#like that whole mike gaslighting lucas scene

[strangeswift]

One of the arguments that gay!Mike truthers use is that the show 'focuses more on Mike's lack of interest in girls than it focuses on Will's lack of interest in girls'.... which is, blatantly untrue?

Like. Will's lack of interest is girls is the main focus when it comes to Will's sexuality. We literally see multiple scene on the show where Will just disregards and is weirded out by girls' attraction to him. In Snowball where it's obvious as fuck that he's faking through it when the girl asked him to dance, and the more blatant example in S4 class scene where a girl was hitting on him, and the narrative literally focuses on Will's lack of attraction to girls ''it is not my fault you don't like girls'' which is about referring to Will's obvious lack of interest in girls. Will isnt even interested in what girls would like cue S2 and S3 moments. It is actually a blatant contrast to Mike and other boys in fact IMHO, Mike actually wants and desires to impress a girl (this is stated by the Duffers and Finn himself) he is interested in impressing girls/getting a GF. It is Will who isn't interested in anything such, that is why S3 moment is such a big thing for Will's character because he's being left out and he cannot relate to Mike and Lucas who are all about girls now.

Will's being gay is written in a sense that he truly is blatantly uninterested in girls in every way. I feel like I am being gaslight when I read about other Bylers' theories, it is like flipping the characterization. LIKE. Bruh. The whole thing with S3!Will is that his lack of interest in girls is the main reason why he's left out.... while his other friends are moving on and just... growing up but Will cannot because he simply isnt interested in girls like that, and he cannot relate.... That's really the thing and the sole difference between Will and the other boys. That's the narrative literally.

Also I dont really vibe with this whole 'Mike has a crush on Eddie, roller rink guy, this guy from Nancy's club' etc 'theories'. Honestly, I don't think his actions/behaviors are meant to be read as such and most people are taking things out of context in those scenes. Theorizing about Mike's queercoding is one thing, but then just..... taking things out of context to prove that is another thing which kinda borders on being unintentionally homophobic too as if Mike has to or intended to look at every guy he sees with attraction. I dont think those scenes are meant to read that way honestly.

Hi anon! I'm gonna break this up just cuz it makes it easier to respond to.

Here we go:

"One of the arguments that gay!Mike truthers use is that the show 'focuses more on Mike's lack of interest in girls than it focuses on Will's lack of interest in girls'.... which is, blatantly untrue?"

I agree that this is untrue. I haven't personally seen anyone make this argument I don't think? If they do, maybe just... don't listen to that person. 🤷‍♀️

"'it is not my fault you don't like girls' which is about referring to Will's obvious lack of interest in girls."

Agree, but this also reads as projection to me so I would argue it also is implying Mike's lack of interest in girls. That's just my interpretation though, either way your original point still stands so it doesnt really matter in this context. I just wanted to throw in my two cents here.

"Will isnt even interested in what girls would like cue S2 and S3 moments. It is actually a blatant contrast to Mike and other boys in fact IMHO, Mike actually wants and desires to impress a girl (this is stated by the Duffers and Finn himself) he is interested in impressing girls/getting a GF. It is Will who isn't interested in anything such, that is why S3 moment is such a big thing for Will's character because he's being left out and he cannot relate to Mike and Lucas who are all about girls now."

My personal interpretation is that Mike is experiencing compulsory heterosexuality. He's redirecting his feelings for Will onto El. That's the source of the conflict.

"Will's being gay is written in a sense that he truly is blatantly uninterested in girls in every way. I feel like I am being gaslight when I read about other Bylers' theories, it is like flipping the characterization. LIKE. Bruh. The whole thing with S3!Will is that his lack of interest in girls is the main reason why he's left out.... while his other friends are moving on and just... growing up but Will cannot because he simply isnt interested in girls like that, and he cannot relate.... That's really the thing and the sole difference between Will and the other boys. That's the narrative literally."

That is indeed the narrative. I just happen to think that Mike is also struggling with his sexuality at this time, it just manifests differently.

The thing is, being gay doesn't mean you never show any interest in the opposite sex. Compulsory heterosexuality and internalized homophobia are powerful things.

"Also I dont really vibe with this whole 'Mike has a crush on Eddie, roller rink guy, this guy from Nancy's club' etc 'theories'. Honestly, I don't think his actions/behaviors are meant to be read as such and most people are taking things out of context in those scenes. Theorizing about Mike's queercoding is one thing, but then just..... taking things out of context to prove that is another thing which kinda borders on being unintentionally homophobic too as if Mike has to or intended to look at every guy he sees with attraction. I dont think those scenes are meant to read that way honestly."

I don't think the scenes are meant to be read that way either. I definitely don't think these scenes should be used as any kind of proof about Mike's sexuality. (I am a Mike has a crush on Eddie truther but that's more of just a headcanon.)

I do think it's fairly harmless in fanon to say Mike is crushing on a bunch of boys. I don't really see it as homophobic, teenagers have a lot of crushes. I had crushes on a lot of girls as a teen. Full disclosure I made a post about how the idea of Mike crushing on a bunch of boys is kind of hilarious to me, because it sort of flips the Mi1even's "Mike is the straightest character to ever exist" narrative on its head. But I do understand how it can be viewed as reinforcing negative stereotypes so I'm not trying to invalidate anyone who thinks it's kinda homophobic. I just... don't think that.

[wixterirox]

I think it’s hilarious how antis think Billy could be the only racist character in Hawkins a town midwest in the 80’s

[thebrokengate]

I still think Vol2 sucks. I get that Duffers wanted us to ''feel the lost'' but feeling the loss and feeling the bad writing are different things.

Max's death was handled badly. I know she's going to come back probably but what I'm talking about is that her first escape from Vecna was good and then her death made no sense. Why El did bring her back to life but not really? I mean, she's not exactly there as well so what's the point? Why did they use the Dear Billy scene where they showed how Max overcame Vecna but killed her after?

Eddie's death is still trash. Heck, I don't want him to come back because I hate when characters come back again and again. But let's be real his death made no sense. I don't care about Eddie as a character that much but his death was badly written.

Jason's and Brenner's deaths were predictable so no comment on that (I also sincerely hope that they won't Brenner back again because dear god...)

Not gonna talk about the way they handled Will's character and basically tortured him and made Mike's character trash it's a fact that Melvin still sucks and Mike's dynamic with both El and Will are off. It's like he doesn't even know what he is doing anymore. Associating El with her superpowers and calling her a superhero while distancing her from 'humanity' and saying contradictory shit many times during the monologue (saying he loves her without her powers but then continues to capitalize on how great her powers are and how she is a superhero) saying his life started the day Will went missing, the whole monologue being prompted by Will and running off Will's feelings from the van. What was the purpose? Let's be real, this was trash for each character involved. Are we supposed to believe Mike is a decent person? Honestly, El and Will should escape from him ASAP. Mike just doesn't even know what he is doing anymore and I just don't understand how the Duffers are even going to fix this mess with Mike's character. I don't care about the romance, really. Even from a platonic perspective, it doesn't sound good for him. Was he just speaking at the heath of the moment? Was he truly telling the truth and believing in everything he said? Then that means he doesn't understand El and Will at all, Im sorry. Oblivious or not, still Mike is a bad character to me. Saying he didn't say he loved El because he was afraid she wouldn't need him made no sense. She was literally crying her eyes out when she was beginning Mike to say the words before. She clearly needed him there and wanted to hear the words. Mike didn't even flinch a bit and proceeded to gaslight her. Let's be real bro Mike's character cannot be fixed and the amount of justification is hilarious ATP.

Erica and Lucas getting hate-crimed basically sucked. That scene was hard to watch. Is the minority characters getting hatecrimed and tortured a theme now?

El's powers makes no sense to me tbh. It's like they're giving her random powers atp. How was she able to re-start Max's heart? Also her sacrifice actually meant nothing because Vecna still won and the Hawkins got destroyed so again, what was the point? The way they handled Max's character this volume is annoying. I get what they were trying to do but still it was sloppy.

Also, Robin and Vickie only talked for a couple of minutes and Vickie spent more time on kissing her now ex boyfriend than to talk to Robin. What was the point? To draw parallels to Will/Mike? Still shit writing imo. We didn't even get to see Robin happy properly.

Idk man things sucked hard tbh. It's like Vol2 was just there to create drama and cool stuff and shit instead of providing actual quality writing with substance. I'm done man lmao. I wish I've never watched this volume to begin with.

I do agree with a lot of what you said, tbh, but there are a few things I also disagree with so I'll try to break down my response by individual number because there's so much to go over here, lol.

I know Max's death was one of those things that had to happen, but it shouldn't have because it lessens the impact of her Dear Billy escape and that still pisses me off. I cannot even begin to explain how much that pissed me off because now every time I go back to that episode, I don't get the emotion from it that I used to because her escaping what she kept saying was her fate is what made the scene powerful. For her to have an amazing and moving escape like that only to die later takes so much away from it.

His death was fucking pointless, I agree. Next.

Absolutely, and the predictability of Vol 2 pissed me off even more with it.

I still think that was purposeful, and if it's not in 2 years and they really used Will just to build up Melvin, then that's fucking horrible and the backlash they'll receive for that will be huge. Using Will's feelings, even with as fucked up as that is, didn't even fix Melvin either. Nothing is resolved here, and Mike just used what Will told him in the van because he thinks they're El's feelings. Doesn't make it better, but it is what it is, I guess. They should've just ended Melvin in Vol 2, I still think, purposeful or not (as we'll see in 2 years), because it was already going that way and they've dragged this shitshow out for too long already.

Unfortunately seems to be a running theme at least this volume. It's not a good look.

That literally came out of fucking nowhere, and there's basically no limits now. If she can revive people, how is there going to be any future danger? Especially if she gets good at it later on? I don't know. I kind of hate that they basically made her Jesus, lol.

Really really hope they'll develop Robin and Vickie's story together more next season, because I absolutely agree. The parallels are one thing, but being all Vickie's kind of used for right now is pretty shit, ngl.

I still have my beef with Vol 2 as well, analysis aside. Some things make more sense now, but it still doesn't really make it any better to me. Not to mention the pacing of Vol 2 and the characters that were slightly out of character, and so many of the good moments were improvised. Not that there's anything wrong with improvisation and actors do have good ideas sometimes, but it made me feel like they still cared less about the writing of Vol 2 and rushed a lot of things.