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why is mike and will’s friendship framed so differently than the other friendships in the party? why are they framed in a more romantic light? and why in the world are they always paralleled to canon couples? really makes you wonder, right?

mike and will have a Special Bond, they have intimate heart-to-hearts, longing glances (even from mike’s side, fight me), they’re plotted to have more screen-time together, always being positioned together, etc etc, i could go on. no other friendship, for example dustin and lucas, of course they love each other, but don’t have that Thing™ that mike and will do

they’re so special, so intimate, gentle, and sacred. you cant picture mike and will having the kind of relationship they have with each other, with another person in the group

my god i love gay people

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he’s so in love. look at that expression, it’s literally adoration in his eyes. he’s falling so hard it’s actually so cute.

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cannot stop thinking of mike and will finally figuring their shit out and just being so insanely happy. like trying to kiss but they’re smiling so hard and they just end up hugging and laughing and maybe they do a little spin and then they’re just holding each other’s faces and the heart eyes are so intense

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"will has a crush on mike"

no, will is so in love with mike he's risking his mental health and borderline sanity in order for mike to be happy.

every bone in his body is so deeply in love with mike that it genuinely hurts, and I don't blame him.

his first friend. his BEST friend. the boy who didn't stop looking for him. the boy who said he's the only one who cares about will. the boy who said asking him to be friends was the best thing he's ever done. the boy who always (used to...) notice if he wasn't okay...

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so true bestie

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Finn changing the script while Noah holds the duffers back by arguing about his wig.

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These past few months, she’s I’ve been so lost without you.

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You know what broke me down?

When eleven was stuck with vecna and mike was trying to find the words to say to her so she could come back to him, he obviously was about to give up but Will Byers went and told him 'don't stop, you are the heart' and mike found the words to say to her.

Mike found the words because he believes that eleven thinks he's the heart. He found the words because he believes that eleven created that painting for him and that Wills words were hers.

But Will Byers is a fucking hero. He saw that mike needed something to hold on to eleven and Will pushed on through and instead of admitting that he created the painting for mike, that he is the one that believes Mike is the heart, that he is the one afraid of losing Mike because he needs him, he decided to chip away more of himself and told mike that it was eleven.

And because Will decided to put his best friends and sisters feelings above himself, he gave mike the words that helped eleven who in turn found the strength to continue the fight.

So yeah Will Byers a true fucking hero.

And that absolutely broke me down. How can a character continue to give and give and give and not feel any resentment for not receiving?

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After sleeping, I'm now more confused then upset now. Vol.1 makes no sense, ita like they wrote a completely different story.

It feels like we're missing something. Maybe the ones who still believe can compile some evidence for vol.2.

It's just...the airport scene. Cornelius and the arrow, the story of it is just too uncoincidental.

I get that vol.2 would be hard to have Byler happen right away, it would feel rushed almost, and maybe it really is a build up to season 5. That monologue Mike made? Made no sense to me, NONE of this makes sense to me.

Even after El woke up after saving max, we never get a milkvan kiss. In fact the speech was never brought up again, it's almost like they act like it never happened.

Either we got the queerbait of the century or the Suffer brothers just poorly executed what was intended to be Byler build up for the final season.

What do you guys think?

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he did notice will crying but he didn't say or do anything like wtf?? s2 mike would have hugged will and asked him what was wrong.

i'm a mike wheeler anti now.

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 ✨

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they need to stop doing this shit too. if they're never planning on making byler canon, then they need to stop with this kind of imagery and paralleling them to canon couples. anyone with half a brain cell could look at this and see what they're doing. so if byler truly will never happen, then they need to stop. it's pissing me off.

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im still so mad i can't believe i let them do this to me again. fuck it.

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the original emo kid of Hawkins, King of gaslighting, Lord of repressed feelings for your best friend

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One of the reasons I believe a lot of people are so aggressively threatened, freaked out, and even offended by the concept of a gay or bi Mike is because then they’d have to face the fact that queer people are just people. Which, duh. Of course, they are! But Mike Wheeler, at least in the first season (and sorta the second season), is THE main character. He’s THE guy.

It’s what turned Finn Wolfhard into a heartthrob and fast-tracked him to starring roles in movies like It and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. For people who grew up loving 80s childhood adventure movies, on which the Duffers based their show, Mike Wheeler is Elliot from E.T. He’s Mikey from The Goonies. He’s Marty from Back to the Future. He’s Luke from A New Hope. In other words, he’s the kind of young sci-fi hero every boy dreamed of becoming. I mean, who wouldn’t want to find out that magic/the supernatural is real, go on an insane, life-changing adventure with their friends, stand up to bad guys, and fall in love with a girl with superpowers in the span of a week?!

Other than being nerdy/into D&D (which is honestly not that far from being a theatre kid, tbh)/hj, kinda melodramatic, and somewhat unathletic (affectionate), there’s nothing about Mike Wheeler that radiates gayness on the surface. Plus, he’s the protagonist! In Season 1 we experience most new things through his eyes. That makes him the audience surrogate character, so how can the audience surrogate character be (gasps) GAY?! That’s OBviously impossible. He’s just a guy. He’s just a dude. He’s just a person. He’s just the boy next door.

And if queer people are just people, then that means ANYONE could potentially be queer. Even your younger sister. Even your best friend, who has no stereotypically gay traits, plays football, and has a girlfriend. Even your children (gasps). Even you (am I gay quizzes? were born from fears like this). That’s terrifying for people who expect the world, and the media they consume, to be black-and-white.

People like boxes. They like things that are safe. Every time general audiences are introduced to a new character they fully assume the character is straight, even if they aren’t shown to have any interest in girls (like Will) unless they are an obvious stereotype, say the words, “I’m gay,” or explicitly make out with a boy (even then, some people will still try to claim they’re confused or simply “struggling with their sexuality”).

Kevin Keller from Riverdale. Kurt Hummel from Glee. Patrick in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (as much as I love that movie). Carlos in HSMTMTS. These are all characters that are Gay™️. They are almost always the comic relief sidekick, or the gay bestie for the main female character, or some variation of common tropes. Audiences (even homophobic ones) are increasingly used to seeing these types of characters on their screen, but a gay Mike Wheeler would be a different type of character entirely. 

“Mike being gay or bi would just be OUT OF NOWHERE and would be bad writing done just for woke points.” Okay. Aside from the fact that it would simply NOT be out of nowhere (gestures wildly at the Byler Proof Slides), let’s unpack the phrase “out of nowhere” for a second. Why is something only considered “out of nowhere” when it’s gay and never when it’s straight? Was it out of nowhere for Dustin to find a girlfriend while at camp? Is the resurrection of Stancy out of nowhere? And to the people who are still somehow convinced that Will Byers isn’t gay, just “maturing slower than his friends,” I guarantee you they wouldn’t call it “out of nowhere” for Will to suddenly have a female love interest, even though it clearly would be. They would encourage it, even if it was someone especially ridiculous like El, who is literally his sister, or Max, with whom he’s had almost no on-screen conversations. This is why you see people on TikTok and YouTube who genuinely believe Will’s painting is for the random girl he danced with at Snowball. Talk about out of nowhere!

“But Mike just isn’t gay. Don’t be delusional. Don’t be unrealistic. He is straight. He has only been shown to like El and has one of the most extreme cases of romantic tunnel vision in fiction I’ve ever seen.” Okay, let’s push aside the constant lip stares, the romantically charged conversations with his best friend, the fact that he can’t say or even write, “I love you” to his girlfriend, the ways the Duffers have consistently framed the Will/Mike/El dynamic with love triangle imagery and drawn our attention to this for the entire show, and more (gestures wildly at the Byler proof slides once more!!) for one second. 

The emphasis on “just isn’t” betrays them and their underlying perspectives. Let’s be clear. You can say Robin just isn’t straight because she’s been explicitly confirmed in show and out of show to be lesbian and into girls. You can say Will just isn’t straight because his sexuality has been all but confirmed as well. But you can’t say Mike “just isn’t” gay if the only concrete “proof” you have for this is his (turbulent) relationship with Eleven. Keep in mind. Without Vecna, we don’t have access to the innermost thoughts of any of the characters. All we have to go by is their actions, their words, and the intentional ways the Duffers have coded their characters. Ultimately, people who say this are saying that Mike Wheeler “just isn’t gay” because he doesn’t fit their pre-conceived, ignorant, myopic notions of what a gay person is. Mike “just can’t be” gay in these people’s minds because he hasn’t done any gay “actions,” whatever that even means (that’s why they believe Will- sweet, innocent Will- is a predator/homewrecker because they associate gayness with freakish deviance and see it as something inherently sexual, whereas if Will were a girl with the exact same feelings towards Mike, they’d never in a trillion years see it this way).

In both real life and in fiction, despite all the progress we’ve made as a society, straight is something you’re allowed to just be, by default, regardless of whether you’re dating someone. Gay is something you have to PROVE or “fall into,” and even then it’s treated with incredible suspicion (this is why people who ship Stobin believe Steve can “fix” Robin and make her into boys). Bisexuality is tragically either erased altogether, treated as a joke/a phase, or completely misunderstood (I heard someone say Mike could never be bi because he’d never date Will and El at the same time - what?! That’s not how bisexuality works). And comphet is something entirely baffling to straight audiences. You might as well be saying 2+2 equals armadillo. 

They’d rather believe that he’s just become an asshole, or that Finn Wolfhard has suddenly become a bad actor. Because accepting that Mike Wheeler isn’t straight means accepting that he can be the cool, brave, valiant, kind, caring protagonist of seasons 1 and 2, AND also be madly in love with his best friend. That feels like a bait-and-switch to some people because they don’t see queer people as “normal,” even if they claim they aren’t homophobic. They see queer people as “the other,” as something alien. [Insert Visibly Stereotypical Character Here] can be gay, not MY Mike Wheeler. He’s straight. STRAIGHT.  He’s madly in love with El. He and Will are just friends. JUST friends. Sound like someone?

That’s one of the reasons that Byler will be such powerful, meaningful, representation (aside from just being the only logical explanation for Mike’s weird actions). Byler becoming canon will give hope and provide a voice for the millions of LGBTQ+ kids out there who don’t fit a stereotype or society’s pre-conceived notions but who just happen to not be straight. Mike Wheeler will join Nick Nelson as one of the best LGBTQ+ teens EVER on screen. It will be a cultural reset. And it will hopefully open people’s minds to the beautiful tapestry of humanity. A love story so pure, so beautiful, and so overwhelming that the boy who tried so hard to be “normal” and to deny his feelings for his best friend and the boy who survived bullies, a week in a hellish alternate dimension, and a possession that took over his mind and body had no choice but to go crazy together.

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I don' t want byler to be tragic. I don't want to watch some story about a gay kid with unrequited love of his straight bestfriend. I don't want heartbreak and anguish.

I want queer joy and happiness. I want acceptance and I want love

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Mike's Special Treatment of Will Byers

The way Mike treats Will Byers is so funny/fascinating to me. This boy a hot mess, a disaster, and somewhat trifling throughout Stranger Things, but best believe when it comes to upsetting Will, he'll get on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness (he even dragged Lucas in the rain to apologize with him - what in the baby comeback soap opera type of beat is this?). Whipped, sprung, lovestruck - pick your poison Mike got it bad for our can't-catch-a-break-existence-is-pain bowl cut artsy boy.

Not only does Mike have the special "Will voice/smile/look", but he also cares for Will in a way that clearly shows obvious favoritism. Mike approached Will 1st in their little kindergarten meet-cute. He was out here defying all the adults by searching for Will. His own determination rivaling the mother of the said missing child in question. And we all know Joyce don't play about hers, so Mike matching that energy is telling. He showed his protective, nurturing guard dog side in S2 by always wellness checking on Will and was ready to comfort Will no hesitation. He legit only has an abundance of patience when Will's on the other side of the conversation. Plus when he snapped at Dustin and Lucas for trying to help Will during Halloween, Mike's never displayed possessive emotions with other people in the Party like that before. It shocked Dustin and Lucas.

Lastly, in S3 Mike does take Lucas's advice in winning back the relationship, except it's not with El, it's with Will. He did this twice; biking in the rain after the failed DnD campaign and in S4 in Will's bedroom. Each time, Will called him out on his BS and Mike regrets getting defensive and chases after Will ready to apologize. It's like he's paralleling S1, where he's constantly looking for Will, and in S2 when he noticed Will wasn't trick or treating with the gang and found him scared. Solidified when Mike told Will he felt he lost him in S4. Just like Lucas's advice of winning Max back, Mike continuously regains Will's affection when he screws up (Lumax and Byler mirroring each other). Mike doesn't open up to the Party, his family, or El as easily as he does with Will because to him Will is special and in turn Will gets to see Mike's soft boy side, reserved only for his presence. The emotional intimacy between them stays fortifying.