#d&dgate

Hidden in a S2 flashback of cleaning up the cabin (a reoccurring theme), the original master recording of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon pops up.

The last line over a heartbeat: "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it's all dark…"

An album of heartbeats and ticking clocks, similar sound effects end EP 6 & 7, and are the sounds that morph into those of brick laying in the epilogue.

Bricks are symbol of conformity, an allusion to The Wall poster in the radio station's basement.

The album's rainbow on the cover is an illusion of a single, colorless, light beam, where the colors always obey the same order.

And the title's sided moon, represented by a triangle prism, in fact has no sides, because it's all dark, as the sun makes it alight. Therefore, the idea of a side is something we've collectively imagined.

Throughout the final season, its themes of darkness and light match the album's themes. Roger Waters explains that by meeting the listener on "the dark side of the moon," he means seeing their shared troubles that aren't just in their head, as darkness is an intangible, collective feeling.

In the track, "Brain Damage", the lyrics go, "Got to keep the loonies on the path...The lunatics are in my hall...The lunatic is in my head."

Lunatics, admirers of the moon, veer off society's path when they do not obey made up orders. Our characters briefly do the same as Max says there is no "brick road" inside the hall of Henry's mind and they cut through the fourth-wall breaking play.

Therefore, the dark moon symbolism holds deeper connotations about "lunacy." Us sharing in this lunacy is just like Waters' statement and Will and Mike's lines, "crazy together."

Max's reference to the Wizard of Oz recalls Dorothy's subconscious journey to the Emerald City where she finds her heart's desire. In S1, HNL is called the Emerald City, the experimental facility in Will's backyard.

Dorothy realizes that if she ever goes looking for her "heart's desire" again, she won't look any further than her own backyard, because if it isn't there, she "never really lost it to begin with."

What this means is, she never had to imagine a world beyond a rainbow—love, happiness, and fulfillment were powers she already possessed, which mirrors Robin's speech to Will, who comes to terms with his sexuality.

If a friend of Dorothy's is Will, the cowardly lion emblem who finds bravery to come out, then Mike is Dorothy. He is called "the heart," he is the dungeon master who leads the party and is trapped in his own illusion.

Behind The Dark Side Of The Moon is Supertramp, a self-titled album about the naive illusion of love and its lie. The cover is a rose, just like the Creel House door, and the symbol of doomed love in the fake-out play.

One of the songs personifies a shadow, "Shadow's Song," representing feelings of doubt and insecurity that lead to regret and being forgotten. The lyrics go:

"Guess my shadow spoke to me tonight and made me throw my dreams away. Told a story of a twisted man, who was playing with some foolish plan, about a girl who'd have her way."

A girl who is a part of a foolish plan is exactly El's relationship to Mike, who calls her an illusion. Though, the illusion is what she represents in reality—a lack of authenticity or pretense for a much larger issue of corporate greed.

Tracking this thread is the color purple throughout the show:

Bylers are labeled "lunatics" for looking behind the twisted wizard—Vecna's purple curtain, in his Dark Moon play. That's because we would not accept the heteronormative lie of Mike and El marketed to us.

We are told off for not "obeying our thirst," as Sprite's tagline says, a colorless competitor to the lemon [gay] taste of 7-UP, the "uncola" Mike and Will like to share. Sprite, a play on the mage's spirit, El, is in the frame with the rainbow color dice when Mike says there's "a purple light."

Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon is about the evils of influence and illusion, such as capitalism that creates the illusion of choice.

In the show, this illusion is represented in the cola war product placements, the rainbow room, and the color coding of Eleven as a deadly violet blinding spell. When Netflix choose to commodify her, she became their cola product, and no longer prioritized an authentic love story.

At the end of "Money," a solution to a squabble over "eleven" was "a heavy blow," after someone was asked when there was a time when violence was the "right" decision. Just like Mike's bomb, and how everyone acted as if they had a concussion (or brain damage) afterward, this creative dispute over Eleven was settled the same way.

Track 7, also the number Will and Dustin rolled to summon Eleven, is called "Us and Them." The lyrics are about an illusion of choice that controls everyone by creating a fighting mentality.

This mirrors the fandom's infighting between who Mike should choose, El or Will—yellow or purple (like the airport flowers), when it's actually not "any color you like," because the choice was taken away by Netflix.

The #7 is also the last roll pictured beside the Stranger Things player's manual. The last image of the show. The illusion of how the audience is the master of this universe, they can "believe" anything they like.

However, the #7 next to the words "fantasy role playing game," makes the original intent obvious as it's a nod to how Mike and Will were role playing as Eleven.

When Mike talks about "the real story" of the mage while staring directly at Will, the freedom of choice between Eleven and Will—believing they're separate entities—is broken. After all, violet is the 7th color in the rainbow.

The cut to Will and Finn's acting choice suggests that Mike's desire was not lost when Eleven died. Going by his comparison to Dorothy and the album's themes, El was the fake-out, the imagined dark side of the moon, and she was never the "real story" behind his pursuit.

Will is the summoner of the mage, the source of light. He is the sun in this overarching moon analogy and Mike's heart's desire he could've found at home instead of going on a fantasy campaign (or marketing campaign).

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.

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.