#aND I WANT TO KNOW WHAT MY FIRST BYLER INKLING WAS?? like i knew will was queer obvi and i’m 99% sure i knew he liked mike??

[significant-ace-nnoyance]

fully convinced the byler tag kidnapped me and wiped my memory because i’m genuinely not sure how i got here. like one day i was like ‘i’m lonely and gay maybe tumblr will fix all my problems’ and then the next day im neck deep in gay analysis and delirium???

[daisybrained]

I really try not to think too much about the confession scene if I’m being honest. I only watched it the one time and I’ve never gone back to it to rewatch. It’s such a confusing thing for me. I was excited to hear him say he loved her, like I knew it was coming, but then when it happened it felt So. Off. It just wasn’t quite right, somehow. And I couldn’t tell if it was Intentionally Weird or if it was the acting or the writing or what. Like… why was Mike not more emotional? I know it’s not because Finn has become a bad actor overnight or whatever people were saying, that’s insane. If they’d wanted him more emotional, they would have had him do it that way and used those takes instead. It can’t be that he just can’t cry, because he literally is crying five minutes later when he’s begging her to wake up.

And the way it’s written is off too, somehow, and again I don’t know if it’s intentional or not! It’s like, half love confession, half pep talk, which I kind of get because she needs to Fight! or whatever (and oh my god I cringe just thinking about that bit) but it just felt so. Kind of like how milk tastes right before it goes off. And other people have mentioned the framing and blocking too, like having Will be Right There and even cutting to reaction shots of him and Jonathan at one point is such an odd choice if it’s meant to be a romantic moment between Mike and El. That’s not something I thought of while watching it, but it’s one of those “you didn’t notice it, but your brain did” things where you notice that something’s off in the back of your mind and it unsettles you, but you can’t pinpoint what has unsettled you until someone points it out later. (Kind of like Will’s dark possessed eyes in s2.)

And talking about the day they found her and actually cutting to the flashback? The juxtaposition of what he’s saying and what is happening on screen is so WEIRD! He is clearly not falling in love with her at first sight in the flashback, we can see his confused apprehensive look with our own eyeballs, but that is what he’s telling us happened! I know some people think the juxtaposition is intentional, and that may be the case, but why would they have him say it only to backtrack and go “nevermind that was bullshit” in the next season? Why would they have such a big climactic moment intentionally fall flat! I don’t understand!

I dunno. It’s weird. Before volume 2, I had no real inkling that byler would ever become canon; I just wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I was invested in Mike and El’s relationship. Byler felt absurd to me on a canon level (enjoyable in fic but not realistic), and I know people are annoyed by this, but it was because of how I’ve seen close relationships between two men handled terribly onscreen before. I’ve been in many fandoms with clear, calculated queerbaiting and every time, the fandom thinks, this one will be different. This will be the one that transcends. And it just never is. It’s like Lucy with the football. That’s irritating to hear, I know, I’m not trying to harsh anyone’s vibe; this one is fundamentally different because Will is explicitly in love with Mike, but for me personally, that just confuses the issue more than clarifying it like it does for some people.

I know I’m just rehashing stuff that people have already dissected and explained and theorized about, I’m just trying to get all my thoughts about the confession in particular into words and why I’m still so uncomfortable with it and confused by it.