50501: Vecna (& The Administration) Wants You Tired
New Years Eve Special: A spoiler-free Stranger Things parody about the administration’s favorite weapon: exhaustion and the “flashlight rule.”
Disclaimer: This is a spoiler-free parody. No finale spoilers in the post or comments. This is a 50501 New Years Eve Special, a Stranger Things Parody Post. If you enjoyed this please subscribe and continue to support our publication. Thank you for reading.
Some of you may be thinking, “I don’t watch Stranger Things.” And that’s fair. A lot of our readers didn’t grow up on Netflix but you probably know someone who is. If you have a niece or nephew, adult kids, grandchildren, younger coworkers, or a friend’s teenager who’s excited about the finale, this is a perfect moment to pull them into the bigger conversation.
Share this post with them and say: “Read this, it’s spoiler-free, it’s funny, and it explains what’s happening to the country in a way that you can relate to.” Pop culture is one of the fastest ways to get people paying attention, and the future of this country belongs to them too.
If this post helps even one younger person trade doom scrolling for real civic action, it’s worth it.
📌 NOTE FOR NEW READERS
The 50501 Movement organizes peaceful action across all 50 states to defend democracy and push back on executive overreach. If this resonates, subscribe so you don’t miss the next mobilization update.
TL;DR
A spoiler-free New Year’s Eve parody: the Hawkins crew faces Vecna and the Mind Flayer, standing in for Trump-era executive overreach and realizes the monster’s real weapon is isolation, confusion, and fatigue. The counter spell is simple: flashlights (visible, repeatable civic actions), a no-spiral protocol, and a two-touch monthly habit (one pressure action & one community action) across all 50 states.
The Gate Doesn’t Like Flashlights
Hawkins wasn’t looking normal this New Year’s Eve.
The Christmas lights were still up in some windows, blinking like tired small hearts refusing to quit. The air had that thin, electric bite it got right before midnight like the sky itself was holding its breath.
Inside the old Wheeler basement, the party was assembled.
Mike was hunched over a table covered in scribbles and maps and a stack of flyers that said “SHOW UP” in thick black marker like it was the most magical spell anyone had learned all year.
Dustin had commandeered the whiteboard. He’d drawn a huge outline of the United States, slapped fifty little circles across it, and labeled it:
THE RIGHTSIDE UP.
Then, underneath it, he’d drawn the same map again, only warped.
THE UPSIDE DOWN.
Lucas pointed at the bottom map with a pencil like he was about to poke it and make it hiss.
“So you’re saying it’s back.”
Dustin didn’t look up. “I’m saying it never left.”
Across the room, Joyce Byers was duct-taping string lights to the wall again. Not because she’d lost her mind, she’d already proved that wasn’t the issue, but because the lights had become a ritual and a way to tell the truth when everyone else pretended they couldn’t see it.
Hopper stood in the doorway with the face of a man who had outlived too many disasters to be impressed by the next one.
“Are we doing the lights thing again?” he asked.
Joyce didn’t stop taping. “We are always doing the lights thing.”
Will sat cross-legged on the carpet, quiet, eyes distant. He’d been like that since early December. Like he could feel something moving under the floorboards of the world.
Max leaned back in a chair, arms crossed. “So what’s the monster this time?”
The room got colder. Not physically, at least not just physically.
Eleven stepped forward.
Her nose wasn’t bleeding.
She wasn’t shouting.
She didn’t look like a superhero.
She looked… tired but focused.
“Not a monster,” she said. “A system.”
Steve Harrington, now somehow the default logistics guy of any crisis, blinked. “That’s… worse.”
Nancy flipped open a notebook. “Start from the top.”
Eleven nodded.
“It’s like Vecna,” she said slowly, searching for the right shape of the idea. “But older. Like a thing that learned how to hide inside rules.”
Robin raised a hand like it was school. “Okay. I hate that. Continue.”
Eleven took a breath.
“Vecna is taking people again,” she said. “Not with claws or tentacles this time, but with exhaustion. With confusion. With fear.”
Mike clenched his jaw. “So. Like… propaganda?”
“Like power,” Eleven corrected. “And it has a face.”
Silence. Everyone knew the name without saying it.
Then Dustin (because Dustin always said the thing out loud) waved his marker like a wand.
“So we’re just gonna say it: Vecna is Trump.”
Max let out a short laugh that wasn’t really funny. “And the Mind Flayer is… the administration.”
Hopper’s expression didn’t change, but his voice went low.
“Executive overreach,” he said.
Will flinched like the words had teeth.
Joyce turned to the wall, tapped one of the lights, and said, almost to herself:
“People keep thinking the danger is ‘the headline.’”
She looked back at them.
“But the danger is what happens after people get tired.”
The Fog
The Upside Down didn’t arrive quickly overnight, it seeped slowly.
It looked like a thousand notifications.
It sounded like the same argument on a loop.
It felt like waking up already behind, already bracing, already resigned.
Dustin wrote on the board:
UPSIDEDOWN SYMPTOMS
Loud + unclear
Numb to furious, back to numb
“What’s the point?”
Alone
He underlined the last one so hard the marker squeaked.
“Isolation is the gate,” he said. “That’s basically the entire plot of the last year.”
Steve frowned. “Plot?”
Robin pointed at him. “Don’t worry, Steve. You’re the heart, not the exposition.”
Nancy’s pen scratched paper.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked. “Because ‘naming the monster’ is cathartic, but it doesn’t close the gate.”
Eleven stared at the warped map of the U.S.
“We don’t fight this like before,” she said. “We fight it like… 50501.”
Mike brightened. “Okay. Yes. Good. That sounds like a plan.”
“Does it?” Max asked. “Because when people hear ‘movement,’ they picture big speeches and perfect leaders and viral moments.”
Hopper snorted. “That’s not a movement. That’s a movie trailer.”
Joyce tapped the lights again, like she was counting heartbeats.
“A movement is what you do when nobody’s watching,” she said.
The Hinge
Nancy drew a small door on her notepad.
“What closes a gate?” she asked. “Not vibes. Not rage. Pressure.”
She looked up.
“Where are the hinges?”
Dustin pointed at the Rightside Up map and started circling dots.
“Local officials,” he said. “Agencies. Boards. Courts. State legislatures. The places where power actually gets carried out.”
Lucas leaned in. “So… not just Washington.”
“Washington is where they announce it,” Dustin said. “But implementation is where they do it.”
Robin whistled. “So the monster isn’t just one guy. It’s the system that does what one guy wants.”
Eleven’s gaze hardened.
“And the system depends on one thing,” she said.
“What?” Mike asked.
Eleven lifted her hand.
“Silence.”
Will whispered, almost like he couldn’t help it:
“Compliance.”
Hopper’s jaw flexed.
“Fear,” he added.
Joyce, quietly: “People thinking they’re alone.”
The Flashlight Rule
Joyce flicked the lights off.
The basement fell into darkness.
Then she clicked them back on, just one strand.
A soft row of warm bulbs.
Not bright enough to blind you but bright enough to find each other.
“This,” Joyce said, “is the rule.”
She pointed at the lights.
“Flashlights.”
Steve’s eyebrows rose. “Like… literal flashlights?”
“No,” Joyce said, like he was adorable and also exhausting. “Visible behavior. Repeatable. Small enough to do even when you’re tired.”
Dustin started listing them, counting on his fingers:
“Monthly calls. Local meetings. Mutual aid. Documentation. Scripts. Sharing credible links. Bringing a friend. Doing the boring parts.”
Max’s voice softened, just slightly.
“So not ‘save the world.’”
Nancy nodded.
“Build the world,” she corrected.
Eleven’s eyes flicked toward the warped map again.
“The Upside Down can’t digest consistency,” she said. “It can only digest panic.”
Hopper crossed his arms.
“Then we stop feeding it.”
The Monster Tries a New Trick
The lights flickered.
Will grabbed the edge of the carpet like the floor might open.
“It’s here,” he whispered.
And then, like the world itself had a social media algorithm, everyone’s phones buzzed at once.
A wave of alerts.
A new outrage.
A new panic.
A new demand that you react right now.
Dustin groaned. “Classic.”
Robin read a headline over someone’s shoulder, eyes narrowing. “That’s not even accurate.”
Nancy’s face went cold and journalist-sharp. “It doesn’t need to be accurate. It needs to be loud.”
Steve stared at his phone like it might bite him.
“So what do we do?” he asked. “Because I can feel myself getting sucked in.”
Hopper stepped forward, grabbed a pen, and wrote on the board:
NO-SPIRAL PROTOCOL
Water
Put the phone down
Name the feeling
One concrete action
Rest
He capped the pen like it was a weapon.
“Do that,” he said. “Every time.”
Max stared at the list, then nodded like she was accepting a truth she didn’t want to need.
“What’s the concrete action?” she asked.
Eleven’s answer was immediate.
“Two-touch habit,” she said.
Dustin perked up. “Oh, I like that. That’s clean.”
Eleven held up two fingers.
“One contact action. One community action. Every month.”
Mike’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “That’s… doable.”
“That’s the point,” Joyce said. “If it’s not doable, it’s not a plan. It’s self-harm with a mission statement.”
Robin coughed-laughed. “Joyce!”
Joyce didn’t smile.
“I’m serious.”
The Gate at Midnight
The clock on the wall ticked louder than it should’ve.
Eleven stood in front of the Rightside Up map.
“This is how it closes,” she said.
She took a piece of tape and wrote JANUARY on it.
Then she walked to the map and stuck it over every state dot like she was sealing something shut.
“Not one hero,” she said.
“Fifty,” Dustin finished. “Fifty states.”
“Fifty thousand,” Lucas added.
“Fifty million,” Max said, eyes shining with something that looked like anger and hope braided together.
Hopper looked around the room.
“Here’s the truth,” he said. “We’re not going to win because we’re the strongest.”
He pointed at the flickering lights.
“We’re going to win because we’re the ones who keep showing up.”
Joyce’s voice softened into something like a toast.
“At midnight,” she said, “the monster will try to convince you nothing changed.”
Nancy shut her notebook.
“But we will know,” she said. “Because we will have documentation. We will have a plan and we will have each other.”
Will exhaled, a shaky little breath, and the tension in his shoulders eased, just a little.
“The gate doesn’t like flashlights,” he whispered.
Eleven nodded once.
“Good,” she said. “Neither do dictators.”
The clock struck midnight.
The lights held steady.
And for the first time in a long time, the basement felt… warm.
Not safe or finished.
But warm enough to fight from.
Substack only allows us so many poll options, if you are like Steve/Robin: “Logistics & morale” or Will/Max: “I’m healing but I’m still here” or another Stranger Things Character who fits the part, let us know in the comments:
Alas, at nearly 88 years of age, I admit to no longer being up to date with the newer items of interest. But no matter how it's framed, the concept to never give up defending freedoms in the face of any efforts to destroy them is important. It's tiresome to face the same feeble arguments used against us. We are haunted by failures in the past to keep our freedoms safe. Nevertheless, we don't sit down and give up. Continuing to stand in defiance of the ignorant influences attacking us is the honorable way to protect our future. So however you reach those who are needing encouragement to stand, not sit, go for it. History has a long, excellent memory.
I do not watch the show, but I did enjoy the story! Happy New Year to all!