#Generous Reaganites??? fuck off no way

[thelovelandfrogman]

Stranger Things might be a Scif-fi/Horror series but the least believable part is when the kids claim to get a full size candy bar from a house with a Reagan/Bush political sign in the yard

#Stranger Things #Stranger things season 2 #seriously kids don't trick or treat in rich neighborhoods #they buy the same candy as everyone else but you gotta walk twice as far between houses #hivemind monsters? Sure! #Alternate dimensions? Totally! #Generous Reaganites??? fuck off no way

[tjmystic]

Unwanted Opinion About Robin/Nancy and Nancy/Jonathan

Short version: as far as romantic relationships go, Nancy’s best match is Robin. However, I still ship her with Jonathan, and it makes me sad how both the show and the fans are shafting him.

Long version: under the cut, because it is long.

First off, let me say that I ship Nancy with Jonathan. I’ve shipped them since Season 1, I’m going to ship them through Season 5. Tis the way.

HOWEVER:

I love that all of the cast wants Robin to get with Nancy because of their desire for better representation and a happy ending for a wlw queer romance. I also love the idea of the internet collectively obsessing over the idea of Steve being bisexual and having it turn out that Nancy is the bi one. (Both is the better option, obviously, but it would still be objectively hilarious if Steve is totally straight and his ex is the bi one.)

I also think that Robin is good for Nancy in a way that Steve and Jonathan distinctly aren’t. Specifically, Robin isn’t emotionally needy. She has a need to be recognized and seen. She has a need to be taken seriously. She has a need for close friendships, which she’s realized through Steve and (now) Nancy. But she doesn’t have a need for a romantic partner. The only reason romance is such a big part of her character arc is that she’s a lesbian in the Reaganite Midwest. Her desire to be noticed and taken seriously is intrinsically linked to her ability to find a partner because she’s living in a world where queers are vilified to the absolute extreme and AIDS is viewed as a disease sent by God to kill all the gays. ANY story arc with her has to emphasize her search for love as a lesbian, just as any story arc with Will has to emphasize his search for love as a gay boy.

Contrast the way she interacts with Vickie with the way Steve interacts with Nancy. She has an obsessive crush on Vickie (and I say obsessive in the sense that she’s an adorkable teenager, that’s how pretty much all adorkable teenagers do crushes, it isn’t something worthy of moral judgement, it’s just cute). She talks about Vickie pretty constantly with her bestie (Steve). She gets heart-eyes whenever she sees Vickie. And the same is true for how Steve interacts with Nancy (though, good God, do I hope it’s just because he’s desperate for love in general, not Nancy specifically—I love both Nancy and Steve separately as characters, but I hate them as a ship). But he’s also obsessed with their future together. Robin isn’t fantasizing about adopting children or taking in a bunch of stray cats in a high-rise apartment in San Francisco. She’s fantasizing about the present—the way Vickie looks when she smiles, the sound of her laugh, the way she (Robin) feels when Vickie touches her. Steve, meanwhile, has a whole future planned out with a wife, 6 kids, and a Winnebago. He has domestic dreams out the wazoo.

And that’s why Steve and Nancy will never work. Nancy is never going to be the traditional wife type. She probably doesn’t even want kids (or, if she does, she wants to wait a good long while for it to happen). She wants to be a successful investigative journalist with an impressive degree and an even more impressive career. She wants to be taken seriously. She wants to be recognized for the genius she is.

That’s where she and Robin are perfectly matched. Unlike Nancy and Steve, Nancy and Robin have the same goals.

The PROBLEM with that is how it fucks over Jonathan.

I’m not one of those people who are like “good guys deserve women as rewards”. I am one of those people who hates when stories throw away great chemistry and experience between characters just because they get bored. And that’s definitely what it feels like—that the story has gotten bored with Jonathan. He hasn’t had a good plot since Season 1. Even his storyline in Season 2, while interesting, had him acting as second fiddle to Nancy. He didn’t really have any goals of his own. Same with Season 3. In Season 4, it feels like his storyline is entirely about how he doesn’t have a storyline. He’s lost sight of what he wants and who he wants to be, and he’s floundering because of it. Argyle is a happy stoner who smokes because he wants to. Jonathan is a sad, desperate stoner who smokes because he doesn’t know what else to do with his life.

The only real complaint I have about Season 4 is how they shoehorned in the “will-they/won’t they” between Steve and Nancy. At the end of Season 3, Nancy and Jonathan were fine. And even after having watched Season 4, I don’t see either of them as the type to struggle under a long-distance relationship. That seems wildly out of character for both of them. It only kind of makes sense under the lens of what I said previously about Jonathan floundering in California. He’s afraid, he’s pushing her away out of fear that she’ll sever ties first (or that they’ll linger on and turn into his parents, as he says to Argyle), and Nancy is left reacting to it the only way she can.

In reality, I feel like they’d both communicate all of this. More than any of the other characters (except maybe Mike), Nancy and Jonathan suffer from being teenagers who don’t know how to deal with their emotions. That isn’t a complaint, that’s just realistic characterization. But I STILL feel like they’d talk things through. After everything Murray laid at their feet in Season 2, I don’t think they would keep secrets anymore. Even in Season 3, their fight had more to do with telling each other what they considered to be hard truths, thereby oversharing, rather than hiding stuff from each other.

So there’s that. And then there’s the fact that, in one way, Nancy is never going to be what Jonathan deserves. (Which, again, not a complaint against Nancy—she doesn’t need to fit a man’s mold. She does, however, need to meet at least some of the emotional needs of whatever partner she ends up with. That’s true of any person in a relationship.) What I’m talking about is what I said earlier about how Steve and Jonathan are both emotionally “needy”. Steve’s needs are a lot more obvious than Jonathan’s because Jonathan never really voices them. But that just makes those needs all the more depressing. He’s never been someone’s number one priority. He isn’t number one for Joyce, he definitely wasn’t for his dad, he only sometimes is for Will, and he will never be for Nancy. The only person who consistently puts him at the top of their list is Argyle. But that’s why I like them so much as best friends. They’re like Steve and Robin—soulmates who don’t need sexual or romantic affection to know how much they love one another.

Basically, then, as long as Jonathan is cool with being his bestie’s number one but not his girlfriend’s, I think they work out the best. They challenge each other. They recognize each other’s strengths. And I think they’re the only two characters who take each other seriously. And I really want to see more of them together as a team because of it.

#stranger things #stranger things season 4 #nancy wheeler #robin buckley #jonathan byers #steve harrington #jancy #ronance #tw: aids #tw: homophobia #anti-stancy

[tibby]

I’ve been thinking about all the weirdly conservative views in stranger things lately and am wondering if your have any stranger things hot takes? I love all your stranger things and riverdale posts!

it’s been brought up before but it truly is like...baffling that this show is so pro capitalism and one of the main families are proud reaganites and yet neither of those things are criticised. i understand that that was the mood and beliefs of a lot of people in the 1980s, but they were not good things, and presenting them at face value with no criticism is lazy writing at best and something the duffers support at worst (although, honestly, i wouldn’t be surprised.)

for a show set in a small town where a large percentage of the residents aren’t wealthy (the byers family is an obvious one, but we can safely assume dustin and his mother aren’t super well off either, not to mention everyone who lost their jobs in st3) stranger things really does not like to discuss class disparity. 

following on from that: they had so much potential to discuss how corporations and Shiny Malls damage family businesses and the livelihood of small business owners, and they just...did nothing with it? like yeah the mall gets burned down and the mayor gets arrested but like. it’s never properly addressed and if i remember correctly (it’s been awhile since i watches s3, so i could be wrong) hopper even arrests some of the protestors. you know, the people who lost their jobs and businesses thanks to the mayor’s shady deal to make starcourt happen.

generally speaking, the glorification of hopper.

anyone who has followed me for an extended period of time knows i hate murray but WHY would a man that has countless conspiracy theories and who doesn’t trust anyone suddenly turn around and start preaching about how america is the land of the free and so great? murray has always sucked but his speeches to alexei in st3 didn’t even make sense for the character.

see also: erica being made a main character (yay!) but giving speeches about how america is great and capitalism is good.

the treatment of lucas and the sinclair family is a whole other post and one that isn’t really mine to write, but the way he’s treated at the hands of other characters is rarely ever addressed within the show and it’s incredibly disturbing.

the fact that they genuinely seem to think that a wealthy white woman having a shitty boss is like, the peak of misogyny. i’m not denying that what nancy experienced was bad (although, honestly, seperate from the sexist comments, if i ran a newspaper and two teenage interns tried to tell me about insane rats, i wouldn’t believe them either), but like...her storyline was not the feminist masterpiece they made it out to be. giving her a #girlboss moment was the absolute bare minimum they could do and they didn’t even do it right.

discussed this plenty of times before but nancy being a woman does not give her a free pass on classism.

feels like i’m really ragging on nancy here but like...her st3 “journalism” plot was so bad, but it didn’t have to be! i complain a lot about st2 but at least that storyline made sense for her. she was investigating the us government because its corruption led to the death of her best friend. having her and jonathan continue their investigations into the us government due to the damage and trauma they caused to them and people they loved would have made sense, and it’s not like that corruption started and ended with the hawkins lab. instead it was throwing us into the idea that nancy always wanted to be a reporter (???) and decided to get her poor boyfriend fired so she could do an article on weird rats (which didn’t even contribute to the plot at all.) maybe i’m being too harsh and maybe it is another flaw of their Time Jumps, but honestly to me it just reads as them trying to be #feminist and having reporter teens without having to criticise america any further. 

last nancy point but my GOD can this show stop with its weird pro gun message via her. like i understand they have to fight monsters but at this point it’s just them trying to make her seem badass and also she canonically enjoys the act of shooting a gun, which is like, lmao.

the sudden switch to “america is good, blame the scary russians for everything” is something that’s been unpacked multiple times by people much smarter than me, but like, fucking hell.

and look, i get it. i understand that most of this is just reflective of the time period and that plenty of people believed the messages that the show parrots. but here’s the thing: you cannot present these views and not criticise them. you cannot set a show in the 1980s and then refuse to address any kind of social issues and injustices outside of a few offhand comments. i’ll give credit where credit is due and admit that they made a decent effort to at least explore classism in season one, but that hasn’t really been brought up since, and no other issues have ever being decently addressed. and i probably shouldn’t expect much from netflix’s cash cow and the duffer brothers themselves, but the entire show really is....uncomfortably conservative.

#sorry these are all on the weird conservatism of the show apologies if you wanted takes on other things #also i got more annoyed than i expected so f for me #my controversial take is idm that they haven't really explored gay issues outside of robin because like #a) it's a small town in a red state in the 1980s #b) i'd rather die than watch the duffers unpack the aids crisis #and c) i do think will being gay will be made canon eventually but also he's 15 in 1985 give it time #ask #Anonymous #meta