in real life, you're more like a sorcerer.

Hopper: ‘fight for the days where you’ll have your own kids someday :)’

-

El: ‘you don’t get to write the ending.’ +spends her last words urging Mike to understand her choice and tell the others.’

Can we please discuss the analogies and metaphors more?

For example, this scene screams Byler and makes a direct connection between how Stranger Things is both a love story and a supernatural story...

Will has a "crazy" feeling. Crazy = love. The sky was spinning for him... "You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby......"

Will says maybe it's nothing. But "if Will has a feeling it means something."

Will says maybe he's just nervous before crawls and looks directly at Mike. He's nervous around Mike because he's in love with him...

Here's the fun part. Lucas says he gets nervous too, but "the sky doesn't spin for [him]". He feels love but not as intensely as Will.

Then Lucas looks at Mike and asks him "it ever spin for you?". Mike DOESN'T ANSWER but turns to look at Will. My guess is his answer is yes...

Then Mike says "maybe he's close". YEP indeed "he" is. He's.right.in.front.of.Will.

To further prove this point that Will's connection to the hivemind is directly connected to his connection with Mike...

Will is a receiver. He receives signals from both the hivemind and from Mike. Now if you re-watch the show, you'll see that pretty much whenever Will feels an connection to the UD, Mike is present. Throughout ST2-ST5 it's especially obvious.

Now I keep changing my mind on certain theories, but this is what I think the show is going for:

As the Duffers mentioned, ST is "a love story". This is different than a story about love. A love story is usually a romance between two characters who either end up together despite all obstacles, or at least continue to love each other until the very end.

"Can love defeat fear" is a question TFS asks. The ST5 finale's answer to this question is a resounding "NO". This is because Mike never became Mike the Brave. Will also chose fear, as he never truly revealed the depth of his feelings towards Mike. A clearly unsatisfying ending to anyone paying attention to the analogy of the show. Ever heard of “a love story” where neither characters ever get together or even reveal their feelings? lol

Mike and Will both still think that their love is wrong and that they need to "kill" it and that's what resulted in that goddamn awful ending we got.

Sports represent traditional masculinity in the show, and I noticed that in T85, not only does Mike finally give himself weapons after not getting to use any in the main show, he chooses to fight the monsters with sports equipment.

He uses a bat to fight the Snow Shark, and then when he brings the bag of weapons down into the cave, he picks a modified hockey stick for himself.

By using sporting equipment to fight off these monsters, he's subtextually trying to fend off his inner demons (his shame around his queerness) by embracing traditional masculinity.

But his queer alter-ego Nikki is openly dismissive of sports multiple times in the show.

The first time we see her, she's facing down the tough guy who was threatening Will, and she mockingly calls him "sport."

After the party defeats the Snow Shark, Lucas gets up in her face in a way we've never seen him do (as if he were putting on a "tough guy" facade to scare her into keeping her mouth shut).

But Nikki isn't intimidated. She mocks him, too, by telling him to keep eating Wheaties, which are famous for featuring prominent athletes on the box.

Later, when Will pulls the fire alarm, Nikki openly and obviously lies to the coach about who did, clearly disrespecting his authority.

And finally, when the party's getting weapons from her garage, Lucas accidentally punctures a basketball, and Nikki suggests that it was inevitable that the ball would get flattened.

Nikki's consistent disregard for sports signals that Mike needs to reject society's rigid ideas about what it means to be a man in order to fully accept his queerness.

I'm convinced that T85 is some kind of vision for Mike, and everything we see is from his POV, which means that the Will we see is how Mike views Will.

I think the real Will is represented by Charlie.

What happens to Charlie in T85 mirrors Will's possession story and shows how he can be freed by Mike's love.

girl. i can see where that rectangle that is pasted on top of the second to last DVD sleeve starts and stops.

There is mention of a 'collector's booklet' (but not a perfect-bound 148 artbook, and I can't figure out which of these is the so-called artbook?)

In this image below, it shows where those extra items are stored. It matches the same size as the first image. And you can see on the right corner the extra posters that’s at the end of the box.

Someone said the unlabelled black box is probably cardboard to pad the space. This does not happen in package design 🙂 The best option is always the less material you have to use, the better. Even when it comes to ink, there’s hidden panels where I’m often instructed to omit colour so it doesn’t increase the cost of printing. Or I’m instructed to shrink the ‘dieline’ of the package so it better fits the product.

A multi-billion dollar company like Netflix or Stranger Things wouldn’t make lazy choices like that. If it really is the extra items, the scale has been poorly photoshopped. Again! A multi-billion dollar company would never allow this.

This is what the black space reminds me of though: 👀

the particles in tales are green, associated with 'true' in the show (while orange is associated with vecna and as a 'lie'). the particles are from the monsters that have been 'killed' then they travel to infect other parts of the nature in the woods to create a new monster. the actual show has also showed us that the upside down rots nature, with the pumpkins in season 2 and again emphasising it in the last scene of season 4

if the air can affect the nature in hawkins, it can surely affect the people of hawkins. especially with a time jump of 18 months. it's rotting something, probably people's minds. potentially also people's bodies, maybe readying them in a way. this along with the mindflayer particles flying out of the demogorgons in season 5, there's a strong potential of monsters being created in a similar way that tales in showing us. the particles affected will's body (he likes it cold), so it has to have an effect on other's bodies as well. so ud air rots you, and the particles fills the gaps that are left to turn you into something else entirely

the very first monster in tales takes a person from hawkins and uses their body/life force to power it

this immediately reminded me of the very odd and creepy information on the evolution of demogorgons, which ends with mike at the end

you can argue it's for scale's sake, but why not add a metric used for measurement? why place a character there? (why place mike?)

we also see in season 5 a demogorgon act semi human like by bowing to vecna

So, I made the decision to watch ‘Tales from '85’. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm pretty sure we're getting something else in about 7-10 days.