Power Cake

In light of everything that's happened in the last few days—namely Netflix releasing its first teaser for Stranger Things Season 5—many are returning to Stranger Things spaces online here and elsewhere for the first time in months. Maybe years. So, it's time to have this conversation again, because many people weren't here when some of us were having this conversation in the lull between content; and we're due for an update.

Buckle up—this is going to be long. I intend for this to be a mega post on the whole situation in so far as I can cover it, with receipts and screenshots.

The Conversation Around Noah

Put bluntly—the vitriol around Noah Schnapp has become dangerously insane. It's been that way for 2 years, but the renewed spotlight on Stranger Things, especially as Noah is set to take center stage in a Will Byers-centric season, has revived some of the worst elements of the conversation.

"What do you mean?", you may be asking. Well, I think it might just be better to show you:

This is just a sampling. If I showed you every tweet — every post — every video I've seen with this rhetoric, I'd need another medium to do it. A tumblr blog alone couldn't contain it all. But I take it you see my point now.

How Did Things Get This Way?

There are people on this app and on #that app who will say this behavior/treatment is warranted. They'll tell you that Noah is a "genocide supporter." That he "cheered for the deaths of Palestinian babies." That he "celebrated as people were being murdered." But none of this is true.

As a reminder, this was what Noah actually said—his very first comments on the matter—right after the Hamas attack that happened on October 7, 2023:

Important to note:

"...we will hope and pray for safety, justice, liberation, and self determination in Palestine."

and

"...we will say a Jewish prayer for peace for all Israelis and Palestinians."

That is the literal antithesis of support for a genocide or the wholesale slaughter of anyone.

The very next thing to happen was the infamous "sticker video" about which the most lies have been told, so let's debunk them one by one:

He did not make the stickers.

He did not wear the stickers.

He did not hand out the stickers.

He did not hold up the stickers.

He did not even touch the stickers.

He did not post the video on any social anywhere.

I've posted a pair of screenshots here that give you the gist in lieu of the video itself, but you can Google the video and watch the entire thing to see that I'm telling the truth.

What actually happened was that Noah was taken to a restaurant by a pair of influencers who were his guides while on a school-sponsored trip to Israel. Both were significantly older than him, were responsible for the video in question, were the only ones in it (aside from the waitress) to actually touch the stickers in question... and yet? Noah bore the brunt of the hate that ensued. When the backlash came, they abandoned him and left him to the wolves. (And perhaps because of that, he no longer associates with either one of them, nor follows any related social media accounts—all of which he was required to follow in the first place as terms of going on the trip through his school.)

Noah had just come out of the closet earlier that year and was 18 years-old. He would only turn 19 years-old in the ensuing weeks.

He has addressed these events several times. Most famous was the TikTok that he made explaining his actual position (that he doesn't want anyone, Palestinian or Israeli, to die). Less famous were remarks he made to fans on Snapchat:

I'll post his remarks here for those who can't read the text:

Hey guys! I appreciate you reaching out. To give you context, I did not post this language or sticker. I was at breakfast with friends, it happened to be an Israeli cafe, and a girl was handing out stickers. Someone photographed me and posted and tagged me. As you guys know better than most people, social media can be used however people want to use it. I understand the weight of the situation and take it very seriously. I have friends of friends who are currently being held hostage in Gaza right now. My friends kids were killed in the massacre at the Israeli music festival. Standing up against this terrorism is important to me and why I made my statement after the attack. As one of the only few Jewish people with a platform, I absolutely think it's important to share my message about hatred for Jews around the world right now. However, everyone online is obviously twisting everything and saying I support genocide and am Islamophobic which is obviously entirely false and never have I stated either of those things. Seeing what is happening to the innocent people in Palestine pains me so much and I wish it would stop. I fully support everyone in Palestine as I said in my post on Instagram. One of my best friends in college is Palestinian and we talk about this issue allllll the time and agree on most things. I think people on social media are just animalistic right now so it's hard to even chime in because they just rip me apart so now I'm staying out of it.

I'll let that stand on it's own. I think it provides the context behind his remarks, the situation with the video/stickers, and his actual views versus how social media portrays his views. It also explains why he hasn't said anything else in almost 2 years.

The key takeaway: He was speaking out against antisemitism and the attack on Jewish people on October 7 and he supports an end to what is happening in Gaza and fully supports Palestinians. He literally says it.

And this support, by the way, has been corroborated by his own actions and the word of mouth from Palestinian organizations he has contributed to:

What Has Happened Since?

It would be easier to list the things that haven't happened; but I'll try anyways:

Noah has been called antisemitic slurs; gay slurs and targeted with gay stereotypes; been compared to antisemitic caricatures; he's been threatened with death and had posts go viral fantasizing about his brutal murder; his family has been threatened; he's been threatened with rape and sexual abuse; there are massive accounts on Twitter that doxxed his location while he was filming Season 5—particularly targeting him when he was alone; he's been hacked, had personal pictures leaked; he's had lies spread about his treatment of his cast mates (all of whom have spoken out and said that they've loved him at some point since, making these claims unequivocally false.

Here are a few examples:

Again, I can only post a sample. I hope that sample is enough to get the message across.

It's hard to overstate how cataclysmic this has been. Obviously, he's recovered and healed a lot since the initial incident; but the damage done needs to be acknowledged. These attacks drove him into a dark place by his own admission. He talked about needing therapy on his (now deleted) private spam TikTok account. And they are starting up yet again.

And Then There's the Fandom

The Stranger Things fandom in the wake of all this has been an irritating place to be. Not just because of the above behavior but because of the blanket hypocrisy.

The shipping sub-fandoms in particular have been rank with antisemitism and homophobia—even the Byler fandom, which is predominantly queer. People have:

A) Taken pre-Stranger Things photos—like his baby pictures or pictures with his family—to use as part of their content, their profile pictures, their banners, their fan art, their fan edits, etc.—violating his and his family's privacy for "Will" all while calling him "ugly," a "fag," and lobbing the above-listed threats at him. B) Tried to recast him with a fan cast. These fan casts are almost never Jewish actors, you'll notice. In fact, there's someone on this very app that recast Will Byers as himself. This is gross and absurd. Will Byers is intrinsically tied to Noah Schnapp. Tied to his identities as a Jewish person and a gay man. Tied to his experiences being a character he helped bring to life during his formative years. C) Persist in stanning or support his cast mates despite the fact that they continue to associate with him. This, in particular, is gross hypocrisy. If you're going to be mad at Noah Schnapp for being in a restaurant around stickers you object to—guilt by proximity/association, in other words—those SAME standards should apply to his cast mates, who continue to hang out with him outside of work, state that they love him, and post him on their social medias. I have a whole post about that here.

Instead, the cast is continually afforded blanket immunity while he is singularly targeted for continued abuse and harassment.

It should give the fandom some pause that openly pro-Palestine actors like Maya Hawke not only continue to hang out with him; but in her Instagram story, even stated that she misses it (check the link above for a screenshot of said story). She wouldn't do that if she thought he somehow supported mass-murder; and she knows him way better than any one reading this blog. That goes for the rest of them, too.

They know him better than you. They know his moral compass and what he believes. And they haven't abandoned him and obviously aren't going to. So, are you going to stick to your guns and apply your anger evenly; or maybe consider that you don't have the full picture?

So, Why Care?

I get this in my Asks so often. "Why do you care?" "He's a celebrity." "He don't know you." "He's not your pookie."

I know. It's not about that.

Yes, full disclosure, I am obviously a fan of Noah's. Have been since the show started. And no it's not because I'm gay and he's gay or because he plays my favorite character in Stranger Things.

Like many of his fans, I've spent the last decade seeing his lives on Instagram and TikTok, seeing his fan interactions, watching his vlogs and videos, and I've come to respect him as a human being quite apart from Will Byers or his role as an actor. Fundamentally, I really believe he is a kind and caring human being. The word of mouth from everyone who knows or has met him bares this out—and, yes, he's even been kind to me in the few conversations we've had.

This is only one example from Instagram during The First Shadow premiere this year; but I think it encapsulates what I like about Noah most. He's kind. He goes out of his way to be kind. He does things he doesn't have to do, contractually or just in general, for the sake of being kind. He always has been.

He's also stood up for a plethora of causes. Black Lives Matters, trans rights, the rights of women. He's known to be his cast mates' biggest supporter—and they'll tell you as much, too.

But quite apart from my personal feelings about him and more importantly: this is wrong.

Antisemitism is wrong. Homophobia is wrong. Both kill. Still, to this day. As I am sitting in my kitchen writing this, the news just broke that an Indigenous gay man and a celebrity was shot dead in front of his husband—after having his home burned down and dogs burned alive—in the United States. Yesterday, news broke that a gathering of peaceful Jewish protesters (which included children and the elderly) demanding the release of hostages still held by Hamas was firebombed in Colorado. Luckily, they all survived, but six people were injured in that attack.

Violence and bigotry are ascendent everywhere right now. Minority communities are being targeted. Normalizing the behavior I've described and shown above kills marginalized people. Regardless of your feeling about Noah as a person or celebrity, normalizing the violent and bigoted remarks, tweets, and behavior towards him harms Jewish and LGBTQIA+ people—all of us.

And just as an example of that, I give you the treatment Finn Wolfhard is now receiving just for the "crime" of shaving his head and being deemed no longer conventionally attractive by the fandom:

Yes, the general audience found out about Finn's Jewish heritage and now he's a target, too.

And this fandom is at fault for it.

You cannot normalize bigotry towards one person and expect it to stay contained to that one person. It will always harm everyone in that community. Finn Wolfhard—or any other actor/actress—being your favorite is not going to spare him from the consequences of a discourse you started.

ALL antisemitism and ALL homophobia needs to be called out. The people who insist it's okay that they do that for ANY reason—regardless of if they themselves are LGBTQIA+ or not—need to be ejected from the fandom and never let back in.

Noah Schnapp is a human being. He does not deserve this treatment. No one does. No one is saying you have to like him or even care about him. But you SHOULD care that this is how he's being treated and the impact it is having on others. The impact on Jewish people. The impact on queer people. Standing up and saying that does not mean you support genocide or murder or bigotry of any kind. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I am a person with left-leaning values. I'm tired of those values being spat on and dragged through the mud by people who think THIS is activism or is in any way helping a cause. It's not. All it is doing is perpetuating harm on a real person and real communities—queer and Jewish alike. And it needs to stop.

Related Blogs:

I've compiled some related blogs that expand on other elements of the situation that I've mentioned above in greater detail. This post was already long enough. I'll be updating this as more content comes out.

Examples of Noah’s Support for Gaza and Palestine (by @nymphus-fan-account)

The Evolution of a Lie

No, the Stranger Things Cast Does Not Hate Noah Schnapp

Lyric Vault’s Obsession with Noah Schnapp

But there was a fundamental difference in the way they did it:

Jeremiah talked about how much Belly has done for him. Jeremiah tried to make the moment about Susannah. He talked about how Laurel always wanted him as a son-in-law. He didn't really talk about Belly. It was all about how Jeremiah felt, how Susannah would've felt, how he thought Laurel felt.

Conrad, on the other hand, did it for Belly. He talked about how Belly was sad and not eating. He talked about how Belly needs her mom. He talked about how he just wants Belly to be happy. He didn't mention what Belly can do for Jeremiah, he didn't mention how much Susannah would've wanted her there, he didn't mention how the wedding could make Laurel feel. He just talked about how Belly needed her mom.

but in the summer i turned pretty, jenny han builds up all the ways jere and belly wouldn't be compatible in a romantic relationship, she contrasts the way jere doesn't take things seriously with the way belly and conrad both do (like the volleyball tournament in the show and the game of chicken in the book), and it all comes to a fruition in the third book/season, yet i'm seeing people say the only way jenny could make bellyconrad work was by ruining jere's character. jere is the character he was always built up to be, and so is conrad! when we first meet conrad, we're told over and over about how he's acting differently this summer, how this isn't him, and we see him in all these flashbacks being really sweet, and now that he's had time to work on himself and work through his issues in therapy, he's able to be that conrad again that belly used to know.

sasusaku and naruhinas trying to be like narusasu/sasunaru again 😂

These people can't get enough of being losers...

Naruto saying that he wants to stay his whole life until he dies, he says it to Sasuke, not Hinata, it's something completely stolen from the studio, which by the way, a studio that disrespected Kishimoto, his work, and the character of Naruto

What was the tension in Sasusaku? LMAOO Sasuke didn't give a damn about Sakura's ass, whether she died or not, she was ignored so much that she had to chase him to get him to give her a baby

Sasuke wanted to kill Naruto because he was the only person after Itachi who made him have feelings, get confused about them and want to be like before, literally Orochimaru separates them because of this, Naruto's charm was so much that it ruined Orochimaru's plans

Sasuke tries to kill Sakura because she is annoying to him, he doesn't care that she was on his team, she is annoying, complaining, she harasses him and he dislikes her, she disrespects him and his clan, very different

Naruto and Sakura aren’t lonely or helpless. Naruto has friends, comrades, plenty of people he could give the “best friend” spot to. Sakura had plenty of time to find a "boyfriend" who likes her back. Sasuke never prevented them from doing this. They had the choice, the freedom, and plenty of time to find people to fulfill their emotional needs instead of dumping them on a traumatized genocide victim. They are the ones refusing to move on from their middle school teammate, even after he made it clear multiple times he doesn’t want anything to do with them. And yet the narrative, the characters themselves, and the fandom act like they were victims because Sasuke didn’t bend to their emotional whims.

I love them 👀

In my point of view, Sasuke has always been a self-sacrificing even borderline suicidal character. Many fans see him as the opposite, but from the very beginning of the series until now, I’ve always viewed him as someone willing to sacrifice himself to protect others.

Take the early arcs, for example during the fight with Haku, Sasuke instinctively threw himself in front of Naruto, taking the hit meant for him. Later, when he left the village, it wasn’t because he wanted to betray his teammates or chase power out of greed. He chose isolation, loneliness, and pain just so he could avenge his murdered family and clan people who were already gone. If he were truly selfish, he would’ve stayed in the village, forgotten about revenge, and lived a normal life with his friends. But instead, he was ready to risk everything, even his body and soul, to bring justice to those who couldn’t speak for themselves.

Even when he became what the world saw as the “final villain,” his motive wasn’t destruction it was protection. Sasuke wanted to make himself the common enemy of all the villages, so they’d stay united and never fight each other again. His methods were wrong, yes but his intentions weren’t. He was once again willing to bear all the hatred in the world, alone, if it meant peace for everyone else. Naruto understood that better than anyone.

when the final battle came, and he admitted he lost . He accepted Naruto’s heart, and in that moment, you can see he had already given up on himself. Once again, his instinct was to surrender his life ready to die, ready to give up his eyes if they could be useful to others. That’s just who Sasuke is someone who never truly lived for himself.

And what’s truly sad? Most of the fandom ignores this. Even many SNS fans who claim to love both Naruto and Sasuke often reduce his character to the “cold, cruel” one, focusing more on the ship than on who he actually is. But if you look at Sasuke with empathy instead of bias, you’ll see him for what he really is: a boy who grew up without love, carried unbearable trauma, and still chose to protect the world that abandoned him.

Yes, he’s made countless mistakes. But if we viewed the story through his eyes, everything would look different. The people we see as heroes the village we admire might look like villains to him. And in a way, that’s the tragedy of Sasuke Uchiha! he’s not evil he’s broken, burdened, and endlessly willing to destroy himself for the sake of others.

If you look closely, throughout his entire life, Sasuke never did a single thing purely for his own happiness. He never had a normal childhood. His teenage years were spent in isolation, forced to be strong, with no friends and no one to lean on. When his family was slaughtered, he had no adult to comfort him, no one to help him escape that loneliness. He grew up reliving that trauma again and again through nightmares, through genjutsu, through guilt.

When he finally killed Itachi, he was alone again carrying a pain no one helped him bear. And when he learned the truth, when his whole world collapsed in panic and grief, there was still no emotional support. Sasuke practically raised himself guided only by anger, sorrow, and a warped sense of justice. Every decision he made came from that lonely place.

You knew Sasuke would come back to you, even when he wouldn't for Team Seven or Konoha. How could he not? You were the only one who really understood. But now, you must take the next step.

ao3 link Here:

A knock at your window startles you. You jump, and sit up in your bed, and once you see the swirling sharingan, your surprise dissipates. You knew he would come back. How could he not, after what you said to him the day he left?

And this is not mentioning all the other bullshit my boy had to go trough.

Ashley Martin - Holy Eye

¤ Creepyasta oc of mine that I I've been working on for at least 3 years, she does have a partner, Sammy but I haven't did a similar drawing like I did for Ashley. ¤

I'll post more about them later <3