#mild byler doubt | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

strangertheories · 2 years ago

Note

mike's monologue and love giving el the strength to fight back against vecna was a parallel to el gaining strength from remembering her mother's memory and love for her and defeating vecna at the lab scene. i am sorry but how can ppl watch that happen and say that the monologue was a lie and mike secretly has feelings for will is beyond me. bylers have the tendency to reach hard to prove their ship's existence with baseless ''parallels'', but when they see an actual and real parallel on the show they completely disregard it, it is just ridiculous in terms of following the narrative and storylines. also el being 'dependent' on mike is not a good way to read that narrative, the show portrays love and being dependent on it as something positive, not negative. el depending on her mother, and on mike is not a bad thing when the show portrays love as the strongest feeling that gives you strength. so no, i don't think el being dependent on mike was portrayed as a negative thing. she and others characters are portrayed as getting strength from love, will did in s2 and max did in s4 and el did it at the lab and then in s4 with mike giving strength to her.

Ok firstly, I agree that it was a parallel between her mother's love and her use of strong emotions in previous seasons to boost her powers. I'm more of a Byler doubter and that scene is ultimately what holds me back from believing in Byler because it's quite romantic and was the climax of the series, which feels odd if they're intending for Byler to happen. However, I still dislike it and believe they should be together even if I have my doubts that they will (I was thinking about not including this paragraph, but I would like to be honest with people following me however I'll still make pro Byler posts and theories!)

However, disclaimer aside, I still dislike the scene. Personally, I would've preferred Will and Johnathan cheering her on from a familial sense of love because it would've served the same purpose without as many issues. Eleven depending on her loved ones is not the issue; it's Mike needing her to depend on him. Maybe that's not what the writers intended, but he had a scene about how he thought their relationship was over because she didn't need him, was told she secretly did (when it was a really Will) and only then was able to tell her he loved her. It just makes him seem like he's only telling her so he can feel validation - this is an issue for me with Byler as well. Also, and you can disagree, the confession just felt a bit cheesy and cliché to me.

I'm aware this is only one opinion, but I just think the other ships were handled so well and Mlvn has been a bit of a let down to me, especially considering how much I love(d) them in earlier seasons. And I don't think I'm the only one; most people in my life who will never even have heard of Byler are no longer invested in their relationship as it seems cheesy, they're constantly fighting and are outshone by the other couples. For me, the difference is that I genuinely feel like Mike and Eleven could break up and stop loving each other during their fights whereas when Hopper and Joyce or Lucas and Max fight, it just feels like they love each other.

It's nice to hear your perspective and I hope this was balanced and made sense. Thanks for the ask, hope you can understand my pov more.

#anti mileven #byler #mild byler doubt #stranger things

11 notes · View notes

quinnick · 2 years ago

Text

Silence is a Killer

Summary: Mike attempts to come out in front of everyone

Ship: established Byler

Length: 683

Mike didn’t really think he’d get this far. He’d thought he’d chicken out or Will would change his mind. He really hoped this whole thing with Will wasn’t some cruel prank on him because there was no other way to get out of this than admitting it. Laying it all out on the table and see how everyone would react. Which was proving to be way harder than he thought.

The silence rested heavy on his shoulders and he found himself slouched back over to the height of everyone sitting. All their eyes stared at him and tried to take him apart. All trying to figure out his next words. He searched everyone’s faces for a sympathetic soul but only found confused glances in all but Will’s eyes. His deep brown eyes drawing him in and grounded him to the floor beneath him.

“Mike,” Nancy’s voice broke him out of his soothing trance. “If you don’t actually have something to sa-”

“I do!” Mike shouted and all the anxiety fell back down onto him. He cleared his throat. “I really do.”

He watched them all swap confused glances; Eventually, each glance fell onto Will but Will never took his eyes of Mike. Everyone all followed Will’s gaze back to Mike as he patiently waited.

Mike fixed his postured, the best it had been in years, and he crossed his arms.

“Me and Will are dating. We have been for a while. And if any of you have a problem with it, keep it to yourself,” He stated. His brain running a mild a minute as it prepared for any response. He even was willing to start a fight.

He wasn’t prepared for silence. Robin and Steve swapped nervous glances while Joyce flashed Hopper a warning glance. Lucas, Dustin, and Jonathan all looked to Will.

Mike felt his own stomach drop as he crumbled back in on himself. The way his stomach twisted felt like a gut punch. His eyes now trained on floor as he wished he would sit down and pretend this never happened. Mike Wheeler? In love with a boy? Probably something they all saw coming but maybe they didn’t think he would be so shameless about it.

“Mike!” Will shouted and he felt an arm wrap around his midsection and attempted to drag him to the safety of the couch.

He didn’t budge.

“Mike, please,” Will whispered with a wobble in his voice. Like every syllable was hard to get out.

“Oh, honey,” Joyce cooed and he felt a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Hey, look at me.”

Mike gingerly looked up at her. His face burned as tears rolled down his cheeks. His heart not even daring to slow down even with tears lining Joyce’s eyes.

“It’s okay. We all love you,” She smiled as looked to Will. “I am so happy for you.”

Mike looked over to Will who had a goofy grin spread across his face as tears dried on his cheeks. Mike’s heart slowed just for a moment as it stuttered when Will let out a giggle.

“I love you, mom.”

Mike found himself scooped into a tight hug and time finally stopped dragging out. The pain in his chest now light enough to float away as he returned the hug,

When they pulled apart, Mike looked around at his friends and noticed first Robin and Steve giving him the biggest thumbs up. As if they were rating his coming out, and he did very well.

“Just as long as you don’t start ditching us to make out with Will all the time,” Dustin said. “Than I fully support this.”

“I doubt they’ll make out at all since Mike can’t shut up when he is around Will,” Lucas stated.

“Hey!”

Mike would have defended himself but any defense was lost in his throat as a shadow cast over him alerted him to the presence of Hopper. He looked up to see the man towering over him with his arms crossed.

“Two inches?” Mike tried with a forced innocent grin.

“Three. Three inches, Wheeler.”

#Byler #my writing #my fanfic #Stranger things #Mike Wheeler #Will Byers

82 notes · View notes

wibble-wobbegong · 2 years ago

Note

Would you like to see an implied byler sex scene in s5

i really don’t care if we get one or not tbh, i just hate when people talk like it’s some outrageous and atrocious idea. i kinda doubt we’ll get one and that’s fine, i’m not like rooting for it or anything, it’s just a possibility and i wish people didn’t treat it like it would be wrong or gross or bad rep when it would literally be them following in the footsteps of previous relationships at their age (namely jancy, who they’ve been paralleled to a lot). we could get nothing sexual, or something mild like the jopper kiss scene too, and that’d be fine, but it’s when people act like teens experiencing sexual feelings and wanting to express them would feed into a nastier audience and that they’re just too young for it despite being 17 that i have a problem with

only thing i really want to see is for them to get their due We Finally Get To Be Together moment that’s been withheld from them for four seasons and their entire fucking lives. ja ncy was desperate and they’d only been pining for each other for around a year. jo pper, excluding potential small feelings in high school, waited around 2-ish years and they made out sloppy as soon as they had the chance. by ler has been waiting for SO much longer by the time they’re seventeen. let’s say that they were both finally conscious of their feelings sometime during S2 — that’s five years of intense pining and crushing miscommunication. for them to not get any kinda intense scenes removes them from a pattern created by the duffers and doesn’t do their feelings justice, in my opinion. the argument usually made against the boys getting anything more than a gentle peck is that they would be different from lu max, which makes them different overall and this is bad, oversexualized rep. lu max had their first kiss at 13 after knowing each other for a couple months. people will also say it’d be weird because we’ve seen these characters since they were kids. there’s a refusal to let these kids grow up and experience more grown up feelings, like they want them to be innocent children forever and it’s weird

tldr; i don’t necessarily want one, i just have a passionate hatred of the idea that it would be wrong for them to have one

#asks

24 notes · View notes

nancywheelersgirlfriend · 2 years ago

Note

hey so for the fic request, i was wondering if you could do a fic about the mike will jonathan and argyle road-trip but they have to stay at a motel and byler has to share a bed (not anything yk bc they’re literally children) but through mikes pov i just wanna see him have a gay panic and freak out and get his inner thoughts

this is my first byler fic!! more of a short character study than anything. i hope this is what you were looking for!!! :)

gentle on my mind (1,392 words)

“We can only afford one room.”

Mike didn’t realize he was supposed to react with anything but mild annoyance before the sentence hit him square in the chest. Nearly knocked back by the emotional weight, in reality he stood and teetered to the side. The rest of the group interpreted this as his tiredness. He knew otherwise.

There was something about the implication of one room that bothered him. Two beds. Four boys. Honestly, the fact that it was getting to him was worse than the actual situation; had he never shared his bed before? Of course he had. Back when they were small enough, he and Lucas would sleep shoulder-to-shoulder on the bottom bunk of his bedroom, Dustin and Will on the top. That was how they spent summer nights. But they’d stopped doing that years ago. Mike had been sleeping alone.

Tonight, though, he wouldn’t be. Out in nowhere Nevada, shackled by clothes days-old and smelly, stood in between his best friend’s brother and said brother’s best friend, ignoring all eye contact with his best friend and trying not to wish for the world to implode.

Instead Mike stared at the water stain on the ceiling that looked a little like a mushroom cloud. He could hear Jonathan’s low conversation with the woman at the desk only in subtle vocal tones - parents in Charlie Brown style. He knew, distantly, that this should be the least of his worries. And it was. He was trying to make it so, at least. El was somewhere lost in the desert. He hadn’t seen her in days. Sleeping arrangements shouldn’t have mattered to him.

“You alright, little dude?” Argyle asked. His voice was swimming. Mike turned away from the ceiling to glance over his shoulder, realizing he’d stayed rooted in place while his travel companions had begun heading for their motel room.

“Uh, yeah,” Mike said intelligently. He picked up his lead-heavy feet and followed after, trailing and bumping into the columns as they walked back across the parking lot. He missed the comfort of his own bed. He missed his ability to avoid conversations he didn’t want to have.

Sleeping in a bed with Will meant that they would have to talk. About what, exactly, Mike honestly wasn’t too sure of. The list seemed endless. He dreaded having to come up with reasons for why he had acted the way he had - all oblivious and stupid, no letters or calls or nothing. In reality he had no justification for the way he had treated Will. In his mind…

In his mind it was a different story. But a story he wasn’t willing to utter aloud, especially to the boy he’d have to survive sleeping next to. Getting killed in his sleep wasn’t on Mike’s bucket list.

He watched Jonathan fiddle with the lock, some shitty key bent halfway down from years of misuse. Across the motel Mike suspected no-doubt shady dealings were going down; they were so isolated. Still in the back of his mind he knew the most intense and unpleasant event to happen that night would be sharing this stupid bed.

“Right or left?” Will asked. Mike blinked back into focus to see that somehow, somewhere, he had made it through the heavy red door and was now stood at the foot of the offending bed. He looked at his best friend and back down at the mattress.

“I don’t care,” Mike managed to choke out. He spun on his heel because just the sight of the bed was making his hands clammy. Will shuffled behind him, Jonathan and Argyle arguing by the bathroom sink. Mike moved to stand and look out the motel window. Past the opposite end of rooms, rooms potentially available to avoid sleeping in the same bed as your best friend, the desert stretched on endlessly. El could be anywhere. They were so alone out there. Mike was alone.

Except -

“Let’s go to sleep,” Will dragged out the last word childishly. Mike heard the springs of the mattress groan underneath his weight. He tore his eyes from the desert and submitted to his fate.

Will was sprawled out on the bed, long legs kicking back and all, his hair ruffled from the day’s stress. His face was pressed into the pillow. Mike watched his mouth come slightly ajar to breathe deeper in sleep, eyes pressed shut. His eyelashes fanned out on his cheeks. He’d gotten tan in California, hadn’t he? Mike had never seen Will as anything other than on the verge of translucent. But the sun had given him colors. And freckles. Freckles that spread out across his nose, his arms. They dotted his forehead, disappearing into his bangs. It looked good. He looked good - you know. Having color. It made him healthy. Obviously he didn’t look good for any other reason.

“Mike!” Will said again. He flopped out a spaghetti limb to pat at the empty space beside him, but he didn’t open his eyes. Mike swallowed, sent up a quick prayer, and submitted to his fate.

Jonathan flicked off the last light left in between them. The room was shrouded in darkness. Only the blue light of the motel sign across the way was visible. Its neon power dripped onto the floor through the blinds, casting shadows on Will’s face.

Mike knew he should turn over on his other side and forget the whole thing entirely. Laying on this side (his left) specifically to watch Will do whatever it was he did while he was sleeping was the stupidest idea Mike had ever had the pleasure of having. But he didn’t turn around. And neither did Will. The latter because he was halfway to REM by this point. The former for no particular reason.

Except there was a reason. He liked watching the way Will’s eyelashes fluttered everytime he took a breath. The subtle shift of his chest in a rhythm Mike appreciated paying attention to. The way the blue light of the sign lit up Will’s face in a way Mike had never seen before. Distantly Mike was reminded of the time he’d slept over at Will’s house during his period of hospitalization. How strange and affected Will had been then. He’d been at his palest. Sickly.

Now he looked healthy and good. He looked like a stranger. Maybe Mike had been the one making him sickly all along, and now that Will had moved he was thriving. He didn’t know. They hadn’t had time to talk about it. No letters or phonecalls either. Mike realized he’d committed a worse act than sharing a bed with your best friend - sharing a bed with a stranger.

God, but he didn’t want Will to be a stranger. It killed him inside to call him that. He wanted to know everything about Will inside and out. He wanted to be with Will constantly so that he wouldn’t even have to tell him - they’d sense it together, as they had when they were kids. He missed that closeness. He was desperately craving it right now, lying with a good foot of space in between himself and Will.

Slowly the realization that Mike had been avoiding for years budded at the back of his neck; like a Pompeii-level migraine. He ignored it. There were more important things to worry about. El was gone. He hadn’t called his mom in days and had no real way to.

But he wanted. Mike wanted. What he wanted he couldn’t admit. But it felt realer than anything else.

Mike reached out and brushed apart Will’s bangs on his forehead, feather light and nearly unregistered. Will let out a little sigh but he kept his eyes closed. His hair had felt nice.

Mike was hit with a wave of wish, suddenly, to touch Will everywhere. Feel his hair by burying his hands in it. Pull him close for warmth even though Mike was burning up with a mental fever. Press all his fingers into the individual freckles to keep them there, hold them down.

He was just tired. He was just confused. There were more important things to worry about. Mike swallowed back all protests against himself and shut his eyes. The image of Will, sleeping there with a hand tucked underneath his head, stayed.

It was the best thing he’d ever seen.

#byler #byler s4 #byler fix it #mike wheeler #mike wheeler character study #mike wheeler apologist #mike wheeler is bi #will byers #mike wheeler is in love with will byers #mike wheeler loves will byers #mike wheeler is gay #gay pining #stranger things fic #byler fic #byler fanfiction #byler fic prompt

35 notes · View notes

queer-as-in-slightly-odd · 3 years ago

Note

Byler season 4 heart to heart, whether in Will's house when Mike comes visiting or during the drive back to Hawkins in the Pizza van :)

Congrats anon, you did the impossible - you got me to acknowledge the existence of season 3 and write in accordance with its canon - it will not happen again lmao

Summary: Six months after the Byers' departure, Mike shows up unexpectedly at Will's doorstep, and is surprised with how much his friend has changed. (~700 words, fluff, mild angst, one-shot, ambiguous ending)

Send me a prompt!

Fear. That’s the one feeling Mike can discern as he jams his thumb against the Byers’ new doorbell. Actually, two feelings – fear and doubt. Quite a lot of doubt. What if he’s got the wrong house? What if Will doesn’t want to see him? What if it’s not even Will who answers the door? His blood runs cold at the prospect of El answering – after their weird parting conversation, he’s still not sure where they stand, and he hasn’t exactly mentioned that he’s coming. Oh god, what the hell has he done?

The door clicks open, and Mike’s ample fear and doubt drain away as he stares into Will’s astonished face, which lingers on disbelief for a moment, before breaking out into sheer delight as he wraps his arms around Mike in a tight, excitable hug.

“Mike!” he exclaims when he finally lets go. “What are you doing here?” Having carefully rehearsed a speech for the duration of the whole trip, Mike suddenly finds himself lost for words. Will takes the hint, though, and beckons him inside. “Mom and El are getting groceries, and Jon’s at work,” he says, leading him into the kitchen.

He busies himself with the coffee machine, chattering away as Mike looks around, disconcerted by how different it is from their old house in Hawkins. It’s large, and bright, and mostly clean; there’s no smell of damp which always seemed to linger, despite Joyce’s best efforts, and no draught from the inexpert repair of the lounge wall.

Neither can he quite compute the change in Will. California suits him, apparently: he seems more confident, and his new haircut is a mild improvement on its predecessor. Maybe he really was able to leave his demons in Hawkins with Mike.

“Seriously though,” Will’s saying as he places a mug of coffee on the table in front of Mike. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Mike silently wrestles with himself for a moment, debating internally whether to launch into the grand speech he prepared on the plane, but after a few moments, he decides against it. Another time. “I missed you,” he says instead, as simply and earnestly as he’s able.

Will arches an eyebrow and smiles incredulously. “Okay,” he replies, “obviously I miss you too, it’s been six months – but we’ve been writing, so why now?”

“I don’t know, really,” Mike says softly. “I guess there are just things I wanted to say that felt weird to put in a letter.”

The other eyebrow joins its twin halfway up Will’s forehead. “That’s ominous.”

“Shut up,” Mike mutters, suppressing a smile. “It’s just weird at home, that’s all. I don’t know, it just feels like the Party’s going its separate ways now that we’re in high school. Lucas and Max are cool now, and – ”

“They’ve replaced you?” Will says, startled.

“No, of course not! They still hang out with us, it just feels different,” Mike shrugs. “You know, without you. And El,” he adds hastily. Will purses his lips, and Mike curses internally. Bad choice of words. “How, uh…” He clears his throat. “How are things with her?”

“Fine,” Will shrugs. “We get along okay, and we have lunch together at school.”

“You don’t have other friends?”

“I do,” Will says pointedly, and Mike understands.

“But things aren’t weird between you?”

“Only because of you,” Will says, and his blunt candour catches Mike off guard.

“Me?”

Will looks him directly in the eyes, and despite the almost uncomfortable intensity of his gaze, Mike finds himself powerless to look away. “She still likes you, so it feels weird that I do too. I think that ”

At this juncture, Mike almost chokes on his coffee. “Sorry, what?”

“I like you,” Will shrugs. “I’m sorry if that’s weird, but it’s not like Hawkins here. People are more open. More accepting, too, for the most part.”

“It’s…” Mike’s voice falters; this really is a brand-new Will. He’s suspected Will might be different, of course, and it’s reasonable to assume that Will’s had similar suspicions about him. But to hear him say it aloud without so much as blinking… it’s just so unlike the Will who left Indiana six months ago, and it’s something Mike can’t imagine himself doing in a million years. “It’s not weird,” he says finally. “Just a surprise.” Not the whole truth, but honest in a sense.

“Okay,” Will says simply, and launches back into a lengthy monologue about his and El’s school, as if nothing’s happened. Mike’s hardly listening, though: Will’s unexpected revelation seems to have flipped a switch inside his head, reigniting certain feelings which have been long buried. Now, though, he’s gazing at Will’s smiling confidence, and suddenly he’s a doe-eyed six-year-old again, wondering why exactly he can’t marry his best friend.

Mike laughs as Will does, his heart sinking on the inside. He’s well and truly fucked.

#byeler #byler #mike wheeler #will byers #stranger things #stranger things 2 #stranger things 3 #fanfic #ask games

42 notes · View notes

strangeswift · 2 years ago

Note

I always thought the monologue was there to show El that the kind of love Mike has for her is not the way she wants to be loved, and that their relationship couldn't be saved by him saying "I love you" because they had bigger issues than just him not saying those words. El's whole arc this season is about how she can't be put into a box with the words 'monster' and 'superhero' and yet in Mike's monologue he once again refers to her a superhero, which to me is setting up a conversation where El calls out Mike for loving the superhero that he thinks she is rather than the person that she really is, and she will break up with him because she wants to find out who she is without all of that pressure and those labels.

Two of the most prominent memories used when she revived Max were "there's more to life than stupid boys" and "not Hopper, not Mike, you," and I think that is setting up El's independence era where she realizes that she doesn't need a boyfriend and wants to focus on herself, especially now that she has to deal with Hopper's return, the fallout of Max's coma, and the impending fight against Vecna. She'll realize that she cares about Mike deeply but being with him romantically is not what she needs for herself.

Also this is just me and I think most Bylers will heavily disagree but I think they're going with Bi!Mike (who is aware on some level that there's something different about Will but doesn't know at all that he loves Will yet) and doing the misattribution of feelings trope where Mike was only able to say "I love you" because he fell in love with Will's feelings in the van and believed he loved El because of how those words made him feel. He says "I love you for exactly who you are" to her but it's clear that this is going to fall apart soon because the "exactly who you are" that Mike believes in is not El - she never said any of those things that made him feel so loved and so valued. That person was Will.

I think that once Mike finds out about the painting and Milkvan breaks up due to Mike realizing that El didn't say any of that "you're the heart" stuff, Will is going to confess to him as an explanation for why he lied and Mike will 'platonically accept him' at first and they will be closer than ever. Then after the timeskip, as they work together as a team to defeat Vecna, we're going to see Mike realizing that he has feelings for Will too and they'll probably kiss towards the very end of the show. Mike probably won't get an explicit bi label but they'll show him being in a happy relationship with Will.

I don't see a convincing way to do Gay!Mike at all after the monologue but I think implied Bi!Mike - where he thought he loved El due to the van speech but eventually finds out that those were Will's words, which jump-starts their romance arc - is very possible.

(The only line that truly bugs me in the monologue is the 'my life started the day we found you in the woods.' We as an audience know it's bullshit bc Mike did not love El immediately and he also said befriending Will in kindergarten was the best thing he's ever done but idk how they're going to explain away that one in-universe. But the rest of it is fairly easy to debunk imo and actually serves a purpose for both El's arc and Mike's realization of his feelings.)

Warning for mild By1er doubt

Very good points and well said.

To the gay Mike vs. bi Mike point, I definitely think he's going to be unlabeled in canon. Personally I am a gay Mike truther primarily because "It's not my fault you don't like girls" reads as projection to me which only makes sense if Mike does not, in fact, like girls. And I think they could do gay Mike in a convincing way. (Here's my thoughts on what is going on in Mikes head during the monolgue, which I wrote from the perspective of him being gay, though it doesn't have to be read that way.) BUT I don't think they will do gay Mike, in canon he'll definitely be unlabeled.

To the point about the "my life started the day I found you in the woods" Yeah that line bumps me too. I know a lot of people use it as evidence that Mike is obviously lying through the whole monolgue. But I don't really think he's intentionally lying? So that doesn't explain it away for me. The pessimistic part of me just thinks maybe the writers just didn't expect people to read into it that much so they didn't concern themselves with the fact that Mike canonically was going to let El be sent "back to Pennhurst or wherever she came from." But I honestly don't know what to think about it. (I do have a theory about this line but I don't know how much merit to put into it, I'll probably make a separate post about it.)

Anyway, you made extremely good points. As I said before, I'm a massive pessimist, so everything I say regarding S5 predictions should probably be taken with a grain of salt for that reason. I have a hard time trusting the Duffers because I have a hard time trusting anyone.

For example, I am sort of afraid that they're still going to lean into the Superhero thing for El now that she has her powers back. It is possible that El was only upset at being called that because she didn't have her powers at the time. That's not the way I choose to interpret her character, I think she doesn't want to be a "superhero" regardless, BUT I worry that we're all misinterpreting it and the Duffers are going to be stupid idiots. But I won't dig too much more into the things about the monolgue that worry me, because that's depressing and I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts anon, you said it well so I don't have much else to add. I sincerely hope that you are 100% correct and this is exactly the way the Duffers intended it to be interpreted.

#asks #abby rambles

4 notes · View notes