#campaigngate

The Wizard of Oz in the background +

A Wizard of Earthsea

welcome back to shadowgate, Mike Wheeler

As much as I hate to say it, the possibility of Stranger Things being Mike’s fan fiction to cope with his conformist reality might actually be true. I’ve put together the puzzle pieces below to explain it, but it starts with how being Vecna’d involves meta, reflexive imagery that parallels his reality and internalized homophobia.

To start, Max wakes up in the gay-themed rainbow room, which marks the beginning of Henry’s mind maze. It features the labyrinth game, as well as a Rubik’s Cube that Steve plays with in EP5. Vecna’s mind functions like these games. Moreover, the first person we see in Vecna’s memories of her is Mike.

Others and I have pointed out the parallels in Mike's room to M.C. Escher, Labyrinth and it's villain Jareth, and the connection to Vecna.

In the epilogue, Dustin’s shirt reminds me of Escher’s Relativity, and it features Roman numerals. Earlier, he jokes that the graduates’ robes look like the Romans, drawing a comparison to conformity. He is also talking about “change,” while Mike is the only odd one out, leaning from the row to listen. His speech is very similar to the themes of what transpired in the show, it's self aware.

In Labyrinth, Sarah’s journey is entirely in her imagination, with the set decoration in her room mirroring what transpires, The Usual Suspects–style. When she breaks the fourth wall, she is freed. In the finale, Mike also breaks the fourth wall when he realizes the inconsistencies about El's ending. He becomes self-aware.

Then Mike’s final campaign recaps the entire show. Around the room as he's finishing his story, it has all of the objects that he drew upon that helped inspire him. Just like at the end of Labyrinth.

Bowie’s “Heroes” plays over the end credits of S5, which is a Jareth connection, and it ends on a fourth-wall-breaking D&D manual for Stranger Things. They even almost made Will look exactly like 80s David Bowie, who was openly bisexual, in Mike's fantasy to further underscore how great of connection this show has to that film. Then the last image of Stranger Things being a campaign book clues us in to idea that everything was a game.

Circling back to the Rubik’s Cube, it functions like a tesseract in how it’s about manipulating dimensions, and it’s rainbow, pride-themed. In the scene where the cube is featured, Dustin and Steve fight over “playing heroes.” The subtext is about whether or not to be brave, an internal struggle Mike the Brave is going through with his sexuality. Twenty-some minutes earlier in EP5, Mr. Whatsit tells the kids in the Creel House they’ll be “heroes” after defeating the darkness with light. That is exactly what happens in Mike’s campaign: his heroes win, and he flashes them with a light.

We also have that post from Ross Duffer during production about this particular brain teaser. A very famous, meta 1980s film about a play, with a gay twist, also features a Rubik’s Cube. It’s called Deathtrap. Spoilers: halfway through the film, the two main playwrights in a murder plot reveal everything was a ruse, and that they are gay lovers, one of them played by Superman himself, Christopher Reeve.

There may be no correlation, but it sparks the idea that a gay meta plot twist is not unheard of, and that the meta elements are similar enough to the concept of a play Henry puts on, or the role-playing of a D&D campaign.

This is why I am now starting to think the theory that this was all a D&D game in Mike’s head may not sound as crazy as it once did. I mean, it’s stupid, crazy, but I honestly think that’s what the Duffers went for, and they’ve tried to deny it because they know audiences would hate it, just like they did with Lost.

But if this really was all Mike’s story, he just told the tale of a boy’s journey of discovering his sexuality, coming out, and trying to find acceptance. The Will and Eleven (Wi11) comparisons and parallels make so much sense, especially the way their powers begin to blur in S5. El’s ending being imagined, fictional, suggests she was always fictional, an allegory for the closet or a transference for his repressed childhood "crush" on Will.

Mike’s line, “but there is a story that he can never tell,” about himself, suggests he dreamed up the mage, who happens to look exactly like Will (dresses the same, swap places, etc). The fact that he struggled to say out loud that he loves El could very well mean that it's suppose to symbolize how he struggles to confess his feelings for Will in real life. It explains why Mike cries over Will’s D&D book, because he never got to tell him he loves him before graduation and they go their separate ways. His feelings will always be closeted.

a lot of the plot consists of converging the holodeck world with the real one. the major theme being trapped in illusions within illusions.

makes me think about a different interpretation of stranger things' ending. perhaps how the character vecna in mike's campaign could've become self-aware and wanted to exist in the real world.

with all the mr. whatzit/one/vecna items around the room, that would be an interesting thought that his plan to converge worlds was in pursuit of this and he became real. those photos comparing mike's epilogue look to henry ties into this. similar train of thought to d&dgate or campaigngate.

bigger star trek fans might be better at drawing parallels to this plot line, especially the episode "ship in a bottle." (there's ship artwork hanging in the basement, right? then the 'curiosity voyage' quote).

You’re very much in time! As we’ve literally just started discussing TNG references too! @forever-hyperfixating has a lot of points about it, and I added some from myself in that thread, including the holodeck!

Your point of making Vecna alive through the game is very valid, although it is questionable in the matter of who the author is, if it is Mike The Storyteller, or if it is Will who created the UD in the first place — given that the UD is also a metaphor of internalised homophobia, and it “suits” both. (But also Mike is a self-insert, and the DB are writers, so maybe it’s still him who did all that…)

But I must say that campaigngate obviously makes sense at least when you consider Jumanji being put in its base. So ig, this all revolves around pretty much similar ideas and may be the actual case.