ladyfromaspookyforest

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

My theory brain is gone after my tumblr hiatus, but I have a drafts folder overflowing with Unhinged Thoughts and I don't even know where to begin.

#my dumbass post

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

Bruh, I struggle with this too, but I think the most satisfying course to me would be for Mike to make other proclamations that drastically contrast those he's made to El. I.e. "I don't know how to live without you" -> "I don't want to live without you" or "You're my superhero" -> "You make me feel strong" etc. like we've already seen with "I feel like my life started that day blah blah" -> "It was the best thing I've ever done." Circumstance versus choice. Fear versus desire.

me understanding that couples on the show don’t need to say ily to know they’re in love and the couples that need it don’t end well vs me wanting Mike to say he loves Will to contrast how he couldn’t say it to El

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

And so I return to the land of tumblr! I rise! Emerging slowly from the lake of my mind, but not, like, majestically or anything. Like one of the corpses in that creepy cave in Harry Potter or some shit.

*cough* anyway.

#my dumbass post

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

♫ turn around, look at what you see ♫

Mike Wheeler & Will Byers in S04E05 - The Nina Project + Mike in his "babe you can't keep breaking into song" era

#okay but what about the fact that Will sings “turn around” and then Mike does?

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

"I'm so glad you were born."

#WHAT

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

@notmybabies Yes! I have seen some posts about Will and tigers and I can't remember who wrote them all but I rb'd this one by @starsarefire824 so I found that one pretty quickly. And I just realized this same screenshot was used in that one. I think @erikiara80 wrote one too (sorry if I'm wrong). Not sure if anyone has compiled all of them, though. So that would be interesting to see, if not.

Why was it necessary to have the drawing of Will the Wise reflected in the mirror? Like, only that one and only Will. The rest of the drawing was cut off by the easel. Mirrors complicate filming because mirrors make reflections (it's true guys! Amazing fun fact!) so they're often utilized in film to emphasis a theme or create impactful shots for the *aesthetic.* And this is very much not aesthetic. It's background. Like, I zoomed in A LOT. That mirror didn't need to be there at all.

So why do we have this shot of Will (and a tiger) between two mirror opposite illustrations of Will the Wise?

I mean, I don't actually have an answer. I just think it's fishy and it screams timeline theory to me.

#will and tigers

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

I actually have a lot to say on this topic. I know there are people who are frustrated by the fact that Will hasn't had an official coming out scene or that even though Robin has, she's never called herself a lesbian. Personally, it's one of my favorite things about the way queerness is handled in the show. Media shouldn't cater to the jermaines of the world. Straight people are not owed a guided tour of queerness and queer people shouldn't be forced to watch something overexplained for the sake of the nonqueer audience.

Characters shouldn't have to state their identities for them to be recognized as real. It's the same way in life. I am queer, whether I choose to tell anyone or not. And I do not owe anybody my identity. If you choose not to see me because I have not sat you down and told you I'm gay, that is on you. I want media to grow in a way that treats fictional characters the same way. I want to watch a queer story evolve without the characters loudly exclaiming that they are GAYYYYY! and from episode 1, too, because apparently if it doesn't happen early, it's OUT OF NOWHERE.

Personally, I don't want to watch a romance. I don't want to watch a show that's all about relationship drama. I want to watch intelligent science fiction or incredibly realized fantasy. There aren't separate genres for Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi But With Gays. Anyone who wants to watch a sci-fi is going to the same place, and eventually the jermaines conflating non-explicit queerness with nonexistent queerness will have to get used to it. Would it be nice if the show had a tag on it to let me know that there are queer themes? Yes, but not before they're revealed. I don't want it spoiled for me.

In conclusion, it's not about the jermaines and nobody, real or fictional, owes them a label to validate their queerness.

This here post is getting some fire on twitter.

So I've got a question for y'all... in particular any queer folk who want to humour me, because the above is NOT an official twitter account, but some people will see a blue tick and run with it. So let's look at some of the replies.

Let's start with the good...

But we can't ignore the bad...

A little more good...

(and a little more)

And also some people who just wanna know when s5 is dropping (preach)

Then we've got some Mike shade (my poor baby they don't understand you)

and the response to this was clearly written by someone who... well, I'll just leave their response here and allow you to judge for yourselves:

but it's this comment I want to focus on:

So at first, I'm like - well let's do an Atticus Finch and walk a mile in this person's shoes. Let's give (him) the very best benefit of the doubt; I mean seriously extend some kindness and devil's advocacy here.

Perhaps it's some - let's say dude for ease - who grew up in an era where gay media was still taboo, still in the R rated aisle or chuckled at when it won Oscars. Maybe all he sees is netflix being filled up with LGBT+ content (it's really not, but I'm trying here). Maybe he sees queerness being celebrated (as it should god damn) in mainstream media more and more, and his political, skeptical, cynical ass just sees it as a box ticked rather than good, honest storytelling about a folk whose stories have been swept under the carpet for centuries.

It's entirely possible - in fact, I believe that a good portion of the LGBT resistance are these kind of people. I specifically remember when Call Me By Your Name (2017) dropped, and so much of the response was from male viewers who

'didn't expect to see that two men falling in love looked just the same as heterosexual love'.

The movie had captured all of it, they said. The longing, yearning, the nerves and butterflies, the confusion and apprehension and hesitation. The pain and utter euphoria when you choose to 'speak rather than die'.

But the thing is, that movie - despite absolutely gunning it on the awards circuit, rightfully so - was NOT MAINSTREAM. Not really. It was an indie darling of the small cinema set, selling little theatres out across the globe but commanding a pretty damn big, pretty damn dedicated fanbase of all ages, genders and orientations.

But Stranger Things? For better or worse, is now as mainstream as it gets. Well, the consumers are anyway - the creators, I believe, are still very much on their own path.

But I was out here trying to sympathise with this Jermaine asshole dude, purely because I'm obsessed with psychology and I can't rest until I understand the ins and outs of everyone's brain,

but then... oh.

Fuck.

There's more to the story. There's a frickin tweet thread isn't there?

We have a byler warrior in the house! All hail justalittleboyo (do they mean Mike or Will? Because yes)

So looks like I hypothesised right! Jermaine (the jermaine?! Oh give me a break)

But yes, jermaine (he don't deserve caps tbh) looks like he recognises the close friendship between Mike and Will but thinks LGBTQness will be forced and oh-so-woke, as if Stranger Things isn't already as subtextually queer as it gets.

But our byler warrior does their duty, to which jermaine replies:

Oh goodness, it seems like jermaine is confusing Mike and Will, I mean what he's saying doesn't even make sense anymore oh jermaine but we persist because devil's advocate right? But, bro - don't even make me link you to those hour long videos of byler evidence, don't even MAKE ME because this isn't just about Mike, I mean you wouldn't even register the Mike evidence would you? Because you can't even see that WILL

WILL

is in love with Mike? For four seasons the Duffers have tried their utmost to portray silent, beautiful longing; audiovisual media-appropriate longing that isn't full of dialogue and exposition and unrealistic pronouncements of love that simply don't happen in real life. Four seasons, jermaine. FOUR.

Because not only is this silent longing very realistic for many kinds of people, but it is so typical of queer love. Oh-so typical and oh-so necessary. And yeah, there were definitely loads of s4 viewers who aren't homophobic but who still didn't pick up on it for whatever reason... but jermaine's responses not only reek of straight privilege, but reveal him to be an emotional cul-de-sac. jermaine it looks like you play football i mean maybe it was all those hits to the head I don't know, I'm going for the Hail Mary here

Because look here at his response:

jermaine is all talk - talk of proof rather than of feeling, of gut instincts (trusting your gut regarding a show about conspiracy theories? Wild bro), and it makes me wonder how he connects to people or displays his own emotions irl, because if a film like Call Me By Your Name, a film full of the kind of silent gay longing that made many people leaving the theatre scratch their heads and say 'it came out of nowhere' - IT WAS A GAY ROMANCE MOVIE IT'S LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO GO INTO THAT NOT EXPECTING GAY ROMANCE AND YET YOU STILL MANAGED IT - if that film could not convey hidden, hesitant queer desire clearly to these people, then how on earth is a show so big and convoluted as Stranger Things supposed to??

Filmmakers go for broke and they get shot down. They go for the horror metaphor, and they get shot down. What do these people want? Why are they incapable of approaching a story and seeing where it goes, letting characters fall in love as the filmmakers planned and just trust it?

So my question, after all this, to any queer folk who are still with me, is...

what do you make of the marketing and labelling of queer or LGBT+ media, films, books, etc, in the case towards normalising queer love? I used to work in a bookshop, and the LGBT+ section - bright, rainbow, joyous - would sometimes give me a little ache of off-kilter anxiety. It was celebrating itself and yet alienating itself. Some customers would make a beeline, while others swerved stories that they may have fallen in love with, not because they were homophobic, but because they simply went straight to fiction or crime, or perhaps they might have wanted a story that would surprise them rather than one they knew would be LGBT; perhaps they didn't even KNOW they would enjoy an LGBT story! The iconography of LGBT+ content HAS become, for many like jermaine, a symbol of the 'woke generation', a box-ticking agenda. Shouldn't gay stories be tucked amongst every other kind of story? Don't they belong on the regular shelf rather than in their own section? At the very least, in both places at once? So that one day, instead of needing to label something queer love in order to find it, it can just be seen as good old regular love? Because that's what it is.

Or is it more important to ensure that young (or indeed any) queer folk are able to easily, safely and joyously find their kin, rather than spending their time and energy attending to the misplaced hatred of people like jermaine? After all, as Dustin Lance Black said, you can only be an activist for so long until it starts to drain you. And it's ok to take a break, as long as you keep fighting for what's right in your heart. For yourself.

So does placing queer love, unlabelled, next to straight love erase the very thing I've mentioned here? That queer love IS its own separate thing, with its own rules - rules in place BECAUSE of society's judgement and discrimination? Does sliding queer books on to the shelf amongst het ones erase the history of pain and isolation LGBT+ folk have experienced? Can there ever be both acceptance AND acknowledgement?

And, excitingly, will Stranger Things itself become a show at the very frontlines of this school of thought when s5 drops?

I want to finish with a snippet I found from my old journal from 2016 after s1 dropped, because boy oh boy if this kid hasn't always been on track to change the world somehow

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

Why was it necessary to have the drawing of Will the Wise reflected in the mirror? Like, only that one and only Will. The rest of the drawing was cut off by the easel. Mirrors complicate filming because mirrors make reflections (it's true guys! Amazing fun fact!) so they're often utilized in film to emphasis a theme or create impactful shots for the *aesthetic.* And this is very much not aesthetic. It's background. Like, I zoomed in A LOT. That mirror didn't need to be there at all.

So why do we have this shot of Will (and a tiger) between two mirror opposite illustrations of Will the Wise?

I mean, I don't actually have an answer. I just think it's fishy and it screams timeline theory to me.

#will byers #me on my journey of desperately trying to decipher all of Will's drawings and doing a crap job of it #timeline theory #will the wise #my dumbass post

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

I FINALLY EDITED THE BOIS

Thank you @mcderpy for the idea.

#byler #byler edit #genuinely terrified the homophobes of youtube are about to come for me #praying to the gods of gay #the gayds #that this will not happen #Youtube

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

So. Y’know hosegate. And the way we’re finally acknowledging as a community that two teenagers might actually have sexual desires, like most teens do? That’s awesome. I love that for us!

Now can we talk about the pizza, I gotta talk about the pizza.

Because I wouldn’t bring this up if they didn’t say the thing but they did, they SAID THE LINE:

If anyone out there doesn’t know this line, it’s a classic trope originating in adult films, and has taken on a ubiquitous and almost universally understood connotation that some wah-wah pedal guitars are about to go nuts and some nuts are gonna I’m actually gonna stop this metaphor there!

For reference:

The trope involves a male delivery guy arriving with with pizza, likely “smokin hot with extra sausage”. To which the unsuspecting person (usually a woman) says the immortal line, before the sausages start flying (SORRY). But surely they wouldn’t take the reference that far—

LMFAO nah they’re really leaning into it 🤣

So when we get big red “Pizza” and “Boy” from the van’s rear window oscillating back and forth between Mike and Will’s heads, when we get a pizza coupon very much like the one above stuck on the wall next to Mike’s bed, WITH A DRAWING BY WILL, when we get a scene whose sole purpose is to show us Mike and Will stating that they are both hungry for pizza?

…Yeah it probably doesn’t mean anything. Right? 🙄

#it's the way you thoroughly described the plot of the porn for me #lol I love this take

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

*clears throat*

Dustin thinking Mike and Lucas are best friends because they live next door is the equivalent of Lucas thinking Mike has a crush on El because she's living in his basement. Like...lads.

In conclusion, Mike's friends don't know shit.

#byler #an A+ relationship assessment from the guy who still ships st0bin in S4 #my dumbass post

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

Fully agree honestly people thinking Vecna will target Mike bc Mike is secretly gay makes no sense. The dude has other priorities I doubt he cares what Mike secretly is. If he wants to kill him and the Party he will just go for it and try to kill them. Using the similar tactic he used for the 4 victims makes no sense, he did that do open the gates because he needed to make a connection to his victims to open the gates. If he ever targets someone it would be to show visions to that person, and I think that someone will be Will when Will uses his mind connection to Vecna to try to piggyback and Vecna will try to lure him by showing him stuff and also reveal plot related stuff to him. So it would have more narrative reasons for the story's arc. Sorry but Mike getting Vecna'd achieves nothing in terms of the story progression and makes no sense.

You got it, nonster! I also think if it's anyone, it's going to be Will. Because the only two people I can imagine Vecna thinking it's worthwhile to contact are Will and El and after the end of S4, he probably wouldn't try to make mental contact with El because that would start a fight again. Whereas if Will has powers, Vecna knows Will doesn't know about them, so he doesn't run the same risk. So it would be something like showing Will his time in the UD but with Vecna's perspective, or making Will realize they have a lot in common, or showing him what will happen if he doesn't do XYZ to manipulate him. Things that either serve to further Vecna's agenda or demoralize Will when he starts to feel like a threat.

#ask #on the topic of vecna vecnaing #will byers

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

Unpopular Opinion of the Week

Okay, maybe this IS a thing I'm doing now. I don't think anyone's getting "Vecna'd" in season 5. He wasn't just out there killing teens for fun. Dustin literally says exactly that. Killing teens is too random. It was to open the gates. So I don't think we're about to launch into another season of the same shit happening. If anyone experiences a Vecna vision, I'm expecting it to be like the one Nancy had. Used solely to taunt or to communicate with his target and not to kill.

I obviously think Vecna's power and the mind lair will still be extremely important, but Vecna continuing to target people the way he has been throughout season 4 makes no sense. He opened the gates for a reason. Now he has the rest of his plan to enact and I don't think giving Mike Wheeler gay nightmares is at the top of his list of priorities.

#st unpopular opinion #vecna #why when I type “vecna” in to tags is the first suggestion “vecna smut?” #I...*hurls* #my dumbass post

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

he lost something once too

(unmute i think i’m funny)

#I'm dying this is so fucking stupid I'm laughing so hard help

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

It depends which web browser you're using, but on either Chrome or Edge, in settings, you go to the "System" tab and then turn off "Use acceleration hardware when available." Restart your browser and the screenshots should take the actual image instead of a black screen.

Y'ALL HOW DO YOU GET THE SCREENSHOTS OF NETFLIX SHOWS WITH THE SUBTITLES??? SOMEONE PLS TELL ME I GOOGLED IT AND IT WAS USELESS :(

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

will isn't a homewrecker bc mike is actively wrecking the home with his bare hands as we're speaking

[ladyfromaspookyforest]

I think it's simultaneously so sad and so heartwarming how quickly Max took El under her wing in season 3 despite El being a straight-up bitch to her when they met. Max gives off this air of not caring, but despite Dustin and Lucas being totally lame when they met or the boys (*cough* Mike) trying to exclude her from things, she still just wanted friends. And she was so interested in El when Mike first mentioned her. That moment of meeting El only to be ignored must have been so disappointing for her.

And standoffish and sarcastic or not, Max welcomed El in immediately when she changed her mind. And you KNOW they hadn't already established some form of friendship yet because LOOK AT HER FACE! She is confused. She is hesitant. But then she immediately brought El inside and was on Her Side right off the bat, trying to be the best friend she could be despite how much of a bitch El was to her and how presumptuous of El it was to then go to Max for help after rejecting her friendship when they met. Like, Max had the Upper Hand here and did nothing with it. She just threw away all pride and jumped at the chance to be El's friend.

Like, if it were me, I'd have been like "OH HO HO! Interested in what I have to say now, are we? WELL TOO BAD."

Everybody talks about how essential gaining a female friend was for El's growth, but this season also shows how DESPERATELY Max wanted one too. And that is so sad to me, but also makes me so happy for her that El came around. But then it's EVEN SADDER because not only did Max have to suffer through watching Billy die in Starcourt, but Max FINALLY gained El's friendship, which she has wanted since the FALL when she first heard about her, and then El moved to California.

I just don't think people talk enough about how much Max needed El, even before all the tragic events of season 4. Poor girl just wanted a friend.

#in my feels about Max for no reason at all #elmax #max mayfield #el hopper #platonic elmax #my dumbass post