#i tried to be more respectful than usual wrt religions and it came off uhhh worse lmao

[abysstiel]

i am thinking very much about mirror characters and religious themes today. i have. no experience with media analysis. or idea what i'm talking about with regards to it. i am kind of a dumb viewer—i usually have to have themes and meta explained to me by more brilliant minds. and i've convinced myself that i'm reaching with this. hardcore apophenia. but it won't get out of my brain, so.. here. sorry for this.

@strangerthings4theories has written some amazing shit about billy and el (and will) being mirrors. and also about billy's christian imagery and narrative function as a christfigure trope.

heck. i don't want to talk about the fraught, blood-filled history and current events of religions and interreligious conflict in this post. i want to talk about stranger things. i'm literally not qualified to handle the big conversation so i'm just going to hand you this disclaimer and leave it at, christianity uses our stuff, which is why i'm pulling from my personal jewish background to talk about christian themes. please understand i am not making any comments in any direction other than this word comes from us and gets used by christians.

ok.

so billy is a christ figure. and an eleven—el—mirror. the hebrew word 'el' means 'god' or 'of god.' it is often used as both a prefix and suffix to denote holiness in judaism and judeoderivarive religions like christianity, e.g. the names of many angels, holy places, holy men—yisrael, michael, uriel, samuel—and five of the seven true names for, you know, the big guy himself.

her name—Jane Ives—bestowed in love, was taken away. she never even knew it. and in its place, she was given a number, an identity of shackles. eleven, the experiment. eleven, the tool. and then, when she became a savior, it was altered by mike, the first person she helps/saves, once she leaves the facility. he called her el. she reclaimed it. shortened it. el, the girl. like elle. el, the child. el, the friend. el, the protector. her number-name meant inhuman when she was shackled with it, and now she's broken free, using the chains from the shackles to defend herself and her flock, if you will. it means holy little girl. blessed child. of god. and that's just one of her many names, which is.. kind of a big thing in theology—many names, epithets as names, etc.

i was curious so i looked it up, and the name jane is english and means..

oh. it means 'god is gracious.' wikipedia tells me its etymology is hebrew in origin. it's thought to be derived from the french 'jehanne' which is the feminine form of 'johannes' which is, in turn, suspected to be derived from the hebrew 'yochanan/yehochanan' and now we have circled. yehochanan essentially means the same as jane, except 'merciful' instead of 'gracious' and, yknow. in hebrew.

i don't have any closing statements to make this anything more than just a reach, except people much smarter than me have told me not to dismiss this kind of connection wrt stranger things, that there's a lot less coincidence on the duffers' sets than they'd lead viewers to believe. i just.. like it. even if it is apophenic, pure coincidence. i think it's neat, and i'm choosing to hold onto it as more strangerthings4theories confirmation.