[ SECRET POST #4041 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4041 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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03. https://i.imgur.com/MPdttxe.png
[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia; linked for illustrated? nudity / OP warned for NSFW]


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10. [repeat]


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11. [SPOILER for Stranger Things, season 2]



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12. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]



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13. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #578.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

11. [SPOILER for Stranger Things, season 2]
https://i.imgur.com/m2klMmS.png

[(Anonymous)]

It wasn't like Hopper was doing it to be mean. he was hiding her because there is a secret government organization that might still be around and want to CAPTURE HER FOR STUDY.

[(Anonymous)]

Dud op say he was doing it to be mean? Or as the other anon said, for fun? I don't see anything in the secret that says that. People can make mistakes and bad decisions with the best of intentions. IMO, Hopper did the best with the resources he had at the time, but it wasn't really ideal.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course it wasn't ideal.

But the criticism that the secret offers is a red herring and incomplete if it doesn't balance Hooper's choices against the choices available to him. I don't think anyone, including Hooper, thought that, oh, yeah, the cabin is great and is definitely what 11 would have wanted if she wasn't a fugitive. Of course not! But just saying "11 didn't like cabin, therefore cabin bad and Hooper bad" is just silly, and that's what I got from the secret.

[(Anonymous)]

"11 didn't like cabin, therefore cabin bad and Hooper bad"

That might be what you got from the secret, but I think that's more about you than what the secret actually says. The secret makes no value judgment about the cabin or Hooper. Keep in mind that bad decision =/= bad person.

[(Anonymous)]

Uhhhhhhh

I mean, there was some broader context for what he was doing. It's not like he was hiding her for funsies.

[tabaqui]

THIS THIS THIS.

He could have allowed the other kids to come over and visit under the guise of a hike, a camp out, or 'learning woods skills'. He could have let her call people on the phone and/or write letters and stuff.

He could have taken her to the movies and met up with her friends, or out of town to a diner or IHOP on the highway somewhere and had Steve or Johnathan or Nancy bring the other kids.

He had *so many options*, and then he got pissy and mean when she couldn't stand it anymore. I really disapproved of his choice, there.

[(Anonymous)]

all of those decisions would make her much more likely to be discovered by the extremely powerful secret government organization trying to hunt her down

[tabaqui]

Uh huh. No. Because he was *working with* the fucking secret govt. organization (or, at least a branch of it), and that Doctor - Ownen - was doing his best to make sure *no other govt. agency* heard about the gate, the Upsidedown, Eleven, etc. He even organized a fake birth certificate and adoption papers for her showing Hopper as her dad!

Hopper was running out to some random cabin in the woods that he hadn't been to in years and buying food and supplies and carting them out there.

Way to be obvious!

You hide things in plain sight, and you don't call attention by suddenly changing your habits and patterns. He had better choices, and he didn't make them, and he treated Eleven poorly.

[(Anonymous)]

That's not a given. For starters, it would've meant that 11 probably wouldn't have gotten so frustrated with the isolation and she might have been a lot less likely to break out on her own...you know, the thing that DID put her back on the radar.

[(Anonymous)]

Literally right in the beginning of second season the kids blab to Max about everything even though she wasn't even their friend yet and had no reason to keep any secrets of theirs. They're kids, you really think they can keep a secret as serious as Eleven's case was? If she was caught they may never have found her again.

[tabaqui]

And who were the kids going to tell? Random adults? They told Max - and Max...told no one. They're *kids* - they don't confide in adults.

And they kept Elven and the Upsidedown a secret for the whole year she was stuck in the cabin, so...yeah. I think they could.

[(Anonymous)]

If the kids were that bad about keeping 11 a secret, season one would've been one episode long.

[(Anonymous)]

No. Why would he trust a bunch of idiot kids with the life of someone? Idiot kids who told some random girl everything? Who can't be trusted NOT to try and raise an evil monster>

And he can't take her out in public. She would be found then.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, did you forget the shady government that was literally spying on all of Hawkins?

[tabaqui]

See my previous comments because - i heartily disagree but don't feel like typing them all out *again*.

[(Anonymous)]

Uh... that "bunch of idiot kids" were the ones who rescued Elle and kept her hidden in the first place, not Hopper. Also I don't get the vibe that Hopper's that arrogant. He knows he's not infallible. I don't think he'd feel as dismissive about the kids as you seem to?

[nightscale]

He was doing it with good intentions but it ended up poorly because he threw himself into a situation without really thinking it through properly I think.

Like how much Eleven would want to see Mike and the other kids.

He wanted to protect her which was understandable but he went OTT about it in the end, not saying he should have paraded her about the town but at least letting her see one other person(Mike especially) might have avoided the mess it turned into?

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like I get my Stranger Things fandom on with a wildly different crowd than most of you. I don't think I've talked to anyone outside of fs who thought Hopper's game of "Secret Daughter: If I don't tell anyone, she can't die!" wasn't fucked up. Whether it's irredeemably fucked up or not may be up for debate, but no one's been giving him a pass.

[tabaqui]

I don't really talk to many people in the ST fandom at all, but i thought this was consensus for most people, as well. I mean - seriously - who thinks what he did was his only, correct choice?

[(Anonymous)]

Hopper's been pretty fucked up for as long as we've known him, and fandom loves to treat psychological issues as a free pass for terrible behavior. I don't think Hopper deliberately set out to be abusive, but that doesn't really count for much once he's alternately isolating and threatening a traumatized child. If this was real life, I wouldn't trust him with a kid until he was receiving counseling and therapy of some kind, and social services would definitely be involved until all parties were satisfied that he wasn't going to fall off the sane parenting wagon again. This is a TV show set in the 80s though, so we'll probably just have to hope he's been scared straight.

[(Anonymous)]

I think Hopper should've realized as time wore on that he was asking way too much of Eleven by expecting her to just accept her isolation month after month. But I don't think he did a Bad Thing by pushing her to stay hidden in the cabin. The possibility of her being found and taken again was very real, and Hopper was out of his depth and had no idea who he could trust. He was doing the best he could. I don't necessarily agree with all of his decision-making, there, but I understand why he made the choices he made. And I think it's also worth pointing out that it's not as though Hopper ever forced Eleven to do or not do anything. He pushed her, certainly. He talked to her as an authority figure and tried to tell her what to do, but she was always free to disregard him if she chose to.

What I do hold against Hopper, though, is some of his behavior during their fight. For one thing, when a kid is living in isolation the way Eleven was, it's pretty fucked up to think that taking away her TV is a reasonable form of punishment. That's how you punish a normal kid in a normal situation. But Eleven doesn't have a whole lot else she can occupy herself with, so taking away her TV is one step shy of putting her in solitary confinement.

And then he threatens to send her back to the lab. He literally says, "You wanna go back in the lab? One phone call, I can make that happen." Dude. DUDE. You just threatened to send a kid back to the unconstitutional, dehumanizing prison that you KNOW she's terrified of. You used that as a way of trying to make her behave how you want her to. That's so, so fucked up.

I can still forgive him for it, as long as he learns to be better, and never uses threats as a way of controlling El again. But the fact that he did that shit in the first place is definitely something he deserves to be called on, IMO.

So basically, I agree that Hopper really fucked up in S2 and deserves to be called on it, but I disagree that it was pushing El to stay in the cabin that was the fucked up part.

[(Anonymous)]

I absolutely understood Hopper's worrying and wariness and the strategy he was using, but that fight was so messed up, and I absolutely agree that he needs to do better in the future. For someone who took care of and got to know this abused/traumatized child over the course of a year, his decisions during that fight were bewildering to me, not to mention upsetting.

[tabaqui]

OH, yes, that fight. Holy gods.

I don't see how he *wasn't* pretty much forcing her to stay there, though. I don't think his talk about her going back to the lab, the danger to her friends, etc., was something that happened once.

I think, like i said before, his own grief and emotional panic and paranoia probably led him to basically terrify her on a regular basis and emotionally blackmail her into staying.

Whether he did it consciously or not is up for debate, but i don't doubt it happened.