So Henry just likes the number 12, and also clocks, and also libraries

For no reason tho

The fact that Stranger Things is a show designed to attract all kinds of nerds, while focusing on a group of marginalized nerds, and yet the general audience still mocks real people for being nerdy and making theories is honestly hilarious.

The Duffer Brothers seem to mock all the nerds at this point too, honestly. You need to be their brand of nerd, their brand of misunderstood, otherwise they dgaf

And you cannot, under any circumstances, be smarter or more creative than they are

I need everyone to watch this and repost it

Okay, now I legitimately believe in #divorcegate, this brings things beyond mere speculation

Leigh Janiak is probably to thank for so much of what we loved.

Her absence from season 5 explains its mediocrity, and might explain them possibly intentionally sabotaging plotlines that seemed to be incredibly intentionally built up in the first 4 seasons.

the noise that audience made when maya put will and mike under “cutest couple that never was” lives rent free in my brain because, from a film and tv perspective, that is the clearest possible indicator of general audience expectation. you don’t get that kind of palpable, unanimous reaction unless the text has been building a trajectory people subconsciously recognise. that’s storytelling language 101.

and honestly? the duffers fumbled history. i’m not being dramatic, i’m being academically accurate. they set up a romantic arc, primed the audience for it, and then acted shocked when people responded to the emotional grammar they themselves established. it’s wild to watch a show undermine its own cinematic logic like that.

S4:

S5:

The fact that Stranger Things is a show designed to attract all kinds of nerds, while focusing on a group of marginalized nerds, and yet the general audience still mocks real people for being nerdy and making theories is honestly hilarious.

The Duffer Brothers seem to mock all the nerds at this point too, honestly. You need to be their brand of nerd, their brand of misunderstood, otherwise they dgaf

im pissed and disgusted by the queerbait so

here is a masterpost on everything that doesnt make sense because byler isnt canon, plot holes that exist because byler isnt canon, all the ways mikes character was ruined by making him straight, AND how it was homophobic. i include explanations and categorize things by color coding! this includes scenes in the show, interviews, and posts from the stranger things team. (note: im not going to include things noah said-explained in tags)

warning, it’s very long because im including EVERYTHING. I found and listed 108 examples here. enjoy—or don’t.

The way that this isn’t even all of the questions we could ask and issues we could list as a result of this being queerbait lmfao… god….

hot take

ok obviously mike isn't wills tammy.

however i don't think jane was mikes tammy either like a lot of people are saying.

from what i remember tammy and robin literally meant nothing to eachother than tammy being robins crush? tammy was just a plot point, that furthered robins story.

jane was like, obviously, to me, more than just a plot point. to both mike and will. (willel wondertwins ily) like. no i don't think mike and jane were in love however i DO think that they loved eachother. just not in the way that s4 jane wanted mike to say. (i still think its wild that finale mike STILL did not say i love you back before she died. like man cmon now. milevens i'm actually sorry about this. if they were going for endgame mileven they (duffers) could've atleast put effort into the relationship n not ignored like. actual points of contention from other seasons. but i digress...) they literally care about eachother so much and have been through so much

added note: some people on this site need to read up on the difference between a trauma bond and shared trauma please please please

I don’t think people really understand how horrifying Henry’s story is. Like…imagine you’re 8 years old, and you’ve just come off this massively traumatizing self-defense struggle where you had to kill a guy, and now this alien invades your body, but you cannot tell ANYONE because they all think you’re insane. And it makes you hurt animals, hurt people, even though you really really really try not to, because it’s hungry and it wants energy and more than anything it wants you broken so it can take over your (recently awakened and wholly unfamiliar) psychic powers that no one in the world could possibly explain to you.

And then you meet this doctor and he believes you and he seems to want to help—or maybe he doesn’t, you can’t really tell, you’re only 14 and he’s the only person who isn’t scared to touch you let alone stay in your presence for longer than a minute or two, and he knows you’re never going to be normal, you never stood a chance, and you know it too—and then things go to shit because you get scared of him and your mom sells you out to him and the monster takes advantage of your pain and fear to make you kill her and wow, look at that, the only person who understands is that fucking doctor again!

So you end up in his government lab and it just…metastasizes into this breeding program because the government wants more kids like you, and the only silver lining is the repress of chip the doctor built to keep the monster from taking over again. And it stays that way for 20 years until you try to help one of your children (siblings? The doctor uses the words interchangeably) escape, and she refuses to go without you, so you go “I’m sure it’ll be fine” and let her take the chip out.

And then you blink and suddenly everyone’s dead and you’re being pushed through a rip in space-time to a planet where you’re 99% sure no one will ever find you—not that anyone wants to find you, because you’re pretty sure that doctor was plenty satisfied having Eleven, so why would he look for you at all? And you’re also pretty sure you died on impact, but that’s not really important because THE FUCKING MONSTER LIVES THERE. AND YOU CANT RUN THIS TIME 😐 WHERE DO YOU RUN ON A FOREIGN PLANET INHABITED BY A SMOKE MONSTER.

So you accept your fate because what other option is there at this point, and you’re in the middle of almost being able to reach your home planet when all of a sudden you’re 1) being thrown through a window, 2) being forced to relive that thing in the cave that sparked all this, 3) being preached at by some coddled teenager who thinks he could somehow understand you, 4) being violently decapitated by your former classmate while you mentally beg her not to hurt you because it wasn’t you, it was never you, and she knows that because her kid fucking said it out loud, but she’s doing it anyway.

And that’s your life up to age 40—which is only half your expect life span—and 32 years of it were spent suffering unimaginable horrors with no one there to help you. No one ever came to save you except for that stupid fucking doctor! And they’re all going to blame you instead of the monster because it makes them feel like righteous heroes instead of misinformed children who killed the wrong fucking guy because that same righteousness prevented them from asking even a single question in regards to your situation.

Oh yeah and also your body rotted down to shattered bones, but the monster has just been puppeting it using its tentacles.

set designers thought they were slick with the jack kerouac poster

So its "overbearing partners" when Vicki's upset and concerned for her girlfriend but true love when hopper starts crashing out over his not even girlfriend is talking to other men.

Hopper's speech about how El deserves to live saying she'll have a daughter someday and that theoretical daughter is ALSO already presupposed into a prematurely physical relationship with a boy. it's just Hopper projecting his own parenting issues onto future El. and El only getting to say goodbye to Mike. Mike not saying "I love you" but only "don't leave me" (? i'm not checking lmao) making it about HIS feelings yet again.

these were El's last moments as she prepared to take her own life and they made them revolve around the shitass men in her life and THEIR dreams for her. nobody in the entire show ever asked El what her dreams were for herself. ever.

The incredible concept of having your cast read personalised handwritten (!) letters about their individual characters, after dropping the plotline of one of them writing a handwritten letter for each of the others without even mentioning it once in the show.

the part where Hopper thought he shot Jane was the best part of the finale I think. it had me quaking in my boots praying. it was such a great sequence, and I wish they had kept going with the Vecna mind games instead of Giant Enemy Spider.