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pop-punklouis · 2 years

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ok it’s rant time !! there are SO many things which are just so ?????

1. what was the point of eleven and nina ? like why did it have to be stretched out. they could’ve been done with it in like 4-5 eps max

2. everyone was so separated…. like it’s similar to the previous seasons where there are like 3-4 different storyline’s converging to form the bigger picture but this season was just so messy…. eleven had a completely different storyline, will + mike + jonathan had a sub plot within elevens plot and so irrelevant at that ???? (like hello will deserves sm better) then what was even going on w hopper + joyce ???? like they were doing a completely different show and had a cameo appearance on stranger things in the last 5 min of vol. 2….. OH AND elevens reaction to seeing hopper ALIVE AND IN FRONT OF HER AFTER MONTHSSS??? not it. like where is the drama, the emotion, the “i can’t believe you’re here and real and alive” it was like she was Expecting to see him. no shock. no surprise. no questions. even joyce for that matter but it was still better. and why was there so much focus on jason and the dudes? eddie and argyle deserved that focus tbh. i couldn’t connect with either of them. (eddie seems overhyped to me because you don’t really see much of him, other than being the nerd who witnessed the first death) the main characters were literally steve + robin + nancy (derogatory) + max (+ lucas + dustin and maybe eddie)

3. speaking of main characters, whatever happened to the og gang ?????? the 4 guys and eleven and max????? i miss all my children being together and doing this shit together!!! this was just so not it. also, where did the fun go???? s1-2 (and 3) were just FUN. there was good humour AND logic. the kids were just so adorable and likeable (except mike but yes)

4. they tried SO HARD to make new audience favourite characters in eddie and argyle but these 2 were just so so so so so so so so pointless and useless like ughhhhhh (eddie also died for NOTHING, like he literally just wanted to be the hErO) it was just stupid af. they also tried making eddie and dustins dynamic like steve and dustins ???? the never change exchange between the two of them?? so random tbh. idk whatever it was,,,, looked very very forced fit.

5. so many characters were just THERE it was so annoying like helloooo people, add to the plot !!!!!! the stupidest plot ever but pls contribute !!!!!!!!!!!!

6. when it was revealed that henry is vecna and vecna is one and one is the dude w eleven, i was just like woah ,,,,,,,, disappointing. marks for the effort but disappointing nonetheless. also this could’ve been such a good ending for the entire show??? that it’s been vecna all along but no vecna is somehow still fucking alive

7. why tf did eleven need mike to tell her he loves her for her to gain her powers? why did mike lose ALL personality once he got together with her? like his personality was annoying but he at least had some personality.

8. lucas my man is so under appreciated. dustin and mike were so mean to him actually in the beginning w the campaign and basketball thing. lucas deserves better friends.

9. vol 2 felt like a never ending epilogue tbh. it could’ve literally been done in like a 1hr episode max but no. they could’ve really ended the season at vol 1 finale.

10. jonathan is bleh but this season he’s BLEH. erica was annoying this time ngl.

11. oh yeah, what the fuck happened to owens?

hi hello grey! finally getting around to reading this x

1) i liked getting backstory on eleven’s origin and i do think nina could’ve had one (maybe two) episodes that dug into that, but they really did drag it on and on for a plot twist that had little pay off imo also i’m tired of not knowing what powers eleven can do anymore. it’s like they add new elements every season but never explain them— and she just instinctively knows? how to do them?

2) i don’t have a real issue with everyone being separated as long as it makes sense in the end and they all come back together per seasons past during the climax, but yeah it just seems like they have bloated the cast unnecessarily and given so many different subplots that either are incredibly boring/irrelevant or are completely left behind without an explanation. and yeah hopper and eleven’s reunion was so disappointing. i felt more for dustin and eddie’s uncles dialogue than hopper and el’s and eddie is a new character lmao the last 30 minutes of ep 9 felt super rushed and clunky overall tbh.

3) i think one of the worst decisions they made was to separate the entire group of kids this season. i know they wanted to expand on eleven’s backstory etc. but they threw the rest of the hawkins kids with four of the teens to try and repair that absence but it wasn’t the same at all. it felt like a corny scooby doo episode every time that group was exploring together lmao and having will and jonathan almost completely absent was such a bizarre choice. and yeah i miss max + eleven’s friendship. it was really special, and it was just ripped away like. after el left it was like the writers forgot her and max were close lmao

4) i like eddie’s character tbh, but i do think they pushed him to the forefronts of the group too quickly which didn’t make it feel organic. i don’t have anything against argyle either, but the entire california storyline didn’t need to happen at all, and it would’ve still been the same season so yeah just wasted content tbh

6) i just want to know why it was so easy to “defeat” vecna with fire and shotgun bullets like i know he was vulnerable during that time, but it was so underwhelming. the climax of episode 9 was SO underwhelming. legitimately no one but eleven really did much besides fuck around in the upside down and almost die

7) it’s the way eleven’s entire story arc this season was that she has the power within herself and doesn’t need validation or security from outside sources to tap into her strength and purpose and to water her down to like an accessory of mikes 🤢 where she can’t do anything without his love or approval 🤢 is insanity to me and gives off the worst message.

8) lucas deserves a better storyline altogether??? like they basically ignored the opportunity to flesh out his character for three seasons only to do it very uncomfortably in S4 he deserves so much more than what they gave him

9) no forreal vol 2 was def just a money grab to keep the excitement and engagement alive for netflix and the series, as a whole, since i was surprised myself to see so much attention back on the show after being gone since 2019 there was no reason why we needed OVER 60 minute episodes for vol. 2 especially when it was drug the way it did (like ep 9? i found myself on my phone scrolling through social media so often for the TWO AND A HALF HOUR RUNTIME)

10) i always love erica but yeah jonathan has always been bleh and he literally built his entire relationship with nancy off being a creep and taking photos of her without her permission on someone else’s property (all while treating her like shit nonetheless) yet they really gave this man maybe 45 minutes of screen time the entire season and it was unbearably noticeable

11) stranger things! where everything is made up and the points don’t matter ✨

#grey #stranger things spoilers

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dawllick · 9 months

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Stranger Things Thoughts

No one asked but after my annual rewatch wanted to share some season 4 musingssss

Okay so first:

I really hope that Nancy ends the series single. I don’t see the writers back tracking to make Robin x Nancy thing (which I’m for and find delightful and hilarious due to their canon dynamic), and I don’t want her to end up with Steve or Jonathan at this point. Jonathan wants something different, and I feel Steve has this idolized version of Nancy. Her character is one I could see still seeking mystery and adventure in the future, if they kill Nancy in S5 I would be genuinely shocked. I truly love the idea of her ending the series single and on good terms with everyone, mainly due to her age. Going through college I saw way too many people that have been dating or haven’t been single since middle school, and it’s be cool to end the show with a character was a focal point in the romance aspect for a good chunk of it single.

Kiddos:

Dustin: I literally just want him to live. I don’t think they’d kill any of the kiddos but like….Max is on thin ice soooooooooo

Lucas: For the other kiddos to give him more love? Season four he gave and gave and gave and gave. Lucas needs more like…appreciation lol

Max: omg girl I need you to live or something pls

Mike: …..they won’t kill him and nothing bad has happened to him. Like no, the worst thing to occur to him was when Billy knocked him out in S3 and he was fine a few mins later. He’ll be fine.

El: my sweet baby angel, I want you to tear a whole dimension apart. I’d love to see her do smth new with her powers…idk what but like if she’s back to full steam I think she deserves some new tricks as a treat

Will: best boy for last, I am still holding out on Will getting powers. He was in the upside down for a week, AND had Vecna in his mind for like…..a few days and managed to still get a message to the gang. Plus! I wanna see more sibling interactions between him an El, I am more interested in that than whatever shipping is going on between the children which I can’t get behind bc….they’re like…13? 14? They’re babies. ALSO I hope Will comes out to his friends as well, but also I hope they don’t introduce some random new character for him to get a crush on. I’m not huge on Will x Mike mainly bc I’m not a huge Mike fan, and again….shipping….

Adults:

Joyce: this woman and her children need a fucking vacation, Joyce should get a gun and like….idk what else Joyce is a great woman and she and Hopper deserve a long nap

Hopper: I hope he has like something go right for him this season. Like have a super good time with something and it not be a direct part of story development let the man have emotional rest. Also get him some lasagna and bread sticks.

Enzo: pls give me more Enzo, he’s a lil daddy also seems like a…character who has more to add to the story

Murray: He’s my baby girl, he has a black belt, he speaks Russian, my father and I both adore him, he’s a bitch, he’s got the biggest heart, he flew out to check on Joyce after she lost the call, he went with her to Russia to get Hopper back, and the funniest guy on there (to me). IF he dies, after making me watch Bob, Aleksi, and my beloved Eddie die I actually become a hater. He is the one character whose death I don’t think I could handle, well maybe Steve but yeah

Teens:

Robin: let her function, like a bit better around Vicky, I still need her to be a disaster otherwise however. Also live, she’s sweet and should not be separated from Steve

Nancy: see above

Jonathan: I hope he and Nancy amicably break up, and be better friends because of it. They do work well together. If they stay together I’ll be surprised because they had some issues in season 3, and then more obvious ones in season 4. Narrative wise they are headed for break up city, I’ll be shocked if they make it.

Argyle: I need him to live, he’s the gentle giant, the Shaggy and scooby, he’s precious.

Steve:

…

Where do I start? Okay SO Steve is babygirl, and I’m over here thinking it would be neat for Steve to work on himself S5. I don’t see Nancy x Steve working again because 1: I’m not a fan of a character ending a relationship and jumping to another. I didn’t like how quickly Jonathan and Nancy got together in S2. 2., Steve had no romantic interest in Nancy in season 3. Literally none, it felt weird to have him pining over her in season 4. Steve has been used to subvert quite a few tropes already, and has become a very kind character because of it. He spends time with Dustin and gives him advice, he went to the basketball game and cheered for Lucas when everyone else was doing something else (Max gets a pass but she wasn’t there tho), constantly put himself between the kids and danger, accepted Robin for who she was when she came out to him, and ran back into danger for Nancy and Jonathan when they first fought the demogorgan.

I think Steve is my favorite character in this entire show, there are aspects of him that I relate to. He’s not the smartest guy there, but he tries, he wants to help his friends. He wants to protect, he wants to love and be loved so bad. Steve looks out for others so much, and I want to see him have a happy ending, but like…a satisfying happy ending. Idk how else to put it.

Hopes/Theories:

Eddie is still alive, because I’m delulu but also it would be fun to have him come back in season 5. He doesn’t have to come back as a bad guy, but I’m not opposed to him coming back with suddenly no memory and to be used against the kiddos and teens as a friend they left to die in the upside down (again), annnnndddd maybe having some more monstrous features about him…that go away as he remembers his friends and humanity. Anyways I really would love to see him again because also…like Eddie / Robin / Steve / Nancy as a group working together had such chemistry oh my God. Like they all had such fun chemistry together, and Jonathan is def better suited to be with Will/Mike/Argyle. Good dynamics.

Will should get powers and rip Vecna apart or at least help El in doing so. See above for more reasons why. But also Vecna put Will through a lot. Will needs some closure from the trauma he had.

Alternatively: Max gets powers from where El brought her back, being connected to Vecna who tortured her mental health, and being “blank” at the end of season 4. Her mind it’s own sensory deprivation tank, and during her “coma” maybe she develops something.

Thats all I got and if you read this, I’m so sorry this is just rambles and I’m not even going to tag it other than long post lol

#long post #long text

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urdearestmom · 3 years

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I'll Walk With You

hello everyone shocked to see me posting yet again???????

i said after i posted that oneshot rehashing 3x06 that i was going to one day write something where mike and max have an actual conversation.... and here it is!! for your reading pleasure :)

i think i did them and their dynamic justice with this and i'm super proud of how it turned out. we're unlikely to ever get something like this in the show but i'm hoping s4 at least gives us them being actual friends so that i can infer that something like this happened between seasons lol

Max’s house is silent as the grave. She isn’t surprised, it’s been like this nearly all the time since the summer. Her stepfather will drink himself back to sleep on the couch, and her mother will say nothing. Max won’t say anything either. The day has barely begun and it’s already shit.

Most of the time she escapes the horrible atmosphere inside her house by going to school, but it’s Spring Break now and she has nowhere to be. She’ll be stuck with her thoughts all day if she doesn’t find something else to do, so after nearly two hours of trying in vain to entertain herself, she decides to head out and see if Lucas is free. She knows Dustin already left town with his mom the night before, and she’s not willing to have Mike third wheel her and Lucas, so she hopes he’s down to go do something with her. He’s good at distracting her from the inescapable cycle of guilt and anger she feels constantly nowadays.

Except when she gets to his house, his parents are in the garage putting things into the trunk of the family car. She stops at the sight. Erica is nowhere to be seen but Lucas is standing in the front doorway and sees Max coming right away. He meets her in the street.

“Max, hey,” he says. “What’s up?”

Max gestures to his house. “I came to see if you wanted to hang out, but it looks like you guys are going somewhere.”

Lucas frowns. “I thought I told you, we’re going to visit my cousins in Chicago for a few days.”

Lord, a few days? Lucas must see it on her face because he scrambles to assure her it’s not for the whole week.

“I’ll be back Wednesday,” he promises.

“Today’s Sunday,” she protests. She knows there’s literally nothing to be done about it, but it still sucks. What’s she going to do all week?

“I swear I told you,” Lucas repeats.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Max answers. “You probably did. I’m sorry, just… forgot.”

He frowns again. Max has been forgetting a lot of things lately. She’s not sure why, it just feels like everything in her life is too much and her brain can’t handle it the way it should. Freshman year has not been the greatest so far.

“You okay?” He asks her, reaching for her hands, and his concern makes her heart squeeze painfully in her chest. He’s probably the only person who actually cares about her well-being, seeing as her mom clearly doesn’t.

Max nods. “Yeah. I just didn’t want to be at home, but I guess I’ll find something else to do. Bye, Lucas,” she says, squeezing his fingers gratefully before turning away to bike off back down the street.

“Hey!” He calls. She turns back. He motions to the big house next door, equally familiar to her. “Mike’s still home, maybe you can ask him?”

Max crosses her arms. “Like he would want to hang out with me,” she scoffs.

Lucas sighs. “Look, I know he can be a bit of an ass sometimes-”

“That’s putting it lightly.”

“-But he’s not a bad person, Max, you know that. He’s dealing with a lot right now,” Lucas finishes.

Max rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, he’s not the only one,” she says bitingly. She has never gotten along with the third boy in their group and at this point she isn’t sure she ever will. She’s also not really in the mood to look at his stupid face today, considering it’ll more than likely start an argument and she doesn’t have the energy for that.

“I know,” Lucas says. “I know. But you’re both my best friends and I think you guys are more alike than you think. If you just gave each other another chance, you’d get along.”

Max doesn’t reply. She doesn’t really know what to say because she knows Lucas is only trying to help her with what he thinks is the current best solution, but she doesn’t want to agree with him either.

“Just think about it,” he continues. “He’s the only one not going anywhere so if you really need to see someone…”

She gets what Lucas is implying, but really? “He’d probably laugh in my face if I showed up at the door. I’d rather stay home.”

At that, Lucas raises his arms in surrender. “I’m just saying he wouldn’t turn you away. We don’t lie to each other, alright?”

Max shrugs in response. “Whatever. I’ll figure something out.”

Lucas steps forward quickly to hug her. Pulling back, he keeps his hands on her arms. “I wrote my cousins’ phone number on the back of your math worksheet yesterday if you need it.”

She gives him a tiny nod and he returns it with a small smile, dropping his arms back to his sides.

“I’ll see you first thing Thursday morning,” he adds.

“Thursday,” she repeats, putting one foot back on her bike pedal. “Got it.” What’s she supposed to do until Thursday?

The answer, as it happens, is absolutely nothing. For the rest of Sunday afternoon, Max rides around town with no destination. She stops in a park for a while, sitting down and pulling up blades of grass and sprinkling them around her. A man walking his dog gives her a weird look and she flips the bird at his back. That action feels oddly satisfying, even if he didn’t see it. In the evening she makes her way back to her house, and everyone pretends like she didn’t just spend the entire day gone.

Monday dawns looking and feeling exactly the same, except Max decides to get a start on some homework. This way when Lucas comes back she’ll be free to hang out with him without the thought of her assignments hanging over her head. Her mom leaves to go to work and all it does is make Max hyper aware of Neil’s movements across the house. He’s supposed to go to work too, but Max isn’t sure he will. In fact, she sort of suspects he’s either quit or been fired. He’s missed too many days.

When she’s tired of writing and the lines of her character analysis of Mercutio are starting to blur into the equations on her algebra worksheet, she goes into the kitchen to find something to eat. Neil’s gone, so she makes herself a ham and cheese sandwich and stands by the sink to eat it. She feels exhausted, and it’s barely afternoon.

Hours later, she wakes up from a nap to the sun near setting and the noises of her mom puttering around the kitchen making dinner. The first thing her gaze lands on is the clunky walkie-talkie sitting on her desk, and her thoughts spring to the boys. Specifically, what Lucas said to her the day before.

Maybe it has more merit than she first gave it. It’s true that she doesn’t get along with Mike at all, but she might be willing to try again at some point, if only to appease Lucas. She had wanted to when they all first met. She liked the other boys just fine, but she could tell from the get-go that Mike was their ringleader and his opinion could sway the others. If she wanted to truly feel like a part of the group, they all had to be on board. Even after that, things weren’t so terrible between them; at least until summer and all the drama with El and then everything else that happened. Now, Max’s headspace is too occupied by other problems to care much about trying to repair her somewhat-friendship with him, and Mike has become more and more reclusive by the day. She even thinks she saw him smoking once, down at the far end of the field, which, although she isn’t an expert, she feels is extremely uncharacteristic.

Everything’s just weird now. There’s too many empty holes in all their lives.

Dinner is mostly quiet; nobody in this house ever says anything that has any true meaning anyway. Maybe it’s better this way. Neil ends up on the couch joined by his bottle of whiskey and Max’s mom shoos her away after she’s cleared the table, so Max retreats back to her room. The silence is almost deafening, and she wishes that dumb walkie-talkie on her desk would crackle. What she wouldn’t give for someone to say real words to her.

She considers calling Lucas, but she doesn’t want to bother him with her problems when he’s supposed to be having fun with his cousins. She also doesn’t want Neil to ask who she’s calling. In the end, she ends up tidying her room, gathering up all her comic books and folding the clothes she has on the floor before placing them on her chair. The walkie seems like it’s calling out to her as she glances at it every five seconds, and then finally lets her frustration out on it by snatching it up and launching it at her bed. She doesn’t want to break it, but she did want to throw it. Why does she keep looking at it? It’s not like anyone’s going to call her on it. The only people who might are both out of town.

Her emotions war inside of her. On the one hand, she knows what she wants, what she needs. She needs to talk to someone freely so it has to be someone who relates to what she’s seen, because being stuck virtually alone inside her house for the next few days until Lucas gets back is going to drive her insane. Unfortunately the only person she can think of is someone she isn’t on good terms with, which makes her angry for even having the thought. Is she really desperate enough to potentially embarrass herself?

Damn Lucas for putting the idea in her head. She’s sure she never would’ve considered it on her own. Damn Lucas and his stupid advice, damn Dustin for ever speaking to her that day and getting her involved in all their mess, and damn Mike for hating her from day one.

Damn her for going to talk to him anyway. She sneaks out her window, just as she has done to meet Lucas so many times, except it’s after nine and it’s dark out. She brings the walkie with her.

On the way, she wonders why she’s even doing this. She supposes it would make it easier for Lucas and Dustin when they all hang out together (which is getting rarer every week) if she and Mike aren’t constantly at each other’s throats about something or other. She also remembers something El said to her on the phone a while ago that she had forgotten about until this very moment. El had heard enough complaints from both of them about each other and was just wishing they would stop fighting. Max had scoffed at it and been about to launch into another rant about just how much of a jerk Mike was when El had said she didn’t care if they weren’t friends, she just wanted them to stop being so mad all the time.

Max kind of agrees with her. Being angry all the time is exhausting, and there are way worse things in her life to be angry about than Mike Wheeler and his dumb attitude. If she can make peace with him, maybe she won’t feel so out of place around her own friends. And maybe, if they can get over everything that’s happened between them, it’ll give her hope that the rest of her life might look up one day, too.

It’s only when she gets to his house that she realizes she doesn’t know what she wants to say. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a whole conversation, maybe just seeing each other for five minutes will give her enough stability to stay in her house until Lucas returns and she can talk to him instead. She just needs to be around someone who knows the things she’s been through since she moved here, someone who looks at her and knows why she is the way she is. Her mom can never know and will never understand, and Neil is too scary to ever think about approaching him with anything at all.

She drops her bike in the grass by the back of the house, making her way to the basement door where she knows the boys like to be. He’s probably in there still. Her stomach is roiling with nerves, scared that he’ll open the door and glare at her like he usually does, but she remembers there’s another way he looks at her sometimes. There are moments at school, when she passes the gym or sees the basketball team, where Max gets overwhelmed at the memories of her dead stepbrother. It’s almost like she can smell him, the way he used to get up in her face when he yelled at her and the way he looked when he died apologizing to her. It’s moments like that when Dustin and Lucas will be distracted with some petty disagreement that she looks to Mike and his gaze contains solidarity instead of hostility; reassurement that he knows what it feels like to be reminded at every turn of someone you cared about who is gone. He was there, too, and saw Billy sacrifice himself at the last moment just as she did. It’s not an image either of them can forget.

It’s this that gives her the courage to rap her knuckles on the glass pane of the basement door and wait for an answer. When she waits ten seconds and nothing happens, she frowns and knocks again. He wouldn’t know it’s her, why would he ignore it?

She pushes her face up to the door again and tries to see inside, her breath fogging against the glass, and then realizes all the lights in the basement are off.

“Shit,” she says quietly. She doesn’t want to show up at the front door at this time of night. His mom will probably answer and Max doesn’t want to explain herself. She wanders around to the front of the house anyway, looking at which lights are on. There’s one on the ground floor that flickers and seems like it might be a TV, and there’s one on in a room on the second floor. That room has pink wallpaper, though, so Max decides to assume it’s not the one she’s looking for. The middle upstairs window is dark, and the one on the left has the blinds pulled halfway down, but she spots a familiar figure walking past it in the half second her eyes jump to it. Bingo.

She takes a breath to steel herself before bringing the walkie-talkie out of her jacket pocket and pressing down on the button. “Mike, do you copy? It’s Max. Over.”

The walkie crackles with static for a few seconds, and then clears up as an answer comes through. “Yeah, I copy. What do you want? Over.”

“Can you come outside?”

It crackles again in the silence, and Max thinks that maybe this was insane and she should just go home. Then, “You’re outside?”

The blinds lift all the way up and Max sees Mike’s expression change from confused to surprised, like he didn’t actually believe she was there. In a second, he has the window pulled up too and his head sticking out of it.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, his tone of voice anxious, and Max realizes he probably thinks something horrible has happened. In his head, there’s likely no other reason she of all people would show up at his house at close to ten at night.

“Nothing happened, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says, glancing away from him above her and noticing she’s standing in front of the front door. This is not a good place to be. “I just- didn’t want to be alone.”

She looks back up to find him staring at her like she’s grown another head. “So you came to me?”

Max huffs and crosses her arms. “Well, there’s no one else to go to!”

“Keep your voice down!” He hisses. “Do you want my mom to hear you?”

She glares. She’s starting to think that this was a bad idea after all.

After a few seconds of mutinous eye contact, Mike puts a hand to his forehead exasperatedly. “Give me a minute, I’ll meet you at the basement door.” He shuts the window and pulls the blinds down without another word, so Max heeds the order and circles back around to where she left her bike. A few moments later, he comes out the door shrugging on a jacket over what looks like-

“Are those Star Wars pyjamas?” She asks, her mouth twisting into a teasing little smile. What does El see in this guy? As far as she knows, Lucas isn’t this completely nerdy.

He gives her a flat look. “Why do you have to have a problem with everything that I do?”

She frowns. “It was just a question. Relax, jeez.”

In response, Mike puts his hands in his pockets and looks at her. “So what do you want to do?”

Max balks for a second, awkwardness taking over her. This is so weird. She’s never willingly chosen to spend any of her time alone with Mike, and now she doesn’t know what to do.

“Um… just- walk around, maybe?”

He shrugs at her answer and starts walking toward the line of trees behind the house, where there’s a little path that leads off to the next street. Max follows quietly, a little moonlight shining down on them, and she thinks that the silence between them doesn’t feel as explosive as it usually does.

Somewhere along the way, after they’ve crossed another street and gone down a path between two houses, Mike takes something shiny out of his pocket and starts playing with it, and Max sees that it’s a lighter.

“What’s that for?” She asks.

“Lighting things up,” he says.

“You smoke?”

“Only sometimes.”

“So what’s it for the other times?”

He looks at her and his eyebrows furrow for a quick second, seemingly surprised that she inferred something about him correctly.

Mike shrugs again. “Sometimes I go out to the woods and set dead leaves on fire one at a time just to watch them burn. It’s weird how something that was alive once can just disintegrate right in front of you.”

Max isn’t sure what to say to that, but she offers something anyway. “Sometimes I steal my stepdad’s Bowie knife. Use it to stab trees,” she says casually. “Sometimes I even carve that I hate him into them.”

She’s never told Lucas that. Something in her knows that he wouldn’t relate, that his way of dealing with his anger is much calmer and reserved, but Mike’s admission of low-level violence makes her feel less crazy for her own. Maybe Lucas was right in saying they’re more alike than they think they are.

They come out of the trees behind the houses, and the path continues down a hill to a small playground area. There's a swing set that Max sits down on, the cold rubber biting through the fabric of her jeans and making her shiver. The chains creak when Mike sits in the one next to her. He’s digging through his pockets for something.

Max is almost surprised when he pulls out a box of cigarettes and plucks one from the pack, lighting it, but given what he’d just told her two minutes ago it’s not that shocking. He takes a pull from it and then blows the smoke out into the air slowly.

“You want some?” He asks, turning to her.

She remembers the choking sensation she’d felt that time Billy had offered her a drag from his cigarette, and then her mom’s reaction to it.

“Yeah, why not.” Maybe if she still smells like smoke tomorrow, her mom will care enough to ask where she’s been.

Mike hands it to her and the tips of his fingers are warm. “You’ve smoked before?”

“Once,” Max says.

He nods and watches her, and she tries not to let the hot, ashy air she breathes in make her choke. She holds it for a few seconds and then blows it out, and it makes her feel less nervous than she was before about this whole situation.

The pair of them sit there in the darkness for a few minutes, sharing the cigarette in silence, before Max thinks to ask a question she never got a real answer for.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

Mike doesn’t look at her, sucking in another breath of smoke. “I don’t hate you.”

“You sure act like you do.”

“Oh, and you don’t?” He says sarcastically, still not looking at her. “If I hated you why would I be here right now?”

“Well, if I hated you, why would I have come talk to you?” She retorts, trying to restrain the irritation she knows is probably written all over her. If she doesn’t rein herself in, she knows this is going to go south quicker than she wants it to.

He laughs dryly. “You said it yourself. You only came because there’s no one else.”

Max bites back the anger that’s trying to rise. He does have a point there, but she’s not going to tell him that. He’s also not answering her question.

“Fine. Maybe you don’t hate me.”

“I don’t.”

“What’s your problem with me then?”

He hands her the end of the cigarette to finish and grabs onto the chains of the swing, dragging the toes of his Converse through the grass.

“You’re always starting shit with me for no reason and it makes me so tired,” he says. “Like, we’d be friends just fine if we didn’t argue every other day.”

“And whose fault is that…” Max murmurs under her breath, dropping the cigarette stub to the ground and putting it out with her foot.

Mike turns to her sharply. “Uh, yours? You made El break up with me! How am I supposed to forget that?”

“I already told you I didn’t make her!” Max says loudly. Why is he still on this? As far as Max is aware, they’re basically back together anyway so it’s not like it made a difference. “And how am I supposed to forget how shit you made me feel the first week I was here?”

He looks away again. “I was pretty rude, I’ll give you that.”

She scoffs. “That’s underrating it. You were a total asshole.”

He pushes himself forward a little bit and then lets himself swing back. “I guess I never really apologized for that. I do regret it.”

Max stays silent and waits for him to continue. He’s slumped over in the swing, looking smaller and sadder than she’s ever seen him look, and her heart twinges. She recognizes the defeat present in the way his shoulders are hunched, the complete and utter exhaustion at the state of their lives painted on his face. It’s what she sees every day when she looks in the mirror.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t like you, or something,” he tells her. “I was jealous that Lucas and Dustin seemed like they were moving on when I was so…”

“Messed up?” She offers.

Mike shrugs. “Yeah. And part of it was out of concern for you, too.”

Max furrows her brows in confusion. That’s new. “Concern?” She asks, shaking her head slowly. Her hair swings around her face like a curtain, blocking her vision, but she wants to look at Mike and see how he explains this. She tucks it away behind her ear.

“Yeah,” he says again. “I could see how fucked up Will was, and I knew how fucked up I was. And Dustin and Lucas are good at pretending stuff doesn’t affect them but I know it did. It does.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t want someone new getting mixed up in our shit, okay?” He bursts out, meeting her curious gaze once again. “I didn’t want someone else to have to experience the stuff we did. I thought if I made it obvious that I didn’t want you there, you would leave. You know now, but when Lucas told you we couldn’t tell you stuff for your own safety it was the truth.”

Max thinks about that. She supposes it makes sense. She has noticed that Mike tends to be the guy that worries about everyone else’s safety, and always wants to get to the bottom of the problem before anyone gets hurt. Lucas is the same and it’s something she admires about him, but it’s overtly obvious in Mike when he’s always the one stressing about coming up with plans. Lucas is a little more go-with-what-the-adults-say.

“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” Mike finally says, and his expression is earnest. He’s a bad liar anyway, so Max knows that he means it. Speaking of his lies… she has something to apologize for too.

“I’m sorry too,” she says. “For judging your relationship too fast.”

He makes a weird noise when he registers what she said, almost like a laugh but kind of mad, too. “Yeah, and for making my girlfriend dump me.”

Max reaches out towards him and smacks his arm, a spike of irritation fuelling her. “Mike, how many goddamn times do I have to tell you I didn’t make her?”

“Well, what the hell did you say to her to make her do that?!” He exclaims.

The peace of the previous moment is gone and Max crosses her arms over her chest defensively. “From what she told me, it sounded like you were just lying straight to her face so you didn’t have to see her. All I did was tell her that if you did it again, she should dump your ass. You did it to yourself.”

Mike throws his arms up. “Hopper made me lie! He told me if I didn’t, he wouldn’t let me see her anymore. You seriously think I wouldn’t want to spend time with her? After everything we went through?”

She thinks for a second about the way he’d looked when El had walked back into their lives; the way he had seemed to drop all the negativity he’d been carrying around the second she came through that door. Max remembers thinking she’d never been so sure about someone’s presence in her life.

He’s still on a roll. “What, is that why you’ve dumped Lucas, like, seven times? You just break up with him the second he does something you don’t like without even letting him explain himself?”

Bringing that up is a sore point. Max feels incredibly guilty for the way she’s treated Lucas in the past, and she’s trying to be better. She’d told him once that she knew she could be a jerk like her stepbrother sometimes, that she was angry just like he was, but that she didn’t want to be like him. And then she turned around and behaved exactly like him, manipulating Lucas’ reactions and dumping him over and over because she knew he would come back. It made her feel like she was in control, the dominant one, the complete opposite of what she saw in her mother and what she felt in her house every day.

But she had come to a point where she realized that one day, Lucas would get fed up with her. There would come a day when he wouldn’t stand for it anymore and he’d leave her permanently, and Max didn’t think she could live with that. From then on, she had decided to try harder with him and make things better, to talk about her feelings more. It’s always going to be difficult for her, but Lucas is worth it.

“Don’t say that like you know anything about why I did that,” she says sharply, gripping so tightly onto the chain of the swing that the cold metal feels like ice in her hand.

Mike glares back at her, indignant. “Oh, that’s rich! Like you knew anything about me when you said that shit to El!”

Max stands up suddenly. “I’m tired of the lies, Mike! Do you know what it’s like to live in a house where your mom will watch your brother get beat up and leave the room so she can pretend it didn’t happen? Where she doesn’t care where you go or how you feel or what’s going on with you because if she doesn’t ask, she doesn’t have to lie to herself that it’s okay? Where we all just don’t talk about anything and pretend it’s all fine when it isn’t?”

She’s breathing hard and he’s staring up at her with wide eyes, accustomed to her outbursts by now but not like this. Max sits back down on the swing, hard.

“I broke up with Lucas a lot because it made me feel like I had control,” she admits. “I needed to feel like I was in charge of the situation. I get enough of being treated second-class at home, and I don’t want to be like my mom, ever.”

She looks back at Mike on the other swing and he doesn’t look mad at her anymore, only like he’s processing what he’s just heard. It lets her own anger drain out of her.

“When El told me what you said, it reminded me of my mom,” Max continues. “She seemed so confused on why you would do that and to me it looked like you were just using her when you wanted her and dropping her when you didn’t. My mom kind of… disappears into whoever she’s dating and just goes along with whatever they do, and it looked like that for me,” she finishes.

“I get it,” he says, and Max raises her eyebrows. “I mean, I don’t get it personally, my parents aren’t like that. I just meant I get where you’re coming from. It makes sense why you would think that way.”

“I didn’t want the same thing that happens to my mom to happen to El,” Max adds. “She is her own person, and she of all people deserves the chance to be that.”

At last, they find common ground. “I agree,” Mike replies. “She’s been through enough in her life. And I’m happy you and her are friends now,” he adds. “Seriously. It was kind of weird to imagine her having girl problems or something and talking to my sister about it. I’m glad she has you.”

“I’m glad she has you,” Max says, and Mike looks shocked to hear her say it. “I might not get why, but I know you make her happy somehow. Even if you do wear Star Wars pyjamas.”

“Hey!” He says, offended. “You recognizing it means you’ve seen it too. And I know for a fact you read comics, so you’re just as much of a nerd as me.”

Max shrugs, giving him the point. “At least I can beat you at arcade games.”

“Is that a challenge?” He asks, swinging closer as if to intimidate her.

Max laughs, and it’s a real laugh for the first time in what feels like forever. “You’re on.”

“Tomorrow,” Mike suggests. “Twelve o’clock. I’ll meet you there.”

“Bring painkillers,” she warns him. “You’re gonna need them after I’m done kicking your ass at every. Single. Game.”

“You won’t beat me at Galaga,” he says proudly.

“Wanna bet?”

They stand up and shake hands, and his feels pleasantly warm. It’s a nice change from the frozen chain she was holding onto.

“Loser gets us fries,” Mike adds, and Max agrees to it. As if of one mind, they both turn back up the path they came from.

They’re back across the two streets they crossed and almost all the way back to Mike’s house when Max speaks again.

“So are we good?” She asks. She feels good about having aired out all the conflict she had with him, and he’s had this dumb smile on his face the whole time they’ve been walking back, which she’s choosing to take as a good sign.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at his feet. “We’re good.” He smiles wider.

It brings a small smile to Max’s own face. Having friends feels nice. “Why are you smiling like that?”

He coughs a little, scratching his head. “Just thinking about how happy El will be when she finds out we’re not enemies anymore.”

Max rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “You are so whipped.”

He shrugs as if to say, what can you do?

“I think Lucas and Dustin will benefit from having us not trying to kill each other every five seconds, too,” she says.

“Definitely.”

“Although I’ll probably still be annoyed by half the things you say.”

Mike makes a face like he’s not surprised to hear that. “Don’t worry about it. You’re still annoying, I just like you now. No more actual fighting.”

“Good,” she replies, feeling happier than she has in days as they arrive back in his backyard. She can faintly see her bike lying in the grass.

Mike has the door to the basement halfway open by the time she’s sitting on her bike ready to ride away, and at the last second lays a hand on her arm.

“Hey, anytime you need somewhere to go… I’m usually home,” he says, looking at her directly. It’s a simple thing to say, but she knows what he means by it. He’s telling her that he understands that sometimes her house is not a home, and that she’s always welcome in his if she needs it.

“Thanks,” she responds, and for once she is truly thankful for Mike Wheeler’s existence.

“Well, good night,” he answers, and awkwardly salutes her out of nowhere.

Max squints at him confusedly for a second. “I’ll... see you tomorrow,” she says haltingly.

He looks kind of embarrassed and shuts the door quickly, and Max rides off back to her house. That was random.

However, she is looking forward to tomorrow. She has a feeling Mike’s going to be the type of friend she’s constantly competing with, ribbing back and forth to see who can be worse just like they usually do, but this time knowing they’re both forgiven for their mistakes. It’s different from her other friendships for sure, but she thinks it’ll be good. Lucas is going to be pleased.

Maybe the wait until Thursday won’t be so bad after all.

#YALL please let me know what you think of this #i have so many thoughts on this pairing #SO MANY #also if you liked it please rb to share so more people can read it!! <3 #stranger things #stranger things 2 #stranger things 3 #stranger things fanfiction #urdearestmom

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hawkinslibrary · 4 years

Note

i love hearing what you have to say about season 4!! i promise it’s not too long lol, anyway i have a question for you: what do you think the next season holds for mike & el? i’m a little worried tbh

ahhh thank you !! same rules apply: spoilers ahead, so please read no further and blacklist/filter out the ‘s4′, ‘st4′, ‘spoilers’ tags if you don’t want to see anything !!

i’m going to talk about them both as individuals and as a pair but first, i have to say that i don’t personally feel like you have to worry about them breaking up or anything again this season. i think s4 is really going to establish romantic jopper and once that happens, i don’t see them, mileven, or jancy not being endgame unless someone actually dies. which -- i’m not going to think about the possibility of anyone dying until i’m forced to confront it, so. this is fiction and it’s already unrealistic and i’m gonna take my ‘everyone survives, happiness all around, time to relax’ endings and go. anyway, i would love to add lumax to this list but i honestly think it could go either way depending on what happens in s4. that’s a different essay, though.

i tend to think that the most important dynamic on the show is the one between the whole group and i just don’t really see them spending much more time trying to develop romantic relationships outside of the ones set up since s1/2. maybe steve, robin, and will get love interests, maybe they decide to develop dustin and suzie more, maybe suzie is never even mentioned again, idk. but these will probably all be secondary -- as in less screen time, not less important than the main romances, but probably still less developed. unless it happens to be a new person added to the main cast. which, as of now, the only new mains are brett and priah who has gone from recurring to regular. so.

i think s3 showed how messy and complicated romantic relationships (or, really just relationships in general) can be. everyone was arguing, there was miscommunication all around, everyone thought they knew what was best, no one was seeing eye to eye. but when it comes down to it, they would do anything for each other. they understand each other better than anyone else ever could. i can’t see them spending another season on breakups and romance drama after the ending of s3.

mike and el have already been separated once before. this time, mike knows for sure that she’s alive and that’s she’s with the byers. this time, el won’t be kept completely isolated away from everyone else. they’ve made plans to meet for the holidays. they can still call and talk to each other as much as they want. i’m hoping they handle being separated this time better than they did in s2. i don’t want mike to be moping and i don’t want el to spend a lot of the season thinking about how much she misses him. in fact, i think in their case that some distance could be good for them. the same for jancy and jopper, too, honestly. it’ll be nice to see them existing outside of these relationships while still acknowledging how important they are.

as far as i know, the byers and el stuff has not started filming yet so all there is to speculate on are rumors, the audition tapes, and logical guesses about where the story goes after s3. el obviously moves away with the byers. we still don’t know where. she’ll still be mourning hopper and trying to figure out life without her powers. and, of course, she’ll be in a long distance relationship with mike. i think she’ll be having a hard time and she’ll wish that mike was around, but she’ll realize she’s got a pretty good support system around her now with the byers, too. i’m very, very excited for more joyce and el content particularly, but there’s gotta be some great scenes with her and will and jonathan as well.

there’s only one audition tape that i can confidently tie into the byers + el plot(s?) and it’s the queen bee/mean girl character ‘angela’. if we’re running with the whole ‘there may be some truth to the audition vids’ thing, then this one teases that el will be going to school and that angela will be bullying her. this is something she would probably want to talk about with mike (b i g troy s1 vibes) but i don’t know if she actually would ? so this is probably more a thing that el and will could bond over or that she could talk about with joyce or maybe jonathan. i do think there will be at least a few calls between the two of them before the action really hits and the whole group is (hopefully...) reunited.

so, el -- at least in the beginning of s4 -- will be going to school where ‘angela’ bullies her, forming a bond with joyce + will + jonathan and becoming part of the family, mourning hopper (+ hopefully having conversations about him + his past with joyce), missing her friends back in hawkins, continuing to learn how to navigate life without her powers, and trying to maintain a long distance relationship with mike.

mike... i’ve been seeing some wild theories about him today but they aren’t really that far-fetched i think. first, going back to the audition tapes, the ‘eddie’ audition i saw makes it seem like mike is going to be part of the hellfire club with dustin. i’ve recently learned that there’s another version of the scene where ‘eddie’ is only talking to dustin and mike might not be a part of the club after all. if he isn’t part of the club, then the basketball v. hellfire, jocks v. nerds thing turns into lucas v. dustin and mike’s probably there just caught in the middle while max is off distancing herself from everyone.

at this point, i really want mike and max to become good friends. i think the end of s3 gave them the perfect opportunity. s4 max has s2 mike vibes. it’s not the same situation at all, but he knows kinda what she’s feeling and they could connect through that + the fact that they’ll both be missing el. i also just really want... some wheeler siblings content. i’m hopeful that s4 gives us good nancy and mike scenes bc there’s no reason not to give us good nancy and mike scenes (+holly!). however...

while there’s proof that gaten and sadie and natalia and priah have all been filming since production restarted, and while i have reason to believe that caleb has been filming a lot inside/at the studio recently... there’s no evidence that finn has been on set. there’s none for maya and joe, either, but people have said that finn isn’t even in atlanta right now. maybe he is and maybe he just hasn’t been seen and maybe he’ll pop back up tomorrow. or, maybe he already filmed whatever he needed to film for hawkins before production stopped.

the wild theory that’s popped up today is that everything gets to be too much for him in hawkins and he just... hops on a train to go visit el + the byers. i don’t know if i buy it, but it is interesting to note that he was sitting with them at the table read. and since we can guess that steve and robin will still be working at the video store, robin and nancy will be investigating pennhurst together, lucas and max may have some angst, joyce and murray are probably teaming up for the finding/saving hopper plot, and el is going to bond with will and jonathan, it seems like the order might mean a little something. i’d even bet that dustin and erica have scenes with them bonding over d&d.

now this theory pretty much only exists because no one’s seen finn on set and one of the paps posted some pics of some trains. there’s also always theories about how there will be issues at home with the wheeler fam and if that’s going to happen, what better time than in s4 when all of his friends are pulling away and el’s gone again. so if he is missing el (and will) that much, and if he has any reason to worry about her and how she’s doing, or if the party becoming distant and issues at home are weighing on him and he feels like he needs to get away, he’s absolutely the type to venture off on a train by himself. i don’t know how it would work since he’s definitely supposed to still be in school and his friends/nancy at least would notice he’s gone, but.. it’s fun to think about and we’ve got zero actual content to go off of right now.

another way i could see mike’s plot going is that he’s the one trying to keep the party together this season. playing mediator with lucas and dustin, becoming better friends with max, being the connection between the hawkins plot and the byers plot (along with nancy).

there was also talk of him joining the track team bc the track has been set up with hawkins high colors for filming. but mike ‘this isn’t a stupid sports game’ wheeler? i don’t think so... basically, no one knows at the moment what’s happening with mike wheeler in s4 lol.

s4 mike is just like s4 byers fam -- a complete mystery to me currently. i don’t personally think that he’ll be leaving school and hopping on a train to visit el. i think he’ll be a part of the hellfire club with dustin, or that he won’t and instead will be attempting to keep the party from completely disbanding. i hope that we get wheeler siblings scenes and that max and mike have a breakthrough and become better friends. i also feel like he’ll be having some complicated feelings about hopper, the last interaction they had, etc. and, again, the whole long distance thing with el.

so... mike and el broke up in s3. it was messy. but then they reconciled. and then hopper “died”. s3 ended with them at this weird place where she’s heard him say that he loves her and she’s told him that she loves him back. things are a little awkward in the scene bc everything has changed at this point, but a kiss, an ‘i love you’, planning to meet up on the holidays, and promising to call frequently all sounds like they’re back together and going to try making the long distance thing work to me.

i think they’ll be together when s4 starts. i think that we’ll probably only see them talking on the phone or their radios for the first few eps. maybe we’ll see flashbacks or something to them being together on the holidays. the distance might be hard and they’re definitely going to be missing each other. like... el doesn’t have mike or hopper with her now and i’m thinking the party is going to be drifting apart, plus they’re both probably going to have other personal issues that have nothing to do with each other or the party. maybe they’ll be experiencing some emotional distancing of their own while dealing with the aftermath of hopper’s “death”, the move, and whatever’s going on with them at home and at school. i think that once they reunite (probably not until the last half of the season), they’re likely to be stronger than ever.

now, onto personal theories that have zero basis. for some reason, i can’t get it out of my head that this season might dive into psychological horror a little bit ? like a greatest fears type of thing ?? and i keep thinking about brenner popping back up and using the people el loves to get to her or something and 👀👀

#this took forever to write and it's so long and for WHAT #when i tell you i've been typing and deleting and typing and deleting and typing again all day #anyway.... a l l of this is speculation pretty much bc the byers/el haven't even started filming yet #and there's no info on mike as of now #these don't even really touch on what could happen at the end of the season #bc i just have... no idea what's really happening or how it could possibly end #there was that whole thing about s5 being the part 2 of s4 so like...#what if we don't even get the reunions this season lol #nah i have to believe that everyone will be back together by the end #answered #s4 #st4 #spoilers #thank you for the question 💖 !!#sorry it's basically nonsense on my part though #me @ me: how can you ramble so much but say so little #Anonymous #idk if this even makes any sense but it's 2 am now and i've been staring at it forever so

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harringrovelove · 5 years

Text

Something Solid: Part I

A HARRINGROVE SUMMER OF LOVE HEADCANON

At the beginning of summer, school’s out (finally!) and the gangs all together, constantly using every bit of freedom to hang out: swim at Steve’s pool, ride their bikes, D&D, watch movies- you know, getting to be kids in general. The first part of the summer is marked by Billy apologizing to Lucas (my theory is after the events of last season Billy realizes it’s up to him to not become like his dad and therefore starts making an effort to be different), being a protective brother to Max- something she finds at times annoying and at other times endearing in a way she has always wanted from her brother, and Billy slowly but surely being accepted by Max and her friends- especially El. She has been oddly supportive of Billy from the beginning- of course Max knows why. This leads to Steve and Billy, the natural chaperones, spending more and more time together. Awkward and barbed at first, this quickly subsides over, basically, it’s more enjoyable to be getting along than constantly arguing. Plus, because Steve doesn’t give a shit what Billy thinks, Billy’s antagonistic antics are usually unsuccessful.

So Billy & Steve’s summer is spent together, at first by circumstance, sometimes swimming with the kids or even D&D- Billy was reluctant at first but is now well and truly hooked thanks to Dustin (Dustin & Billy have their own nerd-bonding when Billy lets Dustin borrow his small -and secret!- but coveted comic book collection). And when Steve & Billy aren’t chaperoning, they start doing their own thing together like playing basketball- turns out they make a perfect team when Billy isn’t antagonizing Steve. Surprise surprise, these two dummies actually enjoying spending time together when they both let their guard down.

Of course various Upside Down things occur (nothing truly major) that lead to Billy finding out the truth about Hawkins & El, who is slightly in shock at first, a little disbelieving, but lets face it, Billy’s seen his share of monsters and these Upside Down creatures are just another breed to him. These monsters, Billy thinks, are easier to deal with- they aren’t disguised on the outside like people can be...like Neil. He deals and proves strangely dependable to group and Max. (Although clearly Steve and Billy are finding kicking monster butt together both thrilling & therapeutic).

No real danger, but there’s some solid stray demo-dog take-downs where they both have each other’s back and come out on top. Of course when Billy and Steve fight together they are magically in sync, almost like a dance; a monster-ass-kicking dance. The few times the kids & Nancy + Jonathan were present to witness the Billy & Steve dynamic it just kind of stopped them in their tracks, staring as the two boys demolished 4 demo-dogs together. When it was over, Steve & Billy, high on adrenaline, laughing and breathing heavy, looked over after high-fiving and noticed their friends staring, clearly clueless to how they appear: “What??” Billy and Steve say in unison. “uhhh, nothing, good jobs” are uttered as the group re-calibrates, no one sure how to explain it. Steve slings an arm of Billy’s shoulder, and vice versa as everyone heads to Hopper’s cabin for post-monster fighting ice cream and eggos.

For Billy and Steve, what started out as against-their-will bonding turns into real authentic friendship and then some: Billy confides in Steve the abuse he endures by his dad, and Steve admits to being haunted by the trauma surrounding the Upside Down and having to go home to an empty house every night. Billy gathers that Steve’s preppy rich-kid image couldn’t be further from the truth and Steve realizes that Billy isn’t the jock asshole he pretends to be.

Sometimes, when one can’t find the other, they know without question that they can find the other at the edge of the world (the rock quarry), and so will drive out and quietly keep the other company against whatever monster is haunting them that night. (It’s here at the rock quarry one night that Billy, unable to look at Steve, apologizes in a thick voice about that night at the Byer’s when he nearly beat Steve to who knows. And it’s here that Steve realizes that he’s already forgiven Billy, and even though Billy doesn’t think he deserves forgiveness, Steve makes it known…gently grabbing a now silently-crying Billy, holding him till he stops struggling and says “you’re my best friend.”)

And because I’m a slut for friends to enemies to would-be-lovers, these two are falling deep for each other without admitting it to themselves, let alone each other. And because Neil is Neil, he eventually gets angry about something random and takes it out on Billy- Billy gets cut/injured along his torso, and when he arrives at Steve’s (because going to his best friend’s house when he’s hurting is more comforting that he can bear to think, let alone say), naturally Steve has him sit with his shirt off at the kitchen table while crouching down to tenderly clean up Billy’s injury. Cue Steve feeling extremely protective over Billy + wanting to destroy Neil, and feeling heat in a way he can’t give words to because Billy is here, half naked in front of him, so close he can smell him and it’s dizzying. Cue Billy being frozen by the intimacy of being truly cared for by his best friend and feeling warm everywhere because having Steve’s hands actually touch him is awakening something (love!) in him that scares him.

“Guess this is what I get for being an asshole for all those years” Billy rasps jokingly to lighten to the mood. Steve stops breathing for a moment and maybe gets too intense, but he can’t help it, with Billy as he grabs his hand and makes him look in his eyes, saying shakily “This is wrong, Billy, what’s happening to you is wrong. But you’re not. You’ve done bad things, but you aren’t bad. Do you understand, Billy? You are not bad.” And it’s so intense that Billy can only dazedly shake his head yes as he tries to blink away the tears stinging his eyes. Steve nods briefly before going to back to cleaning Billy’s injury, and both are silently thinking I can do many things but being without you is not one of them.

This is the first night Billy stays the night- he sleeps in the guest bedroom right next to Steve’s and this becomes a frequent occurrence for Billy to stay over when he’s able to or can’t go home. A few weeks later he’s sleeping over in the guest room (after the kids went home Billy & Steve drank Steve’s dad’s whiskey and played records and jokingly insulted the others taste in music) but gets woken up at some point in the night by Steve having a nightmare. When he rushes into the room- both of them in their little basketball shorts- Steve is already sitting upright on the edge of his bed, breathing heavy and mortified that he woke Billy up with one of his screaming nightmares. Billy crouches down in front of Steve, gently makes Steve look him in the eyes – they are so close they are sharing the same breath – and tells Steve he has nightmares too. Billy quietly tells him about his nightmares about his mom, his dad (doesn’t mention that losing Steve is now a feature in his nightmares now), and says, almost without thinking, that spending time with Steve helps his nightmares. That Steve can call him anytime he has one, anytime it gets too bad, that there’s nothing wrong with being scared of the big empty house and the monster that could be in the pool outside. That Steve is not stupid, and that he’s not bullshit. That Steve takes care of everyone all the time, and Billy gives a little huff of a laugh and nudges Steve’s knee when he says “so I’ll have to look after you”, trying to play it off like a joke and not like the promise it is. But Steve’s eyes glisten slightly in the dark as he softly says back “And I’ll look after you.”

Soft touches, shared glances, and brief blushing smiles become all too common between them in the weeks that follow (they try to rationally explain this away to themselves when they’re alone- that the other couldn’t possibly feel the same way, that they don’t want to lose the one real best friend they have by confronting feelings they’ve both never felt before). Of the short time periods they are not together- when Steve’s parents show up for a night or Billy has to stay home overnight because Neil- a void is felt by the other’s absence that both Steve and Billy start to admit (only to themselves, of course) feels painful in a way that nothing ever has before. That when they are together it feels right, feels solid. That the other feels like home. Like something they’ve never ever had before And it’s only when they are alone at night, in bed, thinking so loudly they are sure someone can hear them, will they acknowledge their biggest secret: that they are in love with their best friend.

END OF PART 1!

Part 2 coming shortly, but this is just a headcanon I would love for someone to take and turn into a full-fledged fic- that would be my dream! I just don’t think I can do it justice but if you want to take it on, just let me know, I would be thrilled!

I had to re-write all this because it disappeared- honestly, I just don’t know how to Tumblr sometimes, but! this is the first thing I have creatively written for this website and it’s all because of my favorites who are my inspirations in this Harringrove fandom- you all are seriously amazing and beyond talented! I re-read your guys work consistently and it brings me such joy so I wanted to share my headcanon idea with you guys. Tagging my inspirations: @lymricks @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger @pizzacast @gothyringwald @flippyspoon @marsza @highon85 @lemonlovely @granpappy-winchester You guys are amazing!

#harringrove #harringrove ficlet #steve harrington #billy hargrove #steve x billy #summer love #is this a ficlet or a headcanon #not really sure #harringrove headcanon #feedback welcome and appreciated

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munamania · 4 years

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this isnt quite the ask meme so feel free to ignore it but i wanna hear about why u like either stranger things or it (or both im not ur mom)

omg i love you thank u for asking. im gonna put a keep reading on this bc i ranted a lot lmao

ok so stranger things was odd (ha); i remember when it very first came out during that july i was like ‘im not rlly into scifi so idk if i’d care for it’ and my sister was like ‘no, trust me, me neither but i started this and it’s really good’ so i started it while hanging out at her house and was absolutely glued to the screen and then i left and went home and proceeded to stay up until 4 am to finish it and was absolutely SOBBING at my screen. i was enamored by the aesthetic (so many beautiful shots of the fall landscape and a simple 80s wintery vibe and the christmas lights UGH poetic cinema) and i just felt like all of the characters were so fleshed out and no matter how much conflict there was or idiotic things they did i literally loved every single one (except like. Ted and Papa yk??). and they were such good friends and so so funny??? like dustin and lucas had a hilarious dynamic and mike literally going to jump off a cliff for dustin???? being so concerned for will and letting that take precedence over any romances (not just talking about mileven i promise) hello????? el sacrificing so much of herself and her energy for these people because they’re the first to truly treat her with unconditional kindness in her life and they’re her family now??? but they all had SUCH heart and dedication to one another, and i loved that because the boys werent super concerned with like toxic masculinity (not to be #deep like a lot of it was that they were kids but they love each other so much and don’t care when they’re bullied by troy and his gang; they are there for each other and the first season shows how deep each of their friendships run and i love it); like these idiots were big NERDS and so sweet and kind to el, and each other honestly. you know they all had each other’s backs, even when they were mad or bickering. it went against my expectations for an 80s-based show and the government conspiracy aspect was intriguing (despite the fact that i usually get lost with that stuff; same with the sci-fi aspect) and i adored all of the kids and the story was just so tight and developed so wonderfully. i think season 1 was phenomenal and thats where it becomes hard for me as it goes on; im bummed that it’s more mainstream and thus i can only expect them to abide by mainstream guidlines (in terms of how they handle lgbt/minority characters, the balance between plot vs character, how far they will go in criticizing american and other governments), but i do think it deserves the hype. it is a beautiful, wonderful show and i am attached to the characters and the actual story more than i have been with anything else. it easily became my favorite show and season 2 LIVED UP TO THE HYPE it was so so good!!!! i rewatch the first two seasons all the time (i honestly dont know how many times ive seen each season at this point (other than three which i have seen thrice, i believe); i simply adore each and every character and the different teams that form by the ends of the season and i believe that they did very very well with all of this up until season 3 (ive talked about my diasppointment extensively, so im gonna focus on the positive); and we will see how s4 goes.

as for It, i have a lot less background tbh but i still really love it. i remember watching the og miniseries years ago and even though i have trouble watching shows with a big “ensemble” cast (mostly bc the characters arent diverse so i have trouble distinguishing between them), i liked the story and i remember being struck by bev’s storyline. i dont remember why i wanted to see it ch1 so bad (probably because i’d seen finn in stranger things the year before, ngl) but i attached to the characters so quickly. i saw it with my mom and she was like ‘that was awful it wasn’t even scary, it was just corny’ and i was like MAYBE SO but i fucking loved the characters so so much. i said that over and over and over and was heartbroken when i found out upon further research that two of my favorite characters (though ofc its hard to ‘rank’ them when they all have such a special place in my heart) die in the book. regardless, i just loved the kid actors sm and i think i found it especially easy to get invested in the story and the cast because they’re my age?? idk i just find it a lot more fun (which is probably why im still more partial to ch1). and then i went home and found all of the stupid interviews with them and the videos they posted on their own youtube channels and i thought they were so funny and it was awesome that they were genuinely such good friends. again, i dont always get invested in horror storylines but i thought the fact that its really....a love story between friends and ch2 especially has a lot of commentary on homophobia (its absolutely not perfect but yk) because of adrian mellon coming from charlie howard and how they all come from more troubled backgrounds but find love in each other is just the BEST i am such a sucker for found family and i have genuinely not found a better example of that than the losers club. i love them so fucking much. again, im not quite as informed when it comes to It as i am with stranger things, but i still really really love the story and characters and the depth that they all have (except mike/stan they were slept on) (and eddie was deprived of a good gay story and just Happy story but whatever) and yeah anyway im just ranting at this point. i think that stephen king had some... interesting ways of writing this story that make me wary of finally just picking up the book and reading more than the first few chapters (ie You Know, and just... idk i don’t trust how bev was written (but maybe thats harsh of me considering i Havent read it)), but hopefully eventually i will so i can be more involved than i am now. i cant quite articulate all that im trying to say, but i really really do love the story and the kids.

send me asks!!

#lesbianrobin #asks #i put in a keep reading link but if thats not working im gonna Cry this is so long lmao #long post #tysm for asking shcjsjfjsjff i had so much fun thinking abt everything

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tonyajace-182 · 5 years

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WHERE IS MY SEASON FOUR!? [Contains Spoilers]

Overall Conclusion:

I don’t feel satisfied, like at all.

So much happened and I loved every single bit of it, but it felt too much like a build-up. It actually felt a lot like a season 1 than it did a season 3 (if that makes sense).

I don’t care about Nancy and Jonathan. Their story line bored me from S1. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy they lived and have such a strong relationship between them; but their story line is of no interest for me. They are definite side characters to me that would rank like in the way way lows on my ‘characters of importance list’.

I’m actually really really proud of Karen Wheeler. She said no to temptation and that is admirable. I feel like I owe her an apology because I literally expected the absolute worst of her. As in, I was mentally and inwardly hating on her before I even watched ep1. I feel bad, especially after she had the heart to heart with Nancy.

SO…..

Sorry Mrs Wheeler.

Unexpectedly…. I think I might have a new ship or bromance. Murray and Alexei were just so cute to me. The child like marvel Alexei had was endearing, plus Murray’s attentive enlightening was cool to see. They may have been minor but when they got screen time they really brought the sweet fluff vibes.

I noticed that everyone was split into small groups (probably because they are too big to properly develop altogether as one big group). What stood out to me a lot was the dynamic’s always tended to take on a rather family vibe. Two characters would play the parents roles and the others would act the role of children. For example, Jopper were the parents, Alexei and Murray the children. Steve and Robin were the parents, Erica and Dustin the children etc. Between that, they would also switch it up with a bit of Teenage dramatude (Drama plus attitude). Jopper bickering and Murray calling them out. Jancy having real adult talk about life. Steve and Robin talking about that hard knock life. The teens being actual teens.

Real talk though, I’m proud of the kids.

I felt Lucas had a lot more to offer this season. Although, at times he really did seem a bit clueless, I don’t know. He definitely came off as a bit of a dick sometimes (both him and Mike) towards Will. Glad he chilled out later, said his apologies and stuff. I love the Mileven scenes, but Lucas and Max deserve a tonne of credit for this season.

But Max deserved the most.

I loved Max the second she was introduced, I thought she was awesome. This season I seriously name her the ultimate Wifey/best friend a guy and girl could have. She sticks to her guns, you know. Dating a boy doesn’t change her. She knows who she is and what she wants and fights to get it. She was a GREAT influence and pal to Eleven, exactly what El needed, in my opinion. My heart broke for her when she faced Billy. For whatever reason, I got the impression that she and Billy had bonded or something since Season 2. Either way, it hurt to see Sadie/Max slapped out of the way like that. Then when she cries over Billy- It broke me.

I’m glad Will kind of got a break this season. A little disappointed he didn’t really get to do much, other than be an informant. I spent a lot of the time expecting him to reveal he was actually still infected by the Mind flayer the whole time. Also, no one is going to convince me that Will is not gay or bi. The way he stares after Mike and El every time they run off together says so much. I just- after everything he’s been through, both physical and emotional intimacy is something I think he’d crave a lot of. It’s the gender I think he wouldn’t care about. Regardless, Will needs love and gods someone better give him some next season. Also, did no one else keep thinking he was like Spiderman with his mind flaying senses?

Mike was the real Nerd or Geek boy representative this season. I enjoyed seeing how gangling and similar to S1 he was. It was nice not seeing emo Mike. However, the constant doubt and questioning slowly became a bit much. Frankly, I was relieved when he and Max had that argument. I don’t like Mike when he’s in doubt or unsure on stuff. He was okay, but not really an interest for me this season. As I said, I thought he and Lucas were assholes for their treatment of Will. The car ride he has with Hopper will forever be my favorite scene of Mike’s this season.

I really felt for El this season. She’s been put through so much and-…… It’s still too raw and fresh. I can’t talk about it without getting upset. But to summarize: I’M SO FUCKING PROUD OF HER!!

Dustin. Any chance I get to hear Gaten sing is a blessing to my ears and food for my soul. I love his voice and he is so talented. He’s been my fave since the first episode okay. When no one believed him about Suzie, honest to god I wished I could be there to tell him I believed him or some shit. Beyond that, I laughed when he basically said he won’t tell the others about the Russian message because they didn’t believe him about Suzie. That was so petty but I loved it. The bonding between him and Erica was also great. Regardless… out of all the kids Dustin made me the most proud and is still my favorite.

I live for Erica’s sass, but at some points she did test me a bit.

Or maybe I just wanted her to ease up on the feisty attitude towards my baby Dustin.

Steve and Robin had me fucking scared! When they got captured I was shitting my pants imagining all the worst ways they were going to get tortured. I knew since the promo pics that I would love Robin- because I loved the expression on Maya’s face that promised so much attitude and sarcasm. She wasn’t too much of a nag, and while I had mentally labelled her a lesbian queen in my head. When she confesses to Steve I lost my shit. I fucking lost my shit and had to take a break and everything. Then Steve was perfect with his response. I don’t care Steve Harrington will be revealed as BISEXUAL before this fucking show is over!! He just has to!! He is both a MOM and a DAD!! Let’s just say I need more Steve and Robin scenes in the future. Jancy can get like cut or less scenes ok! I need Steve and Robin!!

Joyce….. I can’t talk about her without-….. I just can’t.

Hopper…. Fuck…… I can’t.

Billy.

Fuck.

Overall.

Stranger things season 3 was so good but just not enough. It was too short- too brief and left me with so much to process!!

SO FUCKING GIVE ME SEASON FOUR YOU SON OF A BITCHES!!!!!!!!

Oh.

And P.S: FUCK YOU RUSSIAN WANNABE ARNOLD!! IT’S ALL YOU’RE FUCKING FAULT!! I’M GLAD YOU GOT SPUN AND WHIPPED!!! REST IN HELL YOU FUCKING SHIT!!

#stranger things #stranger things season 3 #stranger things season 3 spoilers

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canvaswolfdoll · 7 years

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CanvasWatches: Stranger Things

I am super late to the Stranger Things… thing, and it took the premier of the second season and an unexpected stretch of free time to finally sit down and watch it. Even then, it took me a couple extra weeks.

I’ve been a critic of Netflix’s binge-focused release format. Not because I don’t enjoy a good binge watch from time to time, but because I like the freedom to choose when I take a break. When bingeing a show formatted for segmented release, each episode tends to be written in such a way as to let the audience comfortably wait a week, either because the narrative is one and done, or by carefully pacing the series to allow it to hold up with a time gap between episodes.

Also, everyone was raving about Stranger Things, which induced some hype poisoning, and I was born after the 80s died, so I don’t really have any nostalgia for the era. Besides Back to the Future and Ghostbusters, I never really watched much 80s media.

Plus everyone was so excited by how the show featured D&D. There are very few D&D-centered episodes that I like, as such depictions always fall short of my expectations.[1]

Besides one groan worthy aspect in season 2[2], I was actually pleasantly surprised by how the show handled the subject: by making it a casual part of the kids’ lives. Season One opens with a game, and closes with a game, and it’s sometimes used to color dialogue, but it’s never in focus, which is good. Hobbies should color characters, not define them.

The actual plot of season 1 was well written, and uses the only plausible excuse for characters not telling each other vital information: by segmenting the plot between three groups that have no reason to interact until the plot threads run together.

Sure, Chief Hopper maybe should’ve been keeping Joyce appraised a little more often, but he was also busy, so I can give that a pass.

Oddly, beside Eleven, I didn’t actually care about the Kids’ plotline. They’re well cast, don’t get me wrong, but the argument over what to do once El enters their lives just runs in circles until the other two plotlines convene, and I just wasn’t particularly invested in them.

And the teens are likewise dull until Nancy and Jon start proactively hunting the eldritch horror. And even then, it’s plagued by gross High School Romance drama. I don’t care who Nancy starts dating, I want to know what’s up with the supernatural weirdness and the effects that has on people.

Which, of course, leaves Hopper and Joyce to be the ones to pull me through. Also Eleven’s flashbacks. You know, the parts showcasing and developing the things that are strange.

The first season is, mercifully, a rare example of a well-executed secrets plot. The mystery’s set off by Will’s disappearance, a strong inciting incident that gets three different casts going down three different plotlines until convening at the end.

Because of the nature of who the characters are and the methods they use to accomplish their goals, they’re kept separate not because of tedious secrets kept to ‘protect’ others, but because they just don’t have any reason to interact.

Hopper and Joyce’s efforts to find Will lead to the Government Conspiracy, and they are unaware of Eleven’s existence for most of it. Eleven is (rightfully) afraid of the Energy Research place, and doesn’t trust adults because of it, making it reasonable the kids wouldn’t know. The teens (once they get past the dumb romance drama) are trying to find Barb, who no one else cares is missing.

The moment the three groups learn they’ve been pursuing different sides of the same puzzle, they work together and share information without fuss. Then they split again when their goals lead in different directions. Hopper and Joyce don’t want to put the kids in danger when they go to confront the big bad; the kids continue to protect Eleven; the teens seek revenge on the demogorgon.

And all three contribute to the resolution.

Then the second season opens, and Hopper, who I loved for being a reasonable protagonist, betrays my trust. Eleven’s hurting being separated from her friends and her friends are hurting not knowing her fate.

A problem easily solved if Hopper just told Mike “Hey, Eleven’s with me, she’s safe, but I’m keeping her out of the public eye. I’ll try to arrange some visits, but they can’t be frequent. Here’s a morse code info card, and a frequency. Don’t keep each other up too late, and don’t tell anyone who hasn’t already met her.”

There, Eleven’s got some social stimulation, no one’s pining, and everyone knows where things stand.

They all worked together for season one’s finale. Hopper’s actions are inexcusable.

Hopper went from my favorite character to one of the most annoying.

As a whole, the first season felt much more tightly written than the second. The first balanced the eldritch horror and psychic powers sufficiently well.

The second advanced and built upon the Upside Down in exciting ways, including a giant central intelligence to the whole place. Confirmation that, instead of just a decaying world to mirror our own, the entire place is a single malevolent entity, represented by an enormous, alien being. I love what is being done with the Upside Down.

Then there’s ‘The Lost Sister’. Which is… the episode literally doesn’t fit. Eleven leaves, seeking her mother. Okay, good development. This leads to some new exposition of what Eleven’s young life was like. That’s good! Slowly exploring that works for the show! Introducing another test subject in the form of ‘8’. Logical, since Eleven is, well, number Eleven.

Elle/Jane goes looking for this mystery girl. That’s where the show goes off the rails. Not that Eleven searching for others like her isn’t a fair plotline, but it literally takes the show away from Hawkins and all the endearing characters we’ve met.

It’s a filler episode, and it turns Eleven from ‘Oddity with connection to the Eldritch’ to ‘Blossoming superhero’ which… Stranger Things wasn’t a superhero show. It’s a mystery and thriller. It’s an episode so divorced from the other eight episodes, you can literally skip it and lose nothing.

Kali’s gang has no redeeming features. They’re criminals and murderers, plain and simple. Elle finds them, establishes a connection with Kali, and then it’s just a ‘Good Character is lead down a dark path before leaving’ plot. It adds nothing.

And Kali has a different power set from Eleven, deepening the Superhero aspect where each mutant has a different power. If, instead, Kali had the same (but weaker) Psionic powers I might take her inclusion better.

But, worse still, none of it has anything to do with the rest of the plot, even when it would’ve been easy to integrate, though that probably would require more time.

Kali’s gang, as mentioned, are bad people. Send them rocking into Hawkins in search of a place to lie low while the heat dies off, maybe induct Billy Hargrove… maybe they could find a space.

Actually, no, nevermind. They’d still be a distraction. It’s a series that works on the strength of it’s dynamic characters. Suddenly hamfisting in Kali and company would strain that.

In fact, I’m not sure searching out numbers 1 through 10 (maybe 12) will ever work, because that would imply a road trip season, which would suck because we’d see less Hawkins in favor of Scooby-Doo’ing up the series.

So keep the fates of the previous ten test subjects a mystery. They were experiments that failed. And considering how much hullabaloo Eleven’s escape caused in the first season, Eight getting away without any remark until now is ridiculous.

It… just doesn’t work. It’s too Kyle XY.

So, let’s take some metaphorical scissors, snip after episode 206, and before 208, remove the middle episode, and drop it out a window. It’s gone, hopefully never to return to hurt us.

Keeping Eleven separated from the rest of the cast for most of the season is the greatest sin of the second season.

Having strong characterization can only go so far if you limit who characters interact with. Segmenting the cast by age groups in the first season was fine as we were meeting the characters, so we need to learn about them in their preferred environment and when normality is interrupted. They come together at the end and cooperate to save the day, an experience shared by all. Mike and Nancy even have a heart-to-heart about how they won’t keep secrets from another. Real touching stuff.

For the second season, besides needing to flesh out the now present Will, we know the cast. So the fun should come from now intermingling the cast. Have Nancy consult Mike about getting hashtag Justice for Barb; Jonathan and Steve becoming romantic mentors to Lucas and Dustin;[3] Hopper becoming an unwilling paternal figure to the party; and show Eleven adjusting to the Real World.

Instead, Eleven only interacts with Hopper all season, and, yes, Daddy Hopper is adorable, though he should maybe try and remember he’s caring for a socially stunted psychic before he starts yelling. Maybe have him start yelling, Eleven gets mad, one bookshelf falls over, both stop to look at this reaction, then Hopper runs both of them through the deep breathing exercise from the end of Season One before talking it through.

Eleven and Hopper’s arc should’ve been about learning to trust in a scary world, instead of… whatever they were going for. And giving her limited interaction with her friends would’ve allowed for this growth, as the party would first have to coax her out of the cottage, and then she’d have firmer ground to question Hopper keeping her cooped up.

And I so love fish out of water stories. Learning what money is and asking Hopper for an allowance? Stumbling about and learning not to assault people who offend her?[4] Being the first kid to form a bond with Bob? All would’ve been nice to watch happen.

Also, Bob was… okay. He didn’t leave much of an impression on me for a generically nice man. They should’ve worked the ‘Bob founded the AV Club’ thing in way sooner, so it wasn’t an awkward line shoved in after his death to retcon in stakes for The Party. It was awkward.

Also, no one else wearing costumes is the least realistic thing. After my 13 years of public school, I know that would never happen.

It’s not all bad, let’s be clear. Upping the threat of the Upside Down and giving it a central intelligence was good, as was expanding on the Demogorgon lifecycle to bring in a nice Alien touch. The tunnels made the threat feel more immediate, and explained the pockets of Upside Down that broke out in season 1. Max is… promising. Hopefully she’ll get more of a concrete arc going forward, but she’s got a good start.

So, in summation, I liked Season 1, and 2 was as enjoyable with a few missteps that hopefully won’t be forced back in. My one fear is that they’re going to put the Mind Flayer on the back burner and spend the next season on the less interesting ‘Other Test Subjects’ plotline. We’re heading towards the end of the Superhero Media boom, while I can’t think of many properties that focus on themes of eldritch and inhuman intelligences that the Mind Flayer and Upside Down presents.

Still, when Stranger Things 3 arrives, I’ll watch as eagerly as anyone else.

If you enjoyed this review, may I suggest to trawl through my archive to see if you enjoy my other works? (The CanvasReviews tag should give you a good start). Also, feel free to send me messages and question. I also have a Patreon, if that’s your sort of thing.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Yes, even Community’s much beloved take. There was no passion in it and it was weighed down by the ‘One Character for all games’ and ‘Dice results dictate everything’ concepts that makes zero sense. [2] How can you forget about Rogues, you idiots? It’s literally the best class! [3] I will go on record: if you sit me through a tired love triangle, but follow it up by having two corners advise on a new love triangle, I will be on board for that absurdity. [4] For context, my ideal ending of the the show is the town just transitions into casually accepting that, sometimes, eldritch horrors pop up, and just deal with them casually.

#CanvasWatches #stranger things #CanvasReviews

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