#and he knows mike’s in love with el and not him. he’s not going to come out in a bus on a rescue mission?

[byerseason]

stranger things fandom is the only place on earth where people watch a found family trope and see literal step siblings that the show keeps highlighting and say “i think will doesn’t like eleven” and it’s all because he didn’t sacrifice himself for el yet.

el lying about her entire life is silly and cute but will *lying* (yes, they say that) about helping el fix her project is horrible. and will was the one saying she shouldn’t be lying to mike.

mike changing the entire topic in rinkomania and yapping about will rolling his eyes isn’t a problem, but will responding with “what about us?” is the most selfish thing ever.

will saying “we’re her brothers and we’re family” doesn’t mean anything because he just had to save the situation. he deeply hates her.

will being the only one asking if she is okay and almost crying doesn’t mean anything because that was probably just millie and noah’s bond.

will is the worst for not keeping mike and el’s relationship in check and not letting mike know about everything in el’s life.

he is the worst for not being a saint and knowing el was lying to mike for months.

he is also so selfish for expecting the bare minimum from his life long best friend which is just being best friends again and not being ignored.

he is so annoying for not being able to let go of his childhood after losing it with horrible traumas and expecting his friends to give him a SINGLE day. but mike ditching all his friends for the entire summer is cute.

it doesn’t mean anything when everyone ignored dustin but will, because he probably just wanted to play games.

he is also a horrible person for not standing up against el’s bullies after being bullied for who he is for his entire life, by his entire town and school and even biological father.

and also, him brutally sacrificing his feelings for mike and el’s relationship doesn’t mean he loves el because he only did that for himself.

in conclusion, every character is allowed to do every wrong until it’s will byers who is the closest to being perfect.

[glisten-inthedark]

You wanna know what gives me confidence for Byler? The show.

That's it.

Because I promise you, if you watch the show objectively everything is there. You don't even have to look at camera angles, lighting, or signs that point towards closets, the information you need is there.

And it isn't even shit people made up (****** I'm looking at you, even though I ship it). It's there, I fucking saw it before even shipping it.

And at first, I assumed I was seeing shit. To be honest I mostly brushed it off, but when we found out that Will was gay and in love with Mike, it clicked.

My favorite mental exercise is: If Will was a girl, how would you perceive their scenes? All you have to do it's switch up their genders and it's not even up for debate because we all know everyone would eat that shit up.

I mean, a boy relentlessly looks for a girl in the woods, stays by this girl' side, tells her they'll go crazy together while touching her hand, tells her that asking her to be his his friend was the best thing he's ever done, fights with her but actually tries to apologize, then we find that said girl has been in love with her friend but it's lying so that this friend could be happy. Tell me that if this was the case there wouldn't be like 30000 fics of that couple on Ao3 and millions of people begging the showrunners to make them canon? Tell me, I fucking dare you.

And at this point I'm like a broken record but I am going to repeat myself.

WILL BYERS BEING IN LOVE WITH MIKE WHEELER does not make a difference to the plot. It doesn't.

He could have been gay and not be in love. If the life lesson was: "Will has to learn to accept himself as gay, and to love himself and understand he isn't a mistake" they could've done without the love. They could've given him exploring that part of himself in California, they could've presented another gay character that taught him that.

They could've fixed El and Mike's relationship without Will's love. We've seen them doing it before. Will could've helped by just being Mike's friend.

So can we ask ourselves this itsy bitsy question: Why make Will in love with Mike in the first place? Why make him say not once, but twice, that he and Mike could play DnD together for the rest of their lives which, if you're not good at subtext, means he sees himself with Mike by his side as long as he lives if all they're going to do is bring him more misery?

Because I'm going to be honest, with the way they wrote this love Will has, they literally didn't gave themselves a easy way out. They made sure we knew it was real, it was unconditional and that it would never change. We didn't make it up, they gave us that information with their writing.

So again, ask yourselves why that is.

Because whatever non Byler explanation I try to come up with doesn't make sense.

Queerbaiting? More like Bylerbaiting at this point considering Will is gay and again, he could've been in love with anyone else or not be a queer character experiencing love at all.

Make Mil*even stronger? It literally did the opposite, the ship is going down in flames and we all know it. Their relationship isn't healthy, El's arc isn't about romantic love and the painting which was the only reason Mike proclaimed the romantic love he doesn't feel literally came from Will.

So... Again. Why?

[fruitbythefoot7]

will loves mike the way mike wants to be loved 

[starbylers]

M*levens will say Will’s love for Mike is ‘just a crush’ or that ‘he can/will get over it’ whereas El’s love for Mike is real and true and deep, too strong for her to possibly move on from…while in the same breath try and claim Will’s words/feelings in the van also belong to El. Make it make sense 🙂 they'll say Will's feelings = El's feelings to explain why the monologue is valid even though Will was the driving force behind it, but then turn around and say Will's feelings ≠ El's feelings which is why he'll move on but El can't, and why El’s love for him is deeper and why she‘s better for him. It's a total paradox.

[chirpsythismorning]

My hottest take of all time is that Mike is (was) the main character of Stranger Things.

Now, do I think he still is? No. Not really.

TBH I would argue that ALL the OG's are main characters in their own way at this point, with them all getting somewhat similar amounts of screen-time across the board by s4.

But if we're talking about the first two seasons, Finn was indeed credited before both Millie and Noah. The only actors that were credited before him were Winona and David (respectfully).

Just rewatching s1-2, you can see very clearly that Mike is being framed as the main character, with his perspective being favored in big group sequences, with us following him places that we don't really follow others, and for longer periods of time.

What I find interesting, is that even though Noah revealed recently that the Duffer's have been slowly building up/hinting at Will's feelings for Mike since the beginning, it's Mike whose perspective we were usually seeing in all those moments.

In s1, we see Mike looking for Will, with Noah only having like a handful of scenes that entire season. We also get more of a focus on Mike's reactions in comparison to the other party members.

In s2, we see Mike making every effort to support Will all season. It's Mike whose reaching out to Will constantly, calling to see why he's not at school, going by his house, sleeping over for days and staying by his bedside at Hawkins lab. Although Will arguably plays a bigger role in the upside down aspect of the show this season, a large portion of Mike and Will moments focused on Mike's feelings for Will being shared through Mike's POV, and not so much the other way around.

It isn't until s3 that Millie starts being credited before Finn (and respectfully so, as she was arguably bringing in more hype in terms of fandom excitement back in those days, so I do get it). And so we're arguably going from Mike centric (s1), to Will centric (s2), to El centric (s3).

As a result, we also started seeing less of Mike's POV. Though, to be fair there are 10+ new characters joining every season, so EVERYONE is getting less screen-time, every season.

But isn't it so convenient, that when we start getting less insight into Mike's POV, he starts acting strange...? And we don't really get outright answers as to why? Answers that we would probably have if we had Mike's POV as much as we used to?

S3 is when we started getting Will's POV more when it came to him and Mike's relationship. Their dynamic sort of flips between s1-2 vs. s3-4.

Not to say we never get Mike's POV anymore, but when we do, it's hard to discern and so most people overlook it completely on the rare occasion that it does pop up.

Anyways, this whole concept reminded me of the main character shots we got at the end of s4.

These were shots that had multiple characters in the frame, but with only (1) person specifically at the forefront...

YALL KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS???

Arguably, these three main characters storyline's are tied together in a substantial way, and how it all plays out could have been foreshadowed, by the very order and even blocking of these shots.

Think about it.!?!.

Mike was arguably the main character of s1, which means getting his POV at the forefront again would be going back to the shows roots.

Will is arguably the main character of s2, and so blending Mike's arc (ending with Mike hugging Hopper hmmmmmm... Mike accepting his sexuality??) with Will's unreliable narrator arc being resolved (ending with Will and Mike side by side hmmmmmmm... Will getting the boy??), and this combined with Will's connection to the upside down, blending perfectly with his wonder twin, El's storyline (El walking passed Mike and Will.... El dumping his ass again??), with her now at the forefront as the main character, arguably just like in s3, except now she has full autonomy for the first time in the show, she knows her worth, she's accepted herself. And this all coming to a head with those three and everyone in the shows arcs being resolved by the end??

BITCH???

[bylertruther]

byler + santa clarita diet au where will is sheila and mike is joel. you nod and clap and agree because you know that it fucks severely and fits them perfectly, yes

summary for the uninitiated:

[delicious-p4ncakes]

Them

But as this book:

Please tell me you guys are picking up what I'm putting down

[willsboyfriend]

Mike crying with El&Will is one of the sweetest details of this show:

[ice-sculptures]

like ripping off a band-aid

[paintingformike]

if the monologue was mlevens’ idea of “good communication” they need to actually reflect on how they view relationships and what they consider enough resolution to a conflict...because wdym a situation where only one side of the relationship is actually talking while the other is physically restrained and unable to respond to them and the one talking isn’t even sure if the other can hear them is a demonstration of the two properly communicating with each other 😭

[uselessnbee]

when i'm feeling extremely angsty i like to think about that theory that Mike was supposed to be one of Vecna's victims/was cursed until he left to Cali where Vecna couldn't reach him and it basically saved his life

and what would happen if he never left, if he stayed in Hawkins and was the first/one of the first victims

how would it happen? would people already know about the curse and try to help him? would it be before they found out about it and there was no help left? even if they knew would it actually save him? what if they found out how to help him but one would know his favorite song so they wouldn't be able to save him anyways. where would it happen? would someone be present or he would be all alone and not found until later on? how would everyone react? how would they let the Byers know what happened? how would they tell Will and El about it? their reactions?

so many questions so many scenarios floating around in my head

but hey that's just my thoughts

[gayofthefae]

Thinking about how Mike said El AND Will could visit and expressed desire to stay in touch well with Will RIGHT before El kissed him and told him she loved him - when up until that point, they had still been broken up.

(Thinking about how, though he hadn’t worked up the courage to tell her he loved her yet, he also didn’t seem in a rush to initiate a conversation on getting back together, seeming pretty generally content and that point...- even avoiding the topic when she brought it up. And standing stock still when she kissed him.)

And then look who didn’t call.

Thinking about how we talk about the broken promise but never about the fact that something changed in between the promise and it being broken. Not between season speculation. There was an immediate change that we saw onscreen.

Thinking maybe he was relieved when he realized that being broken up did not, in fact, mean not having her in his life and he was growing to really like this friendship of theirs and he was freely feeling comfortable with both Will and El in this state and then she kissed him and he felt the need to pick a side again and pressured himself into suppressing the idea that he was ever relieved by the friendship and putting all his energy into that relationship. We talk about El’s behavior that season broken up from Mike but never Mike’s behavior with but broken up from El. He seemed happy too. Once shit picked up, stressed for obvious reasons, but he said he loved her when they were broken up. But more importantly for this post, once everything was back to normal, there was some time that passed between the 4th of July and them moving in which we have no indication that they got back together. To say that they did would not be an implication but an assumption.

[maddy-ferguson]

Ppl who think that jncy is 100% endgame and there was and is no feelings from nancy towards steve sounds like ppl who refuse to see that el, mike and will situation is a love triangle. I am sorreeey but it aint making sense with the logic here chief

not you sending this to me, someone who thinks there was and is no feelings from nancy to steve💔 i mean it's not like i think she was never into him i just don't think she ever Loved him. and continuing that line of thought, in season 4 i genuinely dooon't see her feeling anything deep enough for her to uproot her relationship with jonathan.

to me either way they brought stncy back to remind us that no relationship we've been used to since season 1 is safe.

which could mean, for this particular love triangle, that they're gonna have steve and nancy end up together (which just doesn't make sense. thematically. i don't see it happening. at all. which is why a lot of people aren't really worried about jncy). or that while stncy doesn't come back the relationship we've been used to since season 1 (jncy) is still not gonna be endgame. or that this is all gonna strengthen jncy and that the no relationship we've been used to since season 1 is safe thing only applies to mlvn

[castelobyers]

midleven shippers saying it's all settled but we didn't see Eleven's version yet

She went through a huge personal arc of discovery this season and we can't expect her to still have the same yearnings she had in the beginning when she didn't knew if she was a monster or a superhero, or expect that she's still super dependent on Mike's words of affirmation, like, after meeting Hopper and leaving Brenner to die she changed a lot and she figure out a lot of things about herself, she got rid of the abusive papa and she's finally with her family complete and we still don't know how it changes things for her, besides, Max is "gone" and she's really sad about it

Eleven's side hasn't been heard yet so it's too hasty for them to think that she still wants the same thing she wanted in the beginning, besides, she asked for a confession of love in her most fragile moment but now she is a different person and we need to know her side of this whole story and how having her family complete and the needs to look for Max changes things for her

[chirpsythismorning]

Finn being asked about Mike dying and him saying if it’s in the cold open, then no, but if it’s at the end of the season as like a sacrifice, then yes… Why would he even bring up a cold open death tho 👀

[bylertruther]

the crazy thing abt will and mike is that we mostly learn will is gay because other people tell us he is, but we learn that mike is gay (despite him telling us he's not, begging us to pls see tht he's not gay) because literally everything that he does is so fucking gay. because in him trying to not be gay he is just being so unbelievably extra fucking gay without realizing. like. el is literally his red herring idc i'll say it stone me if u must but the truth must be said !!!!