#I've been thinking about the trend of 'overused villain' again

[zahri-melitor]

You are reading a Bat comic. There is a splash page at the end of the issue showing the surprise villain behind this story. Which of these options annoys you the most?

Joker has been specifically excluded to get a more interesting spread. Pick someone else who irritates you to your back teeth.

[maddy-ferguson]

can u expand on the byler vol2 problems

i said ask me to expand and i will and you delivered thank you for that!!! i didn't say byler vol2 problems though i said byler fandom problems post-volume 2!

i think the main thing is overcorrection. i said every major problem but i only meant the things i think of as byler tumblr trends that annoy me personally. tbh🙏 it's subjective. kind of.

i've been rereading posts from after volume 2 recently and yeah it's the "will only ever gets to be sad" to "will deserves a villain arc" kind of pipelines that you saw after volume 2 that i think are still very much happening i'm gonna talk about even though the will villain arc one died down pretty quickly. on this side of the internet anyway. some of these actually aren't volume 2 related sorry i lied i was mostly thinking about the mike stuff when i said that.

mike says i love you to el: everything always ends up being about mike somehow. i think this is the biggest one. people like the mystery and the way mike's sexuality isn't confirmed like will's is and so they analyze him more which leads to people literally rewriting history with takes like mike is more queercoded than will?😭 i get that everyone knows will is gay now but the mike focus has people thinking that will has no subtext when literally his entire storyline is full of the saddest subtext ever!!! but it's not subtext that you can choose to only read as "this boy is gay" so it's not as fun i guess😔 and it really isn't as fun. because it's mostly heartbreaking and awful lmao but yeah. just wanted to give a thumbs down to the mike is more queercoded than will take again.

mlvns say will is a whiny crybaby, bylers say going through what he's had to go through would make anyone cry just as often so will isn't even that sensitive even though he is it's literally one of the first things we learn about him lol. people imply that being sensitive is bad so often and act like will has sensitive gay kid allegations to beat when he literally doesn't like he is a sensitive gay kid😭 why do you think that's bad exactly...🎤

mike says i love you to el: 90% of people think they read everything wrong for 72-96 hours and then everyone's like oh no i get it now. byler's still endgame. overuse of the term media literacy and everyone who doesn't think or simply doesn't believe that the duffers would make byler endgame is stupid and has no media literacy. which actually comes off as very INSECURE!!!! and is frankly annoying. and obnoxious. the term media literacy needs to be taken away from byler tumblr i'm so serious.

will is not a baby just because he's gay look at these two scenes he's actually so mean and most importantly not sensitive (and then he's not even mean in the scene) and he can load a gun could a sensitive baby do that (and then he's literally 12 in the scene so like. i'm sorry but that's a baby to me😕). how dare you imply that he's sensitive, gay, and a kid. i'm kidding about the gay one because no one in this day and age is defending will by saying he's not gay but some of them might as well be because it's the qualities that made people assume he's gay that people try to say he doesn't have. the how dare you infantilize him he can load a gun one is just nonsensical because regardless of how you feel about will with a gun you're definitely meant to be like oh no this poor little kid has to defend himself all alone :( in the moment like him being a kid isn't a bad thing (??/!??,/) it makes you feel for him and is part of what makes what happens to him so awful.

mlvns accuse bylers of hating el and of being raging misogynists: elmike is born. bylers start saying that el will actually be thrilled by the match and might actually set up the guy she spent the first two and a half years of her life out of the lab fixated on who's been her boyfriend for over a year and her newfound brother. because she's so mature and over the petty drama that's a teenage love triangle. which is crazy because i DON'T believe that most bylers are as misogynistic as mlvns make us out to be like i've seen way worse which might be because...the show is actually pointing to mike being gay so it's not made up and no one needs to give el a thousand flaws to justify anything? even though people do blame her for things that i don't know if she should be blamed for but whatever that's a different discussion. i was saying: it's crazy because while i don't think bylers are all awful misogynistic el haters...the girl being so happy and out of the way and not being given the space to feel anything about her (gay) boyfriend not being in love with her is sooo new age 2010s mlm fandom sexism. let el have emotions about her breakup with her gay boyfriend who was the first person she bonded with (who didn't die immediately) after escaping the lab who lied to her about falling in love with her at first sight 2k25‼️

everything about babygirl mike and buff byers? let's not get into the whole buff byers debate i hate it with a passion. but it's like. people want mike to be taken down a peg. mike says i love you to el with will's sad little face in the background and people want mike to have to beg for forgiveness. which i get because as i was saying the other day, "i feel like my life started 24 hours after you were taken to the upside down and were traumatized forever because i met this girl who's replaced you in every way that matters, will" is hard to get over. but idk. people are so weird about mike being lame and loving will and about will barely caring about him in return and about the loserification of mike wheeler because yes mike is a loser but only in the sense that the whole party is!!! and that's something that gets lost when he's made to be below them and below will specifically because people feel like he has all the power in the relationship right now and will's at his mercy. which is something they don't like. like it's okay they're both miserable actually. rejoice! post-volume 2 mike needs to have fallen first and he needs to have fallen harder because if the only thing will gets at the end of everything is a boyfriend who loves him only as much as will loves him it's not good enough even though that's all he's not letting himself hope he'll ever have.