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I'm sorry, but Season 5 was garbage. Okay, maybe that is too strong. it's the Big Mac of television. It felt okay watching while watching it but is ultimately empty, devoid of meaning. They did the same trick as Episode 9 of Star Wars, except better. Think about any aspect of the plot and it all collapses into a pile of questions and contradictions.
Also, no one said shared trauma in the 1980s, which they explicitly did in Vol 2. In Season 1 the kids acted like kids, teenagers like teenagers all from 80s movies. In this season, they don't act like 80s people.
Will being gay is because the actor is gay and wanted Will to be gay. This was their Emmy scene that they thought would get them recognition. It took them too long and the wheel has turned. It's 2025, nobody needs a fucking coming out scene anymore. People are sick of gay shit and diversity being shoved into everything. It didn't add anything to the show, the character, or the scene. Would the season have been any worse if that scene was cut? No!. It's purely there for pandering. Thats what woke bullshit is pandering.
I think the bigger thing is how anti-woke the show actually is. Is Vecna as a metaphor for pedophilla? He grooms the kids. Convinces them he is their friend, before Shoving tubes and fluids into their mouths. Traumatising him. Leading to the obvious question, was this trauma what made Will gay? This has long been an argument levelled at gays, that their debouched nature lead to them grooming kids to become gay. This season is the literal embodiment of that.
I don't believe this at all. Him being gay has been hinted at since the start of the show. In the very first episode Joyce mentions that her ex-husband used to call Will queer.
No she didn't. She said he was a sensitive child. Some of the bullies said he was a fairy, and that he was off with the fairies. That was the extent of it.
Bullies calling someone gay <> someone being gay. A sensitive kid, who is into art <> gay.
Yes she did. Trivial to look up Season 1, ep. 1 ~18 minute mark:
Joy (to Hopper): Look, he's... he's a sensitive kid. Lonnie (sigh), Lonnie used to say he was queer. Called him a fag.
Hopper: Is he?
Joy: He's missing, is what he is!
That doesn't prove anything. But you're wrong to say she didn't/
When I was about Will's age my dad once told me he hoped I was gay because I'd never be strong enough to attract a woman. We were working on some home project and I kept fucking it up and he kept yelling at me and finally he snapped and really gave it to me. And my dad is pretty nice and loving and not at all like Lonnie!
Being called queer != Being queer. Especially not before 2010 or so.
Like yeah it's in the "text" that someone called him queer but it's not conclusive that he is queer.
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I think it was the trauma from the retcon that did it, since Vecna didn't catch Will in S1; he'd just fallen prey to the environment at that point. Though perhaps maybe the spores and the tentacles can infect you with the gay re: Robin, and why the gay characters didn't think the atmosphere in the Upside Down was dangerous when asked. They were already carrying it, you see.
Vecna as a metaphor for the show's writers. You've correctly identified that it is child abuse, but not for the reasons you're probably thinking of.
"Let's just use children as props to [ab]use because we're too lazy to write them as actual human beings" is an incredibly apt description of S5, and most of the good parts of S5 were... starring a 14 year old playing a 9 year old in full jailbait uniform for basically no reason (clearly, practical for trudging around in the forest and desert heat)[1]. You do kind of forget that after a while, but it presses the "child beauty pageant" button.
It's a grown woman wearing child-face. Which is consistent with how the rest of the formerly-kid characters act, come to think of it (it's especially jarring with 11, since that character's design means they can't hide it... even though they kind of did in S4), and probably why the writers wouldn't see much problem with it either. After all, how else are you going to convince the audience this [again, obviously grown woman] is A Child? Remember, the original cast was actually physically younger than their stated ages (and, uh, that's how it is in real life too), but if you forget why that works this is the result.
As for those nice, veiny, oral intubation scenes with Vecna... I think they were just going for shock value and stock "villain is a walking pedo stereotype". They had a schedule to keep, after all. That's not really anti-woke, though[2]. It also blows suspension of disbelief because Stranger Danger accompanied the Satanic Panic, and the latter was a massive plot point in S4- there's no fucking way those "kids" should have believed that, and yet.
And it didn't even do that effectively, because it basically destroyed that ship (and the teenage girls most interested in it) for a moralizing gotcha. Again, an example of "how adults think sexuality works", not how it actually works[2, again].
Contrast S1, where as you said, the characters acted fucking normal. The kid characters in particular weren't just cheap throwaway props, especially and most relevantly Will, who exercised agency and intelligence every time he was actually interacting with something (and even better- every time he takes the advice of adults- suffers overwhelmingly negative consequences of doing so instead of using his fucking brain; this was a massive plot point in S2 and basically every season thereafter, because [the writers needed a prop, so they made sure] he never learned). And it's not like the writers forgot how to write a character like this, since Derek (of all people) does this every time he's on screen.
[1] Adventuring outfits don't look like this, they look like this. One would expect an artist who draws the latter character nude on occasion to have the more sexualized design, yet in fact the opposite is true.
[2] But it is what traditionalists will think is anti-woke, because they're usually incapable of noticing that "forcing an adult outlook on kids with respect to sex" is the specific mode of abuse (and is correctly called out as a bad thing when it happens to Will in S1), rather than suggesting the actual act itself. It's a very feminine mode of sexual abuse, which men don't usually understand (they can only identify suggestions of the actual act).
I think this is a bit hyperbolic (perhaps deliberately so). Plenty of 14 year old girls are still pretty far from physical adulthood.
Then perhaps they should have cast one that was "still pretty far" rather than heading straight into the uncanny valley?
Even Max, who's supposed to be (and her actor is, to my knowledge) significantly older, actually looks younger than Holly does; the illusion also quickly falls apart when she's standing next to (and being physically overpowered by) the other kid actors.
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I immediately wondered why the swapped out the actress for Holly with one that was, for lack of a better term, "lolita-esque."
The show was pretty good at finding 'real' looking actors for the kids, even at the expense of them being 'ugly'. Derek being a great example. Holly though, hoo boy. Looked like they even gave her perfectly coiffed eyebrows and she kept the pigtails the entire time rather than swapping to a more practical ponytail. I couldn't ignore that it was like watching a de-aged Sidney Sweeney.
This was made worse when she's next to Max, who is a GREAT representation of a tomboy.
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