#byler subtext

[gayofthefae]

The van scene is insane in how direct it is when you break down the structure and themes.

Mike: I love El so much that I don't want her to leave me even if it's better for her

Will: Well, I love you so much that I'd rather you be happy without me and me be in excruciating pain than be even a little bit less happy with me.

They really said "which do y'all pick"

[michaelinprogress]

soldier, poet, king

[gayofthefae]

The way the subtext varies from "I didn't say that/how do I convince you" 'NO! neverrrr' to "okay now that's bullshit and you know it"

mike lying vs mike telling the truth

"You think I'm a monster too."

*high pitched, animated facial expression* "What?!"

vs

"What about us?"

*firm, but quiet. solid eye contact* "What?"

"Yesterday. The way you looked at me. . .you were scared of me."

*head shaking, rapid blinking* "No, no- *scoffs* that's not- that's- that's not true."

vs

"What, you're mad that I didn't talk to you? Seems like you've made it super clear you're not interested in anything I have to say."

*firm, solid eye contact, no stuttering* "That's just not true."

i still can't believe people called finn a bad actor because of this

FINN WOLFHARD??? BAD ACTOR???? PUH LEEZ

MIKE is a bad actor, not finn

[sade-alicious]

im currently rewatching stranger things for the sole purpose of analyzing camera angles, blocking, lighting, and whatnot, so here’s another little thing i noticed

this scene. when jonathon and joyce call out for will and the camera cuts to an angle from inside castle byers. castle byers where will was hiding. this scene foreshadows that will was right there the entire time by showing his perspective. especially since the entire scene jonathon and joyce were shouting his name, but at the end joyce yells “where are you,” when he was right where she looked

also just imagine we open season 5 and its this scene from will’s perspective. will hears joyce and jonathon calling out for him and he tries calling back, but its useless as he hears their voices fading away

[teambyler]

YES Mike eating fruit on pizza was a gay metaphor

I saw a comment saying that Bylers are delusional for finding gay subtext in the "fruit on pizza" scene. We're "overanalyzing" things, they say!

Thing is, that's not the only gay metaphor WITH FOOD that is in Stranger Things. Remember this?

Any LGBT+ person has to react to this the way I did: haha that's a gay joke! "You can't have two of the same thing together"!

And then Robin gave her the jar of jelly, which gave it new meaning:

Vickie was just rambling about her ex-boyfriend and holding 2 slices that were incompatible. But Vickie is compatible with ROBIN. It doesn't matter that she's also a girl, you see! Giving her the jelly and their unspoken shared look and understanding is THE moment they realize their attraction is mutual.

And they made these points about Rovickie with food. (Also see another easter egg where they used food to associate Will with Mike.)

And then Vickie's immediate next line: "I don't know what's wrong with me." She talks about her mouth moving faster than her brain, but the GAY subtext is here also. Something "wrong" about her = being gay = feeling "like a mistake." This is Vickie telling Robin "I'm kind of odd / gay, you know..."

The Stranger Things writers KNOW about gay subtext. So when Mike calls FRUIT (a derogatory term for gay men) on pizza "blasphemous" and comically is made to eat it, AND he says afterward "No, you're right. It's good"? ...

... we're just supposed to IGNORE that????? Just accept it? And if it's not that, then what was the point of the scene?

It is frankly, a pretty BLATANT hint that Mike is QUEER.

And he loves Will. This isn't some unrequited love story -- the writers know the proper way to handle that which is to resolve it quickly... they did that with Dustin's hopes for Max being introduced AND resolved within the space of a season. (Same with Steve liking Robin.) Meanwhile, Will's love for Mike has been built over FOUR seasons, and everything remains unresolved between them, the Painting Lie being one of the most important things. (Will coming out to Mike being the other.)

-teambyler

[imsonormalipromise]

Mike hiding El in his closet

I saw this post about Mike and closets by @sara-yuna and it got me thinking about and remembering other moments where Mike has closeted subtext, particularly the entire scene where Mike hides El in his closet. I know some people have talked about this before (like in this post by @wheelercurse) but I haven't seen a more detailed analysis (it doesn't help that Tumblr's search function isn't top notch) so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Obviously, on the surface, Mike is hiding El because his mother came home and doesn't know about El. But because he hides her in his closet (and as well as other things I'll be mentioning below), it really points to the idea that Mike is closeted and has been ever since season 1 (whether he was consciously aware of it at the time or not).

(I am not trying to take anything away from El's trauma or disregard it, this is just an added layer to the scene).

What I find backs this up is that the outfit El wears when she's hiding in the closet is almost exactly the same outfit Mike wore the day Will went missing:

They are both wearing grey sweatpants and a dark blue jumper. I believe it's the same jumper, it's just that in some shots the way it's fitted on her looks like it has more of a V-neck shape, but the colour and style is definitely the same.

Obviously El had to borrow some clothes because she didn't have others with her, so it's not simply the fact she's wearing Mike's clothes that's damning. It's the choice to have her wear an outfit we've seen Mike wearing before...especially one that can be associated with Will...

So this means that, to some extent, El resembles Mike whilst hiding in his closet. I mean, come on...that has to point to Mike being closeted!! In addition, whilst El is hiding in Mike's closet (looking like Mike), Mike and his mother have a queer coded conversation at the same time: "Michael. ["Yeah?"] I'm not mad at you. ["No?"] No, of course not. All this that's been going on, with Will. I can't imagine what it's been like for you. I just, I want you to feel like you can talk to me. I never want you to feel like you have to hide something from me. I'm here for you, okay?"

Karen believes Mike is hiding or keeping something from her regarding Will. She would understand Mike feeling lost or scared or sad because his best friend just went missing. But from her wording, it seems that there's something more to it that he's not sharing, and that she's open to listening to and understanding whatever it is. She may be aware of or have suspicions about Mike's sexuality, and if so, it points to her being inevitably accepting.

This conversation is recontextualised in season 4 as it is quite similar to the one Will and Jonathan have, where Jonathan expresses his wish for Will to talk to him more ("I miss talking to you. I, like, really miss it. And I think, right now, we need to talk more than ever") and where he expresses that he'll always be there for Will ("I just, I don't want you to forget that I'm here. And I'll always be here. No matter what"). It's quite obvious that Jonathan was making reference to Will's sexuality here, so it's not a stretch to believe the same could be true for Karen and Mike.

So, to reiterate my point: El is hiding in the closet, wearing the same outfit Mike did prior. And at the same time, Karen and Mike have a queer coded conversation about his feelings concerning Will. Thus, El could represent Mike being closeted.

It's significant that this is from season 1, too, because many people argue that "Mike isn't gay/queer" or that if he was, it "would have come out of nowhere", but this is one of the many hints that it was written into his character from the very beginning. Him being queer and reciprocating Will's feelings would not be because of "fan-service" or for the "woke audience", it would be good writing planned from the beginning! (or, because of the uncertainty of the show's reception and of how many seasons there'd be, at the very least there would've been "seeds planted" about Mike's sexuality so that the idea could be developed in later seasons).

[gayofthefae]

I think about the delivery of "I mean it how you mean it. However that was"

I think about this everyday btw.

[butter-bubbles]

Why is no one talking about how monumental it is that Will's feelings for Mike were confirmed by the released S2 script for the Snowball? Like, beyond that script recontextualizing the whole of S2's Byler moments as undeniably romantically coded, I think it illustrates that the Duffer brothers were never unaware of how amibigiously Mike and Will's relationship presented. One of my biggest sources of Byler doubt has been that the (presumably) heterosexual, white Duffer brothers happened their way into gay subtext between Mike and Will while trying to craft an (overplayed, tired, predictable) unrequited, in-love-with-his-best-friend queer narrative for Will, but this has completely changed my mind. Because why would they put so much effort in showing how reciprocal Mike and Will's intense and intimate friendship was in S2 when they were already setting up Will's romantic feelings? Either they are really empathetic and sensitive to the complexity of queer feelings or they just wanted Will to suffer more by including so much ambiguity to Mike's actions, which I'm hoping is not the case. And furthermore, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say that they were always planning for Byler, given that Will's queerness and Mike's insecurities + desire to perform "normalcy" by kissing a girl are evident from the original pitch. They were originally going to kill off Eleven which, in the context of S2 Mike and Will + Will's burgeoning romantic feelings, increases the likelihood of endgame Byler dramatically. Idk y'all, I'm freaking out because there's absolutely no way the Duffers could even pretend to be oblivious to the romantic subtext of Mike and Will's friendship when they were planning it since Season 2. They are so endgame y'all ahhh!!!

Also, the fact that even in the pitch Will is related to Mike (through DnD) makes me actually sick, like that's actually insane...

[ki-flor]

Yeah them:

[apocalyptic-byler]

and if i said byler’s first kiss deserves as much passion as jancy’s first kiss then what

[gayofthefae]

It's the same face. Guilt.

The fact that being left alone for 30 seconds to think about El's safety Argyle talked about leading him to look over at Will is already suspicious. But guilt.

Where was I when she could have been dying?

[michaelinprogress]

hey guys im back to talk about mike wheeler again

I feel like people talk about will and his loss of childhood a lot, which is so devastating ofc, and it's definitely a huge theme in the show (god praise the duffers), but when are we going to talk about Mike and his loss of a childhood?

Will is the more obvious one for this trope, as we still see him wanting to play D&D in season three, but what about Mike?

Mike, who argues with his mom about starting to get rid of his toys and action figures

Mike, who still has all of Will's drawings from when they were kids hung up on his walls

Mike, who still spends most of his time in the basement instead of his bedroom because his happiest childhood memories are there

Mike, who stayed in the same style of clothing he wore when he was younger and didn't begin to develop his own sense of style until Eddie made fun of him, saying his mother dresses him

I feel like a big part of why Mike got so angry at Will for being "childish" is because his family and the world around him makes him feel more ashamed for still feeling young and not wanting to move on yet. He associates his inner child with Will, and he can't love Will like he does, so he forces himself to "grow up," mainly in the way of dating El. Will's refusal to leave his childhood is more understandable, and I know Joyce is a gentle and good mother and would never make him feel ashamed for feeling how he does.

But when Mike makes him feel ashamed? He leaves it all behind, he makes himself abandon his childhood, accepting that he needs to grow up and destroying castle byers. When he's faced with his childhood ending, he takes it and destroys it himself, in a way. But Mike? Mike can only suppress as far inwards as he can, still behind Will in leaving childhood, even though he can't admit it.

They both lost things, and they both have very different trauma, and I think it's time we start exploring Mike's a little more!!!!!!!

[kidovna]

OH MY GOD SHAWN AND MICHAEL ABSOLUTE PERFECTION

you get itttttt

[gayofthefae]

Ooooooooooh

I love parallels where they are the subtext of each other, just like the s2 Lumax and S4 Byler apology scenes matching in both music and lines.

Maybe you should find something you actually care about, Mike. Maybe you should remember. What about what you care about?

"Maybe you should find something you care about, too."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

4x01

"What about us?"

"What?"

4x02

[conanssummerchild]

turns out that all a tv show needs to interest me is an autistic character with gay subtext that i can relate to

[sade-alicious]

oh i soo need a scene like this for byler in season 5

(also i couldnt find the full scene but at the end steve knocks and interrupts them)