Truely missed oppurtunity, not having them kiss in these outfits. Would have saved the world without anyone ever having to enter the Upside Down... smh
I think it’d be so cool if conformitygate is real if we got 4 new episodes, for a total of 12. Obviously this would parallel the 12 kids and all of the “why 12?” Questions but they could also re contextualize vol 2&3, one new episode for each of the four in those volumes. Also I think the vecna stuff started after episode four so episodes 5-8 would be great to see in a new light
thinking about will being framed as the exotic matter with an x over his heart, and his heart (mike) being the builder of the bomb set to destroy the exotic matter.
coming back to ask what the point of all these details were. will had nothing to do with the exotic matter and mike’s bomb killed el.
Okay so, I never believed in the whole "secret episode" part of conformitygate, but I did and STILL DO believe in the plotline itself?? Because there's genuinely no way they had that many parallels and details in the epilogue alone? This isn't even a "trying to cope with bad writing" thing, like no I can accept this shit was abysmally written, I just thought they'd announce a spinoff or movie to explain the whole truman show epilogue.
Transitioning into the epilogue using clock mimicking sounds and heartbeats? Multiple sets of extras looking directly into the camera? The whatz-it game? The repeated mention of media that revolves around false endings and realities? The dropped logic of hellfire being accepted, max graduating, hopper being chief? The reused engagement ring? Making Mike look like both his father and Henry at the same time? The lack of times on watches, clocks, and video recording? The blank sign, everyone in orange instead of green, the way everyone was sitting the same way Henry does? The saturated colours mimicking the mindscape? The exit signs throughout the season, even in the "happy endings" Mike crafts? The ominous WSQK and how the broadcasters names sound like Vecna and the Mindflayer? The parallels to DND concepts like the false Hydra?
Bad writing, yeah, but what was all that???????? How do you do that accidentally??????? Yeah, they could still announce something, though the longer they wait the more they're gonna get accused of copying their audience's idea. Well, fuck the duffers anyhow.
the duffers are genuinely gonna give me trust and commitment issues and im gonna have to go back to therapy
My biggest issue with their portrayal of Will Byers is how insulting it is for queer CSA survivors. We have been made to watch Will be physically and mentally tortured for 5 seasons, but nothing was as disturbing as watching the first 5 minutes of season 5. This scene was easily the most disgusting and hard to watch scenes in the entire show. It is dragged out needlessly, and we are forced to watch a 12 year old boy sobbing and gasping for breath while he is literally being SAed on screen.
From the way this is shot (camera angles), to how it is never treated with gravity, it is all entirely gratuitous. It is shock value, and nothing more. Not only did Netflix neglect to put a trigger warning before showing this clip to an unprepared audience, but this topic was never again brought up in the show itself. Will Byers was denied his voice as a character regarding this abuse, and those of us fans who have experienced CSA were shut up as a result of the Duffer brother’s irresponsible storytelling.
They made us watch this, tied this sexual abuse to his sexuality, and still denied him the right to have romantic love or to act out any sort of consensual and happy romantic act on screen. They have directly told queer people through Will Byers and their other underutilized LGBTQ+ rep that we do not deserve love, but for those of us that have been sexually abused, this message is even more apparent. New studies have shown that 83% of queer individuals report physical, mental or sexual abuse. Out of this, nearly 60% is report of sexual violence. 3 in 5 queer people will report being sexually abused at some time in their life. Most queer survivors of sexual abuse will experience this during childhood. We are at a significantly higher risk than that of our cishet peers. This is a very real problem our community faces that they exploited.
They did not allow Will Byers to even acknowledge what happened to him, or process it, let alone heal from it. They never allowed him to actually love another boy without it being in servitude of straight romance, and they never allowed him to be touched in a way that wasn’t intended to harm him. Sexual abuse of children continues to go almost entirely unnoticed, because it is seen as taboo, it is swept under the rug and ignored. And I will never forget that this is exactly what Stranger Things perpetuated, using his character so many of us queer people related to and saw ourselves in. They wrote a story about a gay boy being abducted and SAed at 12, purely for the equivalent of queer torture porn. Will Byers deserved better as a character and so did we. We do not exist for your shock value. We are real people and these are things that actually happened to us, and we deserved representation that cared and that would give us our voices.
i have a little bit to add to conformitygate, and just the fandom in general:
a lot of people refuse to believe in conformitygate - which is absolutely understandable because you’ve been burnt too many times and even i’m approaching it cautiously. however, i keep seeing people say “the duffers are stupid, they can’t do something this good” and “ross’ divorce is the reason the quality declined” and i have to stop you right there.
the duffer brothers are not the only writers of stranger things. by implying so you’re removing all the other writers in the stranger writers room like kate tefry, paul ditcher, and caitlin schneiderhan from the narrative. people who contributed to all episodes plot points from the beginning.
and then we have intentional costuming and set design which also point to obvious clues. the duffers didn’t do this themselves, there are experts in these fields working on it. okay, say the duffer brothers disappoint us with the writing. are you seriously going to tell me that amy parris (the costume designer) missed by a mile with robin’s styling in the epilogue accidentally when she’s shown us time and time again how much effort goes into the costuming. the hand printed shirt with triangle motifs, letting maya customise robins’s converse, the consistently masc look robin has going on.
lastly, i’ve seen people say “netflix nerfed byler halfway through filming” and as someone who studied film and animation, that’s just simply not how it works. scenes are almost never filmed linearly. the shock jock scenes of will communicating with max (directed by frank darabont) were filmed before the sorcerer power reveal (directed by the duffers). mike doesn’t touch will in shock jock, and mike’s iconic heart eyes that turned a lot of GA into bylers was filmed after the shock jock scene.
i only chose to believe in conformitygate because i know stranger things is the result of many people coming together to create something big. volume 1 was written and filmed by the same people so i want to explore why episodes 6-8 felt off keeping this in mind. and even if conformitygate isn’t real, i do think it’s important to remember that the duffers aren’t the only people who wrote and made stranger things happen just because they keep giving unnecessary interviews.
if i’m wrong about it, i’ll just mourn what stranger things could have been and move on. the ending we have is ambiguous byler anyway so i’ll still be taking that as a win. but if you’re going to hold people accountable for queer baiting, then it’s important to include the entire writers room in the conversation and not make it about a divorce that probably has nothing to do with stranger things.
and lastly. no, foah isn’t the reason we thought byler were going to happen. i’m going to be honest, i hadn’t spared a thought about their friendship before st5 and i refuse to fall for this narrative that the actors’ chemistry is the only reason people ship byler. byler is woven into the narrative threads of the show. in every possible way.