#st55

It's not just the skateboard: right foot, left arm but also...

It's "off screen" but it's there.

And we see El in a mirror, so Max is doing it correctly on the right side.

But maybe we shouldn't call her Max. That is, for lack of a better name, ElMax. Because 'Who is El?'

This is actually a more convoluted topic than I originally thought, so forgive me if I jump between the different elements. Let's start with speed:

I: Speed

There's a constant association of Max, our Zoomer or speed queen, to a peregrine falcon.

(You see the toy, the poster a a few more details like that drawing on Max's left, or ducks and wheels in the other.)

The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth.

And it has been talked about it in the link(s) (also see see down below) before, I believe we could take another look at it and it may have been overlooked.

The peregrine falcon/knight is Max in the chess game:

Here, here, and here (note that I incorrectly call the peregrine falcon a hawk in I think the first posts due to a translation issue)

The moment in which we see Max next to the falcon poster, saying "Holy shit this is insane" moment literally comes up in the revival which was never (directly) mentioned again though it's such a big moment for El, Max in S4 and seemingly for the story. (there's a fleeting nod made by Max saying that something called for her...that's it). And the peregrine falcon is a symbol of rebirth.

So, it doesn't come up and @anonymusauros pointed out here and here that the reason is that they are the key to restore/save (or get the characters back or whatever) the correct timeline is ElMax.

"Speed queen" can be seen after Max wakes up in the laundry room which in itself is a nod to the Argo which essentially means "switft"

Zoomer (it's seen from the perspective as "being fast" - aside from the zooming effect around El's head in S4 which is mostly ignored.)

Peregrine Falcon

Speed Queen

the Argo (which also stands for "ship" as in relationship)

Hence: the Millennium Falcon.

II: Millenium Falcon

We see El letting the toy of the Falcon fly in 1x3, so why use the Millennium Falcon other than to make a pop cultural reference? (btw I would have liked to see cultural references to the things like Franco-Belgian comics that heavily influenced Star Wars if not quite literally ripped it off as there are accounts of french artists who saw comic books in the art departments of Georg Lucas's oh so brilliant film production. They didn't understand the stories as these comics were in French but found the art of let's say Jean Giraud aka Moebius and others - but as these parallels show it's possible that the Duffers were aware of it) This could be part of my current sort-of-series: the Falcon from Star Wars is a ship, a vessel.

Let's talk about ships. What is the Millennium Falcon? A ship. A space ship as they connect the Mercury Project and the Pioneer One rocket.

A vessel. For whom?

We've heard of Eddie (Edward) being accused being a vessel for the devil, we had the characters named William (Will and Billy) being possessed.

What about God? El? - Yes, the God & Dog connection, the meaning of the characters in the show keep switching all the time. In this case El and Max. While I discussed the God and Dog allegory before, it kinda works the other way around especially in regard to the "name" Eleven in it's shortened form. And while the show clearly points to the two characters being interchangeable.

Max's body is a vessel, a ship for, well: ghosts and El is a ghost. (as described in the script of the finale)

A vessel or ship like the Argo. Like ElMax. Blue and Yellow.

And this ship flies.

And here it gets interesting. Han claims that the Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. And, yes, a parsec is measuring distance, not velocity, and exactly 3.26 light-years. You are probably already guessing where this is going.

1) 3.26 light-years. - 3+2+6=11

2) What's less than 12 parsecs? Um, let's say... 11? So, let's do a bit of advanced algebra. 3.26x11 = 35.86 Hm, let's see, 3+5+8+6=22. Oh.

Catch 22 if you can:

"I felt so free. It's like I could fly, you know?", Robin. Another proxy dialog - Seriously, are the Duffers one trick ponies who can only tell the true story of characters through other characters? Because this is an annoying pattern.

Also on side B, I guess. Where is it? The same salt mine in Transylvania as the 30 minutes of cut scenes of Event Horizon?

Speaking of side B. Which song is on side B of "Running up that hill" again? Ah, yes, "Waking the witch" (like the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull that transforms into a falcon)

Like a witch that can turn into a peregrine falcon and manipulate time? (Post that inspired this thought) Miss Peregrine.

The fastest animal on earth. Manipulate time. Come on! Wouldn't be surprised if there's a deeper connection with this movie/novel and Stranger Things. After all the Duffers like to use seemingly random references that are telling completely different stories.

“Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.”, Miss Peregrine's school for peculiar children.

Fun fact about peregrine falcons. Aside from being the fastest animal on earth, they have binocular vision.

III: German

Now you may have been wondering why the title of this post was "The speeding falcon".

The German translation of the Millennium Falcon is actually different than other languages from what I found. Most other translations use their version of "millenium".

Nobody can say for sure why but one idea suggests that because the ship was originally "inspired" by the one from Space 1999, yoz only need to add a year and you are in another millennium. - Now the Falcon has a closer resemblance to Valerian's ship from the Franco-Belgian comics.

Okay, but what do we Germans call the Falcon then?

Der rasende Falke = The speeding Falcon.

Granted it has a different ring in German than in English but calling a fast ship, this fastest hunk of junk, is in my opinion a bit more fitting. In German it works, English...not so much in my ears.

But it doesn't stop there. Let's talk about the Kessel Run. And not the distance/math as above, which in itself already fits like a glove, but the term.

Kessel (in German it was changed to Kossal Flug because calling it "Kessel Flug" would have confused the audience I think) is mostly used as the term for cauldron. It is also the word for a valley surrounded by hills or mountains - a Hill Valley so to speak. You can say Kessel but it's more common to say Talkessel (Tal=valley) to distinguish it from the term for cauldron.

Sidenote: there's another term for cauldron. Crucible which also has a different meaning but literally it's actually a melting pot, in which you fuse things together.

Interestingly there's a place called Kesseltal near the federal route 47.

So, Kessel is a place surrounded by mountains or hills which makes also sense in Star Wars as the planet Kessel is within a maelstrom. Interesting. More interesting is that the traditional route looks like a spiral.

How about this: spirals that you see in ST isn't this evil deity/demon (forgot his name and I'm to lazy to look it up) or whatever but point to this? Not to mention the Ethereal Plane. Or, wait for it, space. You know like a galaxy?? The space theme is everywhere and hinges on/is connected Sara(h). Everything points to her.

The topic of spirals came up in a chat with @nuffit and I'll probably talk about it in detail in another post.

I talked about a space walk a long time ago:

Also, right now it feels as if fans see more villains than we have actual characters. Can we deal with the evil guys we have first?

A literal 'Hill Valley'. Running up that hill. RUTH.

You see where I'm getting with this? The Falcon isn't just your typical Star Wars reference just because they like it, it's more. And drawing the connection early on between El, the Millennium Falcon and the peregrine falcon which is then associated with Max as a zoomer/speed queen, space, high speed, rockets etc isn't a coincidence. Not at all.

El is Max.

Max is a Zoomer.

Suddenly the Kessel Run feels different.

Or spirals:

Additional links:

Special thanks again to @o11yradio @noreasontobeupset @anonymusauros @nuffit

I probably have forgotten potential links, so here are the links to my

Primary Master Post

and

I leave the discussion of "Purple does/doesn't exist" to the links below and try to focus on why purple as a narrative tool, metaphorically, symbolically, is more interesting from an authors perspective than a purely scientific point of view in this very specific case, although the aspects of existence of non-existence are of importance nonetheless - granted creative writing is a bit of a walk on the tightrope (although the wormhole in ST is weird af even from a writers perspective to put it mildly) - doing both, being accurate but also creative that you convey a message through visuals, dialog, music etc is admittedly hard.

Purple as a term depends a bit because violet and purple are sometimes used interchangeable in the English language, sometimes not, definitions vary depending on country, even though violet is bluish and on the outer edge of the spectrum while purple is already sprinkled with red.

And if you compare the color palettes of purple and violet on Wikipedia you would see that there are at least two hues on the violet palette that are...actually purple. So, don't nail me to a cross if something may look violet (to you - which is another factor). And if you look up the flower violet in an image search you'll notice it varies between blue/violet to purplish colors - In optics, you'll notice that a lot of what would be called violet is outside this spectrum aka is then purple is my unprofessional view.

I'm going to use the term purple and point out when it says violet although I'd argue that its purple.

Purple or magenta as a specific shade are extra-spectral colors that don't exist as singular wavelengths but are essentially pieced together out of two different ones.

Quote*: ...your brain "makes something that's actually not out there in the world," Johnson said. Red and blue are on opposite ends of the visible spectrum: When the brain encounters these wavelengths, it ends up bending this linear visible spectrum into a circle. In other words, it brings red and blue together to make purple and magenta, even though that's not what light is really doing. [...] Nonspectral colors like purple are made of two wavelengths of light.

Our brain invents a color like purple out of two different ones or better two different wavelengths (although all color is sort of invented by the brain) and that has an interesting indication on why this color does happen to appear especially in Season 3 in which we had the most ElMax interaction and why they chose "Purple rain".

The use of the color purple is interesting in regard to the LGBTQ community and it's use in flags.

I mean I already pointed to these aspects here:

Both Labrys flags use shades of purple as far as I can tell and said here - even though some may say violet but then again this seems to be more of a language issue.

The older Labrys flag on the left.

New one which includes trans-women on the right.

In the article they use the term violet - as mentioned above the word is used very loosely also for purple colors and image reverse search told me that the flags above (from that article) are magenta/purple.

And there are plenty of examples in which El and Max (mostly El) are associated with shades of purple/magenta, as pointed out at the beginning of the post, definitely connecting them to specific facets of the rainbow (although purple is not a part of an actual rainbow).

Wait a moment, you'll say, what Max is wearing in the Skittle scene looks more lavender, more violet. - Correct. Violet is on the outer rim of the visual spectrum which brings Max metaphorically at the edge of "reality". To become purple it needs a tad bit of red. Like from the red Skittle that Max is swallowing in this moment. Savvy?

No? Okay, to make a long story short:

1) Purple is a color "made up" or invented by the brain because it tries to interpret two different wavelengths of colors that hit our eyes in this case red and blue/violet. One could say purple is real but also made up at the same time. Like the answers to two questions, although one wasn't given.

Are you real? Did I make you?

2) Two wavelengths that are combined or mixed to a single entity of a color. "If only we could just combine." Not to mention the Argo, the swift ship of the Argonauts (as in fast, speedy, a Zoomer) or the starch Argo which mixes easily.

And the truth points to itself.

In a narrative, almost poetic way purple can be seen as a visual metaphor to give us an idea on how to see these characters.

Something invented by the mind like a different personality for example and yet for it to exist it needs to be combined out of two different things.

And ironically that's exactly what this show gave us, that it's happening in the mind. You need to find the cues, the hints, the "colors" and mix them in your mind. Right now, that's all we've been left with.

Like blue and yellow are green and we know that Bob prefers a green one over orange.

With a single word you can describe both characters and the relation between them.

Who is El:

It's a story told with showing only the bare needed minimum of interaction, visual aids etc. to keep it in the show - not satisfactory but it's there.

Stories...stories are all made up. Like constitutions, like our way to structure society, like laws. It's us agreeing on these things that makes them real. Sometimes you can have a different perspective like a person struggling to see the colors everyone else sees - their perception is different. Yet, we agree on other things. We agree on a story to be good or bad, to be of value, of their meaning, sometimes we disagree with someone while others concur, sometimes we stand alone in our conviction. But in the end it's all made up as it is real. It's real to us.

The real story. It's purple and beyond our visual perception. It's green.

The Color out of Space

There are two movies, one from 2010 and one from 2019 based on Lovecraft's short story 'The Color out of Space' both using magenta as the color for "The Color". Which is why I mentioned it.

The idea is that magenta as a shade of purple is an extra spectral color - which is why it was an even more brilliant move of the 2010 German movie to be made in black and white except for "The Color". Which was magenta.

And if we walk in Lovecraft's footsteps one could argue that El, as the color purple, is a color out of space. Extra terrestrial so to speak. But unlike the Color, El doesn't consume, absorb and morph things, she cures. She's the anti-Lovecraftian idea even though we didn't really get to see this?

What I do like about it - although people see it as cold and denigrating towards El's character, the concept of something "alien" that wants to go home yet it's home is where her heart is - is that it opens the door to so many interpretations of her meaning as a character. It's actually pretty fascinating. It makes her special, not because of her abilities but of what she means to others and hence what she means for herself or how she defines herself. Sadly though we didn't really get that, the possibilities, the potential is there.....unused.

Here are a few links. The one I quoted* above: