#**strangerthings

If Storify were still a thing(?) I’d Storify ERW’s entire feed from the last week or so. (Also note the dude who thinks that using a double negative is as bad as coercive control/emotional abuse, because of course he does.)

Anyway, Hopper is one of the antagonists of ST3 and he acts against his own interests, Joyce’s interests, Hawkins’ interests, and ESPECIALLY El’s interests. The Duffers’ choice to make ST3 a definitively horror show, instead of mixing up genres and making it fantasy/intrigue/coming-of-age/scifi/horror-lite but just STRAIGHT UP HORROR, recasts the tropes and roles of its characters, and they have to deal with that. One of the fundamental truths of the horror genre is that horror is a teenage girl. The monster is female sexuality. The monster is your daughter growing up and leaving you. The monster is sex.

It’s no coincidence that the season Stranger Things became straight-up horror is also the season that Hopper lost his mind about Eleven dating -- and that he died to close the gate (that, okay, is a giant glowing vagina) forever. And when he did, Eleven lost her powers and has to move away from her boyfriend. And none of this is even going to get INTO how Hopper treated Joyce all season, which was horrific and painful to watch. This is specifically about Hopper and Eleven from a specifically technical-writing horror genre perspective... thing

Mike, since season one, has promised El that she isn’t the monster. And she wasn’t: in season one, it was Nancy’s sexuality that birthed the monster -- Nancy having sex that killed her best friend, in the parlance of horror. In ST2 Nancy drunkenly tells Steve that they killed Barb, and she is wrong inside the universe of the show -- the demogorgon did, ofc, not them -- but outside of the world of the show, in the meta world of the show’s existence, she’s right. If Nancy and Steve were not having sex, Barb would be alive, because in horror, women having sex that isn’t rape is like a monster homing-beacon.

In season two, it was Joyce’s sexuality that brought the monster back to her home, invited the monster to meet her children and drive them to school (and that is why Bob always had to die). Joyce CAN’T ever just be happy in Stranger Things, because if she were, if she got to be happily in love and having a healthy relationship, the story would have to punish her, otherwise Stranger Things would have no story to tell. That is the conceit that horror demands, and for all that ST likes to pretend like it subverts all these ‘80s tropes and stuff, it doesn’t, really. It blends them well, but the basic premise conceits are there, especially when it comes to women and girls. (Look at Max: last season, Max was the Final Girl, beating her monster with a bat when it came to Billy; this season, for some fucking reason, she gives a shit whether he lives or dies?? Come on.)

But this season was over the top. Hopper let himself die to “save the world” aka “close his daughter’s giant glowing vagina on the wall and end her powers, to keep her a child, to seal her off from the world of women.” And so the last scenes we get of Eleven this season are in her father’s voice, holding a teddy bear, being driven away from the boy who told her she wasn’t a monster.

Within the scope of How Horror Works, this IS protecting El, because to paraphrase Boy Meets World, the way to survive a horror story is to be the virgin, because virgins never die. But in the meta of looking at ST3 and its characters as mirrors, as though they are people and not objects/tropes/archetypes/vessels, it’s horrifying. The amount of coercive control that Hopper feels entitled to over not just Eleven and Joyce and Mike but the whole TOWN (“I’m the chief of police, I can do whatever I want,” slurs the violent drunk angry white man with a machine gun, HORRIFYING) is... so villainous and scary and gross.

Like, obviously Billy was The Villain of S3, and that’s obvious, and jesus FUCKING christ I hope no one is excusing anything he did because goddammit karen it DOES NOT MATTER IF A WHITE BOY WAS A LITTLE BIT SAD, HE KILLED PEOPLE. But Hopper was A villain in ST3, too, and either it was intentional -- or the Duffers are not good at writing horror. And since they, like, seem to be good at writing horror, we’ve gotta assume that it’s intentional that Hopper, like every other adult man who has ever been in Eleven’s life, has become a monster because he sees her as one.

As of where the plot stands, if he returns in ST4, it’ll be as the Big Bad. And that’s as it should be, because he... is.

THAT IS HOW WOMEN DIE. THAT IS HOW GIRLS DIE. THAT IS HOW WOMEN AND GIRLS DIE EVERY. FUCKING. HOUR. OF EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. IN REAL. LIFE.

DO NOT DO THAT. Do NOT stop fighting back and try to reason with the huge-ass raging, infuriated man who is TRYING TO KILL YOU. Because he WILL KILL YOU. The WORST POSSIBLE THING YOU CAN DO while being attacked is stop fighting back and try to ~reach their humanity and empathize with their pain about their fridged mom.

Fight. the fuck. back.

The Billys of the world do NOT STOP and DO NOT turn into good men, period. I FUCKING HATE that they show this little girl-child underneath a gigantic, raging, murderous grown-ass man and have her stop fighting back like it’s a good thing to do.

When James shows up to take Erin to the ‘50s prom after she gets stood up

The juxtaposition of the happy, innocent kids at the talent show and the adults watching the news report of the latest deadly bombing at the end of S1 of Derry Girls

"What’s he sayin’?” “I! AM! A DERRY GIRL!”

All of the Derry girls starting to wear rainbow lapel pins to support Clare

“I’m trying to come out to you” “Well, don’t! Go back in!” (That was more of a Deeply Sad cry)

When Scoutmaster Pat gets to see his baby grandson Pat (“He has my legs!”)

Robin explaining why he loves the moonah (“It’s the only thing that’s been here as long as you have, eh?”)

Mr. Kim realizing that Kimchee’s roommate is Jung and pausing to look at the photos of Jung with Janet over the years since they stopped speaking

The pudding conversation in the hospital in Kim’s Convenience

Mr. Kim singing along from outside the door during the talent show

Mr. Ratburn’s wedding

The Rosa Parks episode of DW13

The Pakistan episode of DW13

Patrick’s proposal to David and FIVE RINGS :’‘‘c

Johnny Rose standing up for Roland and Jocelyn at the fancy restaurant

Stevie’s reaction to Johnny Rose in the hospital :(

“The Rosebud Motel” name-change :(

Moira trying to bond with Stevie and complimenting her and genuinely meaning it

Johnny Rose protecting Stevie when they realized she was being dumped

Will destroying Fort Byers (and, in the same vein, “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls”)

The letter at the end of S3 of Stranger Things, even though I hated Hopper this season

Alexei’s death :( He just wanted his Woody Woodpecker toy and the games weren’t fixed :( The kids were so excited when he won :( “You can do it, mister!” :(

@aimmyarrowshigh Exactly. Her actions aren’t normalized for the same reason his aren’t. They deliberately depict them as negatives. Whether it’s Delores killing people or Jim being possessive of Joyce, they’re depicted as negatives and therefor are not normalized. Joyce and Jim literally argue about his possessive behavior in one episode, and not to mention that while yes his reaction was poor, it wasn’t completely unwarranted when from his perspective she completely stood him up.

His actions towards El were treated as normal, justified, positive, and funny, though, and his actions about Joyce "standing him up" (on a date that he tricked her into saying yes to, that she clearly did not want to go on, that she was missing by accident because she was doing something that mattered to her as her own person) have gotten him WAY overblown sympathy/empathy from defenders compared to the amount of coercive control and emotional abuse that he put Joyce, El, and Mike through.

The only person who concretely calls out Hopper's behavior toward Joyce as being a negative in the show itself is Murray, who the show has always treated AT BEST as pervy/predatory and crazy (even if he's usually proven sort-of-right about his conspiracies in the end) AND when he did so, he was calling out Joyce equally and telling her that it was like, her Job to fuck Hopper into a better mood, which is unbelievable bullshit. The only other time that anyone confronted Hopper about his behavior being wrong was when Max asked if he knocked on El's door, "jeez!" and there was zero follow-up to that.

The show allowed for Joyce to show frustration with his behavior but never actually gave her, or Eleven, the room to show that they felt more than "annoyed." That isn't showing his behavior as a negative, that's showing Bitches Be Crazy, Joyce Stood Him Up And His Daughter's Dating And He's So Sad About It Parents Suffer Don't They LOL Poor Hop.

The show took every inch possible to defend Hopper's emotional violence and pulled it a mile, and that's not okay. It deserves to be called out, if only so that the Duffers -- who are real humans, and real living men, unlike Hopper, yk -- can look at how they wrote him and see how people are reacting and evaluate whether it was how they intended, and then adjust how they write going forward. That's what criticizing media is for. It's not to make people feel bad for liking a character, it's so characters get written better next time.

andy dwyer

charles boyle