the lurker becomes the poster......

queer cinema has always had to fight for scraps. for decades, queer characters were only allowed to exist through subtext, tragedy, or metaphor. the “coded longing” era wasn’t an aesthetic choice, it was survival under censorship. filmmakers used lighting, blocking, colour, and performance to signal queer desire because they weren’t allowed to say it outright. that visual grammar became a language of its own.

and the duffers used that language. deliberately. expertly. cynically.

the slow push ins, the pink golden washed lighting, the confession proxy scenes, the emotional monologues framed like romantic declarations, these aren’t accidents. they’re techniques with a lineage. they come from decades of queer filmmakers carving out space where they weren’t permitted any. they come from a history of audiences learning to read between the lines because the lines were forbidden.

so when people say “it was the 80s” or “realistically it wouldn’t happen,” i want them to understand the irony. queer cinema of the actual 80s was already pushing boundaries. already telling stories of longing, rupture, confession, community, and survival. already refusing to be erased. pretending that a queer coming of age arc would be “unrealistic” is not only historically wrong, it’s homophobic in the exact same way the old censorship codes were.

and narratively? thematically? structurally? byler made more sense than anything else in the show. the entire premise was “the outcasts,” and yet the one queer outcast with the clearest emotional arc gets shoved aside so the creators can maintain a heteronormative status quo they themselves destabilised through their own cinematic choices.

that’s why i call the duffers liars. they didn’t just queerbait, they appropriated the emotional labour of queer cinematic history. they used the tools queer filmmakers developed under oppression, they used the audience literacy queer people were forced to cultivate, and then they pretended none of it meant anything.

lucas, who most definitely has been othered all of his life

lucas who, even when surrounded by people he trusts, so rarely sees himself reflected in them

lucas, who has always been an outcast in ways the others aren’t, in ways that are more – god knows he’s been called much worse things than freak

lucas, who has seen people avoiding his touch, crossing the street when he’s walking, distrusting him like it’s a default setting

lucas, who knows what it’s like to do everything right and still be looked at like he’s wrong

lucas, who hears will saying he’s not like them and gets it in ways the others can’t

lucas, who knows will is going to experience all of the same things – the othering, the distrust, the mistreatment, the slurs, the being avoided like the mere touch of you could kill, the dangers that come with just being – despite the differences in their circumstances

lucas who, even if he’d ever felt some kind of way about queerness, would grab that feeling and squeeze the life out of it because that right there is will. his will.

his in the way all of lucas’ people are his. his to carry when unconscious, his to tackle out of the way, his to use himself as bait, his to take a slashing to the chest, his to jump over tables and traps and interdimensional monsters. his to protect, his to kill for, his to die for.

Small comci based on this tweet

You can’t tell me these two didn’t talk about their shared trauma, while living together 🫵

adhhjfhj YES! I do love Elmax a lot but I always feel bad leaving Lucas out bc that's his soulmate dude.