I remember thinking, “I wish I could live in a world where Mike and Will could fall in love for real, be real” back in season two and three.
Like I actually remember THINKING that. I remember the real ache, the sadness and loneliness of knowing that gay people, especially gay children, are seen as alien, morphed, distorted, wrong. They don’t want to see us on their screens. It doesn’t matter that we were queer children and we were real, that we had the crushes and the heart fluttering and the falling in love and the wanting just like they did. We are wrong to them. ‘Other’, even when we really aren’t.
So of course Mike and Will would never be shown in a story of falling in love with each other. Perhaps, maybe in a distant dream sort of way, will will be cruelly made to fall in love with a Mike who could never love him back. Maybe the kid who’s been kidnapped, starved, possessed, haunted, and abandoned will be gay because he’s already different, already other - but then we’d have to watch Mike wheeler, the main hero boy of the show, reject him. Because of course it would be rejection, anything else would be unfathomable; the main hero boy falls in real love with the main girl, the center of attention; the main hero boy goes through trials and tribulations, learns courage, and beats odds. He does not fall in love with another boy. He does not fall in love with the starved boy, abandoned boy, haunted boy. Not in this story. Not in any story. Of course not. That’s ridiculous, unthinkable, on a show this massive and known and loved, there is no way they will show us up there, cracked open and bare and bleeding love like they do. It just doesn’t happen, and hasn’t happened, so it won’t happen.
And now we’re here, on the precipice of the final season of this grand grand story, and it’s not just a possibility, it’s a likelihood. An ‘all signs point to here’, an ‘all roads lead to this’.
The creators are revving up for the plot twist of a lifetime; a reveal of Mike’s thus far unrevealed internal struggle. it’ll be a cultural reset, a shockwave, a disbelief producing outrage and disgust from some but tears of disbelieving joy, from others. That one of THE biggest shows of all time, created slowly over the course of the better part of a decade, watched and praised and anticipated all over the world… reveals that it was the story of the two main boys falling in love, slowly, the entire time. The cultural whiplash will, I think, be unparalleled.
And yea, obviously maybe we’re wrong about how the story will end. If so, I suppose I’ll delete this when the time comes. But I don’t think I’ll need to. I’m more than excited and proud to be a byler and a stranger things fan in general and I love being on this ride with all of you.
Here’s to the grandest grand finale we can hope for. 🎉 XX
stranger things looooves using the editing to mislead the viewer. so I decided to pick this scene of owens and el and entertain the idea that he didn't talk about vecna here and that he actually knew what was happening aka MF flaying everyone & messing with their memories.
well we still don't know what project nina really is, so why not?
and it works oh so well
first of all, his wording is not vecna/henry specific at all
and he says that el is the only one who can actually help, but she should be separated from everyone else. sounds like she has a very important role, but she'll need to do it alone?
something something el jumping to the void with mike and says he will understand later why she had to go
...it works with the idea that everyone in hawkins was already flayed by that point
if she goes she will also get flayed. so what if I say el might never went back and she's working from the outside of the camazotz to bring them back?
sounds like owens is not fucking with the size of this problem, so do we really believe that his plan was only to get el's powers back and that's it? like go fight vecna girl i believe in you yayy
i would rather believe he had a more sophisticated plan
to state a little bit of the obvious, but i've not seen anyone say it plainly yet, literally every plotline in s4 sets up conformitygate. it's literally:
1. hawkins - setting up vecna as an antagonist and how he uses his powers. he wins, ultimately.
2. california/nevada - setting up the mike and will romance and the mike and el breakup before a sudden pivot.
3. nina - about being imprisoned in memories.
4. russia - a prison escape that is literally the only plotline where they actually WIN win.
and alllllll the symbols in s4 are so clear compared to previous seasons. the colour coding is 10x more obvious. the subtext is 10x more blatant. like. c'mon.
For those who don’t know, the story of Strahd is mainly about doomed love. Strahd was a human in love with his brother’s soon to be wife, Tatyana. He murdered his brother to be with her. This caused him to become a dark vampire lord. She ended up falling to her death. Strahd became cursed to remain undead and forever hunt and lose reincarnations of his love. x Sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it? Like Strahd, Mike has been cursed to not grow up, and forever attempt to find then lose his love, Will.
Strahd rules over Barovia, which is a part of the shadow realm. Within Barovia lies Vallaki, where Mike essentially sent Will. The interesting thing about Vallaki is that it is ruled by another character considered a ruthless cruel man. This man believes that “if he can make everyone in town happy, then Strahd will lose his power inside Vallaki’s walls.” x The reality is, no one is really happy within Vallaki, it’s all a facade. In other words, if Strahd (Mike) believes those within Vallaki (Will) are happy, he will leave them (Will) alone. But the truth is, Will is not actually happy and Strahd/Vecna hasn't been truly defeated...
Mike was Vecna'd from the start, and his weird hair in S5x04 [Sorcerer] proves it
(along with some other stuff, obviously...)
First up, here are two things you should know:
The 'Henry' hairstyle is used to signify Vecna's influence on a character. It's a neat, slightly long side parting with the forehead showing. (e.g. Karen, Nancy, Dustin and Mike in the Epilogue.)
Orange tones are used to signify Vecna's influence on a scene (all of Season 5 is orange-toned, especially Camazotz + the Epilogue; Will wears orange after entering Vecna's mind)
In a SINGLE SCENE, this guy's hair went from short + messy with no parting -> longer, neater with a side parting and his forehead showing. -> short + messy with no parting again.
When did it start?
In his first talk with Will, Mike's hair is normal and the sky is blue.
Murray opens the trap door.
Mike suddenly stops in his tracks and urgently prompts Will into considering that he has powers like Vecna. From Will's POV, Mike's hair is suddenly longer, neater with a side part - like Vecna. (Directly after the trap door!!!)
Then, the first time that Mike directly compares Will to Vecna, the sky suddenly turns orange.
They keep talking. Cut to Robin in the trap door.
From Robin's POV, Mike's hair is normal, and the sky is blue, not orange (it all looks normal, because Vecna wants Will, not Robin).
It's as though Vecna is influencing Mike somehow, in order to convince Will that he is like him.
This would unfortunately be a genius move on Vecna's part.
Mike is the ONLY PERSON Will would possibly listen to after being compared to Vecna – the guy who is "evil and hellbent on destroying the world" and who literally DESTROYED WILL'S LIFE. Can you imagine Steve or even Joyce telling Will he's like Vecna, and him actually listening? SMILING?!?!?!
Remember, Vecna wants to work together with Will. He said it himself; "We are going to do beautiful things together". By listening to Mike and becoming a Sorcerer, Will fell right into Vecna's trap.
Nancy: “Before he took Holly, Vecna stalked her, but… he didn’t appear as Vecna, he appeared as Henry. As a friend.”
Cut to Will.
Mike: “...I highly doubt his long-term goal is friendship.”
Vecna isn't using his old tactics. HE'S APPEARING AS A FRIEND. That friend just looks a little... different than usual.
I know there’s only a few conformity gate people left with me, but for anyone out there still interested, I’ve compiled a list of every piece of evidence I’ve seen recently that points to the idea of more content coming soon, I posted it on Twitter but I’d like to show it here too.
If you’re totally off the conformity gate bus, that’s fine, but please don’t hate or harass because some people still believe it. I’m not trying to grasp at straws or get peoples hopes up falsely, I genuinely just see so much evidence that it feels statistically IMPOSSIBLE for any of this to be a coincidence anymore. Every day I am more sure of it as more things come out.
Both how little everything makes sense if it’s not true, combined with how much DOES make sense if it IS true, has convinced me that this isn’t over.
So here’s some of the evidence I’ve collected (and there’s SO MUCH MORE)
Warning, long post:
- The legal registrations of the last half of the episodes. That one lawyer looked at it and compared to previous seasons and it doesn’t match at all.
- The legal ‘out’ of how they technically didn’t charge anyone for the movie tickets because they were just ‘vouchers’
- The nearly no press after the finale, nearly no comments from cast, and no crew admissions even though the DNA’s should be ending and come on if the writing issues, production issues, filming issues etc really WERE as bad as they’re making it seem, you KNOW some crew member would be talking g about it by now
- It took double the length to film this season compared to any other season
- WAY higher budget for LESS content, LESS production quality?
- Both that it apparently took twice as long to write this season than the others (pointing to much more content, aligning with the budget increase and the filming time increase) AND just the fact that things they said about the writing timeline in the documentary vs everything else we’ve heard about writing timelines do NOT match up, the math DOESNT make sense- plus how the fuck would Netflix EVER let them start filming before the final script… and then EXPOSE that in a documentary?!?!?!
- The way Caleb said traitor and now that’s been scrubbed from the internet, Millie said meta and now it has too
- Steve saying he wants to live in forest hills which has only ever been the trailer park and was only nice in the NINETEEN FIFTIES
- Randy being the ONLY actor in this season to comment and he’s dismissing everything so hard so much so constantly. Going out of his way to. And in the show, his was the character that did that too
- Will references The Grail which is a movie that ends up breaking the fourth wall and it’s a documentary and they see the camera people and it all breaks down
- Still so many proofs of scenes that were cut / not shown (from max’s moms actors to the miwi CGI pics to the proof of the church filming etc) plus in late 2024 I think they claimed the 600 something hours of footage
- The amount of things that the cast said in interviews that straight up just DONT MAKE SENSE. like things that wouldn’t even make sense to lie about (like if they were just lying to hide they didn’t like the ending), lying about weirdly specific things
- For example Millie said ‘ every question she’s ever had about the show and the upside down got answered’ not only does that truly not make sense but in the actual finale it’s like they PURPOSEFULLY left SO many questions about EVERYTHING unanswered, especially the upside down.
- Caleb also gave us the word ‘Zenith’ and Zenith is a movie in which “ creates frustration and paranoia by chopping up its narrative…. It comes off as the director jerking the viewer around…. It’s an examination of the conspiracy fan psychology.” THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO US COME ON
- Script reading discrepancies- Charlie said he was in front of Noah and Finn and they both cried 20 minutes in. This does not match the footage they showed us. The white scripts versus the red scripts. Finn changing clothes mid video randomly, like they’re cutting together a bunch of unrelated footage to set a narrative.
- The duffers are answering questions in interviews more dumbly, dismissively, and vaguely than they ever have before, switching up the way they’ve always acted
- The fact that the documentary itself was just weirdly bad. The directing was weird the things they focused on were weird. The amount of time they spent on the duffers struggling with the writing and pointing out so many flaws that then never got fixed in the actual show. Why would they point out the flaws so clearly if it shows incompetence on their part unless they wanted us to notice those flaws? They focused on this more than they did on most of the major import scenes from this season too which immediately stood out to me as odd. And we think the Netflix execs, famously PERFECTIONISTIC AND ANAL, would allow ANY OF THIS, for Netflix’s BIGGEST PROJECT EVER??
- The fact that Netflix still has not made any official statement about this. In any other situation they would have. Every day they continue to not address it it feels less and less likely that this is a money making marketing ploy, because THE DOCUMENTARY IS OUT???? ALL THE STRANGER THINGS CONTENT IS OUT??? how would not addressing this make them more money besides keeping some people on the subscription a bit longer? That’s not a sufficient explanation to me. This is objectively odd behavior
- The ‘Mike wake up’ sign at the sponsored wrestling event perfectly matching the blank yellow sign in the background of the epilogue graduation (and what are the chances they’d leave something like that in the show anyway?)
- All the weird coincidences/changes/inconsistencies from the season of course- the dial color changing and them NOT changing it even though they changed Holly’s wardrobe mistake very quickly. It’s autumn leaves in the background at graduation even though it’s GRADUATION, it’s supposed to be SPRING. Will saying melvald’s milshakes, even though that’s not only obviously wrong but so specific to get wrong, something they so specifically showed us in TFS play. The vacuum at the graduation is one only sold in the 1950’s. Dustin calls the guy ‘a square’ even though that’s slang ONLY USED IN THE 50S AND WEIRD ANY OTHER TIME. All the characters specifically growing up to do things they’ve seemed they’d never want to do, like Robin wearing girly clothes and Nancy quitting her dream college and Max emulating her abusive brothers rage issues and Mike acting and dressing just like his father etc.
- The amount of parallels to movies that have said ‘this is the final one’ and then come out with MORE.
- The 11 tapes that were sent out to creators to decipher. The cursor flicker pattern decodes to ‘STILL HERE’. The audio pulse decodes to ‘VECNA LIVES’. The tape also gives hints to a timeline ‘needing to be reset’ and Eleven being missing from said timeline as an anomaly
- The fucking Morse code of the tape wall behind Robin in that one scene, spells out ‘U DID NOT STOP ME’ baby how could that possibly be a coincidence. Do you understand how low the probability of that happening is.
- The fact that all of this directly makes US Joyce Byers in season one, not being believed, looking for and holding onto obvious undeniable clues even though no one else believes us. Parallel to the fake Will Byers body
- This also makes US the children in Henry’s house in his mind. Being surrounded by an illusion and only some see how none of it is real. Trying to convince the others. Not being able to find the way out
- It also makes US Lucas- “is this all just Vecna messing with us again?” “I don’t know about you guys but I don’t believe in coincidences, not anymore”.
- The documentary ends with Finn in the light with upside down, looking particles around him, saying “something is definitely coming” which is in itself, very telling that they would end on those words and from Finn’s mouth especially, but now add to it that those words are the first ever said in the first episode of Stranger Things in season 1- “something is coming, something hungry for blood” WHAT ARE THE ODDS????
- Why the FUCK did Jimmy Fallon randomly in the middle of Maya talking look directly at the camera and say “meta” then look back and not explain it or acknowledge he did it at all. He’s in on it I swear
- Jaime saying “tomorrow it begins” and “eleven lives” on the show. No explanation of course
- The finale’s opening being a shorter length than any opening of any episode. When they cut to the epilogue it begins with NO YEAR and a heartbeat and a clock ticking. When it becomes Nov 6 earlier on, they show NOVEMBER 6 but again, no year. Before this season they have always shown the year when putting dates on the screen
This could have been basically the best queer story that’s ever been written. It could have been one of the best plot twists hidden in plain sight ever written. It could have been one of the best things that’s ever happened in queer media and genuinely been in queer history books. It would have been film history and taught in film schools. We were right there.
It was completely ridiculously perfectly set up for Mike to be one of the best written queer characters to ever exist, the most realistic, with a happy ending.
It was supposed to happen. How many times over these years have I imagined the world’s shock and reactions, the ripple effects, the tears of queer people out and closeted alike who didn’t see it coming and are overjoyed, the queer spaces of the world would have been lit up and alive and emotional so much it would have been legendary. I was prepared to live in a world where this is what happened, to deal with the homophobes backlash but know it’s worth it because of the queer love that was just brought to life in front of the whole world. But it died with us.
Why would they do this? How could they do this to us? Just to squeeze out a few more subscription dollars, or just to laugh at and play games with the stupid queers who give you money? Why does the cruelty always happen to us, in real life and on the screen? Why would you do this to us? The choice of showing them in love was SUCH a joke to you? SO funny, SO ridiculous, SO improbable?
No man. Someone’s lying about something. We weren’t crazy. We fucking weren’t.
I saw someone comment ‘why is queer people’s love always doomed and not destiny’
GENERATIONAL queerbait. Queerbait probably literally of the actual century actually literally. This was malicious, purposeful, calculated, orchestrated, statistically impossible not to be. This was evil, truly actually evil. Somebody is going to pay for this.
worst part is that they genuinely ruined a character that was loved by many queer, self repressed people (including me!) and gave him the saddest ending of all. even will has a happier one, despite not getting the love of his life in the epilogue. mike is just. left there. all alone and sobbing.
it honestly feels like such a slap in the face. taking a very much canonically suicidal, emotionally depressed boy and making him end up away from his friends, all alone in the basement and sobbing as he thinks about the most important person in his life slipping through his fingers.
such a slap in the face for every fan whos loved him so much.
i wasn’t manifesting anything, i was literally analysing the cinematography, the blocking, the colour theory, the narrative beats, all the stuff i was trained to look for during my TV degree. the signs were there because the show put them there.
the duffers absolutely queer baited the audience. everything I learned academically about visual storytelling was pointing toward a byler slow burn, and then they completely abandoned their own setup. we didn’t hallucinate subtext; we didn’t “make up” a ship. they built it, then pretended they didn’t, and the result reeks of homophobia.
they didn’t subvert expectations, they ignored their own narrative groundwork. that’s not clever writing, that’s just bad writing. they tore down a storyline they spent years constructing, and now the overall story makes zero sense.
this mike wheeler is not the same mike wheeler that recognized the sound of will’s breathing through a walkie talkie, stood up to his bully in front of the whole school after he mocked will’s death, who wouldn’t leave will’s side all of season 2, and who told will meeting him was the best thing he’s ever done
