#stawit

in a wrinkle in time, meg’s father is imprisoned in a column in IT’s (the brain that controls the hivemind) headquarters on camazotz. meg frees him, but she cannot do so alone. instead, she uses a pair of glasses given to her by a mentor figure— a token of the differences she is insecure about.

but that’s not the only help she’s given. she has to both literally and metaphorically embrace what makes her different in order to save her father and brother.

thanks for the ask 🫶 i yapped and yapped and yapped so sorry… now i need to flesh out my camazotz thoughts into their own post like i’ve been wanting to do for. months.

i think you just followed me on storygraph (😁👋 ) so you may have seen these before but. in no order:

oranges are not the only fruit by jeannette winterson. the first time i read this book i didn’t get it at all. one of the first books i read where i was like i have no idea what this means. but i persevered and read it again and it’s so good i wrote a college application essay about it

a swiftly tilting planet by madeline l’engle. i loved this book as a kid. i would take it with me to youth group and read it during the sermon. i memorized the poem at the end and had a copy of it on my door. i haven’t read it in years but if i can find the time i would really like to read it before s5 comes out. i have to read a wind in the door first though (helloooo s2 parallels)

the left hand of darkness by ursula le guin. i need to reread this book as well. first of the books on this list that get misinterpreted so bad. what if i told you that it refers to people who don’t fit our gender binary with he/him pronouns because the whole point is that genly can’t conceptualize outside his own deeply entrenched worldview. he can’t break out of the dichotomy he’s been forced into! and not because ursula le guin is transphobic

it by stephen king. i need to finish rereading this book also. one of my professors let me do a project on it #bigmistake #hedoesntknowimcrazy so i’m very itpilled right now. last time i read it i was 13 and stupid but like. it’s so good. eddie kaspbrak i love you forever

wuthering heights by emily brontë. basic answer but that’s because it’s one of the best books in the world. number three on the misunderstood list. can you believe depiction does not equal endorsement. and sometimes a character’s race is important to their development. also #hottake but it kind of is a love story im a cathyheathcliff shipper. maybe that means i’m missing the point a little bit too but that’s okay because i’m missing the point in a better and more enlightened way ❤️‍🔥

and as for 5x06 escape from camazotz. i am not really a theory girl but i can tell you what i see. fair warning this might be more like. fanfic concept-y than Likely To Happen.

so as we know camazotz in a wrinkle in time is a planet in a galaxy far, far away where everyone is forced to live exactly the same life as everyone else. it’s been taken over by a dark cloud entity of hate! in a draft that i’ll never post i call it a World of Forced Conformity.

meg in awit is different from her classmates. she sometimes wishes she wasn’t, but as soon as she sees camazotz, she clocks it as wrong and wants nothing to do with it. i think something similar to this could happen with will. fleetwood-will theorized about vecna showing him a false world where he’s “normal” — he likes girls, he’s physically strong, lonnie didn’t leave, etc. i could also see vecna/mr whatsit tempting holly with a similar idea— here’s a world where your parents love each other, your siblings tell you the truth, etc. (this could also happen to max.)

but what vecna/It from awit don’t expect is for the protagonists to actually believe that people are better for being different. that could catch vecna by surprise and keep him from winning will over to his side. it’s the same mistake that It (the giant evil brain) makes in awit — meg starts to believe that there’s no hope until It tells her that her mentors and family hate her. she realizes that isn’t true, that they love her for her flaws and differences, and fights back. it’s not dissimilar to what happens to will in the vr game, i think.

so the way that they beat conformity in awit is with love, not hatred— meg tells her possessed brother that she loves him and breaks him out of his trance. love (specifically over hate for el) is already a big thing in el’s, will’s, and max’s arcs and something mike struggles with. i know this is unpopular in the byler fandom now but i don’t think it’s unlikely that we get a scene where will (or someone else!) is possessed and someone (joyce, jonathan, mike, etc) has to say they love him in order to snap him out of it. but he also has to realize it for himself or it doesn’t work!