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ktredshoes · 3 months ago

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HBO War Fanfiction Stats

Let me start by saying that I am not in any sense criticizing anybody's taste in HBO War relationships. In my opinion, any well-written fanfic, regardless of ship, is worthy. Heck, any fanfic is worthy — it takes a special type of creative courage to write and share a fanfiction story so that others might appreciate what you see in characters you love. So, that's the first thing.

Buckle up, I get wordy. More under the cut.

Tagging a handful of folks who showed interest in my decidedly unscientific findings: @onyxsboxes @jesslovesboats @itstheheebiejeebies @onekisstotakewithme @sparkling-strychnine

Trying something here: @meyerlansky @anachilles @astolovewithallmyheart @dano-png

I started down this fanfiction stat rabbit hole about four years ago when I started looking at The Pacific tags on Archive of Our Own (AO3). I was trying to figure out if it was just my imagination or not that everything other than Sledgefu in TP fanfic felt like a rarepair. I was not surprised to find statistical backup for what anecdotally felt true.

I love all the HBO War series — and for the record, I consider Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Generation Kill, and Masters of the Air to all be part of this fandom community. I won't get into trying to rank them or make the case that one is better than another — they are all related in being stories of men at war, and three specifically stories of men at war during World War II — but direct comparisons, in my opinion, are apples to oranges to prosciutto to tiramisu. They all have different raison d'etres. So that's the second thing.

(I will admit to a particular soft spot for The Pacific as the overlooked "younger brother" to Band of Brothers, precisely because of the tendency of some to negatively compare it to BoB. TP was never intended to be "part two" of Band of Brothers — I was listening recently to a podcast with Tony To, an executive producer of both shows, who asserted that BoB was, yes, about the brotherhood of war, but TP was about the cost of war. )

Anyway.

A couple of days ago, I saw someone post about the fact that the Cleven/Egan ship in Masters of the Air was about to hit 1,000 stories on AO3 — and since I knew that the total number of stories was only about 1,400ish, I figured it was time to take a look at MotA stats too. And that led to looking at GK stats and BoB stats and once I finished, I was really struck by what I saw.

I have a whole spreadsheet looking at the four shows, with breakdowns by relationship and character, with percentages of total stories. (I've posted some graphics from those spreadsheets below, not to worry.)

So what did I learn?

The Pacific and Masters of the Air both are overwhelmingly dominated by a single ship — Sledgefu in the case of TP and Clegan in the case of MotA.

As of August 10, 2024, there were 1,500 stories on AO3 tagged for The Pacific, and 1,485 tagged for Masters of the Air. Sledgefu features in 884 of TP stories, which is 58.93% of the total.

You might think that's an astounding total — but Clegan features in an astonishing 986 of MotA stories, or 66.4% of all stories. The falloff in the next highest ship in each fandom is precipitous: Hilldane in 14% of TP stories (210), and Crubbles in 8.82% of MotA stories (131).

If you are a fan of any ship aside from the most popular pairing in these two fandoms, that has got to be terribly discouraging. You wouldn't think the dropoff would be so high if you're at all active in the HBO War fandom on Tumblr, based on what's posted on a daily basis, but if your entry to HBO War fanfic is solely on AO3, what would you think?

I will once again state that I'm making no judgement on anybody's favorite pairing — I'm making a case on behalf of all the other ships. I'll also note that there are many, many fics posted to Tumblr that never make it to AO3, and I would very much encourage those authors to please please please consider posting your stories to AO3! (If you don't have an account on AO3, it currently takes about 10 days from requesting an invitation to receiving it, which is not that long in the scheme of things.)

The popularity of TP and MotA characters in these stories shows a similar disparity between the most popular and everybody else. In The Pacific, Snafu features in 63.53% of AO3 stories (953) and Sledge in 62.6% (939). No one else is as high as even 20% -- Burgie is in 17.2% (258) and Ack Ack is in 15.6% (234) and Hillbilly in 14.73% (221). The other two ostensibly lead characters in TP are Bob Leckie (12.53% or 188 stories) and John Basilone (1.67% or 25). I find that just shocking.

MotA is both better and worse. There are 10 characters who appear in 10% or better of posted stories on AO3 — but the dropoff from most popular to next highest is even more dramatic. Bucky Egan features in 77.9% of stories (1,157) and Buck Cleven in 74.28% (1,103). The next highest is not, as you might think, Harry Crosby or Rosie Rosenthal, the other featured lead characters in the series. It's Curt Biddick, who is in 25.19% of stories (374), followed by Croz in 23.7% (352). Next is Rosie, who is tied with John Brady — both in 16.9% or 251 stories. What a steep drop!

But, hey, at least there are a baker's dozen plus one of characters who feature in at least 100 MotA stories:

Egan: 1,157 stories (77.91%)

Cleven: 1,103 (74.28%)

Biddick: 374 (25.19%)

Crosby: 352 (23.7%)

Brady: 251 (16.9%)

Rosenthal: 251 (16.9%)

DeMarco: 243 (16.36%)

Payne: 225 (15.15%)

Lemmons: 181 (12.19%)

Hamilton: 167 (11.25%)

Marge Spencer: 146 (9.83%)

Douglass: 139 (9.36%)

Kidd: 130 (8.75%)

Blakely: 111 (7.47%)

After 14 years, will TP ever develop more diversity on AO3? Probably doubtful — though since I first checked the stats in 2020, Hilldane has gained 2%, so there's slow change but some change. Eight months in since the birth of the MotA fandom, and Clegan, and by extension Bucky and Bucky, are steamrollering the rest of the MotA relationships and characters on AO3 — based on what I see on Tumblr, I don't know if that huge disparity will hold up, but who knows? It's still a very new fandom.

But what about GenKill and BoB, you say?

Well, as you might have guessed, there's a clear delineation in GK between the top ship and the next ones below it, but the dropoff is not nearly as dramatic as in TP and MotA.

There are 3,024 Generation Kill stories on AO3 as of August 10, 2024, and the number one ship is Brad/Nate, with 1,261 stories, or 41.7% of the total. Next highest is Brad/Ray, with 677 stories, or 22.39%. The top three characters are Brad, featured in 63.82% of stories (1,930), then Ray, featured 52.35% of the time (1,583 stories), followed by Nate (45.44% or 1,374 stories). Next is Walter Hasser at 571 stories (18.88%), followed by Poke Espera at 284 stories (9.39%), Mike Wynn at 262 stories (8.66%), then Doc Bryan at 254 stories (8.4%). There's that dropoff again!

And as for Band of Brothers? After nearly 21 years on AO3 (the oldest story dates from November 2003), there are 5,016 BoB stories on AO3, with a huge number of ships and characters — albeit some quite small. Frankly, I stopped counting after getting to 70 relationships and 55 characters — I just got tired!

Still.

Let me add that the earliest BoB stories on AO3 are not well tagged for ships or characters — many don't have any tags at all. I don't know the reason for it — whether the tagging system in the early AO3 days wasn't easy to navigate, or maybe the lack of tagging was a holdover from earlier systems or archives? I have no idea how well-tagged stories were on LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, or Fanfiction.net. So anyhow, early BoB stories on AO3, if tagged according to current standards, would definitely change the stats but I have no insight on how it might shift them, except definitely upward for the most popular characters and ships.

At any rate: onward.

The top BoB ships on AO3 are 1) Winnix — 1,250 stories or 24.92%, 2) BabeRoe — 771 stories or 15.37%, 3) Webgott — 663 stories or 13.22%, and 4) Speirton — 662 stories or 12.4%.

Moving on to characters, there are a dozen that feature in 10% or better of the BoB total. Take a look:

Winters: 1,173 stories (34.35%)

Nixon: 1,652 (32.93%)

Roe: 1,380 (27.51%)

Speirs: 1,135 (22.63%)

Heffron: 1,125 (22.43%)

Luz: 1,063 (21.19%)

Liebgott: 1,058 (21.09%)

Lipton: 978 (19.5%)

Webster: 790 (15.75%)

Toye: 749 (14.93%)

Guarnere: 686 (13.68%)

Malarkey: 514 (10.25%)

That's a much more even distribution here, without the massive dropoff in the other three fandoms. Or as @itstheheebiejeebies put it to me: "BoB fans feast on variety. It's a grazing table instead of main and side courses." Just so.

So what do I take from all this? I mean, in the case of MotA, I came into the fandom all gaga over Callum Turner and thus Bucky Egan. But then I quickly veered off into following Benny DeMarco (Adam Long) and for the past several months I've fallen under the spell of Everett Blakely (David Shields). Will I stay there? I have no idea! And that's kind of exhilarating.

But here's what I know for sure: as I continue to read and write HBO War fanfic, I'm going to be doing my best to support the ships and characters out of the top tier.

Creators: Don't just post your fanfic to Tumblr — post it to AO3 and tag it.

Be the change that you want to see.

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Now, as promised, here are the stats in graphic form.

#hbo war #hbowar #the pacific #masters of the air #generation kill #band of brothers #fanfiction statistics #fanfic stats #redshoes riting #said with love #fanfiction inspiration #be the change you want to see

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redshoes-blues · 4 months ago

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Emotional Time Travel: How Will Byers Controls Time in the Upside Down

"We are all time travellers, if you think about it."

Buckle up, everybody, this is gonna be a long one! :)

Over a year ago I wrote an analysis on the references to clocks throughout Stranger Things, and looked at how this connects to the show's specific form of time travel. This post is a bit of a redo of that original analysis, but this time I'm focusing on the idea that emotions have the power to alter the movement of time. And not only this, but Will Byers specifically has the power to control time in the Upside Down.

From the clock symbolism throughout the show to the time travel references, it’s clear that S5 is going to delve fully into the way the Upside Down operates; more specifically, I suspect we'll finally get answers to the question raised last season—why is the UD stuck on the day Will vanished?

I have some ideas on how that might work, and it has to do with emotions, which are described in ST as a way to time travel, as El says it best herself in the opening of S4: "We are all time travellers, if you think about it."

[CW: this will delve into the various forms of trauma and abuse faced by Vecna's targets in the show]

The Vanishing of Will Byers: Time Travel and Dimension X

First of all, let's deal with the obvious. The Upside Down, aka Dimension X, is a dimension that is stuck in the past. This is tied directly to Will Byers, given that it exists perpetually as the date he vanished. Therefore, entering the Upside Down is a form of interdimensional time travel.

To me, this could work in one of three ways, although a combination of these factors could also be at play here.

First, the UD could be a fixed point in time. A place where time doesn't work. It acts as a set piece, where characters can move around and exist within, but otherwise, it remains the same. In this case, it is quite literally frozen from the moment Will is taken. However, there are some things in the UD that do change. The weather, for example. Or vines that move and grow. So it's really hard to say how the fixedness would work. Perhaps, if this is the case, time is fixed and frozen, even non-existent, but space isn’t.

Second, is the idea that the Upside Down exists as a time loop. How long the loop would be, we don't know for sure. All we know is that the UD is stuck, somehow, on November 6, 1983. Maybe the loop is a single day long. Maybe it goes on for the entire duration of Will being missing. Either way, the time loop is certainly a plausible theory for how time operates in the UD.

Another important thing to consider is S5's use of A Wrinkle in Time as a source for inspiration, which brings me to the third way that time could operate in the Upside Down. Now, it has been awhile since I read AWIT, but there's an important concept in that novel called a tesseract. This is basically a way of travelling through time and space, to a fourth dimension. Looking at ST, this seems like a likely culprit for what's going on with the UD, which would be a sort of fourth dimension in this case. Vecna as much as says the UD is a fourth dimension himself:

"I became an explorer. An explorer of a realm unspoiled by mankind. I saw so many things, and one day, I found the most extraordinary thing of all."

But Vecna isn’t the only one to explicitly refer to the Upside Down as another dimension/realm. The government call it “Dimension X,” and the Party refer to it as the “Shadow Realm” pretty early on, an analogy to D&D’s location of the same name.

Now, I went googling for a description of the Shadow Realm, and I found this one that is very telling: “The Shadow realm is a realm caught between the realms of the living and the dead, a place where the boundaries of time and reality blur.” [link to article]

Looking at the UD, this absolutely makes sense as the location of choice that the Party (aka, the writers) chose to compare it to. As we’ve discussed, time does blur in the UD, and things don’t always happen as they would in Hawkins (there are strange storms, cosmic horror style monsters, etc.). Perhaps, in this realm, time itself doesn't even exist in a way that makes sense to us.

Now, going back to Vecna, we see that this sort of fourth dimension where time doesn’t exist as it should is exactly what he wishes to achieve.

On his motivations, Henry Creel says this: "Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years. Decades. Each life a faded lesser copy of the one before. Wake up. Eat. Work. Sleep. Reproduce. And die."

Clearly, he feels burdened by the limitations of how time functions in the real-world. This is why, he explains, "I became an explorer."

Now, the Upside Down we see him enter is very different from the one that Will is taken to, and the one we see from S1 onwards. There are two people we know that may be responsible for this change in appearance. Either Vecna shaped the world to his liking, or Will did.

Maybe it's a both/and situation. After all, we know Vecna has powers and has been communicating with the Mind Flayer (who seems to be a sort of eldritch/cosmic god/force of the UD) for years. However, it is Will's vanishing that shapes the "time" of the Upside Down.

Will vanished on November 6, 1983, which is the same day that the UD is stuck on. This means that the Upside Down is inexplicably tied to him. Why it's tied to him is hard to say. He's the first kid Vecna kidnapped, and it is very interesting that he didn't just kill Will like he does his other victims: there's something different about Will.

I'll get into that later, but for now, what does this mean for Hawkins, where the UD is beginning to leak out of the gates?

As I mentioned previously, it's clear that one of Vecna's goals is to create a world that is "unburdened" by time's constraints. As the gates open up, we see a clock turning backwards (see: gif above), which may represent how time is slowing down or ceasing to exist the same way it always has.

If we want to get metaphorical about how time functions in Hawkins vs. the Upside Down and Vecna's mind lair, just look at the first sign of someone's Vecna vision, which is represented by a chime of the Creel house clock. For Vecna's targets, time is literally running out. Not only because they're about to die in Hawkins, but because they're about to enter a dimension where the passage of time does not exist.

"We Are All Time Travellers": Emotions Alter Time

Let's back things up a little bit.

Last spring, I was rewatching S4 to look for any references to time travel (turns out there's a lot of them when you go looking for them). It didn't take long for me to get a reference. In fact, there's one in El's opening monologue, as part of her letter to Mike.

"Dear Mike. Today is day 185. Feels more like ten years. Joyce says time is funny like that. Emotions can make it speed up or slow down. We are all time travellers, if you think about it. For example, this week is going very fast because I am so busy..."

In one sense, El's line here is describing how time can literally feel fast or slow depending on how we feel. For example, if we're busy and happy, time often goes by fast, but it we're upset, time can feel slow. Of course, I believe this line also has a deeper meaning that foreshadows what we later learn about the Upside Down being tied to Will’s vanishing.

It's no coincidence that in the season whose villain is represented by clocks, who is tied to a dimension where time is wonky, and who feels burdened by the existence of time, this opening scene mentions time travel directly. It's also important that El says this line. She's the one who opened the gate in the very first scene of the season, after all. She's also the one who goes through the NINA program, which is essentially sending her back into time (through her memories) to access her powers again. Isn’t it interesting that revisiting her traumatic experiences is what restores her powers?

If we take what El says literally, emotions actually have the power to speed up or slow down time, and not just our perception of it, depending on which emotions are felt. This bit about emotions is vital. As we know, the UD is shaped around Will's vanishing, which is a traumatic experience that he continues to deal with for years after it has occurred.

Now, this begs the question: did time in the UD slow down because Will left an emotional imprint on the landscape via his childhood trauma?

Again, it isn't a coincidence that Will's vanishing is the day that the Upside Down is stuck on. The "demogorgon"—which is pretty obviously going to be revealed to be Vecna—took Will into this fourth dimension, traumatizing him in the process.

All of Vecna's victims in the 80s timeline are also victims of trauma and/or abuse in their childhoods. Chrissy and Patrick have an abusive parent, and Fred has trauma from the car accident. Max has mental health issues and a complicated family life that we see in detail—an abusive brother whose death she blames herself for, suicidal ideation, a dad who isn't in the picture, a mom who becomes an alcoholic, and that's not to mention the inherent traumatizing circumstance of living in poverty. Will is also implied to have been abused by Lonnie, who called him homophobic slurs and turned into an awful deadbeat who doesn’t accept that his son doesn’t follow traditional masculine gender norms; he's also bullied at school for being different.

Each of these victims of abuse and/or trauma are all targets by Vecna. They have that in common. And we know that Vecna is targeting these kids on purpose because we see him sifting through his mind lair to select his next candidate. How does he do this? By looking at these kids' experiences and selecting someone vulnerable.

After Patrick is killed, Lucas and Max say as much when they discuss Vecna's motivations. To them, to be hurt us to be haunted:

Lucas: "It's like everyone Vecna targets has something in their life...something that's—"

Max: "Hurting them. Haunting them."

With this in mind, it begins to look as if Vecna is using the trauma and hurt of these kids because their emotions are strong enough to create gates, and therefore to alter—or even slow down—time.

Interestingly, the psionic powers of the lab kids seem to be impacted by their emotions as well.

Dr. Brenner tells the kids in the NINA memory to not use their emotions, but it’s One’s advice to El—to focus on something that makes her angry and sad—that helps her win the battle against Two. Brenner is so angry at One’s interference here that he tortures him for it. We know that Henry Creel was the original kid with telepathic powers who was experimented on. Somehow, Dr. Brenner learned to develop powers in these other kids, but it’s Henry/One who first received his powers from the Mind Flayer. Even as a kid, he understands that channeling negative feelings makes his powers grow stronger.

Before we look at why I believe Will is the only one truly capable of restoring the Upside Down to the way it was before, aka Dimension X, I want to dive a little bit deeper into Vecna’s targets themselves.

The Trauma of Vecna's Targets

There isn't a single main character in this show who isn't traumatized, hurting, haunted, or a victim of various societal pressures and/or forms of oppression. This isn't an accident. These themes are built into the show on purpose. Sometimes they aren't handled as well as they could or should be, but they're certainly present.

When we look at Vecna's victims, the reason they were his "perfect" targets is because of their vulnerability.

Lucas suspected Patrick was dealing with abuse at home, but Patrick never talked about it with anyone. Same with Fred's guilt about the hit-and-run. He's terrified of the idea that he'll be found out, so he never tells anyone about his visions. In the case of Chrissy, her own boyfriend has no idea about what she's going through, and she turns to drugs for an escape from her pain. If Max hadn't confided in her friends about her visions, equipped with her knowledge of Vecna and the Upside Down, then she would have had the same fate as them.

So, not only are Vecna's victims people who have something in their life that is hurting or haunting them (trauma, abuse, mental health issues, etc.), but they are also actively repressing these emotions. With this, I think the writers are trying to say that opening up about what you're going through with other people who care about you is vital to your survival and well-being.

Healing from trauma requires you to confront the emotions and/or experiences many people would rather suppress. I think El is a good case study for this. She is very clearly a traumatized character who is a victim of child abuse. Much of it is stuff she doesn’t actively remember, because she has repressed it, as we see in the NINA project. But despite her repression, the trauma, those memories, are still with her. She believes she's a monster, and she carries this guilt around with her for years. But El is also very resilient.

In fact, she confronts her trauma head-on in the NINA project. She relives her abusive childhood, the bullying she experienced, and the massacre, and she comes out of it a stronger person—even though she doesn't beat Vecna this time around, because she’ll require the help of someone else who is deeply tied to the UD if she wants to beat him.

Looking back at what Henry Creel knew from a young age, that his pain and experiences could be a source of his power, it becomes clear why he’s killing all of these traumatized kids. He’s doing so to harness the power in those experiences, perhaps because their emotions will affect the UD and cause time to slow down.

However, when El talks about emotions as a way to time travel in the beginning of S4, she isn’t just referring to negative emotions like boredom or sadness, etc. She also refers to positive emotions which make time move faster. If Vecna used his targets’ trauma to slow down time—originating with Will’s arrival in the UD—then maybe it is positive emotions, like love, acceptance, and healing, that will undo the changes Vecna has made in the UD.

Will The Wise: Why Will Byers is the Antidote

Will's connections to the UD are my main reason for believing he is the key to defeating Vecna. It began with Will, and it will end with him, too.

This is also supported in the text.

D&D always forms a direct analogy to the events that happen in any given season of Stranger Things, and it's through the lens of D&D that the Party describe the happenings in the Upside Down. For example, Will rolls a 7 in the first episode of the show, and tells Mike that "it [the demogorgon] got me." Later, the creature we're told is a demogorgon does get Will.

So, that's why the D&D campaign run by Eddie in S4 is very interesting, as it serves as foreshadowing for the rest of the season. An 11 is rolled first. This is a miss. It isn't until Erica—who is an unlikely hero in this campaign—rolls a 20 that Vecna is defeated.

It's crazy foreshadowing that an 11 is rolled, which isn't enough to defeat Vecna, in the season where Eleven is not able to defeat Vecna on her own, despite her powers being stronger than they've ever been. That's because power isn't the only thing at play, here. And we don't know yet who will be the Erica in this story, the underdog who will swoop in and join the fight, being the unlikely hero to defeat Vecna, but I think the missing piece will be Will.

It's like Dustin said in reference to his drawing skills (interesting, because when Will drew to solve the puzzle before, it was directly related to his connection to the Upside Down): "we need Will."

This brings me back to the main point of this analysis. If emotions alter time—with traumatic memories causing time to slow down, and causing Vecna to gain power—and if the Upside Down is shaped around Will's trauma, then confronting Will's trauma is crucial to Vecna's defeat.

Everything goes back to Will. To the moment he entered the UD on November 6, 1983. The very day the Upside Down is frozen on is the same day that Will's trauma began. By experiencing his trauma and imprinting those emotions onto the dimension, did Will quite literally grind time to a halt in the UD?

I certainly think so. And we've already seen a little bit of how positive memories can be used to fight against Vecna. Music is shown to carry positive memories and emotions, almost forming a shield around a person, as was the case for Max and Will, who were able to fight back through the power of music. If we take this a step further, it makes sense that healing from his Upside Down trauma, would work as a sort of antidote to Vecna, who feeds off of people's trauma. He only targets people, haunts them, if they are hurting. Heal the hurt, and he has no use for you any longer.

Functionally, this could work a number of ways. I think it could work by Will re-entering the UD and bringing positive emotions with him. Maybe the UD would reshape itself again, this time in a more positive way, removing the "rot" that has existed there since Will first entered. After all, Dimension X does not appear to be inherently evil like the Upside Down, it’s only when it begins to shape around trauma that it changes and rots.

Some Final Thoughts

If we consider that it was Vecna who took Will, then it’s clear that Vecna's goal isn't to kill Will. In fact, in S2, Dr. Owens asks Will if the evil wants to kill him, to which Will responds that the Mind Flayer wants to kill "everyone else."

Why? Because Will has powers that Vecna wishes to exploit for his plan. Because, by keeping Will and his strong connection to the Upside Down alive, he caused the Mind Flayer to enter Will, giving him the ability to feel what it feels—and later, in S4, to feel what Vecna feels.

My speculation, given all of the similarities between Will and Henry Creel, is that Vecna hopes Will will come to see his view as the correct one. He recognizes that Will is treated differently, that he’s an outsider, and he wants to exploit this to have Will join his side. Like the Emperor to Anakin, and later Luke, Vecna doesn’t actually care about Will: he’s manipulating his emotions to access his power. He didn’t keep him alive out of the goodness of his heart. He kept him alive because he knows that Will’s emotions have the power to alter time in the UD.

Killing Will simply wouldn’t serve his purpose of using his trauma to keep the UD stuck in time, grinding it to a halt.

Because, if Will’s emotions have the power to imprint on the Upside Down to the degree that he shapes the way an entire dimension appears and operates, everything begins to make sense. That’s why Vecna kept him alive: to continue his plan of removing the burden of time from the world. That’s why the UD is shaped around him. And that’s why Eleven could not defeat Vecna on her own.

Will controls time in the Upside Down. He shapes it through his emotions and experiences. His fear and trauma slowed down the movement of time, so, if Vecna is to be defeated, it only seems plausible that healing from his trauma, learning that he is loved and accepted for who he is—that he’s not a mistake—will have the opposite impact. By doing so, time will speed back up in Dimension X, healing it in the process.

In the end, everything began with Will. It was his vanishing that kicked off the story we’ve followed for what’ll be five seasons. And it’ll be him that brings an end to everything, as well.

Author’s Note

Thank you to everyone who stuck around and read this whopper of a theory/analysis! Writing it has been a long (but very fun) process. I started writing this about three weeks ago, as a rewrite of my old clock theory with more of a focus on how I think the UD functions, but then it grew into a beast of its own. I just couldn’t help it! When I get a meta idea about Will in my head, I can’t not write thousands of words about it lmao.

That said, I always love to read other people’s thoughts on these theories—it’s truly the best part of our little community on here. So please, feel free to add onto this if you have any ideas! :)

—Em

#my brand might as well be long meta analyses of stranger things that focus on will byers lol #this one?#will byers has the power to control time in the upside down #st5 theory #will byers #stranger things #stranger things meta #stranger things analysis #stranger things theory #st meta #st analysis #st theory #will byers meta #the upside down #vecna #vecna’s curse #byler #byler meta #redshoes-blues

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