I want to ask you all to be strategic with your complaints and anger towards what the Duffer Brothers and marketing team has done to those that actually followed the writing and market decisions made which resulted in us recognizing that season 5 was a mess, most especially with a botched finale that is incongruous with the majority of the show.
First: know your audience
As an example: if you are a Byler fan and you've spent the last few years swearing that the colors blue and yellow were intentionally used in the show to symbolize Mike and Will's love for each other, step back and realize that literally nobody outside of your fandom circle will see that as concrete evidence of queerbaiting.
Don't even touch on symbolism. Don't mention props or pop culture references or anything more than surface level. You aren't talking to literary scholars, you're talking to the general audience and the Duffer Brothers. Point out the bullshit in simple ways.
Return to the essential components of what was written and shown repeatedly in the story itself and character dynamics.
Point #1: Talk about how we were given a scenario in which Mike was (definitely since season 3) repeatedly shown to not understand or communicate with El well, lied to her, repeatedly seemed unconcerned by and even irritated by her expressing her feelings and desire for him to be a better boyfriend, and that they devoted entire scenes to Mike not being able to tell her that he loves her. Emphasize that they showed a more neutral relationship between Mike and El in season 5, but without any expressly romantic interactions until Mike's (now allegedly hallucinated, according to the Duffer Brothers) goodbye kiss in the void in the finale. Why does Mike have such a fraught relationship with El? Why couldn't he tell her that he loves her, even when she was literally crying basically begging him to do it? Why could he only tell her after Will's lie about the painting, and while Will was shouting at him to remember that he's "the heart"? Why was everything Mike listed in his season 4 love confession superficial (love at first sight claims, saying she's his superhero but he insists he loves her the way she is etc.) and nothing about his love for her as a person?
Point #2: Call out specific instances in which Mike's lack of concern for El was directly contrasted with his concern and compassion for Will's feelings. For example, when Mike and El were fighting in season 3, Mike spent time laying on his couch eating chips complaining to Lucas about it and asking"what did I do wrong?" and talking about how women are too emotional. Max reassures El after she breaks up with Mike that surely Mike will soon beg her forgiveness and say he's sorry. (This doesn't happen.) In contrast, after Mike and Will had their fight and Mike and Lucas were being rude and pretending they were no longer interested in DnD (which we know isn't true because he was passionately in Hellfire Club in season 4), Mike bikes in the rain (with Lucas) to find Will and apologize. We see him banging on the Byers' door yelling how sorry he is and begging him to come out and talk. Mike is shown to be willing to beg for Will's forgiveness, but not El's. There's other parallels like this one, particularly in season 4 with the contrast between Mike and El's "From Mike/ you can't even write [I love you], Mike / you never say it" fight, and Mike and Will's "I didn't say it / you didn't have to" apologetic and happy, optimistic heart-to-heart in the same season. I won't break them all down now, but you all know the scenes.
Point #3: Within the context of Mike and El's repeatedly struggling relationship, shown in frequent direct contrast to Mike and Will's very strong bond across all seasons... the writers deciding to treat the question of whether Mike might reciprocate Will's feelings for him is made into far more than simply an observation about Will's feelings. Mike being closeted could answer questions regarding why Mike is so emotionally unavailable towards El in spite of his determination to make the relationship work. It would offer a more generous reading of his immature and selfish behavior across the seasons than simply saying he's a kid that doesn't know how to be a good boyfriend. It does Mike's character a disservice, since we know he knows what appropriate behavior towards someone you care about looks like, he demonstrates that with Will all the time.
Point #4: They let fans believe Will had a chance and that Mike might reciprocate his feelings all the way up until the finale episode. Will was written as suddenly having hope in the possibility of Mike reciprocating his feelings at the start of the season, and in the penultimate episode a vision from the antagonist was what led to him telling his friends through tears that he realized that the person he had feelings for wasn't like him and was just a crush he'd have to get over. We need to lean a little on pointing out storytelling structure and logic here, but it's very atypical for a hero's fears stoked by a villain to be proven correct in a finale. That's not often seen as satisfying storytelling.
Lastly: don't let critics or the Duffers trivialize audience investment in character relationships or character arcs making narrative sense. Can someone add up the total hours spent across all seasons focused on the relationship between Mike, El, and Will, and how Mike's motivation within the supernatural main narrative was often tied to these character dynamics? That's a huge part of the story you built, Duffers. Like it or not, if you want an audience that cares about your story, that audience will care about the character relationships along with caring about the high budget action scifi spectacle you're putting on, too.
You might fool the casual viewer and critic s paid to write up a news headline about a show they watched on their cell phone, but you're not fooling us.
And finally: if creating alt accounts for your Twitter rage helps, do it. They'll make fun of fandom blogs and accounts dedicated to Byler or specific characters because it's easier to make us look like overzealous fans in a fan bubble that will seem unrelatable to the general audience. Make yourselves look like whatever normie will sell best to these conformists. Play their game a bit. Screw it. But get them to listen.
Show that the idea of Mike liking Will back isn't irrational, but a very plausible possibility built into the story. And then list all the ways they failed to shut down the idea and even fanned the flames repeatedly in marketing to profit off of the hope it could happen.
You can even tone down your conviction to sell it better. Look to get them to admit it was a very reasonable reading of the set up, but no need to claim it was the only one. Simply argue it was the most logical one.
I used Byler as an example because of the large community talking about this issue, but other observations made by fans are incredibly valid criticisms too. Approach with basic observations that the general audience cannot deny. Same formula.
Fans aren't "noise." They're the people who fed your success. They're the people that believed you were skilled writers.
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
janainaart
romaincrisis
stormborns
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
2087
