#i should emphasize that i don’t rlly want white ppl’s opinions on billy and the racism thing. this is not about u. sorry

[cabinetkillerz]

I think you should go for it! ST fans can be sort of... intense but honestly if they cant handle criticism of their fav series then they should just like. not interact with the post (or get blocked if theyre assholes abt it). Also I'm interested now that you mention it!

ok ok. cracks my knuckles

i would talk about the racism issue solely, but it’s a fundamental problem with the 2nd season as a whole. it is sort of imbedded deep in the season and there’s no good way to properly discuss it without bringing up a lot of other stuff.

overall i do think season 2 is a great season of television. it just happens to be the worst stranger things season, but at the end of the day it’s still rlly good! a lot of iconic parts of stranger things originate from s2, steve’s redemption and his relationship with dustin, el and hopper’s relationship, the introduction of max and billy, etc. however, you can tell this season was written in under a year with all the questionable turns they took and the choices they made (cough cough what they did with billy and whatever 008’s deal was cough cough) but i’ll get to that.

a big issue with it is the pacing. its very long and drags on and the different storylines are not as interconnected as they are in the 1st and 3rd. 9 episodes and they spend a lot of time trudging onward toward the actual plot, the whole existence of episode 8 and that awful fucking cliff hanger, yeah.

unlike in the 1st season and the 3rd, the characters are split up because the duffers are aware that if they had been together from the beginning everything could have been solved immediately. compare that to the other seasons and the characters are split up because they are tackling different chunks of the same big mystery, them meeting up in the end and exchanging information feels more natural.

that also connects into the whole plotline with eleven.. it was set up beautifully but fell flat on its face almost immediately. i feel that the stuff with her mother was extremely well done, the cold opening with 008/kali was top tier and rlly gets you excited for everything. and then they deliver the “spinoff pilot” episode; it has good moments sure but kali as a character (and her gang as well) feel like badly written ocs. their dialogue is also Atrocious, good god. kali also has no real connection to the lab aside from being a number and getting her angsty edgy revenge? she doesn’t rlly teach us anything new about the lab or her and el’s backstory, which is a damn shame :(

there’s also max. i do rlly like her but her “not like other girls” introduction was a little bit gross imo. i think they did a good job rounding her out by the end; the romance plot with lucas was a little unnecessary and weird tho lol. that’s about it with her, otherwise i see why she’s a fan favorite :]

and then of course there is the elephant in the room, billy. it’s kind of a hard thing to talk about because there was so little tact in writing him and this entire thing. i just feel like, billy is a pretty tragic character overall, not just because of what they did to him but his purpose as well? i don’t know if most people are aware, but billy’s whole purpose and the reason behind his introduction was him getting possessed and dying (though, they didn’t have the full plot for s3 down yet). he was a character brought in to uplift steve and make him look better, he was created solely to be a piece of shit. honestly, it feels a little sucky to me.. he was written to be a 2D bully/villain, which rlly sucks because as far as i can tell a lot of the characters are not set up to be so two dimensional.

the characters are a big part of why the show works so well, they feel incredibly real and fleshed out (aside from the russians in s3 but thats a whole different topic, idk if i’m fully equipped to cover it). his actor had to come in and ask them if billy could have a little more to his character than that. he was trying hard to make this character meaningful and have a little more to him than just being a 2D jackass. i feel like his character would have been a total waste if not for the changes they made to him, especially with how talented his actor is. god and the decision to make him vaguely racist? Fucking Awful.

from what i understand the duffers were the one who wanted the subplot in the first place. kind of gross because they are two very white men who wouldn’t even begin to understand what goes into a subject like this, let alone how unnecessary the whole thing was. i like the show but at the end of the day it was still pretty immature at the time and not built for such heavy subject matter.. and the way they executed it really fucking shows that. they drop vague hints but never actually commit, the scenes are incredibly uncomfortable and not in a thought provoking way like they wanted. if they did talk with black writers and try to understand their experiences, or hell just have them write the damn thing, it really doesn’t show.

it also just fucking sucks for lucas as a character. they do so little with him and then they subject him to a very prominent trope in media— they couldn’t just let lucas be a black main character in a cool sci fi horror setting, something that is incredibly rare mind you, they HAD to make being discriminated against a part of his storyline. as a black person it honestly just breaks my heart that he and other black characters are reduced to discrimination and always in such a tasteless way.

for the third season, they somewhat retconned the whole thing. probably due to backlash. on one hand i’m incredibly grateful because the whole thing felt rlly disgusting and i like billy as a character. but on the other i am disappointed that they did. they made a shitty decision and instead of committing and writing it better, they just swept it under the rug.

this is all a matter of opinion though, if any other black users find anything wrong with my statements about the use of racism in the show feel free to let me know.

the whole thing just kinda sucks, this show is pretty great otherwise. but something like this is only inevitable in any popular media.

again these are all just my opinions. i have a lot of opinions about stranger things, it’s one of my favorite medias ever. but at the end of the day i’m still critical of it because u have to be, yknow.. i will never understand people over the age of 12 who blindly obsess over smth lol

#racism tw #stranger things #answered #long post #i should emphasize that i don’t rlly want white ppl’s opinions on billy and the racism thing. this is not about u. sorry