random shit

my two cents about my weekly fixations

[bylertisy]

me when my homie is moving to another city vs when my girlfriend is about to sacrifice herself and die

[casualtreebranch]

redownloaded tumblr after 4 years to say i was RIGHT about all my will byers has powers theories and i am right that byler will be canon

[casualtreebranch]

NOOOO I HAD A DREAM BYLER WAS CANON IN THE NEW SEASON KMS 💔💔💔

[she-who-fights-and-writes]

In my opinion, found family is so much funnier when it’s more like “these losers hold me hostage and won’t leave me alone”

[casualtreebranch]

[casualtreebranch]

i find it really interesting that season six is more centered around the entire smith family than any other season, like yes i know the season is based in a time where rick is unable to travel inter-dimensionally but it’s a little odd to me that that’s even a problem anymore

it’d be very on-brand for rnm to just pull a “rick is the smartest guy ever he can just re-invent portal tech” so why haven’t they done that yet? normally the fact that the EXISTING portal fluid is tainted wouldn’t even be a problem because rick would just somehow fix it. my question is will this tie in to rick’s arc? like maybe he’s stalling for some reason or he just doesn’t want to recreate portal tech at the moment? why is this still an obstacle?

my very loose theory is that rick—for whatever reason—doesn’t want to recreate his old tech. might have something to do with weird(?) rick or something else entirely. i’m excited to find out.

[casualtreebranch]

i summarized the plot of “night family” for my brother and his immediate response was “so a gravity falls episode?” and i cannot lie i definitely get it

[peachgirl21]

[casualtreebranch]

AND THE DIFFERENCE BEING THE ABILITY TO BE SEEN BY OTHER STUDENTS 😭 NICK DOESN’T WANT TO HIDE

[casualtreebranch]

the fact that heartstopper is the only piece of media i have ever consumed where i don’t want to read any fanfic about it at all… canon is too good i’m sorry

[dukeofdelirium]

The reason people see Will as whiny is because his romantic feelings are clouding his vision and causing him to want things he shouldn’t realistically be expected to have. Why should he get letters? Why should he get boyfriend treatment? It’s NORMAL for boys to focus more on their girlfriends than their friends. Imagine if Dustin walked up to Lucas and asked him why he was spending more time with Max than him. Or if Steve starts dating someone and Robin starts moping. There are boundaries. And Will comes across as an energy vampire sometimes. He literally admitted he wants to run away with mike to Vegas and play games forever

“what about us?”

“We’re friends. We’re friends.”

Exactly.

LMFAOOOO

You do realize Will joking in the van was just him trying to make Mike laugh/smile, right? He wasn’t being serious. 🧍🏻like thats very obvious.

Will never told Mike to treat him like his romantic partner? He literally was just asking why they have grown apart and why Mike won’t talk to him? He deserves an explanation, dumbass. Mike’s behavior is weird and unlike how he acts toward Will in previous seasons. Will literally said “you called maybe a couple times, meanwhile El has a book of letters from you” which is super funny because what is in a book Mike has from Will? Will’s art 💀 but will doesnt even know that probably. Mike has zero pictures etc on his walls or in his basement that are connected to Eleven. He has Will’s artwork hung up all over his bedroom and basement walls, even when posters etc have been rearranged or changed outright. For FOUR SEASONS they have intentionally hung up Will’s drawings, they even added a new one.

Mike says “we’re friends, we’re friends!” But Michael sweetie…. Who said you weren’t friends? Literally no one said that Michael…. Will never implied you weren’t friends nor did he imply you were more than friends. That is just Mike projecting and admitting that he has thought of Will as more than a friend LOL! Also, it’s funny you bring up the other friends. Youre clearly aware that Mike and Will’s relationship is not presented to us as the same as Mike and his relationship to his other friends. Even his relationship to el isn’t similar to his relationship with Will. They directly parallel byler to Melvin over all of the seasons but particularly 3 and 4, blatantly showing in parallels that byler is healthy and Melvin is not. 😩 fucking COPE with it. Mike only likes El because she has superpowers lmfaoooo

[casualtreebranch]

“why should he get letters? why should he get boyfriend treatment?”

[boywill]

honestly the fact that there is a rather large portion of stranger things fans that are homophobic (not just in a i hate gay people way, in a believing that certain characters cant ever be gay and fighting about it way) is surprising cus the cast ships a lot of the gay ships.

gaten ships steve/eddie, charlie and joe keery have made comments about stonathan, maya and natalia ship ronance to an insane extent, and of course we have finn, noah and david, the leaders of the byler club.

it just confuses me. even if the cast wasnt this outspoken about these ships, stranger things has literally condoned homophobia in the show face on. but the support from the cast just makes it all the more strange.

[casualtreebranch]

not to mention that charlie and joe have kissed on camera before no problem and that shawn levy has liked several byler tweets

[casualtreebranch]

not to be anti-ship or anything but there is not one scene in the entire show that has m*leven actually talking to each other. it’s always either mike teaching her the basics of being a person like in s1 or mike defending himself when el raises a very valid issue in their relationship… i can not fathom how people watch the scenes between these two characters and say they’re “meant for each other” like… where?

[casualtreebranch]

mike did not push a homophobe over and dustin did not threaten to have el kill said homophobe for the hets to say they wouldn’t accept will

[casualtreebranch]

we constantly talk about how el has been shown to be better off without mike but i hardly ever see any discussion about how m*leven is bad for mike.

in season two, mike is portrayed as childish by his own definition: he has an emotional connection to his stuffed animals, he loves dnd, he’s closer than ever to will (and we all know how he feels about that by now), and although he is focused on el, he’s still involved in his friend group and tries to be there for them. his development (or lack thereof) between seasons two and three are centered around this theme, as mike is always the one talking about how they’re suddenly too old to be doing what will wants to do. post-el’s return, mike forces himself to “grow up,” which goes hand-in-hand with mike’s comphet tendencies, e.g. him telling el that “old people” say they love each other (so now that he’s grown up, he has to say it too).

mike’s character arc in the transition period between seasons two and three is entirely centered around his insecurity now that he is in a relationship with el. obviously i’m not saying el is bad for him, but the relationship itself is. it’s all one big showcase of mike’s self doubt and lack of confidence. in the same way el thinks she needs mike in order to feel valuable, mike thinks he’s nothing if not el’s boyfriend. he basically says this himself in vol2, saying that he can’t even compare to lois lane, a superhero’s love interest. he believes he’s worthless and latches onto el as a way to give himself some sort of purpose.

lots of the GA and m*leven shippers see this as the backbone of their relationship—they need each other to feel like they’re worth anything. but it’s neither a good relationship model or a healthy reason to idolize the individual characters.

[casualtreebranch]

i finally got around to writing a byler fic based around season 4, check it out if you want <3

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[casualtreebranch]

a character alignment chart for the soul

[casualtreebranch]

wait wait WAIT why am i seeing so little discussion about mike x will / vickie x robin parallels?

1. they’ve both been left as open-ended possibilities after volume two, with one character confirmed gay and interested in the other while their love interest’s thoughts are left a mystery.

2. major props to this post for pointing out the parallels between m!leven’s reunion and vickie/her boyfriend’s scene together. i wanted to expand on this, because obviously we’ve all noticed the specific choices made in the camera angles—placing will/robin directly in the middle of their love triangles. why would these decisions be made as obvious as they are if only one couple ends up being one-sided? make it make sense

3. the final scene between vickie and robin says a lot to me because… just…

left and right placement.

audience isn’t quite sure character on the left, gay character on the right? for no reason in particular? got it.

4. might i bring up that neither of our possibly-queer love interests were looking like they were going to have a het relationship (anymore) until volume 2? given el’s “from, el” to mike, mike’s “a fight you can’t come back from,” and so much other break-up foreshadowing, hardly any (actually observant) fans thought mike and el would just pull a s2 stancy and say “nah man that’s water under the bridge” but they appeared to do just that. just like how vickie suddenly had a boyfriend we previously hadn’t known about or expected her to have, m!leven was suddenly just… fine in volume 2? and people don’t think that was intentional?

5. both het couples have essentially “broken up” or had an unspoken, heavily implied separation by the end of volume 2. the same exact flowers mike gave el at the beginning of s4 are decaying in hawkins, and el is the only one shown CLOSELY watching that happen, just like how she is distancing herself from mike, because she is the only one out of the two of them who is absolutely aware it isn’t going to work out. (this may be a stretch but) mike even is shown to be unaware, suggesting that el’s distance is due to her loss against vecna; similarly, he is shown watching the entirety of hawkins decay while el watches their flowers decay. so while el is aware of their relationship ending, mike is still oblivious.

6. both vickie and mike mistreated their queer love interests while in the presence of their het ones! vickie’s “just a girl from band” even though she knew how badly robin’s feelings would be hurt, and mike’s general dumbassery whenever el is around. from the byler fight in s3, his neglect of will in most of s3 (i mean we only had one single “nice mike” scene in the entire season), the skating rink in s4, his idiotic airport behavior, mike has repeatedly been shown to neglect ONLY will when el is around. (and some still don’t believe he doesn’t consider him to be a love interest? ok)

anyway my point is, i know we were all feeling very let down by the treatment of queer characters in volume 2 but it was all done for a good reason and it’s about time the GA was on our side about something.

[casualtreebranch]

sometimes i doubt the potential for a milkvan break-up and then i remember that we didn’t see ANY of el’s inner thoughts during the monologue. the only time this has ever happened was in the context of the s2 monologues in the byers’ shed—we couldn’t see will’s perspective because he was possessed. the only visual aids we get for el are the tightening of vines on el’s neck and her facial expressions, and neither of those really support the fact that el is happy with what she hears. just throwing it out there. 🤭🤭