#the specific movie im talking about (climax) definitely made me more careful when i take drugs....so it impacted me for the better ig lol

[blookmallow]

i finally rewatched Us watching for details... I also took a bunch of screenshots, I’ve mentioned before I live in santa cruz and grew up going to this boardwalk so im obsessed with this movie, I’m going to go try to take some better comparison shots sometime (here’s a few I took before) (and here’s a Tethered mannequin that was outside of the frightwalk for a while. i havent been inside for ages so I don’t know if they moved him inside or if he’s just gone now) (i HOPE they did something with the theme considering the frightwalk is literally a horror attraction beneath the boardwalk. i dont really want to go in there by myself though lmao. not a fan of animatronics jumping out and screaming at me) 

this is a lot, i have many things to say 

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

- the opening news segment is 11 at 11 

- you can faintly see adelaide/red’s reflection in the tv screen, with a toy rabbit (her shirt also has twin lines on it in multiple places but that could be looking too far lmao) 

- in the “Hands Across America” segment (aside from the obvious red figures linked together in the logo) : “from the golden gate bridge to the twin towers” another possible 11/twinning, and it starts in california, which is where the tethered revolution begins 

- on “from sea to shining sea” the exact same coastline image is just flipped 

(there’s also another 11 on the side of the TV here) 

- “This summer, 6 million people will tether themselves together” 

- brief mirroring in the boardwalk ad, not just two girls running on the beach but also two girls with upside down reflections in the ground, 

- fairly obvious one, but “find yourself” (as a sidenote there’s nothing in that spot irl, the roller coaster and the swings are real but there was never a ‘vision quest’ or a ‘merlin forest’ as far as I know and there’s no door or anything there either, the interior shots must’ve been done separately somewhere else) (nothing’s left here from the movie now either, I have no idea when they filmed it because I never saw anything or heard anything about it) 

- adelaide/red whistles “the itsy bitsy spider” when the lights go out in the vision quest - “down came the rain and washed the spider out,” it’s raining outside when her tethered comes up (and she is dragged down). she also drops her red apple on the ground before she enters 

- zora’s rabbit shirt 

- everyone else is eating fast food of some kind, except adelaide, who is eating red strawberries 

as well as being a visual cue, its possible she has an aversion to meat if she was forced to eat raw rabbit as a child

- young adelaide arranging animals in the sand (it seems like some of the tethered tend to mirror their counterpart’s movements, so it’s possible she’s mirroring red, though it’s probably not that likely she’d be planning this early/the dance hasnt happened yet so its probably just foreshadowing) 

- young adelaide very pointedly watches “her” mother crying, saying “I just want my little girl back” - she will never have her little girl back again, though she doesn’t know it (I’m not sure if adelaide still remembers what she’s done at this point either) 

its also mentioned that ‘grandma’ has passed away as of the present time, likely adelaide’s mother (i dont remember if its stated outright but since the house belonged to the grandma, and it’s in santa cruz, that would line up) so. the tethered mother, if she’s still alive, would not kill red’s real mother in the uprising. dont know about the father, or if red knows/cares about this, but. thats there. that also means the original mother will never know what happened with her daughter (likely the father won’t either, it’s not clear if he’s still alive but there’s no mention of him being around/he’s not at the house so it seems likely he passed already too) 

- adelaide, her reflection, and a (not so) itsy bitsy spider 

theres even two spiders, one a toy, one real 

- jason crawls out of a cabinet at zora’s feet and scares her while she’s looking in a mirror (which is also a very pluto-like movement) 

- adelaide finds the toy rabbit in a box; assuming the intro was chronological, we saw “her” with it in the tv screen reflection before she went to the boardwalk, so this was red’s rabbit first (she probably does not remember this, though) (red also later finds this and cuts off the head, not sure why though)

- adelaide “sees” her child self in the room with her (in her memory) learning her dance alongside her reflection

 but the reflection is the one she “sees” looking directly at her 

(she’s also interrupted by hearing her son, above her, screaming because he’s trapped, but that might not be intentional) (though when red comes down here later, she is also interrupted by her son getting stuck in the closet too)

- she’s also wearing a choker necklace with a matching gold bracelet, maybe an allusion to. the choking and the handcuffs, again i might be looking into it too much, but. the white clothes which steadily become red with blood seems very intentional so i wouldnt be surprised if the jewelry was planned specifically too 

- its really hard to see and its a split second throwaway comment but kitty goes “oh isnt that beautiful” showing her the magazine and i thhiiiink thats a white girl in a native american headdress :’  ) probably doesnt have. much deeper meaning other than ‘clueless white friends’ but 

- guy buried in sand comes bursting to the surface again and scares his friends (also eyyooooo you can see the wharf in the background im down there all the time) (sorry this is still wild to me. i grew up here ive been to that beach like 9 million times)

- i didnt catch it and was waiting for it to be shown again and it wasnt and i dont want to go back for it but anyway jason has a drawing of a bunch of people holding hands in a line like the hands across america thing in his room, theres a lot of drawings around and we see his drawing of the first untethered, so he probably drew that as well

- jason has a hard time communicating, but he seems to use drawing as a way to express himself. he doesn’t tell his mother about the encounter with the old man (and only shrugs when he’s asked about it) but he does draw it. adelaide found self expression through dance when she was a child before she was able to talk, so he probably got those traits from her. her voice also goes low and hollow on the line “I just didn’t know if you were lost, or... taken” 

- her voice also gets very strange when she’s talking about her memory of the encounter in the vision quest. low, shaky, harsh. its fascinating hearing how much alike the voices are (obviously they’re both the same actress/if the tethered are clones it makes sense that they’d have identical vocal chords but like. red’s got a fucked up voice. hearing echos of that in adelaide is wild and i didnt notice it at all before) 

- its not clear whether adelaide actually remembers what she did, or even realizes she was the copy - is she trying to protect her family from what she believes was the girl who almost took her, or trying to stop her from getting her revenge? she describes the event to gabe as if she was the one who was attacked but escaped, and im not sure if she’s lying or has convinced herself that’s the truth

something’s going on with jason and pluto too but I don’t quite know what it is. when we first see jason he’s wearing a Jaws shirt, kind of a similar vibe to the thriller shirt, and when the tethered arrive he’s wearing a white tuxedo t shirt, white matching his mother’s white outfit. the others all go off to kill their doubles but pluto holds jason’s hand, sits with him quietly, watches his magic trick, he’s told to go “play” which. obviously has a violent undertone to it but he doesn’t actually try to kill him. i dont even remember seeing him with the scissors. why are jason and pluto different. why does pluto get stuck mirroring jason’s movements even to the point of his death but the others dont. why didn’t adelaide mirror red

i guess its possible its because pluto is the youngest in the family so maybe he hasn’t broken out of his connection yet? they didnt really ever explain how they learned to do that 

and as for the connection with adelaide it. could just be that jason takes after his mom more and zora takes after her dad more but that seems too simple. i mean theres the theory going around that jason was actually switched with his clone too at some point and its got some good points (jason forgetting the magic trick, getting stuck in the closet again, etc) but theres a whole line of logic to debunk that too so its just. What’s Going On Here  

cal 11 

i took the first pic to get a comparison shot at the same place later irl but then noticed the ambulance they come across is the same one (#2) they saw earlier 

pretty obvious but the real rabbit comes out through the picture of an identical rabbit (there’s also probably a “rabbit hole” allusion here) 

i noticed this before too but now i have a screenshot of it, im the rabbit in the background just chilling on the floor during the climax here

- im sure i must have seen this before but i forgot about it. the 11:11 guy’s tethered didn’t have a sign so he just.......carved it into his head

- it never healed, either, he did it badly enough to scar

- red says “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, how you could have taken me with you” - she doesn’t mean adelaide ran off and left her there. adelaide made the choice to trap her in the underground. its possible red might have even been thinking how she would have let adelaide come with her if given the chance, which. i mean, i dont know how her parents would have reacted to suddenly having identical twins out of nowhere, but like. knowing there’s a chance red might have accepted her. and all this could have been different 

this is definitely a movie that’s not really intended to be fully explained, there’s a lot of questions that aren’t really supposed to be answered, but nonetheless one of my biggest concerns is where do the clothes come from underground. red tells us they were all abandoned down there generations ago so nobody’s supervising or providing anything. how do they end up with copies of the clothing their counterparts are wearing. and here adelaide has a messed up faded old shirt that either looks similar to red’s shirt or is the same shirt just badly damaged, she switches it with red’s before she goes out for good so that explains how she gets the new shirt, but where did this one come from. why is it different if the other clothes aren’t

and of course there’s the whole question of “where did they all get these red jumpsuits from” but again. questions that aren’t really the point, i guess

[massacre-at-hawkins-lab]

if you had the power and you wanted to, would you re write parts of stranger things and which parts would you re write

oh yes, definitely. get ready for me to take this ask way too seriously:

i would leave most of the first season as-is because i loved it. art is the making of meaning, and s1 proved that it's art. it realistically showed family relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships, had a whole plot about not trusting the government, and in general had a natural depiction of life and its stuggles, whether through a family in poverty fighting to stay together and safe, a teenage girl fighting her stereotypes, a group of kids being bullied and saving each other with the power of friendship, coping with the loss of a friend at a young age, etc. AND it synthesized lots of classic 80s movies into a dynamic show with lovesble and (mostly) three dimensional characters.

season 2 was good. it really steered into the aftermath from the last season, which was for the most part really well done, especially when it came to Wills PTSD and Mike and Nancys grief (not to overshare but i lost a friend when we were 13, and the way Mike acted in s2 was spot on. he was angry and detatched and wasn't acting like himself, and felt like he was the only one actually grieving when everyone else acted normal. that's exactly how i reacted too). however. my rewrites would include: keeping hawkins lab as clearly Evil and not trustworthy, having nancy and jonathan not get together like that because that was WEIRD, having Max be a lesbian because i said so but still have her really connect with lucas because that bus scene was perfect, have el be less interested in just finding Mike for the first part of the season and then doing the max mike el jealousy skateboard fall yikes and then just change gears completely and go to chicago But instead have Els arc be exclusively about family and how family heals by being a direct opposite of her time in the lab. that means that the episode with Terry and finding Kali would be less about Revenge and more about healthy ways of handling the past, because that would fit in with the main point of the season (recovering from trauma). that means i would've changed the climax of the season to somethin else (dont know what!), but i think season 2 went too big anyway and the supernatural aspects of it got kinda muddy to me. i liked wills possession though.

season three wouldve been COMPLETELY different if i was in charge. FIRST OF ALL. the mall. i think theres an easy way to criticize the commercialization and the big flashy advertising of the 80s while still having a poppy, fun summer vibe. they got my hopes up SO high with the crooked politician, small businesses protesting the big fancy mall, and fourth of july cold war stuff, and then they shot them down like a big weird human flesh monster being shot down by fireworks. my rewrites would include: actually having a commentary on commercialization and capitalism and america instead of having a fucking New Coke sponsorship in the middle of all the action, having a child talk about why she loves capitalism for no reason, having hawkins lab guy from s2 and the u.s. military come save the day at the very end, etc. ??? just seems like common sense to me? if you're making the show specifically about america while some UHHH politically relevant stuff is happening in america while making that season??? maybe say something about it. just a thought. wow. ANYWAY, now that im heated, heres other stuff i would change: give Will a personality please. touching his neck every 3 seconds saying HeS hErE got old and we know from s2 that y'all can do better. the whole mileven breakup and getbacktogether thing.. heres the thing. i dont care about it? also, hopper losing all the character development from the past seasons just to be mean to Joyce and Mike (and El, honestly) for dumb reasons was bad and infuriating to watch. also nancy and jonathans dynamic was weird. they could've done a lot with nancys character but they instead did almost nothing. and THE RATS i hated the rats. we had some baller theories for season 3 that were a lot better than that. remember the one where the mind flayer spores that came out of will in s2 were in the ice cream, because summer is hot and ice cream is cold?!!! that would've been COOL to see (pun intended), and would've been a way better way of infecting the townspeople if they were so married to the zombie thing. and the monster of this season being like a dog made of melted bodies with a thousand legs that just chased everyone everywhere and did pretty much nothing was really really disappointing. boo. i really like the supernatural parts of this show but they really gave me nothing this season (except for one badass car flip i guess!) anyway. heres things i liked about the season that i would not change: max and el friendship!!! lesbian ice cream sailor befriends loveable moron steve harrington!! karen isn't as awful as she could've been and actually gets to be a good mother!! and they at least attempted a human villain made more evil by the big bad evil thing, like jack torrence and the hotel from the shining. i thought billy going Full Evil couldve been done a lot better, especially by. not having. a. redemption. arc... but i guess i respect that they tried? lastly, i have no opinion at all of dustin this season, despite him being one of my absolute favorites in season 1. same with joyce