#erica tells Dustin he Has to watch this one episode with her and threatens him and doesn’t explain why and Dustin is like :// okaaay fine

[snazzyscarf]

rip erica sinclair and dustin henderson they’re not dead but they would’ve loved to grow up watching my little pony: friendship is magic in the early-mid 2010s

[artemisrae]

have you watched season 4 of stranger things yet! i’d love your thoughts

Hi friend! I just finished it late last night because I was waiting for the whole thing to be released and my parents came to visit for the holiday.

Also I got COVID so here are my cold medication influenced thoughts in bullet point form:

- The Duffers really said "Hey you know El's awful tragic backstory? Okay what if it was worse?"

- Eddie Munson has the most precious soulful baby eyes I've ever seen on a dude.

- The fact that the Byers clearly see El as their sibling is just. My heart can't take it.

- The further we get in the more I like characters from when they were introduced. I had little interest in Jonathan even after season 2 - loved him in this season. Same with Erica, who grated on me last season and Murray who just bugs me when he starts in on people's love lives and telling them to sleep together. But I really liked what they all got to do this season.

- Some of the retconning is ehhhhhhh but they have another season to refine it.

- The Hawkins crew was the most dynamic and had the best material to work with.

- I'm not touching the shipping of Mike and Will, but I will say it's weird he couldn't even hug Will? When has he ever been afraid to hug Will??

-Mike and El's fight was heartbreaking because it boils down to two people with very low self esteem speaking different love languages. Mike has grown up with Karen and Ted as his example of a functioning relationship- even for a marriage of convenience, as Nancy has pointed out way back in Season 1- but no matter what their actual feelings are, you know what they both do? They provide. Ted has a good enough job that Karen doesn't have to work and Mike still gets all kinds of games, books, figurines, and electronics. Karen loves having the kids friends over and feeds everyone. There's obviously stuff happening beneath the surface but my point is: Mike was shown that you take care of people you love. He's a gangly bullied kid who is obviously terrified of what happens if El decides she doesn't need him - or worse, finds someone better. Except that El is an abused kid raised devoid of loving human contact that isn't meant to manipulate her in some way. Then out of the lab her initial education in human socialization is... television. Soap operas. Old movies. So yeah. She needs and wants verbal reinforcement. Which is frightening to Mike. It's something that real couples struggle with, and it also makes sense that these two teenagers wouldn't have the emotional maturity to be like "let's talk about love language."

- Max and Lucas were the MVPs this season. I always liked them but not really beyond a "high school sweethearts" sort of way but watching them in that last episode was a gut punch. Dustin talking to Eddie's uncle was also a moment of Acting. Definitely got wibbly along with Dustin.

-There was too much torture. But thats a personal ick of mine, I have a pretty low tolerance of it in media.

-I do not give the tiniest whiff of a fuck about Billy and find it notable that the two "happy" moments they could flash back to for Max was 1. When he died and 2. Him acknowledging her after she threatened him with bodily harm to get him to leave her alone. I'm glad they put some context for it in Max's monologue because I was NOT buying anyone being sad for that racist abusive jerk who only got flayed because he was on his way to fuck Max's friend's mom.

-I loved Suzee and the entire scene in Utah. Loved that she wasn't a one off for a musical gag in season 3. Loved feral child Cornelius even though I want him nowhere near my own house. Loved Argyle instantly and immediately falling in love with Eden. Loved Eden being like "Please attempt to murder her for me thanks." All of it was great 10/10.

- Hey uh.... anyone gonna check on Owens?

-Overall I liked it more than Season 3. But Season 2 will always be the gold standard for me.

Thanks for asking! I think this is mostly coherent. Hope you are well friend!

[sulietsexual]

Could you elaborate why you were dissapointed in season 3 of Stranger Things? I haven't seen it yet but feel free to spoil stuff, already saw tons of gifsets on here.

royalweirdonj said:Thoughts on Stranger Things 3?

Okay, so I have some mixed feelings about this season, so I’ll talk about both the good and the bad and why I was ultimately disappointed with this season (at least in part). So we’ll start with …

What I Liked 

First and foremost, I absolutely loved what they did with El���s character development and characterisation this season. El is a character who hasn’t really had the chance to grow or develop because she’s always so isolated and/or going through so much trauma. In Season 1 she was basically just a traumatised child and in Season 2 Hopper kept her very isolated and her weird sojourn to find her mother and her sister didn’t feel authentic to me. But this season finally gave her the opportunity to start to develop her own sense of self and I loved that, especially the medium through which she did so, ie her friendship with Max.

We’ve all wanted this friendship since Season 2 but I don’t think that any of us realised how glorious it would be. El is a reserved and unsure character (when she’s not being pushed to save everyone) and so she really needed someone like Max in her corner, someone who was loud and assertive, who would stand up for her when she couldn’t stand up for herself and who could show her how to be more dominant and make her own boundaries and rules. I loved the shopping montage, particularly the part where Max helped her pick out clothes that felt like her (”Not like Hopper or Mike, but like you.”), as well as their sleepovers, the way they investigated everything together and the bond which formed from them being the only girls in a group of boys who didn’t always understand each other. It was a really sweet and organic friendship and I’m so glad that the Duffers decided to develop it.

And speaking of friendships, I also adored the dynamic between Steve and Robyn, the way the show turned what we all thought would be a romantic relationship on its head and instead turned it into a sweet and snarky friendship between two people who genuinely liked one another. Robyn herself was a great character and her presence on the show greatly improved the overall tone. I loved how smart and quirky and snarky she was and Mia Hawke really made the character feel authentic. And I really loved the subversion of her and Steve’s relationship and her coming out scene. Steve Harrington proved what an absolute cinnamon roll he is with his reaction to her coming out; I loved that his only response was to tell her that she needed better taste in women and I loved that in the Three Months Later sequence they were still besties looking for jobs in the same place so they could stick together. 

Steve Harrington remained the awesome character he’s always been. Loved that his and Dustin’s friendship is still so intact and that they still care about one another so much. Also loved him sneaking the other kids into the movies on a regular basis. And I liked how the series demonstrated that while he isn’t book smart, he’s smart in other ways, such as figuring out where the music on the recording came from or using the vial of green substance to jam the elevator door open. It shows that he knows how to think on his feet and that he pays attention to his surroundings and is street-smart. I love what they’re doing with his character, allowing him to continue to grow into a more kind, smart and compassionate character with every season.

Also, I loved seeing Science Teacher Scott Clarke again! I missed him in Season 2, so seeing his epic reappearance was amazing! Wish he’d been in more than just one episode.

Characters aside (although, I should mention that I love Joyce Beyers more with every season, her “Mom Voicing” the Government was brilliant and I liked that they touched on her grief over Bob’s death) but that aside, the season felt really well-paced. Only having eight episodes meant that the story progressed quickly and there wasn’t a lot of filler, which was good. There was also so much excitement and action going on that it was very easy to binge-watch the whole season. That being said, I feel like the season changed direction mid-way through, which brings me to …

What I Didn’t Like

Following on from the previous paragraph, I feel like Season 3 started as a character-based season and then quickly switched to a plot-driven season (and on an added note, I was kind of annoyed that the plot this season was literally the same as last season ie the Mind Flayer has taken over someone close to one of the party members and they have to close the gate to stop them - again. Also, the subplot with the Russians was kind of lame). 

There was so much characterisation laid down in the first half of the season which was then kind of forgotten about in the second half once the action got underway and then was never resolved. Will spends most of the first three or four episode lamenting his lost childhood and desperately trying to re-connect with his friends. It’s heartbreaking to see how much he craves the days before everything, the days where he felt safe, where his friends were there for him and not concerned with their romantic entanglements. It was actually a really interesting look into Will’s character and how he’s desperately clinging to the old days but once the Mind Flayer comes into play, this is pretty much dropped. Aside from a half-hearted attempt from Lucas to bridge the gap, Will’s disconnect from his friends and the fact that they’re growing up faster than he is and therefore growing apart from him is never addressed again, leaving this particular thread unfinished. 

Hopper’s characterisation and his storyline regarding being a parent to a thirteen-year-old was also left unresolved. Overall, I didn’t love Hopper’s characterisation this season. He seemed overly aggressive and I really didn’t like that he got so drunk when Joyce didn’t turn up for their date. He’s obviously having communication issues with El, and the opportunity to resolve these issues died along with him. His jealousy over any man who even talked to Joyce was irritating and I didn’t like that he essentially threatened a fourteen-year-old kid and seemed pleased with himself when said kid then hurt his daughter (because it meant that he got his way and that’s all that mattered). I understand why he was so alarmed with El and Mike spending so much time together but the fact that this never got resolved in an adult manner irritated me. And his death, well, we’ll talk about that soon because that pissed me off beyond belief.

Billy’s character needed more depth. I did feel a bit sorry for him this season and he definitely felt like a better character than the previous season, but any development he had (including his relationship with Max) happened offscreen, so it was hard to believe that Max would grieve for him so much after everything we saw him do to her in Season 2. Obviously things have gotten better between the two of them and Billy himself is nowhere near as gross as he was (although he’s still a dick) but we never got to see this growth/development, so it was hard to really empathise with his character or feel grief over his passing, even for Max. 

Nancy’s character felt (once again) kind of useless this season and her storyline was (once again) so separate from the main storyline that I really feel that it could have been removed entirely and it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. Also, I get that we were supposed to feel that she was being treated in a sexist manner by the men at the newspaper but, I mean, she was only an intern. She wasn’t there as a reporter, she was working as a intern and it’s an intern’s job to run menial tasks such as getting coffee, picking up lunch and doing boring tasks like photocopying and filing and the bad treatment she received seemed to be based more off her intern status than her gender. Also, what did she think, that she would become some groundbreaking reporter based off a summer job with zero experience or writing credentials? Lastly, Jonathan barely felt like a character this season, his sole reason to exist seemed to be to prop up Nancy’s storyline and I hated that after Jonathan delivered that epic (and entirely true) speech about how Nancy didn’t understand the lower class and how he needed the job and wasn’t born with the same silver spoon in his mouth that she was, he then turned around and apologised and said that he was wrong (which he totally wasn’t). Yet another example of Nancy treating a boyfriend like crap and getting away with it, but hey, “feminism”!

I also didn’t really like the dynamic they wrote between Joyce and Hop. It was good at first, with him going to her for advice on how to deal with El and Mike. But once she “stood him up” and they developed that weird snarky “banter”, I found myself growing tired of the dynamic. Also, bringing back the creepy conspiracy theorist from Season 2 to tell them they needed to bang (like he did with Nancy and Jonathan) was, again, so annoying. I hate when characters are told that they have feelings for one another, rather than developing naturally. So yeah, never been much of a Jopper shipper and this season made me even less so. Bring back Bob!

Oh, and lastly, Erica Sinclair is the most annoying little snot of a character. I didn’t find her entertaining at all. She was rude, obnoxious and mean, horrible to pretty much every character, took advantage of Scoops tasting policy while acting like an entitled brat and I just honestly could not stand her. I wish they’d left her out of the Steve/Robyn/Dustin dynamic, she was just such an unnecessary addition.

What I Hated

So, characterisation issues and weird bait-and-switches between it and plot aside, there were a couple of aspects to the new season which I truly hated.

First of all, this season was unnecessarily violent. Like, I get that there’s been violence in this show before, but it’s always been stylized violence, usually aimed at bad guys and quite subdued. But this season? Wow. Starting with that horrible imagine spot where Billy envisions bashing Karen Wheeler’s head in, it just never let up. Having grown men savagely beat up teenagers was way more than I needed to see and the violence often seemed really gratuitous and unnecessarily drawn-out. Steve’s torture at the hands of the Russians was really hard to take, especially because it went on for so long. I hated having to watch them punch Robyn in the face. Jonathan’s brutal beat-down from the Flayed Editor of the paper was horrible to watch and, once again, went on for way too long. Also, watching Flayed!Billy literally choke, punch and smack thirteen-year-old El around was horrifying. Also, his taking of Heather (and later on his attempt to take El) was incredibly rape-y, what with him leaning over them while they were incapacitated and telling them “Don’t move/struggle”, “It will be over soon”. Totally uncalled for and incredibly hard to watch. Maybe I’m oversensitive but I honestly don’t think that the show needed to display that level of violence.

The character assassination of Karen Wheeler continued, with her and her creepy middle-aged mom friends sitting poolside to perv on a eighteen-year-old kid. Imagine if the genders were reversed and it was four middle-aged men perving on a young girl? Also, why would she even consider sleeping with a teenage boy? Sigh. Remember when Karen Wheeler was a concerned and caring parent, who was strong enough to yell at government officials when they wouldn’t tell her what was going on and dropped by a grieving friend’s house with food and comfort? At least she and Nancy had that sweet scene in which she was encouraging to her daughter, but the rest of the time she was just useless and didn’t even know where her kids were.

Speaking of which, why did this show separate Joyce and Hop from their kids for so long? And why on earth would Joyce and Hop be willing to be separated from their kids for so long, after everything they went through the previous year? It felt so OOC for them to not even be suspicious that they hadn’t spoken to either of their children for at least three days, just taking the word of other parents that their kids were alright. 

And lastly, the thing which pissed me off the most and actually made both me and my husband instantly switch off from the show and feel like we had just wasted eight hours watching this season, the death of Jim Hopper.

I know, I know, the Stinger maybe hinted that he was still alive. I know we didn’t see a body. I know that there were hints of time travel in future seasons and that Jim Hopper possibly isn’t dead. But you know who doesn’t know this? The characters. And I hate that. I hate that El has now lost her father, less than two years after finally finding one. I hate that she’s now alone, separated from Mike and while, yes, Joyce will take care of her the best she can, it’s never going to be the same. I hate that Joyce now has to suffer through the heartbreak of losing yet another man she had feelings for, less than a year after she lost the first. I hate that she made the decision to move away (even though I understand it) which separated her kids from their relationships and removed El from the one person who still loves her with all his heart. I hate that the season ended on such a downer, with such loss and tragedy and sadness. It really brought down the whole season for me and left me with a horrible, sad and empty feeling and not at all looking forward to more seasons because of all the crap the characters have gone through.

Whew. That got really long. Hope this was coherent! 

[zalrb]

What’s your opinion on Stranger Things S3? Did you like it? Did you think it was better than the past two seasons?

I still found season 3 boring and slow-moving with a lot of scenes and dynamics that I just fundamentally didn’t care about. It wasn’t better or worse than any of the seasons before it, it felt exactly the same,which is the odd thing about Stranger Things because this season is supposed to be about change and how friendships form and fall apart, growing up, different interests but the only thing that really indicated to me that things were different was the fact that the main cast are growing up. Stranger Things feels like being stuck in the same day over and over again, I almost feel like I’m being held hostage to the episodes that feel SO long because in 60 minutes, maybe 5 minutes of that actually show something vaguely interesting?

Like I mentioned, I did like Erica and Dustin together, they’re good scene partners and have a charming chemistry but at the same time, as another blog already mentioned, Erica is still the sassy black girl stereotype just like how the black nurse at the front desk of the hospital was the stereotypical “mmhmm” sassy black woman/nurse so I watched their scenes amused but also like

I don’t care about Joyce and Hopper and their apparent tension, particularly when they don’t actually have that kind of chemistry, it felt forced and typical and trope-y.

I didn’t care to see Max and El shop and the whole thing about that friendship is that instead of it coming about because Hopper was the stereotypical father figure who threatens the boy interested in his daughter, I would’ve rather Max just ask her to hang out one day and El mentions that she needs to meet up with Mike and Max tell her that she should have friends outside of her boyfriend. Just like Lucas and Mike trying to figure out how to talk to girls and how they’re basically another species, like that’s not a fresh take on anything, and shows have done that conversation or conversations like that to DEATH so it felt like I was watching an amalgamation of different sitcoms and that’s not interesting to me so I forwarded through most of those scenes. I do not care about their love lives.

Nancy and Jonathan. I get what they were trying to do there because Nancy has to work in a sexist environment that Jonathan doesn’t understand (and I feel like the show was trying to say that he doesn’t care to understand) and they frame Jonathan as in the wrong but frankly, I ended up sympathizing with his points more about the fact that Nancy has privileges he doesn’t have, he needs the job to pay for college tuition and to help his mother with the mortgage and as an intern they both have to pay their dues to which she just flippantly replies, “Oh great, the Oliver Twist routine” and she later admits that she wasn’t even thinking about him, she just needed to be right. And I think they could’ve been nuanced about that entire thing. First of all, name the fact that it’s sexism instead of just dancing around it because why introduce it if you’re not actually going to talk about it. Second of all, admit the fact that Nancy IS privileged and Jonathan doesn’t just have a chip on his shoulder. There are levels and layers to privilege and this just felt superficial and sloppy.

Like I mentioned before, I didn’t like or dislike Robin, she was just another character to me. She and Steve had good verbal sparring.

[constantviewings]

Stranger Things 3 - Full Season Review

Stranger Things is an American science fiction horror web television series created, written and directed by the Duffer Brothers and released exclusively on Netflix. The third season, titled Stranger Things 3, premiered on July 4 2019.

Spoiler warning for seasons 1, 2 and 3 of Stranger Things.  Also, this review is extremely long. Don’t say I didn’t warn you...

It’s 1985 in Hawkins, Indiana, and summer’s heating up. School’s out, there’s a brand new mall in town, and the Hawkins crew are on the cusp of adulthood. Romance blossoms and complicates the group’s dynamic, and they’ll have to figure out how to grow up without growing apart. Meanwhile, danger looms. When the town’s threatened by enemies old and new, Eleven and her friends are reminded that evil never ends; it evolves. Now they’ll have to band together to survive, and remember that friendship is always stronger than fear.

What I Did Like:

Production Design The visual aesthetic of this season is unlike either of the previous seasons. The garish colours and abundance of neon lighting firmly cements the shows’ events in retro culture. This season also incorporates one of my favourite film-making tropes, juxtaposing the good and bad with extreme contrast (e.g. playing an upbeat song over harsh imagery).

Character beats are given the appropriate amount of significance What I mean by this is, that at several points throughout Stranger Things 3 expositional beats for several characters aren’t made into bigger events than necessary. Three examples of this include both Will and Robin being ‘revealed’ as gay and Will and Jane (Eleven) professing their love for each other.

Formatting and Storyline Progression This season follows four separate storylines that converge to three midway through the season. All of these storylines are weaved together in a way that you can tell which events are happening simultaneously and which aren’t. Though this format does present a slight issue, as the episodes progressed and more was happening I found it increasingly harder to know how much time had passed between scenes; this was most prevalent with Steve, Robin, Dustin and Erica in the underground bunker.

Dacre Montgomery’s Performance When Billy was introduced in Season 2, he was a mostly two-dimensional character with the slightest backstory with his abusive father and step-sister Max. In Stranger Things 3, Billy is the main protagonist and the primary host of The Mind Flayer and thus is involved in some particularly impressive scenes showing how he became the person he is and his love for Max. Dacre Montgomery did an amazing job this season, but I truly worry that the majority of fans will neglect that to either keep over-praising Millie Bobby Brown or obsessing over minor characters.

Progression of Existing Characters Stranger Things 3 spends a decent amount of the first few episodes further developing characters that otherwise weren’t in previous seasons, notably Max and Lucas. For the most part I appreciate this, but there is a negative aspect to it that I will explain further on.

The Hospital Fight In episode 7, Jonathan, Nancy and all the kids (minus Dustin) go to the hospital to continue investigating. What follows is a pretty good fight scene where the abilities of the ‘flayed’ are displayed and a smaller version of the The Mind Flayer is revealed. Though Stranger Things is no stranger to strobe lighting, the harshness of it in this scene was somewhat bothering.

What I Didn’t Like:

This isn’t the final season The endings of season’s 1 and 2 acted both as solid conclusions, but also left enough open so that they could continue the show and gave the audience a glimpse into the next season. The ending of Stranger Things 3 is simultaneously the best and worst ending of the entire show. It is the best because it perfectly wraps up every characters established storyline and with everyone moving into a new phase of their lives. But, with that being said, the mid-credits stinger that teases the next season left me with an unsettling feeling in my gut that the fourth, and potentially final, season will drag out a story that doesn’t need to continue.

Will’s Character Will Byers was my favourite character from the beginning of season 1 and Noah Schnapps’ performance in season 2 truly lived up to the expectations placed upon him due to his small presence in the first season. So why didn’t they do anything with him in Stranger Things 3? Will spends the first two episodes wanting to play D&D and spends the next six episodes doing nothing but touching the back of his neck and saying “he’s here”. The Duffer Brothers truly did Noah Schnapp, and the audience, dirty by neglecting one of the most talented actors in the cast.

The Overabundant Product Placement If you think the constant appearances of Eggo waffles were annoying in the first two seasons, you will hate the inappropriate amount of product placement in Stranger Things 3. My main issue is that it’s not subtle at all, and I understand that that’s the point, but in the first two seasons all the product placements are seamlessly incorporated so that they’re not as noticeable. The same can’t be said about Stranger Things 3 where they have a minute long debate about New Coke.

Millie Bobby Brown’s Acting Millie Bobby Brown was highly praised for her ‘outstanding’ performances in the first two seasons of Stranger Things. So much so that she received twenty-one nominations and nine awards for Stranger Things alone. This fact doesn’t sound as impressive when you add that all she did in the first two seasons was look like she was concentrating and utters a maximum of five hundred words across both seasons; which is a very small number given most humans say at least seven thousand in a day. Her characters developed speech skills means that in Stranger Things 3 she is given a larger role, the only issue being that her skills as an actress don’t live up to her reputation. I don’t mean to say that she is a bad actress, she just isn’t the ‘young superstar’ that her reputation implies.

General Thoughts:

Jane or Eleven? At the end of Stranger Things 2, Eleven’s name was legally changed to Jane Hopper. So why now, at least six months after the end of season 2, are her friends still calling her Eleven? I am aware this is a minor nit-pick, but why bother showing the audience that her name is now Jane Hopper if the characters aren’t going to use it?

The Flayed I was worried that the Flayed were going to be too similar to zombies, but I am extremely happy that they didn’t go down that path.

It is more censored than any previous season

Never-Ending Story I truly can’t decide whether I love or hate that they take minute out of the seasons climax to sing The Never-Ending Story…

Cary Ewels You can never go wrong with Cary Ewels portraying a corrupt leader.

Will’s Artistic Abilities  I truly appreciate that Joyce’s mention of Will’s drawing talents is something that has been incorporated and featured in every season.

I’ll conclude this review by stating that, while I enjoyed seasons 1 and 2, the two year gap between releases did result in a slight loss of interest in the series on my part. I will also state that Stranger Things 2 is my favourite season out of the three, excluding episode 8, and I am still unsure whether season 3 ranks above or below season 1 in quality; though I do lean towards it ranking higher. With all this being said, Stranger Things 3 is a great season of television that I definately enjoyed watching.