#stranger things criticism

[spirulasmain]

now that the whole fandom crashed and burned are we ready to talk about how vecna’s backstory was rooted in ableist tropes? can we talk about how his father was portrayed as a “misdiagnosed schizophrenic who’s delusions were actually REAL” is an extremely dangerous thing to be saying? is it time to unpack that?

[donuts-multifandom-hellhole]

Tfw you realize that Stranger Things is essentially going to be Netflix's Game of Thrones and we'll get spin-offs of it for years to come even though the main series ended

[ragdollins]

stranger things spoilers, complaining about the season 5 bullying representation. content warning for semi-detailed description of the vecna victims bodies

The bullying representation in season 1 of stranger things was literally phenomenal what the fuck happened making season 5 ??? why do the bullies sound like disney bullies now

it just feels so bad to see them go from a realistic depiction of how horrible bullying is, showing how all of them were bullied for things like race and disability (and mike was bullied for standing by his friends despite this) and how violent it got. they would've literally killed mike. and now in season 5 it feels like all of that changed, they're being bullied for. supporting someone who the town believes is a murderer. and the bullying is dustin just getting stereotypical insults like "freak" and then he gets beat up for putting a snake in someones locker. how did we go from the cast being bullied for being disabled/gay/black to being bullied for openly supporting a serial killer murderer who horrifically tortured people during the whole d&d cult thing in the 80s.

(while we the viewer obviously know eddie was innocent, literally what else is the town supposed to think. everyone is saying that d&d is a cult and the weird super senior ends up with a dead girl horrifically mutilated in his house, and then multiple other people die like that too when nobody can find where he is. and THEN the earth SPLITS IN 4 and he is nowhere to be seen. what could it possibly look like other than a cult)

just imagine how that would look in real life and say you swear you wouldnt think dustin is a horrible person for supporting eddie

why am i almost on the bullies side in season 4 & 5. theyve lost people to this 'cult' whose bodies were brutally mangled. jason lost his girlfriend and she had EVERY BONE IN HER BODY BROKEN with her eyes gouged out and she was found in eddies house. all of the bullies lost 2 friends, too. and the police arent doing shit and there's people hiding this 'serial killer'. someone you thought was your friend is defending your girlfriends killer. mind you when they're hiding eddie more people are dying, making it seem like while they're hiding him he's killing more people.

anyone who cared about the people lost would've wanted to kill eddie. i dont agree with jasons actions but i cant say i wouldn't do that shit too, especially with the context of it being the 80s and everyone was scared of cults.

we went from stranger things bullies being ableist, homophobic, and racist kids who got no consequences for almost killing a child. to a bunch of teens who have pretty valid reasons to want to beat the shit out of the main cast.

some people might've forgotten or missed it but jason dies in season 4 too. In the towns perspective, jason loses his best friend, his girlfriend, in such a brutal way to the hands of a cultist, and then dies trying to stop a girl from being killed in the same way by one of his ex-friends who has joined this cult.

also i fear i wouldve believed eddie was killing people too this guy was standing on lunch tables and selling drugs to teenagers meawhile he's like 20 in highschool 😭 i like his character a lot but he REALLY got a shit hand here

[nonbyler]

okay i know el deserved to die since she tried to steal mile from will but the duffers saying that she represented childhood magic and had to die for that is really messed up???? like i know ill grow up someday but i don't wanna let go of all the fun stuff! i wanna keep drawing and playing games and talking about the shows i like!!! just because ill have to pay taxes and stuff doesn't mean i don't want to have fun :(

[anonymousstrangerthongs]

the timeskip was the stupidest thing ive seen in ever. 18 months and everyone's having the same conflicts, they're all the same people and nothing happened until the 18th month that we're seeing it. if cg is real i wonder how they'd tackle that.

FYI THE SNOWBALL TO CALIFORNIA WAS 15 MONTHS. california to the crawl was 18.

?????????

they were on 50 different types of drugs making that decision.

.

[auracobaltblue]

I think what bothers me most about the duffers writing and the way they concluded certain plot lines in the final season is that a lot of actions/behaviours of characters that I expected to be addressed as such in the final season were either unaddressed at all or they painted as neutral or even morally good.

It’s not a problem when characters act in questionable ways or if they behave badly towards someone, as long as the show paints it to be morally wrong, provides a reasonable explanation to such behaviour, and the conflict (that is sometimes hidden from the audience) is being resolved. What’s wrong is when they portray morally ambiguous or even just bad acts as okay without any apology from said character or a proper resolution.

That is one of my biggest disappointments because there were so many things that I believed were intentionally being portrayed as bad, and in order to showcase how a person’s own internal conflict can lead to unintentional unhealthy external behaviour, only for them to be pushed as morally acceptable and provided no reason or explanation at the end, which just makes the entire conflict confusing because why did this happen at the first place?

[lunarelysian]

STRANGER THINGS S3: THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Been rewatching Stranger Things recently and it's made me realise S3 really was the beginning of the end for the show. Like, it's actually unwatchable sometimes; I've had to walk away from the TV while I was watching with my mother because I couldn't stand it anymore.

Firstly, the vibe is completely different from S1 and 2. Hawkins doesn't feel like a claustrophobic, judgemental small town where everyone knows each other's business. S3's mood is much lighter; it just doesn't have the seriousness and darkness as previous seasons. You can see this in the lighting, costuming and overall colour palette – everything's much more vibrant and colourful.

The dialogue doesn't have the same depth anymore. Every line has to be some smart, witty retort or joke and it gets incredibly annoying and unfunny after a certain point. There's nothing as intense as Joyce and Lonnie's argument or Hopper confronting the man at the bar.

But, possibly worst of all, is the character assassination. Hopper and Mike are such total assholes for no good reasons. I give Mike a little more leeway because he's a traumatised teenager, but the writers never address or explore this so I guess it just doesn't matter. Hopper really grinds my gears; he's what makes the show unwatchable. Him being overprotective of El and him getting over it was his arc last season, but he acts even worse in S3, straight-up threatening Mike. He treats Joyce awfully; I get that he's upset she stood him up, but he sulks like a spoiled child and completely invalidates her thoughts and feelings.

Meanwhile, many of the other characters are sidelined. Jonathan (who was one of the most interesting characters in S1) and Lucas are reduced to just Nancy and Max's boyfriends – a problem that continues into S4 and S5. This is also a problem for Mike. It's rather ironic that this is more of a problem for the male characters than the female ones when it's usually the other way round.

But the character who suffers from being sidelined the most is without a doubt Will. He was the centre of the show back in S1 and S2; everything revolved around him, even when he hardly had any screentime in the first season. Yet in S3 he's pushed to the background, only allowed to rub the back of his neck and warn the others about the Mind Flayer.

One last thing: the Russian plot is fucking ridiculous. It's completely unrealistic, dven in a sci-fi show. Also, I'm sick of the evil communists trope; it's been done to death.

S3 does have it's good parts: Billy is a terrifying villian (an incredible performance by Dacre Montgomery); Robin's coming out scene is beautiful; Max and El's friendship is fun and important for El's independence; and I like Jonathan and Nancy's argument and how it highlights gender and class differences. Unfortunately, the bad far outweighs the good.

[averytauntingletter]

tbh the biggest thing with the lack of main character death in stranger things is not the lack of main characters dying. its the lack of commitment they have to main characters dying.

like hopper? nope actually he didn't die. he's in russia. max? she was revived. jonathan and nancy? saved at the last second. steve? saved at the last second. i could go on. the duffers want to freak people out, to scare them and make them think their favs will die before ultimately just saying "nope nvm. they got saved". they want the emotional impact without the commitment and eventually that is what lowers the stakes. not the lack of main character death, but the fake outs, because eventually, it becomes the boy who cried wolf