#up!! bc of potential spoilers -_-

[hinamie]

congrats on your recovery n all yuuji but unfortunately for you I thought the scars were cool >:/

[nullyisgoinginsane]

"We're special, Case"

[luck-of-the-drawings]

FOR A BEAT OF HEART, THE BREATH IS SHOT. AND WITHIN A BREATH, THE HEART IS CAUGHT. THE PIPES ARE BURSTING, UNDER GREAT STRESS, BOLTS TORN ASUNDER, MAKING A MESS. A FINAL COUGH, A FINAL RETCH, A GOREY SLOUGH, CLAIMED BY WRETCH.

[aeoris4lovers]

i know travis guiding them was 100% travis and not in character as chet bc he didn’t even have the voice going, but i also would like to imagine that chet did exactly that.

i like it generally bc he has moments like that where he drops the chaos when things get serious (i’ll never forget watching him and orym talk about will and realizing that oh god, under all those layers of whatever the fuck is going on with him, he cares so much).

but i really like it in this specific situation too bc i’m pretty sure imogen was the one to step up after his confession and immediately say they weren’t going to leave him, and i can totally see him avoiding the conversation in the moment but then stepping up to guide her and taking it really seriously out of appreciation.

[swan2swan]

Look who I found at Kohl's!

[satoruxx]

it’s been a few hours and i’m still very angry and upset at this ending like wow ofc i’m mad about gojo not coming back but the overall downfall of this series has me baffled…

[caramellody]

I could go on and on and spiral about a LOT of things relating to NSBU:

The NATURE of the nsbu movie and what THAT could entail and what THAT could mean for the characters in this movie

The way at how everyone in the main cast AND barsimmion follow the themes of the lack of change and stalemate in life

[cinematicnomad]

i mean in a different interview that came out tonight ryan literally said he’d be down to explore buddie so i think tim mightve just figured a bi buck arc first would make sense tbh

my assumption is that tim had an idea for buck for s7 either with natalia or with lucy, since tim mentioned he wanted to bring her back, but when neither actress could fit it into their schedules he was suddenly left in a lurch and chose to flip the storylines since the actress who plays marisol (unfortunately) was open and willing to return.

honestly, i try to temper my expectations regarding any ship, but to ME this seems like a very good sign bc it implies that tim and the writers have discussed BOTH buck and eddie being queer. kind of feels like they think it's interchangeable which could, maybe, be a sign that they're both headed in that direction.

ryan has also played a queer character before and the rumors about him being homophobic or having issues with buddie have always seemed pretty empty to me.

[stardustdiver]

ynow i always feel like caffine does absolutely nothing to me

bc i can have coffee and im feeling anywhere from on any given day: tired sleepy, riddled with anxiety and/or hypersensitivity, and 🧍 emoji irl

then days where i give the coffee a skip, i can range from: tired sleepy, riddled with anxiety and/or hypersensitivity, 🧍emoji irl

i dont think days with coffee strike me as any particular state more than others compared to days without coffee

[marcmorrigan]

Released to [REDACTED]. SPK 02-04-10 6:45 PM

also released:

3 - One (1) sealed bag s/c cigarettes & lighter which were found in right exterior vest pocket of unnamed male accomplice.

4 - One (1) sealed bag s/c polaroid photo which was found in left interior vest pocket of unnamed male accomplice.

Note: victim posthumously identified as one Mail Jeevas, DOB 02/01/1990 (aged 19yrs at time of death). Request that Gevanni update documentation accordingly. - N

always thinking about the polaroids matt and mello didnt get to take + the amount of clean up and paperwork near and the SPK probably had to do after they seized all the kira case files from 'L'... also like. do you think near had to identify matts body. who else was there that couldve done it. anyway whatever teehee <3

+ 'clean'(er) version without all the scratches and stuff:

[starofhisheart]

So much of the "bad" behaviour in ofmd are trauma responses and i love that they show how yeah sometimes we dont respond in the most healthy of ways, we fuck up and we hurt those closest to us, but we still deserve love and kindness at the end of the day

Just so important to me

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

i like to think that solaris carries a lot of unresolved (and unidentified) baggage post the death engine that prism's presence severely amplified. they have too many similarities for her liking. self hatred through the other type shit

[doriandrifting]

815 Gate: 008 is 001’s “5 star general”.

Season Two shows us Kali’s crew in the very first episode, but it isn’t until Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister, that we meet 008 and her friends. This is episode fifteen of the series.

Dustin: You're going to crack the case, Steve.

Steve-the-hair-Harrington: *cracks a literal case*

Before this interaction, Nancy says, "The answers are here. Somewhere." A few beats later, Steve drops Dustin's bag and we get a zoom in on it. We see a ghostbuster's pin that references their costumes in Season Two.

So let's go back there, shall we? We'll start on Seventh Street.

"They turn to you, remove their [masks]."

This is not to mention the visual parallels between the Mind Flayer's possession and 008's powers:

Regardless of whether Kali had anything to do with this specific instance, as it was shown to be the Mind Flayer, the parallel is sinister. Character symbolism is also already happening from the moment we see her on screen. She's wearing gloves and covering her mouth—a classic sign that a character is hiding something.

The very next shot after that is this:

One grave reads: “Ashes to Ashes / Dust to Dust / Here lies someone I wouldn't trust.”

Meanwhile in Season Four:

A graveyard with a hand.

Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.

Here lies a sister I wouldn't trust...

The police standing around and not seeing anything directly parallels the abilities we see Kali display in Season 2. Not to mention, the dogs in the neighborhood are clearly seeing something that we're not! Dogs in media are commonly shown to perceive the supernatural, hence why the dogs are barking when Fred and Chrissy get cursed, and yet they're noticeably silent when Steve, Nancy, Robin, Max, and Dustin return as a group. The dogs could see past Kali's illusions.

This is more theorizing than solid evidence but, I think Season Four was Stranger Things' Freddy vs. Jason moment. We quite literally have Eddie vs. Jason, and also a character named Fred who tells us he's rooting against Jason's team winning. They've also cast the actor who played Freddy, Robert Englund, as Victor Creel, and there's a cardboard cut out of Freddy at Family Video. Vecna's hand was inspired by Freddy and a whole bunch of other things, so this isn't a major reach (maybe lol).

Anyway, in Freddy vs. Jason, the townspeople of Springwood have forgotten Freddy Krueger. The ones who do remember him are sent to a mental institution as a government coverup. (I'm not suggesting that is what has happened in Hawkins, but the inspiration is clearly there as Nancy and Robin take a trip to Pennhurst to gather information from the only person who seems to know anything about the case. Henry being taken is also covered up by the government.)

Because no one remembers Freddy Krueger, he's been trapped in Hell and unable to invade children's dreams using their fear. ("Dream a little dream of me" + "Welcome to Hawkins Hell") Freddy sets Jason Voorhees on a killing spree in order to manipulate the children of Springwood into remembering him. Essentially the murders spread a wave of panic and Freddy's name gets tossed around until Freddy's power grows strong enough that he doesn't need Jason and can lure them himself. It leads to a showdown between them, yadayada.

So what does this have to do with Stranger Things? Well, we're told that Vecna is stalking his victims. Dustin says he's trying to build a strong psychic connection with them. We see as much while Vecna's in the Upside Down. But until this season, he never shows any of these vision abilities. He obviously always had them, but it seems like maybe he’s been unable to use them because of being stuck in an alternate dimension. Before this, he’s always relied on the Mind Flayer to physically possess characters like Will and Billy, but we don't see any of that this season. Max says, "All we know is this is something different. Something new."

I think, like Jason Voorhees, Kali was helping build Vecna's psychic connection to his victims. Once it was strong enough, Vecna was able to finish the job himself, opening the gates. This would account for the fact that our victims are seeing visions for awhile before they're actually killed. "Your time is almost at an end." Why not just kill them at that point? It doesn't make a lot of sense. There are also some inconsistencies at the name that Max is called. We also see lurking shots of the characters clearly being spied on, especially Mike. A big one that a lot of people noticed is the one in the junkyard where someone is watching through a car window. Who is watching our characters? Could it be Kali and the "cult of Vecna"? Kali is able to travel through the void, just like El, afterall. And maybe it's a coincidence, but Kali takes El to a junkyard in Season Two to help her train. Again, it seems to me like the writers are leaving a clue.

[edit: Someone pointed out that Kali is surprised by El explaining how she used the void, but I think that there’s reason to believe that she’s lying about that. The purpose of the Hawkins experiment was remote listening using the void. Kali is 20 years old in Season Two, meaning she’s 7 years older than El, but she is somehow completely unaware of the existence of the void? That doesn’t make sense, but El had basically no memory of her time at Hawkins, so it was an easy lie for Kali to tell.]

Besides this, there are so many visual parallels between the opening of Freddy vs. Jason and Season Four—the Molotov cocktail being thrown and setting Freddy on fire, a human puppet on flesh strings (“Master of Puppets” + Vecna’s tentacles making him look like a puppet on strings), etc.

Okay back to connections that I swear can't just be a coincidence (To preface this, I'm not saying the characters are aware of all of these things. IMO, most are just subtle clues being left by the writers/set designs, etc.):

When El goes to visit Kali, she walks into the warehouse and passes a giant Upside Down sign that says "To Paris". Next to it is a spray painted smiley face. This season, Jonathan's wall has a Paris sign and a smiley face balloon, and his tapestry is upside down. (The balloon and smiley face motif also floats around different scenes this season—Like a smiley face balloon by the Christmas lights at Benny's when Lucas wakes up. Another link to the Upside Down.)

El also passes a giant sprayed Magic 8 Ball at the entrance hallway, just like the one 010 was playing with in the lab at the opening of Season Four.

El asks Kali, "Are you real?" just as Max does to El this season.

The sign between Kali and El is a red hand and eye with broken lights that make it read "Spiritual ISOR [eyesore]" instead of Spiritual Advisor:

Downstairs, Axel throws knives at a painted target. It's a person with a heart drawn on it. Next to him is a giant spray painted crown. This is similar imagery to Mike in Will's painting this season.

Axel says something something, "You mean the loony bin," which (offensively) connects to the Pennhurst storyline in Season Four. Kali responds with, "Mick, our eyes, our protector."

Dottie asks to play a game. "Awh, come on. Just one hand." Mick's response is, "One hand leads to two hands, two hands leads to three, and before you know it, I'm as broke as Axel." (This connects to Vecna using his hand to curse people and the motif of four. Also mimics his signature phrase: "You will break.")

Axel has the exact mask from the one they slow zoom in on at Joyce's job:

Something similar happens where we get a long zoom in on a news paper stack. Later we see a piece has been torn out and placed in Will's locker with the phrase "Zombie Boy." The eyes have been crossed out in red marker, just like Vecna's victims losing their eyes. We're never given an explanation for how it got there. We're meant to assume a random bully did it. Some have theorized it was Will's crush who asked him to dance, but that makes little sense. But we are shown that Kali and her crew have a closet where they have a collage of newspaper clippings of all the people they're targeting taped to the wall. They've drawn on clippings in red and black marker. There's Xs through the faces of the ones they've killed.

How did Kali escape before the Rainbow Room Massacre? And why does she nearly verbatim repeat Henry's lines to El while asking her to pull a train? (Also note that while El was in the Rainbow Room, Brenner tells her a story about how she needs to "leave the train station." While Kali isn't aware of the story of Nina, it's another hint from the writers about how this episode is connected.)

"He found his strength in a memory that made him sad, but also angry," Henry tells El in the Rainbow Room. Is it possible that Henry had already gotten to Kali? Where did she learn this? (Both of their speeches are longer, but line by line they parallel.)

To reiterate, we see Kali in a junkyard—the same place we're shown that the California crew is being watched from. These are the only two scenes that the writers chose to take place in a junkyard. Not shown in the screenshot, but there's actually giant "NO."s spray painted on the walls inside the warehouse, always next to Kali. They follow her into the scene at the junkyard, and in the initial shot they obscure El with a bin, so it's just Kali in the background with a big 'ole "NO." in the foreground.

There's a door with a red window spray painted behind Kali like the Creel's door. (Although it's much more prominent when El first comes to the warehouse, we can also see the magic eight ball I mentioned earlier on the right side.)

Kali questions El about what she remembers of her. On the surface this might seem sentimental, but if Kali is working with Vecna, the reason behind this is because she's trying to figure out what El knows about what happened.

One character asks, "Yeah, what about a lullaby? Did you sing her one?" Another allusion to Vecna, but also the idea of singing someone a song, when we know music is a weakness of Vecna.

One character says, "You don't kill their men and expect them to look the other way." Kali responds with, "If they find us, they will release Hell." Another allusion to Hell that we see as a continuous theme in Season Four.

Vecna's army is supposed to be undead, and we get an interesting line from Funshine, "We were dead, all of us. Kali saved us here. And here." He gestures to his heart. Whether this is actually literal is up for debate. Maybe Kali used powers similar to El's and essentially brought these people back to life, which is why they feel they owe her (and by extension, Vecna) their service in hunting down her enemies.

Kali torments El by making her hallucinate Brenner:

Does this not sound exactly like Vecna? Is this not incredibly similar to what happens to Vecna's victims? For instance, Max, when she sees her mother? Not to mention Kali's face is completely devoid of empathy, and the half of her face that we can see is lit in a purplish red glow that is eerily reminiscent of Vecna.

This line is the line. In this scene, Kali is talking about her powers, but it actually takes on a double meaning. Throughout this conversation, she earns a lot of empathy from the viewer, but look at how half of her face is obscured in darkness again. Like El, Kali is only showing us what she wants us to see.

Pt. 2

[aroacettorney]

this might have been the most ludger cherish coded thing casey has ever done and yet she didnt even need to learn it from him.

[chirpsythismorning]

I think because closets have being associated with Mike so much, is why a lot of bylers predict that s5 will finally explore his sexuality.

Why have all that closet imagery throughout the seasons, associated with Mike (even more so than Will), if the resolution to his arc is just going to be, "Will loves me and needs me?! Yay!"

5 years of build-up, hinting at Mike hiding his sexuality, and with an audience that's almost entirely convinced he's straight because he hid it so well, warrants addressing the deeper context of why exactly he felt the need to hide in the first place.

It wouldn't be satisfying, both to ga and milkvans who were straight-baited the entire series, nor to bylers and even viewers open to supporting byler, but who think Will deserves better, all because they don't understand Mike beyond what he's willing to outright tell us.

Mike's character has dealt with so much criticism post s4, to the point where any articles or buzz regarding his arc, minimizes his importance as either being El's boyfriend or how he's basically declined in development over the years from a beloved character to most hated.

To have Mike's arc close with his role going from being El's boyfriend to being Will's boyfriend, wouldn't give closure to what all that closet imagery was meant to represent in the first place; Mike hiding his sexuality.

[indigoraven]

have to say I'm still a bit mixed on the re-released troy saga.

I enjoy most of the songs more than the original but there is some small things that annoy me?

(e.g. the horse and the infant is much more imposing, but I feel kind of weird about the way the voices of zeus and odysseus mix at the end now. It sounds more like a song and less like a conversation.

and I gotta be honest, i'm not the biggest fan of how the lotus eaters sound now. the lotus eaters sound far more gremlin like now (which is fun) but it doesn't quite fit with what they looked like in my imagination. They also seem less dazed. which I feel was, y'know, a big part of them?)

but on the other side I do love that the crew sounds a bit more diverse (if you get what I mean) in their voices now. The same goes for warrior of the mind. I like the changes in athenas performance.

the cyclops saga sounds good. a lot cleaner and stronger although the end of survive doesn't sound quite as goosebump inducing imo

but I'm sure that a lot of my reservations are due to the amount of times I listened to the original ones. The changes will probably grow on me quickly xd they are only small hangups after all