before being attacked by the demogorgan), blink once for yes and twice for no to communicate with Joyce, cause lightning to spark out of the phones twice, and be proficient in guns like Lonnie.  We know the mindflayer is also associated with lightning/storms (but that’s only because it’s one of Ww’s abilities). When Hopper sees Joyce’s phone he even says “storm bq-ed this pretty good.“ And in s2 a scientist said the same phrase while in the upside down looking at the burned equipment the mf created. Showing a correlation between Ww and the mindflayer. CAUSE THEY’RE THE SAME PERSON. In the comic we see electricity come out of Ww’s hands. And in s1 he drew his wizard character with lightning (BEFORE) he went to the upside down.  And in s2 WW was drawn with flames on his cloak.

Will in his cannon journal even draws the mind flayer with red lightning, and later  uses red paper to sketch clouds/lightning and pastes a picture of himself on to it. Because deep in his subconscious (along with the memories of his father- he realizes he created the mf/ww). And Joyce even describes the tunnels he draws as “like lightning.” And note in s1 we are told Lonnie taught Will baseball (and this was when Jon told Will not to mimic him)- and suspiciously there is a baseball and baseball-mitt next to the ‘shadow monster’ (mf) drawing and a bat (next to the ww drawing in castle byers). Cause mf= ww.  Will lies and says the mf is just a sketch for a story he’s writing- but even if that’s not exactly true. The mf is still something he unconsciously created.And of course Will is called ‘zombie boy’ and in s3 when Will watches a zombie movie and writes a d&d story about juju zombies- the mf creates zombies and creates a monster resembling the thing (because when Will was writing his d&d story he was next to the ‘the thing’ poster in s3. In s2 Will playing dig dug which is about underground mazes- so the supernatural underground caves are made. And it’s a callback to the s1 d&d game with “troglodytes “ (cave men). And in s3 the Russians had the underground lab too - sort of being the troglodytes in a way.And similar to s1, after Will watches poltergeist Will/ww is thrust into the same scenario as the little girl (being trapped in another dimension- where the mothers can only hear their voices and communicate to them through electronics ). Like how rolling the 7 in d&d caused him to be captured by the demogorgan in the game and real life. Nancy saying: “So this thing is like a brain that’s controlling everything.”Hopper then says “So how do we kill this thing shoot it with fireballs?”And Dustin says “ No, No, fireballs you summon an undead army.”But Mike actually nails it on the head when he says, “If the brain dies the body dies … closing the gate will kill him(referring to Will).Because it’s not the mindflayers’ brain - it’s Will’s brain- that both Will and the mf share!

In the episode after the mindflayer  enters Will - the episode is literally titled “ Will the wise”. Here we see a ‘slow switch’ occur.”Slow switches are when two or more alters (Will and mf) are co-conscious to varying degrees and slowly blending and retreating to allow one alter (mf) to gain prominence .Some indicators that a switch may be about to occur include feeling "spacey.”

In this episode we don’t see A full switch but ‘blending’. “ A full switch is rarely necessary. Instead of an alter switching to front, they can exert passive influence on the alter currently at front (Will) . Passive influence can be described as intrusions from alters that are not currently prominent in the mind or using the body. This may manifest as ego-alien thoughts, knowledge, memories, feelings, emotions, opinions, preferences, urges, abilities, or actions. These intrusions may vary in strength and influence and may result in the fronting alter taking actions or voicing opinions that they can't explain or account for.” 

We see this with Will’s ‘now memories’ the reason he refers to them as “now-memories” is because they are things he’s already experienced (as memories) but he’s only now remembering them- because of his “dissociative-amnesia’ .  An example is  Will fearing the tub, and  yelling at his mom -confused at his own reaction. Because ww is the one afraid of the tub not Will.This is because this is one of the locations abuse often takes place. There’s at least 20 movies where a bad guy tries drowning someone in a tub. In splice, the cell, and the ring  all incorporate an ab*sive father trying to drown his young child. In the cell the father would beat his son, burn him, called him homophobic slurs, and almost drowned him and causing a seizure.When Will tries to take a bath it’s overplayed with Mr Clarke saying (in front of a model of a human brain) -  “Organisms instinctively respond to danger, expose a bacterium to a toxic chemical and it will flee or deploy some other defense mechanism. We’re very much the same.” As a flash of  Will’s “now-memories” occur as he stares at the tub. And we see a zoom in shot of the back of his head (which Will said is associated with memories) . And Mike stares at Will’s empty desk.Meaning, Will’s starting to fear the bath as he’s  starting to remember (subconsciously) what previously occurred there because of WW- Lonnie/tubs being the ‘toxic chemical’ in the analogy. 

WW fully takes control/switches in the following episode ‘Dig dug’ when he wakes up from the nightmare of Hopper being attacked in the cave- this is indicated by zooming in on the drawing of ‘Will the wise’ before he wakes up. And explains his odd behavior- of being oddly quiet . Looking up surprised at all the cave/vine drawings on the walls. It’s common for alters to pretend to be the host when they switch. He displays being able see into the future (like Will describes WW him being able to do in s3-  like when ww in s2 says Hopper will die), and he late tracks Hopper’s location by closing his eyes like the drawing of ww. Mike mentioning he’s a ‘superspy’  right after he finds Hopper- the next episode is even called “the spy” as Mike realizes he’s the mf and says he’s  “the spy”. He initially tried to help until the soldiers burned him (causing a seizure like Lonnie previously caused) and later when they burn him again. He decides to kill them- similar to how El killed 2 men for putting her in solitary confinement multiple times.

However,  I need to point out “ protectors are still and always protectors. What changes is the protective behaviors no longer look obviously protective and in actuality may be harmful and life threatening to the host.” He still acts as a protector saying he got upset when they hurt him/Will. And participating in a supernatural-extreme version of ‘thought snatching’.”thought snatching" (taking away your thoughts) can be caused by the actions of alters.” So he incorrectly tries wiping all of Will’s thoughts/memories to shield the body from past trauma.

Mf is also hinted to be under the category of a ‘ demon alter’- Will being handed the “devil’s baby” firework and in the background is a sticker of a demo(n)-dog  . “Demon alters are often a form of protector known as a persecutor.Some people have alters which are supernatural beings. These are regarded as possession-form identities, if a person is consciously aware of the actions of the alter then the person may describe themselves as feeling "possessed" by an outside person, spirit, deity (god), or demon.”

“Attempts to banish them using religious techniques such as "deliverance" or exorcism do not work permanently, can be harmful and may prolong any internal war between alters and preventing healing .”

“Ignoring them, trying to shut them up or restrain them, punishing them, or any of the various attempts at “getting rid of them” will not only never work (their needs will only become greater and louder), they’ll become more and more traumatized as you confirm to them their every belief about the world. 

“You can’t actually “get rid of them” anyway, so it’s far better to try and understand them. “  

So yeah- our heroes literally did everything wrong to make it worse.And literally mimicked Lonnie who tied him to chairs in his shed (and like Brenner did to joyce/ Russians did to Robin & steve) or to a bed (like brenner to Terry/lonnie to Will) and hurt and burned him (like Lonnie). Also, FYI the person who was calling Joyce at the beginning of s2 and freaked her out, and later called during the excorcism was Lonnie- why WW freaked out over the call.Noah was even told to watch the excorcist for the burning scene at the end of the season. Even the movie implied it was all based on a similar trauma and it was in the girl’s head- she even while possessed had the male voice of the man who was implied to have ab*sed her and said phrases he said in the film. Similar to WW’s deeper non-human voice he used to try and tell them to ‘let him go.’

So in the next season he was worse than ever and wanted revenge on the people who tried to kill him. Because he fears they’ll come after him again and hurt him- similar to Kali who says the people who are still after her ( and burned her with a taser stick/nancy with burning stick) are still after them and will kill them. 

 We also see the mindflayer despite in the show and d&d lore be sensitive to sunlight pick the summer to come back. Now, why is that? The answer is simple it’s when Will started to realize his romantic feelings for Mike. Joyce at the beginning of the season says “You won’t think it’s gross when you fall in love”?But due to his ab*se - WW DOES! And Will just responds to Joyce , unconvincingly, saying  “I’m not going to fall in love.” But he already has! 

“Even non-ab*sive romantic relationships may provoke the protector’s vitriolic reaction if the relationship takes on a meaning which feels threatening. Simply feeling the possibility of closeness to another person may be the trigger because of the protector’s prior learning that trust and dependency lead surely and inevitably to ab*se and hurt.”(Mierendorf, 1993). EX: a persecutor alter who identifies herself only as "Me, Myself" was questioned about her anger  and violence to the host.

" she began becoming interested in boys, and dates, and all that [she trails off], and I hated it and I didn't want any part of it. So I quit, I wasn't going to do any more ... nobody was ever gonna touch me ...And whenever that would happen with Gretchen [the host] it would hurt me and I would hate it and I'd hate her, and I'd hate her for letting that happen . i wanted to k*ll her”

Whenever the Mf is close and Will touches his neck it relates to his romantic feelings for Mike. 1st time it’s on one of their ‘movie dates’, 2nd time when Will is sad when Mike and El walk off together down the hill to make-out, , 3rd time right after he smashed castle byers after Mike says “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls”, 4th time (after the fight with Mike) when Billy is yelling to open the door (a trigger) and confides in Mike, 5th time when Mike asks him to go away so he can talk to El in the hospital waiting area, and 6th time when Mike says he loves El. 

And in s3, Mike says on a rainy day “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls” (and similarly Lonnie called Will a “fag” and a “queer”). Then he leaves Mike’s house, tears-up all his sketches, comics, a pic of mike (things he loves). And uses a bat that Lonnie taught him to use -to destroy castle Byers (which was also built on a rainy day , after his dad left).He uses a bat, despite saying in s1 he doesn’t like baseball. He has a bat in castle byers (next to a WW drawing) and a mitt/ baseball in his room (specifically next to a picture of the mindflayer.) and Will looked at the Will the wise drawing and then destroys castle byers with a bat. Showing WW/mf are the same person and that WW (and even Will to some extent) is still not taking Jon’s advice about not mimicking Lonnie.He uses the bat (lonnie taught him to use) to try to “man-up” and destroy or even taint the things he loves- castle byers & Mike . And after this, he grabs his neck (which in s2 he said he associated with now-memories) and then says “He’s back” (aka Lonnie’s influence/mf). And then everything supernatural begins to escalate.

-“   another ‘threat’ the, the persecutor believes the host may pose in adolescence or adulthood is breaking the silence about the ab*se and/or the multiplicity. We then witness the protector’s desperate attempt to control the client, to “save him” from the expected dire consequences of revealing the secrets.”

“The persecutor frequently protects the host through scare tactics; through fear and intimidation. In order for this scare tactic to work the host must be convinced of the persecutor's capacity and willingness (even desire) to use the utmost in force and destructiveness. The persecutor must, in short, be viewed as Putnam described: "a fearsome, loathsome, deamon-like entity” .When the danger posed comes from outside the system  the persecutor uses the same scare tactics, trying to impress the intruder (in this case the therapist, etc) with his or her ferocity and proclivity to violence.The persecutor therefore becomes increasingly loaded with hostility toward the host, to the point where the original protective function can be lost to their consciousness.Finally, it should be obvious that the persecutor who uses threats of violence to protect the host may be quite worried about either the host or  others uncovering the underlying protective intent of their actions because it disarms the power of their threat.”

EX:” Susan was a 31 year old woman who came in for treatment when she started recovering memories of inc*st which had begun with f*ndling and proceeded to r*pe just prior to adolescence. Susan reported a host of dissociative symptoms as well as feeling as if she had a "monster inside me who wouldn't allow me to heal.”Before the next session the therapist received a letter from an ego state named Shadow. The letter detailed how big and fierce Shadow was and how she was supposed to be feared, have control, and all the power.In the next session Shadow revealed that she had been using fear to prevent Susan from disclosing the ab*se. Shadow firmly believed that Susan's father would kill them if the abuse were disclosed.”

“As Putnam notes, while the persecutor displays “extreme contempt toward the host,” paradoxically, “the dominant emotion of the persecutor may really be love” (1989, p. 207). In fact, it is this very love which propels the persecutor in the harassment of the host -feeling it is a way to protect them from perceived threats. “

“  They are NOT the actual ab*ser.They are just copying behaviors shown to them by bad people, not harboring the intent, sadism or immorality of the actual perpetrators. We understand this change ( from protector to persecutor) and  displaying ab*sive behaviors does not reflect an underlying character structure.Instead we understand the change as demonstrating a past adaptive instrumental use of violence in an attempt to preserve the system in the face of a [perceived] threat.’

**Another words,  for anyone confused- WW went from childhood  protector to teen persecutor because of perceived threats. Will (the host) becoming aware of his romantic feelings for Mike and Will slowly and subconsciously gaining his memories of past ab*se - and WW fearing once he remembers he’ll tell someone. So he wants to prevent this by scaring Will and others .And does this by playing the role/character of a scary monster- mimicking the scariest things he knows Lonnie and the mf from d&d. It’s also possible like some persecutors he’s forgotten his original protective function or like other persecutors he’s simply masking how he’s trying to protect Will (because if anyone knew he cared for Will the threat wouldn’t be affective anymore).

‘Alters "should be treated with equal kindness," despite their behaviors.Persecutors are often  "misguided protectors" which can be negotiated with. With ‘patience, persistence and kindness" they can be allowed to choose a different role once the person is safe from ab*sers. The persecutor can be "turned into a constructive force" (Watkins, 1978, p. 397) and become “one of the therapist’s strongest allies and can play a major role in the healing of the patient” (Putnam, 1991, p. 205) (*I’ll talk more about this in my s4 analysis) .With healing a non-human alter can even turn human again! "I have an alter who was a persecutor for a long time. A lot of people see persecutors as bad and sometimes even the persecutors themselves see themselves as bad. This alter saw herself as an ab*ser and carried an awful lot of self hate, but she wasn't bad really because her motives were to protect us even though she wasn't going about it in a very good way. She thought that if she punished us and scared us into 'keeping in line' then other people wouldn't have to hurt us. Eventually she learnt that hurting us wasn't necessary, so now she is trying to learn how to protect us in more healthy ways."

-Wizard

There’s also important inspirations for the show to mention that support this theory:

Montauk Project’- The original title for Stranger things was “Montauk”- in reference to the Montauk Project. It was about experiments conducted on psychic children, where the scientists would “break” them psychologically to strengthen their powers and to program them. Duncan who could “open portals to other dimensions-  let loose a monster from his subconscious.”

‘A wizard of Eathsea’ (which suzie mentions in s3)- Is about a male wizard Ged (Will) who casts a powerful spell, but the spell goes awry and instead he releases a shadow creature! The new Archmage, Gensher, describes the shadow as an ancient evil that wishes to possess Ged. But the ‘shadow’ turns out  to be a representation of the darkest aspects of his personality. And the only way for the chaos to stop is for ged and the shadow to merge.

‘the dark crystal’ movie poster in Mike’s room is about a race called urSkeks who inadvertently divided themselves into two separate beings; the violent, materialistic Skeksis, and the gentle, contemplative urRu. It was only when they merged back together as one could harmony and peace be restored to the world.

‘Long kiss goodnight’- both (’good’ and supposedly ‘bad’) personalities also integrate into 1 happy personality.

In d&d  “it’s also possible, although rare, for an extremely powerful mind flayer wizard to become a true lich, also known as an illithilich. illithid's last desire upon death was to be rejoined with its elder brain.” ( Will’s mind/ he wants to integrate with Will).

Even the way the mindflayer/ ‘shadow monster’ functions is similar to the ‘shadow phoenix’/how integration in DID works.  “They considered feeding on brains as a euphoric experience as it absorbed its victim's memories, personality, and fears.”

The dark phoenix (referenced in s1ep1)  fails to merge with jean so goes to merge with her clone body as the next best thing. In this case the mf went to Will’s second alter William/Billy. And as Will states “another me”. Later Jean, Phoenix, and madelyn (clone) merge into 1 person- the new-jean now having the memories and personality traits of all 3.

in s1 Mr clarke describes the vale of shadows (later the upsidedown) as being created by “necrotic” (’dead’-zombie boy) and shadow (shadow monster) magic. In d&d the Vale of Shadows, is  as a lush valley hidden in the mountains that holds a sacred pool with the power to make dreams reality. (In this case nightmares representing past ab*se). He even describes his ‘now memories’ as ‘like a dream’.

In ‘never ending story’ referenced in s3 -  the land of Fantasia represents humanity’s imagination and is thus without boundaries. However ‘the Nothing’ (the physical manifestation of darkness) which has taken over Fantasia and it’s inhabitants is a manifestation of the ‘loss of hopes and dreams’.  

Silent hill videogames/movies (duffers cited as inspo):. “The bad guys faked Alessa’s death. Kaufmann prepared a substitute body of alessa;  and performed the fake "autopsy (like Will) .Alessa believed that their current world must be cleansed with fire (WW’s fire powers). Alessa had a very dark, violent, traumatic and ab*sive childhood: r*ped, beaten, tortured, and even burned , all by the age of 7- “it was a 7″). She had supernatural powers and was called a witch. She had precognition (future/intuition) and pyrokinesis (fire) which developed after her ab*sive mother burned her (like ww). It’s  also implied Dahlia her mother would lock Alessa in their house's dark attic for long periods of time for any irreligious behavior (the trunk).Alessa was "always"  sad, and  Alessa only found respite when escaping to other worlds through fantasy to cope with and comfort herself in the face of her harsh reality. At times, Alessa seems to completely withdraw inward, perhaps as a result of years of trauma as there are many instances of her becoming unresponsive when questioned.Because of  all of her ab*se  Allesa’s soul split in 1/2 (becoming Alessa and Cheryl).Selfless at heart, she cared for her second half /reincarnation more than she cared for herself, wanting to spare them the hellish nightmare she endured at the hands of her ab*sive mother and her cult. For seven years (it was a 7), Alessa endured her suffering because she had not wanted to destroy whatever small happiness her other self was able to enjoy, but little by little, it became more than Alessa could bear. Alessa's latent psychic abilities are triggered and she shrouds Silent Hill in fog and an altered reality to prevent her mother's scheme from advancing. Many of the drastic changes that befall the town in the game, such as the horrific creatures that come to inhabit it, are conjured from her imagination and delusions. “ ( personally i think Lonnie went to the house offscreen in s1 and tried to take Ww- why when lonnie is at the byers house they zoom in on a bullet in the tv for some reason with no explanation on how it occurred).  Cheryl and Alessa also later merge again .

mystic river-in the 80s, a young boy who plays baseball is r**ed by 2 men in a cabin in the woods and escapes and runs into the forrest . He  imagines perpetrators as werewolves and vampires as a way to cope. And imagines he’s in a scary world that no one else can see (that disappears when he turns around). And he even has a split personality. He wishes he could turn into a undead monster so he doesn’t have to feel the pain of being human anymore.

other DID movies/show inspirations for St (some realistic /some more supernatural so resemble DID) : prince of tides,primal fear (realistic DID ,caused by childhood se*ual trauma).supernatural/ or non realistic DID:  elfen lied, exorcist, and Audrey rose .

 Now on to the next point- “chronologically, it is the persecutory alter personality who creates the first split. Helper alter personalities constitute the second split, and as such, constitute a defense against the first split. These two successive splits constitute the basic dissociation. Further alter personality formations are only of secondary nature. In order to cope with the first split, the host personality produces companions resembling [him] as a second defense.The alter personalities developing in the second phase originate from the desire of the host personality to regain her previous strength and from her striving to create alter personalities resembling herself who share the same aim with her.”

So to make it simple some alters are more based on Will in order to combat the alters more based on WW/mf (the 1st alter/. protector- persecutor). So let’s talk about other alters based on ww/mf.

Kali Prasad (avenger alter/ different race alter) 

“The avenger holds the rage from the childhood abuse and may attempt to avenge themselves or seek retribution from the ab*ser.”

”Different race alters are generally created for the stereotypic or imagined qualities of that race, as experienced or perceived by the host personality.  Fike gives the example of a Caucasian patient with a Native American alter personality who represented spirituality and other-worldliness. “ we actually see  Kali who is the embodiment of her religious counterpart.Kali is a (Hindu goddess). And Prasad is a holy offering to gods and goddesses in hinduism.

 Kali’s name means “destroyer of all evil forces” and in mythology she was considered “ a divine protector and the one who bestows liberation to her children”. However , the goddess Kali’s iconography is generally associated with death and violence and paradoxically (at the same time) “motherly love”. Kali is sometimes considered the goddess of death but more accurately she “brings the death of ego”. She only kills demons.  She is considered one of “the most compassionate of the gods because she provides liberation to her children”. She is commonly depicted holding a sword and the head of a demon. “A latitude soul sees mother Kali as very sweet, affectionate, and overflowing with incomprehensible love for her children” (the numbers and her gang of misfits).She is called the Divine Mother  & Mother of the Universe. And when talking to El the sign there’s a says ‘spiritual advisor’  behind her.

“ It has been suggested that a male child that is being ab*sed might create a female headmate because he needs a "mother" role in the attempt to soften what might be angry and aggressive behavior on his part as a male DID sufferer. “

we see other evidence of her being an alter as well. Her saying she feels ‘whole’ with EL around. And In the episode before Kali is introduced. Will describes his now memories as “spreading” “growing” and “killing”.  Meanwhile, after this Kali describes her and El’s wounds (caused by their father) in the same fashion. Kali describes how El has to face her trauma or else, like it did with her it will “spread.” Kali later makes a imaginary Brenner to tell El the same words Will said earlier- saying she has to face her trauma or else it will “grow” and “spread “ and “kill” her. in never ending story (reffed in s3) Sebastian who unbeknownst to him created an imaginary mythical world with characters who’d copy phrases their creator  Sebastian said.

She also says everyone sees her and El as monsters because of their powers- something ww/mf feels (literally becoming one because of this and his ab*se).  And Kali and El say that people hurt them -so they should be allowed to kill them. Kali making the distinction (more aligned with the mf) saying the people who hurt her are still after her -so she’s just making the first move and killing them as preemptive self defense. Something the mf also does, saying in s3 El could have killed him, and targeting those that hurt him and said they wanted to “kill” him in s2 . It’s the same logic as Kali. 

And before kali and El talk we see kali look up to el, as they pass by  graphiti that says ‘barbelith” which in the comics ‘the invisibles’- is the connection between humanity and the holographic world that we see. Aka her and Kali interacting in what’s actually the innerworld. Like Dustin said about the upsidedown “it’s a parallel world existing right beside you, without you even knowing it.”

why the tv of Kali’s tormenter (who tased her as a kid) is watching a show about a kid having a nightmare about being held down and having a needle put in her arm that kept getting bigger and bigger. Like how WW was pinned down and forced to take a shot in the arm.

Even the butterfly she creates could be possibly connected to WW- because butterfly decorations are above the byer’s phone (WW electercuted). And similar to Kali’s description the ficitonal russians (npcs) are also very stereotypical based on what an american kid might hear about ‘evil soviets’. They also use the same tasers as Kali’s ab*sers in the lab. In some movies it’s implied Lonnie may have tased his kids so maybe that’s why? And we see like how the gang tied up the mf to a chair, and shot him with a needle needle- the russians do the same to robin & steve.We also see Kali and El attack a man at a gas station -similar to the russian hitman npc from s3.

And Kali rescues a girl (npc) from a mental health hospital -called ‘dottie’ which is a term for being mentally ill. Lucas also claims El may have escaped from a psych hospital. Personally, i think this is foreshadowing of Mike helping Will out of one (like how Dustin and Lucas bring up ‘myers’ escaping one), but I digress.  in Kali’s place grafiitti also says ‘o’bedlam’a poem about neglected mentally ill beggers .  And compares her crew (of npcs) to herself and El- like dottie (mentally ill) because she’s part of a did system.  Axel with his knife (lonnie loves his hunting knives and used to threaten Will with them and thus did so to el). And El and Will share the same stuffed bear- ‘so there’s the care bear’, one of kali’s crew even wears a clown mask, and axel wears the mummy mask seen at Melvald’s where Joyce works. There’s also the connection of the ‘rainbow room’ (with a rainbow drawing) on the door - relating to  Kali & El and Will’s rainbow-ship drawing.And kali also likes rock music like Will/Billy. And when El first sees her-she’s near fire (ww connection).

El  (caretaker & gate keeper alter)

“A gatekeeper is an alter who controls switching or access to front, access to inside or certain areas inside, or access to certain alters or memories. The existence of a gatekeeper is highly stabilizing for a system because gatekeepers can to some extent prevent unwanted switching, failure to switch when necessary, or failure to switch to the correct alter. They can help to prevent traumatic memories from bleeding from the alters who hold them to alters who could not yet handle them. They might police the boundaries between subsystems.These alters help prevent traumatized alters from fronting. This can be important because there is a chance that the trauma holders may want to harm the body.”  In case you haven’t realized ... el is a horrible gate keeper-opening the gate and leaving it open for a year, not sensing it being reopened in s2 or 3 (too busy thinking about mike in s2/ dating him in s3), and thus causing more trauma to Will (who started to remember old confusing and traumatic memories), and causing Billy, and Max to be traumatized.

she’s also most likely a caretaking alter-“Caretaking alters are a type of a protector, they help manage and care for other alters, and sometimes external people (for example children).  “

“They are often motherly, and may be modeled on a real person (WW’s appearance- WW looking like Will except having brown eyes, and El looking like the female equivalent).  “Caretaking alters lack awareness of self-care and become exhausted easy; they only have a limited role and have little capacity for play, exploration or socializing.” El fighting to exhaustion, being isolated for most of her life and being in the cabin for 9 months (s2-3), comforting billy/Will, and again only not abiding by this when Mike is involved -hurting Max out of jealousy.

Her inability to speak well could be from neglect and social isolation, but  ‘Ab*sive groups are known to have created alters which appear either "crazy" or learning disabled, for example training alters to scramble or garble words so they can’t report ab*se.Alters may be disabled when the body is not, for example a mute alter may be created in response to abusers instructions, e.g. "Don't talk.”

El also shows the trait of ‘memory sharing’.

Memory sharing

“We’ve managed to create a system within us. In order to grant access to memories with each other we have to come to know each other and gain each other's trust.  Caroline says “when the memory sharing happens- the best way I can describe it to a non DID person is by asking you to remember/think about a movie with Wizards or characters like from twilight where they have the power to touch you and let you see their visions and/or memories. Sounds crazy I'm sure— but that's as close as I can possibly describe it.The memories literally pour into me exactly like that. “

After Will disappears, El appears to the audience for the first time. Having similar sounding names and having a striking resemblance (and 1 syllable nicknames ending in L) . Troy, Benny, Hopper, and an eyewitness all initally assuming she was a boy. Hopper even tries to track down El, assuming it was Will who’s hair was shaved-  asking “could it be Lonnie’s kid?” and the man responding “could of been the Byers boy”. Mike even says “Do you really think it’s a coincidence we found her in the same place Will disappeared?”The answer being No. The song “Alice” (from alice in wonderland) plays when El is at the restaurant -indicating El has entered a new world (our world). *Also, both Alexi and El are bribed with hamburgers to give the adults info they need.

El is an alter based on WW . Like WW she is afraid of the underwater sensory deprivation tanks her dad made her go into (Lonnie and ww with the tub). in s1 El used the pool/sensory deprivation to contact Will- the episode is even called “the tub” . And she thinks of this idea to talk to Will -after staring at the tub in the byers house and then remembering the deprivation tank. When in the pool or ‘tub’ at school the water slowly becomes dark as she enters the darkness- the void is a connection to the mf/ shadow monster. 

She unlocks doors and it’s framed ominously just like the demogorgan does in the first ep. In d&d lore Mindflayers have “telekinetic abilities akin to mage hand (El was called a mage) and telekinesis.” I still think the mf may now have her telekenesis  (which was originally his to begin with). We also see El fade away with the demogorgan as she and the demogorgan mimic each other’s body language. This was probably supposed to be El most likely integrating with the demogorgan (until the Duffers admitted to changing their minds).  And In s1/2 she has black veins appear while not being possessed. 

Dustin in s2 mentions the mf “doesn’t know it’s true home.” which is illustrated by  El wandering around as Hopper, Becky, and kali try to convince her they’re her home. El saying she’s the monster in s1 is also how the mf aka WW feels about himself.  And Will/ww was thrown in the dark trunk by Lonnie (perhaps after refusing to shoot an animal ) so for El it became Brenner throwing her in a dark room in solitary confinement after refusing to kill a cat. in s1 El draws similar to Will/ww and draws Brenner with a 3rd leg (cause even if brenner didn’t do so to her - the memory bled through from ww).  Benny suspected El has been “ab*sed or something” and she didn’t seem to understand privacy -undressing in front of the boys.

El cries thinking of the time she killed a squirrel (typical hunting game) and eating it and somehow knowing how to make a fire (a Ww skill). El when re-enacting this forgotten experience of WW’s , spots a sketchy ominous hunter and throws a fired projectile at him and runs. Like WW who uses his fireballs to hurt the bad guys- in this case the hunters (Lonnie and his buddies). Similar to the demogorgan who killed 2 hunters in s1. 

When she goes into the void and sees the demogorgan- we even hear a clock ticking in the background indicating this is associated with the past. When Will encounters the mf a similar thing happens- as the clock moves unnaturally. And similar to the mf she attacks her abusers and throws them into a wall (which mf did in s3). Throwing Nancy into a wall after she burned him.

Unfortunately in the ‘long kiss goodnight’ a girl with multiple personalities (Will/ww) was thrown and tied up in a trunk and when the trunk was opened the main villain tried to sell her for... you know . Then she escapes and jumps off a cliff into the water to escape the r**e (quarry flashback?) . This guy later tries to drown her too. While in skyfall, number-tattoos on the wrist were indicative of being sold into the s*x tr*de (El/kali’s tattoos- Will saw something?) . I really hope this isn’t the case - but this is the man who wanted to make money off his son’s death to to pay off his gambling debt. In one movie the bad guy sold his gf for a case of beer and some smokes, while playing a card game. And unfortunately, the fact Will was triggered to see the mf after Mike says “i’m not pr*stituting my sister?” may indicate something from the past as well (maybe Jon saying something ?). Along with El  being chased by “bad men”. It’s possible those 2 hunters were pals with lonnie and got what was coming to them. On to the next point-

El - is the Cannanite (male) god associated with “salt water “ (pool filled with salt in s1) who “dwelled in a tent” (in s1 Mike’s blanket fort) . In s1 El owns a male lion doll and Will has a female lion . The fact El first appeared looking like a boy,  is named after a male god, El in spanish translates to “he”, and she has a male lion toy could symbolize a few things.  In ‘prince of tides’ when the boy cried the dad yelled for him to go put on a dress.In ‘the cell’ the ab*sive father beat his young son with a belt, burned, and drowned him (causing a seizure), threw homophobic slurs at him, and called him a ‘women’ multiple times while beating him. And said “I’ll teach you to be a woman.” Some specialists say one of MANY possible reasons a boy may have a female alter is cause they were “forced to cr*ss dress “ but obviously that’s not the only possible reason. (And no, this doesn’t apply to trans women- making sure no one tries putting words in mouth). I think of the moment where boyish-looking El runs away into the woods, and takes off her wig and screams in anger at the reflection of herself in the water -may be a recreated event from the past). The fact El [is a male god]  and in spanish El (the way it’s spelled in the show means “he’)  is also possibly intentional . In addition to the fact El is the only alter who physically resembles Will and is the only one with a buzzcut , unlike Kali (who in the flashback at Hawkins lab had all her hair) is something to take note. El could be an inverse of Will’s experience. El as a girl was stripped of her femininity from her papa.  Because Will was a boy forced to dress girly cause of his dad . El having a male lion and Will having a female lion being used to symbolize this. WW was the one who went through this abuse and also had brown eyes  like El ( unlike Will)- so in regards to physical appearence she is his ‘girl version’.Since like many ab*sers Lonnie gave Will mixed messages he could never abide by . In mad max furry road the villain named ‘daddy’ forced his sl*ve to shave their head and branded them with a tattoo like El (he also had 3 s*x s**ves)

-in s2 the song ‘don’t mess around with Jim’ plays. Upon character introductions of lyrics “Jim walker” pans to Jim Hopper and “boy named Will-ie Mccoy” (pans to El).

-Hopper in ep1 mention (El)eanor Gilipse-surname of girl in silent hill with powers/DID.

-the never ending story ref also alludes to how El was created by Will similar to another superpowered human (ww).  El is atreyu and Will is sebastian. El is atreyu- who is said to be the chosen one. He falls from a great height and on to the beach shore, and comes across abandoned ruins, and then the villain gmork latches his jaws on to his leg (like El). It’s revealed atreyu isn’t actually the chosen one and everyone was wrong . And it was actually the poor human kid (Sebastian - who has a bowl cut and one parent and secretly had imagination-powers ) .  Atreyu is told to look at the mirror of his ‘true self’ and is shocked to see Sebastian (his unknown creator) looking back at him. “turn around , look at what you see. In her face- the mirror of your dreams.” 

-In the novel Sebastian even temporarily went evil when he lost all his memories  except those of his father- similar to Will/ww. Sebastian created the whole fantasy story and it’s inhabitants (with their own sentience).  So only he had the capability to remove the darkness from the fantasy world they inhabited. The darkness representing the loss of hopes and dreams.

-Elfen lied (another inspo for the series according to the duffers)- has a Super-powered protagonist/anti hero/ and tragic villain.”She has three split personalities due to past trauma . The three are Lucy, Nyu, and Kaede.  Kaede : (childhood love/friend of Kouta) from ‘mapple house’ (cough- ‘mapple street’/ Will). Nyu: is mentally the age of a young child in the body of an adult, who can barely speak, and found by Kouta after she escapes the lab who experimented on her .Nyu is like a very sheltered child and has a very tiny outlook on the actual world and can only speak one word at the start of the anime (El).Lucy:Her violent personality, who has a distaste and hate for humans after humans traumatized her as a child. Although deep down she wants to be human (mf).”

We also see both the Will/mf and El called spies, have ptsd, described as ‘quiet’, and had their dads force them to kill animals. El growls like an animal after the mf growls at her first.  And in regards to the supernatural Ww and El both have powers. They both could communicate through different dimensions using electronics. Both of their moms’ had “crazy aunts” . Both  are called “schizos” in s2 because of their powers (did is most commonly misdiagnosed with schizophrenia which i do think that will occur initially- mrs driscoll not being believed about the supernatural because of her being a ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ is foreshadowing). Both Will and her had their brain waves monitored at the lab and their measurements were off the charts, plus they were being unknowingly recorded on video.They both tore through walls (with that pink gunk between the normal world and upside down). El even goes through the entrance covered in goo (like a baby) as a hint she was born from the upsidedown! 

We see in Terry’s place (El’s room) symbols associated with Will- clowns and rabbits ( like how Lonnie made Jon kill rabbits on hunting trips). They even chose white rabbits- like those in Alice in wonderland and earlier associated with El.

El/ww can also both can track others when concentrating -Ww found Hopper, El found Will. Both communicated psychically by transferring their conscious- El to talk to Mike in his basement using the void (in s2) & Will to his mom in the living room (in s1).  Also before Will goes missing , he asks Dustin for his X-men comic- later in reference to El, Dustin asks “Do you think El was born with her powers like the X-men?” And when Mike says El is “channeling him (Will)”. Dustin says “like professor x”-clearly hinting that they were both born with powers, like the X-men.

However, El is how Max described “her own person.” When Dustin says she’s “like a wizard (like ww) Mike corrects him and says “more like yoda.” And the longer she stays in the real world the more differences she has to Will/ww as she evolves into her own person. She doesn’t have many interests in common with Will :d&d, scifi, computers, science, horror movies etc. And like i’ve explained in other posts - she isn’t actually in love with Mike. And her obsession with mike not only inhibits her role as an alter but her own independence/personhood , along with Will’s healing ( which depends on Mike and other’s support).  I think the main reason we never see Will & El interact significantly (despite the parallels) is because they’re growing apart as they develop as people and go on divergent paths. I feel like if someone doesn’t integrate it’s most likely El (and probably Max). While Kali most likely integrates- since she was brought to tears by seeing another alter and said  she feels “complete” with El - hinting she’ll probably desire to integrate into Will/ww in the future. in ‘annihalation’ a poc woman with a 8 tattoo on her arm integrates with others into a god like creature too . EL may eventually go by Elle [in french means ‘she’] when she becomes her own person, and gains independence, perhaps? 

demogorgan (fictional alters or ‘fictive’)

“Fictional introjects specifically are based off of fictional characters. These characters can be from television shows, movies, books, fantasy, and other forms of fiction.They don't have to think, act, look, or feel in the exact same ways that the fictional character does. Some fictional introjects can be ab*sive, and form as a way to continue traumatizing the system.” 

“ One of the main purposes of a father introject is to control your behavior when you are away from the father with the same intensity as if you were right in front of him. The father may have a variety of parts that are loyal to him, his beliefs, his ways, etc.’

 in d&d a demogorgon  is a  “demon from the abyss”. And are also called “the deep father”  , indicating his connection of being based on Lonnie. We even see Lucas hand Will a ‘devil’s baby’ firecracker (and behind will is a sign that says demon-dog) to indicate that Will’s father is the ‘devil’. The demogorgan is also first referred to as “the man without a face” in the show. Steve suggesting he does have a face but he was wearing a mask. And when Lonnie first ‘comes back’ to Hawkins Jon says “mom, did that thing (demogorgan) come back.” And Lonnie cuts him off after the comment saying ‘that’s enough’. Lonnie also mentions to Joyce he explored the woods where Will went missing. And later Jon mentions how the demogorgan only ventures several miles from his house -like lonnie.  Jon also tells Nancy about how his dad forced him to go on hunting trips and in s1 we see the demorgorgan kill a deer (typical game), attack hunters, and capture Will in the shed (which contained the riffle and sleeping bags for camping). We are also told in s1 Lonnie taught Will baseball, and when the demorgorgan knocks the bat out of Jon’s hand he gets on top of him- putting his face close like he was about to kiss him. We even see in s2 - the pic of the mf next to a baseball bat and mitt.  And the demogorgan  on multiple occasions was mistaken for a bear (which Will sketches and El also is into teddy bears) and bears symbolically represent “wisdom” (will the wise).

And Lonnie when closing the hole in the wall says someone has to be blamed for what happened to Will- and it transitions to Mike tearing a hole in paper and explaining what happened to Will with the demogorgan. Lonnie caused the ‘tear’ in Will’s psyche. Lonnie is even the one to mention how people ‘make things up to cope.’And how people in the city are “more real” (possible alter foreshadowing).

 In  d&d demorgorgons also have 2 heads with distinct personalities, one wanting to stay as one and the other wishing to separate (a hint at Will’s DID and the fight between WW wanting to integrate personalities and Will not wanting to do so).

~El ,Kali, and the demogorgon being alters is why we see  the lights flicker when the demogorgan appears , and (sometimes) when El and kali use their powers- cause they’re based off ww who has lightning/electricity powers  which we saw in s1. Causing the lights to flicker at Mike’s place,  turning the bike light on with his mind,  causing sparks of electricity to come out of the phone 2x , using lights telepathically to talk to joyce (blinking ‘once for yes and twice for no’, and using the lights to tell Joyce to “run”).

demodogs/dart (animal alters)

“In some cases, what presents as an animal is really a child alter acting as an animal.  This is found in cases where the abused child was forced to act as an animal, usually a dog.”

 In mad-max the r**ist biker gang - ties up one of their victims on a leash like a dog. In unleashed the adoptive father made his son where a collar and called him ‘his dog’. ‘Orphan’ the girl wore a collar and the bullies pulled on it calling her a ‘doggie’ and she starts screaming and having an episode in school. In s1 Hopper says he likes the book cujo , that one of the guards is reading, and at the end of the book they replace the dog Cujo with a dog named Willie. In ‘the cell’ the villain put dog collars on his m*rder v*ctims cause he wanted to ‘own them’. In ghost Busters, Mike -is Venkman- and Will -is Dana Barret. Dana finds a demon-dog in her fridge, and hires the ghost busters. And right before Venkman goes on a date with her she is possessed by the big-bad, Zuul,  (who controls demo(n)-dogs). The s4 movies also allude to Lonnie possibly k**ling chester his dog cause when he was stalking Will (offscreen) chester would bark at him - like how he barked at  the demogorgan - one of the only other times we hear a dog bark is when we see Lonnie (at his place).

*There’s also the parallels of Dart to El. Dart killed a cat. While El’s papa tried to make her kill a cat (which dogs stereotypically don’t like-Lonnie most likely forced Will to kill a cat. ).Heck the russians even reference cats -linking them to El and the demodog. El/Dart also both have sweet tooths (eggos and 3 muskateers). Both were called traitors and ran away- and initially caused a rift in the group. And dustin and Mike said they made “promises” to El/dart and that  dart/el “trusted them” (mike &Dustin)”. Lucas in s1 also called El a ‘dog’ and El asked, annoyed,  if she was Mike’s “pet”.

Jim hopper  : Introject & adult alters

“System introjects are alters who are replications of a person from the outside world , who often believe they are the actual person (and not the replication).  They may adamantly believe that they are a different person . These parts contain a lot of memories, factual information, emotional realities for how it was like to be near the outside person.Introjects can also be based off of  figures that the dissociative child found strong, courageous, heroic, or otherwise worthy of being emulated and internalized and could theoretically protect them.”Jim even means to “supplant” (replace) or “supresede” (take the place of a person or thing previously in authority or use). Meaning, there was a Jim Hopper (Joyce knew in highschool) and a Jim Hopper alter based on him.

“older adult alters are created to serve a nurturing or parenting role, thus serving as a protector. (*protecting Will/el) . However, sometimes the age is related to taking on the identification of the ab*ser, and can therefore take on any of the other more hostile roles... Introjects which are mimicking ab*sers are trying to "keep you inline" in order to protect you from external ab*sers. They don’t dare relax their vigilance or let you fall away from the OLD RULES that were once so important.They are trying so hard to keep you safe. “

We even see the convo he has with El,  is similar to Neil and his ex wife- a man berating the girl after coming home, calling her a liar, and asking about what man they saw. And El yelling and saying Hopper is “like papa” when he yells at her  (the same season dr owens called him Will’s “pop”.  Would not be surprised if Lonnie would berate Will about seeing Mike. There’s even a physical resemblance- blonde, blue eyes, and similar moustaches to him and Neil.And he also parallels Billy & Max in s3 with the ‘door’ imagery.

“Being an introject is a difficult and thankless task. This member of your system has spent all these years acting out a role that they dislike every bit as much as you do.” *(berating El about the rules- that were most likely initially Lonnie’s. A part of me suspects that cabin wasn’t Hopper’s grandfather’s but Lonnie’s secret cabin where he took Will. And berate Will about seeing Mike. He was shown in s1 fixing the hole in the wall. And Hopper says about the cabin “ A LOT OF HISTORY HERE’ ). 

We see other alter hints too -He taught El morse code (which Will already knew). Murray says Hopper reminds Joyce of a previous “bad relationship” (lonnie). And the russians in order to get info, t*rture steve and threaten to rip out his finger nails , while, Hopper threatens to break the mayor’s fingers for info. 

And when a Russian goes into the carnival game in a room with tigers and clowns,   the speaker says “ if you dare enter the cave of horrors you may never know what you may find around the corner (clown laughs) . Don’t show your fear in the presence of the tiger or you may never escape this cave alive”.As he jumps out the tiger roars in unison with Hopper leaps out to attack.

The song you ‘don’t mess around with jim’ (from s2 and 3 that Jim dances and sings to ) is about a boy named Willie beating up a thug (who wears a hat) named Jim (representing resentment of father figures).  We see Villains have zoom in shots of their cigareete trays- like the h*tman, Billy posessed by the mf, and Hopper before he yells and threatens El in s2.  

In s1 It’s implied Hopper is addicted to pills , was an alcoholic (both him and Lonnie have many beer cans and cigareettes in their house- would not be surprised if Lonnie also had a pill addiction too) .

Introjects “ are NOT the actual ab*ser. They are a victim, a single part within a large beautiful mind, bred from the survivor's essence.They are just copying behaviors shown to them by bad people, not harboring the intent, s*dism or imm*rality of the actual perpetrators.”

“The introject in your system was there to help you when the stakes were very high and their job was deadly serious. It’s difficult for them to let go of that level of urgency. introjects represent how important it was, at one time in your life, to always be vigilant. Danger was always near you and you had to be careful of every move and every word, because your very survival might depend on not doing or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

‘ introjects also represent the desperate hope that, if you could only do everything just right, obey all your ab*ser’s rules and anticipate exactly what was wanted of you, that it might lessen or even prevent some of the ab*se from happening. And gain approval or love from the ab*ser.”

We also see how he’s based on the mf/ww in a few ways: he describes his depression in s3 as being in a “deep dark cave” (the supernatural cave in s2/cave of horrors at the fair) and in s2 he says he thinks of himself as a “black hole” that will destroy everything around him including his daughter (the mf/Lonnie).

Now, cause people will mention it. We can’t take everything David says about Jopper seriously- he filmed s4 in advanced and lied constantly about the duffer’s not contacting him prior to this. I think he bs-es a lot and occasionally throws in hints. Like how in behind stranger things after mentioning Lonnie and Bob he compares jopper- to Jack and Evelyn from china town (who slapped her for lying -like Neil did to his wife. And we see duffers laugh hysterically and shawn  exchange a look with them cause they know David is giving a hint that isn’t positive). And evelyn was also r*ped by her father (there’s at least 30+ st movies the Duffers have cited with that dad plot point, unfortunately . Along with about 6-10 DID movies).  David said in an interview with  total film : “ In terms of Stranger Things, you’ll be able to look back at season one and see a lot of things that happen further down the line that relate to that.I’ve had those discussions with them from the very first season. We were always interested in that idea of the Gandalf resurrection – Gandalf the Grey who fights the Balrog and then becomes Gandalf the White.” Well this is a lothr ref (Which Will is into) but i think it’s also just a Will and ww hint -since in silent Hill when Alessa and cheryl mege back into 1 they become a deity- a serene white-clad figure, even the dragon relates to Will. But,  there’s also the fact David in multiple interviews  describes  Hopper as a ‘little boy’ . After s4 started he said about Hopper with Gold DERBY “  he’s also like a little boy who has been just so traumatized and so hurt that he can’t really have relationships with people that are full and that are honest... it makes it difficult for him to get close to people... all the joyce st-...There’s a lot to be revealed around the complexities of that story . Because when we know the ending you’ll be able to go back and watch it and see what we were planting in s3 , that paid off in s4 and s5. That will make those intimacy issues a lot more understandable.” 

Since Hopper-alter thinks he’s the real-Hopper (Joyce’s old friend/ possible ex) he hits on Joyce.There’s the references to back to the future. Steve incorrectly saying it’s about alex keaton “trying to b*ng his mom.” And stobin’s exchange about the movie alludes to what Jopper actually is  “I think that lady is trying to bang her son/ no, but, they’re the same age?/ He needs to get back to the future ,which is his time, cause he’s stuck in the past (trauma)/ W-What?” 

And the season where Jopper was the most evident we see another alter (Billy) hitting on someone who is old enough to be/ resembles his mom. Her being a wheeler could also represent Will’s repressed feelings for Mike. Along with Illustrating his subconscious issues with parental figures cause of Lonnie. Dianne (Hopper’s ex wife) - even is a roman goddess of hunting.

In s2 Nancy asks Steve how his “grandpa’s time in the war is a metaphor for your life?” And steve compares the mf to the germans in the war. Dr owens mentions Will has ptsd like “ (vietnam) soldiers’, Hopper saying he had buddies like Will . “In the 70s there was a study that compared the post-traumatic stress symptoms in Vietnam veterans and adult survivors of childhood s**ual ab*se. The study revealed that childhood s**ual ab*se is traumatizing and can result in symptoms comparable to symptoms from war-related trauma.” Hopper isn’t actually in Russia -but in one of the innerworlds (after he jumped through the rift of the machine- into Will’s mind). We’ll see flashbacks but also present circumstances of his imprisonment echo Will’s past with Lonnie (if the movies indicate anything)- being starved, guards getting payed in order to let other prisoners  r*pe a gay prisoner (than claim incorrectly because of his sexuality he wanted it) , as well as a gang of sadist men who r**e others and a warden using that as a threat to be compliant , being thrown in a dark room of solitary confinement and starved when they didn’t obey the warden, the warden being religious, etc. And the Anerican soldiers (in Vietnam) in the movies aren’t much better and do similarly horrific acts to civilians like r**e and bragging/ happily k*lling women, children, and the elderly. The drill sergant in vietnam calling them homophobic slurs & women, and chocking one of the soldiers with one hand, slapping one for not believing in christianity. Tying up a soldier in a bed , gagging him, beating him and saying “remember it’s just a dream.” Only praising them when good in fire arms.(movies : fullmetal jacket, papillon, shawshank redemption, platoon, welcome to marwen, etc ) . My assumption is while in solitary he has flashbacks of his life- and it’s more hints about him being an alter -the boxes in the basement are “vietnam” ,“dad”, and “ny” (and these are the memories of his we’ll see). And some of the bad characters in said stories will also parallel Lonnie . For instance in s2, Jonathan mentions Indiana writer Vonnegut- In his book ‘slaughterhouse 5′- Vonnegut begins the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has “come unstuck in time”. It accounts of Billy Pilgrim's capture and incarceration by the Germans during the last years of World War II, and scattered throughout the narrative are episodes from Billy's life with his dad, and his own wife and kids.Billy is forced to be part of the war and similar things against his free will. The moments start from his childhood when his father throws him in the water to teach him how to swim. He was unwillingly drafted into the war. Later, he is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians  (aliens that are implied to be caused by his mental health issues/trauma) against his will. Therefore, he realizes that this concept is just an illusion. 

We also see Hopper being violent/aggressive to Mike foreshadowing how Lonnie will treat Mike (difference is it’ll be played completely serious).

Sara : “littles “ also called a child alter (not based on ww)

“Child alters often talk in a child-like way, but unlike a biological child they can normally understand abstract concepts and long words. Some child parts may ...  be playful and fun-living and have only positive memories. A child alter may also be an idealized representation of the "perfect child" from the "perfect" family, for example the "good boy/girl."

we see this in a few ways- Sarah winning the spelling bee (like Will winning the science fair) and Hopper describing her as very intelligent, but not knowing where she gets it from. She in the 1st episode is said to love science like Will (who won the science fair 4x) , and knows how to spell words like ‘odontalgia’.  In s1, Joyce and Hopper pretend with Sara and Will to be a witch and an ogre eating them.And in s1 Will and her both own cat plushies.  she has a tiger plushie (mascot of Will’s school, like with billy’s baseball mascott also being a tiger/ Will’s painting). And her hospital gown has clowns on it (Will’s fear). Hopper even pauses and has a flashback of sarah’s tiger when he sees Will’s lion plushie in the upsidedown .And when Will has a vine  in his mouth imagines sarah with tubes in her mouth.We see despite the fact Hopper didn’t move to Hawkins until after her death- she appears to be at Hawkins lab?

And Holly’s drawing is similar to el’s in s1.And , in s1, like Will she has an episode alluding to her seeing the void as she turns her head scared seeing something no one else can.Then in s2, Hopper says Sarah became obsessed with blackholes - and latter says that blackhole (mf?) got her. It’s possible she saw the void or even the mf and misinterpreted it as a blackhole. And  so she didn’t actually die of cancer - it was probably just symbolic of her integrating into the mf/ww (the blackhole ‘getting her’). Or it’s possible she’s just alive/in stasis in the innerworlds  after her ‘simulated death’

Also can we mention how there’s lions, tigers,and bears (as plushies)- oh my.  Along with the whole “home references”. Wizard of oz is on the movie list, and 2 wizard of oz movies shown in s3.

Robin Buckley

Robin Buckley (possibly an alter?)- Robin discusses with steve the legend of Prometheus , who not only gave human beings the gift of fire, and therefore civilization, but created them, giving them the gift of life. El watches frankenstein in s2 whose novel was titled “the modern prometheus”(another hint WW/Will created El). Steve when looking at Robin even says the biblical verse “let there be light” (the beginning of creation and human beings-i.e Robin).”And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (wow this doesn’t sound just like the black-watery-void in the upsidedown at all) XD. Robins were also considered holy birds by the God thor (the god of Thunder and lightning).  She’s gay, into comics, rides a bike,  and is afraid of drs just like Will is, and was tied to a chair for info like ww. She references surfing (billy) and has a spy storyline. She’s a smart,  into rock music and wants to fit in . And makes fun of her friends’ love-lives to hide her own insecurities about her own romantic feelings and sexuality (that weren’t accepted at that time). And has feelings for a girl who can’t sing (mike) who pays too much attention to a person who didn’t even like them (Steve/El) . Buckley could be a ref to a ‘buck’ deer (like the one the demogorgan killed in s1/ typical hunting game). And another legend says that the Robins were red because it scorched its bre*st in the fires of Purgatory, mercifully taking drops of water in its beak for the lips of the parched souls in torment( the opposite of devil-lonnie).Robins also feature in the traditional children's tale Babes in the Wood, the birds out of kindness cover the de*d b*dies of the 2 abandoned children found in the woods with strawberry leaves (who had been k*lled by an abusive family member) .  Not sure if mrs driscoll (being a strawberry name is a coincidence to that whole cherry/strawberry/heathers movie ref with alexi? Robin is also a unis*x/male name like most of the other gals on the list. While her crush ‘tammy’ (means ‘twin’. could be a clue about Robin being an alter?).  

the rebuttal could be simply: buckley can mean ‘goat’ which would match her bff’s surname Harrington (’he-goat’). And just be a cute little nod to them.While Robin means ‘bright fame’ just like our fallen super-hero Bob ( since robin and bob are nicknames for Robert)- so could also be a simple nod to him.But her names could be both a nod and a deep ref-  who knows.

Barb

Barb- Barbara means “strange” or “foreign” , while Barb means “stranger”. Her name could also be based on the saint Barbara- who was carefully guarded by her father who kept her locked up in a tower (like Hopper & Brenner to El/Lonnie to Will) in order to preserve her from the outside world . He later tries killing her. However, as punishment, he was struck by lightning on the way home and his body was consumed by flame (connection to ww who likes using fireballs against bad guys and who also has lightning powers). She’s best friends with a wheeler (although pictures show us unlike byler they’re not childhood friends). she may have been queer coded and had feelings for her bff  (moping after Nancy leaves to sleep with Steve) . In a s1 flashback Will specifically watched ‘poltergeist’ with his mom- and is then thrust into the same scenario as the little girl (being trapped in another dimension- where the mothers can only hear their voices and communicate to them through electronics ). And barb’s pool scene echos the pool scene in the movie too-a women being attacked in a pool ( and could be considered similar to being attacked in a tub/sensory deprivation tank). And similar to El , she wakes up in the upsidedown and pukes up a white fluid calling for Wheeler- but gets no help. Unlike Will. For Halloween she also dressed up as a scary clown (Will’s fear) when Nancy dressed up as a bunny (an animal lonnie forced them to kill).  She also is dragged away in a similar way to Billy -down stairs.

Her mom’s first name (Marsha) also has the same meaning as Martin Brenner- ‘war like’. A hint Lonnie is violent or maybe was a vet?

Other npcs

Besides the russians, we also have some of the americans who experimented in Hawkin’s lab: most notably Brenner and becky/terry Ives.

“Some survivors will internalize their family into their own DID system.“

Brenner and Lonnie have similar appearances (and in the original script he was suppose to be unshaved and wear plaid and jeans... prob too obvious to keep) . They forced their kids to kill animals, threw them in a dark places, submerged them into water, and also praised them when violent, and tied people to beds (yes lonnie did that - why mf and terry are both tied up there). Brenner even means- ‘someone who cleared forests by burning (showing his connection to ww with fire, and because forests is where hunting/ab*se took place).His collegue - the blond women’s name , Fraizer means -  “of the forrest men” (the male hunters who terrorized Will/ww most likely).

Terry/ Becky Ives.Becky means “snare-a trap for catching birds or animals”. While Terry (Teressa means “huntress’) .While Ives means-  yew wood (a tree).Terry’s backstory should also raise eyebrows when we see when going to Hawkin’s lab that the Byers’ car is there (a tip off this story isn’t reality but from Will’s subconscious). 

Terry also turns in pain on the bed and sees sunflowers. And Will has a sunflower book next to his bed.

While Terry has an appearance similar to Jon’s (blonde and almond shaped brown eyes and Terry is a unis*x name) and both steal guns and drive a long distance in order to help rescue Will/el. This is the season of ‘mr mom’ after all (where Jon takes pics of Will on Halloween just like the other moms). Becky also compares Terry to Joyce too by saying Hopper would have been her type . And both joyce and terry/becky have a “crazy aunt” and were both deemed as ‘crazy’ when not believed about their children being kidnapped and indeed alive. we also see in El’s room (that Terry decorated) -bunnies (that lonnie forced the boys to kill) and clowns (Will’s fear). Along with fox’s which were in castle byers.  We also see Owl’s in both the byers’ and Ive’s house (which also represent ‘paranomal wisdom’).  And Winona mentioned the movie ‘prince of sands’ in an st interview. In that the psychiatrist interviews the older brother to fill in the memory-gaps of his sister (who has DID so can’t remember) he eventually admits both were r*ped as kids. And also tells a story in therapy about how their mom m*scarried and the dad threw the st*llborne in the freezer over night-so let’s hope throwing the demodog in the freezer and Terry’s miscarriage doesn’t have that traumatizing meaning. It’s also possible Terry isn’t an npc but a type of alter-given how her and El participated in ‘memory sharing’ and Terry’s power’s affected lights.”An alter may be stuck in an eternal flashback or refuse to accept that anything has changed since the period of time during which they experienced trauma“ (Terry being trapped in the time-loop after being tied to the bed/attacked).

Npcs ...but possibly other alters

I believe susie was a npc created because Will felt bad for Dustin - after the max/lucas situation. so he made what he assumed would be the perfect girl for him. She even has the same name as Max’s mom:susie vs susan. He met her from camp ‘Knowhere’ ( she’s from no where). The blonde american spy (who is also an npc) even mentions a science tech camp in s1 that dustin goes to in s3 .She has space related stuff in her room like sarah, wizard of oz poster (referencing Will), and she reads the ‘wizard of Earthsea’ -about a boy-wizard named jed  who realizes the evil ancient shadow he’s been fighting is actually the dark part of his personality -and he needs to merge with it to bring balance. Everyone questions if she’s real or exists- similar to el asking Kali “are you real?”Stranger things instagram posted a fake movie poster- emulating ‘weird science’. A movie about 2 boys creating a ‘perfect women’ from scratch for them and comparing this created gal to susie (they aren’t endgame with this girl in the movie-despite her original programing). Like susie/dustin not being endgame.

Dustin on his canon spotify playlist even has the song ‘weird science’.Her appearance is based off what most boys liked, celeb ‘phoebe kates’. And it may be just a narrative device but in s2 Max lies about mormons at the door, the season before she appears.

And of course her song alludes to what’s happening in the narrative. “Make believe I'm everywhere Given in the light (demogorgan/ lonnie in shed) .dream a dream and what you see will be ( his nightmares based on his ‘memories’)/Rhymes that keep their secrets WILL unfold behind the clouds (mf on his clouds and lightning).And there upon a rainbow (Will/ his powers/ accepting his queer identity and healing) Is the answer to a never ending story.’

Similarly, Heather Holloway is most likely from Will’s mind (my guess an alter)-and her appearence is also based on Phoebe.  In the show , they reference ‘fast times’  where Phoebe wears a red bathing suit just like Heather. Billy also mimics phoebe by slow-mo walking in a red bathing suit to the same song phoebe did in the movie. 

After El and Max see the pic of Heather and her dad the lyric  ‘loving you is a sin’ plays. And she shows an aggression mostly to her father- with her mom she simply dr*gs her but for her father she hits him in the head with a bottle and gags him with a rag and ties him up and throws him in the trunk after she was similarly tied up and thrown in the trunk (unlike the mom who was in the back seat). Billy and Heather were the ones with the most focus during their possessions - and Will said the mf would target “another me” ( another Will). She is str*ngled in the shower and later drowned in a tub into a dark abyss screaming for help before merging with the mf.  Both susie and heather are names symbolizing flowers.Susie- means Lily. While Heather is  also a variety of small shrubs with pink or white flowers which commonly grow in rocky areas.Holloway is a topographic surname, which was given to a person who resided near a physical feature such as a hill, stream, or type of tree. Also her dad (Tom- means ‘twin’ which could be another DID hint.like Tammy Tompson along with their names being associated with the nature/woods where ab*se took place).

Possible npcs or  alters (BUT possibly just normal people from the real world) : 

Murray Bauman (possibly an npc or alter?)- Between seasons Joyce mentioned going to Chicago with Will for therapy- where murray is from. Similar to Will who has a ‘do not enter” sign . Murray  has a  “keep door closed”. Both are proficient with shotg*ns . Murray drinks and smokes a lot like Hopper/Lonnie. He makes up a story about how what happened to Barb being a chemical leak. And next season the possessed are consuming chemicals and the npc russians are experimenting with chemicals. Hopper lied in s1 about having a friend from the times- and in s2 Murray from the times magically appears. He says Jon is easier to read than Nancy and immediately pegs his issues with his dad. He references Wizard of Oz by saying “people don’t like looking behind the curtain” (in the movie what was behind the curtain was a wizard-Will). He also has cameras everywhere like the american npcs. Also, it’d be pretty funny if he was investigating crazy conspiracies like aliens but never realized he was a part of one all along.

Erica-Not on the inspo list but she could be like Buffy’s sis from buffy the vampire slayer. The memories of Buffy and her associates were altered, along with relevant records, so that they believed Dawn always existed as Buffy's sister. Dawn is, however, a real girl, Buffy's biological sister, and has real memories of her fictional childhood. Erica has rainbows/sunflowers in her room in s2 (connected to Terry). And Erica is a plant that means “HEATHER”.

what all these possible alters /npc’s generally have in common is unlike ‘natural people’ they all have names associated with hunting or the woods (because that’s where a lot of the ab*se most often took place). name meaning : becky - snare (a trap for catching birds or animals). Teressa-huntress. Dianne (Hopper’s ex wife) - is a roman goddess of hunting.  brenner- ‘someone who cleared forests by burning’. the blond women, Brenner worked with,  Fraizer-  “of the forrest men” (the male hunters who terrorized Will most likely). mayfield- open country (field) where madder (mæddre) grows', Hargrove-grove filled with rabbits" , Holland- wood land, Bruce (who was also possessed) - means WILLow lands .ives- yew wood (of tree) ,Bauman: comes from the German word "baum," or "boum" in Middle High and Old German, meaning "tree’. Bauman may have originally been a nickname for someone who lived by a tree. Holloway is a topographic surname, which was given to a person who resided near a physical feature such as a hill, stream, or type of tree. Suzie-  lily flower. Susan (Max’s mom)- means lily, lotus flower or rose.  Heather is also a variety of small shrubs with pink or white flowers which commonly grow in rocky areas.  Neil -cloud. Buckley- buck deer. Rhadaghast (Will’s castle byers password)- is a wizard who protects the forrest and it’s creatures.

or an association with fire/lightning/god: robin- bird of the God Thor , sara- married abraham who tried to k*ll his son for god, barabara- saint who’s ab*sive father tried to k*ll her for not believing in his religion- so he was electrocuted and lit on fire by god. Kali/El are names of gods

the main exceptions being Hopper an interject . Although Hop could be a bunny pun, he even references bunnies in s3. And Jim meaning to “supplant” /“suprecede” ( replace/take the place of a person or thing previously in authority or use) hints at him being an interject.And heather’s dad Tom (who was possessed means ‘twin’) like Robin’s crush  Tammy (’twin’) Thompson (’son of tom’) . And Marsha Holland (barb’s mom) & Martin Brenner both have first names meaning ‘war-like” (a hint at Lonnie being warlike, or being a vietnam vet perhaps?) 

Ok, guys that’s about it- I hope you enjoyed. :)

[sedge-yells-at-comics]

Reprinted below, in case the link implodes.

Flash #27 Reveals Why Reverse Flash Is a Truly Unique Villain                

The finale of "Running Scared" provides a gut-wrenching Rebirth update to one of DC's most complicated villains: Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash.

By Meg Downey Published Jul 27, 2017               

If you’re a fan of the Flash, you’re probably pretty familiar with the concept of the Reverse Flash, a man named Eobard Thawne who, like Barry, has super speed and wears a flashy costume. Of course, the “Reverse” might sound like he’s the literal opposite of the Flash -- maybe someone who slows things down instead of speeding himself up? Or maybe someone who runs backwards?

There are a lot of obvious and incorrect guesses pretty readily available for casual or newer fans to throw darts at. The reality of the Reverse Flash is, however, pretty complicated. Mostly because his “reverse” status is actually ideological at its core. Flash media, be it print, animated or live action, has traditionally made this apparent by painting Eobard as someone who is essentially pure evil -- a sort of manic, time traveling serial killer who is motivated solely by his endless need to destroy Barry Allen from the ground up.

At that point, the problem then becomes finding a way to make Thawne’s homicidal drive, well… unique in the scope of the DC Universe, a place that just so happens to be populated by enough over-the-top villains to populate a decent sized Midwestern town. Why is Reverse Flash someone that’s specific to The Flash? What differentiates him from any of DC’s other iconic arch rivals, like Lex Luthor or The Joker?

Well, The Flash #27 has the answer, and it's probably not the one you expected.

Running Scared

The rebirth of the “classic” Eobard Thawne (as opposed to his New 52 revamp) began in the Flash/Batman crossover mini-event “The Button” back in April, a four-part storyline which connected the original Thawne to the events of last year’s DC Universe: Rebirth one-shot.

Since, then, Thawne’s taken up residence as a perpetual thorn in Barry’s side in the hero's own ongoing series, stepping directly into the spotlight for the three-part “Running Scared” arc which served to highlight Thawne’s Rebirth status quo. For the most part, it’s a story that fans will be pretty familiar with, borrowing heavily from elements of stories like The Flash: Rebirth and Flashpoint. Thawne’s from the future, he time traveled to kill Barry’s parents, he’s connected to a negative form of the Speed-Force, and so on -- But that’s where things start to get their Rebirth-specific legs.

It’s not that creators Josh Williamson, Howard Porter and Paul Pelletier are trying to reinvent the proverbial wheel with “Running Scared” -- just unlock a different side of it by shining a light on one of the most unique aspect of Eobard and Barry’s relationship.

Reverse Flash doesn’t hate Flash the way Lex Luthor hates Superman, or Bane hates Batman. It’s actually (appropriately) quite the opposite. It’s the reverse. Eobard Thawne loves Barry Allen, obsessively and vengefully, which is where his endless, destructive need to ruin Barry’s life comes into play.

“Running Scared” highlights the fact that a young Eobard grew up alone (though Williamson was quick to confirm that that particular story element came out of an earlier Geoff Johns Flash issue) with only his idealized and imaginary version of Barry -- a character from his history books -- to keep him company. Barry was, for all intents and purposes, Thawne’s only friend, confidant, and emotional anchor, despite the fact that the two of them wouldn’t actually meet for years and years.

It was plenty of time for a very troubled and very lonely Thawne to fall in love with a version of The Scarlet Speedster that existed only in his imagination...and, well, it’s pretty obvious how that particular emotional endeavor actually went down. Actually meeting Barry and subsequently being forced to deal with the fact that he was just a guy and not the cartoon character Thawne had built in his head for years, proved to be too hard a stress test for Thawne’s fragile psyche.

Fatal Attraction

Meeting and being disappointed by a personal hero is a rough experience for just about anyone, but rather than allowing himself to move on -- or even allowing himself to simply decide to hate Barry instead, Thawne’s obsession only doubled down.

As issue #27 hurtles to its conclusion, Thawne’s real motivations become abundantly apparent. As Barry, infected with Thawne’s own inverted Negative Speed Force thrashes Thawne within an inch of his life, he presses him with a question - Why, if Thawne has always been so inspired by him, has he gone out of his way to ruin Barry’s life at every turn? Why has he done all of these terrible things, from killing Barry’s parents to beating Wally within an inch of his life, to kidnapping he and Iris and hauling them to the future?

Thawne’s answer is as unexpected as it is heartrendingly honest: because these horrible things are the only way Thawne understands how to make Barry spend time with him.

It’s that simple.

Thawne’s love for, and obsession with Barry Allen has permeated his life so deeply and completely that he is even willing to count his time spent being pummeled half to death by Flash as a win. He’s completely unable or unwilling to differentiate between Barry’s affection and Barry’s hatred, and he’s ready to do whatever it might take to put himself at the center of either emotion in Barry’s mind.

“A few years ago, it would have really hurt my feelings to hear you say that,” Thawne taunts after Barry threatens him, “but now to think that I caused you that anger? That I could get under your skin like this? It warms my heart.”

It’s deeply troubling, of course, and horrifyingly uncomfortable to get a look into the head of a villain who is, essentially, the personification of a fan gone terribly, terribly awry -- a theme that only gets more difficult to swallow when you begin to think about the increasingly complicated relationship between fans and their idols in actual, genuine, non-super heroic world around us.

This subtle reworking of the Reverse Flash has made him one of comic’s most poignant ruminations of the idea of toxicity in fan communities, idolization of strangers, and self destructive obsession, and it did so in a way that boldly allowed Thawne to win at the end of the day.

The issue closes, and the arc completes, with Barry exactly in the position Thawne wanted him in: completely alone, just like Thawne was as he built Barry into a hero of mythological perfection in his head. Now, where Barry will end up, and whether he’ll be forgiven by Iris, Wally and the roster of people he’s been manipulating as he leads his vigilante double life, is still largely a mystery.

It’s clear that Thawne didn’t expect, or even really want, Barry to come running into his arms to start their life together the second he succeeded in isolating him -- he makes that abundantly clear as he warns that he’ll just return again and again and again, de-powered, killed or otherwise hindered. Iris may have added an exclamation point to the end of the story arc by “vaporizing” Thawne with a Black Hole gun, but it hardly matters.

Reverse Flash will be back, somehow, at some point, and it’s doubtful that his love and obsession for Barry will have wavered in the slightest. We know now that’s just now how his mind is capable of working. It’s unlikely that Thawne will ever feel anything for Barry beyond his own supremely twisted adoration, no matter how many times the Flash pummels him into the ground. It’s just not the way Thawne’s brain is able to process information anymore.

It’s complicated, messy, and uncomfortable, but it’s also one of the clearest articulations of exactly what makes Reverse Flash such an interesting villain in the scope of not just the Flash family of books, but the DCU as a whole.

[elminx]

Energy Update: September 2021

Happy September!

Numerologically, September is a 5 universal month [9 (September) + 5 (2021) = 14 = 1+4 = 5] in a 5 universal year. In numerology, the number 5 represents the pivotal moment in the middle of it all. It holds the vastness of all futures – both good and ill. 5 represents freedom and adventure. A 5 month is, in general, a time to tap in and go with the flow – it’s not a time to make your lists and check them twice; instead, it’s a time to think big and say “yes”. We’ve been sitting in 5 energy all year so this may feel like a bit of a homecoming for some or very nerve-wracking for others. This will have a lot to do with your own personality and comfortability with 5 energy.

Astrologically, the month of September is a mismatch for our 5 universal energy. We spend most of the month in Virgo season and may have to spend quite a bit of time putting in the work to catch up on things that we fell behind on during summer vacation. Whether it’s back to school or back to work, Virgo season always has a feeling of settling into your routines again or perhaps finding a new and more healthful routine.

The Setup

The Sun is in Virgo for most of the month, Mercury spends the entirety of the month in Libra, Venus finishes her stint in Libra and moves ahead into Scorpio, and Mars enters Libra at the midway point in the month. As our planets transit through Virgo, they are squaring off with the lunar nodes, trining retrograde Uranus in Taurus and Pluto in Capricorn, and opposing retrograde Neptune in Pisces. As they transit Libra, they are reactivating our Saturn-Uranus square through a trine to Saturn, trine to retrograde Jupiter, and opposing retrograde Chiron in Aries. Venus whose the head of our pack will be squaring off with Saturn and opposing Uranus once she enters Scorpio.

We are still under the effect of our Saturn in Aquarius square to Uranus in Taurus – this is our Unstoppable Force meets immovable object energy that is in effect throughout the rest of the year.

Additionally, we are deep into retrograde season with all of our outer and transpersonal planets in retrograde. Mercury will join these planets later this month for its third retrograde of the year in the sign of Libra.

For a sneak peek of October: Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto all station direct from 10/6-10/18 – this is the Green Light you’ve been waiting for. Now we just need to get there.

The Nitty Gritty

September is filled with contradictory vibes and may feel like a roller coaster. One day you may feel invincible and full of the highest highs but it is worth keeping in mind all month that what goes up must come down. We are all subject to gravity – plan accordingly. In particular, the first and third weeks of the month look fairly rocky while the third and fourth weeks have promise and moments of sweetness. This is a month to tidy up – to work smarter rather than harder. To pair down your responsibilities and make sure you are maintaining healthy boundaries around work, play, and excess.

The 5 energy may give the impression that it’s go time but it’s really not. Not yet. We will have six planets and Chiron retrograde by the end of the month which is always an indication that our energy is best expressed in an inward fashion.

Two of our personal planets (Venus and Mars) change signs this month which will personalize the energy with some emphasis on the relationships in our lives. While Mars is in Libra, we may be called to balance out the relationship energy we share with our others in some way – early on Mars will make an opposition to our wounded healer Chiron in Aries – there is pain to go through to get to the other side. Venus in Scorpio can be harsh and unyielding but also deep and seductive. These two energies do not sit well together, Venus may try to control (especially with emotions – using toxic tactics like the silent treatment or double binds) while Mars just wants everybody to find peace and get along. The more space you can give your others, the better off you will be.

Relationships may be especially tense around the new moon in Virgo on 9/5-9/6 as Venus in Libra squares of with retrograde Pluto in Capricorn while Mars in Virgo makes a trine. This year is all about transformations – first, we need to transform internally, but then this transformation needs to ripple outward and into our realities. There may be some break-ups and breakdowns during this time – it is likely that some long-term partners (Capricorn rules marriage, let’s not forget) are starting to realize that their connection has run its course.

In a year when it feels like we need to hold onto everything (influenced by our long-term Saturn-Uranus square in the fixed signs), this may feel catastrophic. Uranus in Taurus has a big lesson for us now: nothing lasts forever and retrograde Pluto in Capricorn is reinforcing this lesson. Now is the time to release what you have outgrown. It will likely feel very uncomfortable this month to continue to wear your mostly shed skin. As you navigate this energy, make the choices that are best suited for who you would most like to be, and you alone.

Herein lies the secret to navigating this month and really the energy of all of 2021: give up the illusion that you can control or “help” other people, and instead work controlling and “helping” yourself. As Anne Lamott says “Help is just the sunny side of control.” We are being pushed by our Saturn-Uranus square towards an ever-deepening understanding of this lesson and, since Virgo is a sign concerned with service and helping others, this will be especially accentuated as our sun transits the sign of the virgin. The lesson may come due on 9/14 as our Sun in Virgo opposed retrograde Neptune in Pisces – this is a day to give up the illusion (Neptune in Pisces) that we can control (Sun in Virgo) our Others.

Especially right now, our Others may be on an internal journey that is impossible for us to reach or understand. We’ve all had to make hard decisions and recalculations since the beginning of 2020 – beware of following your Others to a place that feels uncomfortable to be AND most especially of demanding your Others follow you to a place that feels uncomfortable for them. Be especially aware of projection and the illusionary stories that you tell yourself – especially as we approach our full moon in Pisces on 9/20 that is conjunct Neptune retrograde. As we enter our month to finally get shit done in October, we want to do so with our eyes wide open. See things as they really are, not as you would like them to be.

The entirety of September and October will be overshadowed by our Mercury retrograde in Libra cycle. Mercury enters its shadow on 9/6, officially retrogrades 9/27, stations direct again on 10/28, and doesn’t exit its post-shadow until November. The standard Mercury retrograde things apply: get your car fixed before the retrograde (change your oil, too!), double-check your work, save often, and watch out for miscommunication and upsets involving technology and travel. Because Mercury Chthonia is transversing backward through the Venus-ruled sign of Libra, this is another indication that this time will be spent re-thinking, re-imagining, re-editing things that have to do within our most personal relationships.

Mercury Chthonia’s path spans from 10° to 25° of Libra which means that it will trine retrograde Jupiter, just barely miss an exact trine with retrograde Saturn, square retrograde Pluto, and opposed retrograde Chiron not once but thrice through its retrograde journey. This will likely be the densest retrograde cycle of the year but potentially the most rewarding. If the message seems murky and unclear, write out your experiences for review after Mercury stations direct – you may find that there were hints of your lesson that you were too “in it” to see.

The lower energy of Libra is prone to emotional entanglements and codependency so it’s likely we will be revisiting these themes in our own lives during this time. Watch out for where you are not allowing your Others to differentiate or be themselves. Watch out for where you are stifling yourself to please your Others as well. Chiron in Aries is always a lesson in putting on your own mask first BEFORE you step up help an/Other put their mask on. Again, see above about maintaining strong boundaries this month – do less but make what you do count for more.

Balance truly is the way through this month but it may be hard to find. Practice your very best self-care and make sure that when you say “yes” to things, you really mean it. This is a month that could easier run away from you if you’re checking out on yourself or trying to do all of the things with no hand on the brake petal. Breath and put one foot in front of the other – slow and steady will get you to the finish line. Once our planets station direct in October, we will be able to move faster.

Below, I’ve broken down the important daily aspects of the month. Please keep in mind that the days listed are just the days that these aspects go exact in EST – strong aspects can be felt anywhere from 2-7 days (or more!) in advance of their completion and for a number of days afterward. I have bolded the most important aspects.

The Aspects

9/2 – Mars in Virgo opposed Neptune retrograde in Pisces, Moon in Cancer square Venus in Libra – this could spell relationship troubles. Mars is off in daydream land while Venus is feeling triggered. Lie low and try not to put undue pressure on your Others during these transits.

9/3 – Mercury in Libra trine N. Node in Gemini – watch out for Ah-Ha moments and signs that show you a way forward on this day.

9/4 – Moon in Leo squares retrograde Uranus in Taurus – here we see one of our four monthly days where the moon reactivates our Saturn-Uranus square. Lie low. Stay aware. Caution.

9/5 – Mercury in Libra trine retrograde Saturn in Aquarius – the energy is volatile – expect breakdowns and breakthroughs especially involving communication about long term things

9/6 – New moon at 14° Virgo, Mercury enters their shadow, Venus in Libra trine Jupiter retrograde in Aquarius, Venus in Libra square Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, Mars in Virgo trine Pluto retrograde in Capricorn – Pluto’s influence on this new moon (through both Venus and Mars) is unmistakeable – something has got to transform. With both and Venus and Mars involved, it may be a change within your relationships. Remember to reach for balance (Venus in Libra) and compromise if it is available.

9/7 – Sun in Virgo trine retrograde Uranus in Taurus – expect (and embrace) the unexpected during this time. What you hold onto too tightly may break. Stay away from the illusion of control during this time.

9/8 – Moon conjunct Mercury in Libra, Moon in Libra trine retrograde Saturn in Aquarius, Moon and Mercury opposed retrograde Chiron in Aries – this is an air grand trine which means that we are supporting in learning something during this transit. This re-activates our Saturn-Uranus square and Chiron – the lesson is likely to be heavy. Avoid using your emotions as a copout to understanding.

9/10 – Venus enters Scorpio, Moon in Scorpio square retrograde Saturn in Aquarius – this is our first hint as to what it is going to feel like to revisit our Saturn-Uranus square during Scorpio season. Take note.

9/13 – Moon in Sagittarius square retrograde Neptune in Pisces – something may be revealed today and it may feel like a major setback. Pivot your attention and focus on things that you CAN change.

9/14 – Sun in Virgo opposed retrograde Neptune in Pisces, Mars enters Libra – a repeat on 9/13 – you may not have all of the information. All that glitters is not gold. Watch out for “helper” behavior that isn’t helpful and victim/savior complexes.

9/16 – Moon conjunct retrograde Saturn in Aquarius – this is another of our four lunar activation points to our Saturn-Uranus square. Make sure the weight of the responsibility you are carrying is actually yours.

9/17 – Sun in Virgo trine retrograde Pluto in Capricorn, Venus in Scorpio square Saturn retrograde in Aquarius – in a month that begs for transformation, this is one of our powerhouse days – level up. Change may be uncomfortable but it will be even more uncomfortable to stay in your too-tight skin. Watch out for the control through emotional manipulation because this again activates our Saturn-Uranus square and Uranus is not having any of that shit.

9/20 – Full moon at 28° Pisces, Moon conjunct retrograde Neptune, Mercury in Libra trine Jupiter retrograde in Aquarius, Mars in Libra trine N. Node in Gemini – where are you going? do you have a path forward? Things may seem foggy and immutable at this time. Watch out for your boundaries and projection. The Mercury-Jupiter trine repeats during Mercury retrograde on 10/3.

9/22 – The Sun enters Libra, Mercury in Libra square retrograde Pluto in Capricorn, Venus in Scorpio opposed retrograde Uranus in Taurus – Happy Autumnal Equinox! The seasons are shifting but there’s a metric fuckton of tension in the air. Tamper down the emotional volatility – not everything needs to be a struggle. Tap into the Libra ideal of peace and balance for all. The Mercury-Pluto square repeats during Mercury retrograde on 10/01.

9/24 – Moon conjunct retrograde Uranus in Taurus, Moon in Taurus opposed Venus in

Scorpio – there’s a lesson here in letting go of control. This reactivates our Saturn-Uranus square…again. Step away from the Venus in Scorpio impulse for revenge.

9/25 – Mars in Libra trine retrograde Saturn in Aquarius – this is a good day to put in the work.

9/26 – Moon in Gemini trine Sun and Mars in Libra and retrograde Saturn in Aquarius. – another air grand trine. Show up for your own life – what you focus on grows.

9/27 – Mercury retrograde at 25° Libra – go slow. check your work. save often. Mercury retrograde 3-4x every year since this is normal Astrological Weather but still important to pay attention to. In the sign of Libra, Mercury will likely help you to rebalance something about your relationships.

9/29 – Sun in Libra trine Saturn retrograde in Aquarius, Venus in Scorpio trine retrograde Neptune in Pisces – you may want to work but it’s likely that your head will be in the clouds. Watch out for emotional dysregulation. The Sun activates our Saturn-Uranus square so caution would be advised.

9/30 – Moon in Cancer square Mercury retrograde in Libra, Moon in Cancer opposed retrograde Pluto in Capricorn, Venus in Scorpio square retrograde Jupiter in Aquarius – go slow, emotions are high. Misunderstandings will have a lasting impact during this time.

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[the-river-person]

Epilogue

Wind swept through the red grass like a wave upon the sea, sending ripples down the slopes of the endless hills. In the lowest valleys the grass vanished into a soft white fog, making the hilltops seem as if they were detached from the earth and floating through an ocean of clouds. Sans gazed around in wonder, while also having to shield his eyes a little. Above them the sky was a thousand blending shades of purple, everything from a deep angry bruise to a very soft lilac. At the edge of the Horizon was the sun, and from here it looked a very deep red color, and though it wasn’t terribly bright, he still had to shield his eyes. It seemed that he needed some time for his eyes to properly adjust to seeing the surface in all of its overwhelming brightness after living in the muted and shadowed Underground for all his life. Well for lifetimes on end, really. Mouth open wide, and eye lights nearly pinpricks in shock, Gaster too appeared to be too stunned for words at the sight of this world. Sans knew that his uncle had been around to see the Surface of their own Universe, and judging by Gaster’s reaction, it was nothing at all like this. The River Person had taken them to this place because he said it was still a relatively safe Universe to visit for a little while. Comfortably seated in his ferry boat, the River Person didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere soon, so they’d opted to explore for a bit while staying in sight. Arriving at another Universe was just as bizarre as leaving one had been. It was as if there was a reflective orb in the distance, only when you got closer it wasn’t you that it was reflecting, but a place. And if you got close enough it was as if the reflection warped and twisted itself so that it swallowed you and you were sitting in another Universe as smoothly as if you’d landed your boat at the docks. Actually the ferryboat itself was sitting in the middle of the red grass, and looked perfectly natural there as if it were supposed to sail across the sea of red grass and plants instead of up and down a river. Out in the distance the world got even stranger. To the right, he wasn’t sure what the compass direction was because the red sun appeared to be circling the horizon instead of crossing overhead in an arc, he could see bright glow that spanned the whole edge of the sky in that direction, as if the area was filled with light. And to the left the sky seemed to get darker and darker until the horizon that way was shadowed and still. “Pretty, isn’t it?” “Yes,” he breathed, still trying to take it all in. The next moment he leaped away in shock as he realized the comment had come from someone who had unexpectedly been standing beside him. It was a skeleton, somewhat similar to himself in appearance but not quite. Wearing brown pants that might have been tucked in overalls by the green straps that were sticking out from one side of the waist, a white shirt, and a long brown scarf... the skeleton’s clothing alone made a strong first impression of him. But more interesting than that were the splotch of black ink that coated the bottom right side of his jaw and the enormous paint brush that he carried on his back like a sheathed sword. Over his chest was a belt holding a series of tiny phials with heart shaped stoppers, each phial held a different colored liquid within, and altogether and in order they formed a kind of rainbow pattern. Finally, around his neck and hanging down his back was an incredibly long scarf of some brown fabric. The Skeleton was grinning at him, mischief dancing in his eye sockets, which Sans had only just realized contained some odd shapes. In his left eye, the pupil was shaped like a bright, five pointed, golden star (☆), twinkling merrily as if to say “I’m excited!” to all the world. And in his right eye the pupil took the shape of... and this left Sans feeling more bewildered than anything else, a small purple 7. But even as he watched the pupils changed shape, and again, and again. A spiral (๑), a triangle border with nothing inside (△), a check mark (✓), an eroteme (?), a small crescent moon (☽), a pair of squiggly lines that might have been either water or a double tilde (≈), a silcrow (§), a percontation point (⸮), and a very small umbrella (☂). “Hullo!” said the skeleton. “I’m Ink! Guardian of the Multiverse and Protector of AUs!” Gaster, who had turned around to see what Sans had been reacting to, was examining the newcomer with something akin to professional curiosity. “AUs?” he asked, tilting his skull slightly to the side. “Alternate Universes,” clarified Ink. “And parallel ones. And pretty much any other kind of universe that springs up. So... now that I’ve introduced myself, who are you two?” Other universes, the thought was a little frightening. Sure he’d heard Gaster practically wax poetic on the subject numerous times, and here he was standing in another universe entirely. But it was different hearing someone else talk about them existing, as if they’d seen them with their own eyes. An entire multiverse full of them. And if Ink was truly the Guardian of that Multiverse and every universe inside of it, then he must be a really important person. “I’m Sans-” he started to say, not sure whether there was special protocol for introducing yourself to a Multiverse Guardian, but Ink was already cutting him off, flapping his hand impatiently at them. “No no no. There are way too many Sanses and Gasters floating about. Even I’m a Sans. We like to use... well I guess you’d call them nicknames. They help keep us from getting confused. More confused. Some people use the name of their AU, others ” Somewhat at a loss, Sans turned to look at Gaster, who only shrugged unhelpfully. Well alright then. A nickname huh? His thoughts raced back years and years, decades, centuries, all the way to that very first therapy session with Doctor Whimsol. She’d suggested that he didn’t have to be a Sans if he didn’t feel like one. For a while he’d toyed with various other names, mostly Fonts in the style of Skeleton naming conventions. But he’d never really made anything of it. Perhaps one of the ones he’d liked would do? Something that suited him the way that he was now. He’d changed a great deal since then. There was no way anyone would think of him in formal terms, even now. But he was a bit more serious, even though he tried to stay approachable. He wasn’t suffering from depression and guilt, and he was a lot more active than he had been. So something light-hearted but serious, informal like, with a sense of movement.... It came to him and he grinned suddenly. “Mistral,” he informed the Guardian of the Multiverse. “I’m Mistral.“ Looking intrigued, Ink nodded enthusiastically. “It suits you! A little rough of a font, sort of like brush writing, but with this... um... crystal stuff on your bones, it really works.” Oh yeah, Sans had forgotten about the Kenón still growing on him. It had sped up its growth a bit in the Void, which made sense because they were already connected. Small spikes of silvery-grey crystal were now easily seen growing up from the collar of his shirt and from his sleeves, and tiny lumps were beginning to form under his usual overcoat that betrayed the crystals growing underneath. “I think,” said Gaster suddenly, “That I would like to be known as Majuscule.” Sans stared at him. “You want to be named after Capitalized Letters?” he asked incredulously. It wasn’t a font. Though they weren’t really required to stick to those if they truly didn’t want to. But it was related enough that it was odd that Gaster would want to choose that of all things for a name. The smile the scientist gave him was a smug one. “When I use the Wingdings Sign variant it really doesn’t differentiate between Minuscule and Maguscule symbols like the font does in physical writing. And since I cannot speak it out loud and adjust the volume of my speech, it is as if I am saying everything in capitalized letters, constantly speaking with maximum intensity all the time.” Oh Angel, of course Gaster would choose something that convoluted. Sans groaned and rolled his eyes, surprisingly Ink only looked amused and actually giggled, his eyes flitting between an octothorp followed immediately by an S (#S) , an ecphoneme (!), an on/off symbol, and an asterisk (*). “I’m guessing you guys are new travelers to the Multiverse. That means you’re the ones I was looking for. You see, I felt a Universe die recently, and I went to go protect it from whatever was causing it to be destroyed. But it was dying on its own, of old age. I’ve never seen a Universe do that before, reach its natural ending. Then I found a trail in the Void, the sort of paths the River Folk make when they travel, and I knew that someone must have escaped before everything fell apart. And well... here you are!” Ink smirked and stuck out his tongue in a sort of “blep” way. Somewhere in the back of his head, Sans couldn’t help but notice that the tongue was rainbow hued. But now that he was reminded, he had more important questions. “Did you see anyone else?” He asked. “A ship in the Void? Any survivors? Papyrus? Well, my Papyrus anyway. He’s the Captain of the Royal Guard. And there were a lot of people on the ship before it fell into the Void. Please, if you’ve seen anything...” He trailed off hopefully. Ink’s eyes had suddenly become two ecphonemes (!). “Wait, there are more than just you two?” asked the Guardian excitedly. “It’s pretty rare we get more than a Sans or a Gaster. For some reason the Sanses seem to be inclined to go traveling more than others, though we do get Papyruses and Gasters here and there. But I don’t recall seeing a ship...hmmm.” Then Ink reached back and pulled on his scarf. Upon closer inspection, Sans could see all kinds of writing on it, scribbles and notes. Ink was using the thing as a planner. For a moment Ink squinted down at the scarf, searching through all the notes. They could see his mouth moving as he silently muttered some of the reminders he was reading. At last he looked up. “Nope, sorry. I haven’t seen any ship. But I’ll make a note to keep an eye out for one. I definitely don’t want to miss seeing that. Oh, but I did write down something else. I found this where your universe used to be.” And digging into his pocket, Ink produced something that was difficult to see. It was like a point, but without any width, depth, surface, or length. It flickered strangely and Sans heard Gaster’s intake of breath behind him. “There it is!” said the Scientist as he stepped forward, reaching for the thing. “The last fragment. The final percentage. What bit of me are you hiding in such a small form?” His hand closed around it and he closed his eyes, looking triumphant and relieved. Just as quickly he snapped them back open again in alarm. “Sans!” “What?” “I had three assistants, Sans. Three! Not four! I don’t know who Goner actually is!” * * * The Tem had managed to push the wreckage away from itself, freeing its trapped hind leg. Nobody else was in this part of the Ship, mostly being occupied in repair work or attempts to plan and reorganize. He’d volunteered to come out here and replace the spark plugs in this area because it would make it easier to get away from people for a while. A low creak, like metal under strain, made him turn. It was similar to the sound he’d heard earlier before the ceiling fell. This ship had taken a lot of damage in the crash, it was no wonder it was all falling apart at the seams. There was no one there. Yeah, probably just more infrastructure damage from the crash that needed to be repaired. Turning back brought him face to face with the grey torso of Goner, who was looming over him with his pale whitish-grey eyes. “Your name is Bob, right?” Said Goner in an expressionless tone. It wasn’t really a question exactly. More like a statement with a question tacked onto the end like an afterthought. Suddenly Goner’s expression seemed almost sly, sinister. Perhaps it was just the lighting, but the Tem shrank from the Monster as he leaned forward. “My name is Goner, I have a feeling we’re going to be very good friends.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ink!Sans belongs to @comyet Special Thanks to @msaoa12345 for their continued reblogging, praise, and excitable and positive commentary. Without their support, this story wouldn’t be anywhere near finished.

[sterling-silvers]

Star Wars: The High Republic Informal Review

These are my initial thoughts and minutely biased opinion/review of the High Republic.

My basis is primarily founded on the first two issues of the High Republic comic book – written by Cavan Scott – along with a secondary basis, from a secondhand account of the book Light of the Jedi, written by Charles Soule. It is a secondary account because I don’t read books; I am not a book man. My friend loves to read books and he graciously gets on Discord with me basically every day and together we dissect and discern what’s going on in this new period of the galaxy. This evaluation will mainly concentrate on the book portion and while not all encompassing, will give you a significant gist of how I’m feeling about High Republic. Also, there will be SPOILERS – you have been warned.

Overall, the book seems to have a strong first third, gets into a lull in the second third, and somewhat recovers in the last third but, arguably not as strong as that first third. The strengths of the book are definitely world building, the focus on Starlight Beacon, and finally, the introduction to all the new (old) Jedi; the Jedi are the best thing about the book. Plot wise, the book centers on and around Starlight Beacon with hyperspace being the driving force of the conflict.

Starlight Beacon is akin to an amalgam of air traffic control, a mutli-cultural embassy, a Jedi Temple, and a bazaar. At this point, it housed the largest number of Jedi outside of Coruscant and used signals to guide travelers during their interplanetary journeys. It was made in response to the Great Disaster – a hyperspace tragedy that caused starships all across the galaxy to be abruptly launched out of hyperspace leading to several moons in the Trymant system, including Korbatal, to be destroyed. Beacon exists to better calibrate for, identity, and curtail these new anomalies as astromech droids are a rarity in this period of time.

Around the same time, a marauder group – called the Nihil – have found a way to board and raid ships while they are in hyperspace using hyperspace channels termed Paths. Through the use of devices - called Path Engines - Nihil ships are to make short-burst hyperspace jumps, allowing them to appear and disappear in a flash during battle. Their raids have led to deaths, including that of Jedi Jora Malli -  a Togruta Jedi Master that sees the Force as a force – always in competition with itself. She was also very close friends with Sskeer; a Trandoshan Jedi Master that lost an am during the raids. 

In accordance with that last point, hyperspace will be somewhat of the crux contention to fans (and really science fiction enthusiast in general) as this is not how hyperspace has generally been established to work in Star Wars yet, is the lynch pin in how conflicts happen. This even follies with the newly established way hyperspace works in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker but, I digress…

I knew there were going to be some major plot holes in this super prequel series but, my best hope was that they wouldn’t be too gaping. Just knowing that this application exists, changes many aspects of space travel and what characters going forward should know about it. Canon mechanics aside, Charles Soule makes it clear why was given this duty; he has blatant skill for writing not only characters but, also taking the extra steps of having the individualized power of the character be an extension of them. He did this very well during his run in Uncanny Inhumans and he’s not disappointing here either (he’s had plenty of practice in the Star Wars realm already with books like Star Wars, Poe Dameron, and The Rise of Kylo Ren).

There are a multitude of Jedi brought in, which complements the time period and era of it being the High Republic but, the real asset of the book is Soule taking the needed time to give the reader a look at how each Jedi interprets the Force in their own way. Moreover, the pairings of different Jedi serve as accompaniments to each other in very noteworthy ways.

Jedi Master Loden Greatstorm, sees the Force as an ocean.

His Padawan, Bell Zettifar sees it as a flame – sometimes a raging inferno, sometimes glinting ember. (This is very fascination as usual flames are a motif associated with the Sith yet, here is Bell - a shining example of a Jedi - interpreting fire in a positive light. I also like how view of the Force allowed him to synch with his charhound, Ember).

Wookie Padawan Burryaga Agaburry, perceives it has a tree attached to a leaf of equal size.

Vernestra Rwoh, the one of the youngest Jedi Knight in the order, sees it as a river.

Reath Silas, see it as a spider web – strong in some spots, weak in others.

Elzar Mann, views it as an endless, bottomless sea which was impossible to be used up, not matter for what purpose or however many times it was called upon. (I’m curious to see if there will be a differentiation between how Mann sees the force when compared to Greatstorm; an ocean is deeper than that of a sea.)

Finally, Jedi Master Avar Kriss, hears the Force as a symphony – moreover, she can connect with minds of other Jedi and is able see how other see how they see the Force.

Hot take but, the character of Kriss feels like a Kathleen Kennedy character as Kennedy been prone to interject White, third wave feminism (if you’re not intersectional then you’re not a “feminist” to me) into Star Wars. One of her signatures is to take a White human female and make her the either the main character or a key figure in the narrative. Avar Kriss, a White blonde-haired human woman, is literally depicted as “the brightest, most noble example of Jedi-hood” so, I’m keeping a keen eye on her – doesn’t help that she just got assigned Marshall to Starlight Beacon but, if it’s any consolation (more like mitigation), she was the SECOND pick as the first died.

Ultimately, if you are able to get the major hurdle that is hyperspace Paths, this is a competent and enjoyable start. Soule even goes as far to add some interesting and even practical – yet lore breaking – devices in this age: he’s made a new (old) space ship called “Vectors” that are powered/steered by Force sensitive people with the lightsaber being the key to active it (even cooler, the hub takes the color of the lightsaber that activates it). 

That’s a great idea and makes sense within the universe as whole yet, collapses on itself when you remember what time period, we’re in – the past, so why was this not built upon in the future? It definitely feels like the books are 85% of the story while the comics (more on them in a later post) are – at their prime peak – a mere “intrinsic 15%”. The best part for me has been the characters; hopefully, the plot will come along to accent them justly. Arguably though, the best characters – that of Loden and Bell – should be depicted in the comics based on their gravitating dynamics and instant attachment with readers.

[nezumiismissing]

Control Through Culture and the Lack of It

Ok so before we get started here I would like to just give a big thank you to everyone who came to my panel during the convention all the way back in September and listened to me ramble out the first draft of this! We had some great discussion and everyone brought up great points that all came together to make this post happen, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as good without all of your input! I also profusely apologize for taking this long to get this done, but sometimes you have 18 college credits and 30 hours a week of work that have to come first! Now, on with the topic:

When we look at the city of No.6, we see a world that appears, for the most part, free of any defining cultural characteristics. It would appear, in fact, that as part of the city’s construction, what we would normally associate with such a society’s culture has been purposely removed as a factor in the citizens’ lives. The “removal” of culture as a contributing factor in the city of No.6 is highly effective in what it was meant to do; separating citizens from the “other” while reinforcing the identity of citizenship and treating it as not only a good thing, but the only acceptable way of being. In the minds of the citizens, this is a functional system, as they are the ones who have benefited from it, and they are able to live comfortable lives free of the suffering that is inflicted upon “others”, creating the sense that despite their internal differences, they still constitute a distinct group. But while at the citizens’ level they have been chosen as existing on the top, the picture is much different for those ruling the city. While the nonexistence of culture functions as a way to dehumanize outsiders and reinforce No.6′s position as superior (ie. it does not need culture to be a complete society), it also serves as a highly efficient way of making sure that the citizens are also unable to truly empathize with and care about the other citizens, or any other humans for that matter. Because the city is all they know, and they have been conditioned to not be able to understand anything outside of that context, the “othering” of those outside the walls by the citizens and No.6’s government becomes that much easier, as the understanding of “citizen” to those in the city is equivalent on some level to their understanding of being human, making anyone outside of the citizen category not only lesser, but also not fully human, and justifying the violence used against them for the purposes of supporting and expanding the city. In a less explicit way this is also functioning within No.6, as citizenship is viewed as a single, mostly homogenous group, and so it becomes impossible to view the lower classes as being treated unfairly. In their eyes, citizenship is equivalent to safety from injustice, and so any violence or mistreatment experienced by a citizen is justified based on their perceived noncompliance with the city’s norms.

By removing culture entirely from the picture, No.6 not only limits what its citizens are able to express in terms of art and politics, but also in their own self-expression and understanding of the human experience. This is probably most clear with Safu, who at the beginning of the story shows an almost complete inability to recognize and express basic human emotions in a way that would be seen as appropriate and useful to the average person reading/watching the story. This type of behavior, shown more subtly by several other characters throughout the story, distances us from them. While the lack of any existing social norms would usually allow space for us to impose our own norms onto the city, which in many cases is what happens, these micro level interactions, instead of coming off as a blank canvas for us to fill in, instead are just off-putting and strange, completely distanced from what we would recognize as a normal interaction, and that distance is perhaps the clearest example of culture we get to see in the story, as it reflects a set of norms that is completely separated and distinct from what we are used to seeing.

No.6 as an entity exists to alienate its citizens from the rest of the world, positioning them as existing “elsewhere”, and as being “other”, with No.6 existing as the “real” world. However once we, and Shion, are removed from this context, first through his meeting with Nezumi and again when he moves to West Block, we see that while No.6 exists as a template upon which to place our own social structures and systems, it is the “elsewhere” and “other” that I think ends up being more relatable to most of us. Even if we haven’t lived in extreme poverty or experienced much in the way of suffering, the West Block is a world that, more than anything, feels human. There is culture in the West Block; we see the food people eat and what an average day looks like for those who live there. We understand the issues that they face on a daily basis because they are concrete; hunger, violence, homelessness, much different from the highly technical and abstract problems facing those within the walls. There is diversity among this group, but there are still norms in place (no matter how questionable) that hold it all together in a way that feels organic and far removed from the isolated, expressionless world of No.6.

So, it should also be stated at this point that when I reference No.6’s “removal” of culture, this is not an entirely accurate description of what is happening. At its core, culture is simply social aspects of a group that differentiate it from another group, and that is something that can never be fully and purposefully removed. But what the city does do in order to replicate this effect is remove other groups as a point of comparison, leaving only one culture to be learned, accepted, and practiced. We can say that No.6 has no culture only because the citizens do not perceive that other people live any differently than they do. And as we see with Safu’s travels to No.5, as well as our own experiences learning about the city, the realization that other ways of living do exist completely shatters the illusion of No.6 as a perfect society, making its issues immediately clear. No.6 does have a culture. It is a culture of authoritarianism, nationalism, and isolationism. The city is to be worshipped and given absolute loyalty, to the point that social activities not in the city’s interest come with harsh punishments, and knowledge of anything outside of the city is limited only to those who have demonstrated an extraordinary level of commitment to the project, intentionally or not. While social norms and laws are generally viewed as overlapping but distinct, with many norms not legally enforced and many laws viewed as universal rather than cultural, in No.6 there is no such distinction.

So where do we, the reader/watcher, fit into this equation? I mentioned at the beginning that the lack of easily identifiable culture in No.6 is what makes the city and the story easily relatable to us, as we are able to layer our own culture and ideas on top of what is otherwise a blank city. But if No.6 does have a culture as described in the last paragraph, then where does that leave us? Now the easy answer here is that in recent times (including when the novels were originally written) many places around the world have faced an increase in the types of ideologies that make up No.6, and our viewing No.6 as a reflection of our own society shows an understanding (either implicit or explicit) that this shift in dominant ideology is occurring in the real world, that authoritarianism is still a prevalent part of our lives. But that answer is no fun, and is actually extremely depressing, so I’m going to point out some other aspects of the relationship between No.6 and our own world as well. 

Although the culture of No.6 does exist, it isn’t blatantly discussed or shown in a way that most people would traditionally associate with “culture”. We don’t generally treat government and political ideology as part of a society’s culture, as so much of our everyday lives is determined by norms and practices that aren’t necessarily directly dictated by political systems. This is why No.6, despite having such a strong presence, also feels so blank. It looms so large over the events of the story and yet, once we are outside of it, we see that it has basically no impact on everyday occurrences outside of its walls. Unlike the West Block, where we see so many of the things we associate with culture; food and music and marketplaces and so on; No. 6 just doesn’t really have any of these, and what does exist doesn't really have a distinct form separated from any other modern industrialized nation. It is easy for us to imagine then, that perhaps the people in No.6 live similarly to us, that they share many of our values and understandings of the world, and have the same everyday concerns that we have. So much of what we use to understand a society is just not mentioned that the story basically forces you to impose yourself and your worldview onto it. It forces you to take part in the story and forces the story to take a shape that makes societal critique impossible to ignore.

On the other hand, besides just having a feeling of being more “alive”, the West Block also has its reasons for being the more relatable of the two places, at least for a solid chunk of the people who are going to be experiencing the story. Despite the fact that the structure of No.6 is meant as a representation of the issues found within the modern industrialized world, the position from which we are seeing those issues is skewed. I have touched on this in my post about Getsuyaku, and will definitely go into more depth on it in the future, but outside of Lost Town, No.6 exists as an upper middle class utopia only. There is no room in their world for regular working people, or those framed as being “unproductive” in society, such as the elderly. While wealth is a complicated topic when talking about No.6, class is not, and it is clear that the ways in which class manifests are strikingly similar to the real world. So where does West Block fit into this? Well, the reality is that a significant percentage of the people reading or watching No.6 do not belong to the upper middle class, or even the middle class. A lot of us are working class or poor (or both depending on how you categorize classes), and even if the West Block is a somewhat extreme example, those people, along with those in Lost Town, have far much more in common with us than those living in the regular districts of No.6 or in the gated area of Chronos. So while the city may reflect our own society in significant ways, and accurately describes the “culture” of that society, it only does so through the lens of someone who is successful within that structure, leaving it “blank” and without culture for those of us who have not had such an experience and view that position as something completely distanced from ourselves, or that we only encounter from a subordinate position.

In the world of fiction, there basically are no rights or wrongs when it comes to writing culture. That’s kind of the point of fiction. And to a certain extent every story is going to have some aspect of the society it was written in in it, because culture is just an unavoidable part of every person’s life that dictates everything about how they see the world. But through the story of No.6 we get to see that influence from several perspectives, both within and outside of the story, showing not only a reflection and critique of our own society, but the ways in which the positions of the characters and ourselves changes how we perceive that reflection. Ultimately every society is controlled through culture, and systems are in place to in turn control how culture functions, creating an endless loop of changes and reinforcements. To, in any concrete way, remove culture from a society is a fundamentally impossible task, and yet the illusion of removal is very much real, created not through an active effort of removal, but through the elimination both of comparable groups and the perception that any culturally significant differences may exist within the original group.

I could probably go on, but I’m getting away from the main topic, so I’ll stop here for now. The topic of culture in No.6 is really fascinating and something I definitely want to write more on in the future, but it will have to wait until I finish a couple of my other drafts first! So like always thanks for reading  if you made it all the way to the end, and I will hopefully have at least a short thing done in the next couple of weeks or so!

[dweemeister]

NOTE: This is the third film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Raya and the Last Dragon at the Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinema’s drive-in operation in Laguna Niguel, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

As Raya and the Last Dragon, directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada and written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, made its theatrical and streaming bow, the United States was grappling with a wave of highly-publicized hate incidents towards Asian-Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This spike in racially-motivated verbal abuse, assaults, and homicides began with the pandemic and, frustratingly, had only been receiving national attention in these last few weeks. Despite the nation’s racist origins entwined with chattel slavery of black people and its continued unequal treatment of minorities including Asian-Americans, I am not qualified to say if the U.S. is “more” or “less racist” than other countries. But I can hardly think of any other people that interrogate racial inequality and oppression as much (and as publicly) as Americans – an undeniable strength. There was no way Raya and the Last Dragon’s cast and crew could have anticipated the film’s fraught timing, but the film provides a much-needed, positive, and heavily flawed, action-adventure romp drawn from Southeast Asian cultures.

The very notion that Walt Disney Animation Studios was attempting to craft a film using an amalgam of Southeast Asian cultures stoked my excitement and dread. Southeast Asian cultures – including, but not limited to, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – are often lumped into those of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), which dominate Asian-American depictions or Asian-influenced media in the United States. What gave me pause is that Disney’s track record in films featuring non-European-inspired characters and places inspired by non-European cultures is mixed. Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995) are aggregations of (and indulge in stereotypes towards) Arabs and indigenous Americans alike, especially in their presentations of “savagery” (Pocahontas in particular is guilty of false equivalences).

Cultural aggregations in fictional settings are not insensitive, per se. Yet, Disney’s stated intentions on this film are undermined by a voice cast ensemble almost entirely composed of actors of Chinese and Korean descent – you can bring up Adele Lim’s response to the voice casting controversy all you want, but her response contradicts the film’s promotion. Amid its gorgeous production and character design, Raya manages to avoid the worst mistakes of its Disney Renaissance predecessors. But its hero’s journey is too cluttered and too littered with the anachronistic and metatextual jokes plaguing the last decade’s Disney animated features.

Five centuries before the events of Raya and the Last Dragon, the land of Kumandra saw its people live in harmony with dragons. That relationship, however, would be devastated by the appearance of the Druun – a swirling, purple vortex that turns living beings into stone. In the conflict against the Druun, the last dragon, Sisu (Awkwafina), makes a fateful sacrifice to save Kumandra by concentrating the dragons’ collective power into a magical orb. Soon after, Kumandra’s five tribes – Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon (named after parts of a dragon) – fight amongst each other for control of the orb (Heart eventually gains possession of it), effectively partitioning the land. In the present day, the Heart tribe’s Chief Benja (Daniel Dae Kim) proposes and hosts a feast-summit to discuss and heal Kumandra’s divisions. Benja has taught his daughter, Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), the ways of a warrior and the necessity for Kumandra’s tribes to realize their oneness. At the feast-summit, Raya befriends Namaari (Gemma Chan; Jona Xiao as young Namaari), the daughter of Fang Chief Virana (Sandra Oh). Predictably, Namaari betrays her new friend in an orchestrated ploy to pilfer the dragons’ orb for Fang. Just as the Druun make a surprise invasion of Heart, the botched heist sees the orb break into five, and each of the tribes makes off with part of the orb. It will be up to Raya to recover the other four pieces of the orb, lest Kumandra succumb to the Druun.

The film’s screenplay is, charitably, a mess. Though Qui Nguyen (primarily a playwright) and Adele Lim (2018’s Crazy Rich Asians) are the credited screenwriters, Raya’s phalanx of story credits (mostly full-time, white employees at the Disney studios) suggest studio interference. Raya seems as if it is trying to cleanly differentiate certain tribes as based on a certain Southeast Asian nation. Instead, it comes off as a brew of mish-mashed parts (this problem extends to the otherwise stunning animation). With the exception of those from the militant Fang, the bit characters from the various tribes do not behave any differently from the members of other tribes. The partition of Kumandra, five hundred years before the events of Raya, feels like as if it had never existed for lengthy stretches in this film.

After Kelly Marie Tran, as Raya, narrates the mythology and history of Kumandra in the opening minutes, the film’s structure tethers itself predictably to the monomyth. The fracturing of the dragon’s orb into five parts sends Raya onto a tedious adventure: the physical travel to a new part of Kumandra, introduction of a sidekick (all of them are comic reliefs), an action setpiece involving a necessary assist from new sidekick, and the integration of that sidekick into Raya’s ever-growing party. Lather, rinse, repeat. To squeeze the four other tribes into the film’s 107-minute runtime and set up a climax and resolving actions results in a frantically-paced movie. Almost all of the film’s dialogue is subservient to its structure, the hero’s journey. This disallows the viewer to learn more about our lead and her fellow adventurers. In arguably the most important example in how the dedication to story structure undermines the characters, take Raya’s repeated mentions to her newfound confidants that she has difficulty trusting others. Six years have passed since the day of Namaari’s betrayal and Raya’s discovery of Sisu. How has Raya’s sense of distrust evolved over time, and how does it manifest towards those of other tribes? Does it appear in moments without consequence to her quest, in gusts of casual cruelty? In terms of characterization, Raya is showing too little and telling just the basics – a dynamic that also applies to the film’s most important supporting characters.

Ever since Tangled (2010), the films of the Disney animated canon have increased their use of metatextual and anachronistic humor (e.g. Kristoff’s comment about Anna’s engagement to a person she just met in 2013’s Frozen and Maui’s Twitter joke in 2016’s Moana that still makes me gnash my teeth when I think about it). Invariably, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has seen its brand of pathos-destroying humor bleed into the Disney animated canon and Star Wars. Like so many films in the Disney animated canon, Raya takes place in a fantastical location in a never-time far removed from the present. From the moment Raya meets Sisu, the circa-2020s humor is ceaseless. For Disney animated movies set in fantastical worlds, this sort of humor suits films that are principally comedies, such as The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) – a work that owes more to Looney Tunes than anything Disney has created. Instead, Raya’s comedy will suit viewers who frequent certain corners of the Internet, “for the memes.” Do Disney’s animation filmmakers believe the adults and children viewing their films so impatient and unintelligent about human emotions? That they will not accept a scene that deals honestly with betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, or loss unless there is a snide remark or visual gag inserted within said scene or shortly afterward?

Raya seems like a film set to portray its scenarios with the gravity they require. But overusing Awkwafina’s Awkwafina-esque jokes and a DreamWorks- or Illumination Entertainment-inspired infant causing meaningless havoc will subvert whatever emotions Nguyen and Lim are attempting to evoke. These statements are not arguing that Raya and Disney’s animated films should be humorless, that Disney should stop casting an Awkwafina or an Eddie Murphy as comic relief. Instead, Raya is another case study in how Disney’s brand of ultramodern humor is overtaking their films’ integral dramatics. Raya is noisy, clamorous – no different than anything Disney has released in the last decade, save Winnie the Pooh (2011).

Production designers Helen Mingjue Chen, Paul A. Felix, and Cory Loftis have worked on films like Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Big Hero 6 (2014), or Zootopia (2016). Each of these films feature glamorous, near-future metropolises or sleek digital worlds. Where the tribespeople of Kumandra might not be behaviorally-differentiated, the color coding, lighting, and biomes of each of the five lands comprising Kumandra ably distinguishes Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon from each other. As if taking cues from the production designs of Big Hero 6’s San Fransokyo and, to some extent, The King and I (1956), it is difficult to pin down specific influences on the clashing architectural styles within the lands, in addition to the unusually empty and cavernous palaces and temples and varying costumes. As picturesque as some of these lands are, the art direction does not help to empower the characteristic of the tribes and their native lands. Nor does James Newton Howard’s thickly-synthesized grind of an action score, which prefers to accompany the film’s excellent combat scenes rather than stake a clearer thematic identity for its own. Howard uses East and Southeast Asian instrumentations and influences in his music, but, disappointingly, they are heavily processed through synthetic elements and are played underneath the film’s sound mix.

Character art directors Shiyoon Kim (Tangled, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Ami Thompson (2017’s MFKZ, 2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet) embrace the (generally) darker and varying skin complexions of Southeast Asian peoples. The skin textures are among the best ever produced in a Disney CGI-animated feature, and the variety of face shapes – although still paling in comparison to the best hand-drawn features – is a pleasure to witness.

The number of films starring actors/voice actors of Asian descent (all-Asian or majority-Asian), animated or otherwise, and released by a major Hollywood studio makes for a brief list. Raya and the Last Dragon joins an exclusive club that includes the likes of The Dragon Painter (1919), Go for Broke! (1951), Flower Drum Song (1961), The Joy Luck Club (1993), and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Among those movies, Raya is the only entry specifically influenced by Southeast Asian cultures. Its cast may be headlined by Kelly Marie Tran (whose skill as a voice actor is one of the film’s most pleasant surprises), but most of the roles went to those of Chinese or Korean descent. No disrespect intended towards Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, or veteran actress Lucille Soong, but the majority East Asian cast only serves to further monolithize Asians – as the amalgamated story, plot details, and production design have already done. I will not second-guess any fellow person of Southeast Asian descent if they feel “seen” through Raya. What a compliment that would be for this film. How empowering for that person. But the life experiences of those of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent are markedly different. Disney’s casting decisions in Raya – all in the wake of the disastrous Western and Eastern reception of the live-action Mulan (2020) – have revealed a fundamental lack of effort or understanding about the possibilities of a sincere attempt at representation.

To this classic film buff, the discourse surrounding Raya strikes historical chords. When Flower Drum Song was released to theaters, the film was labeled by the American mainstream as the definitive Asian-American movie. Opening during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, the film (and the musical it adapts) looked like nothing released by Hollywood (and on Broadway) at that time. In that midcentury era of rising racial consciousness and the lack of opportunities for Asian-Americans in Hollywood, the marking of Flower Drum Song as the absolute pan-Asian celebration was bound to happen – however unfair the distinction. Even though Rodgers and Hammerstein (two white Jewish men who made well-meaning, problematic attempts to craft musicals decrying racial prejudice and social injustices) composed the musical and zero Asian people worked behind the camera, those labels remained. With some differences in who wrote the source material, The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians have followed Flower Drum Song’s fate in their categorizations. Will Raya? Time will be the judge, the only judge.

Before time passes judgment, we have some present-day hints. Though not released by major studios, the quick succession of The Farewell (2019) and Minari (2020) point to an experiential specificity that Raya attempts, but never comes close to achieving. Whether through aggregation or specificity, Hollywood benefits from the perspectives of underrepresented groups. Widespread claims that Raya too closely copies Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) reflect that dearth of East Asian and Southeast Asian representation in American media. For too many, ATLA is the Asian fantasy. These simplistic observations and bad-faith criticisms (one could rebuke Disney’s vaguely-European princess films on the same principles, but I find this as lazy as the bad-faith ATLA criticisms) also suggest a lack of understanding that Asian-inspired stories are drawing from similar tropes codified by Asian folklore and narratives centuries old. If one reads through this reviewer’s write-ups, you will find an abiding faith in the major Hollywood studios – past, present, and future – to be artistically daring and to genuinely represent long-excluded persons. Many might see this faith as misplaced. But even in the major studios’ flawed attempts to depict underrepresented groups, like Raya, they concoct astonishing sights and form moving links to the cinematic past.

Assuming you have not skipped to this paragraph, the write-up that you have read may seem scathing to your eyes. Raya is no Disney classic – there has not been one for some time. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my first viewing of Raya. After a few weeks’ worth of keeping my agony private over the recent uproar over attacks on persons of Asian descent in America, it was a surreal experience to see even an amalgamated celebration of Southeast Asian culture. Over this last year, we have lost people and things that emboldened us and ennobled us. In this season of unbelonging and otherizing feelings for Asians in America, Raya’s timing is fortuitous. It is emboldening and ennobling.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[fictionadventurer]

The feedback on my Lily Between Worlds post has been very kind and very motivating. It reminded me which areas the story needs to focus on (namely, the portal fantasy part of it!) and it motivated me to play with the world a bit more. Via my usual “throw things at the page and see what sticks” method, I’ve come up with a few possible world-building pieces that could add texture to this world and story. Nothing really defined yet, just throwing sand into the sandbox. I’ll list a few of possibilities below, and if anyone wants to comment on points that seem particularly interesting or fun or dumb or whatever, I’d love to hear any thoughts!

I think I can stick with the Regency-esque setting. Because that Jane-Austeny atmosphere lends itself well to a portal fantasy that’s more about exploring the finer points of assimilating to a new culture. And if there can be thousands of fictional worlds based on medieval Europe, why can’t I get away with multiple worlds based on the 19th and 20th centuries?

Animals are different in this world. Different in size--for example, people ride giant dogs instead of horses. Possibly also some chimera animals. (And them falling the other way through the portal influenced some of our world’s mythology).

Several animals seem to be more intelligent than their Earth versions, and are relied upon to do more complex tasks (sort of like a more serious version of The Flintstones). 

Which could lead to a slightly Cinderella-ish vibe of Lily just talking at various animals when she’s tired of not being able to talk to any of the people around her.

Also a scene where Lily just, like, throws some annoying animal out of the house. And everyone’s just standing there, jaws dropping, like, “You have nerves of steel.  That griffin could have torn your face off,” and Lily’s like, “I thought??? It was just an ugly cat???”

There could still be flying sailing ships, but I also want to consider: Long distance air travel on giant eagles.

Social events tend to involve more physical activity. Sports, sparring, etc. 

The general culture has some lingering war-like habits. Men tend to be armed.  High value placed on defending homeland from outsiders. (Making it a little awkward for outsiders to get accepted among them).

There’s a common phrase, loosely translated, that’s something along the lines of, “A woman must be beauty, create beauty, and defend beauty.”

When Lily’s faced with entering the marriage market, she assumes (based on the Regency-esque vibe of the rest of the culture) that she’ll be okay, since she’s decently pretty and naturally gravitates toward feminine artistic skills. Until she learns that (because of the philosophy in the last point) that martial arts and swordsmanship are considered a vital womanly arts.

(However, this would require me to actually research sword fighting. And try very, very hard to avoid any of the sword fighting romance cliches).

Are matchmakers somehow involved in courtship proceedings? Could be an unneeded complication, but it could be fun to throw such a character into the mix and watch their brain explode when faced with a young woman who has no family and no history within this universe at all.

The world has two suns. Because.

In autumn, foliage turns gold and silver. (Why would I pass up the chance to add a Twelve Dancing Princesses vibe?) This leads to a very 19th-century pastime of gathering leaves in the fall to gild various knickknacks.

 Once the leaves are gone, bare tree branches become bioluminescent. These are commonly gathered and used for indoor lighting throughout the winter. There may be ways to plant some of these types of plants indoors and provoke year-round lighting.

As far as government goes, I’d kind of like to avoid a straightforward monarchy. Perhaps a government where much more power is concentrated at the local level.

Children are commonly schooled at home. (Making it easy for Lily to sit in on lessons with the younger children in the house, and for her to be horrified that she’s back to a less-than-elementary-level knowledge about how the world works).

I’m having fun developing the family that Lily stays with. The Earth scholar who takes her in. Some children around Lily’s age and a couple much younger children. But I’m obsessed with the character of the scholar’s wife. Because her husband has always had this eccentric, harmless interest in a hypothetical parallel universe and she’s been okay with it, and suddenly this girl falls out of the sky, validating most of the claims he’s ever made and sparking even wilder ones, dressing strangely and speaking no language ever heard in this world. And she has to let this girl live with her. And let her near the children! And it seems utterly insane to let her in, but at the same time, she’s not much more than a child, and she literally has no one else to turn to, so you don’t even have the option to turn her away. How to you begin to come to terms with that?

Communication with the scholar can be interesting, since his contact with Earth materials hasn’t made much differentiation between the different languages. So he’s got, like, Japanese and Norwegian and Russian words mixed in with his understanding of English with no knowledge that these are coming from different languages.

The language of this world could be harder for Lily to learn because there are parts of speech that vary based on characteristics of the speaker. (The way some real life languages do, but not based on like, your social standing, but on other random characteristics.) Like, “I said that the same way you said it, why is it wrong?” “No, you don’t say it that way. You say it this way because you’re a girl and you’re shorter than me.”

I feel like most of these details don’t do much to move this world beyond the cliche “well-mannered fantasy society”. Do I need more originality? More details that are different from our world? Or is it okay to stick with a mostly familiar atmosphere and concentrate on just a couple unique points to the world?

[dabistits]

To talk about Twice and villainy is to talk about class and criminality (II)

(Masterlist)

Poverty and crime in Japan

Despite Japan’s perception as a country with relatively low inequality, that reputation has somewhat suffered as capitalism advanced and the country faced economic downturns in the 1990s and 2000s. Japan still claims a high life expectancy, universal healthcare, and low infant mortality, but conversations about wealth have been ongoing: academic Sugimoto Yoshio records the changing discursive landscape that transformed Japan “from a uniquely homogeneous and uniform society to one of domestic diversity, class differentiation and other multidimensional forms.” Sugimoto describes the increasing discussion of a kakusa shakai, a disparity society, and the emergence of a karyu shakai—the underclass. Since Sugimoto’s article was published in 2010, [source] many issues of this kakusa shakai identified by him and academics from ten-plus years ago have persisted, such as the proliferation of non-regular workers (now comprising 15% of the labor force), [source] the growing wealth inequality being reflected in Japan’s aging population, and the increasing numbers of elderly poor. More recently, increasing attention has been devoted to the issue of child poverty, usually connected to the low incomes of single, working-class mothers. [source] In 2017, Japan’s relative rate of poverty rose to 16.3% (for comparison, the relative rate of poverty in the U.S. declined to 17.3%), and many non-regular workers expressed fears of getting sick and losing their jobs, remarking on their total lack of stability. [source] [source]

Reflecting working-class desperations worldwide, the most common crime in Japan throughout the Heisei era (1989-2019) was theft. Theft, particularly of material goods, should be thought of as a crime of need, arising out of a lack of a particular good and the money to pay for it. It’s a crime that points to a society with unmet needs, and an effort to criminalize those who try to have their needs met through their own power when social institutions refuse to help. It has long been asserted that the “concepts of "crime" are not eternal,” and that “the very nature of crime is social, and is defined by time and by place and by those who have the power to make the definitions.” The contested legality of abortion is a simple illustration of how definitions of “crime” are constantly in flux, constantly debated, and not at all intuitive or self-explanatory. Being able to label an action, a behavior, or a group of people “criminal” or “illegal” is an act of power, and people doing the labeling have a vested interest in determining what “crime” is. Activist Sabina Virgo, source of the previous quotes, elaborates: “The power to define is [...] the power of propaganda. [...] Most of us accept the images and definitions that we have been taught as true, neutral, self-evident, and for always; so the power [...] to define what is right and wrong, what is lawful and what is criminal, is really the power to win the battle for our minds. And to win it without ever having to fight it.” [source]

The choice to inscribe theft as a crime, as an act to be punished, is part of that propaganda. It’s the decision to criminalize poverty and to protect profit over people, rather than rightfully interpreting theft as a symptom of a dysfunctional system. In Japan, this looks like a large percentage of crimes getting committed by the elderly, particularly theft (90% of shoplifting offenders were elderly women), and a large percentage of incarcerated seniors, who by 2018 made up 12% of the prison population; on the other hand, the law is just beginning to address unethical workplace practices like overwork and power harassment, while facing a rising number of reports on domestic and sexual violence—the raw numbers of which are likely even higher than reported. [source] The difference between which acts are ruled criminal, and who gets criminalized for acting, lays stark the difference between the unethical actions undertaken by the powerful, and the criminalized actions undertaken by the powerless; the more an unethical act abides by and benefits entrenched systems of power, the more we are compelled to see it as normal and acceptable, whereas actions, however minuscule, that resist the hegemony of the capitalist class and reject its propaganda end overwhelmingly with more debt and prison time.

Family and class.

The socioeconomic forces that shift our societies are no less felt within the family structure, and family may be one of the first social units to see destabilization. In a world of increasing economic strife, it isn’t uncommon for parents to spend more hours working than at home, or even to travel abroad to provide for their family in their native country, to see traditional norms rewritten as children either move away or continue to live with their parents, as marriage and birth rates rise or fall, and as the elderly are either embraced back into the family structure or left to fend for themselves. Due to generational wealth, family is also often the determining factor for whether or not someone succeeds, to what degree, and with how much effort. Needless to say, when it comes to “class,” the topic of family receives much scrutiny as academics, journalists, and creators delve into the ways our notions of “family” shift according to time, class, and economics.

Consider that in Japan, and de facto in most countries in the world, the first and most important safety net in modern society is the family. “Public social protection schemes are based on the assumption that everyone is supported by family first,” [source] and this includes the assumption of financial assistance, and duties like procuring care for the family’s elderly. The Japanese family registry—the koseki—is a family tree that records births, deaths, and marriages, and is in many ways a codification of the centrality of family, bloodline, and inheritance. [source] When a character like Jin says that he’s “someone without roots,” perhaps our first impulse is to imagine it as a description of emotional relationships, a difficulty he experiences because others can’t relate to him, but it’s not purely an intangible feeling; there are very tangible repercussions to being “unrooted.” Without a stable family, “unrooted” people miss the safety net that family is supposed to be—they miss its protection. Under a system that expects the worst scourges of modernity to be alleviated by the family, this leaves the “unrooted” out in the cold.

These failures on the part of the traditional family structure to account for prosperity, whether it be through generational poverty, through abuse, or through instability and absence, often leads to a restructuring of these bonds. In Japan, “when the economic bubble burst and the recession exposed the illusion of permanent and stable employment for the diligent workforce, the children found that attaining a better living than their parents through hard work and better education was no longer guaranteed,” and once economic success was no longer guaranteed through traditional paths, children’s bonds “shifted to more individualized, voluntary ties.” [source] Of course, shifting economic conditions aren’t the only reason for non-blood-related individuals to come together—many also come from backgrounds of loss or rejection. As a columnist wrote: “Tragedy and suffering have pushed people together in a way that goes deeper than just a convenient living arrangement. They become, as the anthropologists say, “fictive kin.””

BNHA poignantly embodies these dynamics as Jin tearfully declares that the LOV gave him a “place to belong.” In Japanese, the term used is 居場所 (ibasho), a phrasing which contains the 居 kanji for “residing” or “residence,” as well as “to exist” (it reprises in “I was happy to be (居られて) here” in Jin’s final thoughts). A literal reading could render ibasho as a “place to reside,” or a “place to exist”—something offered only by the friends Jin made, who are a sanctuary from the public that overlooked his alienation, rendering him invisible and denying him existence. For their parts, the other villains are also marked by an ambiguous relationship to their biological family, if not an absence altogether. Himiko and Tomura, whose backstories were touched upon in the same arc, led contentious family lives: Himiko’s parents appeared to regularly condemn their child, and the repeated rebukes that Tomura (Tenko) endured from his father—including an incident of physical assault—resulted in the awakening of Decay and the deaths of his family.

These three were remnants of broken traditional families, scattered and largely isolated across the country. Originally united as a villain group bound loosely by similar goals, they eventually came to rely on each other for survival once the stability of All For One’s hideout and resources were stripped away, leaving them to face a hostile world saturated by incessant policing and villain power struggles. Mutual protection became not only necessary for survival, but necessary for triumph—the League of Villains are consistently shown to be at their best when working as a team, operating on a mixture of communication and even blind trust. Ironically, it’s only when they try to bring outsiders into the fold that the situation goes awry, suggesting that their strength isn’t in numbers or recruitment, but in the relationships they’ve built between one another, relationships that ultimately coalesced under the unpopular worldview that maybe there is nothing wrong with them, but something very wrong with the world. What the readers come to understand is that the LOV are no longer only convenient allies: they can best be understood as a residence for a group of outcasted people with similar experiences and outlooks, who finally found in each other the shelter that traditional family had failed to provide.

[revlyncox]

Naming Our Joy

Taking note of all of the things that make us happy - large and small - is a helpful practice. This Platform Address was written for the Washington Ethical Society, June 20, 2021.

We started a project at our house on June 1. Even though we’re not yet back to spending a whole afternoon indoors at the library with the children, we wanted to collectively celebrate the experience of a summer reading club. The kids used several sheets of flip chart paper to draw one hundred rectangles, plus doodles and illustrations and instructions for a shared reading chart. Everyone in the house has their own color of magic marker to color in a rectangle with the name of a book as we complete it. Reading, for us, is a delight. Asking each other questions about what we’re reading is a love-language. And so, as the rectangles have bloomed in six different colors throughout the month so far, each one has been a small notation of joy.

Sometimes we think about the seasons of our joy only in terms of peak experiences. We think of the Winter Festival, or New Year’s Eve, or the state fair, each a symbolic splash on a monthly page in the scrapbooks in our minds. If you’re a person who celebrates birthdays, maybe that’s an important milestone. Maybe camping or travel or visiting family we can rarely see sticks out in our minds as we anticipate our hopes for the year ahead. These are all good things. And yet peak experiences are not the only things that bring us joy.

It seems to me that paying attention to all of the things that bring us joy can help carry us through times of transition. Many things in our shared lives are improving, and we’ll get back to some of our favorite big, celebratory events in adapted ways; meanwhile, let’s value all of the things that keep us grounded in the best of who we are and who we can be. Today, as we hang on the cusp of summer, celebrating parents and graduates and weddings and pride, yet still aching from a difficult year and a half, let’s open our minds and hearts to all the forms of joy we can name.

Today’s story, “A List,” from Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel, gives some hints about how to notice joy. The attention to detail in this story, the room Lobel makes in the narrative for pause, and the enduring friendship that is the focus of the entire series are all helpful lessons for us as we gather up sparks of happiness in our own lives, fireflies that may be only with us for a moment, but whose lights we can remember for years. From this story, I learn that small things count, that it’s important to rest and reset, and that we can find joy when we travel together.

Small Things Count

As we are naming our joy, small things count. Frog begins his day by checking off tasks like, “get dressed” and “eat breakfast.” Those things matter. There are days when self-care is a victory, and days when we need to practice self-compassion because those tasks are out of reach. In some ways, it’s a practice of mindfulness, of paying attention to where we are in the moment. As we dress, we can notice the feeling of fabric on skin, and we can hold in loving kindness all those who saw to the completion of that garment.

I think back to times when celebrating small things got me through the day, or helped me inch toward a distant goal, or just brought me back to center after being knocked off balance by the regular turns of daily life. After my children were born, I decided to give fitness walking and running a try. I had never done that before - my favorite team sports up until that time were swimming and frisbee - but something about taking time for myself with my headphones every day was appealing at that point in my life. So I got a “couch to 5K” application on my phone to help guide me through workouts that started very small, and gradually increased until I could participate in a whole race.

The first couple of days were frustrating. I felt like I spent more time lacing up my shoes than I did actually running. But eventually, because there were records, I could look back and see my stamina increasing over time. Not every day, because some days are better than others, but over time there was improvement. I could celebrate when I could run rather than walk for a whole minute, and then a whole five minutes. When I was able to value the time I spent on the practice, even if all I could do that day was walk around the block, I had more energy to keep going. I did get to run in a race eventually. I have since switched to a different form of exercise for my regular workouts, because I have age-appropriate knees, but I did learn something about finding joy in small achievements. Sometimes we need to work up to things gradually, and when there are setbacks we need to work up gradually again. Writing down the joys and the milestones can help.

Focusing on the positive aspects of the experience and on the signs of improvement helped me sustain a practice. The same can be true for groups. I think people at WES have experienced Appreciative Inquiry before. Sometimes we think of Appreciative Inquiry in terms of a meeting or an event or a process of discernment, it’s also a paradigm shift in our organizational life together, a perspective where we lift up and leverage strengths rather than focusing on deficits. The philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry was developed by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva at Case Western Reserve University in the early 1990s. So Appreciative Inquiry has been around for awhile now, and there are newer ideas we need to incorporate about competing value systems and multicultural competency, yet I think it is worth returning to an approach where we ask questions about what’s working and build a positive vision for a future we can move toward together. To bring out the best we can be, we need to identify and nurture what’s best right now.

As our community gradually re-emerges from the pandemic and builds toward a new normal of accessibility, inclusion, compassion, and justice, we will face setbacks, and the speed of our hopes may outpace the reality of how fast we can go without leaving people behind. Let’s find joy in each moment, each time we find ourselves sharing time or space or intention. When you appreciate something about WES going forward, write it down. Ask questions about how members can keep doing what you do well. Share your excitement about small things with others. Make a list, because small things count.

Rest and Reset

The second thing we learn from Frog and Toad about naming our joy is that we can rest and reset. The first thing on Toad’s list is “wake up.” That’s what makes it the beginning of the list. Every day is new. The last thing on the list is “go to sleep.” Toad does not take for granted that he will automatically remember to rest at the end of the day, he puts it on a list. Maybe some of us need a reminder sometimes, to care for our bodies instead of pushing to do one more thing. And when he doesn’t know what else to do, Toad pauses. Now, as the reader, we can imagine that it would also have been a fine choice for Toad to let go of his attachment to his list and either help Frog try to find it or create a new plan, and maybe that’s something some of us need to hear as well, but I also have some admiration for a character who will simply pause rather than rushing into the next thing without consideration.

We’ve talked before at WES about the tension between our focus on “deeds, not creeds,” and the philosophical foundation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person--value that people simply have without earning it. What we do, and the impact we have, is of greater concern than the intentions of our minds or the secrets of our hearts. Yet we cannot forget that worth is inherent, even if we or our neighbors haven’t achieved any great deeds lately. So I hope we can encourage ourselves and each other to rest. People need time to bask in their inherent worth; to notice the beauty of the people and world around them and within them; and to care for their own valuable, precious being. It may be the case that allowing rest for ourselves will also remind us of the inherent worth of others, and will lead us to create a world where every person can have what they need rather than putting up obstacles to separate the worthy from the unworthy. Rest may give us a foretaste of the Beloved Community. Rest creates room for the experience of joy.

The reset part is also important. We can experience time as a kind of river, and there are ways in which the past and the future flow into one another, yet most of us experience time as moving. The past and the present and the future are connected, but they are different from one another. Rest gives us an island in the river so that we can separate them, looking back and looking forward and looking around us so that we can differentiate what was from what is and from what we anticipate will be. Things that brought us joy in the past are worth remembering fondly, but that doesn’t mean repeating the same thing will bring us the same joy or is even possible. Being present in the here and now, resting in the sense of not striving or problem solving or planning or fixing, helps us experience what is bringing us joy right now, without diminishing that joy with comparison to the past or the future. Frog and Toad go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow they will take another walk, or go swimming, or grow a garden, or write a letter. But the comfort of being in that moment is where we pause at the end of that chapter, and pausing helps us value the joy in that moment. Rest and reset to highlight the joy of the present moment.

Travel Together

A third thing we learn from Frog and Toad is that traveling together can help us amplify joy. The thing on Toad’s to-do list that transforms his day is meeting up with Frog. As companions, they support each other in new discoveries, they affirm each other, and sometimes they can be of service to their friend in a way that brings its own kind of joy. When Frog sees the list, he says, “Oh, that is very nice.” Frog appreciates the project his friend has worked on, and that’s a source of happiness. When Toad is disappointed about losing his list, Frog sits with him, simply being present, the peace of friendship providing a balance to the sorrow of a project gone awry. As the evening nears, Frog reminds Toad of something on his list, and reconnecting with his project brings Toad the excitement of a reclaimed goal. There is more joy in their adventure together than there would have been for either of them alone.

May it be so for all of us. Sometimes companions are hard to find, and most relationships come with moments of tension and conflict, yet there are ways we can cultivate a practice of presence with one another that amplify joy, make sorrow more bearable, and help sustain us on the journey. Some of the secret is in the first two things we learned, that small things count and that we can take time to rest and reset. Small affirmations and appreciations make a difference in our relationships, they help us find joy in each other. Taking time to rest, being fully present even when our companions are having a difficult time, letting the new day reset us for the here and now to be with our loved ones as the people they have grown to become, all of these are practices of friendship that make room for joy.

Over the past year and a half, we have had to reassess what it means to travel together. We share time differently than we used to. We find connection in chat messages and text messages, shared movies over an internet connection, recorded sentiments and songs, notes back and forth about books we’re reading, and cards in the postal mail that are ever more precious. May it be so that in-person connections become more practical for more people, but that does not take away the value of the connections that sustained us during this time. We don’t need to devalue the ways we had to adapt, and we definitely don’t need to abandon the people for whom those adaptations are still needed. We are better together, and that includes the friends who have limited mobility, or sensory sensitivities, or transportation challenges, or delicate immune systems. Our beloveds of inherent worth come in many varieties.

I believe there are spectacular adventures ahead for WES. This continues to be a vital community of exploration, mutual support, and action for justice. We will find new ways to live out WES’s core values, and become ever more fluent in new and old ways to connect as members journey in collaboration. We are better together. In that, there is joy. I invite you to continue that joyful journey and your commitment to WES.

Conclusion

Our joy is cultivated and uplifted when we notice it in progress. This is especially true of the small joys, the moments of contentment, discovery, and affection that sneak up on us without being scheduled. Taking note of our joys - writing them down, sharing them with each other, savoring the moments, naming these times as what they are - helps us to experience them fully. Small things count, so give every moment of joy its due. Rest and reset, finding ways to be fully present and to bask in your inherent worth. Travel together, with appreciation for your companions, respect for their inherent worth, and joy in what you can discover in your shared journey.