I never said that there was no other queer representation in the show, just that the presence of it does not mean a show canât also queerbait a relationship. As far as I know, House MD also has other queer characters, and that does not preclude them from queerbaiting a relationship.
This was absolutely not meant to imply that the only valid representation is being in a relationship, or that Willâs arc could only be valid representation if he ended up with Mike. The point was that a show can queerbait only in regards to a relationship.
Will couldâve had a crush on any other character in the entire show or he couldâve gotten over it in the 18 month time skip, and his character arc wouldnât change. The fact that Willâs character arc âisnât about Mike, itâs about himâ is exactly why I said there was no narrative reason for Will to be in love with Mike specifically.
Thereâs no narrative reason for it to be specifically him, so the only other reason is for the sake of the audience. Thatâs why it could be considered queerbaiting, not because of wanting a ship to be canon. Thatâs not to minimize the queer representation the show did provide or consider it invalid.
I'm only gonna repeat myself on this once because I just rolled out of bed and I'm waiting for my meds to kick in - Mike being a straight guy who doesn't reciprocate Will's feelings is not what queer-baiting is. That's literally just a normal experience that happens for queer people, especially queer teens, regardless of whether their crush is even queer or not. If you're not familiar with that concept, then you're either extremely young or extremely lucky. You are not going to convince me otherwise because I'm a grown ass nearly-30-year-old adult who grew up in the 2000's watching shows and movies from the 80's and 90's and was actually fucking there to remember how much worse queer representation used to be and what legitimate queer-baiting actually fucking looked and felt like.
"Will could have had a crush on any other character in the entire show and his character arc wouldn't change", okay, so replace Mike with Dustin and oh look, the problem is still the same, y'all still don't understand the actual point of Will's story and you're still mad Wil/son or whatever the fuck you're gonna call it is "dead". So what are we talking about then? What are you trying so hard to be upset about?
Walter White could have also been slinging fentanyl or ecstasy instead of meth and it also likely wouldn't change anything with his character or the story either. It's almost like not every writing decision needs some deeply-crafted lore-driven justification and the response to the question "why did you pick xyz" can absolutely just be as simple as "because we're the writers and we fucking wanted to".
Why is Robin crushing on Tammy Thompson accepted as valid reasoning for her coming-out backstory but Will crushing on Mike isn't? Just because Will and Mike are main characters? Because that just makes it even more valid, Will and Mike grew up together. If there was anyone Will was gonna have as his first crush, it was his oldest friend who he looked up to and idolized. Welcome to childhood best friend crushes, they're not just for straight people!
The narrative purpose the writers were setting up wasn't "Will gets to be with his crush" - the narrative reason for Will's crush was so that Will could figure out and accept he was gay, regardless of the outcome of his crush. That is it. That is the narrative. Will literally exposited it to you for 5 uninterrupted minutes and you still didn't get it.
And it frankly wouldn't have even mattered if Mike was queer or not, because he's very clearly devoted to El. Like, the guy is in a relationship. So not only are you asking the writers to suddenly make Mike queer with not nearly as much foreshadowing as Will, but you're also asking the writers to make Mike dump his girlfriend for Will.
And you think that highly-unlikely scenario not happening is queer-baiting?
Will is still a teenager regardless of his sexual identity, he still has to learn how to handle rejection like any other queer or straight person would, and rejection doesn't even always have to do with sexuality - sometimes people just don't wanna fucking date you. Mike isn't obligated to suddenly develop a whole new sexuality and feelings for his best friend, just because his best friend caught complicated feelings that exposed his own sexuality. Even if he were queer the whole time, he still doesn't have to date Mike. He's a character with his own motives and needs, not a trophy for Will to win and use as validation for his own sexuality.
Sure, you could choose to argue that everything we've gone over still counts as "queer-baiting", but I'm personally not interested in arguing with 13 year olds who grew up on Steven Universe and Modern Family and don't know what the fuck queer-baiting actually is outside of AO3 shipping culture.
So instead, ima throw you into the coliseum with another anon in my inbox who actually got the point, so you can keep fighting to the death in your own head about it instead of on my blog where people prefer to use their brains and be happy <3
-but that second edit about /r/Byler crying foul over the "public health crisis" Byler not happening could have caused for their modern viewers is actually so ironic and disturbing. Like, I started off laughing at the absurdity of it, and the more my thoughts and this post came together, the less funny it got. And now I'm frankly just straight up pissed off.
So you know what THAT means-
CW: LONG POST AHEAD ABOUT QUEER HISTORY, WE TALK ABOUT DEATH, SUICIDE, AND QUEER-FOCUSED MURDER SO PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION !!!!
Do y'all over there in /r/Byler not realize the show's finale and Will's coming out is set in 1987 and gay men already had a public health crisis? This little disease called AIDS???
And if that wasn't bad enough, I'm pretty sure there was this other public crisis that was affecting specifically gay men around the time, what was it again uhhhh... oh yeah, JEFFREY FUCKING DAHMER.
You wanna get real about this fuckass show that you're gonna claim "lack of Byler" is a "public health crisis" for its modern viewers who can't handle a little canon rejection of their favorite ship? Then let's talk about actual fucking QUEER HISTORY and what Will was risking by living out and proudly as a gay man.
I do not want to make light of a horrible killing spree whose victims are still alive today.
But considering Will was hanging out in a gay bar at the end of the show?
The odds of him being Dahmer's next victim were literally higher than Mike converting his sexuality and dumping El overnight for him.
1987 was the year Dahmer killed his second victim, 9 years after his first. His name was James Doxtator. He was 14. Just a couple years older than Will was in the first season when he was first abducted, and those same years younger than Will when he came out.
The odds of such a thing happening to Will were still low. But infinitely higher than canon Byler.
And the odds altogether of Will either being murdered or dying from AIDS as an unfortunate consequence of being a gay man in the late 80's? Not even "low but not zero", considerably high actually.
In fact, 1987 was literally the year AIDS was declared an epidemic and the CDC started forming actual campaigns to fight against it.
And this wasn't like COVID where it was only lethal to some people and not others. No, it was lethal to fucking everybody who contracted it. And of course, who did that primarily consist of? Gay men. There was no cure. There was no treatment. You had it for life, and for the majority of people who contracted it, that life was prematurely cut short. The only plan the CDC could come up with at the time was prevention. AIDS was like a nuclear bomb that struck and wiped out a significant portion of the queer community. We lost both young queers who had their whole lives ahead of them, and elder queers who were pillars in their communities and helped create safe spaces for those who were still coming out.
And with how little was being done for sex education, especially queer sex education, the disease thrived in poor and black communities which were often neglected - if not flat out ignored - by health officials and the CDC. For the people most at risk, the AIDS epidemic didn't just feel like a disease running wild - it was a fucking genocide.
Its most famous victim, the person whose death propelled concern for AIDS into the public eye on a level even the straights couldn't ignore, was Freddie Mercury - the frontman and lead singer of QUEEN, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987.
And when was the first synthesized treatment of AIDS approved? The same year Freddie Mercury was diagnosed - 1987. Not a cure, and not a perfect treatment, but a step in the right direction towards more treatment developments.
Many of Stranger Things' plotlines converge on the same dates, relative to real world history, and I don't think that's entirely by accident.
Will came out in 1987.
Within that same year, the Cold War was still ongoing.
Freddie Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS.
Jeffrey Dahmer was still at large and had just taken his second victim.
And what was the year all these events collided?
The Cold War ended in 1991.
Freddy Mercury died from AIDS in 1991.
Jeffrey Dahmer was finally detained and sentenced to 16 consecutive life terms in 1991.
In 1991, Will would be somewhere between 20-21 years old. His adult life has just begun. If he's not old enough to legally drink yet, he's about to be, and this is insinuated in one of the final shots of the show when we see him at what's clearly meant to be a gay bar. The AIDS crisis isn't over, people like Dahmer being put away isn't the end of all hate crimes, but in spite of all that and everything else that's been done to them, the queer community is still alive. Still fighting. Still existing, unapologetically.
And Will is now part of that community. He is free and he has found his place in the world and he is happy.
This. This is how I know the unreasonable Byler freaks who are crying "queer-bait" must be young teenagers, teenagers who are only aware of queer history through modern media and predicate their entire understanding of "representation" on shipping culture. And if not teenagers, then queers who are young enough that they're struggling with their sexuality in a context completely removed from the context their predecessors had to survive through so they could thrive.
Queers who weren't there for and subsequently weren't affected by the real world horrors of being queer in the late 80's.
Queers who are young enough to benefit from what their elders fought and died for, but don't have those elders to teach them about what they could have been subjected to had they been born just a few years sooner, because many of them died before they could ever have the chance to pass down their knowledge.
So the next time you think Byler is "queer-baiting" just because Mike didn't reciprocate Will's feelings or dump his girlfriend for Will or, god forbid, you genuinely think somewhere deep in your brain that canon rejection of Byler could depress queer shippers enough to lead to increased suicide rates?
Take a moment to reflect on queer history.
Take a moment to remember the lives that were taken from us too soon.
Take a moment to appreciate that you're even able to discuss Byler so freely and passionately on the Internet with other like-minded strangers, no matter how stupid your opinion gets, without fear or legitimate threat of being socially ostracized.
Take a moment to appreciate that you have the freedom to choose how you leave this world.
Queer people in the 80's - including kids like Will Byers - did not have that choice.
tonight I had the privilege of hearing a 13 year old explain the terms âcookingâ and âcookedâ to my 45 year old manager and she said something so excellent I have to document it.
âcooked is bad. cooking is good. youâre either in the pot or youâre holding it.â
Hey someone suggested I use ChatGPT to figure out adulting today, and as I was going through the mental list of places I'd rather look, I realized "beloved strangers on Tumblr dot net" was on that list.
So if you have an aspect of adulting that you're really good at-taxes, budgeting, cooking, insurance, credit, time management, house upkeep, anything-please feel free to reblog with any tips.
That's us! Professional internet adults, specializing in financial stuff! We recommend starting with our Grand List of All Articles, or one of our Masterposts:
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Taxes
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Increase Your Income
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Retirement and How to Retire
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Credit and Credit Cards
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Investing for Beginners
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Pay off Debt
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Living Independently for the First Time
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Repairing Our Busted-Ass World
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Getting a Job, Raise, or Promotion
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Saving Money and Being Frugal
Hey someone suggested I use ChatGPT to figure out adulting today, and as I was going through the mental list of places I'd rather look, I realized "beloved strangers on Tumblr dot net" was on that list.
So if you have an aspect of adulting that you're really good at-taxes, budgeting, cooking, insurance, credit, time management, house upkeep, anything-please feel free to reblog with any tips.
That's us! Professional internet adults, specializing in financial stuff! We recommend starting with our Grand List of All Articles, or one of our Masterposts:
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Taxes
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Increase Your Income
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Retirement and How to Retire
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Credit and Credit Cards
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Investing for Beginners
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Pay off Debt
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Living Independently for the First Time
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Repairing Our Busted-Ass World
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Getting a Job, Raise, or Promotion
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Saving Money and Being Frugal
Okay, my webcomic is still on Hiatus. However, I took some part if my hiatus to relax and reflect on it. Finally reached that point to where I'm going back to working on it again. Part of that is fixing some parts of of the outline and breaking down stuff into much easier chunks. Also, decided that buffer episodes would be good to have.
Now some things are going to change. Like the formatting of panels. I was playing around with different formatting of panels and found one I like alot more than what I was working with. Some characters will get a few changes in their outfits, it will be explained in story, and it's nothing crazy.
I want to touch a bit on the schedule, mainly because nothing is set in stone. Since I'm making a buffer of episodes I'm probably not going to return as soon as I will like. However, the goal is to return sometime in September. I'm still keeping my December and January break, however to make up for that I plan to make something comic related for those two months. It's mainly there to hold anyone over until February.
That's the current plan, as I stated before nothing is set in stone. If things go well my webcomic will be back in September. Crossing my fingers on that. Either way, I'm really happy to be working on "I Got A Secret, and So Do You". I intend to wrap up the little thing Cassia got going on and giving Livana some attention. Cassia still has more going on, but Livana needs some attention from the narrative.
Last, but not least. I realize that October 30th 2025 is the one year anniversary of my webcomic. I might do something neat for it. That is if I get the time, but it's up for consideration.
That's all I got for now, I might post an update on the episodes during August. I should have an answer on when the release date for episode 6 is. Anyways, hope you all have a good day or night!
I wanted to make some drawings of tarot cards in the world of âI Got a Secret, and So Do Youâ, my webcomic. I honestly had some fun just making three tarot cards. For example One of the cards is meant to be my worldâs equivalent of âThe Towerâ, however I felt it made more sense to change the name and imagery. I personally think it makes sense for the world to have that, because of what I written for lore. For the Other cards, was more aesthetics, but hey whatever gets me drawing. I wish I had something more to say, but I donât sadly. Anyways hereâs the art and I hope you get a boost in motivation!
Okay, my webcomic is still on Hiatus. However, I took some part if my hiatus to relax and reflect on it. Finally reached that point to where I'm going back to working on it again. Part of that is fixing some parts of of the outline and breaking down stuff into much easier chunks. Also, decided that buffer episodes would be good to have.
Now some things are going to change. Like the formatting of panels. I was playing around with different formatting of panels and found one I like alot more than what I was working with. Some characters will get a few changes in their outfits, it will be explained in story, and it's nothing crazy.
I want to touch a bit on the schedule, mainly because nothing is set in stone. Since I'm making a buffer of episodes I'm probably not going to return as soon as I will like. However, the goal is to return sometime in September. I'm still keeping my December and January break, however to make up for that I plan to make something comic related for those two months. It's mainly there to hold anyone over until February.
That's the current plan, as I stated before nothing is set in stone. If things go well my webcomic will be back in September. Crossing my fingers on that. Either way, I'm really happy to be working on "I Got A Secret, and So Do You". I intend to wrap up the little thing Cassia got going on and giving Livana some attention. Cassia still has more going on, but Livana needs some attention from the narrative.
Last, but not least. I realize that October 30th 2025 is the one year anniversary of my webcomic. I might do something neat for it. That is if I get the time, but it's up for consideration.
That's all I got for now, I might post an update on the episodes during August. I should have an answer on when the release date for episode 6 is. Anyways, hope you all have a good day or night!
I swear I had to put my webcomic on Hiatus due to stress from school and a bit of writers block(not all the reasons but a couple). However, for some odd reason, revisiting the chapter in my history textbook about the fall on the Roman Empire gave me enough motivation to write and thumbnail the episode that was the cause of my writerâs block. I did this in AT MOST 2 hours, and I was struggling for weeksâŠ
âI Got a Secret, and So Do Youâ will be on hiatus. This is mainly due college, health related reasons, and simply wanting to take a break to work on less stressful things. I do have plans to eventually return back to this series and hopefully that will happen sooner than later. I think this be beneficial for me and the comic. I hope you understand and Iâll do my best to recover and provide updates when possible!
so embarrassing to get obsessed with your own oc but it doesn't fuel you creatively or motivate you at all you just sort of sit there. like yeah I've been thinking a lot about blorbo from my mind. no images of them exist in the world and they have maybe 3 personality traits so far. I would rather die than attempt to write about them. I've spent the last 48 hours rotating them in my brain though
So I'm currently working on Episode 5 of my webcomic, "I Got a Secret, and So Do You", and I didn't realize how long it was. Like there is no way I would get the while thing out on time without having carpal tunnel come back to bite me. So I made the decision to make Episode/Chapter 5 a 2 parter. Depending on the how quickly I can finish Part 2 and Episode 6(which is much shorter in comparison) I might post those two together or just post Part 2 earlier. I haven't decided yet, so yeah! I'll keep you updated.
I love how when I getting in the writing mood, my brain decides it's a good time to remind me that I'm taking an accounting class this semester. I'm very much the type of creative who's weaknesses is math or anything math adjacent. The only thing that's giving me hope is the fact I can finally learn how to handle taxes. That's it. Maybe I should make a oc/character to embody the suffering I'll be dealing with in Accounting. Anyways sorry for ranting, I'll be getting back to writing.
in light of Trump's inauguration speech declaring multiple national emergencies that require him to take god-knows-what executive actions immediately, I'd like to remember this chapter of "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder:
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