#they don’t even have the excuse of retelling 130 year old gay stories in a subversive way lol

[afishlearningpoetry]

what happened with stranger things? not a fan, just curious

The character Will has been gay since the original pilot Montauk was pitched, described as having “sexual identity issues”. ST built on this characterization for the first two seasons, along with being largely successful of handling the rest of the story and cast. The original inciting incident of the show was wrapped up pretty neatly and everyone was waiting to see what happened next. El and his best friend Mike are dating. Then season 3 ruined everything by killing everyone’s characterization, which also killed everyone’s relationships by manslaughter, injecting dead-end creative decisions for the incredibly thin and boring story for action and spectacle over substance , and giving no one a real character conflict besides Will through the end of episode 3, where he destroys his childhood fort in a fit of anger and sadness over everyone (Mike especially) being able to move on from their childhoods while he can’t, because he’s been through so much and can’t relate to them spending so much time with their girlfriends (Mike especially), which fit really naturally with his own internal conflict over being gay in the 1980’s. The problem is in addition to everything else this arc is completely abandoned after episode 3 and the rest of the season plays out like a pretty soulless husk of itself. Will and his family, including newly adopted El move away in the closing montage.

Anyway so in season 4, which has only corrected some of the issues in s3 while exacerbating others, he hasn’t had anything to do in the story at all. He’s working on a painting of something in the first episode, but doesn’t show anyone what it is. He makes a school project based on Alan Turing. In episode 2 Mike comes to visit and it’s really awkward when they meet again. Will brought his painting to show him at the airport but decides against it, and spends the rest of the day being miserable as the third wheel with Mike and El until him and Mike finally blow up and argue about their relationship deteriorating since the move. Mike’s written El a lot, but only called Will a few times. At the same time, El gets mad at Mike for never saving “Love, Mike” in his letters, and only signing it “from”. They reaffirm their friendship later but the scenes play out strange, in the sense that something seems unresolved on Mike’s end, some other reason why he isn’t telling El he loves her, but we’re given no insight into what that might be, whereas we know why Will stopped reaching out to him. It *feels* like we’re supposed to notice it and aren’t given the full explanation. Lots of plot happens and they go on the run for a few episodes, and in episode 8 last night Will finally shows him the painting, which is of him and all their friends, and lies by saying El asked him to make it. Mike doesn’t pick up that El already said to him earlier she doesn’t know what he painted. Will kind of comes out to Jonathon but without saying it explicitly, and is clearly trying to come out to Mike, but can’t find the words and is crying really hard in the car but Mike doesn’t seem to notice (some people who watched it are still saying Will is not gay lol, so it’s not explicit). Will motivates him to tell El that he loves her so she can use her powers to save the day. His arc kind of drops off unresolved again, and I guess Mike just stopped reaching out to Will because he’s a bad friend, if we’re supposed to take this subplot between them at face value, which is absolutely not what Mike from the first two seasons would have done.

I don’t know if we are but it’s like, so boring to watch lmao. Straight characters in the show get to flirt and everything right away and we have to wait this long for this to happen possibly, maybe. Everything else is saying that we’re supposed to believe it’s not over but the shows been so messy the last two seasons it’s not like that’s a reliable metric. There’s also this weird parallel between lesbian character Robin seeing her crush with a boyfriend and Will seeing Mike and El. Is it on purpose? It obviously should be lol and I believe it has to be because why else? But it’s so frustrating regardless, so who knows.

That’s what I meant by series 4 being so ahead of it’s time. It was able to distill this weird, strangely modern but also timeless kind of dilemma into an unreliable narrative that captures the emotionality of it really well. Is it on purpose? Are the inconsistencies there for a reason? In Sherlock there’s a science to it, but everywhere else in the world, you’ll just find uncertainty.