#forced conformity is what's killing the kids

[elephantshoetoo]

If "forced conformity" is what's killing the kids...

...then Vecna represents forced conformity and can only be beaten by a love that doesn't conform.

Enter Byler to save the day.

💙💛💚

[emblazons]

MIKE WHEELER + A MEDITATION ON BOUNDARIES

"Back when I thought I was straight I would go on dates with boys. The boys would usually want to kiss me. I disliked kissing, but I thought that their preferences deserved to count as much as mine, and I reasoned that they probably liked kissing more than I disliked kissing. So kissing was a morally good thing to do. I also reasoned that if I told them I disliked the kissing then they’d feel guilty and enjoy it less. So I did not tell them.  I am certain I was making some kind of critical error but it has taken me a long time to figure out what it might be." (x)

[mikesbasementbeets]

the snowball scene is so much, the way these three look after max and lucas when they go to dance

will's just happy for his friends, while dustin is disappointed, and mike could not care less

but he's just a little too nonchalant about it, like he's trying to project that he doesn't care... but he actually does care about the dance, because wait, what was that, mike? you go to school dances with...

oh right

knowing that lucas and dustin both want to dance with a girl, while mike and will don't, they're probably both assuming they're just going to hang out with each other all night

something about mike's face when a girl asks will to dance

something about all three of them looking at the person they wish they could dance with

this is just

the immediate regret

the gay solidarity

the gay yearning

the gay confusion

the gay depression.... mike sitting alone when he thought he'd be spending the dance with will

[chirpsythismorning]

They were sick for this.

[ihaveissueslol]

Season 5 Mike better be so It's My Life by Bon Jovi coded I swear to god-

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

Everytime a Milkvan say that they should stay together because they went through so much together, even bad relationship crisis, but never chose to break up for real, I want to tell them "just like Ted and Karen!" lmao.

Wdym, Ted and Karen are such couple goals, they are obviously soulmates? 🙄

Look at them working together as a team!

Tedaren forever! (Or Ked? Do we call them Ked?) What’s their official ship name? 😍😍

[maddy-ferguson]

Mlvns also think El was telling the truth in her letters to Mike. Like, they believe skating is one of El's hobbies meanwhile the show tells us that she's never been to skating and she made that up to lie to Mike in order to impress him. Like bro... you are giving Mike Wheeler with this logic i am sorry.

give her a little credit she's skated before she's even been to a party here. for mom's work! but yes. lol

it's so funny because misunderstanding their relationship really leads to misunderstanding the season and basically the entire show...it's one thing to like a ship but to misread the entire narrative that surrounds it...what a bummer

[ice-sculptures]

What are your favorite Byler fandom inside jokes?

uhhhh i haven't been in the fandom for that long but i really loved mikhailgate!! jonathan being mikephobic is also hilarious & i crack up whenever i read the phrase "babygirl you're the heart"

edit: i saved this in my drafts days ago and forgot to post it and all of a sudden my dash is nothing but babygirl jokes 💀

[pullingyourstrings]

what's your hc on the boys sexuality?

Gareth is bisexual and Eddie doesn't like being labeled.

[allyricas]

there's just something so delicious about friends-to enemies-to lovers

barely teenage steve and eddie who have a devastating end to what they both thought would be a forever friendship. maybe it's a misunderstanding or maybe it's just teenage angst that felt impossible to fix in the moment.

but i am feral over the idea that the only reason steve ever became 'king steve' strutting around with tommy and carol with his aloof, semi-mean girl attitude was because of the falling out with eddie. that he did it so he didn't feel so much hurt over it. still has no idea what he did to make eddie suddenly hate him.

same with eddie. he definitely liked metal and nerdy shit all along, but maybe he only leaned into the whole 'forced conformity, it's what's killing the kids' freak persona to guard himself. as armor. because he fucking misses steve as much as he hates him. so he glares and makes snarky comments. finds his solace in DnD and his band.

they fight with words and shoulder shoves in the hallway. each of them too proud to ever talk it out and fix things. to the point that their peers don't remember that steve and eddie used to be inseparable. everyone but steve and eddie forget the obvious affection and closeness they once shared.

it takes a bunch of freshmen to put them back into each other's orbit.

it takes the upside down, a dead cheerleader and an evil wizard for them to actually get along again.

because steve is meant to hate eddie but the moment he sees the trailer and hears the word 'murder' he feels like he might throw up.

Please, god, not eddie.

only to find out he supposedly murdered chrissy cunningham. despite all the animosity between the two of them, steve knows in his soul that eddie would never kill anyone.

even when he's against a wall with sharp glass pressed to his neck, heart racing as he looks into the eyes he tries not to think about, steve knows that eddie won't actually hurt him.

steve has the urge to stay with eddie at the lake house and make sure nothing else happens to him. instead, he stops forcing himself to be an asshole towards eddie. it's exhausting and he's never truly meant it anyways. the upside-down shit is threatening the one person he hoped would never be a part of it.

it takes eddie watching steve get pulled under lover's lake and attacked by demon bats to realize that the biggest misunderstanding was of his own thirteen year old self's feelings. that he could've lost steve and he'd have never even told him the truth of why he let their friendship implode over such a ridiculous misunderstanding.

that he wanted more than friendship and that scared the hell out of him at thirteen.

he sees steve bleeding and throwing himself into danger over and over. realizes that yeah, steve harrington is a good guy. his own personal munson doctrine is fundamentally flawed and untrustworthy and he's in love with this stupidly brave man, maybe since forever.

make him pay means i'm sorry, i love you, please be safe, come back.

it takes eddie nearly dying and his steve carrying him out of hell for eddie to realize that steve never hated him either. that what eddie always views as aloofness and superiority was hurt and steve trying to deal. regardless of whatever lays in the past, steve holds him together with his hands and begs eddie to stay. whispers that he loves him, always has loved him, always will love him.

eddie thinks about all the years they lost due to teenage angst and fear. fights to keep his eyes open and stay, because steve his sobbing and begging him not to go.

and when eddie finally wakes up in the hospital, it's steve and uncle wayne next to him. steve won't leave his side, maybe ever again. neither of them with any desire to ever look at each other with anything but love.

[mikewheelerlikesboys]

“Forced conformity, that’s what’s killing the kids. That’s the real monster.” Is a crazy line.

[jewish-vents]

I am about ready to scream at goyim going "imagine if a country that was mostly one religion committed genocide other than Israel! imagine any other country being that awful!" I AM JEWISH AND CHOCTAW. My people have been massacred, forced off our land, raped, beaten, killed, death marched down to Oklahoma, forced into residential schools, been denied tribal membership and access to the reservation (and our own fucking culture) for being too light-skinned, Christians came in and beat and killed and raped everyone trying to practice our ancestral religion, Christian charity was contingent on you being willing to go along with Christianity, the government that has its' boot on our neck to this day is Christian, and goyim really want to act like NO ONE religious has ever done anything bad other than (((some people)))?! Choctaw women are STILL raped and beaten by police at four times the rate of white people and you know what the dominant religion in the state it's being done is? Hint, it's not Judaism!

Do you know why my ancestors converted, goyim? It's because the only people who ever offered them any kindness or support who weren't asking them to give up their language, culture and way of life were Jewish. The only people who agreed being forced off of your land and death marched to Oklahoma was fucked up were Jewish people. The only one who would let my great-great-great-great grandfather work for an honest day's pay and pay him the same amount they would a white person was a Jewish man. When white people wanted to take my great-great-great grandfather and his sister and put them in an Evangelical school to indoctrinate and mistreat them, it was a Jewish woman who straight up lied to them and went, "oh they're not Native, they're my kids, actually! no need to take them anywhere, they're not Native, they're white, the father of my bastards is just tan from working outside a lot!" and thus kept them out of there. They converted because they saw the love of G-d and it sure as shit wasn't from Christians!

And people see me and they think, "oh, he's not white, so he must not be Jewish. I can say antisemitic shit in front of him" and it makes me want to go fucking feral. Do they think I just forgot why my ass is in Oklahoma and why I can speak English and Yiddish and not fluent Choctaw? Do they think I forgot who gave my family a plot of land to live on when my ancestors were declared too light skinned to be allowed to live on the reservation while also not being able to return home because white Christians had built a town atop the ruins of my people's land? Because it wasn't you, Karen. You would have been saying Native kids were better off at a residential school and we both know it! We know it because you're fine hating a minority if you just have something you can spin into an excuse and you're fine dehumanizing people if the opportunity presents itself. "Imagine if any other religion-" I don't have to imagine. I'm in Okla-fucking-homa, Karen!

I've been observant all my life but this has switched it from 'lazily observant' to 'digging my heels in and being as Jewish as humanly possible' for the same reason I work my ass off learning Choctaw despite the obstacles: white goyim do not own me and I do not owe it to them to conform to their culture and expectations.

Am Yisrael Chai Akostininchi li Yisrael

(yes I know how to say it in Choctaw, my parents embedded that in my psyche, even if the rest of our knowledge of the language is spotty)

.

[chirpsythismorning]

Mike and El are never beating the doomed subtext allegations…

[hellfirenacht]

Eddie: BUT AS LONG AS YOU'RE INTO BAND-

Reader: You're literally in a band.

Eddie: OR SCIENCE-

Reader: this is why you're struggling in Ms. Odonnells.

Eddie: OR PARTIES-

Reader: Did Gareth's birthday party mean nothing to you?

Eddie: OR A GAME WHERE YOU TOSS BALLS INTO LAUNDRY BASKETS-

Reader: Okay, yeah I'll give you that one.

Eddie: it's forced conforming.

Reader: you make us wear the same shirt every Friday??

Eddie: That's what's KILLING THE KIDS

Reader: Please sit down you almost stepped on my sandwich.

Eddie: That's the real monster.

Reader: your sneakers?

[dungeons-are-too-cold]

listen, I- I cant help but think every time i see will and eddie interact in fics, that will would not have liked eddie like

at all

Eddie? is a dick.

and like maybe this is me just being insane, but i think will's love of Dnd comes from an actual love and appreciation for character and story and a love of his friends and his community he found playing dnd. It gave him an outlet, it let him express himself, it let him be brave and when you see him trying so hard to come back to that in season 3, you see he uses it as a way to express what he's going through. But most importantly, Will plays dnd because he loves his friends.

eddie is so rigid with his dnd obsession. He uses it as a way to control things, to (honesty) control people. He uses it to build himself a throne. A LITERAL THRONE SITS AT THE HEAD OF THE HELLFIRE TABLE. The party always played at a square table, they all looked at each other, all equal, all on the same playing field. But eddie, he's different. Even at lunch you see him sit at the head of the table. He gets up and walks across them, he shouts, he draws attention to them, invites the tormenting almost, and i don't think will would have liked the way Eddie was constantly bringing attention to himself and, in turn, hellfire as a whole. Eddie uses dnd to antagonize, to start shit, as a marker of his "fuck it" attitude

Will would not have felt safe in hellfire. Eddie's "forced conformity is killing the kids" monologue is such bullshit. Hellfire would have suffocated will. Not because i think will couldn't stand up for himself or hold his own against Eddie, but Dustin and Mike are so enamored with Eddie, they fall in line and worship the guy, so much so that they are willing to ditch Lucas and his game! Will never would have stood for that. Will would have been at Lucas's game. No DnD party is worth it to him if its not with his party

"But, what if you wanna join another party?"

"Not possible"

Are we all just, collectively forgetting this? Like are we just blacking out here? Now yes, this is very byler, but its not just about Mike. Its about Lucas and Dustin too. Its about El, and now Max. Its about his people.

Eddie actively tore apart the party under the guise of being "dedicated to dnd" but the only thing eddie is dedicated to is himself and serving his best interest. At least he was in hellfire.

and yeah, idk, i feel like this is an unpopular opinion, but these are just my thoughts. feel free to share yours.

[angry-cryptid]

"It's forced conformity, that's what's killing the kids. That's the real monster."