#traffickgate

🌴🏩❤️‍🔥☎️🎰🍀💸💰🪩🥃🍸🚬

Also #IllusionGate, #EmeraldCityGate, #ChanceGate, #MaterialGirlGate, #GamblingGate, #IllegalGate, #AdultGate, #X-Gate, #TraffickGate, etc etc

Told ya, loves. 🤷‍♀️😘❤️

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Just saw this post by sylviethewise:

Reblog by @o11yradio:

RIGHT. My thoughts exactly. 🍀🏀🐅

If anyone's curious about this, check this recent post of mine:

…but also, X-Mas. 😀🙃👇

❌ Dimension X

“You tricked me” “No, I saved you” (deception), banishment, electricity, fire, heat, yellow, danger, suffering, alien environment, harsh conditions, predators, mindflayer/shadow particles aka virus…

#DimensionX #DeceptionGate #BanishmentGate #ElectricityGate #FireGate #TemperatureGate #AlienGate #SAgate #VirusGate

❌ Hardcore punk / youth culture → the Straight Edge “X”

Clubs began marking under-21 hands with a black X to allow all-ages shows without serving alcohol.

#PunkGate #PartyGate #ViceGate #TraffickGate

❌ Film ratings & censorship → “X/XXX” = adults-only / explicit

UK: The BBFC abolished the “X” certificate in 1982, renaming it “18.” This happened amid tightening around home-video—culminating in the Video Recordings Act 1984 (the “video nasties” panic). US: The MPAA’s “X” rating (widely conflated with pornography) was replaced by NC-17 in 1990, but that 1980s “X” aura—forbidden/erotic—stuck in pop memory. Urban visual culture: “XXX” storefront signage (peep shows, adult theaters) was part of late-70s/80s Times Square’s landscape, reinforcing X => explicit/adult connotations.

Second pic: MPAA Rating System 1987

#ViceGate #TraffickGate #SIgate (Sex Industry) #TabooGate

❌ Nightlife & drugs → “E / X / XTC” for MDMA

MDMA/Ecstasy entered club subcultures in the 1980s (before US scheduling in 1985). By the late ’80s/early ’90s the shorthand “X” was common slang.

#PartyGate #ViceGate #TraffickGate

❌ Computing & design → “X11” Window System + network

The X Window System (“X11”), created at MIT’s Project Athena (1984; the X protocol has been at version 11 (hence "X11") since September 1987, put “X” on millions of UNIX workstations—so in tech circles, “X” connoted cutting-edge GUI/networked computing.

PS.: “X11”??? Eleven??? “Athena” the Greek goddess of war??? 1987, the year ST5 is set in???

#MetaGate #ComputerGate #CodeGate #WarGamesGate #ManifestationGate #AvatarGate (El is an avatar/manifestation of Mike and/or Will, born from & tethered to certain specific aspects of their psyche)

❌ Advertising & anonymization → “Brand X”

In ad/comparison contexts, “Brand X” meant a generic unnamed competitor—anonymity with a hint of inferiority—a usage well-established by mid-20th century and still common in the ’80s.

PS.: “generic unnamed anonymous inferior competitor”??? S4 Argyle going “that’s a shitty knockoff” at Mike??? Are you guys following me???

#ByChance #ChanceGate #ShittyKnockoffGate #ManifestationGate #AvatarGate (Chance is also an avatar/manifestation of Mike and/or Will, born from & tethered to certain specific aspects of their psyche)

Bonus connections I remembered:

❌ 'The X Files' (TV Series, 1993–2018)

"Two F.B.I. Agents, Fox Mulder the believer and Dana Scully the skeptic, investigate the strange and unexplained, while hidden forces work to impede their efforts."

BRO idk who that on the left is, but that is the same fucking guy as the one on the left of Brenner in s1. They're also SO similar to Murray Bauman tf??

#XFilesGate

❌ X-Men

All the ST / X-Men connections we already know about...

❌'Dimension X' from TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Which reminded me of my olddddd post about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Stranger Things Comic.

Tagging... ❤

the "Family Video" store where Robin & Steve work is meant to:

(1) be an ironic, mocking quip/remark about the common innacurate notion that Stranger Things is a "family show" & how it's going to completely subvert that label in s5;

(2) deliver subtext for bychance, #temptationgate, #vicegate, #sigate, #traffickgate and a bunch of other clustered related gates (see below).

notice:

the neon red 'ADULT' film section in the background (i couldn't find a screenshot) while s4 Steve flirts with a girl as he rents her a movie (Doctor Zhivago: “It’s a double VHS. It’s long. But that’s because it’s filled with action and romance …”), only to find out she already has a 'boyfriend' to watch romantic movies with (loser Mike foreshadowing);

the red car (#cargate), already associated to Chance & secret flings (check @offsidetracked posts); also the music band The Cars that's been so heavily featured in Stranger Things (song 'Moving in Stereo' playing during the Karen-Billy pool scene) and Finn Wolfhard's sus STurn playlist;

the Palace Arcade (entertainment, pleasure, vice; also the shady s2 direct allusions to prostitution/trafficking while Keith tries to bribe Mike into getting him a date with Nancy + Dustin warning that's gonna give a disease to Mike's entire family (AIDS subtext) + Keith tricking Max into entering a small enclosed space with Lucas while saying 'keep it PG');

also the 'Firestarter' poster, a 1984 sci-fi thriller horror film based on a Stephen King novel.

while the movie is described as "A couple who participated in a potent medical experiment gain telepathic ability and then have a child who is pyrokinetic"--obvious references to "Fireball!", Eleven's telekinesis & Will's possible latent powers...

...there HAS been an effort by the show to associate the concept of "fire" to "passion/arousal/sexuality" as well. in this sense, a 'firestarter' is someone who 'starts a fire', in other words 'ignites a fire' and therefore 'ignites a passion' (#temptationgate).

fires can be hypnotizing, unstable, quick and destructive; exactly what we've been predicting about bychance.

also included in this #ViceGate theory cluster are:

Rink-o-Mania;

the Hawkins' Pool;

the Billy-Karen side fling;

the Billy & Max sibling duo;

Starcourt Mall & the Russian tunnels below;

Hawkins Lab (HNL) itself;

the entire Russian plotline, starting with that Yuri Ismaylov peanut butter-smuggling nut;

Lonnie Byers and his shady buddies, connections & sources of income;

Al Munson (Eddie's father) and his insane Lonnie-coding in the Flight of Icarus book;

a bunch of other plotlines i'm probably not recalling right now;

and the "Vegas" mention by Will in the pizza van.

and trust me, these are absolutely riddled to their CORE with all kinds of subtextual foreshadowing for the s5 Bychance + ViceGate plotline. I'll make a post about those as soon as I'm able to.

"How far is Nina from Vegas? [...] once we save her — El — we should stop on the way back. El* could make us, like, super RICH, and we’d never have to work. We could just play D&D and Nintendo** for the rest of our lives...."

*El = "He" (in spanish) = Chance = men = homosexuality = trauma... **D&D and Nintendo = games, fun, entertainment, chance, vice, risk

-- sly, crafty, streetwise, mischievous, fun-seeking, risk-taking, cheeky, material gworl Will Byers you are SO unironically real and canon. #materialgirlgate #girlsjustwannahavefungate #mikeyouaresocooked #toolameforwill

mike is officially entering his simpy cuck era, i fear. nevertheless he will still have to step in as a white knight and save will from his dangerous hot girl summer

The multiple references to 1980s German youth culture, David Bowie and the Punk scene aren’t a coincidence, at all.

After being present in every previous Stranger Things season, the subtextual “down-low / drugs / smuggling / trafficking” themes are taking major center stage in the s5 plot too, specifically in connection with Will’s independence arc no less