#like YES Jonathan would die to protect Mike but 1. He'd die for a lot of things and 2. he's honor bonded bc Nancy saved Will

[jonathanbyersphd]

"Oh Will & Nancy barely interact, they don't know each other not like Jonathan & Mike"

Meanwhile this is Jonathan & Mike:

[luxshine]

Some notes that come to my mind as I watch Season 2, episode 3 of Stranger Things (YEs, this would be the equivalent of tweeting live watch, but in just one post)

Jim Hooper is VERY out of his depth. I get him trying to reassure El, but on one hand, BAD idea to lie, even white lie, to a girl whose only socialization after thirteen years or so is the phrase "Friends don't lie" and can make Carrie White look like a parlor trick magician. On the other, not explaining to El that he was late because of probable Upside down shenanigans? Good to protect her of a REAL danger, Bad to give his case. And also, uhm, he knows that Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas CAN keep El a secret. He saw them ride literal circles around the goverment Shop guys (I know they're not the Shop... but they act like the Shop, they quack like the Shop, they are as stupid as the Shop) so why not trust them a bit?

El of course got her teenage rebellion runaway mood going on. Because come on, El was going to run away. She absolutely tasted freedom in season 1, she was not going to stay locked up in a cabin in the woods forever. Plus, now that she has hair? She looks completely different from before. People wouldn't think much about "Jim Hopper's niece", not even if he is still working with the idiot Shop. OTOH, Why absolutely NO ONE ever tries to teach her how to act normally ? She calls attention to herself precisely because she doesn't know how to talk to people.

Dustin being equally smart (because he started researching wtf was hiding in his trashcan) and stupid (Because he feed it the ONE THING we know is really toxic to a lot of animals and then invited Max to see something that OBVIOUSLY came from the Upside down when Max has no idea of it) is... very sweet in a "teenagers will be teenagers" way. OTOH, not realizing that Dart is OBVIOUSLY from the Upside Down, is a mayor fail on Dustin. I get why Will didn't tell him "Oh, I puked him up", but still, it is an obvious alien thing.

Of course he'd tell Mike. But well, then Will has no taste.

Max has the patience of a saint. But then she has to have it if she's related to Bill.

Bob is equally sweet and while his advice is not that good for Will since... uhm... well, Big Nightmare Clown is not the same as what Will experienced -unless his Big Nightmare Clown was named Pennywise and now I weep that Sean Astin didn't have a chance to be a character in It- at least he is TRYING to treat Will normally which is far, far more than everyone else is doing... and of course his advice ended up backfiring because, well, Will wasn't having NIGHTMARES.

Jonathan has fell SO down on my list of liked characters, he's sitting in the fort with Mike. I would get him angry that his mom is dating a perfectly absolute great guy if his father was a) dead, or b) had been a perfectly absolute great guy. But we have established he hates his dad. So why the hell is he mad his mom has a chance to happiness? It's not as if he read the script and he knows Bob will die and break Joyce's heart!

On other hand... wow, Steve really matured in the year between Season 1 and 2. And he called out Nancy on her secret threesome because wow, she was so entitled "where were you?" so Steve is apparently her driver? So good for Steve to actually step out of something that is bad for him. I understand Nancy complaining that she was drunk and thus he shouldn't take what she said seriously... but then she didn't contradict anything of what she said while drunk so... yeah. No Nancy, you want everything? You need to communicate. While on the other hand, Jonathan absolutely thinks they're a trio and just didn't thought of mentioning it to Nancy or Steve either. This really doesn't work.

Nancy is an IDIOT. Like, she KNOWS her phoneline is intervened. She SAW them do it in a montage. I mean, I love her gumption when it comes to hit things with more teeth than the Osmond's family, but she is an idiot when it comes to common sense. Then again, her brother is also an idiot. Him treating Max like trash just because he misses El is not fair. And why the hell El reacts like a jealous girlfriend? That was the worst narrative choice ever for everyone.

Joyce should take a second job as a private detective. She's REALLY good at it. Of course, she's also a total Mama Bear. And the first one who sees that there's something going on with Will more than what everyone is telling her, because of course. How long before everyone calls her crazy? 10 minutes? (I have to say, Winnona Ryder? KILLS the role). Oh, wow, i was right. It took us 10 minutes to see someone rolling her eyes at her. At least it was not one of the main characters.

Oh, that line of Mike saying "That's like saying if someone is from the Death Star they're not necessarily evil" hits really funny since... in OUR timeline, in 2015, two years before? We got Finn. And a bunch of other non-evil Storm troopers in the comics. And well, by THEIR timeline, they ALREADY had Return of the Jedi, where we see that Darth Vader was, in fact, not evil. So yeah, Mike... You don't get to say that someone is evil just because they were born in a very ugly dimension. And while Dart might be dangerous, Mike's reaction to it is not a good one. Especially when the show shows us that yes, Dart DOES trust Dustin, as he's the one kid that it doesn't hiss at.

I also finally realized WHY it bugs me so much that Stranger Things is Stephen King's lite. It FEELS like a Stephen King story, it moves like an Stephen King story, the characters CAN be paralleled to a lot of Stephen King's characters (Jim Hooper is Alan Pangborn without the knowledge of magic tricks to ease kids into talking with him, Dustin is right out of the Richie Tozier school of kids who don't know when to shut up for their own sake. Hell, I can play "scenes that come right out of a King book" and write a ten pages or so post with season one alone), but it has NO credit or acknowledge to King from the creators at all. On the other hand, two years later we got a series that was supposedly based on King's works and... felt nothing like a King story. So part of my anger is that Stranger Things is what Castle Rock should've been.

I need to work on that because well, not fair to the series. Even if they did took a TON of "inspiration" from King.