bitofanupsidedowner

[bitofanupsidedowner]

This is stupid and probably already been done

[bitofanupsidedowner]

milkvan endgame makes three people unhappy and goes against the philosophy of the show.

byler endgame makes three people happy and reiterates the philosophy of the show.

gee i wonder which is the better ship

[bitofanupsidedowner]

which could mean absolutely nothing!

[bitofanupsidedowner]

I haven't seen anyone mention this yet but the lightning looks like a kid standing on a cliff?!

like, you can't tell me that's just a coincidence, it's waaay to specific!

I'm just trying to figure out possible meanings but I think it might refer to Henry Creel as a kid as we might get more backstory or how he might have some human flavour left in him after all? also a certain someone (looking at u mike) spend some time on a cliff so that's there as well... then again the hair looks kinda like a bowlcut lmao

also, soo exited to see will lead the party and here's an honorable mention of mike and will's bikes being a lot closer to each other than the others

and i love how the one crack is running through all of them like a red string of fate

EDIT:

I just looked at it again and I think it might actually be holly. if you look closely, the one lightning at the back of the head and shoulder area suddenly becomes thinner and can be interpreted as a ponytail. we know that she's playing an important/a catalyst part of season 5 and will be targeted by vecna. therefore it would definitely make sense to include her in the poster. her being represented by the lightning would be a smart choice. She is included and connected to vecna but doesn't draw the focus away from our main team and the intended familiarity of the group, since the main objective of the poster seems to be setting up nostalgia, vecna still as main threat and will as the leader (that's my guy!).

I haven't watched the trailer yet though (I'll finally have time this evening ahh) so maybe there's obvious clues in there and this edit is just completely wrong lmao

[bitofanupsidedowner]

love the idea of them having to comb through the footage and find the least gay stuff in there for the GA content

[bitofanupsidedowner]

Will Byers is more humble than me bc if that happened to me I would be mentioning it all the time. Fighting with Mike? Yeah well fuck you I literally got stuck in the upside down and I was possessed. What is he supposed to say to that? I would win every argument

also does he know how insane everyone went when we was missing? Did anyone tell him his mother had what looked like a mental breakdown looking for him? That Mike jumped off a cliff and cried in his mother’s arms when he “died”? Seriously he still thinks he’s worthless but things went haywire when he was taken someone tell him please

[bitofanupsidedowner]

Mike and his shield in the new ST x D&D collab!!

[bitofanupsidedowner]

True reason Byler is canon? Will's feelings serve no purpose for MILKVAN.

Honestly, I've said before I'm a bandwagon fan because I can't handle the heartbreak of it, so I was thinking of if I had to rewatch it and jump ship.

And I don't think I could on this one. It feels too much like "their love beats all odds and...!...overcomes...queerness? He was almost queer but they saved it and he came back to her?" what is the obstacle here?

You say it's the I love you, but then how do Will's feelings factor in at all? Because having 0 impact on Mike not only isn't how writing works but also the prospect of that was erased heavy handedly by the painting and Will encouraging Mike for the ily speech. Will's feelings must serve Mike's story, even if, unfortunately for the message to queer people, that is his story with El.

And that doesn't mean encouraging it. Will easily could done that as a friend. Often a love triangle in some way or another teaches you what you really wanted, I don't feel that they can successfully imply that he didn't know that was El, and season 4 does not show the realization that Will has feelings for him driving him further to El because he realizes, more like Nancy with Steve and Jonathan, that it IS her he really wants. Of course, honestly, the best execution of that would require him to be bisexual and have been considering Will but realize El was his true person.

But that isn't what happened. He already told her he loved her and went back to her and that wasn't the motivation for it. His actions on the surface were unrelated to Will, which means that they were motivated by him in yet to be revealed ways. Those ways could technically be heterosexual and platonic, but it remains true that a character must be impacted by the other's actions. Both must be or it doesn't serve enough of a purpose and it has been poorly written, a waste of time for the character receiving.

If all he needed was to feel loved by Will or to be encouraged, Will did not need to have feelings for him.

If I rewatched this show for Mlvn, Will wouldn't even be an obstacle they overcame, which he should be. Either Will's feelings for Mike and El make Mike and El stronger than they would have been without them or they exist to be satisfied and reciprocated. Those are the only two options, and as it exists, Mike and El do not have a threat to their relationship to be overcome as their entire issue has been resolved - "4 seasons of buildup", right? They did it. It's finished. And that wasn't Will's service to the plot. He DID have impact on it. But his romantic feelings did not. They had 0 bearing on his ability to help get them where they needed to be. His 4x05 advice on telling the truth was about him being gay, not his feelings, and what he passed on from El had no reason to not be true.

Will's feelings have no impact on their romantic relationship. We've covered that his queerness is important but his feelings are useless to his arc whether he ends up with someone else or not (he could have realized through an endgame boy or through Tom Cruise, it could have been anything and didn't need a stepping stone realization boy, let alone set-back heartbreak), but we need to also acknowledge that they have no impact on Mike and El's relationship, or anyone else at all for that matter.

If they do not end up together, his feelings are effectively useless. If you wanted active representation of life without actionable messages or themes, watch a movie about somebody's honest to God day to day that has no purpose or plot, just then going to work coming home cooking and going to sleep. I mean, it's accurate.

Bringing it back to Little Women comparisons, if Mike and El are endgame then that would make Will Jo instead of Amy. But Mike is still Laurie. And part of what drives Laurie is having the comparison of a different kind of love, even if romantic, to contrast his with Amy when he finds it, and his heartbreak matures him to where he needs to be when he reaches her. But this all requires him to have had feelings for the Jo character, and even if the contrast were used to show the difference between platonic and romantic, he would at some point have had to be unsure of that with the Jo character. The perceived romance with Jo would have also had to explicitly come first. These are all things that would have had to happen already.

There is one season left, yes. But the way the conflicts and timing have been written, it is already too late for Will's feelings to impact their relationship - that they would not been together in the end without his feelings for Mike specifically driving them towards each other, the same way I expect Steve's to be a wake-up call for Nancy.

Will's feelings would have to teach Mike or El something that brings them closer and overcome a previous internal threat to their relationship. But they overcame his threat without even knowing about his romantic feelings and as a result of actions that were not dependent on them - Will could have even said the exact same painting speech but as himself platonically, the hiding is what makes it romantic. They overcame it before Will's feelings could even get involved. So, yes, there is a 5th season. But they're supposedly closer than ever with the multi-season threat to their relationship gone, and they did it without the impact of his romantic feelings, so

They are useless. They are painful, unactionable, and simply would be a drag to rewatch - which is the opposite of their leading intention with this show. UNLESS, Mike reciprocates.

To be useful is to change the course of the story. Will did change the course through his encouragements. Will did not change the course by any use of his romantic feelings. Meaning from HERE, the course needs to be changed...and Mike and El's doesn't need any more fixing. So which direction do we go for them now?

I think that answers itself, there is only one. Away. We move away.

Will must break them up, it is the only thing left for them to do. And there is only one way that he could do that that cannot be saved.

Will's romantic feelings are useless to all parties unless Mike reciprocates and it is too late to make them useful if he doesn't. In fact, the only way they have been useful up until this point is if his feelings already posed a threat to their relationship, only possible by reciprocation.

"Mike is unimpacted by Will's feelings!" Really? Because if Mike and El were endgame he would actually HAVE to be.

If Mike had already had romantic feelings for Will, Mlvn endgame would be more likely. He didn't. His feelings are useless to every character in the show. Professional writers don't write useless things.

[bitofanupsidedowner]

I find it so interesting how the Duffers tried to make it so obvious that Mike (and Will, this post just isn't about him 😂) is the missing piece to the 'defeating Vecna' puzzle. Yet some people still refuse that it's true!

I've seen people argue Mike's importance with "but Nancy and Dustin are just as smart, and they've also made plans" but season 4 directly counters that argument. The plan Nancy and Dustin make does not work! Mike's plans are the only ones that have never failed!

I've seen so many reactors say, "they have El, ofc they'll win!" And the characters in the show are guilty of this, too! But El cannot just go in alone and win! Look at season 2 for example, if Mike had not come up with the plan of distracting the demodogs, El and Hop wouldn't have had a chance of making it out of that lab alive!

I know people have said this many times before, but Mike would've seen through that, honestly terrible, s4 plan immediately! I'm so ready to see him back in his role as leader in s5 and for people to finally understand what the Duffers have been trying to tell us: that the only way the Party can succeed is with everyone present and working together as full team, with their leader, Michael Wheeler!!!

[bitofanupsidedowner]

wait i just thought of something...

people are speculating that Will might have been taken by vecna, which is why El is in a swim suit in that one mileven frame:

Mike will be DEVASTATED to see Will get taken in front of his eyes, doing everything he can to stop it and in the end rendering himself useless and helpless. He will do anything to get him back.

If, actually WHEN Mike breaks down at the prospect of Will disappearing again with him being unable to stop it, that would be a great opportunity to use that season 1 scene that was filmed yet never included: Mike biking home sobbing after they discovered Will's 'body' in the quarry. Like a callback. Losing him both times. And if he cries in Joyce's arms? Like he did with Karen? And both of them are desperate and in despair... Oh i wont be able to handle that but i want it so bad

[bitofanupsidedowner]

Apparently Gaten said at one of the cons back in February that they ended the love triangle with Lucas, Max, and Dustin cause they knew it wasn’t gonna go anywhere and they didn’t want to tarnish Dustin and Lucas’s friendship.

Yet they continue to promote the willelmike love triangle with not yet one complete resolution. 🤔

They also brought back the Stancy/Jancy love triangle for whatever reason. 😭

This is a great point, anon!

When you compare the Dustin/Lucas/Max love triangle to the Will/Mike/El love triangle a key difference is that Dustin's feelings never actually complicate the love triangle.

Dustin's feelings in that scenario are more surface level. It was just a crush really. And we even get lines from Dustin that indicate that it's not as big of a deal to him, and that he could tell that Lucas's feelings ran deeper. (About how Dustin noticed the electricity between them, and how when Steve pointed out that it was good that Dustin was pretending he didn't care, Dustin insisted he really didn't.) Dustin's feelings don't further the narrative of a love triangle. 

However, Will's feelings do run deeper. It's not just a surface level crush. And we can tell that in the van. So Will's feelings further complicate the love triangle, keeping it alive in the plot. If the writers had wanted to go to the route that Will just had a little crush on Mike, we might have seen this love triangle play a lot more like Dustin/Lucas/Max.

The plot has been further complicated - there is more story to tell. Its not as simple as Mike saying he doesn't feel the same way and that being that.

[bitofanupsidedowner]

Okay I haven’t seen anyone actually talk about this scene from S1E2 as Byler evidence but I think it’s so telling and honestly insane

In this scene, El asks the boys what a “friend” is and they explain it to her. They tell her and it’s wholesome. Then Lucas performs a spit swear with Dustin and it’s funny. This conversation was just leading up to a funny bit between the two! Right?

Wrong. Oh my god, WRONG.

I was like actually kicking myself when I realised I missed this detail not just on the first watch but on the second as well.

“Friend?”

“Yeah, friend: Will?”

El doesn’t understand what a friend is so Lucas gives the example of Will.

“What… is friend?”

“Is she serious?”

Dustin shrugs

“Um… A friend is someone—”

“—Is someone that you’d do anything for”

Lucas specifically referred to Will in his example of a friend. When El asks him to expand on their bond, he struggles to elaborate and seems exasperated with her questions. Dustin isn’t much better. He doesn’t seem to care much for answering her and they both chalk it up to the weirdo being weird.

Before Lucas can even begin his clumsy explanation, Mike jumps in with

“—Is someone that you’d do anything for”

Which is. Wow. He says it so simply, so bluntly, so instantly and he looks overjoyed at the opportunity to talk about his loyalty to not just Will specifically but also the rest of his friends.

And, bless him, he’s literally bouncing on the spot when he says it. This scene is adorable but it’s also kind of heartbreaking, especially when you take into account when Mike tried to end his life at Sattler Quarry to save Dustin’s baby teeth.

He would literally do anything for his friends. This isn’t hyperbole, this is Mike being excited to show El, his new friend, that he’s loyal and protective. He’s not exaggerating when he’s saying he would do anything because friends don’t lie.

And the rest of his friends know this. When Mike is about to jump, Dustin begs him not to because he knows Mike and he knows just how important loyalty and being a protector to his friends is to him.

But the way he says this:

“Someone you would do anything for” It’s like he’s beaming with pride for his friends. He’s ecstatic at the idea of calling them his friends and being able to be there for them, to protect them, and is proud of them for just being themselves.

Obviously, this could include the entire party, especially with how it relates to Dustin and Mike ‘protecting him’ at Sattler Quarry.

But the fact that Dustin immediately follows this up with:

“You lend them your cool stuff like comic books and trading cards”

Okay so maybe we are still talking specifically about Will. In the first episode, Will and Dustin race and Will, the snarky little shit (affectionate), declares that Dustin owes him a comic. This is. This is a pretty blatant reference to Will and Dustin’s friendship.

What he says is also a lot tamer than Mike’s declaration of undying loyalty which reflects Dustin and Will’s friendship vs Mike and Will’s status as besties for the resties. Quite literally.

Besties for the resties.

We should also take into account the fact that Mike most likely didn’t just jump off the cliff only to save Dustin’s baby teeth after seeing the person he would do anything for’s limp body being pulled out of the water. He would do anything for them both.

But the fact that in some sick alternate universe Will Byers was found dead in the quarry and 12-year-old Mike’s body was found there days later should be enough evidence to be honest.

And if El hadn’t have found Mike and Dustin when she did, this would have been their reality. And Mike knew this was an almost certainty, unaware that he would be saved, and he jumped anyways.

And how does that look? In a conservative small town where no major crime ever happens, the adults spread rumours of a 12-year-old Will Byers being hate crimed for being gay after going missing instead of having any compassion towards him or his family because of this child’s supposed sexuality. His body is found not long after he goes missing and within days, the boy he was rumoured to be so close with jumps in after him and dies.

And let’s be honest, Will most likely didn’t get this much shit for his alleged queerness because he liked art or was quieter than most. He may have gotten a picked on at school but for his parents to pick up on this? Lonnie was a bastard which is standard I guess. Common knowledge. Like the quarry meaning certain death thing. We knew that. Maybe he just gave him a hard time because he didn’t like baseball (Insert coded heart-to-heart with Jonathan and Will destroying Castle Byers with a baseball bat because he thought his feelings towards Mike were childish).

But for Joyce to bring this up to Hop instead of omitting both slurs and just leaving it at “he’s a sensitive kid” or just her most relentless “find him”s? For her to avoid the question when Hop asks whether or not Will is gay? Huh.

Most probably, he was really- suspiciously- close with a male friend. A male best friend. A little too close and a little too affectionate and for a little longer than is normal for boys to be so close with each other. Maybe this best friend even thinks that befriending Will was “the best thing he’s ever done”.

Mike was willing to die. That’s not fucking normal.

His best friend went missing and bear in mind Mike had little to no evidence that Will was alive at this point. He was presumed dead. Mike was 12 years old when he tried to kill himself. You can’t just chalk this up to trying to save Dustin’s baby teeth.

“You make that jump from this height, that water turns into cement. Hits you like a ton of bricks, break every damn bone in your body.” -Hopper

Mike understood that he was going to die. Outside the fact that it’s common sense and probably common knowledge in a small town, where he’s probably been warned by parents and teachers not to play too close to the quarry, it’s basic physics. He’s a physics nerd. He knew that he would die and he still went through with it.

The fact that they emphasise just how brutal Mike’s end would have been by having Hopper stand there and explain in graphic detail what would happen if someone fell over the edge? And then they send the point home further by having Mike weigh his options for a good while before making the decision to ignore Dustin’s pleas and ,I don’t know, any will that he has left to live? Is insane. No pun intended.

I don’t think I will ever get over the quarry scene. Mike jumps off to ‘save’ Dustin and possibly to join Will, out of love and out of loyalty, but also out of lonliness. Fucking insane. Especially with how that would have looked in a conservative town during the AIDS crisis, if El hadn’t interfered. And how Dustin must have felt after he begged Mike to stay alive for him and saw Mike actively ignore him and try to sacrifice himself to save him.

So yeah. Mike would do anything for them both, to a concerning degree.

But back to S1E2, El asked what a friend was. Lucas hesitated. Mike excitedly said some deep shit. Dustin followed up with something more lighthearted but still painful (lowkey imagining how he must’ve felt after failing to get Will home safe, and then later get Mike not to jump) and—

“—And they never break a promise”

Mike when I catch you Mike.

What promise could Mike be referencing here? Friends don’t lie, perhaps? Yes. That. That’s like the only option at this point, I fear.

And we’re back to Mike specifically describing his relationship with Will. How do I figure this? It’s established right off the bat.

S1E1- Will chucks the die somewhere and he rolls lower than thirteen. Lucas tells him it doesn’t count if Mike doesn’t see it. Lucas is willing to lie. Lucas is willing to break the promise. Mike is specifically referring to his relationship to Will here.

“It was a seven.”

“Huh?”

“The roll: it was a seven. The Demogorgon. It got me. See you tomorrow.”

Will dgaf about winning the campaign if it means lying to Mike. He would never break his promise. (Do not bring up the Season 4 painting right now istg this is pre-the-puberty-amplifying-internalised-homophobia-thing (and also I could go on a whole rant about what Will meant by “ripping of the band aid” there so lmk if you guys would be interested in that))

Immediately, within the first eight minutes of the first episode of the first season of Stranger Things, it is established that Mike and Will do not fucking lie to each other no matter what and they have a bond much stronger with each other than with the other two boys.

What did Will say again?

✅ The roll was a seven.

✅ The demogorgon got him.

❌ He will see Mike the next day.

Oh. Okay. That’s not like. Blatant foreshadowing or anything. This might be a reach but I feel like the fact that Will never lies to Mike but told him that he would see him tomorrow, then went missing, may have amplified Mike’s desire to find him faster or at least served as a way to communicate to the audience that Mike and Will hold their promises dearly and if Will says he’ll see Mike tomorrow, Mike will do everything in his power to see him as soon as possible and this is made further tragic by his attempt to join him at the bottom of the quarry.

Maybe a reach. I’m confident about everything else though so who gaf. Let a girl have fun.

“—Especially when there’s spit.”

“Spit?”

“A spit swear means—Puh—you never break your word. Its a bond”

Comic relief for all the devastated re-watchers, classic. This scene definitely wasn’t intended to be sad but I’m a sap, I fear. Plus the absurdity of Lucas’ spit swear and how seriously he talks about it contrasts how bubbly Mike is when he talks about promises when he is the one who holds loyalty so dearly that he is willing to give up his life for it.

Oh my god, I’ve just had a thunker of a thought. It’s. Oh my god. I’ve had a revelation. But it’s 5 am and I’ve been trying to put my thoughts into words for like a good couple of hours now so. It’s to do with the spit swear thing and how it relates to Mike’s asexual treatment of El until Will’s disappearance. Oh my god. Stay with me. It sounds like such a reach and it may well be but I genuinely unironically think I’m onto something here. Especially with how cosmedically Lucas’ bits are played out compared to Mike’s. Holy shit. Aaand it’s nearly 6 am. Well. I’ll edit this for basic grammar mistakes later, it's fine.

Okay, I’m gonna end this part here so just let me know if you guys want a part 2 and I’ll tag some lucky individuals in it maybe.

Also let me know if colour coding the characters’ names was too jarring or something? I feel like it helped me get through writing this monstrosity but low-key idk how the rest of everyone will feel sooo just lmk :)

[bitofanupsidedowner]

This is getting ridiculous

[bitofanupsidedowner]

Two reasons I find the idea of killing off Jonathan in S5 deeply off-putting:

Killing Jonathan when Will is in his mid- to late teens and living with a grieving mother and vulnerable sister, and with no more show left…just seems like a great way to turn him into the New Jonathan, someone with a lot of responsibilities and a lot of guilt who will avoid dealing with his own problems indefinitely. I think this is really hard to reconcile with any kind of romantic relationship for him at the end of the show, tbh. I can see the show trying to spin this as a positive: that Will is grown-up and responsible and not plagued by supernatural beings and accepted by his family/friends and “empowered.” But it would be disturbing if they did so.

If we treat Hopper as a preventative against the above outcome—a father figure who will take over, relieving Will from the fate of parentification—that is maybe even more offensive. Hopper, Joyce, Will, and El are rehabilitated into a standard nuclear family (with Will’s sexuality rendered acceptable by the approval of a conventionally masculine straight older man), but Jonathan, who is too old and too damaged, does not enjoy any such benefits and has his contributions to the family erased because they’re embarrassingly non-standard. Fuck that!

[bitofanupsidedowner]

It's so interesting that Mike's strong suit (to lead and protect) was mostly developed because of Will.

When Will was caught by the Demogorgon, he prioritized Will's safety over anything else, he stood up against his bullies, stood up against the doctors, he didn't leave his side for a second when he was in the hospital, he was able to talk him out of the trance by telling him how much he meant to him, he was the hero.

When he got into a relationship with El, he brought those expectations of being able to do the same for her, then he felt useless because he had nothing to protect since she had literal superpowers, he felt below her, but he knows he's still Will's hero.

Whenever Will has a "shiver", or an episode, you name it, Mike is always the one who notices it, he's the one who asks him if he's alright, this is something he has done since the beginning.

That's why when he has the fallout with Eleven he leans on Will for comfort, he feels validated, useful, and probably feels loved by him too (even in a subconscious level)

[bitofanupsidedowner]

the GA will say over and over "will should die sacrificing himself in season five and save everyone" because saying the words "i think this story should end in a perpetually tortured gay teenager committing suicide for the greater good" is tacky

[bitofanupsidedowner]

if your ship requires a fundamental misunderstanding of the characters in it AND for you to severely minimize other important relationships those characters already have, you don't even really ship that ship.