Both Mike and and El did not know what "love" was supposed to feel like, but their relationship's purpose was to help them find what it meant to them.
El came from a lab and didn't know a lot of things about the world, and had to learn once she got out. Mike was raised as a small-town boy with his parents being one of the first examples of "love."
El was supposed to find out what love meant to her through realizing how she didn't want to be loved.
Mike was supposed to find out what love meant to him by realizing how easy it was to love his childhood best friend.
Both were supposed to learn that they couldn't give the other what they wanted, but nevertheless were still deserving of love.
75. Percabeth -64
Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase, the Percy Jackson universe
76. Hucklerobby
Dennis 'Huckleberry' Whitaker & Michael 'Robby' Robinavitch, The Pitt
77. Bunnydoll
Jax & Ragatha, The Amazing Digital Circus
78. Wangxian -25
Lan Wangji & Wei Wuxian, Mo Dao Zu Shi
79. Shadowpeach -19
Sun Wukong & the Six-Eared Macaque, Lego Monkie Kid
80. Eternalberry
Hollyberry Cookie & Eternal Sugar Cookie, the Cookie Run franchise
81. Odypen
Odysseus & Penelope, EPIC: The Musical
82. Mizisua
Mizi & Sua, Alien Stage
83. Sterek
Stiles Stilinski & Derek Hale, Teen Wolf
84. Shadowvanilla
Pure Vanilla & Shadow Milk, the Cookie Run franchise
85. Moshang
Mobei-Jun & Shang Qinghua, The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
86. Spideypool
Spider-Man & Deadpool, the Marvel universe
87. Davekat 0
Dave Strider & Karkat Vantas, Homestuck
88. Heavymedic
Heavy Weapons Guy & Medic, Team Fortress 2
89. Lumax
Lucas Sinclair & Max Mayfield, Stranger Things
90. Sonamy
Sonic the Hedgehog & Amy Rose, Sonic the Hedgehog
91. Rookanis
Rook & Lucanis Dellamorte, Dragon Age: The Veilguard
92. Zoeystery
Zoey & Mystery, KPop Demon Hunters
93. Poolverine -90
Wade Wilson & Logan Howlett, the Marvel universe
94. Everlark -12
Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Mellark, The Hunger Games
95. Clois
Clark Kent & Lois Lane, Superman
96. Johnlock
John Watson & Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock
97. Agathario -21
Agatha Harkness & Rio Vidal, the Marvel universe
98. Stolitz -64
Stolas & Blitzo, Helluva Boss
99. Devil's Minion
Armand & Daniel Molloy, Interview with the Vampire & The Vampire Chronicles
100. Skystar
Skyfire & Starscream, Transformers
The number in italics indicates how many spots a ship moved up or down from 2024. Bolded ships weren’t on the list last year.
*And, it turnes out we love pure vanilla x shadow milk so much, our data actually pulled it twice. Woops! We hope you enjoy nonetheless, and thank you for understanding❣️
How did your ships fare this week? Did your faves make the cut? Any surprises? Tag your posts and commentary with #ships week 2026 to keep this party going. Thanks for joining us. Now, go forth and keep doin what you're doin tumblr <3
it drives me so so crazy that “music isn't the only way back from vecna" is a key revelation in the final season that they just fully did not do anything with for the two people who have LITERALLY pulled each other back from the grasp of vecna using something other than music FROM THE BEGINNING. MORE THAN ONCE. Using memories of EACH. OTHER.
but nooo the ship was never in the cards. only the straight couple can use that line of reasoning
when mike “understands her better then anyone” but tries to say “i understand what it’s like” and el says “no you don’t.” and when she hits angela he says “what did you do?” in a tone so fierce that it reminds her of her abusive childhood in the lab.
when mike “understands her better then anyone” but max said “the fact is, she’s not yours. she’s her own person capable of making her own decisions.” and when el came to her having a full on identity crisis asking how she knows what she likes max said “you just need to find something that feels… like you.” and helped her become more then a number. helped her become jane.
when mike “understands her better then anyone” but hopper adopted her when she was more alone then she had ever been, instantly treating her like his own and putting her first always.
when mike “understands her better then anyone” but el found will in the upside down when they were just kids, and they had been siblings ever since. they lived in california together and will helped her try and cope with the terrible bullies by being the nurturing brother that he is, and when the cops came to take her will defensively said “we’re her brothers, and we’re family.”
when mike “understands her better then anyone” but joyce, but lucas, but dustin, but nancy.
the wildest part is that when you actually stop and apply even the most basic film school lens, the sheer number of byler scenes constructed with deliberate visual intent, only to be abandoned with zero narrative follow through, becomes genuinely infuriating. these aren’t casual choices. these are scenes built through controlled blocking, emotionally charged eyelines, colour theory, and shot composition that signal trajectory and interiority. that’s the grammar of visual storytelling. that’s how you communicate meaning without dialogue.
and i have never seen queerbait executed with this level of craft and sustained commitment. the framing, the lighting, the emotional framework, you don’t accidentally build a multi season romantic visual arc. you don’t accidentally create a pattern of longing shots, mirrored staging, and genre coded intimacy. in everything i know about this craft, choices like that are intentional. they require planning. they require collaboration across departments.
and then the writers had the audacity to pretend they never built anything at all. as if the audience hallucinated the visual cues. as if the cinematography, the blocking, the score, the narrative parallels, all of it, just materialised without intention. it’s insulting. it’s dishonest. and it’s a betrayal of the queer audience they kept stringing along.
no competent director would stage emotionally loaded beats like that without expecting a payoff. no producer with any professional integrity would sign off on that level of thematic negligence. and the writers? my ex‑professor would’ve obliterated their entire arc in front of the seminar for structural incoherence alone. this is unprofessional storytelling from top to bottom, a complete breakdown of narrative responsibility across the pipeline.
i hope i never see something like this again, but let’s be real: in this industry, i’m not holding my breath.
SOMETHING changed in the writing room. How was Volume 1 so focused on the "snowball becoming an avalanche" - only then to the tone changing ENTIRELY once we drop back into Vol 2 (sans the Byler hug in the beginning of 5×05)??
"There was no evidence for Byler, you're delusional"
It was presented indeed! We were let down by the decisions made after Vol 1. And thats why it hurts especially, because we know we were wronged, because what they did was cruel and a betrayal of LOGIC. All romance tropes used, story beats and themes, cinematography -- all led to Mike and Will finding a happy ending in each other ❤️
i think about byler in a way that’s less “shipping discourse” and more the quiet grief of watching a genuinely groundbreaking narrative slip through the cracks. it’s that particular ache you only get when you understand the craft, when you can see the scaffolding, the emotional architecture, the cinematographic cues, all pointing toward a story that was ready to mean something. not just to fans, but to the medium.
finn and noah had the kind of chemistry you don’t teach. it’s the sort of on screen connection that directors build entire seasons around, the kind that lets you hold a shot a beat longer because the actors can carry the silence. their scenes already had that charged stillness, that soft, trembling intimacy that cinematographers dream of capturing. the camera loved them, not in a flashy way, but in that quiet, instinctive way where the frame leans in because it knows something is happening.
and maybe that’s why it hurts so much. because from a craft perspective, they were positioned to break boundaries in a genre that desperately needed it. they could have shifted the emotional centre of the story, not through shock value, but through honesty. through the kind of queer tenderness that rarely gets to exist in mainstream sci‑fi without being coded, sidelined, or softened into metaphor.
there was magic there, real, cinematic magic. the kind you recognise instantly when you’ve studied this stuff, when you’ve spent years analysing how performance, blocking, colour, and subtext braid together to create meaning. it was all right there, humming under the surface, waiting for someone in the writers’ room to trust what the camera was already telling us.
and the saddest part is knowing that potential doesn’t disappear just because it went unused. it lingers. it becomes a ghost of the story we could have had. a reminder of how rare it is to see chemistry like that, and how easily it can be left on the cutting room floor.
i’m begging people to understand that cinematography is not a series of happy accidents. it’s not a “whoops, the camera just happened to frame them like soulmates for four seasons straight.” it’s a craft built on intention, collaboration, and an obscene amount of pre‑planning. so when i say byler was always in the cards, i’m not speaking from delusion or wishful thinking, i’m speaking from the actual mechanics of how visual storytelling works.
and don’t even get me started on the cinematography, because the receipts are everywhere. you don’t repeatedly isolate two characters in soft, intimate close ups, build entire emotional beats around negative space, or bathe them in a golden yellow light that literally functions as a visual metaphor for queer longing unless you’re doing it on purpose. that’s not something a rogue camera operator just “feels in the moment.” that’s not how sets function. that’s not how blocking meetings go. that’s not how shot lists are built.
every choice, lens, angle, lighting temperature, colour palette, depth of field, is a conversation between the director, the DP, the gaffer (lighting department), the production designer, and the actors’ performances. it’s a chain of intention. so the idea that finn and noah’s chemistry somehow “accidentally” shaped the visual language of the show is laughable. if anything, the camera recognised that chemistry because the story was already leaning that way. the cinematography was reinforcing a narrative trajectory the scripts were too scared to commit to.
and that’s the part the duffers don’t want to admit: the camera has been telling the truth from day one. the framing treats mike and will as emotional mirrors. the lighting shifts when they’re together. the blocking pulls them into private two‑shots even in ensemble scenes. the visual grammar codes them as the emotional core long before the dialogue catches up. that’s not subtext, that’s text delivered through image.
so yes, i will die on this hill. because from a film theory perspective, from a cinematography perspective, from a narrative construction perspective, byler wasn’t a coincidence or a fandom hallucination. it was baked into the visual language from the beginning. the only thing that wavered was the writers courage, not the camera’s clarity.
Imagine if in the Stranger Things finale, as the worlds began to merge and the lines of reality blurred, Will used Vecna's powers of memory manipulation to transform the battlefield into a D&D campaign.
Will the Wise Sorcerer, Mike the Brave Paladin, Dustin the Bard, Lucas the Ranger, and Holly the Heroic among others. Vecna would embrace his Dark Wizard persona fully as the Mind Flayer stands behind him as a summoned dragon.
As Mike shields the party from incoming magic projectiles, Will guides the rest for their last assault alongside Holly with her powers to cast dimension door.
We could've had that: the outcasts' way of conquering their fears.
Imagine if in the Stranger Things finale, as the worlds began to merge and the lines of reality blurred, Will used Vecna's powers of memory manipulation to transform the battlefield into a D&D campaign.
Will the Wise Sorcerer, Mike the Brave Paladin, Dustin the Bard, Lucas the Ranger, and Holly the Heroic among others. Vecna would embrace his Dark Wizard persona fully as the Mind Flayer stands behind him as a summoned dragon.
As Mike shields the party from incoming magic projectiles, Will guides the rest for their last assault alongside Holly with her powers to cast dimension door.
We could've had that: the outcasts' way of conquering their fears.
