Don't You Bylers Understand That Will Moving On From Mike Would Be A Far More Revolutionary And Progressive

don't you bylers understand that will moving on from mike would be a far more revolutionary and progressive ending for his character than byler becoming canon?

he's 15, mind you. still a teenager. do you know just how much adolescents change between 15 and 18?

i had a huge crush on a guy when i was 15 to the point where i was ready to sacrifice anything to be with him. but not even two years later, i realized just how dumb he really was and i moved on. and now i can't even stand the sight of him.

it'll probably be the same for will. s5 is gonna be about will moving on from mike and learning to be himself.

Babe I'm sorry but this is objectively false, like - as a fact - because queer romance in a main show like stranger things between two of the main characters is far more revolutionary than "gay boy gets friendzoned by straight best friend and moves on"

but also I can say the exact same thing for Eleven? lmao

I think it would be far more revolutionary for her to be a single protagonist than stay with the boy she started dating when she didn't even know what that meant, and she can continue to learn to be herself without men in her life! A great message to all the little girls out there, they can be protagonists even without having to have a boyfriend and focus on the love from their family and friends as a priority 🤗

Plus it would also be revolutionary for Mike's character to find out he's queer on screen and have an actual good character arc for himself where he overcomes all of his fears thanks to the love from Will, since the love he got from Eleven didn't help him to do that at all on its own, plus go against the theme of forced conformity that the writers introduced

Byler is just the better narrative and story for all of them at this point and not as an opinion but as a fact... Any decent storyteller could tell you that

i like to think that the parallel between mike destroying the pillow fort el slept in and will destroying castle byers is actually very meaningful -

i like to think that the choice of a pillow fort was deliberate for hiding el. it's a childish object in the same way castle byers is, and the destruction of it symbolises a loss of a kind of softness and innocence that will never come back.

when will destroys castle byers, it's after trying to make things go back to how they were before he went missing. it's the emotional culmination of all of his angst that the things that have happened to him have happened, and that he's stunted in place when everyone else is moving on and managing to be straight. especially because castle byers was something he & johnathan had built to cope with their father leaving.

when mike destroys the pillow fort it's because he's lost el, and with her any hope of finding will.

it's notable that in the scene, he first stares at the door as if waiting for el, or even for will, to come back. he cares for el at this point as her own person, but i think in this scene he is angry because he feels stupid for ever letting himself hope that he could find will again, and that things could go back to normal - just as will felt trying to get the party to play D&D with him.

for both of them it is a deep embarrassment holding frustration and grief of losing their childhoods, and of losing each other, as two people who were boys together.

the fact that mike has this development so much earlier than will in the show is testament to how the trauma changed the both of them - mike grew up too fast, and will didn't get to finish growing up.

i think mike's actions in the show all follow on from here. his grief of losing will - first when he went missing, then when he came back and was wounded - was so much that he shut it out in favour of being angsty about eleven. and then once she came back, he couldn't understand why everything still felt wrong, and instead he rejected childish notions and preferred to think of his woundedness as maturity, getting obsessed with eleven in order to avoid doing things that reminded him of how things used to feel when they were still kids. this is why he is so mocking and cold to will, because he hasn't really processed how much will going missing shook the security of his world at such a young age, and he never acknowledges that it did. he also hasn't been able to grow up, he's just trying to hide it from himself.

Users say Will is feminine coded and suddenly people come in claiming you’re calling him some even more exaggerated caricature of Kurt from Glee like whoa lets calm down here

brenner 04x07: "you speak of monsters & superheroes. that's the stuff of myth & fairy tales."

mike 04x09: "you're my superhero."

okay so do i even need to explain this one

July and August are going to be crazy for by/ler. Not just because of those flashback scenes filming soon. There’s more 👀