monsterkill--er

mike's pov in fics:

thing thats bad: aww

thing that has both genuinely amazing pieces of storytelling and abysmal dogshit slop both happening like entirely interchangably:

Many mistakingly romanticize Romeo and Juliet, one of the major allusions in the show, because of "childhood sweat hearts" trope that has a death grip on society. We tend to see love at that stage as sweet and innocent, which is a fallacy. Really, children mimic behaviors of their role models—in R & J's case, it's a toxic feuding family that lead to their own demise.

Vecna is Paris. It's ironic how Will was narratively treated like ROSALIND, Romeo's first crush, especially in the first season. Lucas was Mercutio and Dustin was Benvolio (Butthole Surfers had a song in Romeo + Juliet, called Whatever, and the Dark Moon play in TFS had Juliet's iconic angel wings). Rosalind is sworn to a life of chastity—they assigned that quality to a queer character, those were the cards they dealt Will.

Mike calling Will his best friend isn't a straight rejection, Will never confessed so Mike couldn't reject him. They were left "half-canon," or queerbait, imo. What we have left is the same, headcanons and allusions…

Netflix has been using AI since 2007 (AVA), it is the pioneer of the "algorithm" they joked about in their graduation speech by mentioning the Elder Brain. Starting last year in 2025, it's now openly using generative AI for VFX.

The Duffers signed with Paramount (Oracle AI, Scale AI) using it for advertising, test audiences, and hiring/firing of employees (x). I don't even know where to begin to list the evils of the Ellisons' impact on the industry, but the Duffers are on board with it!

They said something to the effect of "it's too late for them but the young people should fight it." Translation, they can't escape AI.

Almost every deal and piece of content created today is using it in some capacity. If not them, then through their advertising, hiring, and audience testing.

Yeah, you would ask young people who don't have to pay taxes or face firing to protest/boycott AI instead of doing it yourselves. Pat yourself on the back, boys.

They've satirized product placement and brands in Stranger Things, but profited off brand integration. They are known to be hypocrites.

I'm not overly critical of them using AI, I'm just critical of how performative their anti-AI virtue signaling is. To even survive in the entertainment industry, they'd have to adapt AI—but would you call it "survive" when their flagship show on Netflix made them the pioneers?