#and a subsection that’s just mike or Will

[dinitride-art]

Does anyone else stare away from their document while writing and think “what would Mike/Will actually say…” and just start flipping through their mental library of Stranger Things until they find an expression or line of dialogue that supports/changes what they’re writing? …or is that just me

[goodpaws]

i had a massive crush on this edgelord in middle school, heres me drawing him for the first time in almost 10 years

[ginaporterr]

HIIII Y'ALL!!!!!!! this is honestly very insane to me but i recently hit 1k on here, so i just wanted to say thank you all for being here and joining me on this fun ride over the past two years since i made this blog. i feel like i've joined the hsmtmts/specifically rina fandom three separate ways/times and i've always been able to easily find my niche of people, which really speaks to how open and wonderful this community as a whole is. this third time around was no exception, this little subsection of some of the nicest, funniest, smartest, most talented, most supportive people ever means the world to me, so thank you all for following and partaking in all of the fun that was this rollercoaster of a show, and thank you for supporting my relentless content creation bc i am most definitely not stopping anytime soon skdjfks 😭 this milestone perfectly coincided with the show's ending since i hit it on the day of s4's release, so i thought it would be fun to celebrate both my little milestone & the ending of our beloved show (and our many major wins) with you all, the lovely people that have made this time with the show as wonderful as it was! this show, these characters, and you all hold a very special place in my heart, so. let's celebrate it all!!

like last time, this celebration will be split into two components; prompts & polls! i thought it would be fun to see the difference in top ships now that the second half of the show's been released (+ with a bigger voting pool), so we're running it back! to join in on the celebration, you can vote in the poll linked below and/or send in an ask with a prompt!!

RULES — mbf this blog — send in a prompt (or multiple) from below — vote in the top ships poll

PROMPTS — ❄️ : song association! send in one of your favorite songs and i'll make a gifset relating it to some aspect of the show — 🦋 : personalized sets! tell me what you like about hsmtmts / what it means to you (in as little or as much detail as you'd like) and i'll make something inspired by your message — 🌀 : requests! send in a character/dynamic/episode/etc. + color/quote/song/motif/etc. that you'd like a gifset of — 🪁 : make me choose! send in two (or more) characters/episodes/dynamics/scenes/etc. & i’ll choose between them for a gifset — 💙 : surprise! for mutuals only <3 (reminder that i follow from milesgmorales)

and one last thing, i want to especially say thank you to some of my mutuals, old and new, that have made being here one of my favorite experiences <3 you all genuinely brighten up my dash, my tag, my blog, the show tag, the ao3 tag, everything with your thoughts and creations and talent and humor and i'm so very grateful to you all bc these past few years would not have been the same without you (especially those of you that were around for the s2/post-s2 rina dark ages KSJDKFH) forever grateful to this fun little disney show for bringing so many wonderful people into my life <3 LOVE YOU ALL MWAH

@ginaricky @laylakeating @homemade-ghosts @chuckclayton @richiebowen @saythewylie @aamirmitchell @pinkhysteria @mjsparkour @bakerolivia @spookys @blues-valentine @ginasporter @starrrbakerrr @emiraee @squishymar @rickybowsn @mariasyko @frostluvrs @ginaluvr @narcobarbies @usersojo @tabithatate @kitherondale @mike-el @userguts @kayascodelorio @yellowlaboratory @bartowskis

don't feel obligated to participate or rb ksdjkfs

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

as someone whose classmate is part of the general audience, i can confirm they don't remember most character names.

they only remember el, nancy, joyce, hopper, max and steve. they only know will as "the lonely quiet kid who disappeared in s1 and got possessed in s2" and mike as "the group leader who got dumped by el in s3".

when i asked them: "jancy or stancy?" they looked at me with confusion in their eyes. they don't care about ships at all. so i doubt they'll get worked up about the willelmike love triangle and byler becoming canon. they'll have a mildly neutral-to-positive reaction to byler endgame, most likely.

yeah that makes sense.

being hyper fandom engaged is only a small, but very vocal subsection of humans haha. apparently most people just watch media without injecting it into their veins, can you imagine? 🤯

I mean, it honestly sounds so peaceful though. Going into each Stranger Things season blind, hyped for whatever it throws at you, without any fandom baggage or vested interest in specific ships working out?

It’s a double-edged sword though, cause a lot of people really don’t care about mike or will. And it’s like, how are you not seeing the beauty of these characters?! Hopefully season 5 handles their arcs well so the GA can finally see Will as the icon he is and Mike as more than “an asshole.”

[grievedifferent]

how does the group fit in with each other / how did the group "become a friends group" at all: i am using this new context for my own assumptions here.

i think my problem first in trying to make how this dichotomy of friends make sense was looking at "how do characters like emily, jess, matt, and mike fit in with chris, josh, sam, ashley, hannah, and beth". what i should have been asking is the reverse.

there are three degrees in this friends group, and here's how i see them:

matt, emily, jess, mike -> classic popular kids, it makes sense they would know each other. you know for a fact emily and jessica were best friends, you know matt and mike were at least friendly because we see them talking animatedly to each other during the prank set up (the shots of just establishing where everyone is basically).

ashley and sam -> not correlated to each other, but they're sort of the "in-betweens", and this is kind of important in regards mostly to sam. for me? sam is the big connector of the two groups. for ash, this just sort of explains how she likely slid in to meet chris and establish being part of the "nerdier" side of the group.

chris, josh, hannah, beth -> chris is included because he's sort of part of the washington family package. if you get josh, you get chris.

i think it sort of goes like this:

matt knows mike who is dating emily (at some point during this but likely not the entire time this group was constructing / eventually constructed). this is how matt meets emily, who he will later date. emily is friends with jessica, which means jessica comes in by association to emily.

based on the way emily and sam interact throughout the game, which admittedly isn't a lot (but is enough), we can see that likely sam came into that group above via emily, thus making a good friendship with mike (based on their entire dynamic in the game, thus becoming final boy and girl, we see this even in their death mechanics compared to the others).

via sam, hannah (who is her childhood best friend), becomes affiliated, then beth, then likely josh (who was probably "known" to mike and matt, i would think, maybe in passing, but this is what solidified them being in the same circle and not by going to the same school). this brings in chris, because chris 4 josh of course (ie of course josh's best friend, who is always around, will thus then be introduced). sam already has history with josh, beth, and chris, so this conglomerate isn't that strange for her? more probably a clashing of worlds.

through matt, ashley came in. i say matt and ashley because a) ashley and matt are intentionally put together in the new snapshot, b) matt seems comfortable being goofy with ashley in the scene where he can scare her before being able to look out and find em and mike, and c) they're also placed together in the prank scenes, indicating some comfortability. likely? ashley was matt's tutor or something. she then meets chris, who she gravitates to more (thus likely josh, then hannah and beth). josh because of the chris factor, the twins because of age, i would think. more in common in that way.

i think there's always this divide no matter what, even as a unit. they don't often do things as a full group, likely split off into subsections, and then do huge things together (parties, getaways, etc). they're all mostly rich kids, so that makes sense.

from there, after the prank on hannah, it gets divided further before josh "rallies the troops back together". josh himself is missing half the time, chris seems pretty outside of the group save for ashley, and then from there, it sort of shows itself as to who was hanging out with who after hannah and beth died.

from here? i leave it all totally open tbh, i'm super happy to go with any routes for how this group became a group, but this is just my best guess as to how they might have come together just based solely on what we get in the game (original and remake) without my own headcanons tied in. although, i guess my headcanons follow this idea, so. i hope this kind of helps? it sort of helps me.

[campbyler]

AKDHDKSKFHDKS I JUST FINISHED CHAPTER SIX AND DNKDKGNFFKDK!!!

(Spoilers obvi)

I LOVE YOUR WRITING SO MUCHHHH🩷🩷🩷🩷

I love the little detail about the face paint because when they started kissing my perfectionist brain went “oh no their face paint will get smudge!” And I was right!

Also Mike getting distracted and Max noticing is so real. (also I wonder just how much Max has figured out…🤭🤭) (also also what is with them and making out in kitchens istg it’s like their favorite thing)

i mean it was RIGHT THERE, how could i pass up on it a little blue and yellow color theory??

(fun fact: that scene's subsection in the outline is called "blue meets yellow in the isolation cabin" because i'm a dork.)

max Sees Things. best to leave it at that for right now

i think that making out in general might be their favorite thing. but that's just a guess 😗

[samasmith23]

The best Saladin Ahmed Ms. Marvel scene

One of the strongest elements from the original G. Willow Wilson run on Ms. Marvel IMO was the complicated relationship between Kamala Khan and her best friend Bruno Carrelli. While Kamala & Bruno already had a long history as childhood friends, Wilson portrayed both characters struggling with developing romantic feelings for each another due to them now being teenagers and dealing with hormones and all that jazz. Saladin Ahmed followed-up on this subplot during his run on Magnificent Ms. Marvel after Wilson left the title, and in Issue #9 seems to finally settle the "will-they/won't they" drama of the character's relationship by having Kamala suddenly kiss Bruno when she was torn between stopping a supervillain's rampage and staying at the hospital with her dying Abu.

However, by Issue #15 after Kamala felt awkward about publicly dating Bruno and suffered a near-death experience due to the events of the Outlawed crossover, the two decide to have an incredibly honest and earnest conversation about the status of their relationship:

Although I’ve used to be a huge shipper of these two as a couple, I can honestly understand both Kamala & Bruno’s perspectives here on why they feel it won’t work for them and feel they should just stay friends despite their feelings for one-another. And I love how Kamala acknowledges being confused about her feelings for Bruno since she kissed him in a heat of passion when she was emotionally stressed due to other factors like the Stormranger Nanosuit influencing Kamala's physical behavior to try and kill her arch-nemesis Discord (aka, Josh Richardson) and her grief and anger over her Abu dying in the hospital while she had to go off and fight the supervillain Mr. Hyde.

Additionally, Bruno acknowledges that maybe he was too fixated in the ideal relationship he always imagined having with Kamala that and ended up being a jerk about wanting to be more open about their relationship after the kiss. And while it’s a more subtle implication, Bruno’s mentioning of his ex-girlfriend Mike from G. Willow Wilson’s run is a reference to Bruno and Mike’s relationship developing at a more natural pace without any of the awkward baggage that comes with Bruno & Kamala being best friends since childhood.

Furthermore, this conversation between Kamala & Bruno served as a nice callback to the rooftop scene from the Last Days arc of Wilson’s run wherein Kamala similarly stated that she wasn't ready to pursue romance due to her life as Ms. Marvel. Except here, Ahmed provides some resolution and closure to Wilson leaving possibility of a relationship developing between the two open-ended, settling on the two characters deciding that the messiness of being a couple isn't worth risking their friendship over.

Overall, I was surprisingly impressed by how Saladin Ahmed handled Kamala and Bruno maturely sorting out their relationship and their decision to remain friends going forward. And I say all this as someone who defended and championed the KamalaXBruno ship for quite awhile (especially since a large subsection of Ms. Marvel fans on Twitter seem to actively despise Bruno as a character for reasons that I honestly don't understand...).

From Magnificent Ms. Marvel (2019) #15 by Saladin Ahmed & Minkyu Jung.

[elmoshipsbyler]

edit: i put this in my queue instead of in my drafts by accident, just fixing/rewording some parts

note: this doesn’t apply to all m*levens, i’m talking about a very specific subsection of them

m*levens talking about how sad it is that will won’t have a love interest in s5, because they feel bad for him & he deserves the best, all while they aggressively shit on bylers for wanting him to end up with mike (it’s unrealistic! delusional! or whatever)

like just say you only care about gay people being happy when it doesn’t threaten your straight ship. stop pretending to care about will, as if you wouldn’t hate him for “stealing” mike from el

i grew up in a very homophobic area and people are like this IRL too. everyone i’ve heard that’s used that argument before has used it as a very thinly veiled variation of “i only like gay people when they don’t cause problems” or, “i am pro gay rights, as long as they don’t affect me”. and some people genuinely don’t realize that that’s the logic they’re using (not intentionally being homophobic, they just haven’t thought it through) but i’ve seen so many people talk like that, use those arguments, that i’m just tired of it. like i’m annoyed. will can date mike if that’s what makes them both happy, whether it “interferes” with your ship or not. gay people can have happy endings if it “gets in the way” or not

[gaykarstaagforever]

Seriously?

I found it.

This comes from the website of some lawyer who goes on TV and writes books explaining when and how exactly you can murder people with your amazing, beautiful guns.

I read the relevant subsection or whatever, F, where it says you can push a guy over if he's in your way. But the context of it seems to be as it pertains to YOUR PERSONAL PROPERTY; like if someone is blocking you from going inside your house. But it just says "from a place you have a legal right to enter," so I guess that means you can use it to knock over protesters.

To wit:

Or maybe it only works that way if you're a politician and annoyed that someone is getting between you and the lobbyists who are LEGALLY not bribing you.

If the police won't even let you file charges, I guess it doesn't much matter.

They added this "right to knock people over" thing in 1980. I don't really know how to look up what was going on that prompted this. Plus Pennsylvania is notoriously awful at digitizing records and making them freely searchable.

[alldayeveryday-candycandycandy]

The way I saw FNAF SL: after knowing that his sister is trapped in an animatronic and knowing that he must rescue her or face his father's wrath, Michael hears Baby's story and, feeling bad for her, thinking that she cannot leave the facility without using his body to do so, sacrifices himself to the scooper - not knowing he is being tricked by Ennard until the last second. He is willing to give his life for his sister's escape. And he is punished for it by being unable to die.

Leading to FNAF PS where it's still Michael, but he has no qualms about dying or being hurt. After all, his main goal now is to go after his father. Not necessarily to stop his father out of any good means, but as revenge for all the abuse he and Elizabeth suffered.

Just he and Elizabeth. I think if Crying Child was involved, there would have been mention of him in either of those two games. And no, not just a hard to find map in a non-canonical subsection secret area that might point more towards Afton being able to access other people's houses in secret rather than torment his own kid that no one ever mentions again.

And I think that's the beginning and ending of Michael's story. At least the intention of it. If there was any retconning going on, like if Michael was supposed to be Mike Schmidt from the very beginning, then I don't think that was the original intention.

[wewebaggit]

Honestly this whole 'karen is alice' or mike and the wheelers are related to creels takes seem to be coming from wanting to make mike 'be involved' in the supernatural in some way despite the fact that the important part of this is that he was just a guy who got involved in this bc of his determination to find will.

Also i just find it funny how karen is the one who is thought to be a secretive important character when we literally have joyce on the show who has been involved in the plot and whose teenage life will be featured in the upcoming play in a month in relation to the creels 😭 like why a subsect fandom on here is so blind to some things is beyond me

I mean it's fun to theorise and shit. To each their own. But I know the people who believe in this think of it as some foregone conclusion and act like ANYTHING else is stupid while extending other theories as evidence for future theories. Which is. Well it's more fun to see a house of cards collapse than just stay there doing nothing. So yay I guess. But idts it coheres. What's the message? It's just too crowded and confused already for these new additions to make sense. But good if they do.

[kittenkatbar]

brb going back to college just to write a dissertation on leftist infighting via the vehicle of bi vs gay mike discourse in the byler subsection of the stranger things fandom

[thewrongmoon]

one thing I desperately hope for s5 is that they try to divide the plots and characters up more effectively. like because one of my major qualms with s4 was how bad the pacing was from having 2 hour long episodes and 5 different plots going on. like let me break it down so we can remember just how bad in retrospect it was:

Plot A: Hawkins gang (Max, Dustin, Lucas, Steve, Robin, Nancy, Eddie, Erica)

SUBSECTIONS of Plot A:

Nancy + Fred

Nancy + Robin

Lucas + basketball team

Dustin + Max

Dustin + Max + Lucas

Dustin + Max + Lucas + Steve

Dustin + Max + Lucas + Erica

Steve + Nancy + Robin + Eddie

Plot B: Cali gang (Jonathan, Argyle, Will, Mike)

SUBSECTIONS of Plot B:

Jonathan + Will + Mike + El

Jonathan + Will + Mike

Will + El

Mike + Will + El

Plot C: NINA project (El)

SUBSECTIONS of Plot A:

El + Owens

El + Owens + Brenner

El + Brenner

El + One

Plot D: Journey to Russia (Joyce, Murray)

SUBSECTIONS of Plot D:

Joyce + Murray + Yuri

Plot E: Russian prison (Hopper, Dmitri)

(Plot D and Plot E MERGE in the last few episodes)

Other Perspectives we see from:

Jason + basketball team

Karen, Ted, other parents

US military

Owens

Like the mixture of having more than 4 plots/perspectives and also having a non proportional number of characters in each PLUS having the grouping consistently changing is so convoluted. Let's compare it to season one just to see:

Plot A: The party + El (Mike, Lucas, Dustin, El)

SUBSECTIONS of Plot A:

Mike + El

Mike + Dustin

Mike + Lucas + Dustin

Lucas

El

Plot B: The teens (Jonathan, Nancy)

SUBSECTIONS of Plot B:

Nancy + Steve

Nancy + Barb

Nancy + Jonathan + Steve

Jonathan

Nancy

Plot C: The adults (Hopper, Joyce)

SUBSECTIONS of Plot C:

Hopper

Joyce

Joyce + Jonathan

Joyce + Lonnie

Plot D: Hawkins Lab (Brenner)

Other perspectives we see from:

Will

A lot more manageable, right?? This also has to do with there being less characters. But even if the Duffers don't want to kill anyone off, they could divide them up more efficiently. Having one plot with 8 characters in s5 and another with just 1 is like... how did that happen. Even though the Hawkins plot was one of them more interesting ones, the characters constantly splitting up and there just being too many of them in one plot together just kind of leaves the viewers confused. One of the reasons I actually liked the Cali plot was because I was like "Oh this is like a good number of characters for one plot line."

In a perfect world I think each plot has like a max of 5 characters and a minimum of two. Also there's only 3 or 4 going on. Which is why I really hope we return to the original groupings for season 1.

[brionysea]

whatever he did before things started looping, i don't think he died, but i do think he's dying. mike is einstein's definition of insanity given human form — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results — and he's him, so he's made it this far on sheer willpower, but he can't keep going forever. which is why it's gotten to the point of needing a pep talk and a reminder of who he is

he doesn't seem to be immune to becoming a "faded, lesser copy" every time, either. it might even be affecting him more, since everyone and their mother has picked up on "the mike problem" by now of how he's just... dimmer, the further in we get. that's happening to some other people too, but it's to a lesser extent, so they go fairly unnoticed while mike is right in our face, and it's generally blamed on bad writing

everything might be getting dimmer because mike's dying, actually. if it's all coming from his brain and his brain is slowly shutting down, that makes it harder to get all the details right

the thing about el (but really mike, because he's projecting) being treated like a machine makes me think... idk, like, this is all a loop, right? something went wrong and he's trying to fix it, and while they don't usually lose, they don't really win either, so it keeps coming back

and if mike is the source of that, if he's making this all happen again and again and again until whatever was broken gets fixed, then all of that weight is pressing on his brain. it's like he's maintaining this little subsection of reality where they fight monsters from an alternate dimension every year and that's just normal, and he's doing it all on his own, because the one time el tried to go into his mind, he shut her out. maybe that's where the possible brain damage comes in, just from how much stress is being put on his brain to keep this whole operation up and running

and he kind of seems to want out, honestly? even without pioneering the "if the brain dies, the body dies" movement, he's constantly running into danger without a second thought for his own life. but whatever he's doing this for must outweigh that desire because he's not stopping. he probably just wants the others to take notice so he won't be indefinitely trying to fix the unfixable by himself more than anything, because the other option is giving up, and he didn't sing along to never surrender for nothing

i could see whatever was broken being that will or mike's life was seriously threatened, honestly. i'm partial to the second one, because i'm biased and i'd like to see him fight for himself for once, but both work. hopper considered the possibility of will's disappearance being related to his queerness, and as far as we know, his vanishing was as close as we can get to the triggering incident, so there might be some answers there. something in that vein definitely could have happened to either of them

hopper's theory of what happened to will -> got spotted in the woods by someone scary, dropped his bike, ran to the quarry, fell off the cliff

the reality of what happened to mike -> got spotted in the woods by someone scary, dropped his bike, ran to the quarry, and was forced to jump off the cliff, all because he made someone mad by standing up to them about their homophobia

mike and will's characters touch on a lot of the same stuff, but with will it's usually told to us, while with mike we're shown it. i tend to think that's indicative of something. this would certainly explain how they're planning to make mike's queerness so integral to the narrative and the final resolution that it can't be bullied into being cut out by the powers that be, if mike accepting it is what has to happen for the story to end

mike creating el under manifestation theory and then literally giving her a name like parents do to their kids. i guess the more apt description is like writers do to their characters, but the phrasing of "making el" keeps following her around, and it's one that she herself used when talking about her mother, so...

[spaceorphan18]

I read with interest your view and that of @hopefulobjectmiracle about tumblr Klaine fandom. Is there more shipping these days than 2010-15? I ask because there seems to be a smaller group that only ship Kurt with Blaine but there seems to be a huge rise in Kurtbastian and Hevans shippers. Likewise, there’s many more pezberry or faberry shippers. And a lot more of those shippers trying to discredit Blaine or Brittany as OTP for Kurt and Santana. There seems to be new younger people joining Tumblr declaring a love for all things Klaine, and then a week later shipping Kurt with everybody else!! Has there been a change since the show aired?

Hi Nonny! :)

Hmmm.... There's not really a clear answer to this because the way shipping evolved is different than people just finding things now.

There are kind of two different things going on here -- Kurt related shipping and non-Kurt (blaine/klaine) shipping. I can't tell you much about non related Kurt things -- however, I will say that Faberry was HUGE when the show was on. It's a subsection of the fandom I never interacted with but it was around in season 1, and loud enough that the show makes nod to it from season 2 forward. Brittana was always around, too, and the reason Brittana became a thing on the show was, partly, due to fans crying out that they should be a couple -- and more than the throwaway joke the writers made in the first season.

I don't know what happened to those ships over time, or how the evolved since the show ended -- I'm sorry :/

But now, I will tell you the epic history of Kurt shipping. (Again. i should really dig out my old notes on this, lol)

Here we go long post...

I found it! I'm going to quote myself so I don't have to write it out again, lol. This was originally from an ask about the BBO (Better Boyfriend Olympics), but it'll work here, too.

Okay, so let’s go back to 2010 when there wasn’t a Klaine fandom, there was a Kurt fandom.  A lot of the BBO stemmed out of the Kurt’s Boyfriend Shipping wars of 2010.

Back then, there was just a Kurt fandom, and a lot of opinions about who he should date.  Believe it or not, Kurt was shipped a lot with the other guys on the show, there was a healthy dose of Kurt/Finn, but Kurt/Puck was huge, and there was a smattering of Kurt/Mike (I never really did see much Kurt/Artie now that I think of it, which is kind of funny in retrospect, but I’m sure it’s out there.)  Anyway - when the show announced Kurt was getting a boyfriend – well, things began to get heated up.

Three big ships emerged

Kurt/Sam - because the rumor was that Sam was originally supposed to be Kurt’s bf (probably not, but that rumor was big at the time).  Btw, they were the canoe ship (I have no idea why) and was also known as Kum (rolls-eyes).  This ship’s fanbase was so huge and lasted so long, that the show felt the need to address it head on in Season Two’s Rumours (not a joke).

Kurt/Karofsky - Also known as Kurtofsky, they were also called themselves the Pirate ship (god, Idk why, shipping wars are weird, yo).  These people were also really passionate, mostly about Dave, but liked the whole idea that Kurt would save Dave and they would have this weird - enemies to loves love affair or something.  I don’t know, I could never get past the squicky assault aspect, but whatever.

Kurt/Blaine - which. at the time, was… the biggest possibility? It’s funny cause the other two ships were just as big as the Klaine ship, and really the fighting became over who was going to be the best option for Kurt.

And that’s the thing.  Fans of Kurt were so passionate about who was best for Kurt, because everyone had seen him go through hell and back on the show, so his boyfriend needed to be perfect for him.  And you know who was perfect (at first) – Blaine.  More on that in a second…

However, Blaine brought his own bit of baggage – namely fans of Darren Criss (and/or Starkid fans).  Unlike Chord Overstreet or Max Adler, people knew who Darren was before he was on Glee.  So his own fandom joined in on the Klaine of it all.  At first it was all fine – as the shipping wars continued, it was less about Kurt vs Blaine and more about Klaine vs the other shippers.  Well, that was going to change….

Original Song happened and Kurt and Blaine got together ending the question of who would ultimately be Kurt’s boyfriend.  And things were nice and cozy headed into season 3.  You’d think the Kurt/Sam and Kurt/Karofsky ships would die out, but not really, they stuck around for a long time, and kinda morphed into something else.

See, The First Time happened.  And for the first time Blaine wasn’t the perfect prince that he was in season 2 – he had more of a developed personality, and more flaws.  And… some people didn’t like it.  (Also added to the mix was Sebastian – and the Seblaine and Kurtbastian ships were born, but those kinda go off on their own thing and I’m not really going to bring them up much here.)  Anyway, what really got fandom split was Dance With Somebody.

You had two sides of an argument, people who saw Kurt’s POV and people who saw Blaine’s POV – and guess what happened.  The two sides began to fight with each other over who was “right” in the argument.  (My god…) And thus started what fandom started referring to as The Better Boyfriend Olympics.

See - for reasons I don’t fully understand - instead of seeing that each of the boys have a fault and each were wrong in the episode, each side wanted to say that their side, and their POV was the correct way – that one boyfriend was more oppressed and the other was not as good a partner.

On the Kurt side, though, you had a lot of the old Kurt fans and ships who didn’t like Blaine (and/or didn’t want Blaine as his partner) so they vehemently decided that unless Blaine was the perfect boyfriend again, he didn’t deserve to be with Kurt.  Meanwhile, you had the Blaine fans, many of them Darren fans who wanted Blaine to have more depth to him than just being Kurt’s boyfriend, and not being Kurt fans first (or originally) they were going to push back at the Kurt fans who were lashing out at Blaine.

Compounding this was the fact that during season 3, there were so many cast members and characters that unless you were Finchel, you were begging for scraps and your featured episode to come along.  Meanwhile - Kurt got a ton of screen time, but didn’t sing much, while Blaine sang a lot more, but didn’t get much story.  The Kurt fans resented that Blaine was always singing.  The Blaine fans were annoyed that the Kurt fans resented it, and tried to remind the Kurt fans that Blaine barely got any development.

Either way, a war had begun.  And then The Break Up happened.

Now Kurt fans had a specific reason to point at – Blaine being a terrible boyfriend.  He cheated.  He’s terrible.  The end.

The fandom was not firmly split into sides - you were either a Kurt fan - a lot of them who HATED Blaine - partly because he was getting more attention at the time, partly cause he did sing more, partly because they were made up of Kurt ships that didn’t work out, and partly cause they saw so much of themselves in Kurt that they projected onto him their own feelings, and loving Blaine was not a part of that projection.  Or you were a Blaine fan - who spent a lot of time defending Blaine to the point of exhaustion, and became so resentful of Kurt that they wished Blaine could be with anyone else because Kurt (fans) didn’t understand Blaine and should just stop trying.

Weren’t there any Klainers you ask? Ha, well…. Klainers, people actually liked Kurt AND Blaine were stereotyped into two categories.  Category A) the really really loud fanbase (usually on Twitter) that harassed the creators, RM, Chris, Darren, various crew about Klaine every second that they got – to the point that it started to feel embarrassing (that’s probably my own projection).   Category B) People who thought (think) that Chris and Darren were (are) in a secret relationship.  (Spoiler alert they aren’t, never have been, and never will be.)  The two of these categories overlapped A LOT, and many of the fans of one boy or the other just disassociated completely.

You could still be a fan of the Klaine relationship, but you had a preference to which boy you were actually a fan of – you couldn’t like both, or else you were a Klainer, and that was not cool.  (I spent a long time NOT identifying as anything, and trying to make sure everything I did and said was equal – a) cause I was new to fandom and b) cause I hated that either one or the other of these characters were villainized so frequently.)

Anyway - Season 4 continued.  Adam showed up, and Kurt fans got all excited, but the problem was that a lot of them saw him as the perfect boyfriend again – not a real character but a prop that could make Kurt look good and be everything for Kurt.  Look, I liked Adam, I did, but he was underdeveloped, and this weird idea that your boyfriend needs to be perfect in order to be a functioning relationship is just unrealistic.  I digress.  Meanwhile, we didn’t get a lot of Kurt POV, which didn’t help things, and meant even more projection over his character.

Meanwhile, the Blaine fans had formed their own community, which became viciously defensive of him.  I think the whole fandom was toxic during this time for a lot of reasons, and I really wanted to quit it.  Many people did – the show wasn’t being fun anymore.

Season 5 came along, the boys got back together, tempers simmered, but the whole idea of the Better Boyfriend Olympics came back every time a conflict happened.  Arguments about who was the better boyfriend ensued, gatekeeping as to why their pick was best and why your opinion sucked still ran through the fandom.  Not helping was the fact that Cory had died, and the creators, actors, and crew – as well as media – was tired of Glee.

The one nice thing, though was that a lot of the old crowd had moved on by then, and there was an influx of newer people coming in during season 5 (and season 6) – they weren’t here for the season 3 droughts and season 4 wars, and brought in a newer and fresher perspective.

But still - we had the end of season 5 and the summer of spoilers and season 6 to get through.  At this point, the Kurt and Blaine camps had moved to their parts of the internet and really not speaking much to each other if they could help it.  When an argument happened on the show, the same kind of Better Boyfriend Olympics came up again – one boyfriend was worse than the other, and unless they changed xyz they were not good enough for the other.  But at this point, it was incredibly tiring.  I know that I was just ready for the show to be done with.

I should say, as an aside, not helping things were the rise of some rather vocal BNF-ish fans, who dug their heels in about their own opinions.  The refusal to even acknowledge that one side or the other might be right, or have valid points was not helping anything.  A lot of people on both sides refused to even listen to the points on the other side – and instead of being frustrated at the show, the creators, or whatever, they took it against each other, which wasn’t fun to watch either.

Season 6 happened - Blainofsky happened, and that killed enthusiasm for the season on both sides, most people just kind of wanted it to be over.  And then the ending came quickly, and I think a lot of people who were just plain unhappy about everything left for good.

The Better Boyfriend Olympics, or this weird competition that always pitted the boys and their fandoms against each other in the name of one being better than the other, leveled off after this.  I won’t give myself /that/ much credit - but one reason I created @todaydreambelievers was to give fans of both Kurt and Blaine a safe place where we could enjoy and discuss both boys without the BBO rearing its head.  And you know what – it did mend a few hearts.

For the most part, it’s been pretty quiet since.  Fandom is quieter, but I think the people who have come into it after the show has ended are a lot less judgmental and argumentative.  (I suppose it helps if you know how the story is going to end.)  And the cool thing, for me, is finding a group of people who enjoy Kurt and Blaine equally (or respectfully) – and reclaiming the name Klainer as a good thing.

I’ll end by saying this – it’s been relatively peaceful, even with the influx of new people throughout the years, but I have been seeing shades of BBO pop up again.  Look, you don’t have to like Klaine to be a fan of one or the other of them.  But there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world, a lot of things to be angry and get indignant about.  How a fictional couple was written ten years ago is not one of them.  Be respectful of people, and know that maybe the side you understand better isn’t the only side worth listening to.  ;)

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So, I suppose that's part 1 of this full picture. Onto Part 2.

Here's the thing -- I've stayed, mostly, in my little tumblr buble over the past five years -- blissfully unaware that I suppose things were going on around me. Except... they really weren't. Until the pandemic happened, and Glee went to Netflix internationally, and a whole bunch of young kids grew up and started watching the show.

By the time I ended TDB in 2019, there weren't many of us left. I knew there was our small, dedicated group of fans. The tinhatters (the group who thought Chris and Darren were in some kind of relationship. spoiler alert -- they're not). And I know the Kurtbastian fans have been kicking around for a while. But no one was around in huge numbers.

And then boom - pandemic, and I'm shocked (not in a bad way) that this show has already seen a resurgence. The weirdest part, for me, is the fact that not only is history repeating itself -- seriously, people are bringing up old conflicts that have been dead for ages, and old shipping wars I never thought I'd see again -- but I think this new group's relationship with the show is much different.

I think that Kurt is a character whom a lot of people can still identify with. And because he's on his own in the first season, it's still easy to project yourself onto him. And then shipping goes from there. Blaine went from being the exciting option, omg are they really gonna do Klaine?? to -- hey Klaine is the boring canon choice, we can choose who we want for Kurt.

Layer over that years of Blaine hate still circling the interwebs. The echo chamber that Twitter and Tiktok create. And the fact that neither Chris or Darren seem to have the army of fans they once did (well -- Darren does, but they don't really watch Glee anymore). And you get this varied landscape of shipping.

No, some days it doesn't feel that different from the BBO days. The fact that I still get asks about Blaine and TFT car scene or Tested makes me feel like I'm back in 2013. Other times I'm perplexed by resurgences -- such as Kurtbasitan and Kurt/Sam. (Please don't bring back Kurtofsky guys)

But there's a saying -- Same Shit, Different Day.

I think there is an entirely different group of people than the original people watching, and their reasoning for shipping whatever is much different. But they've certainly come to a lot of the same conclusions that brought about the shipping wars in the early days.

At the end of the day - I think Kurt will always been a fandom mattress. But ship what you like and be nice to everyone else. There's enough hate in the world -- no need to dump on people's escapism.

[sortasirius]

Ok this may not be relevant so no need to respond, but the scene where Dean and Sam get the absolute shit beaten out of them “guys stop. Come on guys just stay down. Come on-“ was so funny to me. So so funny. It gave me such respect for them, their refusal to stay down and actually laughing in his face, but it was also so ridiculous. Was it 30 seconds of “come on guys. Guys stay down come on-“ and then the HEIST MOVIE ENDING! We knew mike would be a daddy’s boy and we had a SeCReT PLan (1/2)

lkjfdklsdf no I totally agree, I thought the END of the scene, where they stood up together, laughing was powerful, but I literally said out loud “how long does this go on for?”  It’s too bad it turned kinda comical bc like I said, the end of the scene was very powerful.

I agree with you too on two different endings as well, it definitely felt like it was for a certain subsection of the fandom, so I’m beyond excited to see the actual series finale.