John Mulaney, A True ADHD Icon

i made a folder on googledrive for poetry&relevant literature that i find myself coming back to when i need to ground myself again. most are fairly well known so it’s also a good place to dive into literature if you haven’t already. all should be free to download but let me know & i’ll try to do something about it. hope some of you get just as much from these authors as i have. 

𝚑𝚘𝚣𝚒𝚎𝚛 𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏-𝚝𝚒𝚝𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚕𝚎𝚝 𝚕𝚢𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚜 (click + right-click “open image in new tab” for high-res).

wasteland, baby! booklet lyrics: here.

everyone good, everyone had a little break from my shenanigans? ready for some more meta tonight? cool because @eddiemunsterson woke my ass up at 6am linking me to this post by @thediktatortot wanting to know why the light on Eddie's bike felt important and I wanted to talk about this whole... thing anyway, so GUESS WHAT TODAY IS.

Today we're going to talk about Light and its relationship to the Stranger Things narrative, particularly as it appears in ST4.

Obviously light has always been important to Stranger Things, as it connects the Upside Down with the Right Side Up. We see this with Will communicating through the lights, with the lights showing the passing of the monsters etc.

In season 4, light really comes to the forefront of the story. We see a plethora of instances where light is used to connect plots and as this... thematic undercurrent where the characters are bringing light into the darkness, or moving out of the darkness into the light. Who is holding the light and what they do with it also reflects in the narrative!

Let's take one of my favorites first. I'll put it all below a cut.

When the group first enters the Creel house in 4.05, the first thing Lucas does is try to turn on the light. He knows - they ALL know - that the light is not going to come on; he even jokes about the electric bill, which means he is aware of the connection. So why choose to spend screen time showing him turning on a light he and the others, as well as we, the audience, know isn't going to come on? Because light matters!!

Lucas is narratively connected to Max this season, HARD. Most of his time this season is spent trying to protect her, trying to befriend her, trying to help. When they are seated in the back the RV, he tries to convince her to let someone else put themselves in danger and we see the first thread of connection. She tells him that Vecna only sees the darkness in them, and so her plan is to run to the light.

What is the light? Her good memories, for sure, but we also see evidence of her running directly to literal light when she is first taken. The group put her music on that first time and she sees the crack of light in the darkness, and manages to escape and run to it. Fascinatingly, they choose to have her "light" that she runs to in this instance be to... a literal graveyard. Fascinating because, you know. Generally when we say "don't go into the light" we are telling someone not to die. To come back to us. And here's Max, running to the light to survive, to return to a graveyard. Look, you can see literal sunbeams fanning out from the group below her!

In any case, her memories are her "light" that she is going to run toward, but the bigger "light" in this case is the music that pulls her out completely. The guiding light back to reality, back to safety, back to Lucas. And... just like Lucas cannot turn on the light in the Creel house toward the start, when he is in the Creel house again at the end, he cannot turn on the "light" for Max. He is barred from putting the headphones on her. That's why they used precious screen time showing us Lucas trying to turn on a light everyone knew was not going to turn on.

The first time they enter the Creel house in 4.05 actually contains a LOT of instances of light use that will come back later, so I'll go through them in no particular order.

One of the moments I've actually talked about before is this one:

Dustin turns on the light and Steve has no idea where the light has come from, or where to find light of his own. This is a theme that repeats for him; he tries to use an unlit standing lamp as a weapon, he doesn't see the light over the boathouse when they're looking for Eddie, he doesn't know where they got the light when entering the Creel house, he doesn't initially understand why they're turning off their lights to "look" for Vecna (this comes back), he doesn't think to take light himself into the lake (Eddie hands it to him, he was going to go in with nothing), he drops the light when the tentacle hits the gate membrane.

The only times Steve uses light to useful effect is when he is following someone else's example, which probably says something about how his character is still learning not to be the asshole (the "monster") he was in Season 1. He doesn't initially understand how he can be hearing Dustin's voice; it is Nancy who suggests communication through the lights, and then he sees Nancy trying to turn on the lamp in the Upside Down, and he turns his flashlight around to look at the other lights- which shows them the chandelier. He doesn't initially understand why they are turning their lights OFF to look for Vecna, until he sees Robin's flashlight light up to indicate that Vecna is present, and then when his own lights up instead, he takes lead and follows the monster at the head of the group.

Another interesting thing about Steve + light is that "his" flashlight, that we see many times a) is very visually different than the rest of the group's (everyone else wields the silver duracell flashlights, while Steve's flashlight is red. you know. like the lights in the Upside Down),

and b) trades hands often. Eddie is the one to wrap it up and give it to him to take into the lake.

Robin is the one that rescues it after Steve has dropped it at the bottom of the lake.

Eddie is the one to carry it around in the Upside Down after the bats, even going so far as putting it on his bike when they're all riding around.

As such, Steve's connection to the light is still tentative, uncertain, and often relies on others to exist. He hasn't learned to make his own or what to do with it, which is a pretty good mirror of the rest of his life. He's been trying to make connections with dating, he's distanced from his family, he's been trying to forge friendships with this group (in particular Dustin but honestly what kid hasn't he adopted at this point). He is surrounding himself with people that are connected to the light, that are full of it themselves, and he's learning.

Interestingly, Steve and Lucas' storylines are linked, in that Lucas is taking after Steve pretty hard. He's the one that's into sports, he's the one that lost the girl he loves to her breaking up with him. He's taking on some of Steve's mannerisms even, putting his hands on his hips like Steve does. And he's the other person in the group that doesn't work light the way everyone else does.

Also in the Creel house, we see the moment the kids first find the lightbulb hanging in the room where Vecna is doing sacrifices, where he hooks up to all those vines. This is... well, heartbreaking in its foreshadowing. Look at them standing around the light, the way it is framed in this moment:

Seven lights.

(This is interesting on its own, outside of the use of lights as well- look at where everyone is standing. Max isn't next to Lucas, and she's not even across from him- Steve is. Dustin and Robin are across from one another. Max and Nancy are across from one another. The older teens to the left, the younger teens to the right. We see Steve and Lucas' storylines paralleling. We see Max and Nancy bonding over making weapons later, and it would not surprise me at all to find out Max looks up to Nancy.)

Compared to when the older teens later find the chandelier, and we are treated to this strange, interestingly-framed view of the chandelier:

Five lights.

Or rather, maybe I should say, two lights less than when they started out, the same way two lights in the party will be extinguished; Eddie's and Max's. We also, in the Creel house in 4.05, see similar foreshadowing when they very first enter.

In this moment, we see the group entering the house and it is VERY much framed as the characters stepping out of the bright light of their world (past the broken stained glass window of Vecna's childhood) and into the darkness of the Creel house. But more than that? Who is standing front and center in this moment? None other than Nancy and Max, the two people Vecna will drag into the darkness of his mind world. And they don't just stand there! They enter, wreathed in light, and together they step out of the light, in opposite directions, into the dark, the same way they will later be taken in different directions by Vecna; one to live, one to die. Behind them ("left behind" you might say) is Lucas, who is revealed still standing in the light as Max moves from in front of him and into the dark. Steve and Robin are already in the dark to either side of Nancy as she enters (much like the three of them will be in a group to fight Vecna later).

This moment also connects to the light that is used to find Eddie. In 4.02, when the group is looking for Eddie, Max is the one to see a doorway lit up in the darkness and goes toward it to find their friend. In this case, the boathouse is viewed from almost level ground; lower, but not particularly from above, just distant.

What I find perhaps even more interesting than that is that the light over the boathouse door is one of the parallels in Jason's twisted mirror plotline. Both groups (ours and his) believe they are searching for monsters, except Jason finds his by going toward the light and our group finds theirs by going toward the dark. Where our group finds a friend in the light, his group finds an enemy. In Jason's case, the boathouse is viewed from "on high" so to speak, with Jason looking down upon it instead of being on equal footing.

While everyone else is seeking the light in both of these moments at the boathouse, both times find Eddie hiding from the light. He hides from Dustin and company, and he hides from Jason and company. He is avoiding the light. But the more time he spends around our group, the more we see him guarding and protecting and sharing the light, giving it to Steve, using it to ask for help by sending an SOS, putting it on his bike to guide the way. Rather than hide, he actively engages in protecting everyone else- much the same way Steve does, except that unlike Steve, Eddie's relationship to light is already solid. As soon as he knows it is friendly, he settles right into guiding and sharing.

So, to answer the original question of "why does the light on Eddie's bike feel Important," it's because it is. It's because it is one of the ways light is being used overall and it's a visual representation of Eddie guiding with light (but he's doing so by borrowing Steve's light, the trust the group has in Steve, he has the light because Robin gave it to him after she rescued it from where Steve had dropped it). It's important, visually in that moment, because it separates him from the others; they will form a team of three, and he will not be a part of it. They will survive, and he will not.

It's also significant because we see the change between the two worlds; we see visual representation of a loss of light in the moment the view switches between the kids biking together with everyone having a light to guide them, to the Upside Down where only one person has a light, and it's Eddie, and it's borrowed- the same way lights native to the Upside Down must borrow their shine from other sources:

(also LOVE the moment before this where they're riding and their shadows stretch out ahead of them... Literal foreshadows)

There is one last incidence of light use that I want to talk about and it's perhaps the most obvious one and definitely the one that links up with the rest of the show, and that's the instances of the group interacting with the light between worlds, particularly the chandelier and the lite bright.

Nancy, is the first to touch the chandelier light at all. She is the one that suggests they use the light to communicate with the Right Side Up in the first place, and the one to actually "write" on the lite bright for the group. She takes time, every time they see the particles, to "play" in them.

But for all that she is the one suggesting contact, the one to touch first, she is the last to reach for the chandelier in the group shot, and the first to pull away again. She steps back and lets Eddie establish contact with Dustin, and only steps in when they actually need to talk, not just signal. In the Creel house in 4.05, when Max begs the question of whether or not Vecna can hear them when the light goes out. The "obvious" answer seems to be "no" but then we find out at the chandelier scene that actually... maybe he CAN. Maybe he can hear Nancy talking about communicating with the other side through the lights, and there's a good chance that that's why he chooses her to try to communicate to El, later on.

Outside of just Nancy, the moment when the fruity four are interacting with the chandelier as a group is important, too. I have seen a lot of gifs of the moment they're all standing there gazing wonderingly into the light together, but I have yet to see the moment before that, and I think the moment before that is actually... SO much more important. Nancy touches the light first, and then stops, and we get this:

What an absolute sucker punch of framing. This light, shining in the dark, surrounded by evil vines. And then, from below, from the darkness, a hand slowly emerges, reaching for the light, stretching for it, followed by two more, followed, reluctantly, by a fourth as the camera begins to drop and the glow of the light is shown reflecting on the faces of the gathered, much the same way the chandelier itself is only lit because it is reflecting the light from the flashlights the group has brought with them into this darkness.

Literally they have brought light to spread to the Upside Down, which in turn spreads it right back to them. They are the lightbringers, they are the beacons, the light in the dark, the hope. And Robin says it all: it feels kinda good. To bring the light, to touch the light.

Like GOD I just love everyone's relationship to the light in this show, and particularly this season. I hope they keep going with it.

I got a proof wrong on an exam. No points. 

Then, I thought about it for fifteen minutes outside of the exam, wrote it down, nailed it. 

I showed a classmate and told him what happened. He looked frustrated. He’d clearly had this happen before, too (haven’t we all?).  He said, “Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

I almost said yes. What the h*ck!? No. No, I do not hate it when I can fathom a deeply abstracted concept in mathematics. I never hate that. I the opposite of hate that. Expecting myself to immediately understand topics like this is unrealistic. I’m proud of being able to do it at all. Who cares if I did it in the exam or within the next hour? I DID IT. It’s mine now. I can do it whenever I want. Missing points on that problem doesn’t take the knowledge out of my brain. How dare I be taught that my knowledge is useless because I didn’t have it right at that moment. It’s just as good now. 

Education is not about the arbitrary numeric number ascribed to your ability to do things quickly in an arbitrary, restricted time interval. Education is about being able to do progressively more things, to understand progressively complex things. 

Tenacity and challenging yourself far beyond your limits is a hundred times more important than getting good grades. Because, when you’re one of .4 percent of the population who possess complete knowledge on a very complex topic, nobody cares how long it took you to do it, or how well you did it the first time you tried. 

Grades don’t discover new mathematics. Mathematicians do (even the ones who failed a basic topic in mathematics because their base way of thinking was too complex). Grades don’t advance medical research. Scientists do (even the ones who had to apply for their PhD programs 3 times in a row before they got accepted). Grades don’t make science fiction into real-world technologies. Engineers do (even the ones who dropped out of school because they wanted to build things, not talk about building things). 

Knowledge is power. Skills are power. Grades are constructs. Never trade actual understanding for a semblance of understanding. 

Peter was the first to go away. He was eleven, and starting his new boarding school up north. He was close-mouthed about it in his letters home, seeming in a daze or a dream, and it was only in his third year when they went through the wardrobe that he remarked cryptically that the Lion was everywhere. On Christmas morning he wore a red and gold striped tie, and he murmured to Susan that she would come soon enough.

It was after two years that Susan went up North. The house was bizarre and empty without her for Edmund and Lucy, whom she had left behind. Susan, the natural peacemaker, wrote home much more than Peter did, as his letters had become infrequent with his life there. Though the secrecy was maintained, Susan said in the snowy winter the landscape reminded her of Mr. Tumnus’ yard. The whole Great Adventure had only been in the summer months before that September, and yet Lucy felt it was more and more distant as she held the blue ribbons her sister had sent home.

When Edmund was at the train station, he wasn’t nervous, exactly. He was eleven now, and since Peter and Susan had gone away to school, he and Lucy had spent a lot of time adventuring on their own. He trusted himself not to make the mistakes he had when he was younger and more selfish. Susan and Peter had taken him shopping; had let him into the secret which was really not as shocking as the wardrobe had been. Unbeknownst to them, he told Lucy. “Magic,” she had whispered, wide eyed. “We’re going to learn magic?” “It’s not as if we never have,” he had teased back, and she clutched his hand. “Thank you for telling me,” she said solemnly, and in a follow-up letter included a new pair of green cuff links she had made herself from finding smooth rocks by the riverbed. 

When Lucy Pevensie finally got to Hogwarts, she was perhaps the first serene unsorted history. She walked calmly to the stool with the hat, and settled herself before a professor dropped it on her head. In that flash, she saw Peter in his last year, the farthest table to her left, awash in scarlet. On the opposite end of the hall was third year Edmund in emerald, grinning at her confidently. At the table next to Edmund was her sister Susan, chin jutting in pride at the glossy bronze P on her chest. The hat dropped to her head, and she felt the huge indrawn breath of it about to scoff something sarcastic when it stopped, shocked and amazed. 

“You’ve lived many lives, my Queen,” it said reverently, respectfully. She had touched something far greater than magic in her life.

And yet, Lucy thought, I am eleven years old.

“You may be with any of the family members you so choose,” the hat said carefully. “For I see you are brave, and wise, and cunning. What then do you wish?”

And Lucy said what she had always known about herself; what the Lion had spoken into her heart: I want to help people, she said quietly. The glass phial was long-empty, but it had hung on a chain about her neck for so long she would have felt naked without it. 

“I knew a group of four like you once,” murmured the Hat. “Four of the greatest people I’ve ever known. In that case, it better be…HUFFLEPUFF!”

And the Pevensie children became rare in annals of Hogwarts to be siblings quartered so evenly. 

“That family will do great things,” the Hat told the headmaster serenely as it was placed behind the Staff Table.

Diggory was old, but he winked at the hat. “They already have,” he answered, and raised his pumpkin juice to his lips as Lucy Pevensie accepted a hand down to the table between her oldest two siblings.

‘My vampiric mistress saved me from a life of poverty and destitution, but she made me wait to be turned until I was old enough to take up a trade or go to university. That way I might be taken seriously by the humans which surrounded us, and would have the pick of careers to pursue.

‘Unfortunately, in the six hundred years since, cultural mores have shifted, and now appearing to be fourteen means they won’t even hire me for a weekend shift at the Burger House.’

#chris evans #in where he is actually steve rogers

twilight but instead of a dramatic reveal about how edward’s a vampire bella just shows up to class one day and slides a copy of Dracula across the table to see what happens