i find it strange how people are willing to engage with will’s queerness only when it makes him miserable (i.e. homophobia or unrequited love) but are uncomfortable when he embraces himself fully (i.e. the coming out scene, the bar scene). i think there’s a lot of problems with how they wrote s5, but i wish people would stop trying to make will’s queerness revolve entirely around mike
this is absolutely true. people love queer characters when they’re sad and feel weird engaging with their happiness.
there’s nothing wrong with enjoying angst. i like the s3 will/s5 mike comparisons. but a focus on that coupled with the idea that anything in s5 about will possibly moving on from mike is ooc and bad writing is. um.
i hate when people act like will would hate sex and gay bars because he’s a csa victim like do you have any idea how tone deaf and homophobic that is???
exactly like. aww poor will he would hate gay sex 🤕 that’s so scary and deviant ☹️ i’m glad will is one of the good gays who doesn’t like nasty evil sex 🥰 and he doesn’t engage in scary queer culture like going to bars 😨 or drinking alcohol the devil’s kool-aid 😒 and he will be a virgin forever because he’s one of the good ones 😁 he just stays in the closet and heartbroken forever saving himself for mike ☺️ do you hear yourselves
Hi! I saw that you didn't think the season 3 finale was Mike's gay realization. What do you think was going on with his face journey right after El kisses him?
hi anon thank you for the question!
so the season 3 finale is often pointed at as the moment mike realized he was gay and in love with will, but as you may have gathered, i don’t think that’s true.
tl;dr: if famously bad-at-lying mike wheeler was consciously trying to hide romantic feelings for will, we would know about it.
i know this is a contested idea in the fandom. there are arguments to be made for mike knowing how he feels by s4 — his nod in the “sometimes it’s scary to open up like that” sequence is one that comes to mind immediately — but this is what i think! and i’d be happy to expand more on any point if anyone is curious :)
i know we all know what happens in the episode, but just to recap— it’s definitely true that SOMETHING is going on in his head that’s not “wow i love her!”
as you said there’s his “face journey;”
the open closet;
his avoidance before the kiss;
the fact that he doesn’t say he loves her back;
the (possibly fake) script where mike is shown thinking something to the effect of “what the hell just happened?” after their kiss;
the way he collapses into will’s hug;
the shot zooming in on him as the byers drive away while the words “lately i’ve been feeling distant from you. like you’re pulling away from me or something” are read;
the next shot he’s in where hopper reads “if i’m being really honest, that’s what scares me. i don’t want things to change;”
and the way he hugs karen when he gets home (“…to turn back the clock. to make things go back to how they were”).
but i don’t think any of this necessarily means that he’s realizing he doesn’t love el and is actually in love with will. a lot of it — like the closet — is very subtextual and doesn’t necessarily represent mike realizing that he’s gay at that moment, even if it is indicative of his queerness. mike (and the rest of the wheelers) is shown repeatedly to not like two things: changes and lies.
on the topic of lies: he gets upset when any characters lie to him, to each other, or to themselves. he’s the one who first said “friends don’t lie.” among other examples, he gets extremely upset so with hopper for lying in s2 and is angry with el (and will) for her lies in s4. in s3 when hopper forces him to lie about his nana, it’s very obvious that he’s consciously lying, is not good at it, and doesn’t want to be doing it.
and on the topic of change, he gets upset in s2 when his parents try to make him get rid of his old toys and when the other boys try to invite max into the party he gets irrationally angry. (we can discuss why he did those things ad nauseam without reaching a conclusion. but it’s irrefutable that he liked things the way they were.) this is also subtextually expressed by the aforementioned “if i’m being really honest, [ie not lying] that’s what scares me. i don’t want things to change.”
so mike is a guy who doesn’t like being lied to, doesn’t like lying, and wants things to stay the same. okay, awesome, we knew that already. but how does that relate to this scene and his behavior in s4?
whatever your perspective on milkvan vs byler, it’s undeniable that both el and will are very important to mike. his girlfriend and his best friend, both of whom he has lost and believed dead at least once in the past two years, are now moving across the country. this is a really big change and obviously something that he would be upset about.
if we’re going down the “hopper’s quotes are insights into mike’s psyche” route, which i think is reasonable, this interpretation makes sense too. he “[doesn’t] want things to change,” and he wants “to make things go back to how they were.” obviously it can’t say textually “i’m realizing that i don’t actually love you” because that wouldn’t make any sense and would ruin the suspense in s4-5, but it does place mike in this time of “i want things to be simpler, like how they used to be, before my feelings were complicated” not “i want things to change even more drastically and break up with my girlfriend.” he doesn’t want to think about his blossoming inability to be both a good boyfriend to el and a good friend to will; he wants to go back to a simpler time. (which i’m aware doesn’t necessarily conflict with him knowing his sexuality! i think at this point in time, though, it makes more sense for him to be, as lizzy mcalpine says, “pushing it down and praying.” if you don’t think about it, it’ll go away.)
back to the idea of both will and el being gone at the same time, which before in the show has only happened very briefly (and debatably s2. but whatever) is going to be very stressful to mike. whether you think he’s conflicted about “missing will more than el” or not, it’s also reasonable that he is in shock about how different his life is going to be without either of them in it. i would argue that the experience of having a major life event end and being unable to do anything about it besides stand around with a slack expression on your face is pretty universal.
and i’m not saying that mike can’t also be really distressed about why kissing el feels maybe not how he’d like it to or anything of the sort! but to me the big takeaway from that scene is how hopper’s letter coincides with the belief that mike himself has been pushing for the entire season— “we’re not kids anymore.” mike is being forced to realize that the thing he’s been pushing on (mostly) will all summer is actually coming true.
now this is all very compelling and i’m sure you’re nodding along and thinking “okay kat this is great but nothing you’ve said actually contradicts mike realizing he’s gay in s3.” that’s because my main issue with this interpretation of mike isn’t his anti-change trait, it’s his anti-lying trait.
before s4 came out, i also thought that the s3 epilogue was mike’s gay awakening. but i think it does him a disservice to say that he would be okay with acting the way he does towards will and el in s4 if he actually knew the reason behind it!
mike has had no problems challenging others on either important or unimportant topics throughout all four seasons of the show. obviously being gay is a little more controversial than, say, yelling at his family at the dinner table, but i think that if he was aware of his sexuality, he wouldn’t have a problem telling people who care about him who he knows are safe. he might feel like a nobody next to el, or he might feel unneeded, but he doesn’t feel like “a black hole” or “a mistake” specifically because of his sexuality in the same way that will does.
he doesn’t feel like he is enough for el, but he doesn’t like feeling that way. his inability to say he loves her demonstrates his awareness that he doesn’t. has no problem demonstrating affection when he genuinely feels it (“you saved us, do you understand? you saved us;” “well, if we’re both going crazy…” etc) so i don’t think that his hesitance to say he loves el comes from being scared of losing her. (obviously. hello byler nation.) at the same time, for the same reasons, i don’t think he would stay in his relationship with el if he knew that he literally could not love her romantically. he knows that something is wrong in their relationship, but he thinks that if he continues on the path of trying to love her he will be able to eventually. his eventual acceptance of lying in his monologue to el — with will pushing him into it — implies that he is still hoping for this relationship to work out, (if you tell everyone it’s true, it will come true!) which i don’t think meshes very well with the perception of him being completely aware that he does not and will not ever love a girl romantically.
i think being gay would be no exception to mike “i’m the only one who cares about will” “i don’t know why i didn’t just tell you, everyone at school knows” “this is total bullshit” wheeler’s general philosophy. (within reason of course! i am aware of the culture of the 1980s.)
additionally, we know from s3 that mike is bad at lying in addition to not liking it. all the scenes in s3-4 where he’s either textually lying or being weirdly artificial are awkward and almost cringy. (even in s1, the scene where he hides el from karen is extremely obvious and suspicious.) his scenes alone with will in s4 present a direct contrast to all of this. the way he treats will in s4 when they’re on good terms is very similar to the way he treats him in s1-2, when it is generally agreed he isn’t aware of his sexuality. he is genuine and emotionally vulnerable, even when they’re fighting. if famously bad-at-lying mike wheeler was consciously trying to hide romantic feelings for will, we would know about it.
https://www.tumblr.com/escapefromcamazotz/807943034792738816/like-one-of-wills-biggest-flaws-is-that-he-puts?source=share reading this post made me think of another post I saw once about how, when it comes to Will's relationship with Lonnie, the fandom tends to conflate their relationship and Will's opinion of him as the same as Jonathan's when that's... not really the case, and I think they said that Will didn't seem that angry, more sad, about Lonnie in the few times he did talk about him in flashbacks. Makes me disappointed how Lonnie was never really mentioned again after S1, let alone make some kind of appearance in S5 like people speculated
totally agree!!! ugh lonnie should have come up more. and i think you can see that tendency to view people as better than they are in those scenes with jonathan too— like when jonathan asks him if he likes baseball and he says basically “no, but i don’t know, it’s fun to go with him sometimes.” will sweetie i know that’s your dad it’s okay to miss him but they were looking for you in the trunk of his car
omg thank you prim… world’s hardest question if i’m being honest. i feel like i always recommend the same fics to people but what can i say they are so good… i’m gonna do ones that were like foundational byler texts to me as a young child. not in order or i’d die.
when she left by @/stuck-in-hawkins… i read this fic when i was 13 and i think about it at least once a week. the author is like half a milven shipper and you can really really tell with the angst but the characterization especially of will is so so so good. it feels like it could be a post-season 2 au published last week with how consistent it is with the way they act in-show but it’s actually 7 years old. makes me scream makes me cry. and the sequel is unfinished but it has my absolute favorite will career choice ever
cosmonaut. by ghostshaming. one of the coolest au concepts i’ve ever heard of + the plot feels so real to the show + also like. i started reading it in middle school and the last chapter was published like a week after i graduated high school. very special to me personally for that reason. and the slow burn is soo slow it’s masterful.
putting undertow and kiss it better by @/byeler together. i’m kind of a hypocrite for saying this because they have other fics i haven’t read but genuinely. if you are a byler shipper and you haven’t read these you need to do so asap. they are truly the bedrock of the fandom To Me.
yesterFriday by nbfutureboy. really really good if you like timeloops or plot-heavy fics. reread it recently and it’s honestly kind of scary. very very very #theallegory and i had to reread some chapters multiple times to fully get the plot (in a good way). also number one on the list of “fics with lines of dialogue that will deal you psychic damage after watching season 4.” (it’s kind of a long list. this is something i think about a lot)
where is my mind? by ciders. (yes, the same ciders who wrote touch like velvet. lol) i haven’t reread this one in probably three years so i don’t have much to say about it but it’s really really good. makes me sick to think about.
My current silly joke theory is that byler actually was the plan all along but unfortunately ross duffers ex wife liked it too much (I mean she did direct the fear street movies that basically featured lesbian byler) so it went out the window with the divorce, along with half the other relationships (I'm just joking to cope please don't take this seriously lol)
i agree. slash j. too bad poor sarah was dragged into it as well. i guess romance is dead 💔 or maybe ross decided to drag matt’s marriage down with his
wait im sorry if this is a stupid question but how is steves baseball thing conformity 😭 like i get mikes writing thing because what. but i feel like steve becoming a teacher/coach for kids makes sense and is so good and works for him??
hiii i think for steve’s arc it makes sense to be a teacher/coach but baseball specifically in the show is a recurring symbol of conformity!
in season one lonnie makes will play baseball/watch games with him. will admits to jonathan that he doesn’t even like baseball. that’s where we get the “you shouldn’t like things just because people tell you they’re supposed to” line! baseball is established as something lonnie — violent enforcer of oppressive conformity — likes and tries to force on will.
this comes back in season 3 in billy’s flashback scene, where his dad yells at him for not being good at baseball, ie, not living up to his expectations of masculinity. will and billy’s dads both also call them homophobic slurs— associating baseball with homophobia, toxic masculinity, and violence.
most notably imo, and in expansion of both of these ideas, will destroys castle byers with a baseball bat he had inside of it. castle byers is a symbol of his creativity, self-expression, and freedom from lonnie, and he destroys it with the very symbol of the conformity his dad tried to force on him.
so yeah, i think having steve — the character who starts the show as the most conformist — appear as a baseball coach as robin says that she thinks the “hawkins curse” has been lifted was… definitely a choice. (i thought the curse came from the everyday mundane oppressiveness and bigotry of reagan era small-town america… curious!)
The storyteller and the mage don't hit the same as any Byler ship names bc is sooo manufacturer (I believe 👆🏻🤓) but I think even if it had come natural, there is no way they could work something better than any of the Byler 40+ other ship names:
Byler? Peak
Miwi? Peak
Cleradin? Peak
Wizeheart? Peak
The heart and the sorcerer? Peak
The illustrator and the storyteller? Even though I would go for "the writer" I think that also would be peak.
And I think the fandom is capable of coming with more and more options that would fit so well with the characters, even as a joke lol
Like idk DM and the puppet master?, Vecna and Tammy Thompson? I think netflix didn't put enough love in their main couple name lol
youre so real for this… also making me realize they wrote “i believe” partially because mleven didn’t have a little catchphrase that was just for them. (el’s goodbye/death shouldn’t have been ABOUT MIKE in the first place but it was. so i’m meeting them at their level by making this about a ship war.) they don’t have “shared trauma” or enzo’s or “presumptuous” or a movie date. most of those things are getting a little manufactured by s5 but at least they already existed. mleven have nothing like that im pretty sure unless you count “friends dont lie.” which applies to the whole party. so they wrote “i believe” and then they had everybody say it. they are not serious people. live laugh love crazy together
