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THE HEROES TAPE WAS IN S4

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The fact that Will literally painted Mike as his knight in shining armor😭😭

DAWG HES SO GONE FOR HIM💔

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I have ZERO Byler doubt there’s no way they’re not endgame.

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Mike is NOT clueless

As fun as it is as a meme, Michael Wheeler is not literally out here no thoughts, head empty in the slightest! At the very least, by the end of season three he is fully aware of his feelings for Will and his sexuality.

Mike and Will are BOTH speaking in code AND misunderstanding one another

The nature of mutual, homosexual attraction in their cultural context is not safe, even in the incredibly innocent way they feel as kids in S1-S3.

So, as Robin says, the nature of their message is sensitive. They speak about their feelings for one another in code.

Their dynamic is a feedback loop of mutual longing, metaphorical language, and tragic miscommunication. Neither of them can speak clearly through fear and cultural context of gayness in 1980s rural Indiana. It’s scary, to open up like that, to tell someone how you really feel.

So we get them….saying something metaphorical, both seeming to understand and get closer, and then reinterpreting with doubt and creating distance between each other.

No, Mike is not “Cheating” On El, per se.

Yes, through what we’ll discuss he is technically in a relationship with El. I want to avoid framing his moments with Will as emotional cheating. Out of empathy, and because…

Mike is:

-a teenager -from a conservative, small, rural town -coming to terms with gayness and masculinity in the 80s -though not mentioned in-show, during the height of the aids crisis -under constant, somewhat self-imposed pressure to be a protector to El and his friends -deeply intelligent, loving, and emotionally aware

He is NOT intentionally living a double-life where he is ‘betraying’ El. He is compartmentalizing his feelings and what they might mean about his place in the world and his safety. There is no intentional betrayal here, even if there is a lot of hurt on all sides.

Yes, Mike cares for El, but Will came first.

Mike and El entered a relationship when they were twelve years old. El was fresh out of a lab. Mike had not fully figured out his own feelings. Mike clearly loves El, at least in a platonic sense. He also feels responsible for her safety in the life-and-death stakes they constantly face. As children, no less!

Before El, Will was already his life-long best friend. When he instinctually shares affectionate moments with Will while still dating El, it’s just a continuation of how they have always acted toward each other. It feels totally natural and not: ‘uh oh! Cheating!’

He’s only really making sense of these feelings for Will as romantic as we leave ST3. Without positive gay media and role models, that’s just too large a leap for him to have made before this point.

By the time he’s likely naming in his head ‘I have romantic feelings for Will’, it’s “too late”. Mike is already feeling locked into a girlfriend versus best friend dynamic. There is no easy way to navigate, especially not in literal apocalyptic stakes.

End of Season 3: Will/Mike Confess in Code

Now that my ‘Mike is not a cheater�� disclaimer is over, let’s revisit Will and Mike’s last conversation before the Byers move.

Literal Dialogue: Mike: “What if you want to join another party?” Will: “Not possible.”

Emotional Subtext: Mike: “What if you find someone new in California? Someone else who makes you feel the way I do?” Will: “That’s not possible. You’re the only one I want. Our feelings are mutual and unique.”

Okay, yeah, they’re literally talking about Will leaving behind his D&D manual but like. This is soooo not about Dungeons and Dragons bsffr. Why is it not though??? Because Mike joins the Hellfire Club pre-ST4. There’s no sense of betrayal surrounding continuing their mutual hobby separately. In this conversation, D&D is the stand-in for their relationship. They both leave this conversation with an understanding of mutual romantic feelings.

NOTE THAT El had broken up with Mike earlier in the season. Mike clearly had had some kind of realization about his feelings for Will and felt free expressing them to him. It’s after this that El comes, kisses him, and there’s an assumption made that their relationship is ‘back on’.

And bless her heart, El is also just a teenage girl reaching for love here. This is not to vilify her or say she is harming anyone. But…there’s not a sense of consent in their relationship being rekindled on Mike’s part.

Mike was clearly okay with it being over. It only restarted because El kissed him, and she assumes that they’re back together now. She doesn’t yet have the social skills to ask Mike if he wants to re-enter their relationship. She’s assuming she can break up with him, pick him back up, and go back to the way things were on a whim. This is totally understandable considering she was recently stuck in a lab, but it’s not fair to Mike.

This puts Mike in a weird place where he’s ‘performing’ in two different, only one openly romantic partnership going into s4.

Season 4: The Painting, the Airport, and the Nightmare Spiral

El tells Mike that Will has been working on a painting for ‘a girl he likes’. Mike doesn’t just hear it’s for someone else; it’s for a girl. Suddenly, all those feelings Mike thought they shared feel like a misread.

From Mike’s POV: -Will hasn’t been talking to him (not picking up the phone, not calling, not writing letters) -Will has a crush on a girl -Will kept it a secret -Will is replacing him -Will is straight / not gay / they are not alike

So the emotional logic is like…But i thought we understood each other. I thought we felt the same. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way. Was i wrong, to feel that way?

This leads to the super awkward airport scene. Mike has put up his ‘normal guy’ walls to both prepare to see his girlfriend again, and pretend nothing is wrong to his best friend. He doesn’t give Will a real hug because he doesn’t want to be hurt again by ‘misreading’ Will’s feelings for him.

And yes, this is ‘unfair’ to El and Will both. But feelings aren’t fair, Mike is just trying to get through the interaction and protect his dignity.

The Fight at Rink-o-Mania

We’ve all seen the scene but just to re-iterate…

LITERAL DIALOGUE: WILL: Well… what about us? MIKE: What? WILL: You’re mad that I didn’t talk to you? Seems like you made it super clear you’re not interested in anything I have to say. MIKE: That’s just not true. WILL: You’ve called maybe a couple of times. It’s been a year, Mike. Meanwhile El has a book of letters from you. MIKE: That’s because she’s my girlfriend, Will. WILL: And us? MIKE: We’re friends… We’re friends. WILL: We used to be best friends. MIKE: Then maybe you should’ve reached out more, I, I don’t know. But why is this on me? Why am I the bad guy? Let’s just find her, okay?

…This conversation is interesting, because there’s a few things happening here. Both are feeling hurt, strained by distance, and chained by expectations.

First, Will is likely feeling regular, good ol’ jealousy. For the first time, he’s living with El, who he loves, but has to see receiving letters from Mike. El is a sweetheart who is trying sooo hard to perform ‘normal girl’ expectations, so we can assume she’s vocally excited and smitten about these letters. Will does not receive letters, so he starts to feel left out, and overwhelmed with the reality that…Mike and El’s relationship is not an abstract concept he can ignore. Mike’s calls are infrequent. HE starts to feel like he misunderstood their D&D conversation at the end of S3 as well.

And Mike, he’s feeling attacked and overwhelmed. He HAS been calling Will, but Joyce’s telemarketer job jams up the line. There is literal miscommunication / missed communications happening here. It’s telling that he chooses not to defend himself by mentioning the busy phone line to Will. After all, he’s feeling rejected, and doesn’t want to feel even more vulnerable by saying how hard he really did try to reach Will. He is not immune to feeling hurt by the fact that Will did not reach out on his own time. His assumption is, again, probably back to the ‘California girl’ that Will is seeing.

BOTH of them feel replaced by ‘some girl’ and that they’re the ‘only gay one’/the one making it weird.

It is also interesting that without speaking in code/metaphor, they’re losing a lot of mutual understanding. Without the D&D metaphor of their ST3 convo, they struggle to name their actual issue. They’re speaking entirely literally here, only using the words ‘friends’ and ‘best friends’. This is why they both leave the conversation feeling unheard and defensive: the topic IS their unresolved romantic feelings for one another. Without naming that in metaphor, the argument is only ended under duress (El hitting Angela)

To a much lesser extend, Mike is also subtly projecting here, like we’ve seen him do when he hurled ‘it’s not my fault you don’t like girls.’ At Will in S3. This time, when he feels Will is mentioning Mike’s romantic feelings, he projects by saying “She’s my girlfriend, Will,” thus turning around the accusation on Will.

Emotionally, this reads as: what are you talking about. She’s my girlfriend and you’re not. Why would you think i would feel that way about you?

Anyways this is quite long but let me know if you’d like a reflection on the Pizza Van and Mike’s Monologue scenes too! They continue this communication style throughout and I can break it down if anyone’s interested!

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GA friend being a byler anti but still acknowledging there’s a chance they get tg. A WIN IS A WIN

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This but byler

it could be lettergate or it could be phonegate or BOTH RAHHHH

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it's 8pm christmas day. you open netflix on your phone after a nice dinner with your family to finally watch stranger things 5 volume 2. your finger slips and you accidentally open tumblr. every single blog you follow now has their profile picture changed to the byler kiss. you cannot tell who is who.

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everyone’s saying they hope ____ character clocks byler in s5 but honestly i hope it’s a quiet angsty realization between the two of them. After they’ve had some time to themselves in their gay little bubble thennn we can get some side eyes like jonathan in season 4 lol

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Everyone’s all about S5 Mike now…

But there was once a time 💔

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The ship of doom and despair 🥀

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on EVERYONES soul this is how it’ll be in S5

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and when mike is looking at will's lips once again but then he doesn't stop and he just gets closer and closer and closer and CLOSER

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this is a very touching and emotional scene between the byers brothers but this line takes me OUT he's so funny i'm sorry

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thought of this after i saw @lesbyyler's version of this meme for will lmao

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More Byler proof for if you’re struggling with Byler doubt is the fact that Mike and Will’s relationship deteriorated in the first place.

Ofc, none of the party is as close as they used to be in season 1, but Mike and Will are noticeably different around each other now. And if they were strictly platonic, then Mike should’ve had no reason to change his behaviour towards Will after he got a girlfriend, esp considering he’s the one who pulled away first.

It’s because there’s something else going on that byler and miwi seem like two completely different ships and characters :)

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if will was a girl, everyone would understand byler, and that frustrates me. why is a ship only worthy of being taken seriously if it’s straight?

if people read every single thing i’m about to point out, but imagined will as a girl instead of a boy, i guarantee you they would say mike belongs with “her” instead. keep in mind, this ship has ALWAYS been semi-canon and there’s always been romantic feelings on will’s side.

will was mike’s first friend and has been by his side since they were 5 (speaking of childhood best friends, it's common in love triangles for the person in the middle to end up with their childhood best friend instead of the relationship they were rushed into in the first season + stayed with for most of the show, because they usually keep the ultimate endgame for a big reveal in the last season, to show “who they have always truly belonged with the entire time”, but of course, people don't take it seriously if it's not straight)

will has always been the person mike has been closest to and has had a different relationship with compared to his other friends. he was mike’s priority in season 1 and 2 and there was more focus on mike worrying about him, crying about him and caring for him than lucas and dustin, which shows the difference between the relationships

will is the only person mike has deep heart-to-heart conversations with and can fully open up to + be vulnerable around

will is the only person mike can be his true self with

will has the most in common with mike

will is the only person who allowed mike to speak, open up and share his deepest struggles in season 4 during the van scene

will is the only person who actually gave mike strength, made him feel less insecure and made him feel TRULY loved after confessing his OWN feelings for him and giving him the painting he made for him

will is the only reason mike said “i love you” to his girlfriend, because he lied in the scene mentioned above and pretending his feelings and the painting were from her, when they weren't

will was selfless enough to sacrifice his own feelings for mike and help his relationship with someone else because THAT is how much he actually loves him and wants him to be happy. he prioritised mike’s feelings over his own, which is proof of how real his love is for him, even though it absolutely destroyed him mentally to do so

how do you look at mike’s best friend, who has done all of this for him, and who mike feels so comfortable with, and still think “no, this ship doesn’t make sense”, JUST because they’re both boys?

how do you seriously think he's happier and better off in a relationship where he doesn't even feel like an equal to his partner and has never once received any sort of emotional support, JUST because one of them is a boy and the other is a girl?

mike and will's relationship isn't just a friendship. will is IN LOVE with mike. he always has been. and mike obviously feels so safe and comfortable with will and has a relationship with him that’s unlike his other relationships.

i already know people are gonna scream “but mike has shown no signs of being gay, that's the difference!” - what “signs” is he meant to show that’s valid enough for you? kissing someone? is that all you see romance as? because those big stereotypical romantic actions/gestures like kissing and making out are 1. not all that love/romance is and 2. can’t happen quickly with these two as easily as it does with mike and el, because it’s not simple for gay people/gay couples like it is with straight people (especially in the 80s!!). they have to go through an entire process of figuring themselves out, discovering themselves and accepting who they are because being gay is not the norm. that's what makes their relationship SO much more emotionally impactful and deeper, because it's hard for them to even exist.

being straight is the norm. it’s the ultimate expectation forced onto everyone from the moment they’re born. even young kids have it put in their heads before they even know themselves and their own feelings, because everyone automatically thinks everyone is born straight. it’s not ground-breaking to be straight. it’s not a huge powerful thing for mike to kiss a girl when other characters were literally teasing him/pushing the idea onto him (they wouldn't have done this if el was a boy) and it's literally the biggest societal expectation that you see everywere. sorry, but i don't know how i'm supposed to think that's powerful - it's actually the opposite. it would've been more powerful for us to actually have a main female and male character that had a strong, deep, emotional friendship for once, with nothing romantic. but of course not. because society needs forced heteronormativity. that’s why it happened so quickly and why every viewer just blindly accepted it even though it was rushed, because people accept anything that’s straight. but if el was a boy and they did the exact same thing, there would be outrage and an uproar about how "disgusting and inappropriate it is to force sexuality onto children."

it's extremely frustrating that so many people dismiss a strong healthy bond between two people and invalidate will's romantic feelings for mike (and the possibility of mike one day feeling the same way) just because they're both boys, and because they haven't done lovey dovey things like mike and el (which like i said, they CAN'T straight away, because they have to go through a whole process of self discovery and accepting themselves in a society full of homophobia).

fulfilling societal expectations, whether it be kissing and making out, holding hands or even "bigger" things like getting married and having kids (only mentioning this since that's the biggest "expectation" put onto everyone, and people seem to think it's a "requirement" and that you're a failure if you don't do them), actually doesn't always prove or guarantee anything, especially if there's no healthy relationship between the couple and feeling like equals with your partner. many people can tick all those boxes and do what's expected, and still be miserable and unhappy because they can't even have deep emotional conversations with their partner. i've seen couples who DON'T fulfil societal expectations that are happier and more in love than a lot of the ones that do.

i'm sorry, but i couldn't care less about any couple who makes out in front of me if there's no healthy emotional bond. it's all meaningless if the relationship itself isn't healthy. i don't care that mike and el have been together since season 1. i don't care that they kiss, make out, hold hands, exclude their friends and danced at a ball. we have seen time and time again that they have made each other feel horrible (even if unintentional), they don't feel like equals, they don't know how to comfort each other emotionally on a deep level, they have NOTHING in common and no shared interests or hobbies, they lie to each other so much, they invalidate each other's struggles and trauma (again, even if unintentional), nobody else in the show even likes them as a couple and they can't sort out their own relationship issues without a gay character being used as a plot device.

there would've been NO big "i love you" monologue if it weren't for will.

will is the person mike has the deepest and most strongest emotional connection with. not because of societal expectations, not because of a trauma bond/saving each other from danger/feeling like they owe each other, but simply because since they met near that swingset, they've felt safe and comfortable with each other and have always understood each other like nobody else has. THAT is what love is to me. THAT is what's powerful and important.

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ik we all know this but if byler isn’t endgame, mike wheeler is low-key insane and genuinely mean

literally awkwardly bro punching someone he’s been best friends with for years

having suddenly no interest in his friend’s hobby even though he was will’s biggest supporter for years (not to mention he wasn’t interested in hearing about his potential crush too, he just conveniently ignored that specific part of the letter)

him not writing to Will at all? making Will think he hasn’t tried to call? (okay, Will could have put more effort into it too but at least we know he didn’t because he is scared of losing Mike, so what’s Mike’s excuse? Wdym he thinks reaching out to his best friend is romantic?)

“you basically sabotaged the whole day!” ouch (imagine birthdaygate is real too, double ouch)

“we’re friends! we’re friends.” no one said otherwise? relax? 🤨

“it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” ??? you know people have been homophobic towards Will his entire life, what is wrong with you. Like imagine being Will, this must have been genuinely so hurtful to hear from someone you trusted your life with, him making fun of Will’s dnd campaign right before that too

not to mention the arguments between him and El in s4, made poor girl feel like a monster AND called her ridiculous too. Yikes

and to top it all off, Will STILL sacrifices his feelings for Mike and El to be happy, both in the van and in the monologue scene. Like okay.

If Mike doesn’t have any romantic feelings for Will he has become a whole mean mess

why would you want to root for a character like that? Like yea he’s young but so are all the other characters and they don’t act this way… Knowing Will sacrificed his feelings for a heterosexual relationship, makes it hard to potentially enjoy mileven again (which is either the point or they messed up the writing big time in this)