the lurker becomes the poster...... @2xsin - Tumblr Blog

Wuhluhwuh

#lesbian steddie is the best steddie hands down

i think i don't care anymore 🫠

#this happened to me with vld.#bad finale just turned me tf away 😭#i genuinely had so much hope for s5 I actually started interacting with the fandom instead of being a lurker #i should've know better a long time ago #ive tried to hold onto what little connection i have to this show but i think im pretty much just gonna finally move on

fresh-and-funky

stranger things would be so good if it was good

#see that's what i'm saying

the-lost-seven-7

I still love this moment

narrativelogicofbyler

with my degree we went deep into queer media history, and that’s exactly why byler makes me so furious. because what the duffers did isn’t just “bad writing”, it’s part of a long, documented pattern in film and television where queer desire is mined for emotional intensity and then discarded the moment it threatens the heteronormative centre.

queer cinema has always had to fight for scraps. for decades, queer characters were only allowed to exist through subtext, tragedy, or metaphor. the “coded longing” era wasn’t an aesthetic choice, it was survival under censorship. filmmakers used lighting, blocking, colour, and performance to signal queer desire because they weren’t allowed to say it outright. that visual grammar became a language of its own.

and the duffers used that language. deliberately. expertly. cynically.

the slow push ins, the pink golden washed lighting, the confession proxy scenes, the emotional monologues framed like romantic declarations, these aren’t accidents. they’re techniques with a lineage. they come from decades of queer filmmakers carving out space where they weren’t permitted any. they come from a history of audiences learning to read between the lines because the lines were forbidden.

so when people say “it was the 80s” or “realistically it wouldn’t happen,” i want them to understand the irony. queer cinema of the actual 80s was already pushing boundaries. already telling stories of longing, rupture, confession, community, and survival. already refusing to be erased. pretending that a queer coming of age arc would be “unrealistic” is not only historically wrong, it’s homophobic in the exact same way the old censorship codes were.

and narratively? thematically? structurally? byler made more sense than anything else in the show. the entire premise was “the outcasts,” and yet the one queer outcast with the clearest emotional arc gets shoved aside so the creators can maintain a heteronormative status quo they themselves destabilised through their own cinematic choices.

that’s why i call the duffers liars. they didn’t just queerbait, they appropriated the emotional labour of queer cinematic history. they used the tools queer filmmakers developed under oppression, they used the audience literacy queer people were forced to cultivate, and then they pretended none of it meant anything.

they wanted the ache without the accountability. the longing without the love. the queer emotional intensity without the queer story.

#forever mad about this.....

waveoftheocean

battling my inner demons (coloring) once again 👊

kaleidoscopicbee

lucas sinclair, who is a dark-skinned black man in the middle of nowhere indiana

lucas, who most definitely has been othered all of his life

lucas who, even when surrounded by people he trusts, so rarely sees himself reflected in them

lucas, who has always been an outcast in ways the others aren’t, in ways that are more – god knows he’s been called much worse things than freak

lucas, who has seen people avoiding his touch, crossing the street when he’s walking, distrusting him like it’s a default setting

lucas, who knows what it’s like to do everything right and still be looked at like he’s wrong

lucas, who hears will saying he’s not like them and gets it in ways the others can’t

lucas, who knows will is going to experience all of the same things – the othering, the distrust, the mistreatment, the slurs, the being avoided like the mere touch of you could kill, the dangers that come with just being – despite the differences in their circumstances

lucas who, even if he’d ever felt some kind of way about queerness, would grab that feeling and squeeze the life out of it because that right there is will. his will.

his in the way all of lucas’ people are his. his to carry when unconscious, his to tackle out of the way, his to use himself as bait, his to take a slashing to the chest, his to jump over tables and traps and interdimensional monsters. his to protect, his to kill for, his to die for.

lucas sinclair who of course is the first one to say you won’t ever lose me – who also means i’m here, i love you, there’s nothing wrong with you, i’ll protect you, i’ll stand by you, i understand you

#thinking about this always #lucas sinclair my beloved

it just occurred to me that in s3 when hopper opens el's bedroom door to find her and max reading, it's a direct parallel from when he opens el's bedroom door to find el and mike also reading (after they were kissing n whatnot). is that why hopper is just standing there in the doorway like 🧍‍♂️? he thought something gay was goin on??

#elmax #stranger things

domi--mi

just remembered all over again how this happened and then seemingly had no impact on their relationship because mike went on to ignore and dismiss Will for the next 2 seasons and they didn't even have the decency to put this moment into Mike's trauma montage that played when Vecna was being killed