...

i'm mika (he/him) and this is where i let my inner 16 year old express himself about a netflix series. i am now 22. years

[saccharinescorpion]

people are beefing over the results of the tumblr top 100 ships list and i know i shouldn’t encourage petty squabbling but i can’t deny some of this stuff is making me laugh

[lazybakerart]

billy is cremated and since neil left and susan is mentally miles away, max carries billy's ashes around with her because she doesn't know what to do with him, can't get to san diego to spread the ashes and billy hated hawkins so now max is That Weird Kid stashing her brother's remains in her backpack debating with a ziploc bag if he'd prefer the radioshack off the highway or what's left of the camaro-scraps in the junkyard, squishing the ashes around between classes and telling billy about all the drama between the nerds and her dates with lucas and how steve somehow picked out billy's jacket from all the other jackets from goodwill and how many bottles mom's gone through and they lost the house on cherry lane and neil just disappeared and that billy is such a dick to say sorry and fuck off and sometimes she thinks she can hear billy's annoying manic cackle telling her she's such a freak and she better learn stick because where he is they don't do lame shit like automatic.

[jonathangoodbyers]

i just think that if billy survived season 3 he wouldve prevented eddies death

[jonathangoodbyers]

after eddie fucked up their ladder into the portal billy would've just jumped from a chair to go back through, sprint after him, and then scruff him like a cat and drag him back. all while yelling at him. and then he'd make eddie apologize to dustin for scaring him like that.

[jonathangoodbyers]

i just think that if billy survived season 3 he wouldve prevented eddies death

[jonathangoodbyers]

rewatched the finale and its still mid.

- when doves cry is a good song but such a weird choice for the circumstances

- the finale is so slow and melodramatic. it did not need to be 2 hours long if theyd just cut some of the 'dramatic walking and staring' bits.

- mikes theory really is stupid bc it hinges on the idea that eleven used her powers to destroy the upside down but she didnt even do that. thats what the explosives were for. she was just standing there.

- all that crying was more from the cast being sad than being true to the characters imo

- seriously there is so much crying from everybody like chill out

- joyce was just there to stand and watch for the most part. she decapitated henry and married hopper and thats it. shes there the whole time but she doesn't.. do anything.

- also the trauma montage during henrys marie antoinette moment features that one shot of eddie doing his devil face and its SO out of place. everything else is screaming suffering dying bleeding etc and then eddie going 😈😛 and then it just cuts to him dying ??

- murray so cringe why didnt he die

[jonathangoodbyers]

isnt it kinda fucked up that the show ends with mike explaining his #GameTheory that El is still alive somewhere but that she can never come back. if he's right then it means they'll forever have to live with the knowledge that their friend is still out there somewhere but they can never see her again. if he's wrong, then he's just fucking up the collective grieving process by giving them the idea that she might come back one day, so they cant even properly get closure.

[jonathangoodbyers]

and you know what, it's not a great ending for Eleven either if she survived. Ive been thinking about her arc over the seasons and the way that her character developed and heres what ive come up with

season 1: e.t. era. girl who was raised in a lab, so divorced from normal life she might as well be an alien. doesnt know jackshit about the world.

season 2: still very strange but becoming more curious about the world and her place in it. discovers her family.

season 3: eleven gets to be herself, first taste of what it's like to be a normal teenager

season 4, first few eps: carrie white arc. she's in a new place with new people and finds out that not everyone will like her. she's behind her peers not just academically, but socially as well. she doesn't fit in, no matter how hard she tries. they think she's a freak and they relentlessly bully her until she snaps.

season 4, rest of the episodes: eleven the exposition machine. mostly there to show us what happened to henry, does some psychic fighting.

season 5: rambo and then she dies

basically, eleven has spent a huge chunk of the show just learning how to be a person. In Lenora, she finds out that she's not that good at making friends, she learns that she can't always make people like her. there's something really interesting going on here, because after the lab, she was usually treated with kindness and care. Hopper, Joyce, the whole party, they all wanted to help her, protect her, keep her safe from the bad people that wanted to take her away, but she's never had to deal with regular social life before. Living a regular life doesn't suit her.

Thats what I find so tragic about the idea that she's still alive and simply trying to live life on her own. She had this whole family of people who know what she's been through, who understand her, and who were invested in helping her, and now that's all gone. The idea that she's "free" now and that she can build a new life for herself is nice and all, but from what I saw, she isn't remotely ready for that kind of independence. She doesn't need someone to tell her what to do, but she does need a support system.

[jonathangoodbyers]

isnt it kinda fucked up that the show ends with mike explaining his #GameTheory that El is still alive somewhere but that she can never come back. if he's right then it means they'll forever have to live with the knowledge that their friend is still out there somewhere but they can never see her again. if he's wrong, then he's just fucking up the collective grieving process by giving them the idea that she might come back one day, so they cant even properly get closure.

[unicorns-are-so-real]

Could you imagine stonathan + will livijg in nyu and then 9/11 happens

[esoteric-kolerik]

Joe and Charlie keep unrelentingly ship baiting in the bts and it's very funny that consistently nobody cares but they just don't give up

men of focus, commitment and sheer fucking will

[esoteric-kolerik]

They made it happen the crazy bastards

[bebx]

I’m sorry but all these plot holes in Stranger Things 5 were insane. They said the finale would answer all the questions but not only did it barely answer anything, it just created dozens more

Also RIP to all those pregnant women in the lab who were literally blown up

[jonathangoodbyers]

i am wondering how they messed up this badly even though they had 3 whole years to think about it. but i do remember reading some trivia thing somewhere that said the duffer brothers had been approving vfx shots literal HOURS before the show premiered. which leads me to believe that they procrastinated the hell out of this season and had to rush to get it done on time and thus forgot a bunch of shit.

im also thinking that the first seasons were only good because they were still working with a mystery, so there was much more they could get away with. once they started explaining how it all worked, it gave everyone the opportunity to check the story for plotholes.

like wow guys you had one of the most successful and iconic shows of the decade and you fucked it up beyond belief. its not even controversial, everyone just dislikes this ending

[kassy-djomunson]

STONATHAN ENDGAME

[jonathangoodbyers]

before the final episodes air i wanna share my predictions:

- deaths: eleven and/or hopper

- obv they kill vecna and save the day

- byler will not be canon but itll be implied that they might get together later (we just won't see it)

- jonathan proposes to nancy and somehow that fixes their relationship

- max will be back and alive

- the steve/jonathan/nancy rivalry is gonna go nowhere

- i honestly dont think that a lot of characters are going to get killed off. they dont have the balls to do that.

- will is going to be more important to killing vecna than eleven will be

- the final battle is going to be an overly dramatic cgi slop fest and it will drag on for far too long

- running up that hill? more like running that song into the ground

- it wont be that good. 6/10 at best

[jonathangoodbyers]

finale's not out yet but i was right on the money for some of these. especially that it wouldnt be that good.

[jonathangoodbyers]

amendments:

- byler definitely not canon, but there might be a scene where mike and will talk about the coming out and will's crush on him (just as a resolution)

- kali is not making it. eleven maybe. im also starting to think will might die but idk if the duffers have like half a braincell left they wont do that

- the character arcs are mostly wrapped up, like nothing special is going to happen to basically anyone except will, eleven, maybe mike?

- potentially minor cliffhanger ending: vecna dies, the upside down + abyss are all gone but oooh when no one's looking theres gonna be a weird red glow or a tentacle or something that implies its not over yet so they can continue to milk this franchise until its all shrivelled up and dried out

- they are going to fill 2 whole hours with nothing but mindless action and cgi monsters. there wont be a twist ending, no surprises, no defying expectations: just exactly what you would expect from showrunners that are too scared to take any creative risks.

[jonathangoodbyers]

well i fucking called it. thoroughly mid. no surprises.

[jonathangoodbyers]

i feel bad for all the byler shippers because they're really setting themselves up for disappointment. personally i think it's pretty clear that the intention was only ever to have Will be gay and that Mike would always just be his straight best friend. Mike and Eleven aren't exactly soulmates either but at least the show has put effort into developing that relationship.

I have opinions about Mike and how he loves people and I might make a better post about it later, but the long and short of it is that he loves being needed by other people. That's why he was so concerned about Will in s1 and s2, but not in s3 and s4.

He's been worrying about Eleven the whole time because she is helpless in a certain way. Like, yeah she has superpowers and all, but she's also traumatized and was deprived of a normal childhood. He kinda loves her in the same way that you'd love a puppy that you saved off the street because it looked so sad. It's not a great basis for a romantic relationship, Eleven is just the first girl he ever really cared about. Maybe he loves Will and Eleven in the same way, but because El's a girl he's decided that what he was feeling must be romantic love. The boy was like 12 when they met so it's not all that weird for him to misinterpret those feelings. And with Eleven constantly being in danger they haven't really had the time to get sick of each other.

Anyway, to both Will and Eleven, Mike was their first real friend. Mike loves them both the same way (like a sick baby bird he has to nurse back to health), but he's not in love.

[wulfhalls]

we are now already in google doc conspiracy theory territory. these bitches really speed running this thing 😭

[wulfhalls]

they are coping really well I feel 👍

[json-derulo]

[filmtvcentral]

He saved no one. STRANGER THINGS 4.09 / 5.05

[monsterkill--er]

The "Coming Out" Scene I Would Have Accepted:

Versus What The Duffers Gave Us:

[jonathangoodbyers]

before the final episodes air i wanna share my predictions:

- deaths: eleven and/or hopper

- obv they kill vecna and save the day

- byler will not be canon but itll be implied that they might get together later (we just won't see it)

- jonathan proposes to nancy and somehow that fixes their relationship

- max will be back and alive

- the steve/jonathan/nancy rivalry is gonna go nowhere

- i honestly dont think that a lot of characters are going to get killed off. they dont have the balls to do that.

- will is going to be more important to killing vecna than eleven will be

- the final battle is going to be an overly dramatic cgi slop fest and it will drag on for far too long

- running up that hill? more like running that song into the ground

- it wont be that good. 6/10 at best

[jonathangoodbyers]

finale's not out yet but i was right on the money for some of these. especially that it wouldnt be that good.

[jonathangoodbyers]

amendments:

- byler definitely not canon, but there might be a scene where mike and will talk about the coming out and will's crush on him (just as a resolution)

- kali is not making it. eleven maybe. im also starting to think will might die but idk if the duffers have like half a braincell left they wont do that

- the character arcs are mostly wrapped up, like nothing special is going to happen to basically anyone except will, eleven, maybe mike?

- potentially minor cliffhanger ending: vecna dies, the upside down + abyss are all gone but oooh when no one's looking theres gonna be a weird red glow or a tentacle or something that implies its not over yet so they can continue to milk this franchise until its all shrivelled up and dried out

- they are going to fill 2 whole hours with nothing but mindless action and cgi monsters. there wont be a twist ending, no surprises, no defying expectations: just exactly what you would expect from showrunners that are too scared to take any creative risks.