Mind you, that feeling tends to wax and wane, with periods of high strangeness punctuated by long stretches of boredom. But in the past six months or so, it's started to almost feel like we've been shifting through different timelines. Or maybe even different realities altogether. The differences are slight, but seem to be growing.
It's hard to quantify unless you take a few steps back.
For instance, it wasn't that long ago that America seemed on the fast-track to what some on the Right call "gay race communism," spearheaded by a presidential candidate who her own party utterly loathed in 2020, but now all saw as Trans-Obama incarnate. The entire institutional infrastructure - even the military - were all in on this soft revolution.
Then out of nowhere, the same tech moguls who did everything in their power to destroy Donald Trump during his first presidency were - weirdly - all falling over each other to kiss his ring.
And at Trump's side is an emotionally-volatile autist who has unleashed an assault on the Federal bureaucracy of a kind this country has never seen. The sheer scope and aggression of it is mind-boggling.
Whether you love it or loathe it, you can't say it feels like normal reality.
And in a shockingly short time, the neoliberal left went from dominating every sphere of the American power structure to coming across like a mob of ugly weirdos and elderly cranks.
How could this happen? It's almost like a fairy story when a witch's spell wears off and suddenly you're in bed with a hideous zombie and not a supermodel. Are these even the same people anymore? I'm seriously starting to wonder.
There are clearly things of a mundane geopolitical nature at work that we're not read-in on, I'm not arguing with that. But I've never seen an entire party shift from total dominance to near-insignificance in such a short time, and I'm old.
And I gotta admit the ubiquity of Elon really feels to this former Trekkie as our timeline's Kieran MacDuff.
If not its Dawn Summers, in keeping with the theme of this series.
Had too many pop culture references already?
Well, I apologize, because they're the only way I can model this weird new reality.
So let's talk a bit about all the alternate timeline/dimension stories we've seen over the past five years, in this instance superhero stories.
Now, I was reading comic books before I knew how to read, so alternate dimension stories are a dime a dozen to me. But seeing all these narratives pop up, unbidden and out of nowhere, is still a bit disorienting to me.
Let's start with this one.
- In Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Multiverse is introduced as a chaotic, interconnected web of alternate realities that becomes accessible due to a botched spell by Doctor Strange.
- Peter Parker wants to undo the public reveal of his identity as Spider-Man. He asks Doctor Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget he’s Spider-Man.
- Peter’s interference during the spell—trying to exclude certain people like MJ and Ned—destabilizes it.
- The spell, meant to alter reality, accidentally tears open the boundaries between universes.
- To fix the mess, Doctor Strange casts a new spell to make everyone forget Peter Parker entirely—not just his Spider-Man identity. This seals the breaches, sending the villains and alternate Spider-Men back to their own universes, but at the cost of Peter’s personal relationships in his own world.
Got all that?
Good, onto the next one, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
So Barry doesn't set out to create new realities, but causes them to fall into chaos because he had tried to reverse time and bring his mother back from the dead, an obviously traumatic event in his life.
- After the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange continues to protect Earth as Sorcerer Supreme.
- America Chavez enters our reality with her innate, uncontrolled ability to punch portals between universes.
- Her power makes her a target for the Scarlet Witch, who wants to use Chavez’s abilities to reunite with her children, whom she lost in WandaVision.
- Strange navigates alternate realities, confronts variants of himself, and battles to restore balance to the multiverse.
- Strange and Chavez visit a universe ruled by the Illuminati (see clip) a council of heroes including alternate versions of Professor X, Reed Richards, and others—only to see it crumble under Wanda’s magic.
- Another reality shows a Strange who destroyed his world by misusing the Darkhold, a mystical book that amplifies power but twists the soul.
With me so far? OK, let's bring some trauma into the mix.
- In The Flash, the Multiverse is made of alternate realities or universes that coexist, each with its own version of events, people, and outcomes
- Barry Allen discovers he can run fast enough to travel back in time. When he attempts to change the past to prevent his mother’s murder, it inadvertently creates ripples across reality. He doesn’t just alter his own timeline but fractures it, leading to collisions with alternate universes.
- When Barry interferes with time, it’s like sticking a fork in spaghetti and twisting it, causing timelines to intersect or overlap unpredictably.
- The Speed Force, the mystical energy that powers Barry’s speed, is depicted as the mechanism that allows him to breach the barriers between universes.
- Barry’s attempts to fix things lead to a collision of universes, threatening to destroy them all. The older Barry sacrifices himself to undo the damage.
And in Zack Snyder's Justice League, here is exactly when we first see young Barry use his mystical Speed Force.
Sound up, folks. You will know what I mean.
And speaking of mystical forces, this calls for a mind with wisdom.
AN ACE UP THE SLEEVE
This is important, so let's look back at Silent Hill and Alessabeth Gillepsie's dolorous ordeals.
First, let me just remind you how this all began:
Now, stop to think about the stories we tell ourselves - and tell our children - for a minute.
Think about how many of them are about intense childhood trauma acting as a portal to another dimension.
And let me reiterate all of this as well.
Alessa, a young girl with latent psychic abilities, is targeted by the Silent Hill cult, led by her mother. The cult believes Alessa can birth their god by impregnating her with its essence, a horrific act they carry out when she’s just seven years old.
They burn her alive in a ritual sacrifice, but her powers keep her alive, though severely injured and comatose, her soul splits and leaves her in agony.
This trauma gives her the strength to shape reality around her, even unconsciously.
Alessa’s pain and hatred project outward, warping Silent Hill into distorted versions of itself. The Fog World—a misty, abandoned town—reflects her isolation and suppressed emotions, while the Otherworld—a rusty, nightmarish hellscape—mirrors her raw torment and the violence inflicted on her.
Interestingly enough, this clip showed up in someone's Instagram stories this morning. Note the song used there takes the bassline from this, as some of you might remember.
It was while working on the Silent Hill material that I remembered that Alessabeth Gillespie is not at all unlike Ace from the DC Animated Universe. The stories are obviously different, but she too is a traumatized telepath who develops the powers to remake reality itself.
We first met Aceabeth in the Justice League two-parter, "Wild Cards." Which was set in - wait for it - Las Vegas.
Now, I don't know what the network censors were doing at the time, but let's just say is it's strongly suggested in the episode that the relationship between the 13 year-old Ace and the however-the-fuck-old Joker is one of an intimate nature.
I guess the writers were doing a spin on the old bit about the creepy comedian and the 13 year-old psychic girl who soon evolves into a reality-warping telekinetic force. You remember that one, right?
Goes back a ways. To Vaudeville, I hear tell. I suppose it makes sense, given Mark Hammill voices the Joker.
A STUDY IN SCARLET
Now, I haven't really looked into what was on the minds of the producers of WandaVision, but between it and then Multiverse of Madness, I'm wondering if they were processing Alessa and Ace. At least a bit.
There are significant differences:
- The many realities depicted aren’t traditional parallel universes like a multiverse in the strict sense.
- Instead, they’re primarily constructed realities—artificial, sitcom-inspired worlds created by Wanda’s chaos magic within a localized anomaly called the Hex, centered in Westview, New Jersey.
- Wanda unconsciously transforms Westview into a pocket reality that cycles through sitcom-inspired eras, each a self-contained "episode" mimicking classic TV shows.
Now, not to get too spoily here, but these realities are the products of Wanda’s grief over losing Vision (in Endgame) and her desire to escape trauma by rewriting her existence.
But as we see in Multiverse of Madness, there's also a dimension/reality shifting component to her power (and a lost child one, too).
So not only is the Scarlet Witch creating these pocket realities to escape her traumatic reality, the shifts between them could be described as somewhat shimmery, as do the tangle of timelines in The Flash.
THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENTS
Aside from the obvious namegame with the actress playing the Scarlet Witch - who was once the lesser-known sister of the most famous Twins in the world - there's also a very subtle yet recurring use of strawberry symbolism in WandaVision.
Make careful note of this Cheddar Goblin-type mock ad used in WandaVision.
But the strawberry symbolism didn't just stay onscreen.
"Another secret Avengers thing."
We also saw weird references to strawberries in Elizabeth Olsen's social media. Which, sadly, she's since deleted. Don't ask me why.
And strawberry syrups in various Scarlet Witch-themed drinks at - where else? - Starbucks.
And then there is this, of which men shall know nothing.
Now, as I've said I see Synchromysticism as essentially using the tools of dream interpretation on what we call "reality," because it is my very strong belief that the walls of separation between the two are slowly but inexorably crumbling. And I also believe that information is actually alive.
Call me schizoid if you must, but did I mention I'm old? I know these things.
So how do we explain all these parallel reality narratives popping up all over the place? How do explain the ubiquity of symbolism that readers of this blog should be very familiar with by now?
It's like a semiotic breadcrumb trail, sent from somewhere to our conscious minds, trying to clue us in on what's really going on.
There's more to come, so do stay tuned.
In the meantime, I recommend you head over to the Secret Sun Extension School to read this piece on The Fifth Element, which believe it or not, is very closely tied into some of these riddles we've looked at today.
