I’m so confused by Stranger Things being featured for pride month on Netflix like. Huh??? Sure there are gay characters but yall literally queerbaited the audience what
they broke up the one queer couple that had off-screen and literally gave no reason for it other than that it would've been "unrealistic" for them to stay together, they only introduced one half of said ship in season four and she got like three minutes of screentime in total in the whole show and no arc or importance outside of that relationship whatsoever, and this relationship (between two girls) was used as a plot device for the shitty excuse of a sexuality arc of the only other queer character (a gay guy) who was pretty much just forced to accept that in order to find love and a sense of belonging he had to move away not only from his hometown but also from all of his friends and family, and also he'd just have to live with the fact that his feelings for his best friend that he had throughout the whole show never got addressed and the issues that came with it never got resolved and his possible future queer joy was left to the imagination even though his queer suffering was highlighted time and time again on-screen and he was basically reduced to it, leading to his character being sidelined in the show that literally started and was supposed to end with him... but whatever.
The queer rep in Stranger Things is what you could have expected to see in a "progressive" show that aired in 1990. A sapphic couple get together towards the end of the show, have extremely limited screen time, and predominantly exist to support a male character's arc.
And a gay guy whose sexuality isn't confirmed until the absolute last minute. Whose storyline ends with some straight people accepting him and a hint that maybe he'll get a boyfriend in the future. Which of course they can't show any development for onscreen, because they might scare the fragile little cishet white men in the audience.















