They Deserved Better Fanclub

+Aubrey. We ship Harringrove & Hellcheer in this house.

[imyoursandthatsitwhatever]

You know what I need?

I need Billy and Chrissy at some shitty high school party in the middle of the forest.

Jason takes Chrissy into the woods for some "alone time" and starts going too far. She's trying to push him off of her, screams out no, but then he's got a hand over her mouth and nobody can hear her screams. He's got his fly down, just about to pull off her skirt, when he feels himself being lifted into the air by his collar.

Chrissy pulls herself up onto her elbows, watching with wide eyes as Billy Hargrove picks Jason up like a sack of potatoes and swings him against a tree, arm across his throat.

"The girl said no, Carver," Billy breathes into Jason's face, nostrils flaring like an angry bull.

"Mind your business, Hargrove," Jason spits back, and Billy presses his arm into his windpipe until he goes purple.

"Tell her you're sorry," Billy instructs through gritted teeth.

Jason eventually gasps out a breathless sorry and Billy loosens his grip, letting Jason fall to the forest floor, clutching his throat and gasping for air.

Billy leans down and grabs Jason by his preppy hair, forcing him to look up at him. "You touch her again, you answer to me," he threatens in a vicious whisper. Jason squeezes his eyes shut and nods, scrambling away into the darkness as Billy turns his attention to Chrissy.

"You okay?" He reaches his hand out to her and helps her stand up. She's shaking like a leaf, her eyes still glassy with frightened tears.

"Y-Yeah. I'm okay. Thanks, Billy."

Billy sighs, grabbing a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lighting it, taking a long drag. He offers it to her but she politely declines.

Chrissy is still looking around the forest, as if she's paranoid that Jason's going to come back for round two.

Billy casts her a sidelong glance. "Look, I've been drinking, but a friend of mine is DD tonight. He could take you home if you want."

Chrissy nods frantically. "Yeah. I don't really want to be here anymore."

She's blushing in embarrassment and Billy plucks the cigarette out of his mouth, stomping it into the ground. "Carver's a piece of shit, but this stays between us. You have my word."

Chrissy looks relieved. "Thank you."

Billy nods like it's nothing and gestures for her to walk ahead of him. They make their way back to the clearing with the bonfire, tons of students laughing raucously and swigging back liquor and beer. Chrissy hangs back in the shadows while Billy strides forward, calling out, "Hey, Munson - Come here for a sec."

The crowd parts and Eddie Munson walks through, stumbling over a tree branch on the way. He jogs up to Billy, looking at him in confusion. "Hey. What's up?"

"Princess here needs a ride home. Can you help her out?"

Eddie nods immediately as Chrissy comes out of the shadow of a nearby tree. "Yeah, man. I can do that. You ready to go now?"

He looks at Chrissy and she nods, pursing her lips as she tries to keep the tears at bay. Eddie's expression immediately softens.

"Okay, my van's parked out on the road." Eddie gently touches her shoulder, guiding her forwards.

Billy watches them walk away together, a hell of a pair. He hears Chrissy laugh, probably from some dumb joke Munson made up, and hopes to God that son of a bitch acts on the crush he's been harboring for about 7 years.

"Is that--?"

"Yup."

Steve hands Billy a beer and they both watch as Eddie opens his van door for Chrissy, bowing as she gets in.

Billy grimaces. "Jesus, he's a fucking nerd."

Steve laughs. "He also loves Metallica, so you can't really fault him on his taste." He pauses, watching as Eddie's van drives away. "Rumor has it, someone scared Jason Carver so bad, he left early."

Billy takes a swig of his beer. "Doesn't sound like my problem, Harrington."

"Well, whoever put him in his place, I'm sure Chrissy appreciated it. Eddie, too."

Steve gives him a pointed look, clinking their beer bottles together before striding back to the party. Billy watches Steve's ass walk all the way back to the fire before following. He figures he's earned it.

*

When Billy hears the rumors on Monday about Chrissy & Jason's breakup, he can't help but smile to himself--Especially when he sees Chrissy at Eddie's locker later, returning the leather jacket he'd loaned her with way too big of a smile.

Just call him a fuckin' matchmaker.

[constants--and--variables]

" I didn't run away this time. "

[a-strange-inkling]

[mwshaaa]

Requiem

[byjove]

my knight dismissed me as his squire for shrieking “DIVA DOWN!” when he was unhorsed on the battlefield

[just-my-latest-hyperfixation]

[narrativelogicofbyler]

as someone with a BA Hons in film and television, the stranger things finale doesn’t just fail, it collapses in a way that feels almost hostile to the medium it’s operating in. it’s not merely disappointing; it’s a text that behaves as though cinematic language is optional, as though the audience won’t notice when the scaffolding of narrative, visual logic, and emotional coherence has been ripped out and replaced with noise. the finale is infuriating because it’s not the failure of ambition, it’s the failure of discipline. it’s the failure of remembering that television is a visual, temporal, emotional art form, not a content dump.

the pacing alone is enough to make any film student’s eye twitch. it’s not just uneven, it’s structurally incoherent. the episode moves with the gracelessness of something that was assembled backwards, as if the editors were handed a pile of scenes and told to “make it feel big.” scenes that should be taut and urgent are stretched into shapelessness, draining them of tension, while moments that require space, genuine emotional reckonings, character shifts, thematic closures, are bulldozed through with the impatience of a show that no longer trusts its own characters. it’s the kind of temporal mismanagement that betrays a total misunderstanding of rhythm, escalation, and narrative breath. it’s enraging because pacing is not an aesthetic choice; it’s the spine of storytelling, and here, the spine has snapped.

visually, the finale is a betrayal of everything stranger things once understood about cinematic craft. the visual grammar is so devoid of intention it borders on insulting. blocking is treated as an afterthought, characters stand in clumps, deliver exposition, and move only when the plot requires it, never when the emotional stakes demand it. there’s no spatial logic, no visual metaphor, no sense that the placement of bodies in space communicates anything beyond “we needed them in this shot.” the camera, once a tool of interpretation, has been reduced to a passive observer. it doesn’t shape meaning; it merely records. it’s the kind of visual laziness that would get ripped apart in a second year seminar on cinematic language.

the upside down, once a textured, atmospheric environment with its own internal logic, now looks like a half rendered digital void. the lighting is so flat and indiscriminate it erases depth rather than sculpting it. the colour palette, once symbolic and deliberate, has devolved into a muddy wash that communicates nothing. it’s infuriating because the show used to understand how to build a world visually, how to make a space feel alive, uncanny, oppressive. here, the world feels like an asset pack. it’s not a place; it’s a backdrop.

and then there’s the CGI, which is such an absolute farce it genuinely makes me question whether the reported 400 million plus budget was ever real. because if that number is accurate, if that much money truly passed through this production, then where did it go. it certainly didn’t go into rendering environments that look finished, or creatures that look integrated into the frame, or effects that interact with light in a way that obeys even the most basic principles of visual grammar. the digital work is so inconsistent, so plasticky, so embarrassingly weightless that it actively breaks immersion every time it appears. it’s not just bad; it’s unfinished. it looks like placeholder VFX that somehow made it into the final cut.

and that’s what’s infuriating: stranger things used to understand how to blend practical texture with digital augmentation. it used to know that CGI is not a spectacle but a tool, one that must be grounded in lighting, composition, and physical interaction to feel real. here, the CGI floats on top of the image like a sticker. it has no mass, no shadow logic, no integration with the environment. it’s the kind of digital work that would get flagged in a second year compositing critique, the kind where the lecturer pauses the frame and says, “okay, let’s talk about why this doesn’t sit in the shot.”

the finale’s effects don’t just look cheap, they look careless. they look like the product of a pipeline that was rushed, under directed, or simply not given the visual foundations required to succeed. and when you pair that with the astronomical budget, the anger becomes sharper. because if the money didn’t go into the CGI, and it didn’t go into the cinematography, and it didn’t go into the production design, and it certainly didn’t go into the writing, then where did it go. into what. because it’s not on the screen.

the editing is where the finale’s collapse becomes undeniable. cross cutting is a tool of tension, of thematic juxtaposition, of emotional layering. here, it’s used like a blunt instrument. scenes are chopped apart before they can develop, emotional beats are severed mid gesture, and the finale’s attempts at simultaneity feel like a desperate attempt to juggle too many threads without understanding how they’re meant to interact. the temporal logic is so broken it feels like the episode is happening in several different timelines that never quite sync. it’s not suspenseful, it’s disorienting in the least intentional way. it’s the kind of editing that screams “we had too much footage and no idea how to shape it.”

and then there’s the writing, the part that makes the anger feel personal. character arcs that have been nurtured for years are tossed aside with a level of carelessness that borders on contempt. motivations shift not because of internal change, but because the plot demands it. themes the show has spent entire seasons exploring, grief, repression, identity, connection, are abandoned in favour of hollow spectacle. it’s emotionally dishonest in a way that suggests the writers no longer trust their own characters or their audience. the finale doesn’t resolve anything; it simply stops pretending to care.

dialogue becomes a blunt instrument. characters say exactly what they feel, or worse, say what the show wants the audience to feel, without any of the visual or performative support that would make those feelings land. there’s no subtext, no nuance, no trust in silence or gesture. it’s anti cinematic in the most literal sense: it treats words as the only vehicle for emotion, then still manages to make those words ring hollow.

the performances, which should be the saving grace, are stranded. you can see the actors reaching for emotional truth, but the direction gives them nothing. scenes that should breathe are suffocated by an overbearing score that tries to brute force emotion through sheer volume. it’s musical coercion, not storytelling. the finale doesn’t trust the human face, the most powerful tool in cinema, so it drowns it in noise.

and that’s the heart of the anger: the stranger things finale is noise. loud, empty, self important noise. it confuses scale with significance, nostalgia with meaning, and spectacle with storytelling. it’s a finale that performs the idea of a finale without understanding the craft required to make one resonate. it’s a show imitating its own legacy, hollowing itself out in the process.

from a film and television perspective, it’s not just flawed, it’s infuriating. it’s a text that collapses under even the most basic analytical scrutiny. it’s a finale that betrays its own characters, its own themes, and its own medium. it’s the kind of failure that makes you want to take the episode into a seminar room and dissect it frame by frame, not out of curiosity, but out of sheer disbelief that something this fundamentally broken made it to screen.

[lovebillyhargrove]

Billy/harringrove In another universe saga, p. 18

[lovebillyhargrove]

They literally had five minutes and several seconds of screen time together. What if they had 5 more.

Billy/harringrove In another universe saga, p. 17

[lovebillyhargrove]

Billy/harringrove In another universe saga, p.12

[amberstruck]

max and lucas (circa 1990) taken by mike 📸

[bitterbound]

Summer edition Harringrove ❤️

ТГК: @bitterbound

[nthegg]

Am I dreaming or is that you, Harrington?

[aggressiveviking]

coffee shop AU for my first fill for @harringrovewinterbingo - B3

[harritudur]

“that girl left that van smiling…”

(or just my take of what could have happened between Ediie & Chrissy during their ride to his trailer 🚙👀 yeah- she raises her knees to his hand to tease him just a lil’ hehe 🔥)

[leporinelou]

but did your fav decide to hold back an interdimensional monster with his bare hands because he thought about his mama

[maryjackpot]

Eddie never watches the game.

[fivendandelions]

MAX AND WILL + Hugs