Can we launch a social study of how the Stranger Things fandom views Seasons 3-5 as the only valid ones for analysing characterisation, and anything in the earlier seasons ‘doesn’t count’ because oh that was in season 1 or 2 and things are different after? Like genuinely why? You’re right things are different after because the entire show lost direction and was primarily continued out of money hungriness rather than actual passion and having something meaningful to say, and the later seasons should be taken far less seriously and discussed way less than the seasons that are actually good.
Why are we treating the objectively more dogshit seasons that across the entire board had sloppier, more inconsistent, juvenile and poor writing and became a blatant capitalistic cash grab as the holy grail of characterisation and the only things that can be taken into consideration ever for any conversation about the show and its characters? Why are we not focusing on the characterisation given in the two seasons that provide the most in-depth, consistent, well written characters and that as a whole were genuinely good and had a lot substance to them.. or at the very least allowing people with brains to focus more on those seasons, rather than immediately dismissing people who focus on them and saying “but what about season 3-5! That doesn’t count because it was before season 3-5!” 😭 Like this fandom is just fucking dumb. This is genuinely the dumbest way I’ve ever seen any fandom view and analyse media. Just completely nonsensical, can we make a separate fandom for people who have comprehension skills above that of a 10 year old and have more than 5 brain cells?
ESPECIALLY S5. On top of it being universally regarded as abysmal dogshit and literally being slandered to this day and having hours long documentaries made on how shit it was and how it did everything wrong, there is straight up evidence that it was written by AI rather than actual humans at times??? And I’m???? Expected to take this season seriously??? And actually give a single fuck about how it characterised anyone or wrote anything??? I’m fucking sorry am I the only one not high on crack cocaine here wtf are we doing. We should not be treating that shit as canon or trying to have any serious deep discussions about it because there is next to nothing of substance or worth analysing in it 😭😭 it’s the equivalent of taking Tales From 85 as serious canon to me, but even TO85 was actually better than Season 5 (and honestly on the same level as or better than Season 3 and the Russia and Cali plots of Season 4….)
And I really wish Season 1-2 were their own seperate thing in general because when I say I’m a Stranger Things fan that’s literally all I mean. I only watched 3-5 because I was already attached to the show and its characters from Season 1-2, if those 3 seasons were their own separate thing I would’ve never been a fan of this show and I overall simply do not like them even if there’s a select few redeeming parts. And I actually think that’s the reality for a lot of people and yet they don’t realise it
TDLR: Recency bias is killing good fandom discussion and media analysis, it’s ruining the way people talk about characters and characterisation, and we should normalise prioritising S1-2’s writing above the writing in seasons that should be viewed as nothing more than spinoff slop. And also the Stranger Things fandom is unintelligent as a whole
