nell

20s. i got here approximately two seconds ago, bear with me. conformitygate truther (replies used to be bugged but they're fixed so i can comment now!!)

[vecnapilled]

on 5x01 from a conformitygate perspective — or, why i think will is the final boss.

first, obligatory disclaimer that if you don’t believe in conformitygate and don’t feel like reading this anyway, this post is not for you. nor is it one that really attempts to convince you, because it is already long enough and i simply have other things i want to talk about.

i decided to watch episode 1 keeping in mind what @thebestofmyrmidons really helpfully illustrated in their post regarding the rather odd situation regarding season five’s copyright; that is, that episode one of season five, and only episode one, have been officially registered with copyright databases, and that really the only reason they’d have for doing so would be that the episodes as they currently are are not their final versions.

except, again, for episode one. so whatever they’re saying in there, they’re leaving that locked in. watching it with that perspective in mind, i came away with a couple of notes.

(that very quickly spiraled into a larger theory about the overarching plot of the season. because of course it did, lol.)

so.

- the episode literally tells you, multiple times, that playing at normalcy and trying to keep everything as it is and under wraps isn’t the right thing to do! robin keeps hurting vickie by having to lie to her, mike insisting there aren’t any monsters around is only making holly more scared of them, dustin is the only party member still publicly standing up for eddie while the others are keeping their heads down and gets singled out and beat to shit because of it, and hopper not letting el move forward is just making her feel like she’s stuck and has to keep pushing herself more. i don’t know about you, but i find it kind of hard to believe that a season that makes a point of establishing a certain stance in its opening would entirely forget about and actively go against said stance in its finale. this isn’t just a case of the series going against a general theme it’s had, it’d be a concentrated arc going against something it went out of its way to inform you of in the first place.

- joyce is also more or less doing the same with will, which is making him frustrated as well, but the difference between those two and hopper and el (and why joyce denies that she’s doing the same thing when her and hopper talk) is that will is just as dependent on having his mom around as she is on keeping him close by. that scene where she snaps him out of his vision and he immediately clings to her establishes how this is how this situation always goes for both of them. joyce is the person will is relying on to snap him out of things. which is kinda why i think joyce will die, but i’ll get to that in a bit.

- i remember reading a post that talked about how mike has never really been directly confronted, more or less by himself, with any kind of severely dangerous situation. he’s always been more on the outside looking in to the terrible things directly happening to someone else he knows (like will or max). this is why i think his advice to holly is to tell her to imagine that holly the heroic is simply by her side, and there for her, because that’s the kind of support you need when something terrible is happening to someone you love.

so holly clings onto her necklace when the monster comes, and it doesn’t do her shit, because sitting and knowing someone is next to you doesn’t really do anything to help if you’re caught in a situation that absolutely demands for someone to act. this is why she decides to become holly the heroic for herself! and there are plenty of great posts that discuss how holly here is more or less standing in for mike. (@astrangerthingsblog has some really excellent ones!!)

and so with all of that being said, i really think will is the final boss here. because we already did a giant monster fight in episode 8, with everyone there essentially filling the exact same role, so i don’t think they’d just do a giant monster fight Again But Longer This Time, because if mike is supposed to be our main guy here i don’t know what he specifically could do against a giant monster that would feel particularly impactful, personal to his character in that truly no one else could have done it, or believable. people were criticizing that everyone was there in the final battle, but i don’t think that’s necessarily the issue. the issue is more that there’s a giant monster, everyone wants to kill it to a largely equivalent degree, and that’s kind of it. vecna’s got slightly more personal dynamics going for him, but despite what joyce with her axe would have you believe there’s really only 2 characters that would realistically be able to fully go up against him, and mike is not one of them.

if it’s an out-of-control will, though, then that changes things. because mike has to be there, obviously, and so do the rest of the party, and steve has to be there for dustin, and jonathan has to be there for his brother, and nancy has to be there for him, and— you get the point. now, there are layers to this conflict; who insists they still need to fight? who says they can’t? do people try and bring him back to himself? each person now has their own unique, individual stake and stance in this, which would create much more of a tense and climactic final ‘battle’ than a bunch of people firing weapons at a massive eldritch abomination that could take all of them out in approximately five seconds if it really wanted to.

there could be hordes of smaller creatures people individually have to take care of, and vecna is obviously still going to be involved, but i still think that will would be at the center of it all. because if mike and will are both intended to be at the heart of the season (ha), i don’t see how well that would be able to be executed if it’s yet another instance of will stepping forward to handle the full brunt of things, and mike again staying back and watching. (plus, this was literally already the ending of sorcerer. so i don’t see them doing it again, lol.)

(in regards to vecna in general, the fact that will’s connection to vecna was blatantly ignored in episode 8 in favor of having a physical confrontation and resolution of the conflict makes me think that that was them going ‘okay! we did it that way! happy?’ and then they’re going to turn around and make the actual one much more focused on an internal resolution. some sort of emotional catharsis will lead to that pain connection issue being resolved, and then the story can deal with vecna accordingly.)

so. joyce. if mike is one half of the core of the season, is finally going to be confronted with A Situation, and is going to have something to do with fully stepping into his bravery in the same way holly did, and will is what they’re actually all eventually going to be up against, i don’t think him doing it with the reassurance that the one person established at the start of the season to be the person who breaks will out of trances is also here in case he fails would land quite the same impact. but if joyce is dead, then mike i-need-to-feel-like-i’m-needed wheeler, who’s been made to feel during and in the time leading up to the coming out scene like he isn’t and has not a drop of supernatural power to his name running headfirst into the eye of the storm to try and save the single person he would do quite literally anything for even if he thinks said person doesn’t regard him the same way would be one of the bravest things he could do. and, with joyce gone, something genuinely only he could do.

will, i think, is still largely motivated by fear. his coming out scene was supposed to be him reclaiming some of that back away from vecna, but regardless of how possessed you think he was in that scene (melvad’s milkshakes will haunt me forever) i don’t think that we can fully say that this is enough to say he’s worked himself through that. he’s terrified of this connection to vecna he has, he’s terrified of these visions he’s plagued by, he’s terrified of how and when all of this will come back and hurt him or his friends again, and i think he would massively prefer if he could just be rid of all of this and never have to deal with any of it ever again. and while i absolutely do not blame him for that, if we compare this to the allegory they make sure to remind us of again in episode 1, this is not something that can just be easily and swiftly deleted away from your head.

(and if we go with the theory that the epilogue is being created for everyone by a possessed will, is that still part of what’s fueling it deep down in his head? that he just wants all of this to be gone, and everyone to be fine, and none of it to ever bother anyone ever again? unfortunately for him, this season made a point of how it feels about playing at happiness.)

so if mike charges in, tells a will at his absolute worst just how much he cares about him and will always run to save him no matter what he’s been through or who he is now or what he can do, with zero expectation for anything in return, i think this would be an important moment for both of them. will might finally start to be able to work himself through his visions on his own, though mike has of course proven that he will always be there for him when he needs more help. tangled being on the inspo board means that we could very well get some sort of ‘mike sacrifices himself to sever the connection and will’s love brings him back’ situation, but whether that connection is removed or simply diminished to a point where will isn’t as affected by it anymore remains to be seen.

and gay love saves the world. amen.

[vecnapilled]

stranger things is, fundamentally, a show about the queer experience— and it always has been. (season five, part two)

(this post picks up immediately where the last one left off, so i'd go and read at least that one if you haven't! or re-read it, if you need to. i sneezed and a month went by, lol.) (seasons 1+2) (season 3) (season 4) (season 5 part one)

in my previous post, i left off on the following questions:

can HENRY actually possess people in the first place?

and, perhaps more importantly...does he even actually want to?

i know that this seems like a silly thing to call into question, because basically everyone— including myself, in some of my other posts!— has spoken about will being directly possessed by henry specifically this season as something that definitely has to be happening at some point. 

but, like. possession is a mind flayer thing. will not wearing a jacket and standing with his hands like that in shock jock are indicative of the mind flayer possessing him, not henry!

(because most of us have thought of that hand position as ‘henry’s pose,’ but it…doesn’t really make sense for it to be, right? the similar hands were a visual cue to reference henry back to billy, not the other way around. it’s a small hint that henry is also flayed (because he is) and cannot be trusted. the mindflayer is the thing that makes you act uncanny and speak strangely and stand weirdly, because it’s an eldritch being from another dimension that has never had to deal with having arms before. henry understands humanity to a fault, because he himself is human in a way mindy over there is not. but i’ll get more into that later.)

though the characters, including henry himself, like to say that henry is the one holding the reins of the mind flayer (because turning your anger towards one man feels more productive and actionable and solvable than turning it onto the shadowy, incomprehensible existence of evil in the world), you don’t even have to have seen the stageplay to know that this is absolutely not the case.

from the way henry and el are framed in season 4, to he and will being foils in the same way will and billy are, to the themes of both seasons 4 and 5 i’ve already discussed, to the fact that the show literally spells this out to you point blank— this is not a ‘partnership,’ nor is henry ever the one primarily in control. 

henry tells will that will’s powers are henry’s powers, when they are literally, as illustrated in episode 8, very much not! henry’s powers are the mind flayer’s! and these three characters don’t all use them in exactly the same way (which is why both will And henry are needed, but i’ll talk more about that in a bit). the mind flayer directly possessing people does not necessarily mean that henry can also directly possess people— nor, actually, am i sure he would even want to. 

when henry gives the mind flayer’s powers to will, he does so via that vine into his mouth. the symbolism here is not hard to parse, and i think we can all understand what the allegory being presented is. 

but remember— henry is also a victim of this same trauma, in both its literal and allegorical form. will is connected to the hivemind through something being put into his mouth, while henry is connected to the hivemind through the mind flayer putting itself inside of him. 

i’m trying to speak very lightly, here, but i’m sure you can see the sort of implication this creates metaphorically. henry, even when continuing the cycle of abuse, does not choose to go about it in the same way as was done to him— the single most traumatic experience of his life.

what he does do is still horrible and invasive, of course, but in a different way. and instead of placing himself directly into his victims’ bodies, he places illusions in front of their eyes, and pushes thoughts in their own voice into their heads. it’s much more hands-off. and he really, really doesn’t like when will speaks to him in his head— nor has he ever once initiated a mental conversation himself. 

so…what does this mean, then? 

well, the idea of will being possessed in shock jock now makes a little more sense. it isn’t vecna possessing will as he’s enacting a plan designed to hinder vecna specifically and not sabotaging it at all for some reason, it’s the mind flayer possessing will and withholding the information it learns from henry in order to further its plans for the both of them along. 

what are these plans, you ask? 

this is where we can delve into what i’m sure you’ve been wondering about in regards to my take on henry— then what the hell is the melvad’s milkshakes line about?

while this moment obviously indicates the presence or influence of henry here in some capacity, that doesn’t necessarily have to indicate a direct possession where henry is literally piloting his mouth. i think it’s far more likely that this is a result and consequence of will, as he so frequently does during this season, tapping into the hivemind! the valve connecting both of their heads has been intentionally loosened, and more of henry’s thoughts, opinions, and ideas are now being sent directly over to will. this also explains the ‘vessels’ line, will calling the kids that were taken ‘weak,’ and his arc across the season in general.

because this blending of thoughts is exactly what the mind flayer wants to ensure. 

will’s side of this season is something i’ve already delved into at length in previous posts, and i still do largely stand by what i said there, despite my opinions on the manner of henry’s involvement shifting. 

henry and will are narrative foils, in that they are who the other could have been had the circumstances of their lives been just the slightest bit different. in the case of these two, the thing that fundamentally separates them is the thing will byers is able to find and feel in spades absolutely anywhere he goes— love! love for the people in his life he holds the most dear, and the love he receives from them in return. and this applies to joyce, and to jonathan, and to lucas and dustin and el, but it most especially applies to mike. 

will is mike’s strength in the same way that mike is will’s heart; they each help the other connect with the parts of themselves that are oh so prone to getting lost. mike helps remind will of who he is whenever he needs it, but will does the same for mike! they are at their best and most comfortable with themselves when their relationship is at its best.

and when said relationship is at its best, mindy and co. cannot win against our crew. mainly because, in order to win, they need the one thing the love mike and will have for each other keeps getting in the way of: a will who accepts the presence of the mind flayer in his head, and its usage of him, with little resistance or rejection. 

a will who thinks like henry. 

and, much like mike, i don’t mean a will who's become an evil supervillain hellbent on destroying the world— i mean a person who has tried to rationalize the terrible things that have happened to them, and so assumes that something different about them specifically was what caused them to be targeted out of everyone else in the first place. 

henry wants to see will’s mindset more resemble his, because it is the thing about will that both fascinates him and enrages him to no end— that, despite having gone through nearly all of the same things henry has, will (thanks to the love that surrounds him!) has not let his sense of self nor his faith in the world be so thoroughly shaken as henry has his. bad things happen to people because they themselves are bad. bad things happen to henry because he himself is bad. 

this is how he can continue the cycle of abuse with will and the children; he feels they deserve it in the same way he does. he thinks that everything is in service of them coming to this new understanding of the ‘truth’ of the world and their place within it, as he had (which is notably different from how he treats the people he curses). he looks at will, and he doesn’t understand why he isn’t getting it. 

the mind flayer, on the other hand, has its own, entirely separate motivations. regardless of whether it pointed will out to henry, or henry selected him from specific criteria it had relayed to him, i think will was chosen based on the thought that he, with how similar their backgrounds were, would fold under the weight of the mind flayer’s presence as quickly as little henry had. 

because, to be clear, the mind flayer does need both henry and will. they fill in two fairly important gaps in regards to the problems that stand between it and the world it so badly wants to destroy; it doesn’t understand people, and it cannot physically be in this world itself. 

because have you noticed that mindy is actually…really bad at subtly possessing people? 

if you’re flayed, you act WEIRD! you act off! you shy away from even slightly warm water, and stare blankly at the people you’re supposed to know, and speak strangely, and only know one thing to do with your hands— it is incredibly obvious that something is going on, and you aren’t yourself. but this is kind of the only way it knows how to integrate itself into a human’s mind, because why would an eldritch monster know how to accurately emulate the human experience right from the start?

henry, though, is human. and, as will’s foil, can read and understand the feelings of the people around him in the same way will can read and understand his own. he was the ‘neighborhood scout;’ he’s constantly on the lookout for people struggling with an issue he has to very quickly surmise the details of. the mind flayer needs him for the way he can understand what people are thinking, and use that knowledge to quietly influence them without ever being noticed. 

but henry works in the mind, only. he creates illusions, not tangible objects. for that, you’d need more of…a builder. 

and so, much like the tunnels, will’s artistic talents are needed to create original things from scratch in the physical world. things that, like the tunnels, are designed to be hidden. put a pin in that for later. 

so this is what i think likely happened:

in season one, will was taken, and brought into the hivemind. however, he’s very quickly rescued, which didn’t leave very much time for the mind flayer to use or get to him in the way it wanted to. so, no problem, it’ll just possess him directly— but that doesn’t work, either. in season three, it gives up trying with will for the moment in favor of finding its own way of creating a physical form. but this is quite complicated, and takes a bit of time, and once again fails to work out in the end. season four, it’s now brought out henry, though the ‘entering-into-physical-reality’ part of the plan is still a bit messy and very easily noticeable. since will hasn’t really tried to engage with the hivemind at all so far, there’s less of a risk in letting him walk around all positive about the state of the world (where henry could potentially pick up on it) while mindy tries out her various other plans. 

in season five, though, this starts to change. and, haha, mindy absolutely needs to go and moderate that. but she can also use it to her advantage, and speed along the process of the Henry Mindset Shift— because, again, both he and will are going to be needed together to build something. 

since will’s positive relationship with mike cannot keep getting in the way of that, his trajectory for the season is born. 

a main part of my argument is that season five is a tragedy, and an intentional one at that (which can still be true regardless of your opinions regarding the possibility of future content). this means that, regardless of what the duffers say (since they’ve already contradicted themselves multiple times, remember?) the story is aware that will’s arc is not a positive one. his dismissal of his feelings as something trivial and a result of his own failings is the direct result of a mindset given to him by the villain! 

stranger things 5 is about the war between fear and love, and what then happens to that love when fear WINS. nearly every single character experiences a moment like this at some point or another in the story; this is an established theme. 

the story of mike and will this season is not that of a poor little gay boy learning he needs to get over his feelings for his straight best friend for his own good. it is the story of two people who, despite how sincerely and genuinely they love each other, let fear get the better of them in terms of whether this love is truly something that should be expressed or not.

mike is scared of the reaction should he ever be open with will, and will is scared that this thing he’s been feeling for years and years and years was never what he thought it was at all. 

so it’s calling into question two things that have almost always been near-universal constants: mike’s place in will’s life, and will’s comprehension and understanding of his own emotions! their respective perceptions of themselves have been shaken, except the person they usually go to to feel more grounded is right at the epicenter of it all.

and so, by the end, we have a will who’s lost his faith in his own judgement of himself, and a mike who’s completely lost his nerve. 

and, as i’ve already partly discussed, the writing on the wall for this can be seen even back in volume one. mike does not see what else there is that could be holding him back from getting the life for himself that he wants, and so he is unable to stop those things from creeping up on him in the end.

for will, the deconstruction of his opinion of himself actually can be traced back to the moment that (since we see it through mike’s eyes) is presented through the lens of it being the opposite: the ending of sorcerer. 

i have a separate post on this scene and my interpretation of it in detail, so to reiterate my main points (i’m going to copy over some text here):

– the ending of sorcerer is shot through mike’s overwhelmingly positive perspective of will partly in order to hide the fact that he is kind of the only person that holds this opinion of will’s powers— because will is absolutely not one of them. he’s always been terrified of his connection to vecna, and even with all of mike’s gushing this still hasn’t changed. mike (and subsequently the audience) see this moment for the display of true inner strength that it is. will does not. 

– directly after a speech in which vecna reframes will’s existence as inherently different to everyone else around him and tells him he does not belong in the world he lives in, will tells himself to ‘stop being scared of who he really is,’ and imagines scenes from his childhood where he constructed a place far removed from anything else that was meant to be somewhere he specifically could go. yes, mike is here, but only during the parts where will thinks about “looking for the answers in somebody else,” and the focus of the memories shifts more and more to will being alone until only jonathan’s hand remains in view. 

– this is will accepting the sentiment of vecna’s prior speech to him. that he is different from everyone else, and always has been, and why should he bother turning to other people when he alone can offer himself all that he could ever want? but relying on other people and trusting that they can help him when he needs it has always been one of will’s strengths! and tammy, to robin, was someone that couldn’t offer any answers to her about herself regardless.

– will has never wanted to give into and accept his connection to vecna, but when he sees mike in danger, he uses vecna’s words to tell himself that well? maybe i Am different, and that rationalization becomes the base at which he awakens his powers from. and once the relief that mike is alright wears off, you can see he sobers almost immediately. he did the one thing he never, ever wanted to do, and it didn’t even help save those kids. from this point on, you can tell that he isn’t really accepting any reassurances or encouragement joyce or mike try to give him. 

so where does that leave mike?

the trajectory of will’s mindset is fairly easy to track, but mike’s path isn’t quite as prominently featured. it’s no less as tall of an order, though— how do you make mike, of all people, doubt his relationship to his closest friend?

though the coming out scene does play a significant part in this, it’s more the moment that finally cements it rather than what initially gets the ball rolling. many people have also noticed that mike would almost certainly think will and robin liked each other, but though mike is absolutely a jealous, possessive little menace who would absolutely let this contribute to this idea, i don’t think it’s enough on its own. 

but do you remember what mike’s reaction was the last time something he’d defended to everyone else around him as being good and helpful started to look like it wasn’t?

because is this not…a fairly similar scenario? will is even thrown backwards in the air by his powers in the same way that lucas was thrown by el’s in the junkyard. 

which, in season one, makes mike immediately start to worry about what his (seemingly incorrectly placed) trust in el could mean for himself. if el is actually bad, and a ‘monster,’ does that make him bad for having so closely aligned himself with her? has he just doomed his best friend by putting so much of his attention into someone that was never actually going to help him at all?

he internalizes lucas’ words towards el, and ends up projecting that hurt outwards through his actions. here, i believe something similar may be happening, though in a less immediately visible sense. and with one, crucial difference. 

in season one, mike begins to doubt the nature of el’s character, and her ability to help them. then, she saves his life at the quarry, which immediately helps to reassure him that she really is good, and on their side.

in season five, however, will saving mike’s life is mike’s introduction to will’s powers. so this is of course part of what informs his extremely positive reaction to them— much like el, how could something that helped save his life ever be inherently bad? and something that came from will, no less!

and mike is correct in his assessment, mind. regardless of what will may think, his powers are a proof of his own strength he should take pride in, no matter their source.

it’s just that the story then does everything in its power to make mike start to think he could be wrong.

no one else seems to find will’s powers as wonderful and incredible as he does. they end up getting will hurt. they end up getting will trapped, with vecna, for a concerningly long amount of time. they result in a will who is miserable and distant and off even after he wakes up.

all because of something mike had so openly been singing the praises of earlier. 

and there’s no quarry scene, this time around. nothing to reaffirm the wonder of will’s powers to mike. he has to hold onto that belief with nothing but his own conviction— and we already know that this is the season where mike lets all of his quiet fears get the better of him.

i’ve already discussed his tendency to retreat whenever joyce is around, but i think the notion that he may have so wrongly misinterpreted something that was bringing will so much pain could have made him start to pull back, as well. what kind of ‘best friend’ is he, if everyone except him was able to see these powers for the negative force they may actually be?

i think this would certainly be enough to make mike start to question both himself, and the true nature of his relationship to will— this is the guy that overthinks everything, especially when it concerns an emotion of his he’s actually chosen to express. 

so the coming out scene is then what pushes him over the edge.

i, again, have a post on this scene in detail (i’d just swap any time i mention will being possessed by henry, to him having a stream of Henry Thoughts unwillingly sent directly into his head, pushed intentionally by henry or not. my opinions otherwise are still largely the same).

to put things very simply; this whole scene is an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (the 2004 film) parallel, and a ‘coming out scene’ is not its single and only function. essentially (and i will once again copy over some parts of my post):

ESOTSM is about a couple in a struggling relationship who decide to undergo a procedure that will remove their memories of each other. in this scene, will is dressed like the female lead, clementine, and mike is dressed like the male lead, joel. in the film, joel decides to get his procedure because he sees that clem has already gone and gotten hers done first.

in byler’s case, however, their memories are not being erased— they’re being reframed. turned sour at the root, so they can no longer turn to them to feel safe and reassured. the goal of their foes is to make it appear like the feeling that has always been there, and still exists currently, was never what either of them thought it was at all. to devalue mike’s role to will, and devalue will’s role to mike. 

in the coming out scene, will’s shiny new Henry Mindset has him thinking a few things (or at least is well on his way to):

all of the things that appeared to make him strong, are actually things that make him weak, and mean he will never fit in with the people around him. 

emotional vulnerability, what he always used to be able to turn to whenever he needed help, is nothing but a display of failure on will’s part.

there was a justified reason vecna decided to come after him in the first place, that has everything to do with who will is at his core.

he was taken and used because he is fundamentally, inherently different to everyone else around him. that difference is founded in him being queer, and that difference made him weak before vecna ever even set his sights on him.

and all of these contribute to his thoughts on his feelings for mike, which i’ll get to in a moment.

because this is another point where i want to amend a previous opinion of mine:

we already know why will calls everyone and their mother in to this scene instead of sitting down with mike one-on-one, and it has NOTHING to do with henry physically making him do so. it’s everything already established above, combined with something he himself said all the way back in the van scene!

if will has to lose people, has to lose mike, he prefers to do it quickly. like “ripping off a band-aid,” because drawing it out would only hurt too much. and will’s opinions regarding his sexuality have now shifted to being the thing that makes him fundamentally different from everyone else around him. 

by coming out, will thinks that he’s going to lose people! and he literally says that, in this scene!

so having to go through that, individually, over and over again, for however long it takes him to repeatedly work up the nerve? when he’s already been made to think his desire to be emotionally vulnerable is a weakness? sit anxiously in the thought, for months on end, that he’s only delaying the day he permanently loses everyone he’s ever cared about?

in season five, we watch mike slowly lose more and more of his nerve. but we’re also watching will lose his. 

he does try, at first, with just joyce. but then mike walks in, and…will sees his opportunity to rip off that band-aid. gets the thought to do so upon seeing mike. because if mike doesn’t find out right now, then he’ll just have to find out later, and— and that just applies to everyone else, too, doesn’t it? so he should just— get it all over with. do it once, and be done. everyone will know exactly who he is, and that will be that. it would hurt too much, otherwise.

fear is winning out, here. and, as is this season’s theme…look at the effect it has on the person will loves.

because this is gutting, to mike.

while he obviously is not entitled to this confession, the fact that will is practically handed the chance to speak with mike privately first and turns it down in favor of just telling everyone at the same time is effectively him saying that the way he would’ve conveyed this information to mike wouldn’t have been all that more intimate or different to how he’d tell it to someone he’s barely ever spoken to. why would will need to talk about this with mike, if he’d just be saying exactly the same thing he’d be then repeating to erica, or murray, or kali?

this is why it had to be a coming out scene, essentially. if it were any other topic, mike probably wouldn’t be as affected by being grouped with everyone else, but this is the single biggest secret will has ever kept. and mike’s importance to will’s internal struggles and feelings regarding it has been significantly reduced. it’s less that he told everyone at the same time, and more that he could’ve had a private talk with mike first and actively chose not to.

and then, there’s the tammy line.

we’ll get to mike’s potential thoughts on this in a moment, but let’s get back to where will is coming from. because, again, this is directly coming from a mindset given to him by the villain— the show is aware that this is a negative thing for him to be thinking. 

“and i uh, i had this…this crush on someone. even though i know…i know they’re not like me. but…but then i realized he’s just my tammy. and by tammy, i mean it was never about him. it was…it was about me.“

“it was never about him, it was about me.” will’s genuine, real love for mike has been taken, and reframed into something that only resulted as a consequence of will’s own faults. of his weakness, and his difference— his queerness— that all prove he will never truly fit in with the people around him. the love he feels for mike no longer feels genuine, but instead like a failing of will’s. ‘even though i know they’re not like me,’ he says. EVEN THOUGH. as if will is saying he knows that this was foolish, and his own fault, and his own failure, because why should he have ever let himself fall for someone who will never ever be like him? 

now, for mike— much debate has been had about whether he knows that he is the person will is referring to. and while i think this packs relatively the same punch either way (which i will elaborate on), i will say that mike’s “i should’ve been there for you” at the water tower makes a little more sense to be coming from someone saying “i should’ve been there for you when you were struggling with this person who didn’t like you back,” rather than “i should’ve been there for you when you were struggling because you had a crush on me.” the latter is just a little weirder to say instead of ‘i should’ve realized you liked me,’ or something.

(and i really do think that the only thing that would make mike accept the idea of will liking him would be will saying it as simply and directly as he possibly could. but anyway.)

if mike realizes this is about him: this pain is easily understandable. will has more or less just denounced mike’s importance to him directly to his face, and dismissed the possibility that he could return the feelings mike is currently dealing with to anywhere near the same degree. some friend he must be, if he never even noticed any of this hurt and anguish. to even be the cause of it. and he is like will, but— how can he say that now?

if mike does not realize this is about him: will is gay, but that still doesn’t mean he likes mike. in fact, he’d agonized over someone mike may have never even met for ages, and this pain was never something mike was able to be privy to despite how clearly important it was to will. some friend he must be, if he never even noticed any of this hurt and anguish. could he have made any of this easier? he actually is like will. but how can he say that now?

then, will goes through that long, long list of everything he and everyone he knows have in common…but still, after all of that, brings things back to their one, intrinsic difference. he is gay, and they, as far as he knows, are not. robin is a lesbian, yes, but she has also never been a victim of vecna’s, which has now been made to feel like an inevitable consequence of will’s entire identity. at the end of the day, he is queer. he is different.

this is why i find the execution of something like this in this particular setting so sinister, on the part of our villains. because even though literally everyone and their mother comes up to tell will that they will still support him, now, in the context of what used to make will feel safe and heard and understood (his emotionally vulnerable moments), a line has still firmly been drawn in the sand between them and him. they can tell him they love him and care for him all they want, but he will still always be aware of the single, glaring difference that will forever set them apart. 

and so, with this scene, mindy and co. have engineered the removal of each of the obstacles that stand in his way of making will see things the Henry Way— that he is the things that have happened to him (and is vecna not. the most literal representation of this you could get?), and everything he’s ever thought he felt towards these people that will never truly be like him was only ever a result of his own weakness that brought him to his situation in the first place. will can still be friends with mike, sure, but…will is who he is. so that’s all it’ll ever be, and that’s just how things are.

mike has spent the season, and the past 18 months, largely operating under fear, which has ended up hurting will due to what it keeps him from saying. that hurt then contributes to the fear will goes about his coming out with, which in turn ends up hurting mike due to what it keeps will from saying, and it’s really no wonder that things headed down the path that they did. 

again, will is our clementine, and so he resigns himself to living under this idea he accepts as unequivocal fact first. and it is mike— joel— witnessing this acceptance of a life with him removed from it that pushes him to follow right along in this mindset after him. 

this is, in essence, what the water tower scene is. joel decides to remove his memories of clem in the same way she has of him, and mike decides to put distance between himself and will…in the same way will has of him. we also get the line from mike i keep referencing across all of these posts due to just how helpful it is in unpacking his brain: the reason mike comes off as so oblivious towards everything is that he’s too stuck in his own head. so, no; he doesn’t know about the painting, he didn’t know will was gay, and again i’m still not sure if he knows he was the boy will liked. 

mike does not feel like a very good friend. clearly, his feelings for will have gotten in the way of him being able to be there for him when he needed it, and whether he knows who will’s “tammy” is or not i think he’d assume that will wouldn’t very much appreciate a confession of them. he and will are friends. mike has to let this thing that’s only getting in the way of that go. 

the important thing to remember here, though, is that joel regrets his decision. right before the removal of his memories is completed, he realizes that he does not actually want to get this procedure— though it is already too late to halt it. 

and mike really spends a lot of that epilogue looking miserable (and longingly at will), doesn’t he?

there has been much (much, much) discussion on the nature of this sequence, and what, exactly, it is, so i am going to attempt to also toss my hat into the ring with my own personal interpretation. based on what i’ve already said about will, henry, and mindy, you might be able to see where i stand. 

when will was used to build the tunnels, they were constructed while he was asleep. ie; his mind was used without him ever registering it, in order to build something in secret. much of this season is spent getting him to think more like henry, someone who has unquestioningly accepted the mind flayer’s presence in his head, and does not object to its usage of him for its own gain. 

almost like…whatever they need will for, cannot simply be completed during the hours when he is asleep. like it requires significantly more time, or energy, or attention to properly be executed. 

the issue with henry is that he cannot create anything tangible in the physical realm. will doesn’t have henry’s knack for working out exactly what makes other people tick. the connection between the two of them has been loosened to the point where their thoughts have started to bleed together. 

i think will, with henry’s mind freely pouring into his, is being unknowingly used to create a physical illusion in the real world. a ‘fake’ reality, for everyone to live under, and have their thoughts all be adjusted under the same general filter. the characters we see are all still themselves, it’s just the precedence they operate under that’s been altered. if you’ve played persona 5 royal, the fake reality at the end of that game is more or less exactly how i imagine this one to work. 

i don’t think this is all just a vision, nor something only affecting mike exclusively. dustin saying 50’s slang and getting a dnd fact wrong (and i actually have a whole other separate tangent of thoughts about the latter specifically, you can find those in my post on bandersnatchgate) are similar to melvald’s milkshakes for me in that i think they indicate more of a hivemind mind-meld rather than a direct puppeteering of someone’s body. 

where does the fake reality start? well, that’s a good question. again, similar to persona 5 royal, i think there’s a slight progression to its creation before it overwhelmingly takes over. so will’s time with vecna is what kicks everything off, and the epilogue would be the point of no return, so to speak. this means that tangible illusions have a chance to pop up at any time following will’s time with vecna. 

and we already know of one, don’t we?

el should not have been able to make physical contact with mike in the void, and yet i’m pretty sure we all remember what happens in there. 

but let’s go through it for posterity’s sake, shall we?

with the knowledge that this is, more likely than not, not el, (and instead an illusion subconsciously created by will based on what he Thinks mike wants to hear) i find it difficult to say that the main purpose of this scene is to proclaim mike wheeler a straight man.

i mean, i would find this difficult regardless (when has kissing a girl ever been the deciding factor of THIS character’s sexuality?), but this really only adds to that. 

because this is kind of mike’s worst nightmare, isn’t it?

i talk in my post on season 4 how the mike we see there, who understands he’s gay yet not that he’s in love with will, is perfectly fine with staying in a loveless relationship (romantically, he doesn’t hate her) with el for what he (thanks to the van scene) perceives as mutual gain through emotional security. because his parents aren’t in love, but they’re still together, aren’t they?

then, though, he realizes that he’s in love with will— and now that loveless relationship has something he can directly compare it to. something that certainly feels better than what he thought he was fine to settle with. he’s just a little too scared to actually go after it, which is how we end up with mike and el in their ‘contemplating divorce’ era that i discussed last time. 

and then that fear of going after it is slowly morphed into a shame at ever even wanting to have it. with the water tower scene, mike resigns himself to never getting what he wants with will (because it has been illustrated to him that he shouldn’t, for all the good it’s done their connection and relationship).

then, though, he also goes and loses el. both of his usual means for security (in different ways, but security nonetheless) have been ripped out from underneath him, and thinking about either of them will only ever remind him of the biggest source of pain surrounding them both.

because mike was “too focused on himself,” he missed all the ways in which his best friend was struggling and completely overlooked the way something was causing him pain, inadvertently making him pull away from their relationship. because mike is himself, even in el’s literal dying moments, he is unable to be the person she seemingly needs him to, and cannot love her back. this entirely undiscussed yet seemingly mutually agreed upon “divorce” maybe hadn’t been as mutual as he’d been thinking it was.

el, as always, is the subtextual representation of queerness as a concept. and usually mike's own, whenever they interact. why do YOU think he’s unable to say anything back to her in that moment?? 

this is all pre-timeskip, though. so who is the mike we see once we’re in it?

before i get into the meat of things, i do have to touch on one small detail that has caused me more grief and strife than it has absolutely any right to:

why the hell does mike send will to vallaki????

in their final campaign, mike looks will in the eyes across that table, and softly tells him he’s going to a place where people who do not comply with forced happiness will be either thrown in jail or put to death. will looks deeply touched.

why?

this is one of those things that truly, genuinely does not make any sense if you take the presentation of everything at face value, because in addition to how both of our characters react to this moment, there’s no way you as a writer are accidentally this on the nose nor know the name of this very specific place off the top of your head without also knowing the lore about it, and doing this to spite your own character for some reason like i’ve seen some people saying also doesn’t make any sense because why would you then write him looking happy about it? he’s evaded his own ‘punishment,’ at that point? this is a silly thing to say. 

anyway. the deal with vallaki, as i understand it (since i am not a dnd player, so bear with me if i miss something), is this:

the reason that vallaki’s evil baron forces all of his people to be happy, is that he’s convinced himself that this will help them win out against the even more evil emperor, strahd, who currently lords over them all.

strahd, you may remember, also happens to be the character this campaign has our party successfully defeat. mike is sending will to vallaki after its main antagonistic force has just been vanquished.

now. does this do anything to change the fact that the guy still in charge of the place was cruel and paranoid enough to believe this forced happiness would work? no, of course not. but remember where we’re operating from, here.

i talk about this a lot in my bandersnatchgate post, but the world the characters find themselves in at the end of the show has started to turn their thinking extremely black and white. as dustin (incorrectly) says in his speech, there now exists only “chaotic good” and “chaotic bad.” the ‘neutral,’ that middle ground, has been removed. you either accept the life in front of you, or you stop living life entirely. if things aren’t bad, then they must only be good— or as good as they're going to get.

i think the vallaki line is, more or less, a sign that mike is just as ‘got’ as all of his friends and family are. though he has his moments, he’s still ultimately stuck under the same mindset everyone else is. if the only reason the baron was doing this was because strahd was around, then with strahd gone, now everything will be fine! vallaki is just a place with a lot of festivals! now it can prosper! and so on. 

it’s “with vecna gone, what’s stopping us?” all over again. though mike seems to be at least partly realizing all the pitfalls that come along with this— despite the world he’s found himself in more or less mobilizing itself to try and convince him otherwise. again, if things aren’t bad, then they must surely be as good, and so on and so forth. 

and this ends up placing us back in a situation similar to season two, in a sense. queerness has, once again, been demonstrated to not have a place in the world our characters live, and mike is the one who is unwilling to let her go. interestingly, though, is the difference in how his faith in el's continued presence manifests. because i would argue that disintegrating into ash and exploding your entire body are, when you get down to it, not all that different of a way to go out, so i would say the situations he’s reacting to here are largely kind of similar. but anyway. 

in season 2, mike feels like he’s going crazy for how often he tries to talk to el despite everyone telling him she’s gone— but he still wants her in his life! he wants to know that she’d be allowed to stay with them!

in season 5, though, mike’s belief that el could still be out there somewhere does not extend to a faith that she would also be able to come back to them. due to the situations surrounding all of them, that bridge has forever been burned. 

a mike who has yet to realize that he is gay is confused by the continued existence of The Emotion I Felt When Will Left despite will no longer being gone, but hopes the people around him would be able to see it as the good thing he knows that it is.

and a mike who has now come to understand the truth about himself and his feelings for will while simultaneously being made to accept the idea that they have done nothing but hurt the people around him, imagines an existence for queerness that never once involves him interacting with it again. that particular card has been forcefully swept off the table.

and since he and el never really talked about that ‘divorce,’ and his full understanding of who el is and what she wants was just slightly off from being fully realized, i think mike would like to think that his feelings for will went off to somewhere just as distant as the concept of queerness had— but ‘queerness,’ ‘mike’s own queerness,’ and ‘mike’s feelings for will’ are a little harder to interchangeably shove together into one source than they were when he had only barely begun to interact with them.

so i think that hands have been slightly changed, this time around, and el has finally graduated to being perceived by mike in a way more akin to how everyone else does. (subtextually, she's now more general queerness, and textually, you know. the aforementioned contemplated divorce.) el's got general queerness, mike holds onto his own, and. well.

i’ll give you a single guess as to who mike’s main association of his feelings for will is, this season.

and…that’s season 5. and my posts in this series as a whole! i have more i could say (because i always do), but this has gotten long enough. so. tldr:

mike wheeler. i know what you are.

but, ah. i'm pretty sure the writers do, too.

[vecnapilled]

Are you a fanfic writer bychance?

i am! very funny to me that you clocked that, i know i'm not all that subtle, haha. i haven't written anything for ST, though (not yet, anyway!), so i'm not anyone you may know unless you happen to be into a very specific set of genshin characters, i have some bigger fics over in there. i'm not really a romance writer (i do mainly gen found family angst hurt/comfort stuff), but i'd still love to write something for these guys! especially since i feel way more secure in my characterizations of them after doing my whole season by season analysis, which is something i stress about getting right even for characters i've been into for years, lol. i have a few ideas circulating about a will was never found!au, i'm a sucker for those yet also cannot find any in the exact specific flavor i'm looking for. rest assured that i will be sure to put any links here should i end up posting anything! (oh also! i saw that comment you left under one of my posts, thank you!! i can't reply directly to comments. but in regards to a season 5 rewrite: i don't know if i'd do a whole rewrite, per say, but i am finally getting to the s5 parts of my analysis series! though i'm not opposed to doing something (mostly) canon-compliant from mike's pov to try and present more of where i think my poor boy is coming from. free him from poor public perception.)

[vecnapilled]

stranger things is, fundamentally, a show about the queer experience— and it always has been. (season five, part one)

(i had to bite the bullet and split this one up, since it was getting too long. more coming soon!) (seasons 1+2) (season 3) (season 4)

this is the fourth part of my analysis series looking into all of the ways in which stranger things truly is a show About the queer experience, in that it is what every single season happens to thematically center itself around. 

and, yes. though you might not believe me, that includes season five.

season five, as it features the same main villain as season four, is once again about fear. this time, however, instead of fear keeping you from being yourself, fear now places itself firmly in the way of your ability to keep a strong enough grip on the things that you love. 

and…season five also happens to be about what happens when you let that fear win. the story, this time around, is a tragedy. 

the main argument i want to make with this part is that the choices the characters make were not decided on by throwing darts at a wall and going with whatever option was furthest away, but instead do, in fact, carry an internal logic that can be followed. 

now, does this mean that these choices are good for them? no! but a negative choice does not necessarily make it a completely nonsensical choice on the part of the writers.

before you jump in to tell me that this idea contradicts what the duffers have been saying recently, here is an interview from 2024 in which the duffers themselves contradict what the duffers have been saying recently. (s5 was outlined in full before s4 was even filmed and then re-outlined again once it was finished, they've had all the answers to the world's lore written out since s1, the s5 finale would contain many big ideas originally drafted for s2, they always got really excited about writing, etc.) so i’m just going to take the season as i see it. :)

so.

again, this season is about fear. but it isn’t the kind that creeps up behind you until it’s right in your face, and all you can think about. instead, though it may feel less overwhelming, it also never really leaves. simmers at a constant burn, instead of flaring up with even the smallest pinch of salt.

in season 4, the presence of fear itself was scary; something new and alarming in how it distinctly sets you apart from everyone else around you. here, though, it's now become something our characters have resigned themselves to actively living with. something they've accepted they will continue to live under for the forseable future.

we're eighteen months into an apocalypse, here. if people remained as off-kilter as fear had rendered them in season 4, they would hardly last two. you need to force it down, get used to it, and not let it show. it’s become your normal state, since your environment would not let you continue on unscathed in it otherwise.

because it isn't just an apocalypse. it's an apocalypse whose presence needs to be kept hidden despite it quite literally bleeding into the cracks of the world around you. a monster whose presence, even only in theory, has you never letting your guard down.

a house full of people, where you have to pretend like everything is normal. a life at school, where you have to remain unnoticed. and a job to do, where distractions and moments to breathe are largely luxuries reserved for after your work has been done. then you can relax. then you can go after all the things you've been holding yourself back from seeking out.

because those circumstances were surely the only thing keeping you trapped.

…right?

as mike tells holly, everyone in hawkins is scared shitless, and this applies to our crew, as well. in theory, this makes sense; they can feel the looming threat above them even if they haven't found him.

though— hang on. 

what is it that each of our characters are afraid of, again?

robin is scared of vickie learning about the supernatural. max gets scared that lucas doesn't actually love her. hopper is scared of losing el. dustin is scared of losing steve. joyce is scared of will going where she is unable to help him should he need it. jonathan is scared of his hesitance towards marrying nancy. will is scared of what what has happened to him means for his family and friends, as well as his place among them. el is worried that she may not have any place at all.

we can see the love and fear interference here quite clearly. but…do any of these hinge on vecna being gone? would they all magically disappear along with him?

some would feel less severe, maybe. but there would still be things robin could never talk to her girlfriend about. sara’s death had nothing to do with demogorgons, or alternate dimensions, or supernatural attacks. will’s trauma is not going to desert him entirely simply because it would be more convenient for it to do so.

in fact…all of these fears stem from the possibility of an undesired outcome. nothing that has shown any signs of presenting itself to you currently, but could show up in the future. so you should brace for impact, shouldn't you? protect yourself?

be prepared for vecna’s reappearance, the second he shows up?

now, there's obviously nothing wrong with trying to get your shit together in the apocalypse. but…how much good do all those crawls actually do for our team, in the end?

and how much good does waiting for the ‘right’ moment do for mike?

because, for the fears on this list that get to be assuaged, have you noticed anything about their resolutions?

robin confesses to vickie. max decides to trust in lucas. dustin is open with steve. jonathan is honest with nancy.

“with vecna gone,” mike asks, “what's stopping us?”

i don't know, michael. YOU tell me.

so what is mike afraid of, this season? what is at stake for him, in this standoff between love and fear?

well. at this point, i think this should be rather obvious.

in the season about puberty, where mike is firmly distancing himself from being more introspective with his emotions, he realizes that he is not physically attracted to women. in the season on moral panic and the desire to be normal, he comes to terms with the fact that he is gay.

and so, in the season about a subtle, underlying fear that runs alongside a love whose expression it quietly submerges whenever the current gets too strong, it only makes sense that our boy is now finally trying to handle all the complicated weight that comes with the knowledge that you are desperately, terribly in love with your best friend. 

because it isn't completely life-altering, in the way that realizing you're gay is, along with everything that that means for your future. mike doesn't act like he does in the airport, here. it's exciting, yet terrifying, in an almost exhilarating way— because it is still love. and for someone you already care so much about, no less!

mike is incredibly picky with the emotions he chooses to share with other people. as i’ve said here before, he's a child of emotional neglect, which, under normal circumstances, means that that boy is only ever going to let people see what he is absolutely sure they are going to take well to. (so, yes, it is significant that 95% of his already small list of vulnerable moments happen when he's with will.)

though he's normally happy to keep his rougher emotions to himself, there is one thing he does actually want to show to other people— joy, and excitement, for all the things he thinks are really cool!

this just also gets impacted by how he thinks people will respond, so he still only lets himself ‘geek out,’ so to speak, when he knows it's emotionally safe to do so (or when he can't help himself). in season one, he tells el how excited he is to introduce her to everyone now that she doesn't have a reason to hide anymore— though this is quickly proven to be false. and he’s unabashed in his open affection for will, until he gets worried that it'll clue Normal Straight Man Will Byers in to how not normal mike is. 

so, mike has just had this startling revelation about himself. it contains an emotion he kind of wants to express, because now the coolest person he knows just got even cooler, but also one he wants to keep pushed down and away because tossing it out into the air like that is kind of terrifying, and there are other things he has to be focusing on that are obviously more pressing and important, anyway! except the times he ends up expressing himself the most are when he feels either emotionally comfortable, or emotionally overwhelmed and thus cannot help himself (end of sorcerer, anyone?), and the subject of this revelation currently happens to very easily make him meet both of these requirements.

are we starting to see what mwtfdydgate looks like, yet?

because we’ve already been shown the shape of the answer. 

mike and will are actually, when you get down to it, quite fundamentally different. many of these differences end up manifesting as the ways in which they complete each other, and make each other stronger, but they also end up becoming the source of a lot of their strife. 

will is someone who always wants to talk about how he's feeling. emotional vulnerability is one of his strengths; whenever he's feeling unsteady about something in his life, he knows he can go to someone he trusts to help him feel secure again. since his emotions are so large, and he's so attuned to them, this is really important to him. he's willing to do this with everything EXCEPT his queerness, and his feelings for mike— and it is absolutely eating him up inside.

mike, on the other hand, never wants to talk about how he's feeling, EXCEPT for when it comes to all these new emotions regarding will! it feels good, and it's exciting, and he wants to gush about how much he loves his favorite person in the world, but his fear towards what the reaction will be has him biting his tongue and pulling himself back. and that is eating him up inside! it's the single emotion whose repression genuinely makes him sad to feel like he has to do!

mike is not planning to say anything about this to will unless he knows it would be emotionally safe to (the feelings are fully reciprocated), which he doesn’t think is going to happen with Straight Man Will Byers. and will is also not planning on saying anything about this to mike, because he anticipates hearing a rejection he knows would devastate him. 

except mike has also been showing will signs. things that sure seem like he’s trying to flirt with him. only, will’s still a little confused. because it isn’t all the time. plus, he seems to pull away whenever will tries to flirt back. will places a lot of importance in being able to talk about his feelings— if mike does like him, then why hasn’t he said anything? will’s been all but spelling out his feelings for him since basically season three. 

mike, however, is…not actually flirting. not intentionally, anyway (which is why will responding in turn seems to snap him back into his head, and he withdraws, like in the field scene). but will, as simultaneously his best friend he’s previously felt comfortable being vulnerable with, someone who frequently and abruptly finds themselves in peril or distress, and the boy he is in love with, happens to very easily check off one or more of his emotional expression requirements, and mike’s newly-heightened affection can’t help but burst out of the box he tries to keep it tempered down in and let itself show. 

again. end of sorcerer, anyone?

compare season 4 mike’s airport greeting with season 5 mike’s lingering shoulder touches, or gentle bumps of the elbow, or longing stares when he holds out his hand, or the way he’s almost always the first to reach will when he’s in trouble. of course will was going to feel that something had changed! 

this is mwtfdydgate! just, you know, multiplied across 18 months. i wonder if mike ever got his preferred hand pile positions. 

yes, they’re more open with each other emotionally in season 4, but they barely even touch!

and i do think that that difference is significant. 

will, much like holly, has registered that mike is keeping something from him, but the complete lack of verbal acknowledgment of it is making will just as uneasy as mike is worried he will be should he ever actually be honest about it.

and this is the season of strategy meetings and tightly executed missions— between a reassuring hand on the shoulder and a quiet, vulnerable conversation stolen away in private, which of the two do you think these characters feel more comfortable taking the time out to execute? especially when someone like mike already has such a long and specific list of prerequisites to meet before he even feels comfortable enough to open his mouth and start!

mike has not been ‘lobotomized’ this season. he, in his mind, is prioritizing. pushing everything off till later, when he thinks the time will feel more ‘right’ to indulge in and express it (outside of when he just can’t help himself). again— “with vecna gone,” he thinks, “what’s stopping us?”

and this is an idea shared by the others, as well!

lucas tells mike and el to hurry up with their conversation on the roof, so they can get started with their crawl. mike and el both agree that dustin and hopper, when expressing their fear instead of bottling it up and shoving it down out of necessity like the rest of them, are acting strange. dustin should be keeping his head down at school instead of letting out how he feels about eddie, and can’t spend too much time at his grave since he’s needed and expected at every single mission. and we cut right from the scene on the water tower to vickie wondering what the hell is taking them so long!

since the consequences of bottling up emotions for so long are illustrated through both dustin with steve, and jonathan with nancy, the show is aware of the issues that arise with doing this. it’s been eighteen months, and eddie’s death, steve’s insecurities surrounding him, and jancy’s season 4 relationship issues are only just now being addressed, and only after things had reached an unavoidable boiling point. 

it’s been touch and go since the moment season 4 ended; mike wheeler, of all people, is certainly not going to think himself justified in taking the time to sit his best friend down and tell him he’s recently discovered he actually wants to kiss him a lot. 

unfortunately for him…this ends up being his downfall. 

because season 5 is a tragedy, but michael’s portion of it is entirely self-constructed.

…with a little outside influence, of course. 

let’s start back at that timeskip. 

yes, it is quite long, but aside from the answers of what they did with those spores, are we actually…missing all that much? anything more significant than the usual ways characters shift from a season to season jump? 

we know that this was a period of time in which no one let themselves deal with or talk about anything left unaddressed in the season 4 finale, because everyone got right to work the second that was over, and never really stopped. 

we know this applies to dustin and steve. we know this applies to jonathan and nancy. less intentionally, this also applies to lucas and max (their last “interaction” for max was him scorning her in her vecna vision, remember?), and so…i am incredibly sorry to say…that this also then has to apply to mike and el. 

no, they haven’t broken up. i know. but there is not a single world in which you could convince me that dustin is less willing to be open about his feelings than MIKE.

so they haven’t really talked about that confession at all, actually, or really about anything that doesn’t pertain to their missions. (because mike’s still got that painting up in his room, right?) after season 4, el jumped right into training her personal strength after she failed, and hasn’t looked back since. 

so, what is that greeting on the field about? why did so many people watching feel like they had broken up, if they actually haven’t?

simple: neither of them actually need this relationship anymore, because they’ve both found something they find more fulfilling than what the other person was previously providing for them. 

mike had been relying on his relationship with el to help him feel normal. even once the painting helps him accept his feelings for the shape that they take (accept that he’s gay), he’s still perfectly fine with staying in a relationship that doesn’t center around romantic love, because it worked out well enough for his parents, didn’t it? they both still got what they wanted. and, based on what he actually took away from will’s confession, he thinks that eleven is also perfectly fine with this. 

then, though, he realizes that he’s in love with will. so now he has a reference for what the alternative feels like. that it really does feel better than keeping himself with el for the sake of it. again, he’s accepted he’s gay— it’s his fear of will’s reaction, and his complete lack of an expectation of the feelings being returned, that keeps him from stepping up and saying anything. 

el, similarly, had been relying on her relationship with mike for validation and reassurance of her identity she didn’t know how to give to herself. the confession helps her learn that she needs to seriously start figuring this out, so by season 5 she’s become more secure in her own strength and sense of self. she doesn’t need mike to be the sole bearer of this anymore. 

however, she doesn’t know what awaits her on the other side of all this. she may have grown more comfortable with herself, but will the world be just as comfortable with her, once she steps out into it? she’s been pushing for hopper to let her go, but i think, deep down, a part of her really wants to stay. she doesn’t know if there’s another place she can go! her relationship with mike is a positive thing she’s managed to get for herself, and though she isn’t solely relying on it anymore, she also doesn’t know how many more of those the world is gonna allow her to get!

so fear is keeping mike and el— and all of our characters— in one place. literally! they’re physically stuck, they haven’t moved on from most s4 issues due to letting them stay unaddressed, and they’re all worried about the prospect of what awaits in the future, both in regards to vecna and to what comes after him. 

mike and eleven both feel fine with staying in a relationship that doesn’t actually fulfill them anymore, because even if they can get the sense that the other person is feeling something similar (neither of them are being super physical in order to overcompensate by giving the other person what they think they’d want, or anything), they’ve still never actually sat down and talked about it— both because they think there are more important things going on, and because they’re actually a little scared to do so.

which, ah. you know. almost sort of sounds like. a couple in a long term relationship they’re no longer satisfied with, putting off getting a DIVORCE. but. ahem. that’s neither here nor there. 

this is why lucas calls them ‘lovebirds,’ but they still look a little individually confused when he does. it’s: oh, but i don’t. actually think it’s all that like that anymore, though?

this is also why mike isn’t intentionally flirting with will; he’s still, technically, with el. and again, he doesn’t think there’s any chance of will liking him back! so this is part of what is making will so confused. 

another way mike and will fundamentally differ from each other is that mike is very physically affectionate while not being so great with his words, while will is very good at deciphering and communicating his emotions to other people but is extremely shy and hesitant when it comes to initiating physical contact. in fact, across the entire show, i literally cannot think of a single instance in which he does this with mike (besides that hug at the airport, which. we all know how that went)— save for one. 

and…what happens, again?

the two of them are out on that field, and mwtfdydgate strikes again; mike can see that they’re behind everyone else, it’s a quiet moment between planning a mission and executing it, and he’s directly next to will— and his affection takes the chance it’s been given to make an appearance! so he nudges will with his arm, and looks at him like That while gushing about all he’s certain he can do. 

and will, emboldened by his recent discussion with robin, tries to take the signs as signs, and goes for giving out one of his own. 

i’ve seen people be like “but why would will flirt with mike, if he and eleven aren’t already broken up?” this is a single hit on the arm after eighteen months of mike consistently making heart eyes at him and being noticeably both less physical with his girlfriend and more physical with him, lol. i think will is allowed to test the waters a little bit just to see what happens, this is hardly him being all that messy. 

and, besides— the interaction doesn’t exactly leave him planning to do any more. 

because of all the things to choose, my love, why did you have to go with pushing mike away?

again, though mike is flirting with will, he isn’t doing it intentionally, nor with the thought in his mind that will could possibly reciprocate. since his emotions have such delicate guidelines for when they’re able to be expressed, it doesn’t take much for him to instinctively shove them back down, or snap back into being overly aware of whatever it is he’s doing. he’s extremely susceptible to becoming self conscious/ashamed/embarrassed of his own emotions depending on how people react to them.

and here, it looks like Straight Man Will Byers has noticed that mike is geeking out over him in a way that is kind of too much for a ‘friend’ to do, and is telling him to cut it out! if you look closely, you can even see that mike is about to lean forward even more just before will pushes him away!

yes, the shove is playful, and not at all intended to be a rejection, but mike is very new to this! he needs more positive reinforcement that what he’s doing is okay first before he can feel comfortable joking around about how he comes off. it’s still enough to make him internally go ‘shoot, yeah, okay. you’re being too much. dial it back.’ so he retreats, because this is the signal he thinks Straight Man Will Byers is trying to send him.

but this of course makes will feel embarrassed! as is often the case with these two, will thinks that he is being so obvious about how he acts and what he says around mike, that mike has to already know about his feelings for him to at least some degree, and so he assumes that mike is always operating under this knowledge during their interactions. 

but mike, in truth, has yet to even fathom that will could like him at all. as i always say, he is too stuck in his own head about his own troubles to consider how he could be coming off in the event that this is the case!

and i think that this is something we the audience need to keep in mind, as well.

mike has gotten a lot of flack this season for the way he seems to not care as much about will as he does in season 2. but i don’t think this is true at all.

because mike always cares about will! the way he acts in every single season can largely be attributed to the specific way in which he is now caring about will; he doesn’t ever really stop. but this has always still manifested itself differently as mike grows up. 

seasons 1 and 2 feature a much younger mike, who hasn’t yet realized that he’s gay. will is very actively in danger in new and scary ways, and all mike is worried about is making sure that his friend is okay.

season 3 is when mike realizes he doesn’t like girls, and season 4 is when he’s coming to terms with the fact that he’s gay. he’s growing into a teenager, and things feel more complicated than they did when he was 12 and could say he liked el and that was it. since will is in generally the same amount of danger as the rest of the group he’s with in both seasons, though, his instinctive desire to help and protect him doesn’t really have to war with all the newfound realizations he’s recently had about himself (and the subsequent worry about what the reaction from his closest, Straightest friend will be). ‘max get away from the door’ and the roller rink fight remind us that mike does still keep a very close eye on will at all times, even when the way he’s acting would have you thinking otherwise.

with all that being said, and all that we’ve already discussed, it isn’t that hard to classify season 5 mike as sort of a mix of both. will is back to being directly targeted, and mike’s instinctive urge to immediately run and check on him has made its continued presence known once more. now, however, things are more…complicated. from what is now expected of mike in terms of crawls, to the yet unspoken state of his relationship with el, to the knowledge mike now carries of the truth of his feelings for will— there’s a lot more riding on mike and how he is perceived by the people around him than there was when he was 12 years old and could brazenly tunnel his vision down to exclusively caring about how will was doing. now, we can see that this protective instinct of his has moments where it is…reeled back in.

there are two moments, i think, that people call out the most in terms of how mike acts specifically when it comes to expressing concern for will:

“why does mike not say anything after he hears will refer to the kids as ‘vessels,’ or when he calls them weak? why isn’t he doing anything? season 2 mike would’ve been on that immediately! will is possessed!’

and,

‘why the hell does mike just leave will on the ground like that in episode 8? he runs away immediately! season 2 mike would never!’

the former is going to take us into quite a bit of further discussion, so i’ll start off with the latter.

i feel like this moment gets misrepresented a lot because it comes post the water tower scene, and is in episode 8, and many people were already upset while watching it. and i do understand that! however, i think it’s also important to acknowledge the full context and circumstances of the scene before denouncing mike’s actions here entirely.

in the very beginning of the season, there is a scene in which mike, thinking his sister is currently in the bathroom, says something he very clearly would not have said had he known that will’s mom was the one inside. because the wheeler house no longer belongs solely to him and his family— the byers all now live here, too!

now, i’m not going to sit here and try to say that the ‘whizz on the floor’ line is secretly super deep, or anything, but i do think it establishes a pattern we can see surface throughout the entire season. 

mike has to check himself, now, in ways he never had to before! he’s surrounded by new circumstances he’s never had to deal with before, and he can’t go approaching them in all the ways he used to, because how he comes off to people is now an additional factor he has to take into account.

this applies to el, and it applies to will, and it also, obviously…applies to joyce.

there’s something interesting, about the times in which mike goes straight for will and stays there versus the instances where he doesn’t. because, for the latter, do you know who is almost always there?

in the forest, when it’s just mike, will, and the rest of the party, mike is the first one to place a concerned hand on will’s shoulder following his sudden vision and noticeably keeps it firmly planted there for an almost comically long amount of time. he even gives lucas a look that makes him remove the hand he’d had on will.

and yet, in shock jock, when will is thrown backwards on the ground, you can see mike hesitate in running over to him, allowing joyce to get there first. when will is trapped by vecna, we get a shot of mike hovering in the background to watch him while joyce sits directly beside her son. mike walks in on will and joyce having a clearly personal conversation, and will more or less tells him that, rather than tell mike separately as well, he’d have nothing more to say to him that he wouldn’t say to people he’s virtually never spoken to (and i have a post on this one, but we’ll also come back to it later).

and, once will collapses in episode 8, it is joyce who tells every other character to keep going on ahead while she stays with her son. 

mike, this season— and for a large majority of them, really— is incredibly worried about how he will be perceived. if he could accidentally end up cluing the people around him in to the sheer size and shape of his feelings for will. 

joyce is will’s mom. when she says something like, ‘please let me be alone with my son,’ people acquiesce with little complaint, because she is his mother, and this is her son. if you have a crowd of people waiting to see will in the hospital, she is probably who would be let in first. the association is clear, and the justification is already there. 

if the choice of ‘who should primarily be there to take care of will’ falls between ‘any of his friends,’ ‘his brother,’ and ‘his mother,’ then the hierarchy is kind of…clear, isn’t it? 

but do you know when it wouldn’t be?

if one of those ‘friends’ were to actually be something more.

mike, to everyone else, is just one of will’s closest friends, exactly like what dustin and lucas are— and mike really does not want to know what would happen were the perception of him to change. 

and why would someone who is only one of will’s ‘friends,’ be rushing to reach him faster than his own mother? lucas and robin certainly aren’t.

why would someone who is only will’s ‘friend,’ ask his own mother to step away from him while he’s unconscious, so that he can watch over him instead?

and what justification does someone who is only will’s ‘friend’ have to stick around after his mother went and told the rest of them to leave? when dustin and lucas and robin and everyone then do leave?

if mike had stuck around, the first question joyce would probably ask him would be: ‘why?’

and mike does not want to provide the why. though it could probably be enough to get joyce to allow him to stay, or spend some time alone at will’s bedside, or not give him a second look when he tears himself over to will as fast as his legs will carry him— no one was going to suggest someone else stay with max over lucas at the end of season four, even if they were technically broken up at the time— mike really, really does not want to provide the why. doesn’t want anyone to get even the smallest impression that there could be a why. 

he and will are just friends. so mike is careful to make sure he acts like it. 

now, onto the second point— that ‘vessels’ comment clearly pings mike as odd. why doesn’t he do anything about will being possessed?

i have a few things to say to this.

people like to compare how mike acts in season 5 with the way he acts in season 2, and that is especially true where this particular moment is concerned. so while i’ve already demonstrated how this is a little unfair to do, let’s actually take a look at this comparison for ourselves. 

season 2 mike does express concern for will’s mental and emotional wellbeing in addition to his physical ailments, yes, but does he ever…bring that up, directly to will’s face? the “will’s quiet today” scene happens when the party are observing him from a significant distance away; mike isn’t announcing how he’s noticed his friend’s significant change in mood when will is right next to him. he’s there for him when he’s physically in peril, obviously, but will mentions every single person he’s close to except mike when talking about how ‘everyone’ keeps hovering around him and treating him like he’s something fragile! though he’s there to be a non-judgemental ear when will wants to open up about something (crazy together), he isn’t treating will like someone who has to constantly be checked in on with every single thing he says or does. 

and, speaking of which, will does not like when people constantly check in on him with every single thing he says or does! this season, he feels like his mother is suffocating him with how overprotective she is! this is absolutely something both mike and lucas are aware of. even if they don’t want to bring anything up to will directly, sounding the alarm to joyce would end up having essentially the same effect. 

and, also. at this point in canon, it has been YEARS since will was possessed. still treating every single thing that comes out of his mouth like a potential signal to tie him down and drag out the space heaters again sounds emotionally exhausting for everyone involved, especially will— that doesn’t sound like a very comfortable environment to be in. it’s like having a friend who used to struggle with depression, and anytime they look or sound a little down you gasp and go ‘oh— oh my god. is that— is that your depression coming back? are you depressed again? is this you being depressed right now?’

literally no one wants to deal with that. so even if mike looks put off by some of the things will says, there are a number of factors getting in the way of the reaction many people seem to want from him, including but not limited to:

his aforementioned struggle in pursuing deeper interactions with will in terms of how these could affect the group’s perception of him

many more things are now in the way of his emotional expression than there were when he was 12. but he didn’t even respond in this specific way when he was 12, either!

will hates being hovered over outside of any situation where he is not literally in active physical danger or peril

this is one thing said by will one time whilst otherwise acting relatively normal, which does not a justified cry of possession make

calling up the cavalry every time will sounds slightly off or speaks a little negatively of himself is a very quick way to make will never want to say anything around any of you ever again

and, to sort of branch away from what the characters themselves may be thinking about,

can HENRY actually possess people in the first place?

and, perhaps more importantly...does he even actually want to?

[vecnapilled]

stranger things is, fundamentally, a show about the queer experience— and it always has been. (season four)

note: this post is very, very long. it is my favorite one so far, but please do keep that in mind before jumping in.

(seasons 1+2) (season 3)

this is the third post in my analysis series where i attempt to explain to all of you, in great detail, how stranger things has always been queer. fundamentally so, and, more importantly, intentionally so.

while i do recommend reading the previous posts before this one, so you have context for a lot of my main interpretations of the characters, the most important thing you need to know from them is simply that each season of stranger things is centered around a different, unique part of the queer experience in its subtext. 

though, in season 4, it can't even really be called subtext anymore. 

stranger things 4, put very simply, is about fear. and it’s about how giving into it— even unknowingly— will only make you lose sight of yourself and the truth of the world around you. jason and his friends are the most malicious example of this, and vecna takes this concept extremely literally when it comes to his victims, but this is about the way fear can spread and fester within anyone, whether they notice it steadily growing or not. 

this is the season on moral panic, where a fear of anything that placed itself outside of traditional— or comfortable— norms or ideas led to such things being viewed as things that should not be interacted with, or even outright malicious. due to the AIDS crisis still in full swing alongside all of this newfound worry about satanism, queerness— as explicitly acknowledged by the show itself, through that newspaper eddie reads— was just as demonized as everything else. 

and so stranger things 4, a story about the time in which queerness was demonized and painted as something monstrous due to lack of understanding of an incredibly severe issue, opens its very first episode with a scene in which el— the subtextual representation of queerness itself— is…demonized, and painted as something monstrous, due to lack of understanding of an incredibly severe issue. queerness is mocked by children at school simply for the manner in which it exists, and its heroes who have died are ignored and left out of larger history simply because they aren’t acknowledged in the mainstream. when it lashes out against all of the forces trying to tear it down, people only take that as a direct confirmation of what they’d already believed to be true, and try to push it away for good. 

subtlety has been all but thrown out the window, this time around, is what i’m saying. 

because this season is trying to tell you something, and it wants to make absolutely sure that you hear it: you are not immune to fear slowly taking the lead in guiding your life without you even noticing. to having a fear unknowingly built and stoked within you until it’s grown too firmly planted to easily remove. 

because neither is jason (self-explanatory), nor henry (he is inherently monstrous), nor max (emotional vulnerability, or really the fear of what comes on the other side of it), nor any of vecna’s victims (again, he takes this concept very literally. that clock is a ticking time bomb till everyone figures out just how screwed up you are, which is a thought no one is able to handle), nor lucas (remaining a loser), nor jonathan (your struggles will only get in the way of a normal life, so you must ignore one to pursue the other), nor robin (accidentally cluing vickie in), nor el (you don’t fit into your own life now that you aren’t what you were intended to be, and everyone around you can see it), nor will (cluing mike in), nor mike (cluing el in), and not even eddie (we’ll get to him later). 

notice a pattern? 

mike wheeler, this season, just wants to be normal— and so do most of the people he knows. given that this is the season on moral panic, this makes perfect sense; not being normal is, quite literally, scary!

but even between just mike and lucas, individual definitions for what “normal” means look quite different (we aren’t in camazotz just yet!). so i think, perhaps, that another way to word this would be to say that mike, and most of the characters this season, really just want to be comfortable. they want to stay within their comfort zone— because a moral panic is usually built around things people do not fully understand, and are thus uncomfortable with. 

if you’ve read my previous posts, the fact that mike begins this season playing dnd— season three’s allegory for engaging with queerness— might make you want to throw up your hands and cheer. but i wouldn’t do that just yet. 

in season four, dnd is not a subtextual representation of queerness anymore. why? because, thanks to that aforementioned newspaper, the connection between queerness and dnd is now something explicitly and directly acknowledged by the text itself. that, by definition, can no longer be classified as subtext. yes, dnd’s connection to queerness has graduated from merely being allegorical— but it has instead been made purely superficial. 

because if being popular and playing basketball is lucas’ comfort zone, then staying away from sports games he feels out of place at and playing dnd off away from everyone else is mike’s. 

this post-season 3 closet kiss mike has since figured out that he doesn’t like girls, but if his joining of hellfire was supposed to represent how he’s starting to feel comfortable with this and come into himself, then why does he act the way he does in episode 2? why does he look so uncomfortable and uneasy by eddie making a scene in front of everyone in the cafeteria?

i discussed in the previous part how, in the rain scene, mike and will are effectively hit with the other’s feelings regarding their own queerness and end up taking it home with them, ie; will gets mike’s denial, and mike gets will’s shame. now, this doesn’t mean that these are the only emotions they’re dealing with, as they are multi-faceted people who can feel more than one thing, but they are the ones that swap into taking the front seat. and unfortunately, in season 4, these have stuck. 

mike making That face after el kisses him, and doing That at the airport with will, and playing dnd but not too loudly and where no one is around to see him aren’t really the actions of a boy unable to properly define the emotions he feels regarding his sexuality— they paint the picture of a boy who knows what he is, gains a clearer image of it with each passing day, and is still trying to come to terms with what that means for him in the long run. 

this becomes the entire basis for mike’s plotline this season, so we’ll come back to that in a bit. but if season 3 was about mike realizing that he doesn’t like girls, then season 4 is about him working through the acknowledgement that he does like boys. (because that’s a scary thing to come to terms with! especially where mike is concerned.)

that basketball game is juxtaposed with the dnd campaign for a few different reasons; one is to show that these seemingly opposing things are really just different expressions of the same emotions, which is the type of idea stranger things likes to explore a lot. but another reason is to present us with two, parallel examples of a seeming victory that only allows you to continue to stay right where you’re comfortable, and avoid having to think about an alternative. there’s nothing wrong with wanting to play basketball, but lucas getting that popularity he wanted by winning the game means that he doesn’t have consider whether he genuinely wants to play, or just wants what he thinks the team could give him had he missed that deciding shot. 

and had erica been terrible at dnd, perhaps dustin and mike would’ve had to stand themselves up and fight for a way to make sure lucas was included in the game. 

because erica’s presence already proves that they could’ve, right? yes, eddie had been the one to give that whole speech about jocks, but he seems happy to let erica in once she stands her ground in a way he likes. mike and dustin could have tried to make an actual case, here. 

and this is what’s interesting about eddie. 

eddie, in some ways, has thinking that is as rigidly defined as the people that hate him. he has very clear and specific ideas and opinions about every group of people he does not belong to, and he only lets erica in once she proves that she is like him. 

moral panic. you are not immune to being made to push away and reject something you do not understand. 

now, this isn’t to say that eddie is a bad guy. he’s no different to anyone else here, save for execution— making people uncomfortable is his comfort zone. he’s been ostracized for most of his life; only letting in people he’s absolutely sure are already a lot like him and pushing away everyone else helps keep him safe. so there’s that underlying fear again, even from someone who likes to pretend as if he laughs in the face of it!

(this is why it's actually a really good thing for him to develop a relationship with steve; this is someone who, while undeniably worth his respect and attention, is absolutely nothing like him!)

so this win of erica’s allows eddie’s views to be challenged in a way that still lets him be correct, and mike and dustin to solve their problem without needing to actually draft up and enact a solution. mike’s connection to his queerness has become as superficial as dnd’s!

how are things on the other side of the country, then? 

in terms of el, i feel that this season expands on something i briefly touched on in my thoughts regarding season one— that though the lab is based off actual experiments conducted by the US government, i think that it is also partly meant to represent the church. 

you don't even have to be speaking in metaphors to say that the children of the lab already regard Papa as some kind of godlike figure. they are raised, more or less, to crave nothing more than his approval, and are taught to believe absolutely everything he says. papa is responsible for giving them powers, but he is also responsible for keeping them trapped here because of them— god made you this way, but he still sees you as something inherently wrong. 

(this remains true even for henry, by the way. he suffered an unimaginable trauma, was brought to the church to be ‘fixed’ from it, and was told that while what happened to him needed to be suppressed entirely, it was also, in a way, his intended ‘purpose’ all along. as ‘god’ had quite the big plans for him.)

this season, however, takes papa, and pulls back the curtain surrounding him for el in order for her to realize that, rather than God, he's actually…more of a Father. a pastor. a man, who can lie and be killed like anyone else, and who had simply been passing off his words as that of god’s own. this was who you were shaped by, but you do not have to let his mold be the only one you live under.

el’s journey into self-discovery in season 3 has her losing touch with the part of her identity the church instilled in her to have— the part of her she was made to feel made up her entire identity and purpose for existence in life, as it was what 'god' intended for her to have. no wonder she feels so lost this season without it.

so does this mean that el’s powers themselves are what associates her with queerness? no, i don’t think so. el is more than her powers, but she was made to believe otherwise by the man who fostered them in her. this is the manner in which the church prefers she exists and perceives herself, as they have lost the “justification” to treat her the way they do otherwise. self-expression as far as the lab will allow it. this is why i think el would learn more from willingly giving up her powers, whereas will would learn more from keeping them; though she doesn't like being defined by her powers, they at least give her something to be defined by. a reason for her life to be the way that it is, rather than bullying as an unexplained consequence of an identity she herself doesn't even understand.

now, in the story, el represents the presence and concept of queerness in general, though this manifests in slightly different forms depending on who she's interacting with. i believe that, where the lab is concerned, el subtextually takes the form of a queer child in the church rather than queerness itself— and look at what literally happens to her this season once she's brought back!

so the church sees that queerness has removed herself from the established way of existence it had laid out for her, and desperately wants to get her back to the way they prefer her.

how? given the season we’re in, there's really only one answer: FEAR.

in fact, they even instill a moral panic in her! if el specifically does not return and re-attach herself to the identity they’ve intended for her to have, then all of her friends will be in danger.

a queer child is brought back into the church and forced to relearn all of the teachings they’d forgotten, which once again make them feel like a monster. but all of it is in service of reminding them who they really need to be scared of. who the real villain is— someone who used to be just like them. the church wants these two to stand at odds against each other, and their direct influence will ensure that.

now, i know that henry is very much doing terrible things, so i’m not saying that el should be jumping at the bit to join him. but his entire outlook on both the world and himself are directly informed by all the time he spent locked away in the lab. he joined the ‘church’ as a child, and was trapped in how miserable and self-loathing it made him feel all the way into adulthood. they are pushing the responsibility of dealing with the horrific trauma response they themselves fostered onto the people they are still able to control, and shunning the original victim entirely. 

again, since henry is committing genuinely awful crimes, and brenner is slightly more humanized this season, the situation does have nuance, so i don't think they're trying to say that religion itself is inherently bad. i think, with the way owens is portrayed and with papa being more like a pastor, it's more about the ways in which people can horribly misuse or misrepresent it.

so that's part of el’s side of things, this season. but will’s been holding onto mike’s denial for quite a bit, now. how’s that going for him?

i’m glad you asked. will certainly wasn’t going to tell you, otherwise. 

i briefly brought up in the previous part how, if el to mike subtextually is The Emotion I Felt When Will Left— his relationship to own queerness— then el to will, subtextually, is much the same thing. except, with him, she’s The Part of Myself That I Hate— his internalized homophobia. 

will, having moved away from mike, is now alone with The Part of Himself That He Hates. it is mocked relentlessly by the people at school just for existing, but he can’t bring himself to really stand up for it in public. sometimes, he even agrees with what is said. when The Part of Himself That He Hates is persecuted right in front of his eyes, all he can really do is look on in sadness.

and The Part of Himself That He Hates is also lying to mike. and he wants it to stop, because won’t mike be upset once he finds out?

he wants mike to love The Part of Himself That He Hates, though, as much as it pains him. he wants that to work in the end. 

textually, though, will’s denial manifests by way of pushing his feelings out of the way for the sake of mike and el. will is so in tune with his emotions that he wouldn’t go the mike route of denying that anything exists in the first place— he knows full well that it does. so instead, he funnels it into other things, so his feelings can be expressed without him actually having to express them in a way that makes them real. 

and while this is of course having a negative impact on him, it’s also having a negative impact on el. because something interesting has started to happen to her, this season.

el’s connection to queerness has always been purely subtextual; she cannot literally feel that she's representing all of these things to these characters. however, in season 4, queerness has started to finally make its way out of the subtext. and since many of mike and will’s struggles this season stem from their respective rocky relationships to their queerness, she herself begins to literally feel the echoes of that strain.

even before all of the lab business i’ve already talked about, jane is having a really rough go of things. but…will seems to be doing a little better, isn't he? he has someone he likes enough to make a painting for them— that has to mean he's at least managed to get close to some people, right? not that he's ever talked to her about them, or even tried to introduce her. he always looks miserable when she's around, and he never tries to step in when people are making fun of her, either— and she could even tell that he agreed with the people who thought her presentation was awful.

now, we the audience know that will’s painting is for mike, which is why he hasn't told anyone about it, and his knowledge of his sexuality (as well as how he was treated at school in hawkins) probably wouldn't make him eager to jump in and willingly place a target on his back. he hates watching her get made fun of and feeling like he can't do anything to stop it, especially since he knows how bullying feels— and we also know from how he pushes for her relationship with mike to work out that he does care about her wellbeing and happiness.

but, from el’s perspective, doesn't it kind of seem like will is ashamed of her? 

similarly, el looks at mike this season, and feels like the usefulness she’d had to him has run its course, and he can no longer bring himself to love her now that he's realized the truth of who she is without that shiny veneer removed.

but mike, after the end of season 3, has just started to realize the reality of what The Emotion actually is— his own queerness. so it really has lost that ‘shiny veneer’ to him, in a way, since he can no longer unthinkingly entertain it without also being aware of the truth of what it is— a part of himself he isn't really ready to say is something he loves.

and textually, mike does love el. as i said in the previous part, he’s being genuine when he blurts out that confession to his friends. he just doesn't love her romantically— and he’s worried she'll be able to read some of that in him (as she's always been very good at doing, which is even re-established in the first episode of the season) the second he actually goes and gives her those words she's so desperate to hear. either that, or she'd end up thinking he's lying. he doesn't want to disappoint her with the revelation that he can't be what she wants him to, but he's also scared of his secret being out.

neither mike nor will mean to hurt el, but their struggles with their queerness are inadvertently doing just that. their relationships to their queerness are literally hurting their relationships to their queerness!

and, really, this lack of communication means that all three of them inadvertently end up hurting each other. we see this in full swing once mike lands in california.

people have interpreted that hug (or lack thereof) between mike and will in many different ways, but to me it’s emblematic of something mike doesn’t let us know about himself until all the way till that scene on the water tower in season 5. 

whenever mike comes off completely oblivious or like an asshole, it is because he’s too caught up in his own business to properly take notice of what else is going on around him. he’s too in his own head. and this conversation was specifically about times where will was struggling with his sexuality. 

essentially; that hug at the airport, much like the rain fight, and much like mike complaining about not being able to call when he could very easily write like he does to el, had nothing to do with will, and everything to do with mike. 

as i’ve said before, this is mike in his shame era! he’s just realized he’s never going to like girls, and here’s Straight Guy Will Byers, already liking a girl in california so much he made an entire painting for her. what if will catches on, the same way mike’s worried el could? and according to el, they’ve been having such a great time over there— why would mike want to bother him with this messy version of himself trying to deal with all of this?

he gets defensive whenever he’s confronted about stuff like this because, to him, he doesn’t feel like he’s intentionally doing anything wrong, nor does he want to feel like the things he’s worrying about are wrong. 

subtextually, his fight with will at the roller rink is a bit like his fight with lucas at the junkyard all the way back in season one. a slight against el is taken as a slight against him and his identity/feelings, with her representation to him as The Emotion. (and this is also somewhat the case textually! but we'll get to that later.) we also once again have him being way too in his own head, since he more or less goes “el is my girlfriend, and you, will, are not in any way my girlfriend! why would i think of you in any way related to how i think about my girlfriend! that isn’t what you are at all why would you think i would treat you, a boy, like that!” when will had in no way been thinking of things in this context in the slightest, and ends up hurt by the perceived insinuation that mike is saying they’re no longer close. mike then flounders awkwardly, because this is a misinterpretation he can’t exactly correct without needing to explain himself, and so deflects the topic with all the grace of a baby deer attempting to leap across a river. 

textually, will looking so miserable is making mike be too in his head again. he’s distracted by will’s reaction, worrying too much about what it might mean and why he’s feeling that way, and, like the rain fight, projects his frustration that he can’t put more of his attention where he knows it should be onto will. 

for will, el is both the subtextual representation and textual reminder of his internalized homophobia, especially when she’s around mike, so he really isn’t having a good day— especially after that greeting from mike at the airport made him shove down and dismiss (deny!) his feelings. he’d thought that mike knew all about the treatment el was receiving at school, yet barely ever called to check in on him to ask how he was doing— he’d heard all about how people treat The Part of Himself That He Hates, and had been properly driven away. then, it goes and tries to hide the truth of its reality from him, which will knows is just a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. 

and then, we reach The Incident. 

queerness proves itself to be a monster in the eyes of the public, The Emotion proves itself to be something mike perhaps should be ashamed of, now that he’s seeing the reality of being openly queer in the world outside of hawkins (and though he’s been bullied before, as el reminds him, it’s never been like this) and The Part of Himself He Hates reminds will of all the reasons why it is exactly that. 

mike immediately crumpling up the final letter el may ever write him the first chance he gets is very funny, but i think it’s important to also take a look at why he’s so willing to toss something like that away. 

will, when he tells mike he can’t change what’s happened, has no idea what that letter says. he doesn’t even know the two had fought, at that point. that letter could’ve said something like, “my dearest mike, i hope you will forgive me for this choice i’ve made. i love you always and forever just like how you too are always so willing and quick to say you love me as well,” or whatever, and will knows that there’s no point agonizing over something like that, since it won’t change what’s already happened. 

the letter, however, does not say that. it is, instead, a reminder that the last thing mike may have ever said to her was the one thing she didn’t at all want to hear, and that his identity is directly causing her pain— so he’s happy to be given an excuse to not have to wallow in that! their fight is one they “can’t come back from,” because it has to do with something mike is realizing he truly cannot change about himself. when will tells him that he can just tell el whatever he wants to tell her later, mike smiles a little bit, but doesn’t look entirely at ease. 

when they bury that body together (just byler things!) mike very obviously resonates with what will says to him about being scared that someone won’t like the truth of how we really feel once we open up to them. will is clearly talking about himself and mike, here, and mike is applying it to himself and el. but “what if they don’t like the truth?” doesn’t really apply to a scenario in which mike does love el romantically, right? this is what el wants to hear from him; what would there be not to like? 

just pointing that out. moving on. 

you all know what’s next. 

the most important thing to keep in mind when looking at the van scene is that mike, as of this moment, has Not realized that he has feelings for will. that is strictly a s5-era revelation; he ONLY knows, here, that he does not like women, and is coming to terms with liking men. 

so i find it particularly telling (and particularly sad) that mike says that, during the last time he and el spoke (the “from mike” fight in her bedroom), mike got the sense that she “didn’t need him anymore.” what does he mean by this?

since mike hasn’t realized the depth of his feelings for will, he’s also never consciously been in love before. he has no reference (to his knowledge) of what that actually feels like, except he doesn’t think that he has it with el. 

but do his parents…love each other, even though they’re married? was being in love ever important, when it came to being able to get a house, and start a family? for mike to exist in the first place? 

in fact, it seems more…transactional, than anything. karen is able to say she has a husband and a family, and ted is able to say he has a wife. that was fine for them, so that’s all you really need, right?

why would mike seek out something he doesn’t think he’s ever felt, when it doesn’t even have to matter when it comes to getting what society tells him he should have?

that’s why he’s still kissing el and being physical with her even when he knows he doesn’t actually love her— that doesn’t have to matter in a relationship!

except, it does matter. to el, it matters. 

and mike cannot give her that. to him, it isn’t a big deal if this relationship is purely transactional, because he cares about her regardless, but el’s side of the bargain requires something he will never be able to provide. 

and if el is serious about wanting this from him, and has noticed that he isn’t giving it to her…then she really wouldn’t ‘need’ him anymore, would she?

mike, just like his parents, enjoys the relationship for what it is able to give him in terms of what he can do with his life. they are the single frame of reference for this he had, growing up; why would he think other people would feel any different?

now, though, he’s worrying el might. 

so what does will’s confession end up turning into?

plenty of people have looked at this scene, and wondered how on earth mike could miss what will was practically spelling out for him. and the answer to that, as it is with every other instance of this, is that mike is simply too stuck in his own head. 

when mike listens to will’s words, here, he isn’t thinking about them in relation to will, or even in relation to el. 

he’s thinking about them in relation to himself. 

look at this speech again— these aren’t just will’s feelings, they’re also mike’s!

let me put it this way:

‘these past months, you’ve been…lost without el. you’re so different from other people and…it’s really scary to be different. when you’re different…sometimes…you feel like…a mistake. but…el makes you feel like you’re not a mistake at all— like you’re better for being different. and that gives you the courage to fight on. and if you were mean to her or— or you seemed like you were pushing her away— it was probably just because you were scared of losing her, just like she’s scared of losing you.’

will byers, i am so, so sorry. 

to mike, will has more or less identified the exact issue mike was having— he feels different, now that he’s realizing he’s gay, and that’s really scary, but being with el makes him feel normal!— and says that el feels the same way. 

essentially, mike has just been reassured that this relationship is MUTUALLY transactional. el does, in fact, get the same things out of the relationship that he does. it doesn’t matter if you don’t love her— el will still need you to keep being with her anyway!

(and, actually, this is sort of true— not that will knows this, and not in the way mike is thinking it is. but i'll get to that later.)

that is why mike looks so reassured. el doesn’t actually need him to genuinely love her, after all! having a boyfriend makes her feel secure in the same way having a girlfriend does for him. the fact that this was a love confession from his best friend did not register in his mind at all. 

will byers. i am so, so sorry. 

there is a silver lining to this, though. 

the painting, i think, is one of the best things mike could’ve been given to help with his emotional development. this is what leads to the confession later, both in the text itself and the subtext. and, despite what will might think, the fact that he’s pushed it through el is only going to work out in his favor!

because what is being said here, subtextually?

mike is struggling with the shame of discovering that he’s gay. that he’s different. 

and will, essentially, tells him that he looked at The Emotion, and this is what it told him to create. this is the image The Emotion inspired in will! that mike is strong, and the leader of their group, and the core that holds them all together. 

the painting— and will’s later reminder of its meaning when mike needs it— is what helps mike realize that his emotions, exactly as they are, are already something he should be proud of. 

or, really: the painting is a huge, deciding factor in what helps mike finally accept that he’s gay. 

of course, it’s still then followed by the relief that this doesn’t have to mean he and el need to break up. but mike now feels more ready to display his feelings to el as they are, and not immediately brace for a terrible impact. he’s been assured that he’s okay, and that they can still be okay, too. 

so after that unintentional go ahead from will to keep pursuing a loveless relationship due to mutual gain, mike is now armed and ready…for The Confession. 

though he still needs a little push to go through with it. this is it, he knows. once el hears it, then she’ll know. 

but will, again, doesn’t have any idea that this is what mike is struggling with. so he reminds him that he’s the ‘heart’— whatever he has to say to el, as long as he’s genuine, and stays true to himself, she’s sure to feel strength from his words, and understand what he means!

and mike goes, okay. alright. here i go. 

so, he begins. and el’s reaction, i think, is so telling. 

because what is mike saying, here?

i feel similarly about this confession to the one in season 3, in that the heat of the moment makes mike more genuine! his whole issue is that his thoughts stop him from saying to el what he thinks is a lie, so when you take away time for him to be in his own head, he’s finally able to get out what he’s been feeling. 

the way this is framed, it doesn’t really make sense for it to be total nonsense, nor does he have the time here to craft an intricate lie about what he’s going to say to his girlfriend on what is potentially her deathbed. he can’t even Write it to her; he has to be pulling this stuff from somewhere.

the confession just isn’t romantic. and, subtextually, it isn’t fully complete. let’s go through it together!

“i love you. i’m sorry i don’t say it more. it’s not because i’m scared of you. i’m not.”

textually: mike does love el, and he is sorry that his own struggles have made him unable to say that to her since it was something he now knows she really did value. and the reason he never said it wasn’t because he was scared of her!

subtextually: thanks to will, mike has come to be more accepting of the fact that he is gay. he feels sorry that he wasn’t able to love his queerness earlier. it wasn’t because he himself thought it was something he should be scared of. 

“i’ve never felt that way about you. never.”

this, despite the opinion of basically every byler ever, is…true. el may not see it this way, but these are mike’s thoughts. 

remember: EVERY time mike comes off like an insensitive, oblivious asshole, it is because he is worried or focused on HIMSELF. mike having a negative reaction to something el does does not automatically mean the emotion he is feeling is fear— el just jumps to thinking it is due to her own trauma. 

so. 

textually: when mike snaps at el for acting out and hurting someone, he is thinking about what it means for him. his ‘i was rooting for you! we were all rooting for you!’ gif moment, more or less. when they're 12, and mike has basically put all of his eggs in the basket of this new, strange person they’ve just found being good, and helpful, and the key to finding will, he’s not going to be pleased by the sight of said person bodily slamming his friend into the side of a truck. if el is bad, then mike is bad for having put all of his faith in her, and he's no closer to finding will than he’d been before. if you think back to my first post on this, this lines up with the subtext, as well; mike is worried that his queerness acting monstrous means that he is monstrous. 

at the roller rink, their relationship has developed, and so has the topic of his worry. now, el is his girlfriend. his girlfriend, who he relies on to feel normal and stable and provide a handy distraction from everything he doesn't want to think about. but she can't really be that for him when she's bashing people in the face with a roller skate. he also doesn't want to sit with the guilt of not noticing that her situation was so bad, so he lashes out at will for not telling him and at her for acting on her emotions. he cares about her; i’m sure this is difficult to watch.

subtextually: mike is scared of what The Emotion means for him, and his future within the world. i don't think he thinks The Emotion itself is scary. it was this new, strange, sudden thing he came across, and then it saved his life. the thing that is scary is the way that mike’s relation to The Emotion could end up rendering him different— this is why, even if he's accepted that he's gay, he’s still happy to stay in a relationship with el. so is he only saying he isn't scared of The Emotion because he hasn't fully realized all that it entails yet? hmm. 

“but i am scared…that one day, you’ll realize— you don’t need me anymore. and i thought that if i said how i felt— it would make that day somehow hurt more.”

textually: again, mike is worried that el will wake up one day and realize that she wants a relationship with someone who will actually be able to love her. their relationship will need to live fully in the reality of what it is. mike thinks having to physically tell her he’s gay himself is worse than an eventual breakup later on because she just isn’t feeling it. 

subtextually: mike is worried that, the moment he’s able to love the queer part of himself, it will no longer ‘need’ him to define the way in which it presents itself, nor filter its existence into a shape his mind will accept. it won’t be “The Emotion” anymore, it will simply become to him Exactly What It Is. he doesn’t know yet what lies behind the wall he’s constructed— once he’s no longer holding it up, what will it look like? and if he’s deliberately tearing down that wall himself?

do you know what part of his queerness he could be scared of, yet?

“but the truth is, el— i don’t know how to live without you.”

textually: mike doesn’t know what to do without the security of having a girlfriend in his life. also, he’s scared that being honest with her will make her leave him entirely (because he thinks that the only thing el wants from him is to be her boyfriend, in the same way el thinks mike only cares about her when she has powers), and he doesn’t want to lose one of his best friends to something about himself he can’t change!

subtextually: mike doesn’t know what to do when The Emotion is no longer just The Emotion. how will his understanding of it— and himself— permanently change, once he sees it for what it is?

“i feel like— my life started that day we found you in the woods.”

say it with me, now— mike is thinking ONLY about himself!

textually: finding el that day introduced mike to a whole world of things he never considered could be possible— in more ways than one. people have taken this as mike saying “the best day of my life was when we found you in the woods” but that is absolutely NOT what this is. finding el let him discover the reality of the upside down, something he’d been completely ignorant to before. 

finding el let him go on this whole journey, that has showed him more about himself than an emotionally stunted 12 year-old would’ve ever been able to figure out on his own. finding el let him find someone who, amidst one of the most tumultuous, scary, and confusing times of his life, let him feel normal, and secure, and like everything would inevitably be fixed. the day mike found el was the day he first realized he could be queer— though this is a reflection that, obviously, only becomes the case in hindsight. this isn’t “i was having such a great time that day we found you and i’m only now just letting you know,” it’s “looking back on it now, i see the way that everything in my life started to change the second we came across you.”

subtextually: finding The Emotion let mike discover the pain will was experiencing in the closet, something he’d have been completely blind to without it. finding The Emotion has let mike discover more things about himself than he ever would’ve had he stayed ignorant to its existence. finding and defining The Emotion let mike, during one of the most tumultuous, confusing, and scary times of his life, put a name to what he was feeling, and explore his queerness in a way that felt safer than confronting it directly. the day mike found The Emotion was the day he first realized he could be queer— though this is a reflection that, obviously, only becomes the case in hindsight. 

“you were wearing that yellow Benny’s Burgers shirt— and it was so big it almost swallowed you whole. and i knew right then and there— in that moment— that i loved you. and i’ve loved you every day since.”

textually: the details shown here are significant. in this moment, little mike saw someone standing in the pouring rain, wearing a gigantic shirt that barely fit them. 

in this moment, little mike— struggling with the sudden, inexplicable loss of his favorite person in the entire world— sees a person who needs someone to be there for them just as badly as he does. 

mike says as much in the van scene; el had really needed someone, back in season 1, and he’d been the person who was there. and remember, the love he’s talking about here is not romantic. the feelings mike has for el are platonic. so, this instead becomes something more like:

“and i knew right then and there— in that moment— that you were someone i wanted to be there for. and i’ve wanted to be there for you every day since.”

subtextually: the very first time mike encountered queerness, he understood something about it in a way his friends did not. in that moment, though he may not have understood how, he felt a connection there. and he’s never stopped. that, regardless of anything else, has never once changed. 

“i love you on your good days. i love you on your bad days. i love you with your powers, i love you without your powers…i love you for exactly who you are. you’re my superhero.”

textually: regardless of how el shows up on a given day, mike will always still want to be there for her. el doesn’t need to have powers for this to be true, and she doesn’t need to be mike’s girlfriend for this to be true, either. 

subtextually: it isn’t a coincidence that the kiss after el had lost her powers is the kiss that led mike to realizing he doesn’t like women. even if The Emotion is no longer able to mask the truth of mike’s identity to him, he’s come to accept it for what it is. right?

and— ooh. el…didn’t really seem to enjoy hearing that line, did she? she looks…pained, and due to more than just the vine currently wrapped around her throat. hm.

“and— i can’t lose you. okay? do you hear me? i can’t lose you. you can do anything— you can fly, you can move mountains. i believe that. i really do. but right now, you just have to fight.”

textually: el is actively in danger, so that obviously plays into this, but i think it’s incredibly interesting that, in the official script, that first line is instead written as “i’m not READY to lose you.” i’m not sure when this line was changed, or by who (my money’s on finn, since there’s an interview where he praises noah for always staying exactly on script, lol) but the latter gives a much clearer indication that he’s talking about losing el to more than just the threat currently in front of them than the former— though that can still be inferred. note that, while el being able to fly and move mountains with her powers is likely true, these words still come after he once again calls her a superhero— something she does not want to be seen as. 

subtextually: i’ve so far neglected to mention what else is currently going on in this scene, but— el is in kind of a bind right now, isn’t she? mike’s queerness is in a bind. 

if mike is not able to tell the part of himself that is queer that he loves it— able to accept himself— it will be lost to fear! 

and, though mike does do this, there is a reason why el also needs to look to max to get herself out. why it isn’t enough to work fully. 

because there’s still one realization left for mr. michael wheeler to have. hanging over his head, you could say. being the steady, guiding force at his back. 

being able to fly and move mountains are reminiscent of phrases commonly associated with love. mike recognizes things that his love for will is literally able to do, but he still doesn’t have a full understanding of what it actually is. 

because michael wheeler still has yet to understand that he is in love with will byers. and that, subtextually, is why his queerness looks so pained. there is more to it, than just what mike has acknowledged.

mike isn’t scared of the fact that he himself is gay. great. awesome. but being in love with your best friend is kind of an entirely different story, isn’t it? 

mike has accepted himself to the best that he currently understands how— but that is not all there is to The Emotion. 

textually, i still think el’s reaction is really interesting. 

the script says that el is getting strength from mike’s words, and using them to pull herself closer to the surface. the scene doesn't really come off that way on screen, though, does it? el’s facial expressions throughout the entire thing don’t really give off the impression of someone relieved to finally be hearing something she's been anxiously waiting for for so long.

so…what if both things are true? 

since this is a genuine confession, el can feel the truth in mike’s words, and the weight of his feelings. he does love her.

but…it isn’t enough, is it?

el’s arc this season partly centers itself around the way she chases after the affection of both brenner And mike (this is why they’re so blatantly paralleled) in order to feel validated in her existence, and to have something to cling onto to make herself feel secure. the lab literally raised her to think this way. when she felt that mike wasn’t able to tell her she wasn’t a monster, she switched to seeking that reassurance out from the other main male figure in her life (and hopper actually doesn’t need to be included, here, since she’s never taken his shit and their arc is more about him learning to let her go). 

in episode 8, she learns to stop placing so much importance in papa. 

and, in episode 9, she learns to stop putting so much importance in mike. 

mike is worried that she’ll think he’s lying to her, but platonic love is still love. will is right; mike is the heart, and so she can feel that he’s telling the truth. 

but, at the end of the day, the thing she realizes is that the strength doesn’t come from mike’s words. he could tell her absolutely everything she’s ever wanted to hear, and it still wouldn’t be enough. because the strength, ultimately, has to come from herself. 

and, just like brenner told her, she doesn’t have enough of it yet. 

this isn’t to say that el should abandon relationships entirely— it all just depends on how strongly she’s relying on them to give her everything she wants for herself. because it’s her friendship with max that pushes her to break out, and even save her life, but she has to remind herself of its value and meaning all on her own! max is fully out of commission both times!

but this is why el, despite receiving a confession that tells her she has someone who will always be there for her, isn’t seeking solace in mike when she’s struggling with the pain of losing in the end. she’s removed the importance and necessity of having mike show up for her in a very specific way, and is instead prioritizing what she’s come to realize should be taking precedence— personal strength! she no longer needs to hinge all of her self-worth on what mike or brenner think of her. “there’s more to life than stupid boys!”

el actually has been relying on this relationship as much as mike is. so…his fears were right, in a way. she’s learned that she doesn’t need him anymore. though she of course doesn’t have to stop valuing their connection. 

because mike does love her. but he only loves parts of her. he loves that she has powers, and he loves that they could be there for each other, and he loves that meeting her has allowed him to do more than he ever thought he could. the same way he could love max for her bluntness, or lucas for his pragmatism, or dustin for his unwavering loyalty.

he is not in love with her. wholly, and completely, and in the exact way she thought she'd needed him to, so she has to stop relying on him for her entire emotional wellbeing. mike is going to feel what he feels, and she has to decide how much importance and strength she should actually draw from that (much like with brenner), because the real problem was always that el never actually felt capable of deciding her own worth and importance for herself. 

so the strength she gains from his words is lined with grief. it's bittersweet. because the thing that she was waiting so desperately for was never mike’s love— it was love and confidence for herself! and though mike can be a part of what pushes her towards discovering that, in the same way max was, he is never going to be able to hand her what she’s looking for on a silver platter. because he literally, in multiple different ways, physically cannot give it to her!

this also means, then, that el was never really in love with him, either. she was in love with the idea of what he could give to her— exactly like mike. 

and then…mike and el don’t really speak, after this. mike still doesn’t know he likes will, so he thinks his most pressing job is done. introspection finished, emotional journey complete. but his queerness feels…distant. how odd.

for el, mike is correct in that she’s angry with herself. but, again, there is a reason that she isn’t going straight to him for solace. and i do think the wound left by the impact of her personal realization of what she actually needs to work on is still fresh. so she barely even looks at mike— though, much like how mike usually acts, i think this has a lot more to do with her than with him. 

and will has just born witness to the last confession he’d ever wanted to hear, that he’d shoved his own feelings out of the way for the sake of, and seen that it barely even did anything. 

so our three friends have quite a lot to think about, don’t they? i hope nothing comes along that makes them think they need to place all of it on the backburner.

see you for season five. 

[vecnapilled]

stranger things is, fundamentally, a show about the queer experience— and it always has been. (part two)

(part one here!)

this is the second post in my analysis series where i attempt to explain to all of you, in great detail, how stranger things has always been queer. fundamentally so, and, more importantly, intentionally so.

i highly recommend reading the previous post, where i explore seasons one and two, before getting into this one, as i explain a lot of my general interpretations and ideas of the show as a whole there that i won’t really be clarifying again.

however, the most important thing you need to know from part 1 is simply that each season of stranger things is centered around a different, unique part of the queer experience in its subtext— and season three is no exception.

the tone shift of s3 gets a lot of flack from viewers for reasons i do understand— it’s where both my mom and my best friend stopped watching the show— but i see the vision of what the season is trying to say, i think. and i get why they went about it in the way that they did!

because season three takes queerness, which has previously only been expressed via the dark, scary supernatural in order to illustrate the ways in which queer people are hurt by things the rest of the world do not think exist nor try to understand, and inversely associates it with things more akin to magic; childhood whimsy, and joy, and staying true to yourself.

because in the season about puberty, where will is supposed to feel like his friends have all grown up without him, have you noticed that he’s actually one of the characters that stays the most…grounded? reserved, and quiet, and less hit by the beam of ~zany~ energy most people appear to have been smacked over the head with. he feels like a child compared to his friends, because he’s literally stayed the closest to resembling his season 2 self.

but will doesn’t know how to get himself to care about all the things his friends now suddenly appear to. not when everything just seems so…silly.

season three puts the audience in a prime position to empathize and agree with the very queer experience of growing older, yet still feeling behind compared to all of your peers— whether that be because you were prevented from having the same experiences they each got to, or because you don’t see what all the fuss is about. there is a reason that will and robin are the most level-headed characters of their respective groups!

(because could you imagine if they did it the other way around? everyone else is an angst fest, while will exclusively acts super childish? i think that would’ve arguably been significantly worse.)

the queer association to mike and will’s connection to dnd is reaffirmed, here, along with continuing our association with the supernatural. this is established through both what will is shown to care about, and what mike and the others have begun to brush off or ignore. because they act ridiculous for it.

if you refuse to see what is around you, and push away parts of yourself, you only end up looking like a fool! dismissing an issue that is clearly right in front of your face is foolish!

this is the season where the AIDS metaphor has shifted, and starts to affect far more than just the one “gay kid” of the town. the refusal to acknowledge that it could be spreading to all of these various people, no matter who they are, is what allows it to grow to the severe crisis it does. gaudy, american patriotism, all laid overtop a suffering group of people unknowingly doomed to be lost to their loved ones the second they came into contact with something no one ever considered could reach them.

queerness is not immature— rejecting or turning away from it is. will, who feels like he’s been stuck in his childhood, is certainly not acting like it when you compare him to the rest of his friends. he wants to continue doing this thing he loved when he was younger, and mike is portrayed as being in the wrong for not playing with him!

and though other characters, once they begin to uncover more of what is going on, also start to feel more like themselves (and billy, now carrying the torch of the AIDS metaphor this season, hardly acts cartoonish at all), it is mike who remains the most stubbornly ridiculous throughout the season— because he’s shoving some things away as far down as they will go under the guise of doing the opposite.

if you haven’t read part 1, i heavily discuss there how el, subtextually, is a physical manifestation of queerness for every character on the show EXCEPT mike. for him, specifically, she represents something he’s only been able to recognize as The Emotion I Felt When Will Left— his queerness, and his feelings for will.

and, you know, mike likes The Emotion well enough. he does, he swears! why else would he only engage in how he feels about it when alone and away from his friends, and not be able to be honest with it, and not be able to listen to what it actually wants from him, and not like when it goes off and acts outside of the box he would prefer it stay in, and look largely unbothered by the prospect of never having to deal with how complicated it makes things sometimes, and—

you get the point. when mike interacts with el, he is interacting with The Emotion, (as puberty has likely made its persistent presence even harder to try and ignore) but he doesn’t actually love The Emotion, because he still has yet to fully unpack and understand it for what it is. subconsciously, i think he’s already aware of what he’ll find, to at least some degree— but he isn’t quite ready to see that just yet.

and el can very easily tell, thank you very much. the part of mike that makes up his queerness knows that he doesn’t actually like it in the way he says he does. the more he ignores the truth of its existence, the more it inadvertently longs to burst out of the cage it’s been shackled to.

so max has never really interacted with queerness before, and she doesn’t know what to make of it at first. initially, though she’d heard all about it from everyone else, she’d still felt a little uneasy about it, and whether it actually liked someone like her. but once she gets to know it, she immediately realizes that it’s actually really neat, and cool, and should get to have a place in the world it defines for itself. who cares what “stupid boys” tell it it should be— queerness should express itself in a way that is entirely unique to itself.

her insistence that el is her own person who should get to discover herself and make decisions independent of anything mike has to say is, subtextually, max saying that mike has no control over the fact that (his) queerness exists, nor the form it takes, and he should stop trying to force it into resembling something he finds more palatable.

but remember— el is mike’s queerness ONLY where mike is concerned. when it’s just her and max, that is when she is queerness in general. mike is still unable to see her as anything but The Emotion.

but…what if that were to change?

as we’ve discussed, mike uses el as a means of interacting with The Emotion, both literally and metaphorically. he’s a boy in his early teens feeling a whole lot of things he doesn’t know what to do with, and having a girlfriend to focus on means he can at least partly do something about that while also not having to actually dig into what any of it means.

he’s still heavily toeing a line, though— interaction is still interaction, whether mike realizes the reality of it or not. so he’s told to stop interacting with The Emotion like that, and (begrudgingly, mind) tries to cut it off and shut it out completely with an excuse he’s fully aware is nonsense.

(hopper, by the way, tells him to do this due to the role he’s transitioned into since taking el in; the parent of a queer child. he’s worried that, once his kid begins to express that part of themselves, he’ll no longer be able to protect/relate to/provide help to them. the more he tries to push this away, the more ridiculous he acts.)

but now that mike isn’t dealing with The Emotion by physically interacting with it (lol), and things like this do not just go away that easily, he’s now left with nothing else to do but Think about it. he’s still! thinking about it!! mike and lucas spend the whole day at the mall looking for something for el!

being the teenage boy that he is— and an already emotionally stunted one, at that— i would imagine that Thought has not often been given precedence over Action and Physicality, so this is probably one of very few times he’s ever actually gone and thought about The Emotion this consistently for this long of a period.

and…has anyone ever had the admittedly ridiculous (in a slightly self-deprecating way) experience of taking a step back, looking at a a very specific set of details about yourself that in hindsight should have been overwhelmingly obvious, and go— oh my god, is that— is that gay? is THAT what this is?????

i sincerely hope, for your sake, that you took what you were greeted with slightly better than how mike proceeds to.

because he’s really taken aback by seeing el out in public with her new look, isn’t he?

thinking about The Emotion leads it to being shoved out further than it’s ever been before— and it isn’t presenting itself in the way that it usually does. now, it looks a whole lot more loud— right out where people can see it.

THIS is what The Emotion is??? why does it look like that??? has that what it’s been this entire time???! he doesn’t— he doesn’t want to have this associated with him if it looks like this— is everyone else going to see it like this, too? is this what it’s always looked like to them???

it’s interesting that this scene is an intersection between el’s role as general queerness with max, and her role as The Emotion with mike, because it’s a breakup!

el has a special relationship with mike compared to the one she has with everyone else. when she severs that, she becomes the same thing to him that she is to dustin, or lucas, or max that said special relationship was preventing mike from seeing— queerness!

and mike largely wants nothing to do with that. isn’t actually all that upset about things ending right there, because he doesn’t want to associate his own identity— which is very different, actually, thank you— with whatever that was. if that’s what The Emotion has been the whole time…then he’s perfectly fine with it leaving him alone.

and mike is really at his worst with this next scene with will in his basement, isn’t he?

with el gone, mike has been left holding a truth he still has yet to understand the true shape of, but one he now refuses to thrust over to her whenever he doesn’t want to have to think about it in detail— it’s being kept firmly within the confines of his chest, because he sure as hell isn’t going to risk letting it get mixed in with that again. it’s much better this way, anyway— now it can just sit in his hands, and he doesn’t have to think about it.

so it sure would suck if that once again became too unbearable to hold, wouldn’t it?

you know where i’m going with this.

the scene with mike, lucas, and will in mike’s basement is the moment that reaffirms dnd’s association with queerness, along with strengthening the association to childhood joy the entire season has been building up.

will wants to express his queerness with the support and involvement of his friends, but mike has just recently decided that he wants absolutely nothing to do with any of that, and refuses to engage with it. will destroying castle byers, a key symbol of his childhood, comes right after mike projects his internalized homophobia all over his face; they’re being very upfront about this.

which means i should probably be upfront about something, as well.

when i said that el represented general queerness to everyone except mike…this wasn’t entirely true. there is another character for whom el takes on a slightly different form: will.

since representations like this are largely only relevant when the characters involved are interacting with each other in some way, and it takes all the way till season 4 for these two to even start having conversations, it doesn’t come up a lot, but el doesn’t really need to represent general queerness, where will is concerned. everyone else needs to have that moment of interacting with this strange, new thing for the first time (and robin only needs about 2 seconds to adjust to the existence of Everything, i see what you did there) and coming to understand it, but will has known about this part of himself for years. this is by no means his first rodeo.

el still represents queerness to mike. she’s just been cloaked in denial that prevents him from fully understanding her.

and so el, similarly, still represents queerness to will. for him, though, she’s instead cloaked in shame. and it’s a shame that feels all-encompassing, rather than a denial that tries to swallow itself whole.

el did not make an appearance into hawkins, or into the world in general, until will was forced to learn of the existence of the upside down— of the closet. he is only brought out of it once she disappears entirely— and, in season 2, when his feelings of being trapped in there return, so too does she.

el is will’s internalized homophobia.

because, though he’s no mike, he certainly isn’t free from experiencing any. in season 3, will is struggling with how different and out of place he feels among his friends, and immediately feels shame and embarrassment at what he’s doing when mike and lucas don’t express interest in playing dnd with him— it isn’t as if he’s continuously able to unapologetically be himself, regardless of the response.

so, in season 3, will watches the part of himself he is ashamed of spend nearly all of her time glued to mike to a degree everyone around them thinks is annoying, during which mike acts ridiculous, and nothing like himself. in the scene on the hill, mike and el— who, since will has lagged behind to watch them, is simultaneously representing both mike’s denial of his feelings for will, and will’s shame surrounding his feelings for mike, run away from the others so they can spend time with each other without anyone else watching!

so mike and will are both effectively using el as a storage container they can direct a particular unwanted feeling towards. will, who has always been incredibly in touch with his emotions, often to his detriment (in stark opposition to mike, who, also to his detriment, has very much Not), would understandably want to have at least one more place to put the buckets and buckets of heavy, unyielding shame he’s been forced to carry so they don’t have to all keep staying shoved within his own chest.

and so, all of this is to say that the rain fight ends up being a case of projection from both sides.

but, again, mike’s usual avenue for it has been removed, following the breakup. since el’s association to will largely comes from her relationship to mike, will has temporarily lost his, as well.

and so…something very interesting happens.

in the absence of el, will now projects his own frustration at not being able to relate to what his friends are all thinking about now onto mike, and calls el stupid (which i know is also about her, but mike is still the focus of the accusation and blame here). since this is also literally the reason he says this, this is the subtext pushing its way up into, and now operating within, the actual text itself. mike and will can physically feel what they’re alluding to here in a way that mike and eleven cannot.

and so mike, still within the text itself, acts accordingly to this projection in turn; “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls,” he says, which drives the stake in even deeper.

hearing this, will then runs off, and tries to destroy castle byers– one of the largest remaining pieces of his childhood. (his queerness.)

now, mike, also in the absence of el, projects his own feelings regarding the truth of his queerness onto will– giving us that aforementioned, “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls.” in response, will tells him that maybe he really had wanted them to keep being as they’d always been in childhood. and we see mike, for what is probably the first time this season, express immediate regret and remorse for what he’s just said.

do you see it?

el, who represents both mike and will’s respective relationships to their queerness, is no longer in the picture. this forces mike and will to either: hold onto these feelings that, especially now that they’ve been pushed outside of the subtext, genuinely hurt to hold, or push them off onto each other. ie; they’re both projecting. but since the wall of subtext has been removed, both of these targets land in ways the other hadn’t anticipated.

in this scene, will subtextually becomes mike’s queerness, and mike subtextually becomes will’s internalized homophobia. and as a result, will physically takes on mike’s denial, and mike physically takes on will’s shame. they’ve both been made to take on and feel what the other has been dealing with.

from will’s perspective:

“you’re destroying everything, and for what? all so you can swap spit with some stupid girl?”

will feels shame at not liking girls, and twists that into calling el stupid. mike, whose time spent with said stupid girl reminds will of all that he is not, effectively becomes the representation of his internalized homophobia. said internalized homophobia then bites back with,

“el’s not stupid! it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”

this is a fundamental thing will knows about himself. and the thought hurts. enough that he tries to destroy its association to himself entirely. tries to deny its existence. (though he ultimately isn’t able to.)

and, from mike’s perspective:

“el’s not stupid! it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”

mike doesn’t want to deal with this sudden reminder of his queerness, and pushes the association off onto will. when he questions his own queerness on whether it thought things would remain how they’d been forever, it tells him point blank that it had certainly wanted them to. struck by the reality of this response, mike is now awash with humiliation and shame at his own words, and chases after them for the first time to properly sort out what they’d actually meant. (though he, also, ultimately isn’t able to.)

though mike’s queerness and will’s internalized homophobia eventually return to their original projected target in the “i like the new look, by the way” scene and the scene where mike confesses that he loves el to his friends respectively, this scene really marks a turning point for these two this season. because from here on, these new emotions they’ve been hit with stick.

will dismisses talking about what happened in the basement or immediately following it any time either mike or lucas try, and says that it’s fine (it isn’t), and that he doesn’t care (he does). he also tells lucas that there are more important things to be worrying about— which is true in a literal sense, of course, given what they’re up against, but this is also will denouncing the details of this fight as something irrelevant and childish, which this entire season has been trying to tell us that queerness is not!

and now…what about mike?

having swapped his denial for shame, mike now moves into the arc of his that will eventually follow him into season 4— and where i now move into a take bylers do not ever tend to have, lol. so. bear with me on this one.

when mike tells his friends in the heat of the moment that he loves el, and does not want to lose her…he is being genuine. his confession in season 4– which we will get to, trust me— is genuine.

mike does love el. of course he does, she’s one of his closest friends!

the reason he’s never able to tell her this to her face, however, is that he knows that el would immediately be able to clock him in the way she always has— that she’d know that the source of this love is not what she wants it to be. his secret would be out, and she’d be hurt by the truth that he’d never be able to give her what she wanted from him.

and, subtextually, this is mike being unable to tell the part of himself that is queer that he loves it. he doesn’t really love himself, not yet.

“i thought, if i said it, then that would make it hurt more.” but i’m getting ahead of myself.

the point is, mike now becomes less in denial about his relationship to his queerness, though the shame that comes from thus having a better idea of what it is still keeps him from being honest.

then, we get to the very end of the season. though the swap that was done in the rain scene is here to stay (and the consequences of this can especially be seen in season 4), there is a slight resolution to the emotions brought up in the fight itself, just before will leaves.

mike saying that he loves el is textually acknowledging that he loves her as a friend, and subtextually the beginning of his acceptance of himself as a gay man— both are related to his queerness. since “i love her and i don’t want to lose her” was him finally being able to do this in some capacity, he finally wants to play dnd again!

and now, it’s will, saddled with his newfound denial (especially with how painful that fight felt for him!), who is the one to dismiss the game. he does say that he can just use mike’s, once he comes back, but he still looks extremely unsure as he does. he spent practically the whole season asking if they could play, and now that’s become more of a possibility he sort of shrugs at, careful not to display too much interest either way. if mike did not want to play, will wouldn’t be going out to do it on his own. but you can see the relief on his face when mike is worried about him finding another party. there’s the boy he knows and loves!

and, to end things off, we get that iconic scene in front of the closet. el kisses mike, and he finally, finally…fully processes that he doesn’t like girls.

that’s it. still a massive step, especially where he’s concerned, but the realization that this means that he’s gay and the realization that he’s in love with will are still separate, future jumps he has to make.

again, mike is an emotional neglect baby; it’s really hard for him to recognize and connect with his emotions when he has them. but you know what doesn’t require a lot of introspective thought to notice?

physical reactions. and this is the puberty season, isn’t it?

this doesn’t even have to be in a more mature way; i’m sure mike’s heard all about butterflies in your stomach, and fireworks when you kiss, and a blush that feels like your whole face is on fire. and he…doesn’t really feel any of that with el, but— that doesn’t have to mean anything, does it?

the ‘not possible’ scene would argue otherwise. since it does happen to take place before that scene at the closet, he then has a very recent frame of reference for how he felt even just talking to his best friend (he’ll get there eventually. bear with him) compared to how he feels kissing who is supposed to be his girlfriend.

so i wonder what would happen if all that newfound shame started to really…catch up with him, hm?

just some food for thought.

but to wrap things up, let’s go back to our overall theme. queerness has been connected to childhood— and childhood is what ends up saving the day, even if it seemed ridiculous at first!

the monster is fought back using fourth of july fireworks. dustin taking the time to sing a song with his girlfriend he met at nerdy summer camp when absolutely everyone he knows can hear him helps save the world. and el, notably, is the one to remind billy of that day on the beach with his mother when he was a boy, which is enough to bring him back to himself for just long enough to save her life.

part three soon. it’s the longest one yet!

i’m sure you can guess why.

[vecnapilled]

hi @trailersafternoon ! sorry to have to respond to you like this, i can’t reply to comments (trying to get that fixed, but. tumblr is tumblr lol). so this isn’t meant to be a callout or anything!!

the person you’re responding to is a troll who camps in cg tags exclusively to comment negative or condescending things on as many posts as they can find, so i’m not really going to bother with them. but i wanted to talk about the point you bring up here.

does el subtextually “representing will and mike’s love” take away her identity as a character?

well. first off, a large point of my series is that el subtextually represents the general concept of queerness to Everyone. in this story, Every character has a different relationship to queerness, and so Everyone has a different relationship with el. she is a multifaceted character in the text, and she represents a multifaceted concept in the subtext. the relationships she has even with mike and will are different, both subtextually and not.

second, is that this is all happening subtextually. it has nothing to do with how el consciously feels about herself, because she as a character is her own person in the story. mike and will go in and out of subtext with their stuff because they themselves are queer, and literally do project their insecurities onto el as just a Thing That They Do because they’re angsty teenagers struggling to figure themselves out, but none of that makes el the person stop and think that she’s actually only just a representation of a concept, lol. she has her own arc with her own struggles; those are just also metaphorically reflecting the struggles of queer people, since that is also what she represents.

i’m sure that there have been instances where people have pushed aside the importance a female character has just to say that she only existed to prop up a male ship. however, that really isn’t at all what is going on with these three. did those shows have a first season that entirely centered around how a small, conservative town comes to discover and understand the existence of queerness, and the experience of what it’s like being in the closet? a second season themed around the AIDS crisis, where the anniversary of the central character’s traumatic event is the exact day reagan was re-elected?

el is a massive part of the show in her own right, yes. but a massive part of the show, in its own right, Is queer. that’s my entire point. el representing what she does to mike and will, and even to the world at large, is Vital to the way everything unfolds in season 4, which i’ll get into in the next part. the individual struggles of all three of them intertwine and impact the way their respective emotional journeys develop in a way that is only possible due to that representation!

also, stories are Meant to represent things. this is how authors write about the themes or issues they care about, regardless of whether you’re writing a children’s comedy or a gritty horror. a story can be about one thing while also carrying a deeper meaning that lets it additionally be about a second, other thing, and that doesn’t at all mean that that first thing is no longer relevant. el also representing queerness is no different than the upside down also representing the closet, it’s just the avenue that is different.

and, like. in season 2, will metaphorically represents someone with AIDS. does that at all take away from his character that season? does will literally think of himself as no longer his own person, but instead only someone who exists to represent AIDS? does that mean that he doesn’t have an arc, or his own thoughts and feelings? when mike interacts with will, he is subtextually interacting with someone with AIDS, but does that at all take away from what ‘crazy together,’ or the shed scene, or those scenes in the hospital mean for both of them? no! if anything, it goes and gives them an additional layer of complexity and depth!

so the answer, at least to me, is very much no. el is her own person, who also happens to represent a large concept to many different characters. that’s all!

again, i can’t reply, so you can shoot me an ask or a dm if there’s anything else regarding this you’d like me to elaborate on!

[vecnapilled]

hi! saw your s5 post and was looking for your post abt mike + the byler water tower scene, but couldn't find it, so thinking maybe it's an upcoming post? just curious to read your thoughts :)

hi! thanks for the ask!

i think i know what you’re talking about, but when i said “i have a post on this,” i was talking about the coming out scene, not the water tower scene! sorry for any confusion ^^; i’ll definitely be touching on the water tower scene in my queer subtext analysis, though, once we get to s5! it even comes up a bit in the part for s4 ;)

[vecnapilled]

stranger things is, fundamentally, a show about the queer experience— and it always has been. (season 3)

(seasons 1+2 here!)

this is the second post in my analysis series where i attempt to explain to all of you, in great detail, how stranger things has always been queer. fundamentally so, and, more importantly, intentionally so.

i highly recommend reading the previous post, where i explore seasons one and two, before getting into this one, as i explain a lot of my general interpretations and ideas of the show as a whole there that i won’t really be clarifying again.

however, the most important thing you need to know from part 1 is simply that each season of stranger things is centered around a different, unique part of the queer experience in its subtext— and season three is no exception.

the tone shift of s3 gets a lot of flack from viewers for reasons i do understand— it’s where both my mom and my best friend stopped watching the show— but i see the vision of what the season is trying to say, i think. and i get why they went about it in the way that they did!

because season three takes queerness, which has previously only been expressed via the dark, scary supernatural in order to illustrate the ways in which queer people are hurt by things the rest of the world do not think exist nor try to understand, and inversely associates it with things more akin to magic; childhood whimsy, and joy, and staying true to yourself.

because in the season about puberty, where will is supposed to feel like his friends have all grown up without him, have you noticed that he’s actually one of the characters that stays the most…grounded? reserved, and quiet, and less hit by the beam of ~zany~ energy most people appear to have been smacked over the head with. he feels like a child compared to his friends, because he’s literally stayed the closest to resembling his season 2 self.

but will doesn’t know how to get himself to care about all the things his friends now suddenly appear to. not when everything just seems so…silly.

season three puts the audience in a prime position to empathize and agree with the very queer experience of growing older, yet still feeling behind compared to all of your peers— whether that be because you were prevented from having the same experiences they each got to, or because you don’t see what all the fuss is about. there is a reason that will and robin are the most level-headed characters of their respective groups!

(because could you imagine if they did it the other way around? everyone else is an angst fest, while will exclusively acts super childish? i think that would’ve arguably been significantly worse.)

the queer association to mike and will’s connection to dnd is reaffirmed, here, along with continuing our association with the supernatural. this is established through both what will is shown to care about, and what mike and the others have begun to brush off or ignore. because they act ridiculous for it.

if you refuse to see what is around you, and push away parts of yourself, you only end up looking like a fool! dismissing an issue that is clearly right in front of your face is foolish!

this is the season where the AIDS metaphor has shifted, and starts to affect far more than just the one “gay kid” of the town. the refusal to acknowledge that it could be spreading to all of these various people, no matter who they are, is what allows it to grow to the severe crisis it does. gaudy, american patriotism, all laid overtop a suffering group of people unknowingly doomed to be lost to their loved ones the second they came into contact with something no one ever considered could reach them.

queerness is not immature— rejecting or turning away from it is. will, who feels like he’s been stuck in his childhood, is certainly not acting like it when you compare him to the rest of his friends. he wants to continue doing this thing he loved when he was younger, and mike is portrayed as being in the wrong for not playing with him!

and though other characters, once they begin to uncover more of what is going on, also start to feel more like themselves (and billy, now carrying the torch of the AIDS metaphor this season, hardly acts cartoonish at all), it is mike who remains the most stubbornly ridiculous throughout the season— because he’s shoving some things away as far down as they will go under the guise of doing the opposite.

if you haven’t read part 1, i heavily discuss there how el, subtextually, is a physical manifestation of queerness for every character on the show EXCEPT mike. for him, specifically, she represents something he’s only been able to recognize as The Emotion I Felt When Will Left— his queerness, and his feelings for will.

and, you know, mike likes The Emotion well enough. he does, he swears! why else would he only engage in how he feels about it when alone and away from his friends, and not be able to be honest with it, and not be able to listen to what it actually wants from him, and not like when it goes off and acts outside of the box he would prefer it stay in, and look largely unbothered by the prospect of never having to deal with how complicated it makes things sometimes, and—

you get the point. when mike interacts with el, he is interacting with The Emotion, (as puberty has likely made its persistent presence even harder to try and ignore) but he doesn’t actually love The Emotion, because he still has yet to fully unpack and understand it for what it is. subconsciously, i think he’s already aware of what he’ll find, to at least some degree— but he isn’t quite ready to see that just yet.

and el can very easily tell, thank you very much. the part of mike that makes up his queerness knows that he doesn’t actually like it in the way he says he does. the more he ignores the truth of its existence, the more it inadvertently longs to burst out of the cage it’s been shackled to.

so max has never really interacted with queerness before, and she doesn’t know what to make of it at first. initially, though she’d heard all about it from everyone else, she’d still felt a little uneasy about it, and whether it actually liked someone like her. but once she gets to know it, she immediately realizes that it’s actually really neat, and cool, and should get to have a place in the world it defines for itself. who cares what “stupid boys” tell it it should be— queerness should express itself in a way that is entirely unique to itself.

her insistence that el is her own person who should get to discover herself and make decisions independent of anything mike has to say is, subtextually, max saying that mike has no control over the fact that (his) queerness exists, nor the form it takes, and he should stop trying to force it into resembling something he finds more palatable.

but remember— el is mike’s queerness ONLY where mike is concerned. when it’s just her and max, that is when she is queerness in general. mike is still unable to see her as anything but The Emotion.

but…what if that were to change?

as we’ve discussed, mike uses el as a means of interacting with The Emotion, both literally and metaphorically. he’s a boy in his early teens feeling a whole lot of things he doesn’t know what to do with, and having a girlfriend to focus on means he can at least partly do something about that while also not having to actually dig into what any of it means.

he’s still heavily toeing a line, though— interaction is still interaction, whether mike realizes the reality of it or not. so he’s told to stop interacting with The Emotion like that, and (begrudgingly, mind) tries to cut it off and shut it out completely with an excuse he’s fully aware is nonsense.

(hopper, by the way, tells him to do this due to the role he’s transitioned into since taking el in; the parent of a queer child. he’s worried that, once his kid begins to express that part of themselves, he’ll no longer be able to protect/relate to/provide help to them. the more he tries to push this away, the more ridiculous he acts.)

but now that mike isn’t dealing with The Emotion by physically interacting with it (lol), and things like this do not just go away that easily, he’s now left with nothing else to do but Think about it. he’s still! thinking about it!! mike and lucas spend the whole day at the mall looking for something for el!

being the teenage boy that he is— and an already emotionally stunted one, at that— i would imagine that Thought has not often been given precedence over Action and Physicality, so this is probably one of very few times he’s ever actually gone and thought about The Emotion this consistently for this long of a period.

and…has anyone ever had the admittedly ridiculous (in a slightly self-deprecating way) experience of taking a step back, looking at a a very specific set of details about yourself that in hindsight should have been overwhelmingly obvious, and go— oh my god, is that— is that gay? is THAT what this is?????

i sincerely hope, for your sake, that you took what you were greeted with slightly better than how mike proceeds to.

because he’s really taken aback by seeing el out in public with her new look, isn’t he?

thinking about The Emotion leads it to being shoved out further than it’s ever been before— and it isn’t presenting itself in the way that it usually does. now, it looks a whole lot more loud— right out where people can see it.

THIS is what The Emotion is??? why does it look like that??? has that what it’s been this entire time???! he doesn’t— he doesn’t want to have this associated with him if it looks like this— is everyone else going to see it like this, too? is this what it’s always looked like to them???

it’s interesting that this scene is an intersection between el’s role as general queerness with max, and her role as The Emotion with mike, because it’s a breakup!

el has a special relationship with mike compared to the one she has with everyone else. when she severs that, she becomes the same thing to him that she is to dustin, or lucas, or max that said special relationship was preventing mike from seeing— queerness!

and mike largely wants nothing to do with that. isn’t actually all that upset about things ending right there, because he doesn’t want to associate his own identity— which is very different, actually, thank you— with whatever that was. if that’s what The Emotion has been the whole time…then he’s perfectly fine with it leaving him alone.

and mike is really at his worst with this next scene with will in his basement, isn’t he?

with el gone, mike has been left holding a truth he still has yet to understand the true shape of, but one he now refuses to thrust over to her whenever he doesn’t want to have to think about it in detail— it’s being kept firmly within the confines of his chest, because he sure as hell isn’t going to risk letting it get mixed in with that again. it’s much better this way, anyway— now it can just sit in his hands, and he doesn’t have to think about it.

so it sure would suck if that once again became too unbearable to hold, wouldn’t it?

you know where i’m going with this.

the scene with mike, lucas, and will in mike’s basement is the moment that reaffirms dnd’s association with queerness, along with strengthening the association to childhood joy the entire season has been building up.

will wants to express his queerness with the support and involvement of his friends, but mike has just recently decided that he wants absolutely nothing to do with any of that, and refuses to engage with it. will destroying castle byers, a key symbol of his childhood, comes right after mike projects his internalized homophobia all over his face; they’re being very upfront about this.

which means i should probably be upfront about something, as well.

when i said that el represented general queerness to everyone except mike…this wasn’t entirely true. there is another character for whom el takes on a slightly different form: will.

since representations like this are largely only relevant when the characters involved are interacting with each other in some way, and it takes all the way till season 4 for these two to even start having conversations, it doesn’t come up a lot, but el doesn’t really need to represent general queerness, where will is concerned. everyone else needs to have that moment of interacting with this strange, new thing for the first time (and robin only needs about 2 seconds to adjust to the existence of Everything, i see what you did there) and coming to understand it, but will has known about this part of himself for years. this is by no means his first rodeo.

el still represents queerness to mike. she’s just been cloaked in denial that prevents him from fully understanding her.

and so el, similarly, still represents queerness to will. for him, though, she’s instead cloaked in shame. and it’s a shame that feels all-encompassing, rather than a denial that tries to swallow itself whole.

el did not make an appearance into hawkins, or into the world in general, until will was forced to learn of the existence of the upside down— of the closet. he is only brought out of it once she disappears entirely— and, in season 2, when his feelings of being trapped in there return, so too does she.

el is will’s internalized homophobia.

because, though he’s no mike, he certainly isn’t free from experiencing any. in season 3, will is struggling with how different and out of place he feels among his friends, and immediately feels shame and embarrassment at what he’s doing when mike and lucas don’t express interest in playing dnd with him— it isn’t as if he’s continuously able to unapologetically be himself, regardless of the response.

so, in season 3, will watches the part of himself he is ashamed of spend nearly all of her time glued to mike to a degree everyone around them thinks is annoying, during which mike acts ridiculous, and nothing like himself. in the scene on the hill, mike and el— who, since will has lagged behind to watch them, is simultaneously representing both mike’s denial of his feelings for will, and will’s shame surrounding his feelings for mike, run away from the others so they can spend time with each other without anyone else watching!

so mike and will are both effectively using el as a storage container they can direct a particular unwanted feeling towards. will, who has always been incredibly in touch with his emotions, often to his detriment (in stark opposition to mike, who, also to his detriment, has very much Not), would understandably want to have at least one more place to put the buckets and buckets of heavy, unyielding shame he’s been forced to carry so they don’t have to all keep staying shoved within his own chest.

and so, all of this is to say that the rain fight ends up being a case of projection from both sides.

but, again, mike’s usual avenue for it has been removed, following the breakup. since el’s association to will largely comes from her relationship to mike, will has temporarily lost his, as well.

and so…something very interesting happens.

in the absence of el, will now projects his own frustration at not being able to relate to what his friends are all thinking about now onto mike, and calls el stupid (which i know is also about her, but mike is still the focus of the accusation and blame here). since this is also literally the reason he says this, this is the subtext pushing its way up into, and now operating within, the actual text itself. mike and will can physically feel what they’re alluding to here in a way that mike and eleven cannot.

and so mike, still within the text itself, acts accordingly to this projection in turn; “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls,” he says, which drives the stake in even deeper.

hearing this, will then runs off, and tries to destroy castle byers– one of the largest remaining pieces of his childhood. (his queerness.)

now, mike, also in the absence of el, projects his own feelings regarding the truth of his queerness onto will– giving us that aforementioned, “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls.” in response, will tells him that maybe he really had wanted them to keep being as they’d always been in childhood. and we see mike, for what is probably the first time this season, express immediate regret and remorse for what he’s just said.

do you see it?

el, who represents both mike and will’s respective relationships to their queerness, is no longer in the picture. this forces mike and will to either: hold onto these feelings that, especially now that they’ve been pushed outside of the subtext, genuinely hurt to hold, or push them off onto each other. ie; they’re both projecting. but since the wall of subtext has been removed, both of these targets land in ways the other hadn’t anticipated.

in this scene, will subtextually becomes mike’s queerness, and mike subtextually becomes will’s internalized homophobia. and as a result, will physically takes on mike’s denial, and mike physically takes on will’s shame. they’ve both been made to take on and feel what the other has been dealing with.

from will’s perspective:

“you’re destroying everything, and for what? all so you can swap spit with some stupid girl?”

will feels shame at not liking girls, and twists that into calling el stupid. mike, whose time spent with said stupid girl reminds will of all that he is not, effectively becomes the representation of his internalized homophobia. said internalized homophobia then bites back with,

“el’s not stupid! it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”

this is a fundamental thing will knows about himself. and the thought hurts. enough that he tries to destroy its association to himself entirely. tries to deny its existence. (though he ultimately isn’t able to.)

and, from mike’s perspective:

“el’s not stupid! it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”

mike doesn’t want to deal with this sudden reminder of his queerness, and pushes the association off onto will. when he questions his own queerness on whether it thought things would remain how they’d been forever, it tells him point blank that it had certainly wanted them to. struck by the reality of this response, mike is now awash with humiliation and shame at his own words, and chases after them for the first time to properly sort out what they’d actually meant. (though he, also, ultimately isn’t able to.)

though mike’s queerness and will’s internalized homophobia eventually return to their original projected target in the “i like the new look, by the way” scene and the scene where mike confesses that he loves el to his friends respectively, this scene really marks a turning point for these two this season. because from here on, these new emotions they’ve been hit with stick.

will dismisses talking about what happened in the basement or immediately following it any time either mike or lucas try, and says that it’s fine (it isn’t), and that he doesn’t care (he does). he also tells lucas that there are more important things to be worrying about— which is true in a literal sense, of course, given what they’re up against, but this is also will denouncing the details of this fight as something irrelevant and childish, which this entire season has been trying to tell us that queerness is not!

and now…what about mike?

having swapped his denial for shame, mike now moves into the arc of his that will eventually follow him into season 4— and where i now move into a take bylers do not ever tend to have, lol. so. bear with me on this one.

when mike tells his friends in the heat of the moment that he loves el, and does not want to lose her…he is being genuine. his confession in season 4– which we will get to, trust me— is genuine.

mike does love el. of course he does, she’s one of his closest friends!

the reason he’s never able to tell her this to her face, however, is that he knows that el would immediately be able to clock him in the way she always has— that she’d know that the source of this love is not what she wants it to be. his secret would be out, and she’d be hurt by the truth that he’d never be able to give her what she wanted from him.

and, subtextually, this is mike being unable to tell the part of himself that is queer that he loves it. he doesn’t really love himself, not yet.

“i thought, if i said it, then that would make it hurt more.” but i’m getting ahead of myself.

the point is, mike now becomes less in denial about his relationship to his queerness, though the shame that comes from thus having a better idea of what it is still keeps him from being honest.

then, we get to the very end of the season. though the swap that was done in the rain scene is here to stay (and the consequences of this can especially be seen in season 4), there is a slight resolution to the emotions brought up in the fight itself, just before will leaves.

mike saying that he loves el is textually acknowledging that he loves her as a friend, and subtextually the beginning of his acceptance of himself as a gay man— both are related to his queerness. since “i love her and i don’t want to lose her” was him finally being able to do this in some capacity, he finally wants to play dnd again!

and now, it’s will, saddled with his newfound denial (especially with how painful that fight felt for him!), who is the one to dismiss the game. he does say that he can just use mike’s, once he comes back, but he still looks extremely unsure as he does. he spent practically the whole season asking if they could play, and now that’s become more of a possibility he sort of shrugs at, careful not to display too much interest either way. if mike did not want to play, will wouldn’t be going out to do it on his own. but you can see the relief on his face when mike is worried about him finding another party. there’s the boy he knows and loves!

and, to end things off, we get that iconic scene in front of the closet. el kisses mike, and he finally, finally…fully processes that he doesn’t like girls.

that’s it. still a massive step, especially where he’s concerned, but the realization that this means that he’s gay and the realization that he’s in love with will are still separate, future jumps he has to make.

again, mike is an emotional neglect baby; it’s really hard for him to recognize and connect with his emotions when he has them. but you know what doesn’t require a lot of introspective thought to notice?

physical reactions. and this is the puberty season, isn’t it?

this doesn’t even have to be in a more mature way; i’m sure mike’s heard all about butterflies in your stomach, and fireworks when you kiss, and a blush that feels like your whole face is on fire. and he…doesn’t really feel any of that with el, but— that doesn’t have to mean anything, does it?

the ‘not possible’ scene would argue otherwise. since it does happen to take place before that scene at the closet, he then has a very recent frame of reference for how he felt even just talking to his best friend (he’ll get there eventually. bear with him) compared to how he feels kissing who is supposed to be his girlfriend.

so i wonder what would happen if all that newfound shame started to really…catch up with him, hm?

just some food for thought.

but to wrap things up, let’s go back to our overall theme. queerness has been connected to childhood— and childhood is what ends up saving the day, even if it seemed ridiculous at first!

the monster is fought back using fourth of july fireworks. dustin taking the time to sing a song with his girlfriend he met at nerdy summer camp when absolutely everyone he knows can hear him helps save the world. and el, notably, is the one to remind billy of that day on the beach with his mother when he was a boy, which is enough to bring him back to himself for just long enough to save her life.

season four here. it’s the longest one yet!

i’m sure you can guess why.

[vecnapilled]

stranger things is, fundamentally, a show about the queer experience— and it always has been. (seasons 1+2)

i’m going to pose an idea, here, and i need you to try and hear me out if recent events have you wanting to immediately dismiss it. (and if you’re reading this from the bus, hello! this is absolutely a post for you, too.)

stranger things…has always been queer. fundamentally so, and intentionally so, and in ways that hinge on more than just how byler interact with each other. because though they are at the core of the show (and we’ll of course be touching on them here, too!), there is so, so much else that surrounds them.

this doesn’t just begin from season one; it begins from the entire pitch and premise itself. and, though you may not believe me, persists all the way through to the end of season 5.

stranger things is not one of the gayest shows i’ve ever seen purely because it has a very prevalent m/m ship, no— it’s one of the gayest shows i’ve ever seen because every single season subtextually centers itself heavily around a different aspect of the queer experience.

(and, no. season 5’s is not what you think it is.)

let’s go back to the very, very beginning.

stranger things, in its simplest form, is about a small, conservative town in the midwest, forced to confront everything surrounding something they hadn’t even thought existed once situations grow too severe to simply ignore.

in stranger things, queerness is the supernatural.

now, before you say anything, no, the show isn’t trying to say that queer people are evil scary monsters. it’s about queer experiences.

because in season 1, who are the people that suffer the most?

stranger things 1 follows a young boy, cast out and ostracized by his town for a difference even his own mother admits she can see in him. he has three best friends, but his relationship with one of them is…different, than it is with the other two. they push him to lie to this friend about something they see as largely inconsequential, and though the boy goes along with it initially, it doesn’t sit right with him. his friend, and the game they forged their bond while playing, mean a lot to him. so he thinks about this feeling, acknowledges it, and then acts on it— though only once the two are alone.

and is promptly thrown into another world in the blink of an eye on the way home.

this new world, though it may look identical to the town he’s always known, is terrifying, and cold, and, most importantly— empty. he sees not a single person also in this terrible place with him, and the familiar people that have always populated his home have been replaced by dangerous monsters, only out for his blood.

will byers has just been trapped in the closet.

if you’ve read this wonderfully written substack article that goes into an interpretation of this in detail, this idea is not new to you— but it certainly is to the people of hawkins.

because though will is trapped, no one really considers the possibility that he could be.

he isn’t suffering, they think, because he’s dead, or he isn’t suffering, they say, because he’s run away, and the notion that a place like this is actively causing him so much pain and anguish is laughable, because how could it even exist in the first place?

will suffers, alone, because the reality of his situation is rendered invisible to anyone that does not deliberately try to seek out and understand it.

so, who does?

a mother’s instincts are are a truly powerful thing. but though joyce understands that her son is actively suffering and in distress enough to hear him when he desperately calls out for her, she still cannot conceptualize the full scope of the place he has been stuck in, and so they cannot see each other. it is her willingness to face the reality of her son’s torment head on that allows her to rescue him from it.

hopper— who initially so very bluntly asked if the opinions held by will’s homophobic father were founded— doesn’t understand what the hell any of this is, or even believes it exists at first. but he does know, intimately, both the pain of losing a child AND the devastation of watching a child themselves suffer in pain, and that is what gets him to initially empathize with and look into a truth that grows more and more apparent the deeper he gets.

jonathan does not want to even consider the possibility of the existence of something he cannot shield his baby brother from. something he possibly could have protected him from, had he only been there to see just where he’d been about to go. it is only when he realizes that something similar could have happened to someone else that he knows he cannot look away from this, and resolves to seek out the truth.

the isolation barb feels at being left behind while her best friend goes and partakes in something she’d thought they both didn’t have very much of an interest in has her ending up in exactly the same world that will has— not that she ever gets to realize that she isn’t experiencing all of this alone. unlike joyce, her parents are unable to forge and force their way into comprehending their daughter’s situation, and she ends up lost forever to them as a result, for reasons they will never truly understand. nancy does try to find that understanding, though it comes too late to help what has already happened to her closest friend.

lucas and dustin learn of will’s situation much quicker than most other people in their town, but their understanding doesn’t quite manifest in the same way joyce’s does. they’re will’s friends, so they obviously want to help him once they learn he’s in trouble, but they don’t quite grasp the true danger and severity of the situation until far later on in the season. their reactions to one specific character are very significant, here, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

and then, there’s mike.

mike, though he initially has no ideas as to what could have happened to will, still knows almost immediately that something has to be wrong. he is the first of the party to be able to ‘tune in’ to this other world and hear him, which so far only joyce has been able to do. but while joyce is granted these moments through nothing but sheer force of trying to understand and reach out, mike is…aided. is immediately faced by the inexplicable existence of something the second his desire and need to help will supersede his desire to listen to his mother.

so what exactly do the boys find out in those woods, again?

el, as a character, only makes her first appearance in hawkins upon will’s disappearance. characters first discover the existence of the supernatural through either recognizing the existence of a place that is causing will pain, recognizing the existence of a pattern of something that is causing the same thing to happen to multiple people, or through encountering el. her existence is something the government is incredibly serious about keeping shut away and concealed, and she is made to feel like a monster by the institution (with dangerously close ties to the government) that teaches her to chase after the approval, love, and acceptance of its male figurehead.

when the party come across her, they want to find will, and quickly reason that she would be able to help do so, but they still don’t know quite what to make of her.

dustin, though he isn’t necessarily weirded out by her existence, has an initial fascination with her and her powers that’s slightly akin to staring at a bizarrely unique piece of novelty furniture, and wanting to poke at it until it does a cool trick.

lucas, on the other hand, thinks she should be sent right back to where she came from, since she’s surely far more trouble than she’s worth if they keep her around them. he entertains the idea that she can help, but grows angry when she, nervous about the prospect of them actually seeing the true state of this other world she is so heavily connected to, intentionally sends them further away. goes so far as to call her a monster, which mike, notably, has an extremely negative and angry reaction to.

now, i’m not trying to bash either of them here, because 1) they’re 12 years old in a conservative town in the middle of nowhere, and 2) this is the first time they’ve ever been physically confronted by the presence of something i’m sure you, if you weren’t already aware, are starting to get that el very heavily represents: queerness.

or, where mike specifically is concerned, his own. though that particular realization isn’t due till a few more years down the line.

so what does mike see el as, then?

the funny thing about this is that every single character EXCEPT mike, recognizes el for what she is, and comes to an understanding of her.

while will is incredibly attuned to his own emotions and feelings, and probably knew he loved mike before he even conceptualized that that meant he was gay, mike is a child of emotional neglect (thanks, ted). when he feels an emotion, he simply knows that it exists, but not what it means, where it came from, or even really what it consists of.

el, to mike, is simply…The Emotion I Felt When Will Left. that is when she first appeared, and so that is what he knows her as. he even refers to her by a name he created for her himself.

mike knows that he has An Emotion, but hasn’t put a name to what it actually is. el is The Emotion. when he interacts with el, he is interacting with The Emotion— but that does not mean that he understands it. keep this in mind as we go.

so, mike and his friends come across the subtextual manifestation of queerness in the woods, upon which mike immediately hides her existence away from his family, tries passing her off as any other normal child of the town, and grows angry when her presence wasn’t enough to save will from being pulled out of that lake, and now he’s stuck being aware of her forever while knowing nothing ever came of it.

it’s only when sitting in this overwhelming grief, this terrifying feeling that you are suddenly, terribly alone in a way no one else could ever understand, that he resonates with what will is currently dealing with enough to finally be able to hear him. he’s letting himself be in tune with his emotions— with The Emotion! and she rewards him for this temporary connection in turn. replicating this when in the presence of other people watching proves slightly more difficult, however.

and let’s go back to the fight in the junkyard. though el is general queerness to every character except mike, he does subconsciously have at least some idea of what The Emotion is actually comprised of. so when lucas calls the general idea of queerness monstrous, mike instinctively feels this as an accusation of he himself being monstrous, and reacts with more anger than we’ve ever seen from him so far. once el hurts lucas, mike then pushes that shame and anger away from himself, and directs all of it towards her.

The Emotion is the thing that is wrong. The Emotion is the thing that is bad, and that is hurting his friends. The Emotion is the monster.

but doing this only cements his own shame within himself even further. because The Emotion is still his own.

so do you know what scene proceeds to follow this one? what its resolution is?

mike decides to jump off a cliff. and he keeps this strictly between el and dustin, because we never see him attempt to bring it up with lucas. because he knows that lucas didn’t mean it like that— but there’s still a point to be made here about the words we casually say impacting people who are quietly struggling with things we’re barely even aware of.

so after mike jumps off the cliff, it is the sheer strength of The Emotion, which he knows is connected to will, that ends up keeping him in this world. but though mike comes to think that The Emotion is not monstrous— how can it be, after it’s just saved him?— he still hasn’t really put any work towards understanding what it actually means.

so season 1 is sort of…everyone’s collective homophobia arc, in a way. they all either come to understand the situation of will and other people like him, come to accept queerness itself, or a slight mix of both depending on where their starting point was. as i said before, that second option is largely fulfilled by our party; as will’s closest friends, they will defend him from anything and anyone trying to hurt him regardless, but that doesn’t mean they fully understand what queerness actually looks like. to complete this arc, they’re each given a moment of acceptance or reconciliation with el: lucas shows up when he knows he needs to and gets an apology scene, dustin’s is at the cliff (he hugs mike And el, because a rare, novelty oddity doesn’t need to be comforted but a real person with feelings does), and mike’s is half the cliff, and half a very infamous scene that comes later— as there’s something about all of this that mike still hasn’t quite gotten.

because mike sits with el in that cafeteria, and happily tells her that once they get will back, she’d obviously not have any reason to hide anymore. will would be back, and so The Emotion I Felt When Will Left wouldn’t need to be kept so close to his chest anymore, and he can tell everyone about it and they can all laugh and have fun because isn’t it awesome? look what it let him do!

there’s a very key piece of information missing from this plan. and a very key thing mike hasn’t yet understood nor accepted about just what that Emotion might be.

then, he even kisses el! look, there’s The Emotion! and he just interacted with it! that’s what that means, isn’t it?

only…that kiss didn’t feel like he thought it would. by the look on his face, he seems confused; he swears he liked her. is something missing?

he’s immediately given at least part of an answer.

naive, 12 year-old michael wheeler is suddenly smacked in the face with the reminder that though hopper and his friends have all cleared their homophobia arcs, and though he may have seen the good The Emotion can bring, the same cannot always be said for the rest of the world.

el is hunted down and persecuted right in front of his eyes, and the only way for the danger they’re in to stop is if she removes herself from him and his friends entirely. mike’s queerness— and The Emotion— bids him goodbye, as they’ve both learned that she cannot exist in his life without endangering him.

only…el hasn’t disappeared completely. in fact, her situation at the end of the season looks awfully similar to will’s at the start, doesn’t it? someone disintegrating in front of your eyes isn’t really a sign that they’re still alive, and just now in another dimension. to most characters, this is an indication that queerness simply doesn’t get to exist within hawkins. will was an isolated incident; there’s no way, if this is what the reaction is, that an actual queer person could continue to live alongside them unnoticed. because the party never really saw the upside down, and joyce’s understanding was largely in relation to her son, specifically.

hopper and mike are the only two characters (minus the people hunting her down) that think el is still out there, somewhere. the person who’s already come to understand that terrible suffering can and does happen to children due to things entirely out of their control, revealed the pieces of el’s existence himself, and fully saw the upside down for exactly what it was (so to everyone who thought they could’ve done a homophobia arc through hopper, they’ve had one the entire time! this is it!), and the person who can very easily attest to, though he may not fully realize it, the continued presence of queer people in hawkins.

temporarily losing will brought the inexplicable, undeniable existence of mike’s own queerness, of The Emotion, of his emotions directly to his face, and that is not a realization that can be shoved away or fully disappear from existence entirely.

…and all of that, is just season one.

season two is, i feel, much more outright about its metaphor than season one is.

because did you know that ronald reagan happened to win re-election on november 6th, 1984?

something terribly familiar is coming towards hawkins, and will can feel its looming, imminent presence with every prickle on the back of his neck.

because though he may have physically left this other dimension, pulled out of it and into the arms of the mother that loves him, that says nothing about how he’ll feel while out in the rest of the world, and he ends up feeling like he’s been placed right back inside of it at the drop of a hat.

it isn’t helped that everyone at school looks at him like he’s something wrong. a gross, creepy monster, who will only spread his infection to them if they get too close.

and remember— even to most of will’s friends and family, queerness is gone. no wonder he feels like he barely ever left the closet at all.

and it certainly doesn’t help that he’s sick with an illness not even his doctors seem to understand.

i don’t think i need to pull out an entire powerpoint presentation in order to convey the idea that season 2 is about the AIDS crisis (though doing so would allow me to point out that all of will’s explicitly mentioned symptoms also happen to be ones associated with AIDS. funny, that). once again, though our supernatural force is directly linked to queerness, it’s specifically linked to a hidden struggle queer people face, and the danger and harm that then comes once that goes ignored.

‘a hidden struggle and the harm that comes when that is ignored’ is the name of the game for a lot of people this season, and as the AIDS crisis is the sort of frontrunner of this whole thing, everything that falls in behind it more or less becomes queer-flavored by association.

think nancy, steve, jonathan, and barb’s parents; nancy is tired of the way she and steve are more or less stringing these people along towards an inevitable truth that will only grow harder to process the more it is delayed. and her choosing of jonathan over steve, though heterosexual both ways, is absolutely the option most people would deem as the ‘wrong’ one.

or, take billy; a foil of will, whose ostracization (in a different font, but still, those girls aren’t ogling him because they want to sit down and talk about his personality) and lack of anyone willing to be close to him in a genuine way means that the abuse he suffers at the hands of his father is thrown back at the people around him. this is a will without a mike, essentially, which does make billy at the very least metaphorically gay (and he isn’t the only character who will be).

and hopper is literally keeping queerness hidden away in the woods, and ignoring the way this is emotionally causing her harm!

(also, this is slightly outside of this theme, but i will say: i know everyone hates dustin’s plotline this season, but i do think that this is the s2 equivalent of what s1 was trying to say with hopper, more or less. let me put it this way— in season 1 the demogorgons are the vicious monsters that hunt down people who find themselves in the closet. in season 2, we are introduced to their slightly smaller counterparts, who dustin likens to ‘dogs.’ a ‘dog’ cannot help the way it was trained, or raised, and is just following what it has been taught to do.

so even if something (or someone) you once thought was cute and sweet grows into a monster you’ve seen a million times before, hope is not lost at never reaching any kind of reconciliation or understanding ever again. you don’t have to become its bestest, closest friend, but dustin’s relationship with dart does end up resurfacing, in the end.

(and he does all of this whilst simultaneously forming an unlikely friendship with WHICH thematically relevant character, again?)

yes, even the demodog plot, of all things, is gay. they truly do leave not a single stone unturned.)

so, what is mike up to this season?

well, when he isn’t being a source of grounding and reassurance for will, or being jealous that will appears to like max a lot, he spends a lot of time trying to get into contact with el.

mike wants to know that el is alive, and safe. subtextually— especially with the addition of our metaphorical AIDS crisis and looming second reagan term— mike wants to be assured that, despite what the men in suits tried to tell him, the existence of The Emotion in his life is not dangerous. that he’d be allowed to have her around without people demanding she be permanently shut away.

mike watched el have to hide the second those guys suspected she was there— he wants the reassurance that this doesn’t have to be the case! that he could shout all about The Emotion up to the rooftops in the way that he’d wanted to at the end of season one, and not be told that he was wrong for doing so.

he wants to know that The Emotion is actually there, because he still feels like it is, but— that doesn’t make any sense, right? this is The Emotion I Felt When Will Left. but will is here, now, so what does that mean? why does he sometimes, all of a sudden, feel like he’s right back in season one?

does this…sound familiar, at all?

on halloween night, mike and will have a conversation where will tells him that, though he’s back and everything is supposed to be normal, he feels as if he’s simultaneously still stuck in the upside down.

will has left the closet, but it doesn’t take very much to make him end up right back in there again.

the problem mike thought caused The Emotion has been resolved, and thus it isn’t supposed to be around anymore, but he feels that it is anyway.

crazy together, huh?

an interesting thing about this conversation is that will asks mike to not tell the others about it, because they wouldn’t understand— implying that he thinks mike does.

but what is mike’s reply?

”…eleven would.”

not saying he won’t tell. not affirming will’s assessment of him. even though he goes on to elaborate on what he means by this and how it relates to him, he still does not come right out and say that he would understand.

textually, mike still has two ways he could respond to this, here. he could say “i still feel like how i did when you were gone even though you’re right in front of me,” and this would carry largely the same meaning, but he chooses to go with the example that is Not directly related to him.

(though subtextually, there is zero difference between the two.)

mike does this a lot; rely heavily on el whenever she appears to take his mind off of or avoid having to think about whatever he’s currently dealing with, and this is in both a textual and subtextual way. our boy is so repressed, he figured out how to use the same defense mechanism both literally and metaphorically!

the biggest example of this comes at the end of the season, so i’ll get to that later.

for now, let’s take a look at that reunion scene— the moment queerness officially makes her reappearance to our crew.

i think the reaction mike has to seeing The Emotion again is an interesting thing to zero in on— textually, mike is obviously relieved to know that his friend is alright, and that they can finally be reunited!

subtextually, though, this is mike staring The Emotion in the face, and…looking relieved to see it reappear. so, again, i don’t think this is him fully clocking what The Emotion actually is, despite the scene its reappearance follows. now, his queerness took one look at the shed scene and came in swinging through the door with a steel chair, but that isn’t what mike is thinking about.

since el bursts in just in time to save them from danger, this is mike being thrilled at the proof that the men in suits were wrong. The Emotion isn’t dangerous, or bad, because el has once again done exactly what she did at the cliff— and this time, in front of everyone! it’s a bit of what he’d wanted back in the cafeteria; other people are now able to see all that The Emotion can do. this is his proof that he actually can and should be able to keep it around.

and then, we get to the snow ball.

mike tells will to go dance with someone, immediately regrets it, and— oh, hey, there’s The Emotion, right on time! funny, how that works. but look, he’s up and dancing with it! he’s dealing with it, isn’t he? sure, he isn’t really thinking about how he felt once he was alone, nor why he may have felt that way, but he can confidently say that he does like The Emotion.

does this mean that he now understands the truth of what it is?

…no, of course not. this is mike we’re talking about.

onwards and upwards.

season three's part linked here. thank you for reading!

[vecnapilled]

on volunteered resignation, absolutes built out of glass, and what stranger things 5 has always been trying to say.

i’m in the middle of writing an absolutely massive post right now (or two, really; we’re at 6.5k and counting) but i had to quickly come on here to inform you all of something i’ve just realized about the entire concept of season 5 as a whole— that is possibly one of the biggest epiphanies regarding conformitygate i think i’ve ever had.

stranger things 5 is, quite literally, a season of things that feel like endings but aren’t. of absolutes, that prove themselves to be the opposite.

and the things that don’t tell us just as much about what this season is trying to say as the ones that do.

robin thinks that vickie will break up with her the second she learns about the supernatural — this does not prove itself true.

max thinks that lucas no longer loves her the second that music stops playing — this does not prove itself true.

joyce thinks that, the second she lets will out of her sight, he will struggle under the weight of all that he’s endured, and she will lose him — this does not prove itself true.

dustin thinks that steve is destined to die and leave him forever, in exactly the same way eddie did — this does not prove itself true.

jonathan thinks the only way his relationship with nancy can further progress is with a marriage he does not actually want — this does not prove itself true.

and then, conversely, we have;

hopper thinks that letting el flourish and finally put her training to use will inevitably mean he loses her — and el sacrifices herself in the end.

will thinks that his queerness is something that permanently and inherently separates him from the rest of his friends and family in a way that means he will never truly have a place beside them, and that his emotions for mike were never what he thought they were at all — and he ends the season with having only ever seen himself reflected in the person that pushed him to think this way in the first place.

and mike thinks that will’s dismissal of him in the coming out scene (i have a post on this in detail), and the conversation on the water tower means that they were never as close as he thought they were, and will always just be friends — and he spends the entire epilogue making sad, mournful eyes at what he’s convinced himself he will never be able to have.

now, the point they’re trying to make here could be that, sometimes, things aren’t set in stone— but sometimes they are, and you just have to deal with that. an absolute, and your resigned acceptance of it.

however. what do all of the things in that first list have in common? the ideas that end up being unequivocally proven wrong?

they’re all yes or no answers. either something is a certain way, or it isn’t, and the answer isn’t really something that can be helped— it simply is.

robin thinks that vickie will break up with her the second she learns about the supernatural — but she doesn’t. i mean, she very well could’ve, but this isn’t that sort of issue for her, so it was always going to be fine.

max thinks that lucas no longer loves her the second that music stops playing — but he does. and she loves him enough back to be able to get herself out just to see him again. if this wasn’t the case, it couldn’t really be forced, but it is. it was always going to be fine.

joyce thinks that, the second she lets will out of her sight, he will struggle under the weight of all that he’s endured, and she will lose him — but she doesn’t. because, as mike will always be quick to clue us in on, her son’s powers are innate. will has always had the strength to fight for himself on his own. and he will be fine.

dustin thinks that steve is destined to die and leave him forever, in exactly the same way eddie did — but he doesn’t. he nearly did, had he climbed up that ladder, but dustin himself was what made him stick around just a little bit longer. steve loves that kid so much, that he’s always been able to withstand any amount of punches that have been thrown to his face, and continue to try and keep him safe. they will be fine.

jonathan thinks the only way his relationship with nancy can further progress is with a marriage he does not actually want — but nancy happens to feel the exact same way. there’d be no way to genuinely push her into feeling this way if she didn’t, but she does. and the two of them are still fine.

…so what about everyone else?

the solutions to each of these problems are all things that can be found — you just have to go and specifically seek them out. there is more than one way all of these could go, and they are entirely dependent on what you choose to do.

el not seeing a way she can continue to exist in the same world as her friends, and needing to sacrifice herself, is not an absolute. they may not have been able to come up with anything in the moment, but there are multiple ways of dealing with this you may be able to craft. mike literally does this himself, because this an open-ended problem that requires an open-ended solution. there is always a place out there where someone will be able to exist as exactly who they are, and who they deserve to get to be.

will’s feelings about the people around him, and never being able to belong among them, are not true, because there is someone silently sharing his experience, right beside him! and even then, this is not something that is doomed to be true for the rest of time. there will always be somewhere for you to belong, and there will always be people out there that will be able to understand you in the way you need them to. just because you may not see them immediately around you, does not mean they do not and will never exist.

and mike has shut himself away from the possibility that his relationship with will could ever be something more — even though he literally knows, now, that will is gay! just because something may be a certain way now, does not mean it has to remain that way forever. you do not have to doom yourself to a life of repressing who you truly are until the day that you die, because there will always be a way for you— and a reason for you— to go and express that.

if they’d been given the opportunity, perhaps they could’ve come up with a way to save el.

if will had opened up to mike on his own, perhaps he could’ve learned of their common ground.

and if mike had been honest with will regardless of what he thought will thought about him, maybe his fears would’ve been finally put to rest.

something that seems like an ending, but isn’t. endings that appear to be final, yet could work to be resolved if given the chance.

but, no, yeah. i’m sure episode 8 is actually the end. after all, that’s the only way things could ever be done.

right?

[vecnapilled]

concealed doors, buried curiosity, and black mirror: bandersnatch— or, how would all of this actually work?

the final boss of conformitygate theorizing has— to my brain, at least— always been the question of how this would actually be implemented within the episodes. what will this all end up looking like? what are we in for?

i’ve talked myself through parts of this before, and the copyrightgate theory has appeared to answer at least some of it, in that episodes 2-8, as we have seen them, are not their final forms. EDIT: slight correction— all episodes of volume 1 were sent for registration on the same day. episode 1 was approved almost immediately, while episodes 3 and 4 were just approved on february 28, 3 months later. this is indicative of something about them being different making them more difficult to file, since season 4 vol 1 had all of its episodes approved on the same day, and took less time overall.

but a few days ago, in our discord server, a conversation between @thebestofmyrmidons and @whispering-goat lead to the discovery that the reason these episodes have remained unregistered with copyright…may actually be because they’re intended to be interactive.

now, myr knows a lot more about copyright law than i do, and i think is planning to make her own post detailing this once she’s able, so i won’t attempt to get into that side of it too much. but the basis of this discovery, from what i understand, is this:

the only other times netflix has ever waited on registering their content with copyright past the three month window have been regarding content with multiple endings. black mirror: bandersnatch, a wildly complex interactive movie, was never registered with copyright at all, and the unbreakable kimmy schmidt, an interactive movie with multiple endings, received separate copyright registrations after the initial deadline window for each of its three separate paths (officially labeled A, B, and C). EDIT: after doing some digging, this is incorrect; kimmy schmidt was filed by universal, and delayed only by the person in charge of submitting the required documents, not the approval time itself. black mirror is british, and the uk provides automatic copyright registration for any creative work. the points below still stand, however, and a stranger things trademark for an “interactive online drama series” has since been discovered.

add on some discoveries @fixthehyper made regarding the similarities between promotion surrounding bandersnatch (in that it was largely a lot of conflicting reports until its announcement was dropped only a day before the official release) mirrors what we’re dealing with in regards to conformitygate, caleb’s “my ending was different” comment (and finn’s incredibly suspicious reaction), noah saying the story was ‘confusing,’ matt duffer’s reaction to being asked outright if there were multiple endings, and sadie saying that the word she felt represented the season was butterfly, and the possibility that this may be what we’re building towards starts to get bigger.

i, naturally, proceeded to have approximately a million different thoughts about this.

because, if you weren’t aware, you can’t actually go and watch black mirror: bandersnatch, or the unbreakable kimmy schmidt movie, or any of netflix’s previously created interactive content— they were all taken completely off the platform last year. @whispering-goat posed the idea that this could be so they could rehaul and redevelop the system that supports them entirely (since they’re pretty hard to keep running!), with stranger things being the start of it, which would mean that we’d be working with something completely different than what interactive content has looked like before.

so, then, what could that be? what would an ‘interactive stranger things season’ actually constitute?

i think i’ve come up with an answer that— to me, at least— would make the most sense. because there are, i think, a lot of immediate questions and concerns you could have upon seeing this. to both myself and many other people in our server, one of the biggest ones would be the concept of an interactive story itself.

because…the audience, controlling the characters? making decisions for them, reaching our own ‘created’ ending we’ve chosen for them? wouldn’t that end up really getting in the way of everything the story has been building up to, if it’s all handed over to us in the end? make the characters not feel like their own people?

i think it definitely could. which is why i don’t think a choose-your-own-adventure type of thing is quite where we’re headed.

because another important thing to keep in mind, is that conformitygate seems to be an attempt at saying something about media literacy, and the importance of people actually paying attention to the things they consume. so, an interactive season where you can pick whatever You want to happen would…kind of directly contradict that, wouldn’t it? ‘i don’t have to think about why mike would possibly do this specific action, because i can just make him do the one i like more instead!’ and all that.

but you know what does go hand-in-hand with media literacy?

pointing out plot holes, continuity errors, and bad writing. you know, the things everyone has spent the past month and a half doing at length? the things every ridiculous comment made by the duffers post episode 8 have only made people start doing more?

robin did say there would be a test later, didn’t she? luckily, i don’t think it’ll be one we’ll have to worry much about studying for— we’ve been unknowingly revising for it this entire time.

so my answer to the format question, based on what makes the most sense to me, is this:

the interactivity would take the form of something more akin to a spot-the-difference game. our job will be to point out things like the dial changing color, melvald’s milkshakes, new coke, etc, with a points-based system per episode that will unlock previously hidden scenes upon reaching a certain threshold. why per episode? well, this would take care of a number of potential issues:

— a story with multiple branching paths works with a movie like bandersnatch, but these are 7 separate episodes. what would happen to a story path if someone were to jump around episodes, for whatever reason? a connected, multi-ending story that has to be tracked and kept consistent across all 7 episodes seems like it would be very difficult to code, and potentially frustrating for a viewer to have to deal with if their watch place gets disturbed.

— a complete rewatch of the season would not be necessary. you’re free to play through episodes 2-7 and unlock all the flashbacks and additional context i suspect would be added, but you can also start right from episode 8 and still get the new ending. (i’ll get into what i think this would be in a second.) no one would be forced to sit through something they do not want to.

— if you remove the interactive element, bandersnatch and the kimmy schmidt movie do not function, especially bandersnatch. they cannot be viewed in their entirety, and be one, cohesive story. since i cannot imagine the duffers would ever even entertain the idea of their finale becoming obsolete or lost media should the technology ever stop working or be removed (as it currently has), there has to be a failsafe, and so the episodes should still be understandable if the game is removed. unlocking scenes that were always intended to be there rather than having multiple versions of multiple scenes would ensure this. (with what i think is one exception. but i’ll get to that!) remember that quote from maya about these episodes all being the length of feature films?

so, we’ve got a format. but what about its implementation? and how would it end up impacting the story?

i’ve got an additional thought regarding the former, but i’ll save that for later. for now, i’ll focus on the latter. what does this mean for the story?

the best way to tackle this, i think, is to ask one of the most important questions pertaining to this— how many endings would there be?

my answer might not quite be what you think it is.

an interaction between max and holly that has grown to be somewhat infamous in our community is their talk about the three doors available for you to take, when it comes to escaping camazotz. accept your fate, take your life, or escape.

now, i see the conclusion you would want to make here. hold onto it. bear with me.

the choices presented here are conscious. you choose to accept your fate, or you choose to take your life. an ending reached due to a certain combination of previous decisions made is not a conscious choice. it is a result.

according to the arg, both the characters and the audience themselves are stuck in an illusion we must actively hunt for a way to get out of. their goal, and our goal, is to choose how we wish to deal with this. right now, with the show in the state that it is, and the duffers acting the way that they are, we are still actively stuck. we are in camazotz.

and, again, the only way to deal with camazotz is to pick a door in front of you.

except…hang on. something’s happened to our options.

in dustin’s graduation speech, he narrows the typical structure of dnd moral alignments down to simply ‘chaotic good’ and ‘chaotic bad.’

when hopper talks to mike on the bench, he tells him that he has only two roads ahead of him to choose; you refuse to come to terms with what happened, and suffer, or you find a way to accept it.

if something isn’t demonstrably bad, then it must be unequivocally good. this must be unequivocally good. and if you don’t want to believe that, your only other avenue is…suffering.

the stranger things finale comes out, and people who believe that more is coming are painted as just being sad that— not wanting to accept that— the show is over. everyone else has settled on either thinking the ending was fine, and not understanding what all the fuss is about, or denouncing both the show and the duffers entirely out of anger.

take your life, accept your fate, or escape.

the option of escape, of seeking more, is being obfuscated from mike, because the epilogue is painting itself as the ‘best’ choice there is. and the option of seeking more is being obfuscated from us, because we’re being told that episode 8 is all that there will ever be.

when in camazotz, you must pick a door. we’ve been told, much like mike, that there are only two available. but that third one is out there— we, and mike, just have to want to find it.

like, perhaps…through an interactive game? where the more we acknowledge that the things in front of us aren’t adding up, the more mike will, as well?

i would like to take this moment to sincerely stress the fact that the final shot of episode 8 has mike walking through a DOOR.

which door, you may be wondering? well, great question.

i think its answer will entirely depend on you.

door one: take your life. you either gave up before this point, or watched the episode through and went “fuck it. i’m not giving this show the time of day again. this isn’t the ending i want, but that’s all i’m ever gonna get.” and so mike exits into…nothing, more or less. you haven’t accepted him staying like that, but you also don’t think there’s anything more. you’ve severed your involvement to the show, and so to you, this is where it ends.

door two: accept your fate. you think the finale is fine, and mike walks out of that door having accepted his camazotz life. to you, this is the ending to the show.

door three: escape. this option was not there before, but with the game, we can now play to uncover it. we know we’ve been in camazotz, mike has since realized that he’s in camazotz, and that shot of him will now be him finding his way out— much like we’ve also literally just done! this will be the final promise we’re left with before the real finale later.

the three endings are not existing simultaneously around each other, where debate around which one is canon could occur. they are sequential. (and even more of my reasoning on this can be found here.) death, then acceptance, and then escape. whether you want to continue forward to pursue the true ending will be entirely up to you.

because a realization that he’s in camazotz asks of mike to realize that there is more out there for him. this is not the best his life can ever be. it does exist and it can be found, if only he deigns to try. to seek out what he really wants. (and i think we all know what— or really, who— that is.) it asks of the audience to do much the same. we should want more from our media. we should ask more of lazy writers! we should look at what we know isn’t all that great, and go after ways to change it for the better!

i believe a high enough score in the game would allow mike to figure things out at some point during the epilogue, resulting in an inserted scene. now, where exactly that would go, i can’t be 100% sure, but i do think i have pretty strong evidence for one specific spot.

i don't know if it would be at graduation; dustin’s camazotz-approved “reject conformity” speech only ignites a camazotz-approved level of rebellion in our characters, where they feel comfortable in thinking they’re doing a lot without actually doing very much at all. (that’s why mike’s “sorry, girls! we’re gonna go play dnd!” remark is immediately followed by them all playing dnd for the last time because they aren’t kids anymore and feel like they have to stop, lol.)

one of the things i’ve always come back to regarding the conformitygate release format is the lost media issue. if whole episodes are replaced, where would the old ones go?

but…do you know what scenes conveniently happen to already be uploaded to youtube?

so a realization scene might be placed in the basement, sometime before that talk about el (and the dreaded epilogue boyfriend), and effectively replace it all the way to the end. the pained looks on mike’s face when he stares at will can now take on multiple meanings depending on whether he’s had his realization or not— and the litmus test theory might then actually be true! now, if a slightly different version of the scene plays, the original is still preserved online.

why is that important, aside from our failsafe?

well, that has to do with my final take on this theory:

i don’t think the game will be permanent.

i’ve been thinking about this idea a lot (if you couldn’t tell), and the game being more of a temporary special promotion rather than the Final state of stranger things 5 resolves basically every remaining issue i could see popping up:

— i could not, for the life of me, figure out a design for the ui that wouldn’t create dissonance and look/feel out of place from the rest of the (very much non-interactive) show, especially from 5x01! but this doesn’t really matter as much if the game is temporary.

— if there’s no way to switch the game off, i think this would get kind of tedious upon rewatch, especially since we’re looking at 9 hours of game to repeatedly go through. but knowing it’s a limited experience would bring a ton of people not wanting to miss out!

— the game has the potential to make less and less sense the more time passes from this resolving. like, in the moment, both we and the duffers have been vecna’d, so the game is our way of breaking ourselves out of that. four years from now, the true finale’s been out for awhile, the duffers are behaving normally, and all has been revealed. we won! so what would you need to still play the game for? i also think it works best if you’ve already seen the original episodes, and are not experiencing it for the first time with the interactivity.

this doesn’t mean that the game would have to be nuked entirely, as well. once we’ve unlocked all the scenes, restored the episodes to their originally intended state, and been rewarded with the true finale release some time later as a result, the “game” version of the episodes could be moved to the games tab, or something. or that collection with basically nothing in it! but regardless, future new viewers would now have a completely normal season of television to watch. if that original scene with the epilogue boyfriend and the binders ends up getting replaced, not as big of a deal, because it’s already been preserved for months by that point.

in terms of the format the true finale will take, that will likely be back to the usual standard. however, as per the continued ‘episode 9’ clowning— and to really cement that feeling of choosing to continue forward— i think it could be listed as a separate title entirely, or at the very least given its own tab in the series itself. (like an anime ova!) please don’t sequester canon byler, haha. though i suspect some of those unlocked scenes will be some very mwtfdydgate-coded flashbacks ;)

so, there it is! my crack at the final boss. of course, all of this is still just speculation, but i do feel pretty good about it.

and you know me by now. GAY LOVE WILL SAVE THE WORLD!

[trailersaftermidnight]

Hot take (that shouldn’t be a hot take at all):

Mike Wheeler isn’t oblivious, clueless or dumb. His character has not been lobotomized.

He’s traumatized. Deeply and irreversibly traumatized.

He is a living breathing case study in “forced conformity is what is killing the kids”.

Both by the repeated traumatic events we are witness to through the series, but also the very real pressure of forced heteronormativity and toxic masculinity.

You cannot analyze his actions through 2026’s lens (where I argue these oppressive social structures are still omnipresent).

There is a real and ever present danger for LGBTQIA folx, especially in the context of Indiana in the 80’s (I will not entertain any arguments that Mike Wheeler is not at minimum questioning his sexuality. Queer media literacy 101 establishes that).

Additionally, the changes in his behaviour, including demonstrating affection to Will, can be ascribed to the overwhelming pressure to adhere to gender roles and stereotypes. The social construct he lives within tells him that the interactions that were natural and joyful are abnormal and wrong.

Finn Wolfhard is an incredible actor. You can see the internal anguish in the “quiet Mike” moments in Season 5.

Mike Wheeler is in agony. But he feels like he doesn’t have any other choice.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[vecnapilled]

the ending of sorcerer is lying to you — just not in the way that you think.

whenever i sit down to write a conformitygate post, most of the time it’s because i’m looking to get to the bottom of something that has been bugging me within the context of this all being true. so, i’ve done it with the coming out scene, i’ve done it with holly, i’ve done it with what 5x01 is trying to say— and now, i think i’ve done it with everyone’s favorite episode.

because i love the final scene of sorcerer as much as the next guy, but…the sequence of events surrounding it have always felt a little odd, haven’t they?

this is what we have right now.

vecna tries to tear will down with a speech -> will appears to reject the sentiment of the speech in a triumphant moment of strength -> will spends the entire rest of the season…echoing and agreeing with the sentiment of the speech??????

something isn’t adding up here. why?

if the ending of sorcerer is supposed to be this big moment of will reclaiming his power, then why do none of his actions following it give the impression that this is the case?

you could say that everything from shock jock on is just will being possessed, but both the plan enacted in shock jock and his second interaction with vecna (after which then i’m definitely sure he’s possessed) don’t really make sense if we assume vecna’s already gotten a hold on him. nor does it explain why the ending of sorcerer is portrayed in the way that it is! all that, and then will gets possessed anyway immediately after? there’s still a dissonance there.

these, then, are the questions we have to answer.

what is actually going on at the end of sorcerer? is it triumphant? is it not?

because, if it’s the latter, then why is it being framed as the opposite?

something is being obfuscated from us. because i think this scene actually has two significant purposes in the arc of the overall story (that will directly converge and create the resolution of the true ending!), but one is being used to directly conceal the other.

and it all has to do with one michael wheeler, and that damn, lovestruck look on his face.

i don’t think it’s a secret to say that the final shots of sorcerer are shown to us through mike’s pov. we, in this moment, are seeing will exactly how mike sees him— and he’s the coolest he’s ever looked!

there’s a point to doing this, and it isn’t just to start cluing some of the ga in towards just how head over heels mike is for will. by placing us in mike’s head, his opinion of will’s powers becomes our opinion— or serves to validate and affirm the opinion many viewers anticipating this may have already had. will’s powers are awesome! look how cool he is, look how strong he is! how he’s standing up against everything vecna has done to him!

in this scene, we are mike. and, for this moment to come across as the triumphant win it’s always painted as whenever it’s brought up by the writers, we kind of have to be.

because have you noticed that mike is kind of…alone, in this opinion?

like, mike is us, so we’ve just been told and shown that this is super cool and will is awesome, no questions asked, which i think manages to slightly conceal the fact that not everyone else is as on board. no one seems scared, per say, but their reactions also aren’t tinged with awe in the way mike’s are. even lucas seems to find the whole thing slightly off-putting, and joyce, though she will always love her son, doesn’t seem all that thrilled to bear witness to the fact that he can bend and break bones with his mind.

and that’s to say nothing of the reaction from will himself.

so this moment…is a triumphant moment to mike. and mike, specifically. it is not a triumphant moment to will.

and, really, why would it be?

will has always been terrified of his connection to vecna. he doesn’t like, and has never liked, the things he is now able to do because of what has happened to him. he’s still scared and unsettled by his visions— he’s certainly not going to be excited by his newfound ability of mental mutilation.

so what’s going on in that scene, then? if you remove the filter of mike’s admiration, how is it seen from the other side?

the presence of robin’s speech here is part of what has always confused me about this scene. because, again, it colors this as a moment of triumph for will, despite none of his actions afterwards indicating that he views it as such. so…perhaps i’ve been looking at it the wrong way.

let’s go back through these events again. first, there’s vecna’s speech to will (my interpretation of which can be found in my post on the coming out scene):

“can you see the children? do you know why? why i chose them to reshape the world? it’s because they are weak. weak in body and mind. easily broken. easily reshaped. controlled. the perfect vessels. and you…will, you were the first. and you broke so easily. you showed me what was possible, what i could achieve. some minds, as it turns out, simply do not belong in the world. they belong in mine.”

he then drops will to the ground, and walks away. will only gets a few seconds to catch his breath before he’s immediately accosted by visions of the three demogorgons pursuing his friends. in the moment, in order to save them, will recalls robin’s words.

“i was looking for the answers in somebody else, but…i had all the answers.”

some memories play: will first meeting mike, and mike and will playing together.

“i just…needed to stop being so goddamn scared. scared of who i really was.”

memories play of will coloring, showing his drawings to joyce and jonathan, and building castle byers.

and once i did that? i was so free. it was like i could fly.”

memories play of will running and playing alone in the woods, getting an affectionate hair ruffle from jonathan’s hand, and jumping off of the swingset away from where mike is still sitting. will then dips down, calls upon his powers, and uses them to stop the monsters in their tracks.

at the start of shock jock, will is shown on the ground, replaying vecna’s words to him in his head up until joyce snaps him back to reality.

were this to happen in a fight against vecna directly, i may feel differently. but this is an instance of will, in the heat of the moment, deciding to do what he feels he has to. directly after a speech in which vecna reframes will’s existence as inherently different to everyone else around him and tells him he does not belong in the world he lives in, will tells himself to ‘stop being scared of who he really is,’ and imagines scenes from his childhood where he constructed a place far removed from anything else that was meant to be somewhere he specifically could go. yes, mike is here, but only during the parts where will thinks about “looking for the answers in somebody else,” and the focus of the memories shifts more and more to will being alone until only jonathan’s hand remains in view.

this is will accepting what vecna has told him. that he is different from everyone else, and always has been, and why should he bother turning to other people when he alone can offer himself all that he could ever want? but, as i’ve said in my other posts, relying on other people and trusting that they can help him when he needs it has always been one of will’s strengths! and tammy, to robin, was someone that couldn’t offer any answers to her about herself regardless. and while being able to stand on your own is important, the people in will’s life— especially mike— will always be willing to remind will of exactly who they know he is whenever he gets too far into his own head.

(and this really just reinforces my theory that robin will be the mirrored derek to mike’s holly, because. poor girl cannot catch a break with her words being horribly misconstrued and unintentionally catastrophic, oh my god.)

again, if vecna was the one will was going up against, i may be inclined to view this moment differently. but this is will giving into and utilizing the sentiment vecna has left him with in order to quickly do what he feels he has to. he’s never wanted to give into and accept his powers, but when he sees mike in danger, he uses vecna’s words to tell himself that well? maybe i Am different, and that rationalization becomes the base at which he awakens his powers from.

and you can kind of see that he regrets this almost immediately. sure, he smiles when mike hugs him, but that’s because he did this for mike in the first place! and he’s okay, and he’s alive, and, in just that moment, that makes everything he had to do more than worth it. it’s only when mike steps back to tell him that “you did it. you really did it,” that will’s expression sobers, because— oh god, he did, didn’t he? he gave in to vecna. did the one thing he’s spent so long being absolutely terrified of. and, in the end, it didn’t even do anything, because all the children were still taken. will could’ve just done all of this earlier, because isn’t he supposed to be strong? joyce tries to assure him that this wasn’t his fault, but now— and for the rest of the season, really— you can see that he isn’t letting himself accept anything that she says anymore. nor does he listen when mike keeps trying to tell him how great he thinks he is.

so why this difference, then? why align the audience with mike, when his perspective so deeply clashes with that of the person this scene should, in theory, actually be about?

i’ve said before that i think will is going to be our final boss, here, and this realization has only made me sure of this even more. i even think i know the specific type of final boss will we’re going to get, and how that will be resolved.

because remember: to mike, and to the audience, will’s powers are awesome. they are a proof of the incredible strength he has, and a mark of him reclaiming all that has been done to him. mike is the only character that has this opinion, and we have been positioned to adopt it as well. mike, at least where conformitygate is concerned, is almost certainly going to be the protagonist.

and when the protagonist is shown to believe in something no one else around them does, unless the story is specifically about them overcoming a flawed view of themselves or the world, do they tend to be proven…wrong? actually, no, everyone else was correct the whole time? you really cannot change the world, you cannot actually win out in the end, you will never truly be able to save them?

do you see where i’m going with this? the setup is all already there. the framing here is everything!

because what if everyone was super excited about will’s powers? they were all cheering him on, telling him how incredible they were, and how much help they would be now for the battle ahead. but now, this scene remains focused on will, and we see his apprehension and unease. that would create a sense of foreboding, right? will knows that something is wrong, we are in his pov, and so we do, too. these powers are not what they seem. the story heads towards this fact becoming more and more pressing, everyone else eventually realizing the truth, and moving to rescue and remove will from the source of the danger.

or what if we’d been strictly with joyce, for this scene? we watch her watch her little boy call upon and feed into all the things she knows have caused him so much hurt and pain over the years, and it’s— it’s shocking! and a little hard for her to see. mike may be excited, but now that’s contrasted with how we know it isn’t sitting well with joyce. and it doesn’t sit well with us, either. we both know will is hurting, and scared, and so the story moves towards her trying to get him help and solace from everything that causes him pain.

but mike thinks will’s powers are only more proof of how incredible he is. will does not. we have been positioned to agree with the former, so…where does that story lead us?

henry and will are foils to each other, and, metaphorically, are both victims of the act implied with the opening of 5x01. as is the nature with any deep trauma like this, there is never really a way to permanently remove it from yourself. while healing is absolutely, 100% always possible, the scars of it will still forever remain— but that isn’t a bad thing! they’re still a testament to how strong you are and how far you’ve grown. no matter what you think your trauma has turned you into, it never has to completely define you, and you are not now inherently worse as a person for having gone through it.

henry creel was terrified of what he’d become under the mind flayer’s influence, and it ate him alive. will, as his foil, will not resolve his story by being scared of who and what he is.

stranger things is not going to end with something michael wheeler finds incredible about will byers being seen as evil, and needing to be completely severed and destroyed.

even if everyone else is scared of what final boss!will means for the boy they care so much about— if he’s been corrupted, or lost, or forever pushed out of his own mind, or made to turn evil, or whatever— mike will insist that it’s still just will in there at the center of it. and we’re primed to root for and agree with him! mike (and, by extension, the audience, as well) will want will to come around to seeing how wonderful he really is, because it’s already been shown to him (and us) exactly how he is! armed with mike’s perspective, will’s powers will always come off as something he should never have to be ashamed of, no matter what a final boss!will could do in the climax of the story. all mike has to do, then, find a way to get close enough to a will at his absolute worst, and make him finally come around to what we all know is the truth.

and, as i always say, gay love will— quite literally— save the world.

[ninononono]

Bonus to my previous post. I put them on wheels at Rink-O-Mania instead of skates on ice. Because I can, and because they cut Will out of the picture for the credits.

[vecnapilled]

HI I'm here from your cg posting! I've already dumped immediate thoughts in the tags of a reblog but I'm reeling (positive) from your theories/analysis, HOLY shit. I realize that I had formed things to say initially but they've all melted to incoherent mush so I apologize for that HOWEVER I am and will be thinking about it forever and ever. I'm still wrapping my head around it all. whattttttt

All that to say I'm throwing sparkles at you because we're all going crazy together here 💙💛

ahhh thank you so so much!! i saw all your reblogs, i'm happy you enjoyed my posts ^^ they take a lot of time so it's really nice to see. crazy together!!!

[vecnapilled]

listened to this unused song from the soundtrack and thought it was so conformitygate coded i had to make an edit about it lol

DON’T STOP, GIVE IT ALL YOU’VE GOT!

[vecnapilled]

no, max, holly is not her brother — and that’s the whole point.

(or: i think i’ve cracked season 5.)

one question i constantly see come up, even amongst discussions from within the conformitygate bus is…why? why were these episodes…made the way that they were? sure, the idea of a surprise continuation after everything’s claimed to be finished is cool, and the concept of we the audience being trapped in a vecna vision is neat, but…couldn’t they have just made a normal season to begin with? have a good ending, and save everyone the collective trouble?

the discovery of copyrightgate by @thebestofmyrmidons (episodes 2-8 being unregistered with copyright and thus seemingly waiting for edits to be made first) has led some people to speculate that perhaps the season would be rewritten entirely with brand new, better episodes, but i was hesitant to get behind this for a few reasons. one, the lost media of it all, two, the insane waste of money, time, effort, work, and resources this would be, and three, season 5 isn’t really…nonsensical? i mean, it kind of is, but those parts are more in the way of smaller details/apparent continuity errors that indicate vecna’s looming presence over the entire thing (the dial, the milkshake line, dustin using 50s slang, etc).

the characters themselves, though…do follow a plottable trajectory. sure, it’s definitely not the one we all wanted to see, but outside of some more abrupt shifts in the epilogue, the actions the characters take— upsetting as they may be— do not just come out of nowhere. there is a reason will calls mike his tammy in his coming out scene, and you can track its development throughout the prior episodes. it isn’t all crack with no substance.

so i was, like. determined to figure this thing out. will’s coming out scene being Like That for a discernible, textual reason (on which i have a very detailed post) meant that basically everything else should also be Like That for a reason. yes, there are plenty of likely valid meta/social commentary/ego reasons they would decide to do this, but none of them apply to the actual story itself, and the narrative justification that should, in theory, be in it. the characters surely must gain something. something is being said here.

this is why i remain firmly in the camp of the revisions made to existing episodes being a mix of flashbacks and missing scenes— so mike and el talking about their relationship over the timeskip, mwtfdydgate, scenes that make it clearer to the ga that this is a season where vecna wins, etc. this would then mean that any future content would have to take place after that epilogue, and after the events of the season. i have what i think is even further proof of this, but i’ll get to that later.

people have pointed out how holly parallels mike a lot in this season, and that her arc appears to follow the trajectory his should have, so any cg content would have him doing just that; he finds his bravery, and breaks out of camazotz. perhaps, as people were saying when vol 1 first dropped, we’d even rewind all the way back and do an episode 2 where mike is now the one who gets taken instead. and while these conclusions make sense…they still don’t really answer the question of why we had to start with holly in the first place. okay, holly is mike, but what does that actually mean? that we’re in for watching the same arc 2 times? why not just go with mike from the start? why holly, and why all the focus on her? what is the point?

to start to answer that question, i will remind you all of something i’m sure you are more than well aware of: will byers and henry creel are foils to each other. they are who the other could have been, had their circumstances been just the slightest bit different.

to nail this point home even further, henry creel has even been given an entire play centered around him; a tragedy, where falling in love cannot and does not save him from himself and his eventual fate, and fear wins out in the end.

…do you see where i’m going with this?

season 5, at one point or another, sees every character motivated or run by fear that is specifically interfering with something they love. robin lies because she’s scared of vicki finding out the truth, hopper is overprotective because he’s scared of losing el, joyce is scared to let will go too far from where she can reach him, dustin is scared of losing anyone else and lashes out at steve as a result, max suddenly becomes terrified that lucas has abandoned her the second that song stops playing and is unable to break herself out and reunite with him anyway, vecna instills a fear into will that has him doubt the legitimacy and validity of his feelings for mike, mike slowly forms the terrifying thought that he’s never truly had a genuine place beside will, and jancy are dealing with a confusing mess of love and fear until they get to be one of the few people that actually work through this for reasons i suspect might have to do with later conversations with one or more of their younger siblings. though some of these cases get resolved, not all of them do, and that’s before we even get to the mess of implications given to us by the epilogue. much like the first shadow, the story is a tragedy. fear— and conformity born from that fear— wins out in the end.

so if will is henry, protagonist of tfs the tragedy, and mike is holly, protagonist of stranger things 5 the tragedy, then tfs is to will what stranger things 5 is to mike.

because henry and will are FOILS. they mirror each other. tfs ends the way it does because henry is not will, and stranger things 5 ends the way it does because holly is not mike.

when max tells holly in that cave that she’s just like her brother, she is WRONG. holly isn’t mike in the same way that henry isn’t will, because they’re both missing what those two have always had in spades: LOVE.

whenever will starts to feel too overwhelmed by all the things that have happened and are currently happening to him, mike is always there to help pull him back to his feet. he reminds will of who he knows he truly is in both a literal and emotional sense. as i know we all know, mike is will’s heart.

i mentioned in my post on a cg-lensed 5x01 that i thought mike saying he imagines mike the brave as being there beside him came from a place of always being an outside observer to most conflict and tragedy. and while i still think this holds true, i also think that this is mike saying that he feels bravest when he has the reassurance of someone always being beside him, ie; WILL is mike’s strength. they are at their best and most unstoppable versions of themselves when they are together and not pushing each other away, which is why seasons 3, 4, and vol 2/3!mike feel like such drastic shifts from how he appears in seasons 1, 2, and vol 1. this is also why vecna spends all of season 5 trying (and succeeding) to force them apart.

essentially, henry does not have a mike, and holly does not have a will. i’m sure the fact of the former is easily understood, but let me elaborate on the latter.

holly, much like her brother, lives in a house with parents that do not love each other. and while we don’t explicitly get a whole lot on how this has impacted mike (though things are certainly implied when you go and look for them), holly is given multiple scenes in which her parents’ fighting makes her visibly upset. not to mention that these fights largely center around her. so she’s well aware that what she sees in her house every day is not genuine love, and that she herself is the cause of a lot of their spats! thankfully, though, both she and her brother do at least have friends; mike has will, of course, and the party, and holly has her good friend mary!

when will gets possessed, mike is the only person will is still able to recognize apart from his mother, and the hand mike himself had held earlier is the same one will uses to convey a message in morse code.

but when holly gets kidnapped and taken to camazotz, mary…is so far gone under mr. whatzit’s influence that she specifically is the one to try and strangle her.

(nor does holly trust that max isn’t a monster even after multiple instances of her saving her life. but we’ll come back to that later.)

so holly’s missing a pretty key part of what being mike wheeler requires, actually. though she nonetheless does her best to try. she tries to adopt the same advice her brother follows for himself (which gets her kidnapped), she tries to be a leader like her brother (which gets her strangled and ultimately unable to escape camazotz), and, in the epilogue, she’s shown playing dnd with her friends in her basement, just like her brother.

(also, the spyglass holly finds in henry’s house has a cutout in the cap that looks suspiciously like the mouth of henry’s cave— which itself looks suspiciously like the letter ‘M’ on mike’s dnd binder. holly is trying to embody mike’s advice to her, and is looking around at things through the lens of her brother’s worldview, but she doesn’t immediately notice that this has also left her vision tunneled. and even though she eventually realizes that she’s been using the thing with the cap on and takes it off, this is not enough to stop her later from doing the exact same thing again.)

and this, interestingly enough, is actually a sign of her heading right towards conformity.

hear me out.

the reason this season centers on holly specifically to act as a foil to mike, and not any other character they could’ve used or introduced, is that holly is the single and only person who does and could exist in stranger things that we know exactly one thing about, and virtually nothing else:

she’s holly wheeler. she’s mike’s little sister. if quite literally anyone else showed up and started emulating an arc suspiciously close to what mike’s should look like, something would immediately feel off, but holly doing this appears to be a perfectly natural conclusion. both the audience and the narrative’s expectations of holly to become someone she fundamentally cannot inherently dooms her to failure from the start.

so she plays dnd, and nothing appears off at a glance, because this is Mike’s Sister doing what Mike’s Sister would do, despite the fact that she hasn’t really given any previous indication that this would actually be something she’d do. she conforms into doing exactly what we expect her to.

(not to mention the additional effect this has of further devaluing mike and will’s relationship, since it turns dnd from ‘something we specifically did together because it was special to us’ to ‘something all children do simply Because They Are Children and so mike no longer plays because he is Not.’ so that’s really the icing on the cake.)

so, why have these two tragic stories? why go into the real ending with what is essentially a will who could not be stronger than what he was terrified of, and a mike who never got to be more than what was expected of him?

aside from it being nice thematically for both sides to come together and get their mirrored resolutions together in the end (especially if the rumored patty newby cameo actually comes to fruition, in whatever way that would play out) this now makes the challenge posed to mike appear bigger than it ever possibly could have before.

because, now, the past, present, AND future (because holly is the future generation!!!) are all pointing towards the fact that FEAR WINS. in the stranger things world, FEAR TRIUMPHING is now the NORM.

to break himself out, mike now has to go directly against the idea that VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING is pointing him towards. most repressed guy of all time is now faced with breaking what is essentially the final boss of societal norms.

luckily, as holly’s mirror— and, you know, actual mike wheeler— he has a pretty good chance of succeeding.

there’s just one problem.

actual michael wheeler is still, thanks to the work of vecna, missing his actual will. their relationship has been reframed and devalued to the point that they’ve both come to think that it was never truly what either of them thought it was, and have pushed each other away as a result. so what does that mean for any future content?

well, let’s look at holly’s story— a mirror of mike’s. who are her key players?

we have holly herself, mr. whatsit, max, derek, and the other children. the protagonist, the antagonist, the guide, the unlikely ally, and everyone else stuck in camazotz with them.

holly is mike, obviously, but i don’t think henry would be both holly’s and mike’s mr. whatsit. mr. whatsit is a friendly, familiar face who gently nudges you into permanently staying in a fake world of his own creation. because, deep down, a part of him still wants to keep these people safe, and so he changes them to ensure that they are; keeps them as the type of people that would never be hurt. to step outside the boundary he’s created is to willingly turn yourself back into the sort of person monsters cannot help but go after— and he can do nothing for you then.

holly is to mike what henry is to will.

and michael wheeler is not going to be lulled into staying in his own personal hell by henry creel.

i’ve made it known on here before that i am a firm member of the ‘will is the final boss’ camp, and all of this just has me digging my stake into the ground even further. though i don’t believe will knows that he is being used to create the illusions presented to us this season (not yet, anyway), it ends up inevitably rendering itself as a display of both his and henry’s beliefs.

because that is not el in the void. that is will, conjuring up for mike a scene he subconsciously thinks he’d want to see: the girl will thinks mike is in love with telling him everything he thinks he’d want to hear. mike’s “life started the day he found el in the woods?” well, look at that— el’s felt that immediate connection since day one as well. he has her tell him she loves him, and he has her kiss him, but he cannot make mike do anything in return. and mike cannot say he loves her back.

mike is set to spend the rest of his days in camazotz believing both that will never truly needed him, and that even in her dying moments, he still wasn’t capable of being someone who could genuinely love el back. this is a representation of him being literally gay and unable to reciprocate, being subtextually unable to love the part of himself that is queer, and metaphorically no longer being able to push his feelings for will outside of himself where he does not personally have to handle them— which, due to the recent deconstruction of their relationship, have only gotten harder to hold. again, unbeknownst to will, this is mike’s personal hell. more on all of that in a sec.

so where is el, then, if she wasn’t in that void? how much of what we see towards the end is a complete illusion?

now, that last part, i’m not quite sure on, but…did you notice how many times this season max was referred to specifically as a monster? how holly, trying and failing to be her brother, cannot bring herself to fully trust her even after she’s gone and saved her life?

and do you remember what the one action that finally got mike to fully trust and forgive el was? what said action made mike directly affirm to el that she was not?

i think we’ve found our guide.

mike needs someone to help snap him out of the camazotz haze and go help will, and who better to do that than the subtextual, physical manifestation of mike’s queerness and feelings for will that he’s never able to fully convince himself is truly gone?

(if you’ve never heard of this reading of el before, i…genuinely do not have the space within this post to properly explain it all to you, but @pancak3sandbac0n has an incredibly detailed series of posts where this is explored at length!! they’re very well done, go and give them a read.)

el could perhaps be a little pressed for corporeal forms at the moment, though, so either that or something else is preventing her from appearing in front of mike in person, or perhaps she can only do so momentarily. (my reasoning for this is again based on the posts above, where el subtextually serves as the displacement vehicle for mike’s feelings for will whenever she’s physically close by so he doesn’t have to feel them himself, and the realization train cannot afford any detours here) so mike receives some sort of message from who he thinks is will, can’t help himself from eagerly going to follow it (will needs something from him!) and is instead greeted by the fact that el is alive (the inexplicable, yet undeniable, continued existence of his queerness and feelings for will. tough luck.)

though he can’t physically see el, or at least can’t see her for very long, he cannot go back to thinking she was no longer still alive, or entertain the fact that she’s still out there somewhere where he simply cannot reach her. (so, he cannot go back to entertaining the idea that his feelings for will were no longer there, or even off and far removed from him.) and if el says that will is in trouble, then mike knows he can’t just sit back and leave that alone. he’s never once been able to.

if el can’t be physically in camazotz, though, he’s going to need some additional help. i do believe that mike being holly’s mirror and the heart of the party will leave him better off when it comes to swaying his friends to his side, but something will likely prevent him from being able to go to them at first— will being compromised, perhaps. so he’ll have to find someone from outside his usual suspects.

enter…our unlikely ally. our derek.

this is going to be the biggest hear me out of the entire post, i think, but. hear me out.

derek, to holly, is an annoyance. constantly getting in the way, and not seeming to care about the grief he causes her. he’d been on mr. whatsit’s side at first, but eventually conspires to work against the construction of the world he’s created. usually, people tell him he does nothing but mess things up, but the crew decide to use the in they know he has with the other kids to help them get closer to henry.

derek…is robin.

HEAR ME OUT.

derek causes destruction intentionally. robin, as his mirror, causes destruction without necessarily understanding that that is what she is doing. (but, as she tells will in shock jock, people also certainly aren’t eager to tell her she’s been helpful.)

because micheal wheeler has long since proved himself to be quite the jealous type, whenever will is concerned, and he spent a large portion of season 5 watching robin and will giggling and being close and sharing glances and for why, hm? could will actually like her? just like that?? (you were “too preoccupied with yourself” to notice will was gay, michael?)

and because the thing about that field scene that i don’t think everyone got (and this is partly on the fault of the editing, since i think they cut away too quickly for you to properly see the expression on noah’s face you’re supposed to) is that robin is not clocking the reciprocal possibility of byler. the script, which can be heard in videos of them doing sorcerer’s table read, specifies that after mike does not return will’s playful shove, will feels upset and embarrassed. and that is what robin clocks. that is what leads us to the talk about tammy she gives him right after. except robin is not as well-versed in byler lore as she needs to be in order to be having this conversation, and gives will advice towards a situation that does not actually apply to him.

except…whoops! will’s now taken that, combined it with the negative self-perception vecna’s trying to force him into having, internalized them both to hell and back, and now the devastating dismissal of will’s love for mike as something entirely stemming from an issue and failure of will’s is kind of also robin’s fault!

considering that this is the mindset i expect will lead us to final boss will, the consequences of this misinterpretation are so severe i cannot imagine it would go unaddressed. i see this happening through one of two options:

one: robin is flayed, and has been for a while. not the most interesting, to me, and i don’t know why it would only use her to do this one thing and nothing else when vecna’s already been chipping away at will’s perception of himself. but this is definitely plausible, and a way to make it clear that her advice was coming from a wrong place.

two: mike, in need of assistance, now aware that will is gay and the two of them had likely gotten close for some other reason, goes to her to desperately plead his case in moving to help will. and robin, faced with the full brunt of just how far mike is willing to go for will, realizes that she has severely misjudged the situation concerning these two. so if mike’s going to try and reach out to will, then she needs to, too. the comfort of camazotz that lets her not have to think about how deeply she may have hurt her friend may be alluring, and the fear of confronting the weight of what she’s done once outside in those woods is scary, but she knows that she has to set things right.

and unlike derek, i don’t think our mr. whatsit here will be quite as successful at scaring her into backing down (because will byers is more loved than he has ever truly comprehended), though i’m sure he’ll certainly try to make his case. but fear isn’t going to have the upper hand this time!

when mike makes his return, his attempt to rally the troops is successful (sorry, holly), and he’s able to successfully escape camazotz with all of them in tow (sorry, holly).

(though, actually, all of the kids making it out in the end has me leaning towards the possibility that, in their mirror, now someone will not.)

and then…the final boss!will of my dreams. i have a post detailing my thought process regarding him in full, but the long and short of it is: mike and will are both at the heart of the season and this is the best setup to properly ensure equal participation, mike running headfirst into the eye of the storm to try and save will regardless of how he thinks will feels about him in return to prove that everything his entire world is telling him is wrong is one of the bravest things he could possibly do, and GAY LOVE WILL SAVE THE WORLD.

so people have tried to pinpoint the moment at which the events of this season start to ‘go wrong,’ and wonder if this point, wherever it is, could be the point from which further content resets from.

i disagree. sort of.

the point at which the season goes ‘wrong,’ the point at which all signs begin to point towards the ending we get, is the moment holly wheeler is taken instead of her brother, and forced to fill a role she cannot. holly not being mike is the entire reason we are here.

and this, i will remind you, does not actually happen from episode two. it happens right at the end of episode one.

the only episode of the bunch that has been registered with copyright, and thus the only episode that cannot be changed.

so, yeah. the characters are going into cg content with allll 10 hours of baggage we’ve had unceremoniously dumped on us in their momentary absence. thankfully, the road they’re headed down should end up relieving a lot of that weight— mike and will will make sure of it.