My Unhopeful Stranger Things S5 Prediction Is That Will Will Not Come Out To Anyone And There Will Be

Ik Dan has joked before that Phannies are scholars, and he is absolutely right. In 2021 I wrote a college gender studies final on Dan and Phil real-people queer baiting and whether it can ever be done intentionally.

Here are my favorite excerpts:

“As influencer culture grows, their audiences grow apprehensive of what may pass as in-real-life queerbaiting…In his coming-out video, "Basically, I'm Gay," Youtube celebrity Dan Howell explains the context of his relationship with the other half of the iconic internet duo "Dan and Phil."… he is quick to follow with a statement about his and Phil's preference to keep their personal life "private" for people that share their lives on the internet (Basically, I’m Gay). While respecting Dan and Phil’s reasoning for remaining closeted at the height of their Youtube careers, it is to be acknowledged that the duo profited on the speculative nature of their homosexual behaviors of their online public relationship. Along with Dan Howell's content, which deprecated his insecurities and mental illness, and AmazingPhil which was light and fun, Dan and Phil engaged a massive community of LGBTQ+ through the display of their closeted sexualities which caused constant, inevitable speculation. “

“Dan and Phil’s Youtube personas and scheduled live streams created parasocial relationships between themselves and their audience. A parasocial relationship is defined as the “pseudo-intimacy” developed between an “audience and media personalities,” often taking the role of a good friend (Ramassuen)…Social and physical attraction are shown to have a positive relationship regarding their importance to parasocial relationships (Kurtin). Dan and Phil’s majority demographic, at the time, were teenage girls; fans often labelled themselves based on who they found more attractive: “Dan” or “Phil” girls…Dan and Phil, although promoting a platform where they “took responsibility” for their fans through a parasocial relationship (Green), benefitted from remaining sexually ambiguous as their fan base, it could be argued, was attracted to either member of the pair.”

“Dan and Phil's 2016 USA tour, "The Amazing Tour is Not On Fire,” contained a segment where they enacted fanfiction on stage based on the audience's reaction to pre-scripted scenarios. During the show, Dan and Phil performed two blatantly homoerotic sketches which cut-off before any physical explicitness. In this situation, the duo is relying on the homosexual subtext of their relationship to please their viewership…If Dan and Phil were to kiss as part of their stage show, their fans may have considered it their “coming-out.” "The Amazing Tour is Not On Fire" is just one example where they took advantage of their crowd’s obsession with the nature of their relationship while keeping the door of the closet locked for safety (from their audience and from themselves).”

“From video titles such as “Giving the People What They Want,” which features a thumbnail of Dan holding Phil’s shoulders and smiling widely, “What Dan and Phil Text Each Other,” and “Taste Our Rainbows,” there are numerous examples of the duo intentionally teasing their homosexuality and showcasing their emotional closeness. On the topic of queerbaiting, Crystal Abidin says“ Vlogs in which not-(yet)-out Influencers display 'homosocial tactility' (Morris and Anderson [26], 1201) and overt discursive intimacies with same-sex Influencers are sometimes deliberate attempts to fan viewer speculations about an Influencer's sexuality”(Abidin)…fans scrutinized the often suggestive way the pair would look at each other which they dubbed “Heart-eyes Howell” and “Love-eyes Lester.” Inevitably, opportunities to engage in speculation of the nature of the pair’s relationship increased the overall attention Dan and Phil were receiving toward their Youtube content.”

“While it may or may not be deliberate, the pair was certainly aware of the advantages of all the queer speculation brought to their careers. In Dan’s 2016 “Diss Track,” a song about his flaws, he says “the only reason you get views is because you’re another white guy that people ship with his friend because they think it’s [cute]”…In this case, Dan is making unintentional, but self-aware gains from teasing his sexuality through self-deprication while also shutting down the possibility of a romance with his roommate, Phil.”

“I LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to experience mental health hardships as well as loneliness at a young age…In a livestream in the early 2010s, Phil accuses Dan’s fans of being dark as opposed to his which love suns and lions. In response, Dan accurately explains that they are the same fans, but that they particularly express themselves more openly with him. There is an argument to be made that Dan and Phil’s audience strongly consisting of LGBTQ+ youth is a result of their open expression of their other attributes - awkwardness, anxiety, introvertedness, and depression, rather than specifically their queerness. Their friendship is what links the pair together and adds excitement for the audience.”

“Dan Howell’s coming-out video is a 45 minute docu-short which tells a vulnerable story of his history with bullying, the word gay, and his sexual orientation on the internet…[In the video, Dan] disapproves of “aggressive speculating” or “forced outing” for the purpose of entertainment, as there could be infinite, valid reasons why an assumed LGBTQ+ person is not out (Basically, I’m Gay)…sharing the story of a difficult journey with his queerness and intimacies with his internet partner on supports the argument that Dan and Phil could not be “queerbaiting,” as queerbaiting is taking deliberate actions to draw-in LGBT+ audiences while safeguarding from homophobia. Any of their actions that may be perceived as queerbaiting was an accidental and inevitable result of the true nature of Dan and Phil’s relationship and online content they created that happened to resonate with young queer people at the time.”

“Reflecting their young gay audience, it took time for Dan and Phil to grow comfortable with their sexual orientations…The pairing of Dan and Phil on-screen inevitably —as if it were a consequence for existing as queer men online in a trial period— “queer-baited,” in an untraditional context, the audience as the content is homoerotic without the disclosure of sexual orientation that the duo ultimately benefitted from to their knowledge.”

Netflix should double as a dating service.

Like

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Elsa Loves Titanic

Elsa loves to watch Titanic. It combines three of her favorite things: a beautiful woman with deep desires, nautical horror, and the cold!

So she shows it to her best friend who also loves these things, Jack Frost.

They watch the whole movie and Jack is on the edge of his seat. Although, he wishes there was a bit more whimsy and a bit less —sorrow and morbidity. Elsa tried to tell him the whimsy was in Rose’s hopeless romance and promises. He was not convinced. It wasn’t until the very end that it clicked as to why Elsa showed him the movie —or at least thought she did.

“Elsa! This movie is about me!” Jack exclaimed.

“What?!” Elsa is confused.

“This movie is about me. And my sister! She’s Rose —well minus the whole romantic, sexual desire thing. People always take creative liberties. It’s like how people always insist to make movie adaptations with catwoman instead of Robin…”

“Jack what are you on about?” Elsa is literally dumbstruck, but Jack is on a roll.

“Jack Dawson. His name is Jack and he falls into the water, freezing to death while holding the hand of the person who most admired him. That’s me! They stole my origin story Elsa!”

“Okay? And they stole my origin story from the snow queen. Nobody is special anymore. Trust me, I know. They tried to sue us.“ Elsa is unamused with Jack’s realization and continues playing the movie. But Jack stops her.

“I refuse to accept that Elsa. I am the original! Why did they name him Jack then if I wasn’t inspiring, hmm?” Jack contests.

“Because there was a Jack from the Titanic?”

“Ugghhhh.” Jack gives up. “Fine.”

“Y’know, before you went on this rant I was just going to point at the screen in a goofy voice and say…”

And they say in unison:

“Oh my gawd that’s so you/me-coded”

They laugh, cry, and smile as they finish the movie.

Does it bother anyone else that  Draco spent his whole sixth year repairing the vanishing cabinet??? The deatheaters could have used a portkey to get into Hogwarts. Portkeys are underrated,  there is no place in the book that says there’s a barrier around Hogwarts that prevents portkey travel. What about floo powder power?  It would have been a year of sneaking around and a suspicious Potter avoided, excluding the trying to kill Dumbledore part. 

Do I want to pay $15 ticketed-live stream of The Terrible Influence Tour? No

I want a 3 hr documentary-cut of the tour (sold to Hulu or Netflix) stitched together with interviews from other YouTubers and viewers investigating the profitably of parasocial relationships that early-YouTubers pioneered.

That’s art. That’s AMBITION bb

Thinking about how it makes no narrative sense to have Will confess romantic feelings and then Mike flat out say “I’m not gay, man.”

Yes, this happens in real life, but what would this accomplish for the show? When would it happen?

All it would do is change (and likely ruin) the dynamic of their relationship for the remainder of the show. You could argue they could have a “RobinXSteve” confession —but Steve’s tender moment with Robin is different because he thought he liked Robin and didn’t know she was gay. Will would be risking more than Steve or Robin. And nobody wants Mike and Will’s friendship walking on eggshells for the wrong reasons.

There are a few other possibilities:

1. Will’s romantic feelings for Mike magically resolve themself, despite spending all of his time with Mike. Therefore never feeling the need for a confession. Alt. A non-existent new love interest appears

2. He never comes out to Mike particularly, or if he does, does not express his feelings. In this scenario Mike might end up with Eleven. However, Mike ending up with Eleven is contradictory to a focal point of the show where Eleven grows into herself and her identity as a human, rather than an experiment. Mike still sees her as the “superhero” that landed on his doorstep that needs him to protect her from the bad. While the show has kind of played itself off as almost anti-will the past two seasons, it really has been rooting for him. The first two seasons were about saving him. So an ending where he is “trapped” in his childhood with his trauma behind the closet would not be satisfying to the audience for a core character. This is a coming of age show at the heart. Not The Tragedy of Will Byers.

3. Um, Mike dies. I’ve seen this one. It’s possible ig but it’s highly unlikely.

4. Slow-burn MikeXWill romance throughout the season in the different ways people have been predicting. Which at this point it would take a lot to convince me is not going to happen.

5. Will realizes his feelings for Mike are him romanticizing his memories of a time before he went missing.

About the Crystal Abidin quote which is particularly about influencers “queerbaiting:” I remember I knew I was going to write about queerbaiting, but was unsure in which media-scape but this quote immediately reminded me of Dan and Phil and the Phans. I even thought she may have been referencing particularly them. Since they had come out already, I was interested in rebutting her statement if two people who are just in the closet can “queerbait” if they’re just being themselves —skipping over whether real people can queerbait at all. The discourse is ridiculous.

Which gets me to a now point. At tit, one of the lyrics in the final song is “is it queerbaiting or homoerotic friction?” Which is followed by “endless greed.”

And I do believe this is less of a now-question and more of a past question that we had but also them. Like why is it that Dan and Phil and Phans were so comfortable doing things like reading/reenacting fanfiction, but at the same time were inable to say gay?

While the answer lies more in how we’ve grown and changed to accept our identities —ones that are more 3-dimensional and confident—I also think it would have been weird for Dan and Phil to have been “the gays” of the old YouTube. They wouldn’t have reaped the benefits from having teenage girls endlessly speculate their sexualities and an ambiguous relationship-status. There wouldn’t have been that extra flavor beyond the skinny jeans and fringes.

Ik Dan has joked before that Phannies are scholars, and he is absolutely right. In 2021 I wrote a college gender studies final on Dan and Phil real-people queer baiting and whether it can ever be done intentionally.

Here are my favorite excerpts:

“As influencer culture grows, their audiences grow apprehensive of what may pass as in-real-life queerbaiting…In his coming-out video, "Basically, I'm Gay," Youtube celebrity Dan Howell explains the context of his relationship with the other half of the iconic internet duo "Dan and Phil."… he is quick to follow with a statement about his and Phil's preference to keep their personal life "private" for people that share their lives on the internet (Basically, I’m Gay). While respecting Dan and Phil’s reasoning for remaining closeted at the height of their Youtube careers, it is to be acknowledged that the duo profited on the speculative nature of their homosexual behaviors of their online public relationship. Along with Dan Howell's content, which deprecated his insecurities and mental illness, and AmazingPhil which was light and fun, Dan and Phil engaged a massive community of LGBTQ+ through the display of their closeted sexualities which caused constant, inevitable speculation. “

“Dan and Phil’s Youtube personas and scheduled live streams created parasocial relationships between themselves and their audience. A parasocial relationship is defined as the “pseudo-intimacy” developed between an “audience and media personalities,” often taking the role of a good friend (Ramassuen)…Social and physical attraction are shown to have a positive relationship regarding their importance to parasocial relationships (Kurtin). Dan and Phil’s majority demographic, at the time, were teenage girls; fans often labelled themselves based on who they found more attractive: “Dan” or “Phil” girls…Dan and Phil, although promoting a platform where they “took responsibility” for their fans through a parasocial relationship (Green), benefitted from remaining sexually ambiguous as their fan base, it could be argued, was attracted to either member of the pair.”

“Dan and Phil's 2016 USA tour, "The Amazing Tour is Not On Fire,” contained a segment where they enacted fanfiction on stage based on the audience's reaction to pre-scripted scenarios. During the show, Dan and Phil performed two blatantly homoerotic sketches which cut-off before any physical explicitness. In this situation, the duo is relying on the homosexual subtext of their relationship to please their viewership…If Dan and Phil were to kiss as part of their stage show, their fans may have considered it their “coming-out.” "The Amazing Tour is Not On Fire" is just one example where they took advantage of their crowd’s obsession with the nature of their relationship while keeping the door of the closet locked for safety (from their audience and from themselves).”

“From video titles such as “Giving the People What They Want,” which features a thumbnail of Dan holding Phil’s shoulders and smiling widely, “What Dan and Phil Text Each Other,” and “Taste Our Rainbows,” there are numerous examples of the duo intentionally teasing their homosexuality and showcasing their emotional closeness. On the topic of queerbaiting, Crystal Abidin says“ Vlogs in which not-(yet)-out Influencers display 'homosocial tactility' (Morris and Anderson [26], 1201) and overt discursive intimacies with same-sex Influencers are sometimes deliberate attempts to fan viewer speculations about an Influencer's sexuality”(Abidin)…fans scrutinized the often suggestive way the pair would look at each other which they dubbed “Heart-eyes Howell” and “Love-eyes Lester.” Inevitably, opportunities to engage in speculation of the nature of the pair’s relationship increased the overall attention Dan and Phil were receiving toward their Youtube content.”

“While it may or may not be deliberate, the pair was certainly aware of the advantages of all the queer speculation brought to their careers. In Dan’s 2016 “Diss Track,” a song about his flaws, he says “the only reason you get views is because you’re another white guy that people ship with his friend because they think it’s [cute]”…In this case, Dan is making unintentional, but self-aware gains from teasing his sexuality through self-deprication while also shutting down the possibility of a romance with his roommate, Phil.”

“I LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to experience mental health hardships as well as loneliness at a young age…In a livestream in the early 2010s, Phil accuses Dan’s fans of being dark as opposed to his which love suns and lions. In response, Dan accurately explains that they are the same fans, but that they particularly express themselves more openly with him. There is an argument to be made that Dan and Phil’s audience strongly consisting of LGBTQ+ youth is a result of their open expression of their other attributes - awkwardness, anxiety, introvertedness, and depression, rather than specifically their queerness. Their friendship is what links the pair together and adds excitement for the audience.”

“Dan Howell’s coming-out video is a 45 minute docu-short which tells a vulnerable story of his history with bullying, the word gay, and his sexual orientation on the internet…[In the video, Dan] disapproves of “aggressive speculating” or “forced outing” for the purpose of entertainment, as there could be infinite, valid reasons why an assumed LGBTQ+ person is not out (Basically, I’m Gay)…sharing the story of a difficult journey with his queerness and intimacies with his internet partner on supports the argument that Dan and Phil could not be “queerbaiting,” as queerbaiting is taking deliberate actions to draw-in LGBT+ audiences while safeguarding from homophobia. Any of their actions that may be perceived as queerbaiting was an accidental and inevitable result of the true nature of Dan and Phil’s relationship and online content they created that happened to resonate with young queer people at the time.”

“Reflecting their young gay audience, it took time for Dan and Phil to grow comfortable with their sexual orientations…The pairing of Dan and Phil on-screen inevitably —as if it were a consequence for existing as queer men online in a trial period— “queer-baited,” in an untraditional context, the audience as the content is homoerotic without the disclosure of sexual orientation that the duo ultimately benefitted from to their knowledge.”

When I read TABINOF for the first time, I read The Urge and The Hand side-by-side and genuinely wondered whether Dan had an unrequited love. I WORRIED. Like all the videos analyzing the gay shit they did was being finally debunked as one-sided by Dan’s vampire love confession and Straight Phil sliding into the goofiest mpreg using words like “homeslice.”

But yea, the people still waiting for the “hard launch” as if The Urge wasn’t the hardest-soft gay that ever flashed its titties in our faces then went to hide away again under the comfort of the black anime t-shirts in the straighty straight straight closet. Y’all are just spoiled now.

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

Walking past this on the T hit different ✨ after Phil said he spent 4 years babysitting the kids on AmazingPhil channel