#but still not a good trope

[bezuss]

when will they learn that it never works

#like this trope>>>> #sad miserable pathetic #hannibal #hannigram #killing eve #villanelle #our flag means death #ofmd #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #good omens #mine/moje #comparative #BUT STILL ME AND WHO #ineffable husbands

[datcravat]

whateverit'snotlikeimadrawingoranything!!!!!!!!!

#my art #FINALLYY DREW HER my god over the years she has been requested SO MUCH i was so terrified #love marie so much everyones all ew tsundere and im like YEAH BABY FUCKIN HELL YEAH GIVE ME THE TROPIEST TROPE YOU CAN and even then she #still has a lot of nuance #also her voice acting is really good #persona #persona 4

[lazycranberrydoodles]

i do not remember the plot of scum villain because i read it in 2020 and it feels like a fever dream now so my characterization is entirely based off of the fanon on my dash.

hualian are my favorite but i do feel that bingqiu deserve the win. tgcf is VERY yuri, but svsss has gender as a main theme and both characters keep getting compared to maidens. overall there are more explicit references to women regarding bingqiu.

#this is the first time ive ever scumposted yayyy #theyre also more toxic and weird and reserved about each other. in a good way. #to anybody else hualian is insane but compared to bingqiu its an honest and straightforward relationship #both have complex facades built off of society and trope expectations but hualian drop theirs immediately #and to this day sqq and lbh are still fighting tooth and nail #in my experience yuri can be. a horrible spiderweb of expectations and assumptions and not wanting to make assumptions #hualian have the plausible deniability right up until the end (their romance is literally SO lesbian coded) but . after like 15 minutes #they can tell when the other person is lying #and honesty is less yuri than whatever bingqiu is going through at all times #tgcf #svsss #my art #i guess lmao #art #hualian #bingqiu #guy yuri poll #mspaint #ms paint #cringetober 2023 #cringetober #lmao

[bruciemilf]

Somebody tell me if this is a bad take, or if my love for Bruce is causing my objective brain to glitch, but-- something about advertising Batman, a hero who's very popular for being good with children, for being NURTURING with children, a bad father kinda defeats the whole purpose of what he's supposed to represent.

Batman is a protector; He protects people the world (and especially law enforcement) does not care about. That's literally the point of him.

Something about marketing " you can be incredibly violent to people you care about! And Its fine, because you care about them even if you abuse them, and that's what matters!" towards people, but especially men and young boys, is REALLY fucked up to me.

#it's not really 'wahhh think of the children' because the media you consume isn't a vessel of your character #but. gotham war is so incredibly shallow to me for pulling the 'no no its another personality bruce would never!' like. thats worse. #you get thats worse right? #because 1) dc loves demoninsing DID for some reason but it doesn’t add any substantial weight because bruce will be associated with #the actions of his 'alter' anyway. and dc knew that. 2) if you truly cannot write an interesting comic book where bruce is not abusive #and the batkids aren't being abused. you failed. #this isn't a reprouch or an attack to people who prefer that format. but the creator isn't doing it as genuine exploration of dark tropes #if that's the case -- dont cop out with the personality thing. let him be a bad dad. but its kinda fucked how dc STILL try to paint him #as a good person while doing so. its the collen hoover effect. 'we know the guy is an abuser. thats not the problem. the problem #is that the author wants us to pretend thats a good thing.' #bruce wayne #dc comics #dc #batman #text post #dc critical

[mrghostrat]

apologies to all non-aussies but the way ur human!crowley professions list is screaming tradie au has me CACKLING

THATS MY GUY LMAOOO

listen crowley is either a platinum amex inside trader in designer clothes and a set dressed apartment, or a walking oil stain in hand me down overalls who steals supplies from his boss and sneaks an extra five on every smoko. there is no in between.

#tradie au i’m wheezing #new take on the ‘crowley is EVERYWHERE around town’ trope #ask a rat #good omens #edit: trying to put my phone down but i’m still thinking about #aziraphale calls a handyman to fix something and it’s crowley #aziraphale calls a plumber and wtf it’s also crowley #aziraphale calls an electrician and wait just one gosh darn minute #good omens aussiefication

[beaulesbian]

Her name is Karlach. An archdevil's soldier I swore on my good eye to kill. A devil with pure fire for a heart. I made my way to Avernus to stop her. She fled from my reach – even climbed aboard the mind flayer ship as it screeched through the Hells. I followed in close pursuit.

#baldur's gate #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #bg3edit #baldursgateedit #baldurs gate #karlach #wyll #karlach bg3 #wyll bg3 #baldur's gate spoilers #bg3 spoilers #wyll x karlach #wyllach #hello??? this story line was so surprising for me?? and rlly good #and im still in the beginning so idk how it goes after this point so no spoilers !! #move over basic enemies-to-lovers tropes #this is like 'person who made a pact to hunt someone down only to disobey that pact when finding out he's been lied to' #'and as punishment he now is more similar to the other person while standing his ground about his code and morals' #'while still being bind by that deity of the pact but he knowing he did the right thing' #and the other person islike 'it was fun running away from his attempts at my life but now he's the one to let me live and suffers for that? #'what is this feeling? friendship?' #(my tiefling will try to see if they have a romance if they will travel together often.. just like dori/bull in dai lol)

[finchers-ipad]

my favourite character trope at the moment: workaholic autistic guy directed by david fincher

#pre tyler narrator ofc #but the trope still exists non the less #i’m on like episode 6 of mindhunter it’s so fucking good #the narrator #robbert graysmith #holden ford #fight club #zodiac (2007) #mindhunter

[just-french-me-up]

Endless Sandman Fanfiction Tropes I Adore (2/?) : ➻ Professor Robert "Hob" Gadling

#the sandman #sandman #the sandman netflix #sandman edits #hob gadling #robert gadling #sandman tropes #i mean is it even a trope at this point and not just plain canon? #but still very good dubious canon #i initially wanted to make a fun professor hob gadling but pinterest only has traditional academia on offer #also this is what you get when you read the unknown and static strange #thank god for the show showing hob grading papers #cause those pics are HARD TO FIND on the internet #when being a teacher is like 50% grading shit #mine

[thebookworm0001]

Highlights of Glass Onion

1-Daniel Craig’s terrible southern accent

2-Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc playing Among Us in his bathtub again Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim

3-“it’s so dumb”“It’s so dumb it’s brilliant”“No! It’s just dumb”

4-literally the whole movie is about how dumb Elon Musk is. Also Zuckerberg. And whoever the fuck the other billionaire is. But also definitely Elon Musk.

4-Benoit Blanc is so clearly gay in such a casual way I love it

5-Janelle Monáe

6-The very clear messaging of ‘you will never take down a person like this through the legal ways so just beat the shit out of them until something gives’

7- everyone is clearly having the time of their lives making this movie

#glass onion #truly a delight #as good as knives out? #no but still a delight #it is so damn good at understanding the tropes of the genre #and leaning into them enough to make it work before twisting them enough to keep things fresh #and it does it in a different way from knives out #knives out says ‘you know whodunnit - and you want them to get away with it’ then throws that last twist in #glass onion says ‘this is the most fucking transparent plot but you won’t believe that because you want it to be complex and layered’ #and you nod right along because despite the fact that the title tells you precisely how simple this plot is #you still expect layers of onion to be peeled back to reveal something new #it’s freaking amazing #and then a billionaire gets his house blown up because he’s an idiot #also that’s a very nice and controlled fire I’m very glad they’re not all dead

[thunderboltfire]

I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.

It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.

The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.

What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.

But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.

There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.

But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.

My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.

The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.

I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.

It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.

And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?

There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.

#The witcher #Sorry if its convoluted I just got reminded of something and it made me a little angry #and as I had this conversation a lot of times I've decided to put it into written text #sorry about being bitter #but these are some of my favourite books and I'm still upset when I get reminded how badly they were treated in the recent adaptation #I'm not saying you should never change anything #But it's good to have enough background to understand why some things are the way they are in the original #and to understand what the source material is about #we don't talk about particular character's looks or something (altough I feel they could care more about it too) #but central themes tropes and motifs #long post #it may seem like I'm talking from a high horse here #people are welcome to interpret literature however they want #Nobody has a monopol on themes #I just think that in this particular case the cultural context influences the worldbuilding #and if changed it doesn't have the same impact anymore #meta

[messiahzzz]

i do wonder why fandom is so insistent on proving that "gale could eventually change his mind" when it comes to fatherhood.

if children are something you ideally want in your romance - that is completely valid and luckily for you, there are several romance options in the game that can provide just that. wyll, lae'zel, and halsin. even shadowheart briefly mentions that children might be a possibility for her in the future. 4 options total that either already have entire adoption subplots or are open to the idea.

meanwhile, fandom is bending over backwards, bringing up aspects of gale's arc that are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand and claiming that any statement coming from gale or any boundary he sets should forever be questioned because... "he has been known to have inferiority issues"?!

gale is a character who is very likely in his 40s. he isn't some 20-something college boy who is still trying to figure everything out. i personally never felt like there was any point in the context of gale's relationship with tav where he was unsure about his desires. quite the contrary.

gale is also very vocal about what he wants. not wasting any time in proposing to tav after the big bad had been defeated. i am pretty sure there would have been instances where gale expressed his desire to have children (whether that may mean immediate or somewhere down the line) if larian had intended to include this aspect in his romance as well.

...but instead all we have to go on when it comes to the subject of children in general are lines like these:

player: gale... how would you feel about having another person in our relationship?

gale: what, like a child? i'm not quite sure i'd consider myself father material, plus our current lifestyle isn't exactly what i'd call settled...

tara: this is why mrs. dekarios and i will be waiting an eternity more for grandchildren.

gale: psst! shoo, tara.

nodecontext: shooing away tara like one would a naughty cat.

gale, upon spotting oliver during their game of hide and seek: ah, i have you! just a shame i don't want you.

EDIT:

adding for clarification

#baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #by all means go wild with your headcanons #no ones stopping you #but recognize that they are ooc and merely self-indulgent #dad!gale #it speaks #fandom critical #on a different note: a good majority of media out there follows the usual marriage-nuclear-family trope #if you're into that sort of thing you'll likely never run out of content to consume #and here we have one (1) character who expresses no such desires #and yet fandom is still so insistent that: Akshually no. he should feel the same. #perhaps controversial but imo gale is for the cf gang

[yourheartonfire]

The first sign something was wrong was when the hero opened the door without bothering to check the peephole. Or maybe that was the seventh or eighth sign, after the way the hero had disappeared and the terrible rumors going around and the silence from the Agency and - oh yeah - that dreadful beating they’d taken a month ago from Supervillain that was still being meme-ed and clipped and posted and reposted and -

All right. There were a lot of signs something was wrong, but the hero opening their door first and then their eyes going wide to see who was on their doorstep was the first sign that villain had personally witnessed that something was wrong.

“Nope,” the villain snapped. “Don’t like it.”

“What-” the hero managed to say before the villain’s hand closed around their throat and drove their nemesis backwards into their home, kicking the door shut behind them.

“Don’t like this look you’re giving me,” the villain said and slammed the hero into the wall.

The hero grabbed for their forearm, eyes dim in the gloomy dark. “And what look is that?” they hissed. 

“You should be looking at me with fear. Like, oh no! My death is coming!” the villain snarled back. They snapped one cuff around the hero’s wrist, spun them around. The hero staggered. Staggered! The villain huffed and shoved them into the wall again, this time face first, so they didn’t have to see those terrible sunken eyes in hero’s face. “Instead,” they murmured, clamping the second cuff on, “you look at me with relief. Like, oh yay! My death is coming!”

The hero let out a strangled noise not quite a laugh, half-muffled by the wallpaper. “Go on then,” they said. “Guess you won’t get what you want out of me.”

“Oh yes, I will.” The villain dragged the hero down the hall, shoved them onto the couch of their living room. It was a nice low couch, perfect for looming over. “I want you to suffer, hero. And if death is a release, well. I can work with that. Princess Bride or Pride or Prejudice?”

The hero blue screened - their weary defiance smashed into confusion. And, for the first time, a spark of the real hero’s curiosity. “Uh...”

“You want to die? Tough.” The villain grabbed the remote. Luckily the hero was a Luddite, it only took a few seconds to get the TV turned on and streaming services fired up. “Not only will you not be dying, tonight you’ll be subjected to the treacliest of manipulative schlock that Hollywood has to offer. Or are you more of a comedy...” They trailed as off as they opened the hero’s watch history. The hero winced. “I’m sorry. This seems to indicate your most watched movie over the past five years is Planes 2: Fire and Rescue?” 

“It’s actually really good,” the hero muttered.

“The sequel to the spin off of Pixar’s worst-?” The villain cut themselves off, jammed the play button. “Right. The instrument of your suffering has been chosen. And apparently my suffering too,” they muttered under their breath, plopping down on the couch next to the hero. “You got snacks?”

The hero was staring at them. Slowly they shook their head. “You’re a liar,” the villain grumbled and reached over them to grab their phone. “I’m ordering pizza and you’re paying for it. Why the hell is that airplane wearing literally a corn costume?”

“Watch the movie and find out,” the hero said. “Can you uncuff me now?”

“No,” the villain said, pulling the hero closer as they searched for the most expensive pizzeria in the neighborhood. “You’re being tortured. Shut up.”

The hero did. And if the villain noticed as the tension slowly left their nemesis’s shoulders, well, there was a terrible movie to distract them both.

#my fiction #hero x villain #heroxvillain #fluff #that one trope #caretaker villain #Planes 2: Fire and Rescue is actually better than it has any right to be #still not a good movie #but villain has committed to the bit #100 #300

[ladyantiheroine]

Thinking about an AU idea where Bruce Wayne’s parents never died but he still becomes a vigilante. They support this endeavor (Thomas even helps train him) until he brings Selina Kyle home.

Thomas: “She’s a criminal! You’re a crime-fighter! What if she’s just trying to use you? Steal from you? What will your mother think? You are not seeing that girl again!”

Bruce: “But daddy I love her 😩”

#shut up elizabeth #i once posted that Batman and Catwoman are a gender-flip “good girl falls for bad boy” trope #And I still stand by it #batcat #batman #catwoman #bruce wayne #selina kyle #dc #dcu #dc comics #dc universe

[gomzdrawfr]

“Nobody should go through the pain I had” x “Everyone will feel the pain I had”

🤌🏻 yes.

#and they share the same upbringing/trauma #the good guy x the villain #MMMMMM #i have a trope that i love lol #doesn’t matter how the ending go esp if jts tragic i would still eat it up #gummmyspeaks

[lesbian-sunshim]

support me on patreon or leave a tip

rare pairs for your consideration - starlight x discord

#my little pony #mlp #discord mlp #starlight glimmer #starcord #discoglimmer #I'm known for uhhhh strongly disliking starlight and I'm not discord's biggest fan either so #people are either gonna love this or hate it but please know my intentions are in good faith i really like this #pairing them together reminded me that i actually thought s7 was leading to a friendship between them & that we'd see them hanging out more #that didnt happen & now i remember the s7 premiere leading to nothing and now i feel cheated #didnt he want her to be his roomie? 🤔 #my thing against most discord ships that arent the princesses is hes still enough of a jerkass that he needs someone wh #who wont put up with his bullshit AND matches him in power #starlight fits that perfectly and being former villians trying to make a new life tropes is something they have in common #so yea i may not be their biggest fans but i ended up genuinely liking the idea of them and how interesting their dynamic could have been #vs what we got in the show and i think their dynamic together improves them as characters enough to improve my opinion of them #basically theyre 'i could fix him' 'girl youre worse' and i like that 😂

[chirpsythismorning]

Just watched Brokeback Mountain for the first time and I need to talk about it.

Throughout the movie, we see Ennis experience a lot of intense discomfort and fear at the idea of being intimate with a man, despite it becoming abundantly clear in the details and based on his actions that that is indeed what he wants. He even admits to Jack that this fear stems from an experience he had at a young age, when his father showed him two men who were presumed to be lovers (they were roommates vibes), murdered and castrated, with him basically using it as a lesson to show Ennis that being gay was wrong and would get you killed.

Jack on the other hand was a little less discomforted or fearful at the idea of being with a man, in that we actually saw him return the following summer to Brokeback Mountain hoping Ennis would be there, only for him to show up alone. We saw how after this he confidently approached a man at the bar hoping to get to know him, only to get rejected and risk getting hate crimed (foreshadowing 😭). And we saw how, over time, Jack’s struggle had more to do with being hurt over Ennis’ unwillingness to commit or even just consider the possibility of them being together long term, even despite the risk of being gay in the 60’s.

Near the end of the film, upon Jack’s death, Ennis discovers from his father that over the past 20 years since they met at Brokeback Mountain, Jack constantly brought it up to his folks, how Ennis, his friend, was going to move up to their ranch and they were going to build a cabin and live together and take over for the family.

Jack was often the one in the moment taking the chances for them to be together. He was the one who mentioned that they could go to Mexico, with Ennis furiously rejecting it saying ‘you know what happens to people like you there??’

But what’s even more painful, is that in this same scene, Ennis’ acknowledges the truth more directly, and why it’s so painful is because it ends up ironically coming true:

Here, Ennis is basically saying that if he decides to be with Jack for real, aka faces his queerness head on, that’s going to be the thing that gets them (Jack) killed. Shortly after this, Jack loses it and has that infamous ass monologue, followed by Ennis breaking down over how it’s Jack’s fault that he’s this way in the first place.

In the end, when Jack dies, Ennis finds out about what happened from Jack’s wife, Lureen Newsome, who said Jack was pumping up a flat out on a backroad when his tire blew up, with the rim of the tire slamming his face, breaking his nose and jaw, and knocking him unconscious on his back. By the time someone drove by on the deserted backroad, he had drowned in his own blood.

The audience might’ve believed this story, if it wasn’t for how rehearsed it sounded coming out of Lureen’s mouth, but it also doesn’t help that images of Jack being hate crimed as his true cause of death are flashing across Ennis’s mind in real time while Lureen is telling him about the ‘accident’.

While it’s left up to interpretation, it’s implied from what his wife and father said, that Jack was hate-crimed by his father in law, with it being covered up.

Broken nose? Broken jaw?… Those are the kinds of wounds someone endures after being beaten up. And if it’s happening to the point of death, then he was essentially beaten to death.

This then fits into what Jack’s father said, because apparently, shortly before he died, he’d told his father he’d found a different friend that was going to come up there to the ranch with him. And so it’s very likely Lureen’s father caught wind of this as his plans to leave neared, leading to his murder (Jack also bitched his father in law tf out in an epic way, which on its own felt unnecessary in the moment, but within the context of this makes a whole lot more sense).

Either way, it seems Jack waited for Ennis to change his mind. 20 years he waited, and when Ennis didn’t, Jack finally moved on with someone else who made an offer of his own years before, only to get murdered just as Ennis feared he would if he decided to live his life authentically.

Ennis initially found out like this, in a postcard that bounced of him inquiring Jack about seeing each other again after that last massive fall out where they had, only for Ennis’s worst fear to be realized:

Nov 7th with deceased stamped across it has me spiraling 😭

Now, obviously Brokeback Mountain is one of the most well known queer films of all time, like there’s no denying that. So it’s fairly easy to assume ST could be taking some inspiration from this film just like they have with hundreds upon hundreds of other films. But especially if they are planning to go the queer route, homage to this film is pretty much guaranteed (there’s also one more reason it might be guaranteed, but I’m saving that for the end 🤣).

Regardless, as you can probably already tell, it’s very easy to see similarities between Ennis with Mike and Jack with Will.

Mike getting the ‘you see Michael? You see what happens?’ treatment from his father, in the first episode in the series, is very Ennis coded in that this is a TV show that follows that up with seasons of Mike pushing Will away from him, with it leading to a boiling point where he says, ‘What did you think? Really? That we were never gonna get girlfriends? That we were just gonna sit in my basement in play games for the rest of our lives?’ with Will responding, ‘Yeah. I guess I did. I really did,’ aka extremely Jack coded.

The really epic thing about this though, is that ST is clearly going on a different journey than Brokeback Mountain did, in that it’s simply subverting the bury your gays trope. While they are acknowledging the risk of being queer in the 80’s, they’re not letting it end ‘realistically’ like many people have insisted it must because that is the only option. And this will be a satisfying ending because it’s coming as a response to all those heartbreaking stories before it that have reinforced this idea that happy endings just aren’t an option for gay people who simply want to be together.

While Ennis and Jack didnt get their happy ending like they wanted, Mike and Will on the other hand 😏

And last but not least, on a more hilariously ironic note, the guy who Jack was going to settle for in the end instead of Ennis, was a guy named Randall Malone, played by none other than David fucking Harbour.

#byler #stranger things #brokeback mountain #am I late to the party #yes yes I am #but I was puny when this movie came out so I am just catching up 😭 #anyways #I balled my eyes out at the end when Ennis’a worst fear came true #it sucked #although it followed the bury your gays trope #I will say it was still good in that it presented the risk from the very beginning #so the foreshadowing was there at least 😔 #anyways will is so jack coded 😭 #the way he excitedly drove to meet up with ennis after he found out about his divorce bc he thought it meant they could be together now #only for ennis to be like nothing changes if anything we have to see each other even less 😭 #and jack just drives home balling 😭