#doofus discourse

[nancykali]

stranger things 3 was just less serious in a bad way you know. like even s2 addressed some serious issues with El, Will, Mike, Nancy, and Max’s characters. Like season 2 still cared about the characters’ journeys. But season 3 was just like an 8-hour-long action/comedy flick with no serious storylines about the characters. Will’s destroying Castle Byers was so out of place bc the season just decided to drop it real quick and never really conclude it lol. 

El’s isolation and the aftereffects of her abuse and her trauma was dropped in favor of showing her as just a besotted teen girl bonding with Max over paying Mike back for lying to her. His monopolizing of her time is framed as just Mike’s fault for some reason, when it was something she participated equally in.

 Hopper’s bad parenting was never addressed, it was just made worse and then sanctioned by the narrative by having El agree with Hopper.

Max’s abuse under B.lly was completely dropped. 

Joyce’s storyline was more interesting for her and didn’t have to do with a love-interest or her son, but it was just about the action, not her as a person.

Mike’s relationship with El, as it pertained to the dialogue and interaction with other characters, only had to do with him being sexist and extremely dumbed down for no reason. Lucas’s relationship with Max was much the same, he makes a sexist comment that Mike supports, and his bond with Max has no basis anymore. Mike, Lucas, and Max are all just immature teens in a relationship drama... it’s just shallow.

There was nothing serious or genuine in the main relationships except for the sad moving out scene after a three month time jump. Which felt like it came out of nowhere, bc Hopper’s relationship with El was mostly about his disrespect of her and Mike, and this was played for comedy. There was nothing realistic about it, and it made me not care about Hopper much at all. Like, seriously, this show forgot it’s characters were people with realistic issues that the past two seasons had cared about a lot. El’s abuse. Will’s insecurities and trauma. Mike’s PTSD and close bonds with his friends (remember he jumped off a cliff?). Max’s fear of B.lly and her being angry after her parents’ divorce and moving away from her biological dad. Lucas being such a great friend to Max and really understanding her? Trying to get closer to her and understand her without being toxic.

Like it was all gone, all of the heart of the show was just gone, and that’s why I keep saying some characters were OOC. Because what we’d cared about in the first 2 seasons when it came to the characters as individuals was just dropped entirely.

[nancykali]

If you think about it season 3 is mocking female empowerment to an extent because Hopper doesn’t listen to Joyce about any of her suspicions until the last moment, is jealous and condescending and sexist toward her (and this is all ok because she’s still attracted to him and wants to date him) and Max’s female empowerment trip on behalf of El is the main factor that puts El’s powers and safety at risk. Nancy’s sexism storyline is like a front to try hiding that none of the female characters are respected by the “hero” male characters in a watsonian or doylist sense lol.

[nancykali]

The Duffers: *give me season 3*

Me: I don’t want your garbage

[nancykali]

I did not fucking sign up for more seasons of Stranger Things for my favorite characters’ storylines to be solely about relationship drama. But that’s exactly what season 3 gave me with not just Joyce, but with El, Max (by virtue of El, she literally had no other plot for herself), and with Nancy. It’s not that they thought they were being feminist either, it’s like they took the laziest possible route to trick the layman into thinking the female characters got storylines about “being independent”, when actually every storyline for these female characters ended up insulting them.

[nancykali]

me @the duffers and co. who wrote a shit season 3: 

six instances they suck: 

writing Mike as OOC*

writing Lucas as OOC*

writing Will as OOC (El is a “stupid girl”; I’ll never forgive them for that)

giving B.lly more than his character warranted (not surprised) and making El a plot device to “redeem” him

Joyce making Will and El move away from their support system for a shitty ass reason that wasn’t even included in canon, so also OOC

Fucking up the last scene between mileven as well as making Mike and all mileven scenes OOC so fandom uses that as an excuse to say they don’t belong together 

*for teen drama that ignored all their previous characterization and interactions with El and Max respectively 

Please feel free to add your own versions of the six ways duffers and co. SUCK

[nancykali]

TL;DR The faux feminist agenda of season 3 literally made Nancy, El, and Max look selfish and the fandom would rather bash them than bash the writers for how they wrote both the female and male characters shallowly and badly in order to push a faux feminist message.

El shouldn’t have spied on the boys and she should have acknowledged she was wrong while Mike should’ve apologized for letting Hopper manipulate him into lying, NOT for monopolizing El’s time, bc El EQUALLY participated in spending all her free time with Mike. Mike and Lucas should have gotten writing focusing on undoing their sexist views, and Will’s sexism and disregard for El should’ve been addressed instead of giving the former petty teen drama and dropping Will’s emotional storyline entirely.

Nancy admitted she was wrong and Jonathan did too, but the writing didn’t let them really talk out their feelings and acknowledge the other person’s anxieties and hurts, making Nancy seemingly come out on top after the apology, when their argument was much deeper than that. Nancy knew and acknowledged to Jonathan she was wrong to compare him to their former misogynistic employers, and Jonathan acknowledged he was wrong to disregard her feelings, but the dialogue was so badly written, failed to address the problem of their economic disparity, and the scene was under two damn minutes in an elevator, so the audience wants to assume Nancy didn’t care about Jonathan’s economic situation just bc it didn’t get discussed in the short elevator scene - when she very clearly had acknowledged her mistakes in the earlier scene with Karen.

Max was not allowed to have a personality beyond helping El misbehave to get back at Mike in a petty relationship drama that undermined the depth Mileven used to have prior to season 3. She wasn’t allowed to have any storyline important to her character, her abuse by Billy undermined and ignored to get sympathy for Billy, who did nothing to deserve Max’s sudden inexplicable compassion for him in canon.

[nancykali]

I've a question: maybe i missed something, but why couldn't the Scoops troop or Jancy or the party just contact Joyce and/or Hopper at the end of episode 3 when they found out about the Russians in the mall and the flayed and the return of the mind flayer respectively? Cuz i think that would've made things a lot less difficult for them in the following episodes? Especially the scoops troop because they basically endangered their lives infiltrating a Russian base which they knew was dangerous.

From what I remember the scoops troop had no reason to think Joyce or Hopper would believe them, or that Russians had anything to do with the Upside Down business of the last two seasons. Same with jancy and the rats. Also bad plotting on the writers’ part - they were determined to keep the groups separate as if it’s a genius plot move like it was in s1, but was a detriment to s2 and s3’s writing.

[nancykali]

People reblogging a clickhole article about ST going on too long as if duffers and co knew how to write their show well after season 2 is a bit too much for me like why is anyone legit believing season 3 was well written and that the show hasn’t already gone downhill

They could have written a completely different show for season 3 that utilized much better plots and characterization, but they chose not to. People believing this show hasn’t already become 99% bad writing with season 3 makes no sense to me.