#It’s just so funny to me. thanks for your input Internet stranger. however

[the-lost-kids]

You’ve never even had a real conversation with a feminist or attempted to learn anything outside your bubble. But keep telling yourself you have All The Right Opinions and believing it until your own people hate you for asking questions.

So close! I’ve actually been campaigning and advocating directly to my state government for equal rights movements of all kinds for over 6 years, and the trans woman I’m helping get elected into office loves when I ask questions <3 but don’t worry I’m sure posting about the tras in your Internet echo chamber is really helpful for feminism too

[bethhxrmon]

Alright, it’s time for an analysis that no one asked for! So, starting off I would like to say that the “Which Kurt Kunkle Are You” instagram account has done a far better job of analyzing the movie and having humor in a similar tone to the movie than I have. I’m not gonna reinvent the wheel here, if you want some real in-depth and good analysis plus some fun memes and good art, check it out!

This is going to be a combination of a critique on Billy Hargrove and Kurt Kunkle’s characters as well as the audience reaction. Keeping in mind that I’m not an expert and it’s been a week since I’ve seen Spree and over a month since seeing Stranger Things 2 and 3 (double majoring and doing online uni is time-consuming). I might miss things and I might interpret things differently from you. That’s just how it’s gonna be.

So let’s start off with the whole Billy vs Kurt deal that one lovely anon decided to bring to my attention. My first point is going to be that comparing Billy and Kurt is like comparing apples and oranges, they’re both fruit. In this case, they’re both villains. That’s where the similarities end, unless you wanna bring up that they’re both from California lmao.

Kurt is the main character of his respective movie (whether he’s a protagonist or if that’s Jessie can be up for debate imo), whereas Billy was intended to be the human antagonist (pretty sure that’s what the Duffers said) of season 2. Obviously this opens up Kurt to be a more well-written character. He has lots of depth and development as a character and a true, complete arc. His death was, frankly, unavoidable. I say this as someone who likes his character.

Meanwhile Billy is a side character and one of the least important characters of the entire series. His job is to be a road block in season 2. He was also used as a way to prove the show acknowledges racism in that time (it’s very blatant and there’s no systemic racism in the show but that’s an essay for another time). This is something that since the season’s release, Dacre has tried to backpedal on. I’m not faulting him for that, I don’t know the guy, but it sucks that the show is essentially trying to erase its own antagonist. Anyways, his death isn’t a shocker. What was a bit surprising (more disappointing actually) was that the third season doesn’t acknowledge his actions at all. Billy has no character arc aside from the fact he has a shitty dad and that he used to have a mom. Wow. His death was also unavoidable, not much to be done with his character. I don’t blame the Duffers, they have plenty of characters to work with that are actually enjoyable.

Now, let’s get into the audience reaction/fan bases. Let me just say it here: if you’re attracted to Kurt or Billy or any other antagonist in a physical sense, good for you! I hope you’re living your best life either way whether I can relate or not. What becomes an issue is when you don’t acknowledge the bad things the fictional character has done.

In the case of the Spree fandom, to my knowledge (I’m not an all-knowing internet being, I can be wrong about things), there aren’t any “Kurt deserved better” or “Justice for Kurt uwu owo” posts. The fandom on the whole has determined that Kurt deserved what he got. He is a shitty human being, he killed people. In other shocking news, fire is hot. No one in the fandom actually wants to date or marry Kurt Kunkle. No one is genuinely trying to imagine a healthy relationship with him. Why? Because that’s not how his character works! “Stanning” him, and my one-time use of the term “Kurtslut” is meant to be funny and a joke. It’s in the same vein as the satirical, sarcastic tone of Spree itself. 

So I’ll admit it, I don’t intentionally go into the Billy tag very much, if at all now that I think about it. His character doesn’t intrigue me at all. However, since people love to come on anon and give input no one asked for, I’m aware that some people refuse to even acknowledge all of Billy’s misdeeds. They think he deserves better and shouldn’t have died. This entirely misses the point of Billy’s canon characterization. If people like his character so much, then they should accept him for what he is as a character. Otherwise, do you really like that character? Or do you just feel bad because his dad’s a shithead?

Also, this is a bit of a side note, but most of my beef with this side of the Stranger Things fandom has come more from the Harringrove end of things (I have a whole post on that). It’s a screwed up ship. I’m only saying this to cover my bases because this should go without saying, if anyone started to ship Kurt with one of the canon characters in Spree, I wouldn’t be here for it. That’s that on that.

To conclude if you made it this far, no one is stanning or glorifying Kurt. Some of us are just attracted to a fictional character. It’s not that deep. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk!