AIDS was exploding in the late 80's and early 90's, with horrifying rates of gay men getting sick and dying.

Seriously, follow The AIDS Memorial or some of the gay 80's remembrance pages on Facebook (where the surviving elders hang out) and read their stories of the sheer number of friends, lovers, and casual acquaintances they lost in such a short period of time. That's one thing they all have in common- they lost so many people.

They'll post a happy photo of themselves and eight other friends in better days, and they'll reveal that all but one of them were dead by the early 90's.

These men have repeated that while it was just luck of the draw sometimes, there were some risk factors that increased your odds of getting the virus back then. One of them was moving to the big city from a small town.

I've seen that take expressed time and time again, that the men with deep internalized homophobia who escaped their hostile hometowns for the big-city gay nightlife often engaged in riskier sex and and took fewer precautions, whether due to naivety, trying to make up for lost time, or even due to self-loathing and lack of regard for their own safety.

I'm not saying that Will being shown in a gay bar means that he would for sure get AIDS, because not all gay men did, not even the gay men who had casual sex.

Also, gay penetrative sex wasn't the only way to get AIDS. Sharing needles, blood transfusions, and heterosexual penetrative sex all could spread the disease, but for a long time most people associated it with the queer community and specifically gay men, since their community was hit hardest at first.

But it is unnerving to me that this HUGE part of 1980's history, this ONE cultural watershed moment they didn't mention in the show, still lies in wait by the time we see Will at the bar.

Because it's unaddressed, it means he hasn't been shielded from it.

From the finale we got, we don't know if Will ever finds lasting love or lives a long and happy life. All the storyteller gives us is that Will will find "acceptance."

And because they chose to put him, a newly-minted young gay man with no experience or support network, in the bar, in possibly the center of a major outbreak, with no narrative shield other than finding acceptance, there's no guarantee that he would be spared.

I guess this lines up well with conformitygate, since it's a fake happy ending for all of them. False comfort lulling you into thinking they all made it and Will gets the life he deserves, when it's very possible the narrative is sending Will to his doom.

I'd feel more confident about Will's ending not being unsettling if the specter of AIDS had been addressed somehow, like perhaps if Will was attending an ACT UP protest with his partner/friends in the epilogue or doing some political artwork, something to show that he was knowledgeable of the threat and possibly staying safe in some way.

Then I'd think, okay, even if Byler isn't endgame, at least they're being honest about the times and creating a realistic pathway for Will to have a fulfilling life as a gay young man in the 90's.

But the fact that they weren't honest about the reality says to me that it's being omitted on purpose.

Now, it could be that this is because Mike is telling the story and he is not aware of the danger the future holds for someone like Will, but I'm doubtful. Mike follows the news and even small towns knew about the disease by 1989. Yet he still tells a story about Will that seems worryingly unfinished.

This is the part where people rush to tell me that the Duffers are straight white men and stupid idiots who would never even consider the danger of AIDS or care, and that's the only reason why it's not mentioned in the whole series.

And here's the part where I say ACKTUALLY that theory doesn't hold water. As @thatgirlalt found in their investigation, the Duffers' own father was involved in AIDS research. There's literally no way they were unaware.

Not only that, but as I said, AIDS looms heavily over the show.

Will returning altered and experiencing strange symptoms after his assault. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him. Will being ostracized by his classmates and getting called Zombie Boy, when AIDS sufferers were said to look like the walking dead.

Vines spreading across Hawkins like a virus. Jason even referring to the evil like it was a disease infecting the town.

Everything to do with the lab and the government, the real life conspiracies that the government was really behind the epidemic.

The blood transfusions with the pregnant women dying. Terry Ives giving the condition to El by being pregnant while given Henry's blood. Hopper unknowingly giving a health condition to his unborn child.

The religious overtones and constant homophobia of the townspeople. Alexei dying in the middle of a patriotic festival and no one noticing, like the gay men whose deaths went unnoticed by America until it was on their doorstep, like the Upside Down seeping into Hawkins.

It goes on and on. Others have said it better than I have, but even though AIDS is not mentioned directly, it's there in the subtext.

So what was it all for? In real life, the greater public had to realize the threat and take it seriously before the virus could begin to be contained. You couldn't just ignore it forever or slap a band-aid over it like the miitary did with the cracks in Hawkins. Soon it was affecting straight people. Children. Everyone had to face up to the uncomfortable truth and end the willful ignorance and secrecy that was endangering lives.

Getting back to the show- if queer love didn't save the day in the end, the townspeople never had to confront their biases to defeat the evil, and we don't even know if our abused gay protagonist is going to survive or not in the future, what message are they sending?

No, I don't believe that the Duffers, with the family background they have, would leave the threat so unchallenged.

The fact that they haven't mentioned AIDS at all in interviews is very suspicious to me. If they were doing some sort of commentary on the epidemic, how could they resist talking about it? If they included the subtext just as an 80's reference and it had no bearing on the greater story, they could've brought it up already.

My recent opinion about this is: since the pilot, 1x01, the very beginning. Shortly, I’ve assumed it because, if El was Will in that scene with Hopper, which also hinted that Will was taken by the Lab, and we’ve never seen this yet in the show, — that would mean that the story is corrupted since 1x01.

I have other reasons to assume that too, based on Will’s story (at least what I found so far, which all cycles back to the idea of him being taken to the lab), but I’ve been postponing publishing a part about Will as since I’ve posted Corruptiongate p.4 (where I theorised that part of the main characters might be holograms in Nina), I’ve felt like maybe there’s an assumption that all parts of the theory that I share must be connected and only this reading of the theory make corruptiongate — corruptiongate. Now, I surely don’t know how you personally see what I share. I am also not saying that all these parts are not connected. Of course, things that I’ve discovered kinda push the theory further (as with part 3 where El seemed to be originally Will taken by the lab, which made me look for — and find — the details about his kidnapping), but I’ve been worrying that if there is any misunderstanding about the concept of corr-gate at all, people can be confused if I theorise about things that might contradict each other: for example, my current stance on time travelling is that it could be done through Nina, if Brenner mixed up footages from different timelines, which would lead us to the plot where we would see events from the later seasons (the future) in the earlier seasons (in the past). Part 2 is a good example of it as it covers mixtapegate: I’m talking there about mixtape that makes no sense for m11 in 3x01, but my general idea about it is that this is part of the true timeline of season 5, which also is a part of my old theory (I’ve been having it ever since I published part 2 because of this 👆 and sime other reasons, but never elaborated on it yet) that s3 is corrupted s5.

I’ve seen theories that other seasons are also s5: @rgwriter posted that s2 has a lot in common with s5; @armencias that s4 and s5 are the same season. What I think about it at the moment** is that what we see in ST is a combination of true memories that have been mixed up, like I said, since the very beginning, which aligns with the idea of existing one true timeline, the inspiration of Nina and Brenner, possibly building the whole new world (on his holodeck*), operating with memories as they were making kinda-new ones.

* it is a reference to startrekgate (the main post is here): holodeck is a device in Star Trek which uses "holograms" to create a realistic 3D simulation; it’s relevant because ST refers to Star Trek quite a lot in a way, starting with spirk being byler inspiration and finishing with the concept of this device.

❕ ** I’m saying ‘at the moment’, but it doesn’t mean that a new find can’t change the direction of my vision of corruptiongate. But I’m fixating it the way I truly see it now. It’s not news that theories work this way, all the time evolving, but the reason I’m clarifying it is that I don’t want corruptiongate to feel limiting: like, if I said that I don’t see time travelling as literal “travelling”, I don’t want people to assume that these concepts are mutually exclusive, and if you believe in a time travel theory, that it can’t be connected to corruptiongate — because it kinda can: as memory corruption could be happening both, with or without time travelling, these are different theories, but, as other theories too, they possibly can co-exist.

So, don’t be surprised if one day I share time-travelling within corruptiongate :D if I find reasons for it to be connected — as corruptiongate is still a theory about memories, and it can be developed in unpredictable ways. This being said, all parts of corruptiongate main theory posts that I share of course are my, in a way, connected perception of the hell happening in ST. Which shouldn’t limit anyone who likes the theory: if I stated something, it’s surely not the only truth, even if it mostly me who is posting theories under corruptiongate tag 😀

2️⃣ All of this leads us to the next part, which is: the theory that I was kinda afraid to share

There was a find on x about Max dressed in s2 as Jean Grey from X-Men (@misspracticallydelulu shared it here): I’ve seen a thread there where cg antis mocked us assuming that we “would surely take it as a proof of new future content, while the Duffers probably just wanted to make their own X-Men bypassing the copyright”. Which is funny bc they … didn’t do it? X-Men as they are would not be my first choice to associate ST with, even with El, Kali, Henry, and now Will, having powers. How often do you think about them as about the group of superheroes? Now that I’m writing it, I kinda see it, but honestly, it’s so far from the very feeling of the concept… On the surface, they, yes, sorely got inspired by XM, it can be kinda compared, but… distantly. However, what made me focus on this tweet in the first place is that if we dig a bit deeper, we can see a bit different, deeper story.

A story about queer people (with powers?) being studied/cured in the Hawkins Lab.

What connects it back to X-Men is their history, they were created as a metaphor for outsiders (sounds familiar?), which then evolved into queer coding and exploring queer topics through comics subtext in general.

I’ve lately mentioned the sync that I’m working on quite a few times: it includes three scenes where one OST was used — The First I love You. In my posts I stated that I found there byler, stonathan, ronance and even henclair proofs. Now, cgers and those who follows me for a while know that I’m a byler, and that’s my OTP. What you should know though is that, as much as I like a lot of other (mainly queer but not only) ships in the show and would be absolutely cheering if we get the gayest happy ending of it all, I have been doubting the possibility of it ever since I watched the show for the first time and till these days. Just because, in my perspective, my personal wish to get that ending doesn’t really make it realistic? That’s what I thought. That was until I started personally finding proofs for the possible endgames of the other queer ships that are not byler. Byler is quite clear. The other ships? I was thinking that those must be the actual queerbait. And not only because I don’t see how it’s possible to do this many queer endgames in a popular TV-show (but that’s kinda a valid reason in our age, isn’t it?). But mainly because… ST is not Queer as folk? Literally nothing is Queer as folk except for Queer as folk. (Although qafgate exists lol.) “Everyone is Gay” was always a quite convenient genre letting QAF’s characters easily find love or one night stand almost in any random place not in a queer district. Is it realistic? I guess not. But that was also a niche tv-show. Gay tv-show. People knew what to wait from it. My question here is:

Is Stranger Things niche enough? As I see it for the kind of plot we have so far, — it is not. Which made me doubt a possibility of having those many queer endgames. Which also makes me puzzled now: you see, the reason you should’ve known that my otp is exactly byler, is that I’m not that biased about other ships. I would be very glad to get them — yes! But the world wouldn’t end for me if we didn’t get them, the way it did last New Year when we didn’t get byler. And since I’m not that biased about stonathan, ronance or henclair (proofs of which I found in the sync I’m working on), it makes even me side-eye what the brothers are actually doing. Because, like firstly happened with byler — when we didn’t get it, everyone got so confused, we were so sure, right? But we could be biased. (Not really, but that’s not the point.) So, now, when I personally find things about others ships that I personally didn’t believe could become endgames… It makes me wonderrr — how can it be possible? Because, as MUCH as I would love to get a multiple-gay-happy-ending, I still couldn’t see how it could be ‘realistic’. And not in the way that ‘ST is a documentary’ (some GA people even said back then that byler happening wasn’t realistic — even though it’s literally a sci-fi show, what does realism have to do with it, right) but just in a way that all the gayness is so deeply in the subtext (I’ve surely seen it before too, but the way I see it now makes me confident, because I wasn’t even looking for it, it found me because it is really there) that I can’t grasp how would the whole party (or maybe a bigger group?) turn out to be queer ‘realistically’-within-the-main-idea-of-the-world-around that is like our ≈day to day life≈, where all your neighbours, family and friends massively come out, revealing their queerness.

(maybe I’m just a sad bi girl who doesn’t believe in unjustified queer happy endings (which although says more about me than about the show 🐸))

Back in January I shared my perspective that Stranger Things is a fairytale where the Prince with get his Prince (cough Prince-the-musician being relevant to the show, right, cough). I still believe in this, but what I’ve just noticed in the fairytale-ish aspect of it is that ST as a fairytale could be about queer people with supernatural powers. Or just queer people whose queerness is their power (which is canon due to the sorcerer, even though the scene’s empowerment is still being discussed).

But is it a fairytale if queer people are the subjects in the Lab? This is a contradiction point 👆 that can get us to the ‘dark’ territory, still about ‘fairies’ but now also about some ‘real shit’ that we were waiting for but maybe didn’t know what we were asking for. Can the lab experimental cover-story for ST be still a fairytale in a way? Originally, as you know, real fairytales were actually dark, and Stranger Things also plays with horror. What if it plays with it by the finale in a ‘realistic’ way? Knowing/feeling the Duffers after seven months of digging into cg, I’m still also sure that we’ll get our happy ending that will also be gay, which although doesn’t disprove the idea that we might get Queer X-Men, and I’m not sure whether I’m worried or not worried about it.

Because ‘Queer X-Men’ can be frightening if Brenner tried to record new memories over the ones that queer people had before. If it is some kind of conversion therapy? Jesus fucking Christ, I have never thought that I would end up here, having grounds to theorise about it. I personally DO NOT like it, it SCARES the shit out of me. And I’m afraid to see it eventually in the show. But, you see that this assumption is basically one of the possible scenarios how all this tapegate/ninagate and even corruptiongate can work out. (Not because corruptiongate is exactly this theory, okay, I hope you get it now, why I was worried to be misunderstood 😅)

This also takes me to my recent post about The Dark City, where I said that I don’t think that in ST our characters has been going through the whole personality changes through Nina… BUT I’m not that sure anymore. What I mean by it is that if the Queer X-Men theory is at any point correct, I can vividly imagine the characters being not exactly the same people that we know as families and teenager in Hawkins of the 80s. Maybe the town is correct. Maybe the decade is correct too. But what if, — if we assume that ST is a hologram since 1x01, — that’s a created picture of their life? I’m sure that some of the main topics are correct (that Will has a family, that he’s in love with Mike since their childhood etc.) — but as I was theorising in part 4 about holograms: what if some of the characters were added there, and irl they are just gay subjects of the Lab experiments, other Brenner’s numbers with designated stories? (and that’s why the Wheelers don’t look like each other? but Mike should also have a family; maybe Karen and Ted are the Lab workers (as @gritstartar often mentions) and Mike and Nancy are the numbers with made up relatives or something like that?)

The thing that bothered me about multiple gay endgames has always been the unrealism: as the only idea I had about it (for a very long time) was that it must be then some scary queer-project (of HNL) because otherwise I don’t see how they can reason plot-wise this multiple gayness. Should be ST still realistic at this point? Surely I don’t know, but since the most unrealistic shit we got in s5 already happened, I guess, the real finale will feel real. Maybe in a good way. Maybe in a sad way too. (Which doesn’t exclude a happy ending, but the real story behind ST still might be disturbing.)

Even the way they work with overlapping scenes from different seasons: you would never find out about it, if you didn’t check by yourself/didn’t watch someone’s sync, but this HARDEST work of creating scenes that repeat each other so DIFFERENTLY and that complement each other so PERFECTLY (and the actors’s gestures and mimic match so often identically!) — this also tells me that the brothers are very true to the story and to themselves. The bros might make us believe Murray for a moment when he says that jancy are meant to be together, or even Lucas who thinks that if Mike is a friend of a girl, it means that he likes her. And the characters can also believe it for a second. But the bros and their crew still do all this 👆(syncs and more) that only nerds discover, enjoy. And only nerds would create. And if they created all that, spent time and money on it, it was done for a reason. Which is good for all the mentioned endgames. But which also takes me back to my worries about the ‘realistic’ finale. Because imo the bros are realistic in their views and attempts to depict characters’ opinions that might me wrong (like assuming that jancy or m11 are meant to be together) — they just let text to fool us, depicting people being able to be wrong about their conclusions. But there’s subtext, the inner world of ST that is very true to itself.

(By the way, the only ship I genuinely dislike is m11, but I’m not against jancy, I just state what I see, and what I see is that the brothers do not see jancy as a working couple. Even though they have similarities with byler — here my stance is that basically all the ships more or less parallel byler, even m11, but in different ways; and what jancy has for byler is romanticism: we see similar car-roof scenes and we make conclusions; same as even m11 in the distorted reality of Tales from 85 confirms that Mike holding Will’s hand in s2 was romantic, because m11 is depicted in that distorted reality in a romantic way — but we know that this ship is not supported by the bros or their crew.)

Back to Queer X-Men: could such HNL project have a more reassuring plot? Maybe. For example, if they look for a cure from AIDS. Although I can assume that it might be also not mutually exclusive: queer people can be treated/studied/manipulated/tested for different things, and if Brenner tries to study whether queerness can be switched on and off (maybe not just to evilly turn it off, but for the ‘sake of science’), Owens can look for something that might help people live their healthy lives. (If they both use Nina, Owens still would be in his grey zone, but not that dark-dark-grey that Papa has been staying with his distorted morality.)

Would such X-Men have real powers? Honestly, I see it both ways, even though at the moment I feel more that probably not: that if ST is basically queer-people-studying project, they can interpret queerness through superpowers within the plot that we know (although we don’t see Robin or Vickie being superwomen). Which contradicts my assumption that Lonnie took Will to the Lab because of his powers. It would make it closer to the conversion crap. In case it’s more “realistic” at this point: he took him because Will was gay.

The new @armencias sync although adds to this concept of Will land Mike being bullied for queerness in their childhood, where Will could’ve behaved like Eleven in s4 (meaning that corrupted memories from his childhood were shown to us differently), thinking that he has powers (because they also used to play as Paladin and Cleric with Mike) which he didn’t really have. That would make sense for the show to be not really about superheroes (because even Papa says that they do not exist along with monsters) — but it could be about queer people being studied, and remaking their memories in this sci-fi way. Which would make the whole plot of ST fairytale-ish, but it would still keep the sci-fi Nina part, revolving around changing and corrupting memories.

It would also explain Vickie’s absence in the finale (because Nina tries to erase queerness?), and it’d also stress that Will has been worked on a lot: just in season 5 their love with Mike was under attack three times — 1) the speech about Tammy; 2) Vecna showing Will his fears being real; 3) and even El’s death to keep Mike away from Will.

(Add here what had been happening before in Will’s life where El had taken his place and Mike’s attention, Will couldn’t confess his love with the painting etc — that can pretty much construct the picture of them being worked on in the Lab to erase their love.)

That’s just one possibility. Another one is that the brothers maybe did create their (queer) X-Men who, yes, are in the Lab, but probably truly have powers? I’m not sure though how them having powers would work out on this level of the story, which makes me doubt it now, but again… Magic realism is not cancelled :) and after all, this is still sci-fi, so maybe based on this, the demogorgons are still real, and powerful numbers are real too. I leave the curiosity door open 3 inches here so far!:)

All in all, the main ideas I want to focus on are:

🔹The Nina project can be a project studying queer people — which can have disturbing implications about the main story’s core but that gives grounds for many characters to be queer in a way that doesn’t feel contrived and unjustified. (Not meaning that being queer should be “justified” irl iykwim)

🔹It also can still be about sci-fi, the demos and superheroes, who is played in the Hawkins Lab in Nina. Are the demos real? I’m not that sure. (Altho I have an unrelated theory (aliengate) in case they are 🤭 — but also… is it unrelated? bc aliens is also a metaphor for queers)

🔹Fairytale is still possible: whether it’s just a happy gay ending (with at least byler, but now I assume that with more queer couples), or if it’s about unrealistic-but-who-cares happy multiple gay ending finale in day to day life that most of us all might prefer: this is a part where all the characters are approximately the same as we know them now, living the same way we know they do, but just with a so called “unjustified” happy gay endgames. The GA would be furious, and we wouldn’t care less.

🔹This all can work within corruptiongate — because it’s about the reasons and means that could be used for memories corruption.

(If you feel uncomfortable with these theories, I can totally understand and me too. But I could’t keep it to just myself anymore.)

💛💙

[ main corruptiongate posts ] [ more the theory key posts ]

tagging those who might be interested (if you want or don’t want to be tagged, pls lmk 🙌):