what genuinely derails me every time i rewatch the byler rain fight is how shamelessly it mirrors the eyewitness confrontation, not just in dialogue, but in blocking and colour language. it’s almost academically brazen.
mike’s “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls” is already a near perfect echo of lukas’ “i’m not gay like you,” but when you layer in the staging? the physical distance, the angles, the emotional geography of one character cornered while the other lashes out in panic, it’s the same scene wearing a different wig. and the colouring? the cold, desaturated palette, the rain acting as both emotional amplifier and visual veil, the way the light isolates their faces in that same bruised, blue grey register. it’s not homage. it’s replication without interrogation.
eyewitness used that moment to dissect internalised homophobia and the violence of denial. it was purposeful, character driven, and thematically coherent. stranger things lifts the emotional architecture, the queer ache, the projection, the wound, but refuses to engage with the implications. they borrow the queer pain but not the queer narrative responsibility.
and the fact that mike never apologises? from a storytelling standpoint, it’s wild. you don’t stage a scene that charged, that visually and emotionally loaded, and then just… abandon the fallout. it’s an unresolved injury masquerading as character tension, and honestly, it’s infuriating.
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