#like they literally need to be endgame for the duffers to be able to pull off some other connected explanations and truths that really will

[ven0moir]

twitter bylers are something else ... jumping to the conclusion that the leaked mileven scene is a break up so early in the game ... what if byler is being treated as a spoiler to be revealed within the last 2 episodes? we'll likely get pro-mileven content and see the devastation that occurs in the community. we gotta be strong and be prepared for whatever happens, not assume the duffers will do the whole love triangle ... peacefully ... bc what if mike isn't fully aware? and it takes VECNA going into his mind to bring forth whats been lying in his subconscious this whole time?

we just do not know with certainty how they'll go about it. and whereas it's fun to speculate, experiencing byler doubt over out of context scenes is so exhausting. so if you're a byler and experience byler doubt, know this:

byler is 100% endgame but they'll make the GA believe that mileven is for as long as they can.

marketing is another thing, but for now i am so certain byler is the way they're going that i'm pretty sure around july i'd have figured out a good chunk of mike's arc, to the point i'm confident i'll be able to predict a leak.

yes, i might be the most delusional person in this entire tag and i might be completely wrong (in which case please be nice lmao im just mainly having fun) but there's a reason why i'm so confident, and i'll share that once the time comes. but for now, know that i'm working hard on that leak prediction

[itsonlystrange]

First off, I am not sending hate to any Mileven shipper. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I will only be providing actual facts and evidence, and hopefully will be staying relatively unbiased. As always, this is a PRO-BYLER account. If you do not ship Byler you do not have to read all the way through :).

This will be a 2 part series. The first part will address MILEVEN and how they will not be endgame. The second part will address the likely hood of BYLER being endgame.

So, I’ve been sucked into the Mileven side of Instagram after liking ONE Mileven edit, which is besides the point. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of people say that “They were love at first sight!” Or that “Why would they break up now if they’ve had 3 seasons of development?!” So I’m going to go ahead and supply you all with:

MILEVEN VS BYLER.

PART ONE (MILEVEN)

To start off with the first statement, “They were love at first sight!”

May I remind you how utterly mortified Mike was when he found Eleven. As any 12 year old boy would be. He did not give her any form of “heart eyes”. He looked genuinely scared. He took her home as a courtesy, not because he was “madly in love with her!”. Obviously not everyone would take home a random 12 year old bald girl, but El being taken to the Wheelers was not meant to be seen as a romantic gesture, it was literally just a plot device for the Kids to figure out she had powers.

May I also remind you that Mike wanted to get rid of her. He stated multiple times that she was just a weapon, and a device to find Will. He only let her stay BECAUSE she knew who Will was. He was fully ready to let her go, and send her back to wherever she came from. In the end of it all, he only cared about Will and finding Will. El was simply used as a device to find him. Obviously, now, I do think Mike cares about El. But not in a romantic way, more so a “cute puppy way”. I think he loves her, but that he’s not IN LOVE with her, romantically.

The show has shown constantly how horribly they work together. El’s most confident and prideful moments were when she was AWAY from Mike. Mike’s most loyal and selfless moments was when he was AWAY from El. They do not compliment eachother like that.

Second of all, they have nothing in common. In season one when Mike was explaining his figurines to El, she looked genuinely disinterested. Now some may say that this could be because she didn’t quite understand what she liked back then, which just further proves that she shouldn’t be in a relationship! If she can’t decide if she likes a dinosaur toy or not, how is she supposed to decide if she likes Mike! And we also know that she did have the ability to differentiate between things she liked as she seemed genuinely interested in Nancy’s clothes and photos. The only thing they have in common is shared trauma! Notice how all the other couples share something:

JANCY: love for writing and adventuring

LUMAX: both are comical and enjoy the cinema and the outdoors

DUZIE: science

Along with most of the other couples. But what does Mileven have In common? Can anyone please name ONE good memory between the two when they weren’t in danger. All the “good memories” they have are from when the world was ending.

If you said “Oh, but they make out a lot!” That’s not a ‘good memory’, hell, that’s hardly memorable at at all. Hoppper, Will, and Lucas even admit that for those 6 months in between season 2 and season 3, all they did was make out. That is not love, that is infatuation. Infatuation is a strong desire for someone, mainly romantic, that focuses on the physical aspects of their relationship rather than the emotional. Love is a deep rooted feeling. You do not need to make out all the time to be in love. Love is emotional, of course it can be physical, but you need that strong feeling before any physical aspect of love can be genuine.

Mileven have nothing in common. It’s very clear that Mike is still into D&D and is a nerd. Especially as he might be in the Hellfire Club next season (a D&D club) and also because we’ve seen that D&D is going to be a big aspect of season 4, meaning he’ll most likely be infatuated with it again. It’s obvious that El needs to figure herself out first. She needs to develop into her own human being. She’s still learning. She’s into poppy colors and magazines and makeup (which is great!), but even on a more basic level, they still share nothing in common. Mike is a nerd, we have established that. And notice how in s3 (when he was with El) he felt the least like himself. He acted so out of character. He didn’t use weird Star Wars analogies or gush about the new movie coming out like previous seasons. Now of course one could say that he’s growing up, but we see that he is genuinely still a nerd as when he’s in time of crisis he goes back to those analogies. He goes back to gushing about the new toys he’s getting at Christmas, he goes back to being a nerd. It’s almost as if he’s wearing this mask, and at the end of s3 he forgets to put it on. And then El kisses him, and he realizes that he didn’t enjoy that. So we know for a fact that he is very much still into D&D and those other shenanigans atleast to an extent, considering how happy he was to hear that Will wasnt giving up the party or D&D. Shouldn’t Mike be with someone who is atleast a little similar to him? Regardless of his sexuality, shouldn’t he be with someone that allows him to be his true self? He was incredibly Cocky and arrogant in season 3, almost like he had to be a “man” for El, and in his mind, being a ‘man’ was giving up all of the things he loved, and only kissing El, almost as if she was an object he had to obtain more than an actual human. Which Max agrees with! He treats her more so of a mask he has to wear to cover his true self. Shouldn’t el be with someone who likes the same thing she does? But then again, what does el like?! Exactly! She needs to figure out who she is before she dates anyone. She didn’t even know what shirt she would like to wear!

Now I just find this silly. Development? Really? Okay let me show you their “development”

SEASON ONE: El could only speak 4 or 5 words. They had essentially zero romantic interactions besides the kiss at the end. If El and Mike never kissed (excluding the time they almost kissed in the bathroom), people would most likely only see them as a friendship. Let’s flip the tables a bit. If El was a boy and Mike and El never kissed, this would further prove that they don’t have any romantic tension. Lucas says it the best: “You only like her because she’s the only girl who isn’t grossed out by you!” Which I agree with completely. It’s more of an infatuation. Mike is infatuated with the idea of finally having a girlfriend. Because he knows something is wrong inside him and wants to ‘fix it’ by dating a girl, as if suddenly his sexuality identity issues would disappear. El doesn’t know anything about Mike, and to El, Mike is a hero. To El, Mike is fearless warrior. And Mike knows that isn’t true. But with el, it gave him the chance to start fresh. It gave him the chance to start and become a different person. He puts on his persona of being “strong” and being able to stand up for himself, yet in the end, it’s El who does the saving. The reason he ‘likes’ El so much is because she isn’t disgusted by him. But mike is afraid that if he shows his true self, El wouldn’t like him anymore, and he’d lose that mask. And without a girl to cling to, he’d finally have to confront his sexuality. Which is why we never see Mike being his true self around El. In every single season, he is this false person. He’s wearing a facade, to keep up with these lies. Because he fears that If El knew how nerdy he really was, she’d be uninterested, and he ‘can’t lose her’ because he knows that El is most likely the only girl who will never be grossed out by him. Because all the other girls in this town know who he is. That nerdy guy from the AV club. And he needs a girlfriend. He feels safe that way. Because if he doesn’t have a distraction from his sexuality then he might take an extra step on accident and accidently act on those feelings

Ep 1: making out

Ep2: breaking up

Ep 3-6: fighting

Ep 7: neutral

Ep 8 ½ : neutral

Very end of ep 8: together?

How is that romantic? So from what we know, Mileven got a kiss in season 1, a kiss in season 2, 2 make out sessions, and then they fought. HOW IS THAT A GOOD RELATIONSHIP?

90% of their relationship throughout all 3 seasons has been kissing and fighting. That’s literally it. Not once have we seen them just hanging out and talking. Not once have we seen them go on dates. And as Hopper, Lucas, and Will put: that’s all they do! The Duffer’s purposefully put that line in to show that, it’s really all they did for those 6 months. There was no emotion to that. Just kissing. That’s it. Kissing and fighting is all Mileven has been. And honestly they would have been pretty cute in season 3 if the Duffer’s hadn’t messed it up. But the duffers aren’t stupid! They did this on purpose! Because they wanted us to disagree with Mileven. They wanted us to find it obnoxious. Because they know that they don’t have chemistry! Finn and Millie are brilliant actors and could have definitely pulled that off, meaning the Duffers had to have specifically said to “not act in love”. Mileven is a summer fling, Finn said so himself. They are their true selves when they are apart, and when they are together romantically, they stunt each other’s growth. They’re way better as bestfriends. El needs to figure herself out before she can date anyone.

Thank you for reading part one! Part two will be up soon, and will follow why I believe Byler will be end game!

Heavy inspiration from @kaypeace21 & @hawkinsschoolcounselor

[lesbianrobin]

☕ stranger things (like the trajectpry of the show)

k first off sorry if i took a long time to respond to this, i fell asleep vjfjvncc. anyways!

in terms of the show so far, i've generally enjoyed the plots and character dynamics that they've chosen to develop and explore. s3 is of course problematic- the sudden shift from "the us government is the bad guy and we can't trust them" to "the russians are the bad guys and we need the glorious capitalist us government to fight them" is... yikes. i don't think that the duffers intended to undermine the show's previous message, i think they were trying to mix things up and introduce a new and exciting threat while staying true the series' 80's inspiration, but the general campiness of s3 combined with the alexei plot was just too much and it almost completely negated the themes of s1+s2.

still, i think s3 did a few things very right. i think mike and el's breakup was the smartest thing they could have possibly done with their characters at this point in the story. the fact is that el has been allowed to go out a little and hang out with her friends for MONTHS at this point, she's been developing her reading skills and experiencing more things, but she hasn't really found any sense of identity in that time because she's so focused on her relationship with mike. mileven straight up wasn't a healthy dynamic as it stood in canon due to this, along with the fact that mike kissed el back in s1 before she even knew what that was or what it meant, essentially making the decision to classify their relationship as romantic for her (which i do NOT blame him for since he's a kid and he doesn't know any better). by breaking them up in s3, allowing el to develop a personal style and build a strong friendship with max, and separating the two of them for s4, they've finally given mileven a fighting chance at being somewhat healthy in the future (assuming that they insist on making it canon/endgame).

as i'm sure we all are, i'm very concerned about s4. i genuinely have NO clue what to expect from the plot- i really hope the time travel theory isn t true, because i think it would tip the show over the line from "sci-fi where you gotta suspend a little disbelief" to "sci-fi where nothing fuckin matters and they do whatever the hell they want," and while i don't necessarily have a problem with the latter, i think it would be too dramatic of a development after what's been established in the show so far. i think they have the opportunity to do something cool, smart, fun, and special, it's just a matter of whether they get carried away by excitement and aesthetics the way they did in s3 or if they're able to pull it back and focus on their characters.

by separating the byers family from everyone else, they're giving joyce, el, will, and jonathan, characters who were all kind of trapped or confined in some way back in hawkins, a chance to branch out, make new connections, bond with each other, and maybe even live a more or less normal and happy life. i personally would really like to see a focus on will and el (and jonathan to a lesser degree) bonding as siblings, and i'd like to see jonathan have his own subplot or SOMETHING going on that has nothing to do with nancy. he's literally never had a fucking friend! let him have a friend! i don't really know what to expect from joyce, but i think it'll be interesting to see how she functions without hopper around during a crisis. she's really strong and smart and fun, and i'd like to see that iron will of hers shine.

my biggest concern about the trajectory of the show is with the show's tendency to split up their ensemble cast for the majority of the season and only show them all together in the last couple of episodes. i think it's a waste of a lot of really interesting dynamics. i've already made a post about the dynamics i want to see in s4, but more broadly speaking i'd like to see them either switch it up more throughout the season or at least choose groupings for the season that are a bit different than what they've been doing so far. it's kind of ridiculous that after three seasons, there are certain people in the cast who we aren't sure have ever actually spoken to each other, or who have only exchanged two lines during a big group conversation. the steve and dustin relationship is one of the most popular on the show among fans, critics, and the general public, and it's the most unexpected!

overall, i think the strength of stranger things lies in its characters. i really hope that the lack of el's powers and the hopper storyline mean that things will be "normal" for a good while before shit kicks into high gear and there will be opportunities to really explore where they are now without hopper, how the kids are doing with the transition to high school, how el is dealing with her new living situation, and, like, whatever the fuck steve and robin end up doing. seriously, where do they come in? my personal hope is that their experience with the russians comes into play and they end up being crucial in figuring out what happened to hopper/where he is, but that might just be my love for them talking. assuming that they stick to five seasons, s4 is gonna be Really fucking important for character development, as it'll essentially be their last chance to introduce and develop conflicts before they're forced to wrap everything up and write satisfying endings for everybody.

so yeah that's about it! i'm excited for s4 and i really hope they make it good gfjfjdjc