not you.

This is a sideblog specifically for Stranger Things content. My main is @thealldeadrockshow so you might see me follow you back from there. (I do post some Stranger Things on there too but it's much more varied)

I'm a multishipper at heart however currently somewhat hyperfixated on dusteve. I don't care much for most of the main popular ships though

I also just like talking about and analysing the characters in general, removed from a shipping context

I didn't think season 5 was that bad. Though it was also not that good. It was fine

I am attempting to write fic for the first time in years and I might talk about it at times. It may or may not ever see the light of day

Like s3 as a whole is much lighter and wackier than the previous two as a result of leaning into the 80s action movie pastiche, and the starcourt subplot is arguably the wackiest of them all. The Soviet soldiers are basically cartoon characters. You've got people zipping around a secret underground base in Austin Powers style golf carts. There's canisters of green goop powering a doomsday machine. The world's most precocious ten year old is Die Hard-ing through the air vents in a My Little Pony backpack. Steve and Robin spend the entire season in the most ridiculous uniforms the costume department could have come up with. Clearly none of it is meant to be taken remotely seriously.

But... the torture itself is played one hundred percent straight. The scene with Steve being interrogated by himself where he's almost crying and pleading with these soldiers as they're beating the shit out of him is genuinely an upsetting watch. (Sidenote but this is one of the few times post-s1 where I actually buy Keery as the age Steve is supposed to be because he really does feel like a terrified kid.) And even though Robin is spared the worst of the physical torture, she's seventeen years old here being slapped around and called a bitch by fully grown men. Not to mention she's still out of the loop about the upside down so she has almost no context for what's happening. Like she fully believes they're going to die.

And this part could be me reading too much into things because I doubt it's intentional but there's also this vague air of sexual threat that permeates the whole thing in a very unsettling way. There's this part where the general(?) sort of pets Steve's face/hair and he flinches away and it's just... ugh. And more generally you have two teenagers in fanservice-y outfits being menaced by middle-aged men and it all just has a very uncomfortable undertone.

And like, look. I'm not some puritan who thinks that torture and violence, even sexual violence, should never be shown on TV. But it does feel very out of place in this season where everything else is kind of a farce, and then to add insult to injury it's never followed up on in any meaningful way, and almost becomes a punchline in and of itself. Steve giving up Dustin's name is treated as another "Steve means well but he's a bit of an idiot" moment, conveniently ignoring that he was doped up with truth serum. Dustin basically says he should have just manned up about it.

(Speaking of which, Dustin straight up kills a guy and it's just - on to the next thing. I'm pretty sure at this point he's the only main character other than Hop and El to have killed another human being (unless you count Nancy and Jonathan vs. the possessed news guys) and it never gets mentioned again.)

Whenever it gets brought up in future seasons, it's largely in the context of wacky drugged up misadventures rather than "hey remember that time we were horribly tortured, wasn't that fucked up?" There's still a large portion of the fanbase that likes to insist Steve and Robin have no significant trauma because they didn't have any Vecna flashbacks in the finale.

Like I totally understand why dustin feels left out and Mike/El dipping early was a bit disrespectful... but Lucas Max and Will hiked all the way to the top of that massive hill with him and stayed until sunset, and they all went out of their way to surprise him returning from camp even if they didn't consider how he might feel being "forgotten" at first

Similarly I do feel bad for Will feeling like he's being left behind and just wanting to go back to childhood after all the horrors he's endured... but Mike and Lucas outgrowing d&d and wanting to focus on their girlfriends isn't a bad thing in and of itself. And yes the way they're so dismissive is a bit uncalled for, but will is also being incredibly annoying, not to mention indirectly rude towards el and max

Max and lucas give absolutely dogshit relationship advice, but it's because they're thirteen and their only point of reference is their own highly immature relationship, not because they're toxic enablers

Max helping El to discover her own identity is beautiful and much needed, but her insistence that Mike is controlling is mostly inaccurate and likely informed by her experiences with Billy/her parents. On the other side Mike's treatment of El is pretty callous at times, but it's largely because he's intimidated by Hopper and he makes his true feelings known repeatedly.