spectrum of solace;

"My mind is a tunnel. The deeper you go, the darker it is."

[hammersanvil]

Baelor and Maekar Targaryen by CrazyTom

[dongslinger--420]

When BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) said "you can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it ok. you need to be better" and "all we have are the connections we make" and "I really should've thought about the view from halfway down" and "sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own happiness" and "you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around, you turn yourself around, THAT'S what it's all about" and "things have to get worse before they can get better" and "in real life, the big gesture isn't enough, you need to be consistent" and "if we hadn't met each other until now, we wouldn't be the people we are now" and, my personal favourite, "every day it gets a little easier, but you gotta do it every day, that's the hard part, but it does get easier".

[narrativelogicofbyler]

i genuinely cannot overstate how baffling it is to watch a creator hand wave away “the noise” when that so called noise is, in fact, a substantial queer audience articulating their own lived readings and a lead actor who is himself gay and openly drawing from personal experience to shape his performance. in any foundational media studies course, you’re taught that audience reception isn’t an inconvenience, it’s part of the text’s life. it’s the ecosystem a story breathes in. when your work intersects with queer identity, queer history, and queer longing, that responsibility only intensifies.

to dismiss all of that as irrelevant chatter isn’t just tone deaf, it’s narratively negligent. it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how meaning is made, how representation functions, and how performance and authorship interact. when an actor with lived queer experience is telling you, explicitly, that he relates to his character’s arc, that’s not “noise.” that’s a primary source. that’s embodied knowledge informing the text from the inside out.

and when your queer audience, the people who have carried your story, analysed it, defended it, and found themselves in it, are pointing out the emotional and thematic resonance you’ve built, brushing them off isn’t neutral. it’s cruel. it’s a refusal to engage with the very people who understand your work most intimately. it’s a failure of craft, of empathy, and of basic narrative stewardship.

at that point, you’re not just being careless. you’re being a bad storyteller. and worse, you’re being a storyteller who punishes the very communities your work claims to represent.

[byerswheeler]

will byers there are no words to express how proud of you i am

[k1ttage]

another thing that really bothered me is that will had zero reaction to being in the upside down again even though it was the event that permanently changed who he is and gave him insane amounts of trauma

[narrativelogicofbyler]

i genuinely need to know what the intended narrative function was here. why build an entire arc around will falling in love with mike if there was never going to be a payoff. why give them some of the most emotionally intimate conversations in the series. why the deliberate colour coding, the blocking that places them in mirrored positions, the framing that isolates them together, the cinematography that treats their scenes like romantic beats. why the shared looks, the lip glancing, the repeated visual language of longing.

and then, why have will explicitly ask about the signs that someone likes you, only for mike to immediately perform those exact behaviours back at him. these are not accidental choices. these are layered, intentional filmmaking decisions that communicate subtext whether the writers want to acknowledge it or not.

from a craft perspective, it’s incoherent. if this wasn’t meant to mean something, then the show is contradicting its own visual grammar. it’s messy, and not in a narratively productive way.

[mikeandwill]

the very ending of them putting away their d&d books was so meta. it wasn’t even really mike, will, max, lucas and dustin we were seeing. It was so obviously finn, noah, sadie, caleb and gaten saying goodbye to their characters of 10 years. them walking up the stairs was their final bow. it was heartbreaking

[byler-heart]

They should’ve ripped the band-aid off in s4.

In fact, there should never have been a band-aid to rip off to begin with.

Will’s feelings for Mike ended up being narratively inconsequential. The show could have had Will realize he didn’t like girls the same way his friends did back in S3, without layering romantic subtext onto his relationship with Mike, and the plot would have remained exactly the same. The ending would not have changed. Even the coming-out scene, as poorly handled as it was, would still exist in essentially the same form.

Making Will explicitly in love with Mike (*cough* or have a crush, apparently) did not affect the plot, the stakes, or the resolution in any meaningful way. Instead, it functioned as a source of prolonged angst that was narratively expendable. If removing Will’s romantic feelings for Mike changes nothing about the story’s structure or conclusion, then the writing failed to justify why those feelings were introduced in the first place.

It could’ve been a crush on a random guy in Lenora. It could’ve been Will realizing he simply wasn’t interested in girls while all his friends were getting girlfriends and making out that summer. Hell, it could’ve been a new teen introduced for that purpose alone, especially since they later decided to fold in Mr. Clarke, Murray, Vickie and all those 12 kids into the narrative anyway, so what's one more character? 🙄

But they didn’t do that. They chose to make Will fall in love with Mike. They chose all the subtext, all the oddly charged dialogue choices (“I’m the only one who cares about Will!”/ “if we're both going crazy, then let’s go crazy together right? Crazy together.” / “I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my friend. It was the best thing i've ever done.” / “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls” / “And us? we’re friends, we’re friends!” / “It’s Hawkins. It’s not the same without you” / “I feel like I lost you or something” / “what if they don’t like the truth?” / “but you make me feel like I’m not a mistake at all, like I'm better for being different.” / “You're the heart” / “You’re a sorcerer” / “--to date?” / “signals? what signals?” / and so many others). They chose to frame Mike and Will’s friendship as DIFFERENT from every other friendship in the party. They chose the queer-coded moments, with the shared looks, the deliberate parallelisms with canon couples, and the [tender, emotional music playing] in their scenes.

And in the end, it meant nothing.

[stevenrogered]

Jonathan during Will's coming out speech

[betterforlovingyou]

It’s frustrating to see people/the writers/etc. act like the disappointment with Byler is a shipping thing. This isn’t about just wanting two boys to kiss. This is about Mike Wheeler, who has been sidelined all of season 5, lacking a real arc and meaningful personal journey. This is about his poor treatment of his friends in seasons 3 and 4 never being adequately explained or resolved. This is about his personal struggles remaining ambiguous and denying him the opportunity to process his feelings in the story in a meaningful way. This is about Will Byers, a character who never thought he would fall in love, learning that if he does, he’ll get over it. This is about a character who has spent the whole show having what he wants taken from him, willingly giving up the thing he wants most. This is about a character who was shown to fall in love slowly over the course of 4 years with his best friend, the person he is closest to and most similar to, only to decide it was just a crush.

This is not about wanting two boys to kiss. This is about writing two characters who care about each other more than anyone else, who feel most comfortable and themselves with each other, having it develop into something romantic, only for it to amount to self-acceptance on one side, and a relationship built on “love at first sight” and a lie on the other.

So stop saying it’s about shipping when it’s about the impact that this writing has on Mike’s character, Will’s character, and the story that was written. There is more to Mike and Will than Byler. But Byler heavily affects their characterization and arcs whether you like it or not.

[atmosphericbyers]

mike wheeler and jonathan byers i am so sorry the duffers could not see your potential

[virgolleum]

btw lucas being the first out of the party to say will won't lose him and his face didn't change at all when will said he doesn't like girls. still s tier friend no notes lucas sinclair you will always be famous.

[dany-is-bored]

Honestly whoever is writing his arcs and overall character loves him so much cuz I feel like out of the Core Four he's the one that has remained the most consistent throughout the seasons. Like, the way he behaves and acts feels like a natural progression of his past self. Not only Caleb has excelled himself with the performance but Lucas as a character has matured so much but overall you can still see his 12 year old self as clearly as when he got first introduced.

I love how emotionally aware he is.

I love how much he values Max no only as his girlfriend but also as a friend and person.

I love how he banters with Erika while still clearly caring for her.

I love how he was the first one of The Party to hug Will and reassure him that he won't go anywhere.

I love how he is also very opinionated but knows when to drop his pride.

I love how clever he is but without loosing his humour.

I love how he embraces his more sporty nature while still being a nerd.

I love how loyal he is.

I love how resilient he is.

Lucas Sinclair deserves more love than the fandom gives him and I stand by that.

[lousolversons]

Lucy Maclean and Maximus in Season 1 of FALLOUT

[mynnvx]

byler is slowly consumig me… duffer brothers i’m in your walls

[tmntmaster13]

I was browsing through Tumblr and I got this two images. They are from two different artists, but go so well together is crazy.

Baby Varang is from @novembermorgon

Adult Avrang is from @yararts

[holleighgolightly]

He’s gonna need more crayons…

(and maybe another exorcism)

[jancys-blue-bayou]

It really sucks how 99.999 % of the Stranger Things fandom don’t remember Jonathan Byers crying alone in his bed hugging himself because he thought his little brother was dead and his mom was going insane. It sucks even harder that the Duffer brothers have no recollection of it either.