Conflictofthemind - Hawkins High Theory Club

just a ramble of thoughts on El's kinda dicky moments this season ("I want today to be about you and me" right in front of Will, rejecting Mike's identifying with being bullied):

El doesn't really have the social experience to always realize how the others have traumas they're processing too, and that her way of going through hers can have an impact on them.

or theirs on her. she doesn't realize Mike's behavior towards her is in fact the impact of Mike going through it, but a different "it".

you know how there's a certain moment growing up where you have that realization that, ohh wait, so everyone else is the main character in their own story, like I am mine? El's around the age for that, but she's still a big step behind, still also in the process of realizing that she even is her own main character.

while she's naturally empathetic and loving, the til-recently-only-memorable part of El's upbringing really gave her no experience in like… not being the center of attention, or having to perceive others' emotions. NOT that "being the center of attention" in the lab was ever a good thing, or resulted in her feelings being valued or anything like that.

yet while she was the sole focus of the lab, SHE was never important or had any agency. even once she was the only number, she was still just a number. a prop in someone else's story.

it's gotta leave her with this weird "I'm at the center of everything but also I don't matter at all" perception of herself.

which is how she's selfless in big ways (helped find Will at her own expense, ready to die to save them all from the demogorgon, saves the world every so often, etc), but then also has these little moments that come off pretty self-regarding in her treatment of Will and Mike. it has a lot more to do with being severely developmentally behind than knowingly being an asshole. I think the others (for sure someone as perceptive as Will) know to account for that, but it still must sting sometimes.

I think this scene is something important for El -

hearing Max's trauma dump was the first time she's ever listened to one of her friends speak at length about their feelings. I'm sure she would have listened to any of her friends any time, but no one ever really opened up like that (and Max still isn't opening up to her here). maybe especially no one tries to confide in El because they either think they shouldn't because she Has It Worse, or that she wouldn't get it.

but El does get it. Max doesn't use the word "monster," but that's kinda what she thinks of herself. she thinks she did something unforgivable. El's fresh off getting some closure on her own monster arc and then turns around and finds out Max has been struggling all this time with something similar.

seeing her best friend cry and hearing her actually talk about her darkest feelings - ones not so different from El's own - idk I think that's gotta be a big moment for El in her perception of other people

I’m finally able to share a piece I worked on last year for a byler/stranger things DnD themed zine that unfortunately got cancelled.

Regardless I had a lot of fun with this one, and my dnd/history nerd heart was quite happy while working on this.

I am a sucker for quiet moments so I wanted to make something about prepping for the next big battle (with a Thessalhydra mayhaps?), or something like that.

A lot of artists have made a lot of great pieces for it, so keep an eye out for some really great dnd art popping up in the tag.

I don’t know… is there something weird going on with the specific memories that were mentioned to the mindflayer/Vecna during Will’s possession… ?

Like… Vecna’s done something to those memories, those dates… like he’s stolen them, or hidden them from the minds of Will and the others who were present at the time. Because they had power over him last time.

March 22nd. Will’s birthday. It’s just… gone.

Drawing the rainbow spaceship? Building Castle Byers? Maybe they’re gone too.

And what about “Do you remember the first day we met?”

Mike saying “I feel like my life started the day we found you in the woods” to El because the memory of meeting Will on the swingset, asking him to be his friend… it’s gone.

stranger things the first shadow and jekyll and hyde and carl jung’s concept of the shadow and edward creel is vecna and i can prove it

So! This caught my eye today:

I know there’s a lot of talk regarding how the MF is also called the shadow monster, and I’m sure that plays into it somehow, but I also wanted to talk about Carl Jung’s theory of the shadow. Jung’s theory is basically as follows:

The Personal Shadow

“The personal shadow is comprised of those qualities, impulses, and emotions that we cannot bear for others to see and thus cast into the hidden domain of ourselves. It is made up of the parts of ourselves we deem unacceptable. For many people this means things like our sadness, rage, laziness, and cruelty.”

Keep this above definition in mind.

"The personal shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself and represents ‘a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared.’”

Staring directly at the fact that the art of Henry for The First Shadow parallels the poster of Will looking out a door, at the shadow monster and there’s so much door imagery in ST. Will’s even got his shadow behind him, just like Henry does.

TLDR: a personal shadow is basically everyone’s “bad” qualities but they’re not always inherently bad.

Jekyll and Hyde are considered an example of somebody vs their shadow self/personal shadow.

“If we hold certain values and recognise these consciously then the opposite values may form part of our shadow. The shadow is not just restricted to values but the example of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde illustrates the point well. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde clearly manifested different values and these were translated into differences in their behaviours. Taking this further we can also see that sharing values would lead to a ‘shared’ shadow – the opposite of these values. The group would collectively hold unconscious and opposite values with the potential for projection.” (source)

The Collective Shadow

And so, remember how I said that I think that the Shadow Monster/the MF would play into this? Well, part of the shadow theory is something called a collective shadow.

Long story short, the collective shadow is considered the dark side of humanity, the sum of all past and present atrocities and abuses.

And we know that Henry had a whole speech about the dark side of humanity.

“The collective shadow, like the personal shadow, is relative in that it will be partially culturally determined/dependent on culture. It consists of things which opposes a culture’s conscious, shared and collective values.”

I won’t be surprised if the Shadow Monster/Mindflayer is meant to be representative of a collective shadow, a representation of the shared hateful/biogted beliefs of the people of Hawkins, a representation of all of the atrocities and abuse that’s occurred, including to people like Henry (in the lab and in the Creel house, ESPECIALLY considering the stage play being in 1959/tied to the Creels moving to Hawkins and also tied to the idea of the shadow via the title). But the people of Hawkins aren’t all inherently awful, because the shadow represents the opposite of their values/beliefs, and some peoples’ values/beliefs contradict eachother’s.

The First Shadow

So- the first shadow? It’d possibly be either a.) the first Henry/the original Henry or b.) the first new, separate sort of Henry, possibly a separate consciousness or an entirely separate Henry (staring at the Henry Creel vs Edward Creel weirdness in the Creel murder newspapers, staring at Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde being the full names of Jekyll and Hyde). And keeping in mind that Edward Hyde was Henry Jekyll’s shadow- so then, Edward Creel would be Henry Creel’s shadow. And look at that art for the stage play again:

In this image, who is literally Henry’s shadow?

Vecna.

In the Henry Jekyll vs Edward Hyde and Henry Creel vs Edward Creel section, who was Henry Jekyll’s shadow?

Edward Hyde.

Which makes Edward Creel the shadow of Henry Creel. But Vecna is also Henry’s literal shadow in that image- oh wait, that makes both Vecna and Edward Henry’s shadow. Don’t people just have one personal shadow, though?

Yes. Because Vecna and Edward Creel are the same person. Henry Creel is not Vecna, Edward Creel is. Vecna and Edward are interchangeable, and they’re both Henry’s shadow, just like how Edward Hyde is the shadow of Henry Jekyll.

Edward is Vecna, not Henry. Even simply in a metaphorical sense, Henry is not the same as Vecna, Vecna is Henry’s shadow.

Conclusion

We’ve got the personal shadow, the collective shadow, and the first shadow.

And the personal shadow is considered the bridge to the collective shadow, in the sense that the collective shadow is made up of humanity’s personal shadows.

So, Henry’s shadow was likely the first one, the first shadow in that collective shadow- and what does the collective shadow represent? What is it comprised of? The atrocities and abuses of humanity and the values deemed negative by a culture. So, Henry himself being an outcast and being deemed negative as a child, and abused by the town and by the lab, and becoming the first atrocity in the collective shadow over Hawkins, the first personal shadow in that collective shadow.

Everything with the shadow sounds so extremely Vecna, with how he’s showing his S4 victims their own shadows, the parts of themselves that they refuse to acknowledge, the parts of themselves that conflict with their egos and ideals.

To confront one’s shadow is considered to be confronting the truth- and Jamie himself said that Vecna is fixated on truth.

And again, the collective shadow is made up of personal shadows. So, if you want to resolve the collective shadow/kill the shadow monsters, you need to resolve everyone’s personal shadows first.

Which is what Vecna was doing. He was literally forcing his victims to confront their personal shadows. He is attempting to kill and change the collective shadow of Hawkins because of how that shadow/those cultural beliefs have outcast and hurt him. But because he’s doing it by committing atrocities, he’s simply creating a new collective shadow/shifting those values/being a hypocrite. He think he’s destroying those hateful/harmful values, but instead, he’s just making his own twisted/still harmful version of them. I’ve talked repeatedly and constantly about characters like Vecna and Eddie being hypocrites and how for all of things Henry lists in his “eat sleep wake up,” monologue, he himself has his own twisted version of things, and this ties in perfectly with the collective shadow theory and the idea that Vecna is trying to destroy the collective shadow/bigotry/hate/abuse of Hawkins but is enforcing his own bigotry/hate/abuse in the process.

And going back to Henry not being Vecna, remember how the personal shadow is defined?

“It is made up of the parts of ourselves we deem unacceptable. For many people this means things like our sadness, rage, laziness, and cruelty.”

And so, if Vecna is Henry’s shadow (which, that’s exactly what we see on the poster), then that means that Vecna is comprised of things/traits that Henry deems unacceptable. Meaning that Henry didn’t share the same values as Vecna/Edward. Meaning that Henry is a good guy. Which, that doesn’t mean Edward is evil, especially not with the idea of Vecna being the result of Brenner merging himself with Edward, and Vecna and *Edward’s* values being different.

It’s also worth noting that Henry himself is very paralleled to Mairon (Sauron’s form before he became evil), and Annatar (his fake good form), but Vecna is the one paralleled to Sauron. Sauron, who poured his cruelty and his malice into the one ring. Sauron, who is described frequently as a shadow.

TLDR: timeline weirdness and Henry Creel vs Edward Creel and Edward is Vecna, Henry is not Vecna, and Henry is not responsible for Vecna’s actions.

Henry Creel is innocent. Any complaints can be forwarded to Henry Creel’s personal defense lawyers (@laozuspo and I, James also has great thoughts about Jekyll and Hyde vs Henry and Edward.)

Because I’m delusional and living a bit of a hermit lifestyle rn with nothing better to do I’ve gone back and looked over the leaked ElMike video a few times, and then watched about an hour of content on how to read lips. And.. I swear to god he very clearly says the word “friends”. And “be” before it. Vowels are hard but you can clearly see the lip movements for ‘f’ and ‘ds’.

I’m not sure if anyone still cares about the video anymore or believes that it’s useful but if y’all want I can really have more of a crack at it. 0% chance I can transcribe the entire thing but I’ve been able to make out a few other words as well no I’ll provide side by sides