will byers is my son

sarena, 28, etc etc

[powerlin3princ3ss]

and if i said not enough people are mad about how they handled kali and that she arguably has had the most trauma bc she lost her freedom, autonomy, and only family she'd ever have and was treated horribly by the characters in the show and the viewers until the very moment she was shot and died for zero reason. oh and she was never going to be more than a plot device to save el, when both of them deserved to be free, loved, and happy after surviving abuse.

you can just tell this shit was written by men.

[new-ronantics]

in my head, el survives the finale, and i imagine she joins hopper and joyce in their move to montauk after the party graduates. they take the opportunity to turn it into a bit of a road trip for el, who is all too eager to see more of the world. they stop anywhere and everywhere she thinks is worth exploring, and by the time they’re in montauk she’s collected a million little keychains and knick-knacks and trinkets from each place they visited. soon she’s old and experienced enough to travel on her own and goes from place to place as she pleases—she can’t bring herself to stay in one place long, too excited for the next adventure.

whenever she feels homesick, she figures out which party member(s) she’s currently closest to, circles them on a map, and heads in their direction. she crashes in dustin’s dorm room at princeton and helps him study exotic matter (by doodling in the margins of his notes). she steals max away from lucas for a weekend of sleepovers and shopping sprees and long drives with the windows down and music blasting. she visits mike and will in whatever bustling city they end up in, and they argue about which pizza place to order from over a movie in their cramped, cozy apartment.

whenever her travels begin to wear her down and she feels like she needs to be home, she returns to montauk, where her bedroom will always be waiting for her. she watches soap operas with her parents and eats a warm, home-cooked meal. her hair is long enough to braid and her cheeks hurt from smiling so often and she is loved.

[opalescent-cheetah]

As a sapphic person, I feel so cheated by Robin's ending and Vickie's lack thereof.

You're telling me that Robin, who spent several seasons complaining whenever she was forced to dress femme, showed up to their final meeting wearing something she could've stolen from Nancy's old wardrobe?

You're telling me that Robin, who was part of the only queer relationship in this entire goddamn show, was also the only person to complain about "overbearing significant others"?

You're telling me that even some of the kids who fought Holly and shoved her down a flight of stairs get to be in the epilogue, but not Vickie?

You're telling me that of all the couples, the only canon queer couple is also the only one that is refused an ending? That is refused closure?

Max and Lucas got their movie date.

Joyce and Hopper made it to Enzo's.

Hell, despite being broken up, at least we know Jonathan and Nancy did break up.

Meanwhile, Vickie isn't even mentioned. We never get to see Robin and Vickie at Enzo's. They don't even reunite before the epilogue, at the MAC-Z. No scanning the crowd for a sign of each other. No yelling each other's name. No fighting the military soldiers to get to each other. We get nothing.

And this is supposed to be the good ending?

[superbylerfanfanfan]

There is a universe where Mi/even is a beautiful story about an abused girl finding herself and family, and then falling in love. A story where she realizes she does belong, despite the world telling her otherwise

There is also a universe out there where Byler was endgame, and we got some of the best queer representation on TV ever.

Unfortunately for us, we get the double kill misogynistic, homophobic ending. Yay.

[permetutotheworld]

Jane never cuts her hair after the finale, she only trims it to keep it vaguely practical and it reaches her hips in long curling tendrils that she holds onto whenever she is triggered. A physical reminder she is free. Her hair is long. She is not in the lab. Her hair is long. She got away.

[wontbyers]

So I know we all felt like “wtf” when they showed a flashback of El wearing a wig and Nancy’s old dress over her telling Mike that he always saw the real her, because like…what? That was a disguise?

But I was thinking more about it because in the flashback of Terry trying to rescue her from the lab, she had blonde hair when she was younger.

It’s very common for people to have blonde hair as kids that turns browner as they age, but most of the time kids don’t have their heads shaved from the time they can form a self image…

All this to say, what if in El’s mind, her image of herself is blonde? Her head obviously wasn’t shaved yet at the time when she was a little blonde girl, but if it only turned brown once she was already having it kept short she might have just still felt like she was supposed to be blonde even after it grew back out and she was brunette.

Her mental image of herself from before she was only allowed to wear hospital gowns and have her head shaved…

[miwipilled]

The duffers thinking Karen sleeping with a high schooler would be “hot.” Them saying “I enjoyed watching a child in severe pain.” (about noah), Sadie’s discomfort with the unscripted kiss made them want to do it more, saying "You've got to entertain yourself some way"... they are sick in the head wtf 💀

[elherself134]

Holy shit maybe they are actually deranged…?

[bylerswheel]

what the fuck.

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Brenner, Henry, Mike, and Hopper. It's been a repeating pattern for El. Even when the people controlling her mean well, they're still controlling her. They're still using her as a tool. Mike even pulls the same "rest up and try again" thing this season as in season 1, and both times it was about her searching for Will.

An independent arc where she's able to have control over her own future is the only ending I want for her.

[kaypeace21]

Preach! This is what I’ve been saying for ages . I wouldn’t necessarily call it an independence arc though . She if anything needs strong female friendships & familial love - something that was taken away from her since she was born. Brenner took away her mother and even her ability to express her femininity. And her whole life has been controlled and dictated by men who think they know what’s best for her .

These aren’t even the only parallels between Mike /el (and her dynamic with brenner, hopper and Henry).

[wontbyers]

Loving El but not in a Mileven way or Hopper way or Max way or Willel way or Kali way. Loving El in a Terry Ives way. That’s her baby and she never got to know the person she would grow up to become. She tried to save her and couldn’t, because her fate was already determined by evil men and could not be rewritten.

Not to be like “only moms would understand this feeling” but…I feel like a lot of people are overlooking some facets of this and they do happen not to be moms…

The absolute sickening evil of stealing a woman's baby from her. And then when she tried to save her baby they destroyed her in a fate even worse than death—stuck reliving her worst memories in a loop for the rest of her life which her caretaker (her sister, who also clearly had to give up any of her own ambitions/passions to take care of her full-time) doesn't even realize is happening. As someone who has both a sister and a baby girl I can't help being so horrified by Terry’s story and nobody else even thinks of her most of the time.

It’s all about Hopper her adoptive father or Joyce her temporary foster mother or Will her foster brother or Mike her boyfriend or Max her best friend. People forget Terry Ives. And then they killed Jane and she couldn't even reunite with her mom on the other side because Terry is still alive…suffering forever.

The detail of all the pregnant women in the military lab was the most horrifying thing this season. Paralleling Terry being used as an incubator to steal her baby as soon as she was born. That information being the very reason Jane decided she needed to let herself die so that those things couldn't happen anymore. And nobody fucking cares. They just move on but I stay there (You’re just thinking it's a small thing that happened. The world ended when it happened to me.)

Not fun fact: the leading cause of death of pregnant women is murder. Violence against women is already so extreme but it only goes up when they're pregnant. Btw do you know how many cases there are of pregnant women being attacked/cut open for their babies to be stolen out of their bodies? People don't see pregnant women as PEOPLE anymore, they see them as incubators and objects to target with violence.

And it IS that deep and it IS that serious and idc, Terry and Jane deserved to live happily together as mother and daughter. But regardless of the canon written by the shittiest men of all time—every AU fanfic I ever read even when it's 'no lab/no upside down' based makes her El Hopper and not Jane Ives. I know that’s because that’s the parental dynamic we got to see develop on screen more, but this is an AU where NONE OF THAT HAPPENED and you still can’t give some respect to Terry. Everyone puts the importance on the man who found and adopted her and not the woman who gave birth to her and gave her life up for her.

Idc Hopper should have died with El if she was going to die. Let him break free from the soldiers and run to join her in the gate, let her not die alone, let him stop feeling like the curse by dying with his daughter this time. I don’t give a shit about him moving on and forgiving himself 18 months layer, marrying Joyce and being happy. I don’t give a fuck, he should have died with her. Terry died a long time ago for her (without even the peace and end of suffering that comes with actual death) and nobody else cares.

Does anyone else like Les Miserables? One thing that has always bothered me was this one line they changed for the movie. In the original musical, when Valjean gives Cosette his last letter, he says “It’s a story of those who always loved you. Your mother gave her life for you then gave you to my keeping.” In the movie, they change it to, “It’s the story of one who turned from hating—a man who only learned to love when you were in his keeping.” Fantine is erased from the story to make it all about the man. The story of Jane, Terry and Hopper reminds me of that….

The psychological horror in the concept of being a mother who dies before their baby can form any lasting memories of her and then being erased from history by the people who raise your child. My girl is 9 months old tomorrow and whenever I think of this I get anxiety that she won’t remember me if I randomly die in the next few years.

Anyway I’m done. If the ending is “open for interpretation” anyway than I’m gonna say Terry made a lot of progress in the years after her baby came home to her, that Jane’s presence helped her break out of her dream circle and after Jane escaped, she went back and found her and brought her to the faraway village where she settled down and they enjoy a cozy life together.

[wontbyers]

I just can’t bear that they killed my baby. I was mentally prepared for them to kill her off because I knew they had wanted to in season 1, but then I deluded myself that after 5 seasons of character development they would change their minds and let her live, but no. They still just saw her as a plot device, a symbol, a manic pixie dream girl for the men in her life (Hopper, Mike)—because even at the end they erased the importance of her friendship with Max, who helped her to come into her own and make choices for HERSELF, not Hopper, not Mike.

At the end they erased all of that development and had her saying that Mike understood her better than anyone, when in actuality it was shown very clearly how he continued to fail to understand her throughout the whole show, even up to and AFTER her begging him to help the others understand her choice. Instead, he offered everyone a safe little fantasy to cope with instead of facing the facts which wasn’t understanding pr respecting her choice.

And the worst part is that she didn’t even die a heroine’s death sacrificing herself for others or anything that would have been, while still devastating, necessary for saving the world/everyone else. It was a suicide, dying because she saw no other way out to end the cycle of being abused and being hunted she was trapped in her whole life. She only ever saw glimpses of freedom and couldn’t envisage a life for herself outside of that.

The BEST case scenario for her is that Mike’s fantasy about her faking her death is true, and that she’s ALONE with none of the found family/friends she made in her short time of freedom. If she does make new friends/family in that hypothetical future, they will never understand what she has been through. Mike’s fantasy couldn’t even include Kali ALSO faking her own death so they could escape together, two sisters who would be there for each other for the rest of time.

The fact that they left her ending “ambiguous” itself was just a cowardly move on the Duffers’ part. They wanted to kill her off, like they’d wanted to the whole time, they just didn’t want to face backlash for it so they left it “open-ended” for the audience to choose whether to believe she’s still out there or not so they couldn’t be blasted for killing her off.

I don’t know how they expect anybody to be able to watch this show again, knowing what happens to El. When I imagine going back to season 1 and watching that little baby girl knowing her ultimate fate; I have NO desire to watch this show again.

I feel the same about how they handled Will, but at least in his case he has a semblance of a happy ending and you can imagine whatever you want for his future. El’s future was reduced to either non-existent (she’s dead) or a life forever on the run, scared of being captured and experimented on again. Her whole life she was just an experiment, a tool, a weapon, a savior, a monster, a superhero—she never just got to be a person because the stupid Duffers couldn’t see her as a person. She was always just a concept to them and was never going to be fleshed out or actualized.

Their misogyny reeked til the very end. How they handled this character was so despicable. Kali too, who they brought back just to torture more and kill.

Sorry I can’t talk about it anymore I’m too upset.

[wontbyers]

sorry i keep liking posts and not reblogging, i plan to eventually but im still not recovered enough from that shit show finale to want to actually blog about the show rn

[gay-lien-from-space]

[sethmerism]

What if he spies back?

[obriy]

[piningbyyler]

I'm ready to show him I'm not afraid anymore.

[sony-7aa]

I just really want my wonder twins to be happy ;-;

[willel]