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they turned her death into a man’s story. her father, who spent every season crying over his daughter’s death, got over it in a matter of months. her friends don’t even mention her. the duffers really wanted to make it seem like mike is the only one who cares, because this is the story of a straight white man. she was only there to be the magical girl who changes his boring life and takes him on an adventure, only to die afterward, because she isn’t a person, she’s a symbol of the male protagonist’s childhood. even her own creators talk about her as if she were a dog, an alien pet of their self insert character.

she never said goodbye to the mother who took her in when she had nothing, the woman who inducted her into her family with a haircut everyone made fun of but she treasured as her own.

she never said goodbye to the older brother who looked after her in an unfamiliar home, who drove blindly into the desert on the idea of hope that they would find her.

she never said goodbye to her best friend, the only girl who ever took the time to try to understand her, the only girl who wanted to help her learn who she was to herself, the girl whose life she refused to let end before its time.

she never said goodbye to the boys who found her in the woods, the boys who were scared of her at first but who became some of her most trusted friends in the world. the boys who saw her as, yes, a hero, but also as a girl, too.

she never said goodbye to her brother, her twin in everything but genetics, who saved her life as she saved his from the monster who destroyed both their childhoods. she never said goodbye to her real brother, the one who understood her to her core, the one who showed her that the monster was not the family she deserved.

she said goodbye to her sister, after a years-long separation, as she bled out in her arms.

And they had the gall to self-insert with Mike and say, “Hey guys—imagine an ending where she didn’t die! Imagine an ending where she was finally free after a lifetime of being imprisoned and in hiding!” Oh, but even in this hypothetical “good” ending, her brown sister still dies. Of course.

They very lazily resolved Jane’s fear that she was a monster, and then had her call the next generation of innocent abused children like her “more monsters” which was entirely out of character.

The children who did get their happy ending were “normal” and shoe-horned into the final season.

We talk about the Will Byers humiliation ritual… what about the Jane Hopper humiliation ritual?

After a fight in which her boyfriend triggered memories of her abuser (while too busy focussing on his “relationship” problems with his platonic bestie) he brings her cold eggos and refuses to apologise for not being supportive of her struggles. He makes it about him. He calls her ridiculous. She begs for him to verbalise his affection for her—write it even—and is then thrown into another prison where she is re-traumatised by her abuser, only for said boyfriend to chauffeur her away after days of homoromantic heart to hearts with his best friend.

They had her wear a fucking collar. Her abuser was the one to unlock it. They didn’t even let her remove her own literal and metaphorical shackles.

Mike professes to her while kneeling at a fucking pizza dough freezer as she’s being choked out. No eye contact. No intimacy. Because his gay best friend reminded him to. She never even gets to respond to this monologue in the canon series, because I guess her feelings don’t actually matter.

Even in her final moments before death, her character was reduced to her love story with the boy who found her in the woods and kept her in his basement. And he still couldn’t say “I love you” back for some reason.

She was never free. She went from being trapped in the lab, to being hidden in Mike’s basement, to being hidden in Hopper’s cabin. She got in trouble and yelled at for leaving these confined spaces and doing normal teenage things. The only exception was when she made herself useful to them by using her powers, endangering herself, and often to the point of physical exhaustion.

Her father figure supposedly learned to allow her more freedom at the end of season 3, but he returns to being over-protective, angry and condescending at the beginning of season 5, undoing all character development.

And we’re expected to thank these men for “taking care of her” all these years, when everything she ever accomplished was no thanks to them but to her own merit, her own desire to do good, her own zest for a life and freedom she never got to have.

Was she… really just used as a tool to help Hopper process his daughter’s death? Was she used as plot armour to ensure our characters could survive the supernatural antagonists? Was she used to give Mike Wheeler something to do other than play games in his basement?

ok but this shit is so ooc