[ SECRET POST #4571 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4571 ⌋

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


Marked for spoilers all the way down!








01. [SPOILERS for Stranger Things]



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02. [SPOILERS for Stranger Things]



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03. [SPOILERS for Stranger Things]



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04. [SPOILERS for How to Train Your Dragon]



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05. [SPOILERS for Jessica Jones season 3]



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06. [SPOILERS for Toy Story 4]



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07. [WARNING for antisemitism/discussion of genocide]

[Game of Thrones]


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08. [WARNING for torture, trauma]



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09. [WARNING for mention of rape, assault]



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10. [WARNING for discusssion of abuse]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #654.
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

[(Anonymous)]

IA. I figure it's one of those subplots that vanish off the radar (sort of like Barb) and not a deliberate omission. This show is good, but it's not always good at continuity.

[(Anonymous)]

Barb didn't vanish off the radar--Nancy's entire plot in the second season was resolving what happened to her and getting closure on it.

[(Anonymous)]

And you don't think that was in part a reaction to fans asking WTF happened to Barb in season 1?

[(Anonymous)]

What happened to Barb: she was killed. We saw everything we needed to know in season 1. The audience knew it and the characters knew it, especially Nancy, whose entire involvement with the plot in the first season revolved around Barb, too.

The plot in season 2 was absolutely because of the fan reaction, but I'm just really tired of "what about Barb" when it was never really a mystery.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't necessarily think people were saying that because they didn't realize that Barb was dead, they were saying that because the show didn't give them much closure about her death - especially where Nancy was concerned. Hence season 2.

[rosehiptea]

It wasn't a mystery what happened to her but it confused me that the show didn't show much of her parents trying to find out what happened to her. So I was glad they revisited it in Season 2.

[(Anonymous)]

Didn't the feds move her car to the train station in the next town and make it look like she ran away?

[(Anonymous)]

The only reason they did was because the audience was weirdly obsessed with her.

[(Anonymous)]

I got into Stranger Things late, but I had already heard all about Barb and Justice for Barb, etc forever. Imagine my surprise to find out that Barb kind of sucked.

[(Anonymous)]

Yepppp

[(Anonymous)]

Because Barb was relatable to a lot of audience members in a way that not many characters are

[(Anonymous)]

That's pretty damn sad. Barb didn't display a single kind or likeable trait during her incredibly brief run on the show. She was a judgemental wannabe who, at the end of the day, died of being too stupid to use a bandaid and too gross to not just drip blood all over someone's pool for funsies. I mean, she's still a better person than Billy was, but that's a low bar to clear.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT but seriously. After watching season one I couldn't understand all the WE LOVE BARB! stuff everywhere.

[(Anonymous)]

SPOILER ALERT: NAYRT, and to be honest I only know about key plot points from Stranger Things through cultural osmosis, but I have the feeling that a large reason Justice For Barb became a thing was because her death, and most of the in-universe reaction to it in Season One (from what I’ve heard, they totally addressed that in Season 2 with Nancy), played far too pointedly on the fearstrings of much of the audience, that being shy teenagers (and shy teenaged girls in particular) terrified that nobody would even notice, let alone miss them should they die young. Seeing a character very much like them having that fear played out and in their eyes confirmed (and with a horrific death at that) would certainly be a reason for such overblown love for a character with relatively little impact on the series as a whole.

[(Anonymous)]

The problem with that theory is that Barb wasn't shy. She was rude. She was prissy. She was unkind to the kid from the wrong side of the tracks whose little brother was apparently kidnapped. But she wasn't shy.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

"shy" is the wrong word but "anxious" would maybe be better. Yes, Barb was at many times rude and impolite and immature, but she's also just a teen, the same as Nancy. And Barb is a really evocative representation of a very specific teenage dilemma. Barb is ugly, and awkward, and knows that she's ugly and awkward. And her best friend - Nancy - neither of those things. And Nancy is in the process of entering into a world of Popularity and Boys that Barb is completely aware that she's unable to enter, because she's ugly and awkward. Of course she's unhappy and weird and awkward about it, being a teen in a tough emotional spot. But personally, I find her a really sympathetic character, and obviously, her themes as a character are things a lot of people in fandom can relate to.

[(Anonymous)]

the thing about her not being able to enter that world is she totally was. remember how steve invited her to the party and tried to include her in what they were doing only for her to still be rude?

[(Anonymous)]

She was Hollywood chubby, and her entirely appropriate for the time glasses and clothing looked retroactively dorky. It was easy for the audience to project on her as some kind of lost nerd stereotype whose death didn't impact most of the town because she was so shy and anxious, even though her 15 minutes of actual screentime showed her as a self-righteous wannabe bully hanging around the fringes of the cool kids. If the rest of the school didn't fall down mourning her disappearance, it was probably because she was so aggressively, unrelentingly unpleasant.