getbeyondthebooks

[getbeyondthebooks]

Listening to "I love you first" I was thinking about the months after Will left Hawkins, how Mike might feel...how many times did he try to write a letter to Will, A letter that always ended with "love, Mike" because he couldn't do unless to expresses her immense love to him and how much he suffered from his distance

I believe in a mike’s letter to Will full of love and I hope we’ll have it in s5.

[getbeyondthebooks]

Continuing this theory because the more I think about it, the more it makes so much sense to me.

I mean, let's think about Byler's Rink-O-Mania fight once again. Forget about what WE know, what does MIKE know of the situation? I'll just state facts.

WillEl moved in together after S3

Will is "painting a lot, I think there's someone he likes"

Will didn't call Mike after moving to Cali

Will didn't inform Mike that El was being bullied and was having an hard time in Cali

Will has been a douche all day at Rink-O-Mania, "you're rolling your eyes, you're moping, you're barely talking, you basically sabotaged the whole day!"

Will says "I've been a total thirdweel all day, it's been miserable"

We know all this is because Will was struggling with his feelings for Mike, but what conclusion would MIKE reach? Does he know that? I don't think he knows or even suspects it, or his reaction to the van scene would have been completely different. So what other option is there?

Why didn't Will communicate more? Why is he mad at Rink-O-Mania? Why does he complain about being a thirdwheel? Being in Mike's position it's not far fetched that he would assume Will feels guilty towards Mike for liking El.

And later in the season, Will says things that reinforce that notion, if you ignore that he's gay. Because if you don't get the reference to his queerness, there is no other logical explanation to what he says. In fact, a lot of people from the general audience also took it THIS way, thinking WillEl was a possibility, because they showhow missed that it was all about Mike. It's not hard to believe that Mike would be the FIRST to miss that everything Will said was about him, because his self-esteem is so low he wouldn't phantom it. So even though it's ridicolous, Will liking El is the only explanation that makes sense.

Again, the fact that he's not jealous is noteworthy.

His issues with El are a separate thing, so Will possibly liking El doesn't bother Mike in a "omg, he's gonna steal my girlfriend" kinda way, but it does bother him that Will might have distanced himself because of that. It irks him that he might be losing his best friend over his relationship with El, in fact that bothered him back in S3 too, when he biked thought the rain to apologize to Will (even thought at the time Will probably didn't feel anything for El, in his opinion) instead of going to search for El over their breakup.

Posting my theory here too because i need to discuss it, I'm going crazy.

The original video I quoted:

[getbeyondthebooks]

I’m obsessed with @wheelersboy’s theory that Mike thinks Will is in love with El. It’s one of those takes that’s so simple, yet so perfectly explains every odd little detail you couldn’t quite account for before, that you know you’re on to a winner.

I always thought it was bizarre that the Willel reunion at NINA was framed in blatant love triangle imagery:

If this was supposed to be yet another reminder that the sad widdle gay boy has fee-fees for his best friend, we’d expect him to be gazing at Mike or otherwise looking conflicted at both of them. But he isn’t. His steady, adoring gaze is for El only. Yes, he loves her, but that love is strictly fraternal, so why the romance symbolism?

Is it straight-bait? This scene comes after his thinly-veiled love confession to Mike (in the same episode, no less), and the Duffers and Noah both made a point of confirming that Will was gay in post-vol.2 interviews, so making the audience think that Will is in love with El clearly wasn’t the intention here.

The Willel romance-coding isn’t for the audience – it’s for Mike.

We often joke about Mike being crushed that Will didn’t laugh at his vomit green socks, but follow Will’s gaze – it’s a little hard to see in the still image, but he’s staring at El, checking to see if she’s going to heed his advice. Mike’s discomfort isn’t because he’s upset that Will didn’t like his joke, it’s because he doesn’t understand the weird tension between these two and is frustrated that his attempt to lighten the mood didn’t dispel it.

Mike’s smart enough to correctly connect the dots by the time Will starts sobbing in the van though: Will is destroying himself in his efforts to be supportive of the relationship between his best friend and the person he’s in love with.

But heteronormativity and a severe inferiority complex lead him to draw the wrong conclusion – he thinks he’s the best friend and El is the one Will’s in love with, and that gets confirmed in his mind when he catches them making goo-goo eyes at each other at NINA.

And not once, after figuring it out, does he get jealous about it – he guides El into Will’s arms at NINA, he looks conflicted as hell during the “I love you” monologue as Will hovers over his shoulder – he just wants them to be happy and is prepared to put his own feelings aside to make it happen, even though it would hurt him terribly to do so. Exactly the same fucking thing Will is doing. It’s utterly farcical. I love this theory so much.

I’d like to springboard off this by taking a look at what it implies about S5.

Between Will’s history with Vecna and the Wonder Twins foreshadowing–

–it’s looking pretty likely that Will and El are going to be spending a significant amount of time together next season.

So we can already see that conditions are perfect for Mike to go through a similar arc as Will did in S4: being a third wheel between his best friend and the person he’s in love with and feeling like he can never truly be more than a third wheel, leading him to sacrifice himself in an effort to support what he thinks they have together.

Mike is very much at risk of doing something stupidly self-harming in S5 – this is the same kid who jumped off a cliff to protect Dustin’s baby teeth, after all. He feels like he has no value if he isn’t needed by Superman. And there’s a goddamn mind-reading despair demon stalking his friend group.

Of course, it’ll all work out in the end. He’ll be saved at the last moment, the truth will be tearfully revealed, and we’ll finally get that big, dramatic, affirming kiss for our OTP.

You might have noticed that everything I’ve said in this analysis so far is consistent with either Byler or Milevn being endgame.

Many Milevns and GA members don’t just believe that Milevn will triumph over Byler – they believe there isn’t any conflict between Milevn and Byler in the first place. The lack of evidence that Mike isn’t into boys is meaningless to the heteronormative mindset – he’s the protagonist and dating a girl, therefore he’s straight, therefore Will’s hopes are dead in the water, therefore Mike has no romantic dilemma to solve.

By introducing a misunderstanding in which Mike imagines that his best friend is competing for his girlfriend – couching his dilemma in relatable heterosexual terms – the audience will be forced to accept that Mike is experiencing a distressing internal conflict involving Will and romance that won’t be resolved until the queer truth comes out.

The GA felt bad for Will in S4 because they assumed there was nothing he could do about it, but they’ll be tearing their hair out with frustration at Mike in S5 – “you’re wrongly assuming he’s straight, you idiot! Just talk to him and this will all be cleared up!!”

It would be an absolutely genius way of getting the audience to question heteronormativity without them even realizing they’re questioning heteronormativity.

Once Mike’s queerness is revealed, the parallels between his arc and Will’s will suddenly become clear, and the audience will realize that, despite his straight-passing invisibility, Mike was just the other side of the same gay coin Will was on all along.

[Part 2]

[getbeyondthebooks]

Posting my theory here too because i need to discuss it, I'm going crazy.

The original video I quoted:

[getbeyondthebooks]

Wait, if the gates are opened, the UD has become real to the real world, but the UD is stuck on the day Will went missing, that means the real world’s timing will slowly be back to the day Will went missing too? “To turn back the clock”????

That’s why Nancy and Steve’s action are weird too. They’re back to the past. And the past is their present, because the real world is still there, the UD and the real world now become one.

Does that make any sense?????

So that’s why... Omgggg!!!!!

#please ignore my grammar i’m crazy now

#it’s maybe not new it’s okay that’s enough for my heart

#Will Byers main character era

[getbeyondthebooks]

I'm sorry but I think we made the wrong connection here.

In the initial leak of the script we got this:

So we know that Mike is confused by what Will is telling him. Something doesn't add up but he doesn't know what it is (we know that Will is talking about himself and he loves Mike so we get it, but Mike doesn't).

We wondered what it is that Will previously didn't get, then, and I've seen most people point this out as the correlated item:

but later in the script we actually get another part where it is stated that "Will does not get it", which is this:

and this comes right after Mike makes a whole speech about him and El not being destiny and the whole Lois Lane/Superman analogy.

Will does not understand why Mike would feel this way about his relationship with El. And tbh neither do I! There is one thing Millie is right about: El is obsessed with Mike. She has a little love shrine for him!! What is Mike even going on about here?? It makes no sense that he would feel like she doesn't need him.

So the key word in the script here...

is that Will TRIES to get what Mike is saying, and to Will the only explanation that makes sense is that Mike is feeling insecure?

But did he actually understand what Mike was being insecure about? Was that what Mike was trying to say?

Because after the whole speech Will gives him, Mike feels reassured but he does NOT in fact get it. Will said the words, but there was an underlying meaning that Mike couldn't catch, which we know it's the fact that Will was actually confessing his feelings for him.

So what it is that Mike was trying to say, that Will didn't catch in the whole Lois Lane/Superman speech?

[getbeyondthebooks]

guys... will does not recognize Brenner because he actually has seen him as himself... it's because Vecna knows Brenner that he does... If Will remembers how One feels and can tell if he's alive or not, clearly his connection to him is pretty deep. It's not a big leap that he would know his (One's) abuser...

[getbeyondthebooks]

I think if anyone knows where Byler is going a part from the Duffers, it's Finn.

Noah does not need to know where the triangle is going, nor Mike's feelings (and neither does Millie), in fact, it's easier for him to wear Will's shoes if he does NOT know and assumes that Mike simply likes El and there's no moving on from that, because that's exactly what Will thinks? If I were the Duffers I wouldn't tell Noah anything about Mike's feelings either, because he does not need to know about them to give his performance.

That's very not true for Finn though. Finn needs to know what Mike is thinking to act him out, he cannot just "assume" how his character is feeling when his feelings aren't the focus of the story, because he has to act in a way that is consistent with the future of the story. So yes, he must have given explicit directions on how Mike was supposed to feel in every moment and what he was thinking for Finn to be able to act it out in a way that wouldn't go against the resolution of this love triangle.

So yeah if I had to give weight to someone's words, they would be Finn's. But he's also the master of saying a lot while answering nothing, so yeah lmfao

[getbeyondthebooks]

so, one of my online friends on Twitter realized that I've been obsessed with ST lately and she wrote this to me. She does not watch ST or know anything about it a part from what I told her myself. I've summarized the love triangle (and ST main plot) for her in a previous conversation.

[getbeyondthebooks]

the “problem” with Mike’s character arc

i’m putting “problem” in quotation marks because i don’t think it’s a problem at all, but it’s something that would make it hard for the general public to notice that a character arc exists in the first place. I’m saying this because I also had the same problem and I only saw the light when I came to the Byler tag and started putting 2 and 2 together. 

I’m talking about continuity through seasons. This whole time I failed to realize what Mike’s character arc was and most importantly I failed to see that it was in developing through seasons without reaching an ending. 

I only started wondering what was going on with Mike in S4, when his weird behavior with Will made it obvious that there was something and it wasn’t just a teen being a teen, like I assumed in S3. 

And still it took me so long to figure out that his weird behavior is not something that came out of nowhere in S4, but it’s actually something that they have slowly built up through the seasons. That no, Mike’s queer character arc hasn’t magically started in S4, but has been going on from the start and that we got it very much presented to us in S3, both for Mike and Will. For Will it was “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls” and the destruction of Castle Byers, for Mike? Hands down the ending of S3. 

My biggest mistake going into Mike’s character, contrary to Will’s, has been to assume that all his arcs started and ended in the same season and that there was no continuity with it, because I was too blind to realize that there was some place they were going with him and that they had yet to reach. I don’t even know why I didn’t realize, Mike is literally our MC, he starts off as our protagonist, if anyone had to have a character arc it would be him?? So why did I just take his character at face value? Istg I feel so stupid right now.

I’ve been waiting for Will’s character arc to take center stage, I knew his queerness was going to be a focal point for him sooner or later, but Mike’s changes completely felw me by because the Duffers never made them obvious. It’s all in the details, and if you’re too taken by Mileven, you’re bound to miss (or dismiss) them. 

For example, when the end of S3 happened, I assumed that the reason why Mike made that weirded out face after El kissed him and told him she loved him was because he was just taken aback that she had heard him confess in the first place and nothing deeper than that. Perhaps it was a bit exhagerated for confusion, but, again, I assumed it wasall for laughs. S3 treated the whole Mileven relationship very lightely and humorously, so it made sense to me that even such a scene would be a bit comical. 

S4 forced me to reconsider everything. 

Rewatching it now, knowing how Mike is behaving 6 months later, that scene takes a completely different connotation and meaning. A lot of similar occurrences do. 

The Duffers have done this before, multiple times. Think Jonathan and Nancy in S1, for example. Their story begun in S1 but by the end of it, Nancy was still actively in a relationship with Steve and the consequences of the time she spent with Jonathan only “hit” in S2. There was continuity there. It was just way less flashed out, it all happened pretty fast although spanning two seasons and it was way more in our face. 

Mike and Will? Have been built up for 4 seasons. From the very start. In the slowlest way possible. In the tiniest details. Their storyline has been constructed one moment at a time, hidden, almost, in the background, but there nonetheless. 

Putting all the pieces together I can clearly see the picture now. I assumed it was just Will, I never really expected Mike to have a character arc per se. I assumed we knew all we needed to know about Mike, I was never expecting any big revelation or anything. But now I can see that his character arc has been going on for 4 seasons and has yet to reach completition, just like Will’s AND El’s (independence arc). 

There IS something going on with Mike. There has always been. I just couldn’t see it until they made it pretty obvious in S4. Some people still think it’s nothing but it was immediately clear to me that they were trying to tell me something when they decided to 1) bring up Will’s feelings for Mike when they could have made it puppy love and give him another love interest 2) have Mileven have ILY problems when the whole audience assumed that was solved at the end of S3 3) have Mike be extremely conscious of Will’s presence for no apparent reason. 

The fact that Mileven are STILL dealing with a problem they introduced in S3 that we all (at least the general audience) assumed had been solved by the end of it is telling us that whatever storyline had been going on in S3? Is STILL ongoing. No, the issue wasn’t closed there. Mike’s character arc didn’t find resolution there, in fact, in hindsight, I could say that’s where his character arc actually properly started. Not to say that nothing happened before then, but I think that’s when he was hit with some kind of realization. 

So the more I look at it, look at the big picture without dividiving the story in seasons, the more I realize that there can’t possibly be anything but Byler at the end of it all. I’ve been saying this since I’ve watched S4. The decisions they took with the story were too deliberate, they can’t lead anywhere else, but I was still 50/50 because I felt like they took it out of nowhere for Mike. But if you put his whole experience into perspective and not divide it into seasons, it’s actually all right there. 

It’s hard because we get years of pause between seasons and the ending of one season stays with us for a long time before we question it so it all feels way more dragged out than it really is in the show. Plus details get lost in time and the Duffers were EXTREMELY delicate with it all. Will’s sexuality included. I picked up on it early but I know for a fact that most didn’t. It was never explicit, it was all very gently introduced. I just never realized they had done the same for Mike. 

I don’t know what Mike’s sexuality is and I’m not even gonna argue (I headcannoned him as bi for a while but who knows) but from a writing perspective, I know that the only possible and logical conclusion of his character arc is Byler. 

I’m so confident in them being endgame at this point that it’s scaring me. It just feels so obvious now, I can’t unsee it. HELP. 

Istg S4 was more about Mike’s feelings for Will than it was viceversa. We got Will’s pov but the real source of their tension was Mike the whole time. He initiated it all. He knows he has feelings for Will and he doesn’t know what to do with them. He’s a queer mess. I just know it for a fact at this point. It just makes SENSE. 

My only doubt for Byler was that there wasn’t enough time to show Mike going through his identity crisis, but that’s because I was too blind to see that he HAS BEEN going through his identity crisis for this whole time. I was so distracted by Mileven and Will that I just never noticed. So now that I have noticed... I have no doubts anymore, but that’s frighteneing. 

[getbeyondthebooks]

my issue with pinpointing if mileven was/is platonic or romantic is that the relationship literally started when they were 12/13. Do kids even know the difference between platonic and romantic by then?

We discuss the terminology so much on here but tbh it all seems kinda up in the air because a relationship between kids to me is simply... a relationship between kids.

I'm sorry but I cannot take it too seriously? Even if they kiss I'm like... yes but they were kids??​ I had a friend who kissed in a relationship when she was 12 and then she wasn't with anyone else until she was 22. The relationship itself lasted a few months but they met just a few times by themselves and they kissed some but then it was over because he got bored, I suppose, and she took the blow.

If you ask her today, she says it wasn't love. At the time, though, she couldn't stop crying about it.

I mean, what is love anyway?

You cannot expect a 12-year-old to experience a relationship in the same way an adult would? So if love is this and this and this based on an adult experience, then what you feel at 12 in your first kid relationship most likely wasn't it? But to the kid themselves it was still possibly something really intense, just different...

I don't know, I cannot categorize mileven one way or the other with certainty, simply because it was an experience they had when they were way too young and unaware of themselves to put it in a box...

So when you guys say it's either platonic or romantic between them and argue about stuff i can only think that they are children.

But for a while at least they believed it romantic. It was their experience in that moment. If in hindsight they decide it wasn't, that's for them to understand. But in the moment they, at least, thought it was. Doesn't that make it romantic?

I think that the line between romantic and platonic is way too blurry when you talk about kids their age, the whole discourse seems so redundant to me, it confuses me.

I'm fine with both interpretations really, I just think it's too easy to say that it wasn't love or anything in hindsight. We tend to forget how we felt as children and as adult people we end up minimizing it, but when you're that age, it feels just as huge as an adult relationship would, is all I'm saying.

[getbeyondthebooks]

I'm too confident in byler endgame, I'm scared 😰

[getbeyondthebooks]

contrast.

[getbeyondthebooks]

Mike’s focus in S4

I’ve been thinking about this insistently for a while now, but I kept dismissing the thought because I had no time to put my suspicions together. I wanna try now. 

So, listen, I know that we always talk about how S4 shows us Will’s POV and makes it a point to hammer his feelings and reactions in our mind: the camera constantly pans to him to show his expression to us, especially during moments between Mike and El, in a way that never lets us forget he’s there. This seasons, we are literally forced to think about Will during any California scene related to Mike. We are made conscious of him and what he would think of everything that happens, especially when Mileven is on screen. 

Do you know who else is been shown to be concious of him?

You guessed it. 

Mike.

And while we aren’t actually given access to any of Mike’s thoughts, I’ve been insistently feeling like I’ve been wearing his shoes this season. 

That the reason why the camera and focus has turned to Will continuously throughout it, showing us his reactions, is because Mike’s focus is continuosly on him. 

Mike keeps thinking of Will. 

Especially when he’s with El. 

From the very first moment they meet at the airport, through Rink-o-Mania, we are shown Will “moping,” “rolling his eyes”, and we think Mike doesn’t notice because Will thinks he doesn’t, but he does. 

So I’ve begun to think about the differences between putting focus on something and using someone’s point of view in film. Unfortunately I’m not studying film or anything so I won’t even try to make it sound coherent or professional, but I do believe that even as an uneducated watcher (which some media literacy) there is something i can do, which is feel. 

I am supposed to feel, in fact. I thought that was the only thing that the Duffers were doing by consistently showing me Will. I thought they were making me feel for Will, while keeping Mike’s pov completely hidden from me. But then, the more I thought about Mike and about the little we got from him, the more it felt like this whole thing was more than just us getting the story told from Will pov. Some of it literally puts him into focus where he shouldn’t be, but the scene itself is not quite through his eyes... 

The two instances that immediately come to mind are the moment Mike and El reunite and Mike’s monologue, especially. 

When Mike and El reunite, we got blurry Will standing between them in the background. We cannot forget about him and we are led to think “oh no, poor Will, is he okay?”. The fact that he’s blurry, contrary to Robin being completely in focus in the parallel scene with Viki, stands out to me too. Because why are we led to think that, but we aren’t able to see him until Mike and El turn towards him? 

Do you know who would perceive Will that way during that moment? Mike. 

Mike reunited with El and they didn’t kiss and the scene is shot in a way that makes me feel like I AM Mike and I know Will is RIGHT THERE and I don’t know what he’s thinking (yet) but I’m so conscious of his presence I cannot comfortably reunite with my girlfriend. 

While the scene is not actually shot through Mike’s eyes, it feels like i’m wearing his shoes right then... does that make sense? Perhaps I’m projecting, but even during his monologue, the way he hesitates when everyone knows what he’s supposed to say, the way he turns to Will and the way the scene is shot in a way that constantly includes Will as Mike speaks makes me feel like this is the same way Mike feels. 

He’s in the scene, but the focus of his thoughts? Will. 

Mike was introduced to us as our MC in the first seasons, and watching these scenes I wonder if that isn’t what he’s still. Yes, his exact thoughts are concealed, but his focus isn’t lost on us. 

Throughout the series we have already been shown that Mike’s priority has always kinda been Will. Even in S3 when Mike is supposed to be obsessed with El, he doesn’t really despair when they break up, but it takes one fight with Will to have him biking across town in the rain. I think S4 somehow cements that in a very subtle way through directing choices. 

Does it mean I think Mike knows about Will’s feelings for him? No. I think he’s oblivious to them, because he’s too wrapped up in his own. But is he conscious of Will? Oh yes. He cannot ignore him. Not even when he’s having a moment with his girlfriend. He’s constantly aware of Will. The same way we are made to be concious of Will too. 

I’m more and more convinced that we have gotten more about how Mike feels than we realize during this season. And it was mostly through directing choices. 

Again, I might be projecting, but I can’t stop thinking about it. 

If my theory about Mike not dealing with IH but dealing with a oh-god-i-have-feelings-for-my-best-friend freak out is true, this would make so much sense... 

(for the record i’m @you-usuratonkachi and also @bumiesworld, i just keep using the wrong side blogs to talk about stuff, i should have just kept a single personal one, but me 10 years ago had more patience for this stuff than i do now)

[getbeyondthebooks]

“A casual lover. Better than nothing”

[getbeyondthebooks]

Just an experiment. Reblog if you actually give a fuck about male victims of domestic violence and rape.

Of fucking course

What sick bastard doesn’t

[getbeyondthebooks]