Scowl Hound

It reminded me a lot of my father. Probably only a couple years older, but it felt like meeting my dad if he wasn’t my dad. Charismatic, can make a quick joke, but sick, and no one with him. It made made me think about how my dad still texts me frequently, to send me money for gas that I’ve told him to stop doing multiple times, because he needs the money more than me, and truth be told, it makes me feel bad for cutting him out of my life cause it makes me forget how horrible he is. All the times he tormented and abused my mother and I, the way he ruined the connections he has with the people closest to him, and mentally he is too far deep to genuinely realize the damage he’s done.

It’s hard to know someone loves you, and the only way they can love you isn’t the right way. My father loves me, but it feels more like I’m his trophy. When I actually ask for things, like a ride when I’m sick, or when it’s freezing out, I’m treated like a burden. Or him ignoring the bullying and abuse he does to my mom and I acts like it’s our fault. The list goes on forever, as it’s what I was born into. There isn’t a way to undo the damage he’s caused to my life as I’ve never known what it’s like to have a healthy dad. A truly good dad. But my dad can’t change. His unfortunate life had changed him permanently too, and he couldn’t/wouldn’t get help, and now it causes harm to others. I think if he were to finally understand how he treated others, it would be like, lovecraftian. He wouldn’t be able to take that understanding, it would kill him.

My father’s health has always been bad, like really bad. And it somehow gets worse every year. I know sooner or later it will be his time, and it makes me wonder where I will be. Selfish parts of me want to be there. I know he has hurt so many people, but I couldn’t live with myself to know he died alone. My dad isn’t a good person, but he fundamentally doesn’t understand why people ghost him or don’t talk to him. At least that’s how it feels. To live the remainder of your years sick and alone, to know your son will barely even talk to you, it’s a life I am terrified of. And it hurts to know he would deserve it if it happened.

I know I know nothing about that old man I saw. I hope he just was at the doctors and his loved ones were at work. That he has good relationships with his children. That he treated them well. That he can laugh with his wife and loves her right. That he’s including in family events and that his grandchild will bring him balloons once “papaw” is out of the doctors. But I don’t know him. I don’t know his life. All I know is it reminded me of my father. Who is now canceling his health appointments because I won’t take him and he’s too proud to get an uber (and thinks we are an extension of him and should be at his call whenever). An old man that can also make quick jokes, and when he goes to the stores alone because I’m not answering his calls, he’s probably making small talk with the cashiers because those are the only people he’s talked to today. Do they remind him of me? Do they remind him of his ex wife? Does he offer his left overs to a kid with piercings and a mullet that still calls him sir out of respect and think, “I wish this was my son?”

I decided to eat some of my food across the table from where the old man sat. It felt like I was keeping him company. It felt like a way to grieve. I finished the rest of my food outside, and realized how much it hurt to know that I’d rather sit with the old man I saw that reminded me of my dad, than if it was dad to begin with.

He tried to call me today as he was worried I could’ve been in danger. I texted him and kept it short to update him. Cause it’s hard to completely cut off an awful dad that would still sacrifice a lot to keep you safe. He just wont ever do the work I actually ask of him.

Wip but it’s essentially almost done

Will be a print most likely!

lets see how this goes this time cause I get no traction with certain tags frown

4got my watermark sigh anyway here is t4t wrestling WIP because I’ve gotten into the homoeroticism/drag like costumes of the art and parts of it fascinate me. I remember a wrestler talking about how they are a form of drag when protesting drag bans and I mean, yeah I see why! Also queer people fighting each other sexually and having fun is also cool. Wearing thongs no matter the gender is beautiful god they r awesome

While I did enjoy the characters, I fell in love with the horror elements and the plot. The characters were important to me, but when it comes to how I enjoyed them, it was mostly based on who I found the most likable, and not which ones I thought had the most depth. With that being said, the duffer brothers have absolutely BUTCHERED the writing of SO MANY OF THE CHARACTERS. I’m going to explain some of my grievances with the show below, and what I think failed the show. I want to also say that I am solely mentioning these characters as characters, and not mentioning the actors or their actions, as there are many people on the set who are Zionist or have been not condemned Zionism when being accused of perpetuating it. There seems to be other things cast members have done as well, but I’m not in the stranger things cast world like I used to be, and I do not want to throw around accusatory statements with no information. The opinions I have going forward are only about the characters, not their respective actors/actresses.

I want to also say I’ll probably come back to this after I rewatch the show in its entirety because I could be missing things since it’s been awhile. But I must say this all while I’m still awake lol.

My biggest grievance and reasons for why I think the show became so lukewarm is because they tried to change the genre. The mood, tone, dialogue, plot, direction, writing, even the COLOR GRADING had changed from what people know the show from. The show started as a small town dealing with the disappearance of a young child while uncovering a government secret about a world they didn’t even understand themselves. It’s was disturbing, distressing, bleak and more. It had moments of triumph and empowerment, but it still felt, quiet. They weren’t trying to save the world, they were trying to save THEIR world.

The second seasons has always been my favorite, I felt that it did an AMAZING job at portraying the organizing of the party while still showing that they are not immortal. The tunnel scene with the demodogs as well as the demodogs in the hospital were amazing in my opinion.

Now compared to later seasons, I feel it lost everything. The color grading went from cold greens and blues to warms reds and yellows with m a y b e a purple. But it just wasn’t the same. It felt the show had gone from a mystery/horror/sci-fi, to an action and fantasy! And they know that! There was a specific scene where Dustin is talking about the wormhole and it felt it summed up my grievances. While I think the actors did a great job, I think the plot with holly was not useful to the show as they shouldn’t have introduced her as a main character. She was a great actress and it’s not her fault, but to have the younger sister of a character that we really don’t get much attention on throughout the whole show be a main character for the last season while her brother who was the main character first season get essentially no plot and development? Poorly done.

They MESSED UP MANY CHARACTERS. LORD. first. ELEVEN/JANE. HER CHARACTER WAS TO DISCUSS THE IDENTITY OF FIGHTING FOR PERSONAL AUTONOMY WHEN BEING SEASON AS A WEAPON AND OBJECT HER WHOLE LIFE. she was notable for her tatoo, shaved head, and quietness. She didn’t know how to be a kid, and her acting was shown mostly with rare dialogue. In the later seasons, the duffer brothers get rid of all of these characteristics but giver her nothing else notable. They give Jane no good outfits or hair for the last season, no personality quirks that make me feel she particularly stood out, it was just awful. Making your character known for wanting to have a normal life despite having her autonomy taken away choose to kill herself and acting like that was truly “the only choice” is a horrible way to end her.

While I never thought that will particularly stood out to me, they FAILED his writing in the later seasons. Noah schnapp is an interesting person and not someone I’m going to commend on a performance with the information I do know on him, but from just an acting standpoint, I do think he could’ve had a way better performance if they duffer brothers had just given him actually good lines. Wills characters had lots of evolution, but dialogue wise, in season 5 he is still essentially a vecna Geiger counter to let us know when “he’s coming” or “he’s here”. There’s only so many times you can make someone act possessed before it feels redundant to a character. The longest conversations will had are a subpar coming out scene that felt very forced (and while I still appreciate a show explicitly having a gay character come out in 2025, with the way politics and the US is right now, it was stale and bad.) and plot wise didn’t work. I saw an edit today of different will byers art and it made me realize just how well they could’ve delved into his story. A scared boy who has been riddled with the shame of being a weak smaller boy, and a queer one at that, for so long and how it’s destroyed in him from the inside out. How it’s not just the decay of the upside down, but the decay of having to hide who you are or being seen as pathetic. I never really felt like I was able to connect to his pain and fear when they absolutely should’ve talked about that. The show started with him. We should’ve seen so much more about his life than what we got.

God what they did to Mike was awful. His character became a side plot with nothing but corny lines. They make him completely unlikable with no depth. S1 Mike was an awkward idiot boy with some shit head tendencies who still loved his friends and was learning what it was like to fall in love for the first time. By s3 he’s a shallow shithead, which could be a character trait worth looking into, except they give him nothing to work with, he’s a douche because he’s an idiot. And yeah some teen boys are like that. But this is a show. And there’s no reasons or explanations for why he’s like this after how he was earlier or any shift to show how it changes. The next two seasons just make him so bland and shallow. While I don’t necessarily see a lot of the byler stuff, I think he had no chemistry with Jane after season 3. Like none at all. I don’t think Mike likes will but they sure as hell made it look like he didn’t like his girlfriend. The goodbye with el? Mike didn’t understand her!! We saw that in season 3!! It felt so forced between the two, there wasn’t chemistry. And acting like they had such a deep relationship and love no one understood, it’s just not the case. The only lines they gave him were one liners that didn’t land. God I’m so upset on how dirty they did him.

I think the strongest actors this season were Jonathan, Nancy, Steve, and Dustin. I really enjoyed the direction of Nancy and how strong and on the offense she was. She didn’t stand out to me much but this season was different! And even then! I feel she could’ve had more of that plot development. The scene with Jonathan and Nancy’s fake non engagement stuff was one of the best scenes, and the acting stood out. Steve and Dustin are always a good duo with great acting skills, but I do wonder if the show would’ve been better if they had been killed off. Same with Nancy and Jonathan. (Would’ve made the non engagement more impactful). It was foreshadowed multiple times with no real risk besides the Steve fake out with Jonathan saving him. The show in general was too afraid to kill off any characters because of how loved they were, but this isn’t supposed to be a fun story. They are at risk of their world dying. No way they all survive. This season was not willing to take risks while acting like they were all super heros. Very different contrast from the first seasons and what we knew and love.

At the end of the day, the coming of age plot became their main focus when I don’t think it ever should’ve. The first couple of seasons felt that it was showing us what the upside had done to rob people of their lives and childhoods, so coming of age in any normal way, was not possible. They had good moments, but it wasn’t normal. And now it felt that it was about showing them that they had upgraded their powers and were ready to face the bad guy, and it wasn’t scary anymore. But that’s not what the show was aiming towards in the beginning that we all fell in love with. In my opinion, the show started to feel like it was becoming a dnd campaign, when the beginning of the show was using dnd as a way to have young children wrap their minds around the incomprehensible. They aren’t supposed to be heros. They are just kids living in the Midwest who want to find their friend. It’s a coming of age story, but it’s not supposed to be action packed with one liners around every corner like in season 5. It’s supposed to be a coming of age story about grief and knowing things you shouldn’t.

I love when the entity in a horror media isn’t necessarily an entity, but a system, that’s why I LOVEDDDDDDDDD season two. How can you win a battle when the battle is a whole biome? I loved the show when it was seen as the government messing with something they know they couldn’t contain. The fear was that these families got caught up in something they shouldn’t, that No one should be touching

When vecna showed up, it became immediately less interesting to me. It went from being the fear of “there’s this whole world we don’t understand and we can’t control but we have unleashed” to “yeah there’s this dude and he’s evil and he does a lot of bad shit but like its mostly him. And like we could probably defeat him sooner or later we just gotta practice. Also there’s a magic rock? But like if u wanna know the lore you have to watch the musical that we barely mention at all. Don’t mind the giant ass spider mindflayer and how it took us five minutes to defeat the epicenter of all of our worries for the past 6 years. Somehow none of our main group dies besides one that absolutely didn’t need to.” The moment that the show made it feel like there was a way to defeat a whole dimension through one person, I feel it lost a lot of movement. There was some serious horror to knowing that they are necessarily winning, just surviving against the upside down in the first couple of seasons.

It feels like the show that was known to be scary because it takes advantage of us fearing for the vulnerable, fearing the unknown, and our distrust of the government turned into a soap opera avengers end-game style ending where everyone is too powerful but no one is that cool. And why did Jonathan and Steve have more chemistry than almost everyone else. They didn’t even like each other. Sigh.