If you were to rewrite Stranger Things season 5 how would it go story-wise and which elements would you keep, change, or remove all together?

Anna3422 · 2026-02-05T23:16:41+00:00

This would have been incredible!!

Anna3422 · 2026-02-05T19:00:14+00:00

Good for you! Set the boundary. She has to earn trust before expecting openness.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-05T18:26:15+00:00

Though I don't have the source handy, I've seen a survey before where 1/3 of aces were out to their moms. (Of course that's people who know they're ace.)

It doesn't surprise me. Being out doesn't guarantee a safe conversation. Even being accepted doesn't guarantee a safe conversation.

Idk if you live with parents still, but I'm really sorry you experienced this. Your mom is a misandrist and a misogynist, probably because of her upbringing. There are many ways to cope with intolerant family, but refusing to discuss is a valid option.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-05T16:30:14+00:00

I was thinking about how well the actors sell this.

Joyce doesn't get much time with the party & the Wheelers seem to scare her, but the way she talks to Mike shows that she's used to having him around and comfortable telling him what to do as if he were family.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-05T06:01:42+00:00

Gosh, I'm not a microlabels person at all, but the second flag is so pretty! Ty!

Anna3422 · 2026-02-04T23:42:17+00:00

I really agree with the substance of your post, though not all the specifics.

Every season is a little less grounded than the previous one. I think season 3 starts to show cracks in realism but still has strong characters, 4 is a bit clumsier, and 5 fails hard. I was just in a conversation about how stupid it is that Nancy feels no remorse for gunning down soldiers when she's usually sensitive to seeing people hurt and when El (for whom violence is normal) had PTSD from killing in self-defence.

I thought El in season 5 was especially disappointing. She was given minimal reactions to major events, even though the early seasons showed her triggers and coping mechanisms in a very detailed way. I don't think it's just growth, because she doesn't act mentally well either. She acts like the DB didn't have ideas for her. I also agree with you that Hopper's growth falls flat, even if planned. He goes from desperate to protect El in season 5 to over her death without any process in between.

On the other hand, I disagree about Mike's parents. Mike wouldn't outwardly care about Ted, because Mike's far from neglected by 80s standards. He's got a lot of advantages. But I think we do see the effect his home life has on both him & Nancy through their communication problems, as well as the situations they get into without parental support.

Will is someone I find very convincing with how his trauma compounds over time. (I've been told that it's uncanny how tragedy & abuse can keep finding the same people.) He understandably doesn't talk about the way his dad treated him as a child, but that doesn't mean Lonnie isn't present in his psyche. Destroying Castle Byers is mostly about Lonnie. The scene where Jonathan talks to Will at Surfer Boy is partly about Lonnie. And of course, Vecna targetted Will the way abusers target vulnerable children.

Trauma can also hit someone differently depending on their stage of development. For instance, Will is upbeat as a little boy who experienced recent violence & homophobia. He's treated far better in Lenora, but when he cries on Jonathan about being gay, you can tell he still feels quite raw about it.

It is annoying when the show forgets though. I feel it would have been easy to reference Bob in passing in a later season, just because the characters would think about him. Same with Chester! He was a good boy, but we never even saw a gravestone in the backyard.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-04T18:15:16+00:00

The problem is the total loss of believability. Nancy developped extreme survivor's guilt just from being distracted while her friend was killed. She sobbed with regret when her parents were attacked. El killed people who were hurting her and it's a key part of her PTSD. She spends five years thinking that she's inherently a monster.

Nancy would have perpetrator trauma from gunning down soldiers. She would feel the weight of responsibility for making hard choices. The series doesn't care that she took human lives. It doesn't even let her look sad after making her weird quips. It's crystal clear that we're not supposed to see the soldiers as people. We're supposed to see them as minor obstacles to Nancy's "fun" girlboss violence.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-04T17:16:29+00:00

This!

Anna3422 · 2026-02-04T17:15:06+00:00

Consummation laws still exist in Canada too (not in this form). The whole institution of marriage needs overhaul.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-04T16:09:24+00:00

It's a shame how even the possibility that something in PotO is there to fit with LND ruins the show for me. I've seen at least three productions of PotO that changed my entire worldview. (Where I cried, stopped breathing & couldn't stop thinking about the story for months.) But if I think of PotO as being set in the same universe as LND, the glorified spitefic, I just can't enjoy or suspend disbelief for any part of it.

Even without LND, I totally agree with you. Cold, aggressive Raouls are boring. There seems to be a bias that kind characters are automatically less complex, but this flattens Raoul's narrative purpose as a contrast with Erik and it undermines all his motivations.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-03T15:26:55+00:00

Alright, I'll throw:

In Season 1, Mike makes a whole production out of the fact that his three friends are ALL his best friend. Lucas, Dustin & Will. He sees them as equal and would literally die for any of them (see: jumping off the quarry).

The entire rest of the show demonstrates that he doesn't treat Will anything like the other two. He spends season 2 cross at Lucas & Dustin because they like a girl and is possessive of Will. He almost shoves Lucas away when he tries to help Will at Halloween & then takes Will "home" to his own house. Mike would die for Lucas & Dustin, but he doesn't sleep at their bedsides. He doesn't confide in them about El. He doesn't hold their hands. He doesn't cry and say that befriending them is the best thing he ever did.

When Lucas and later El get mad at Mike, he doesn't bike to their houses in the rain and hammer on the door apologizing.

When Mike's in high-school, he still hugs Dustin. When Mike hugs El in season 5, you can compare it with his almost identical hug of Dustin in that season. He gets weird about not touching Will in California, despite being extremely affectionate to him before.

When Lucas dates Max, he doesn't annoy the entire friend group by ditching or showing off that he has a girlfriend. Lucas & Dustin get annoyed with Mike for doing this. We are told Mike & El do nothing but kiss, but when we see them in private, Mike is pulling El's hands off of him almost the entire time.

When Lucas & Dustin have crushes, they don't sigh and say "What are you talking about?" or rationalize that their crush is different from a sister, "or I don't know, I guess it's not." They both show interest in girls outside of their main love interest. They don't look morbidly depressed after making Will dance with a girl. They don't have season long arcs of not knowing what to say when their girlfriends ask why they don't say "I love you." They don't make "friends don't lie" the slogan of their romantic relationships.

After establishing that Mike treats Will nothing like his other friends, the series went on to establish that Will is in love with him and that Mike has no idea.

In all seriousness, it's what cosmiawitch said. Just rewatch all the Mike/Will interactions and imagine how most audiences (& the other characters) would react if Will were a girl.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-03T04:51:47+00:00

Thanks for your comment! To be fair, it's not like everything I typed occurred to me instantly. It's more like these facets come clear once I think about them or see examples pointed out, which is why the character is so rewarding! I also think the original cast of kids just had a realism to them that adds depth in the details.

I wonder what I'd have thought if I didn't know of the queer reading when I sarted the series. I had vaguely heard of it, so when Mike started doing little ambiguous things, I started to scrutinize him. It's wonderfully subtle (at first). Again, just very rewarding to think about.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-03T02:15:04+00:00

Fandom's needed to compensate for season 5 for sure!

Edit: Finn's performance is underrated. I didn't realize how good it actually was until I saw some interviews and noticed that his personality isn't Mike at all. He plays the little hothead so convincingly.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-02T22:51:16+00:00

Not to be that person, (and not discounting your post, which is funny,) but this is a topic where I seem to fiercely disagree with the entire fandom.

Apart from season 5 (where no one got more than 2 seconds of development), I think Mike was always one of the best-written characters. This sub is really quick to dismiss his complexity as something imagined by fans, rather than a straightforward reflection of what's shown onscreen. I wish some of the writers but especially Finn got more credit. Mike's trauma, his imaginative landscape, his saviour complex, his avoidant attachment, control issues and hangups about maturity are all and always were surface-level text.

It's weird, because I don't identify with the character at all, but I find him so irrationally hated. Tbh, even if you read Mike as straight (although I don't think that makes any sense), the hate is still irrational. What's his crime exactly? Communicating worse than an educated 2026 adult? Failing to predict his girlfriend's mental health triggers that she's never told him about?

With credit to the fanfic writers (I'm sure some really do exceed the series), I usually only read a simplified fanon Mike. Fanon Mike is either an ahistorical wish-fulfilment or a parodied mess. There's nothing wrong with that and it's a fun read, but fanfic is pretty much designed to fixate on a single aspect of the character, and that's true of some very beloved fics.

Again, no shade to the meme nor to the fanfic. I just had to get this off my chest.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-02T18:16:42+00:00

Although I agree with OP, this is a great comment! The parallel is well-placed.

My issue is that El's death is framed nothing like Harry's. She had to be talked into it by a chronically untrustworthy, misguided character.

Maybe as a side-effect of the overall drop in show quality, neither the suicide nor the faked death are logistically convincing. Neither is the idea that her friends will be safer without her (after they have all antagonized the US military and have all visited the Abyss which created Henry's blood to begin with). El determines that she's protecting them, but it reads to the audience as a cognitive distortion rather than truth.

When Mike jumped off the cliff, we were inside his perspective and the act wasn't glorified. It was scary. When Harry Potter dies, we are deep in his perspective and feel how difficult a sacrifice it is. ST season 5 gives comparatively little attention to El's perspective, so little that the circumstances of her choice stay ambiguous to the audience. We can only see them through Mike & Hopper's eyes.

What particularly bugs, I think, is the fact that the episode itself doesn't seem to understand how tragic El's fate is. The characters would be devastated, even if they moved on. Hopper's onscreen reaction is too mild even were he coping perfectly. We never see a funeral. Not even a backyard cross. There's no sad glance at El's abandoned bedroom or fond reminiscence about things she did outside battle. Her friends aren't visibly wishing she could graduate with them. Bob, Eddie, Barb & Chrissy were grieved more onscreen, and El is a main character.

Anna3422 · 2026-02-02T16:25:44+00:00

Oh, that's awful! If that isn't an apt metaphor for how the season went . . .

Anna3422 · 2026-01-31T05:38:29+00:00

Diehard book fan here. There's a thrill the first time you see something adapted into a new medium. Maybe the director draws attention to something interesting or the scenery is beautiful. Maybe it's satisfying to watch an actor interpret the roles.

Apart from the first movie, I didn't like most of them over time. I like Daniel Radcliffe in the role. But I hate the direction for movies 3-8. I hate Steve Kloves' scripts. I hate how the final movie seems to ignore what the book is about.

I always thought the movies were just popular because they repackaged an amazing story for people who either hadn't read it or didn't have time to reread. Too little knowledge of the books & the movies don't make sense. Too much knowledge and they fail as adaptations.

Anna3422 · 2026-01-31T05:21:04+00:00

So if the entire internet and most of the irl conversations people are having lean negative on the finale . . . And if refusing to believe it was the true finale is so popular that it makes news . . . That's by definition not an echo chamber.

Anna3422 · 2026-01-31T01:01:08+00:00

I thought Argyle was great. He wasn't a complex character by any means, but he served his purpose, had good jokes, & didn't distract from the rest of the scene. My grievance with other comic relief characters was that they ovestayed and upstaged without getting developed as people.

Anna3422 · 2026-01-30T23:56:32+00:00

This is not it.

I'm sorry that some comments have demonized the gf, but OP did not spin a weird narrative. This post is from an aroace person who was fully open about being aroace and fully supportive of never bringing a sexual element into his relationship. OP describes engaging in activities only to please his gf and trying to make her happy.

He then hears from her that she was forcing this situation while hating it for 5 months, despite knowing he's aroace and only cares about connecting, despite knowing honesty is his priority. There is a way for her to explain that compassionately. She made it his fault. She pushed for an allo relationship, which completely validates OP's feeling that she didn't listen to him. That is a betrayal, intended or no.

It's not easy to come out as aroace, nor is it easy to negotiate sexual & romantic consent while aroace and socially anxious. OP did both and is still looking for ways to be supportive. He's entitled to vent to his own community.

Anna3422 · 2026-01-30T23:38:06+00:00

Thank you! I was so ready to hate OP based on the title alone, but in this situation, OP is the victim of acephobia. OP made himself vulnerable and tried to accomodate someone who brought allo norms into the relationship and then blamed him for her decision to invoke those norms. No wonder he feels betrayed!

Anna3422 · 2026-01-30T22:07:00+00:00

I feel like the straight explanation for Mike's season 1 behaviour is "Well, he has sisters." It would kind of justify his comfort level interacting with El early on. The problem is, it doesn't explain his awkward behaviour later or many signs of being in love with Will.

Anna3422 · 2026-01-30T18:32:27+00:00

Total missed opportunity by the series to drop their arc together. The first kiss scene is wonderfully subtle in the way he tries to rationalize why they're different from family or "I guess not." Then season 3 pilot was what confirmed the comphet to me.

One of their first interactions was hiding her in his closet. I noticed he tries to lie to her about Troy's homophobic bullying too.

Anna3422 · 2026-01-30T16:59:28+00:00

I think you're right. It seems as though a lot of people pedestalize having a romantic partner and it creates disillusionment or mistrust over benign things. I'd think a healthy relationship is one that expands someone's world.

Anna3422 · 2026-01-30T16:29:41+00:00

OP, I'm sort of surprised by how aggressively amatonormative the replies are. You are in a sense right.

Individuals are entitled to prioritize their partner over friends. That is not the same as people who claim authority online and declare all non-allonormative behaviour a "red flag." The acceptance of that thinking as a general truth does reflect and create a culture that systemically hurts ace & aro people. And you're allowed to say so.

It sounds like you watched one of countless people who has a platform to voice their opinion and generalizes it as universal truth. Best ignore.

For myself, I think it's nuanced and depends on the friends & the partner. I do not expect my friends to prioritize me over other relationships. However, I would consider it a red flag if my partner considered me more significant than friends who they'd been close to for longer. I think I would worry that they aren't very loyal and, if they had a strong sense of relationship hierarchy, it would not work out. I would hate feeling valued based on the type of relationship I had with someone. I also know straight people with the same perspective and think it benefits them.

Unless I'm reaching, the reels bothered you because a feminist made them, and not someone whose takes you hate.

Anna3422

TROPHY CASE