#she listens to my insane byler ramblings

[brionysea]

i have a couple questions about manifestation theory and they're totally in good faith i'm genuinely curious /gen /srs

there's so much SA imagery around will's vanishing and the attack of the mindflayer. if mike is the one manifesting all of it, subconscious or not...isn't that a little fucked up?

and then shipping byler when mike is the root/creator of everything bad that's happened to will across the course of st? isn't that basically as bad as shipping will with vecna? since vecna is a manifestation of mike's subconscious?

and then the lab...having mike manifest el and through that all the trauma and abuse that surrounds that (not to mention everything that was done to henry before he became vecna) is massively messed up.

i get mike not feeling heard and dealing with trauma of his own but wouldn't this make him the villain in st? since he's the root of it?

again these are 100% good faith questions i really want to hear your thoughts on it.

hi! thanks for the clarification and for asking, i'm gonna try to be thorough on this (and also limit my rambling), because you've got really good questions and i want to answer them properly

get ready, this is a long one

the SA allegory

i totally get where you're coming from with this one. i watched that season 2 episode recently with this theory in mind (and the allegory in general, because it hadn't really registered with me before), and it was... uncomfortable. but the thing is that while mike created everything, he doesn't necessarily have control over everything. the whole show is kind of an ongoing power struggle. manifested characters like el, max and dustin have gone through their own process of breaking out of that authorial control, with max literally telling mike "she's not yours. she's her own person, fully capable of making her own decisions", while obviously projecting and talking about herself as well as el (because they unionised against him, which i find hilarious), and dustin had the extremely relevant "the party's not a dictatorship", with mike being the not-dictator in question as the party leader who dustin doesn't have to run his decisions by. mike does not have total control over the people he creates or the things they do, especially if they decide to rebel against god (him, their creator). which might be why the mind flayer became a thing at all, now that i think about it, since el "died" facing the demogorgon after she didn't listen to mike. i can see where he's coming from there because people make stupid decisions when they don't listen to him, but free will or whatever, so. that's a thing.

vecna is obviously different from them because he's an antagonist, not a protagonist, but he's also different because, instead of being vaguely frustrated by mike's very literal control issues and not fully knowing why, he seems to be aware of what mike's doing. he waited until mike was definitely leaving for california to make his move in season 4 because he knew, due to just how much influence mike has over what happens, that his evil plan wouldn't stand a chance if mike was in hawkins. it's impossible to know how far back vecna realised this, but i fully believe that he knew who mike was and what he was doing in season 2. he's most likely known for the whole show, because that just makes him a more interesting, dynamic, and calculated villain, which seems to be what they're going for. that makes his actions distinct and his own

in season 2, mike and vecna were both kind of... tied up in the mind flayer. in its base form, it seems to be representative of all mike's... angst, i suppose, which is where flaying as just wanting people to see his pain comes in. he was drowning and didn't have any other outlet so all this stuff just happened. and we saw vecna take control of the mind flayer in the upside down. they're both there. it's a fight for control. and i think that vecna can overpower mike's control at times, because while mike is insanely powerful by nature of everything being his doing, how much he's made, and how effortlessly he seems to have done it in comparison to all the limitations placed on other superpowered characters, he's still just a child who doesn't even know he's doing anything. he can't practice and hone that control if he doesn't know there's anything to perfect or fight off in the first place

what happened on the field could be interpeted as just a basic flaying, stemming from mike's frustration from reaching out to will specifically and not being heard, but that's not really the way it was handled. it's more likely vecna was doing that other allegorical stuff. considering mike was able to snap will out of his other flashbacks but wasn't able to on the field, i don't think it was him. his control severely lessened in that moment because he wasn't the one acting. if the mind flayer was acting as mike, and the mind flayer tells the flayed what to do, then mike should have been able to tell will to wake up or stop the shadow monster from hurting him, but he couldn't. will's possession in season 2 was a tug of war between vecna trying to take will away and mike trying to keep will present. will's kidnapping in season 1 was vecna trying to lure mike into the upside down, which was only stopped by el. will was stuck in the middle of a chess match

consent is a very big deal within will and mike's relationship. "i asked and you said yes" is literally the entire basis for their friendship. mike isn't personally, directly responsible for those things happening to will, because mike isn't an adult man who targets children and seems to get a certain... satisfaction out of it, if you know what i mean. mike is constantly fighting to keep will safe. mike didn't assault will. vecna did. mike is essentially creating characters that just happen to spring off the page (or out of his head, as it were), and maybe he puts a little bit of himself into them because that's just how writing and character creation works sometimes, but that's not really the point of mike making characters. the only one who i could see as meant to be him, in a literal sense, would probably be his player character during campaigns, and that is him because it's just the person he becomes when plot things start happening. someone who's brave and smart and protective and can also use an awesome sword, all his best qualities that shine through in the circumstances and otherwise get buried in ordinary life to the point where he loses all faith in himself, like he did in canon, once he's not allowed to play that role. he's telling a story, not an autobiography. the whole point is trying to escape the life that's slowly killing him from the inside out, if only temporarily, to give himself a boost to get through another year (or, if he's in a really bad place like he was prior to season 4, another six-ish months)

vecna is enough of a headache that he definitely qualifies as one of the characters who's rebelling against god. i'm pretty sure that was the reasoning behind opening the mega-gate in hawkins — to at least start down the road of chipping away at mike's control so vecna won't be shackled to his whims anymore. that's definitely not something mike would want, especially since getting there involved killing max, who he fought tooth and nail to keep out of the party for the express purpose of keeping her safe and away from the upside down (away from himself, more specifically), so i'd say vecna is pretty definitively capable of chasing his own, individual goals that don't align with mike's. he manipulated something that is representative of the horrors of mike's subconscious (the curse, which would be an excuse for mike to go into his own mind and defeat his depression in mortal combat — as well as probably consciously discovering his power in the first place by just walking into his subconscious — had he managed to stay in hawkins for season 4), to become something that works to his advantage. he easily could have done the same thing with the mind flayer and will's vanishing. because of this ability to find workarounds, everything vecna does is not necessarily reflective of mike. he's one of mike's characters, but mike's characters are also people because they're literally coming to life, and he fundamentally cannot control them. i apologise if i sound repetitive, i feel like i'm talking in circles, but you got me thinking with this one

i also find it very amusing that the universal inability of writers to control their own characters is a textual thing with this theory, like that's so funny

if mike is responsible for will's trauma, isn't shipping byler messed up?

let's be honest, mike could literally get away with murder in will's eyes. i'll circle back to this a little later because i know that's not really an answer, don't worry, but i think we need to keep will's selflessness and the understanding he extends to mike in mind here. bear with me as i play with the idea of will discovering this himself and wrestling with the question you posed: we saw will go from blaming mike with the incredibly brutal "you're destroying everything, and for what?" foreshadowing line in season 3, to seeing mike's pain in season 4 and bending over backwards to try and lessen it however he can, because he realised that he was previously looking at mike in an... i don't know, uncharitable, kind of insensitive way. blinded by his own issues, i guess, and being incredibly mean about it and not really a good friend. people talk a lot about mike being mean during the rain fight, which is the trap of being so heavily entrenched in will's perspective, but will was doing that too, and it shows through his actions that he recognises that himself

will has been through that journey already. going from seeing mike as a person who's bad and annoying and selfish and destroying everything to a person, his friend, who's in pain and needs help. a person he wants to help. will is in a place where he could look at mike's actions sympathetically without villainising him, especially because he already knows that mike's started to view himself in a very bad light, and will immediately jumped to reassure him that what he thinks isn't true or how will sees him (and will sees him plainly). will's feelings are really the only thing that matter here. our latest update on will's feelings is as follows: mike is good and inspiring and a leader and the heart, mike SAVED will, will needs mike, mike gives will the strength to keep living/fighting, will felt lost without mike, and will would fall apart if he lost mike for real. i can't see anything, and i mean anything, changing that. will tried to rip the band aid off. it didn't work. and mike needs that unwavering devotion and belief and forgiveness if he's going to face this part of himself and come out the other side

if mike manifested el's trauma, isn't that messed up?

this one's interesting, because it's kiiiiinda been touched on a little in canon, and if it doesn't come full circle in season 5 i'm gonna cry! so remember in season one, when el said she opened the gate and made all the horrible bad things happen, and she's sorry, and she's the monster, and mike said she's not the monster because she saved him and that she has nothing to apologise for? imagine that, but flipped, and with a little added deconstruction of the black and white morality at play, because el's slowly figuring out the real world as opposed to how fundamentally mike sees right and wrong. if el isn't to blame for letting the monsters out (and el canonically counts brenner as a monster now) because she's good and saves people, then mike isn't to blame for letting the monsters out either. that's the stance of the characters and the fandom. you can't have it both ways

what's essential to understand here is that el has been tuned in to what's going on with mike since day one, and she's still consistently been protecting mike and saving his life all over the place. she's a smart cookie, she knows that mike's death would stop all of these bad things from happening — if the brain dies, the body dies — but she still chooses to save him over and over and over again. el decided a long time ago to put mike's life first, because he's good and kind, because he helped her when she ran away from the lab, because he's her friend, and because she wants to help him too. she doesn't think he deserves punishment for this (whatever "this" entails). like will getting hurt because of mike's powers, el's feelings are ultimately the only thing that matter, and she's already made up her mind. if she decided that mike was bad because he made the lab, or because she just got Bad Vibes and suspected he would use his abilities to intentionally, maliciously hurt people, she would've thrown him into a wall or something the first night they met, and he would've cracked his skull open and died, and that's no more stranger things. instead, she's hiding him, protecting him, and never saying anything about any of this even when mike himself is floating ideas of killing the source and would clearly use the information el has to harm himself if he could. he would help her to punish him, in the most extreme way, if that's what she decided was necessary or deserved. he would do it himself. but el isn't allowing that to happen

el has canonically blamed someone for every terrible thing that's happened over the course of the show — to her friends, to her, to everyone who's been killed — including her backstory, and that was brenner. she called him the monster, called him out on everything, and vecna tried to tell her she was wrong when she totally wasn't. brenner knowingly chased disaster and used her and risked everything, while mike has no idea what he's doing and is always doing as much damage control as possible to try and stop those parts of himself from hurting anyone. he YELLED as much in season one, while simultaenously projecting onto and talking about el (kind of like max), that "she was just trying to keep us safe! she didn't mean to hurt you, it was an accident!" el reaching this realisation about brenner was a big deal, and it's so compelling that you can't help but believe every word. brenner is the one who abused el, not mike. all mike has done throughout the entire show is help el. he wants her to live a safe, happy life. he's tried to talk her out of feeling pressured to play the superhero role in favour of prioritising her own safety and survival. he's willing to give up pieces of himself to make her happy because he believes that el being with him in a certain way will give her that. mike has parallels to brenner, probably because of the iffy parental parallel you could draw since mike made el, but mike is not brenner, and mike has never hurt el like he did. el knows that mike has been creating things, that he very well could have created the lab, and she still chose to blame brenner for his own actions, because they are not mike's actions. el wrestled with this in the show. el blamed her abuse and trauma on brenner. to take away from that is an insult to her intelligence and autonomy. to take away from that is what vecna did when he was emotionally torturing her. el has already answered this question

but okay, this one's a bit mike-lite so far, so let's talk about him too. what is the lab to him? why did he create it? what does it represent? primarily, it's just el's backstory. will disappeared and mike needed someone with Finding People Powers, so el popped up with pre-packaged lore. because mike likes helping people and feeling useful, el spawns as a person with a Tragic Past who needs help and can make that feeling of being needed happen for him. that's the kind of selfishness he never allows himself to partake in consciously, but mike hates feeling useless, and his real life campaigns always function as ways to make him feel useful, so it tracks. he just made a character, and characters with sad backstories are always more interesting than happy ones, so el has a sad backstory. he's a writer. making it interesting is how writing works. and the first thing he does when he actually meets el is offer her sanctuary. he quickly makes an unspoken (spoken, by the end of season 1) promise that she'll never have to go back to the lab. he offers her a future, not just her past

if we look at mike as an emotional character, not just a functional one, and consider the strong possibility that most of the things he makes have some basis in a deeper part of his psyche, then what's the lab through that lens? it's a place where superpowered children can learn control. they're taught it in horrible, abusive ways, but they are taught it. mike's never had that. people who know, suspect, and/or figure out that he has powers at all, categorically refuse to even tell him about them. he doesn't have any guidance. he can't stop himself from hurting people. he's lost and totally on his own. so put together a mike who doesn't know how to control his powers, and a place that teaches children how to control their powers in cruel, punishing ways, and that sounds a lot like mike's own self hatred given physical form. because mike hates himself. he thinks that mike wheeler is inherently, fundamentally bad, as a human person. that's why he tries to become someone other than mike wheeler at every chance he gets, because in his eyes, anyone and everyone is better than mike wheeler. he constantly punishes himself, talks down on himself, calls himself stupid, makes himself lesser, internalises the constant messaging from his loved ones that no one cares about his feelings, splits himself into pieces for the sake of those very same people who he thinks are more important than him. this aspect of himself would be no exception. especially if his powers just made will disappear, like, yesterday, and mike subconsciously knows that, like he subconsciously knows everything, so why wouldn't he hate them? why wouldn't that bleed in when he made el and her backstory?

doesn't this make mike the villain?

yes. absolutely, without a doubt, yes. and if you ask me, that's the most compelling part

mike is a very... juvenile character, i guess is the best way to describe it. he sees things in a strictly binary way: good and bad. monsters and superheroes. his world operates under the moral logic of childish things like fairy tales and comic books. he would absolutely see himself as the villain. and when you have a character like that, one whose simplistic worldview is slowly being questioned and brought to the audience's attention, don't you want to see his beliefs be directly challenged? wouldn't a monumental shift in the reality of his world be fascinating to watch? realising that the world isn't black and white is a natural part of growing up. an arc like that would fit right into this coming of age story

under manifestation theory, mike is personally responsible for a lot of terrible things. he has a lot of blood on his hands. character reactions to a reveal like that wouldn't be pretty, sides would be taken, screaming matches would be had, but no one would hate him for it more than he hates himself. even though he couldn't help it, even though he tried to lessen the damage at every turn, even though he saved lives too when he used it to undo deaths like el's and hopper's, his mind would immediately jump to taking himself out of the picture to keep any more bad things from happening. and that's canon. mike's stance on anything to do with the upside down comes through in lines like "if we kill it, we kill everything it controls" and "that's like saying just because someone's from the death star, doesn't make them bad". he thinks they're better off dead. he's not going to change his mind on that just because it's him, especially not if he thinks it will protect people. and root cause or not, source or not, the other characters aren't going to let a teenager kill himself for them because of something he can't control. that's the wake up call. because he's still a child who's in pain. and if any of this sounds familiar, that's because mike already has tried to kill himself to prevent harm from coming to his friends, way back at the quarry with dustin. there's a precedent for this kind of behaviour from him

there's a lot of bad here, and it's hard to see past it at first, but there's a lot of good too. mike created el, isn't that a good thing? i think it's an amazing thing. i love el. and through el, we know that powers can be good. they can be fun. they can be something to mess around with and giggle over at sleepovers with your friends. they can be something that saves people. they can be something that saves you. they're just a tool, a thing, they can be anything their user wants them to be. they're not inherently good or bad on their own. they're not an automatic damnation or a moral judgement

mike is the bad guy, and mike is the hero who's been fighting since day one to keep his friends safe from himself. mike is a hurt child, and mike has lashed out and hurt people. mike doesn't have enough control, and mike has so much control that people start screaming matches over it. mike wheeler is a walking contradiction, and that doesn't fit neatly into his worldview. it's not simple at all. it's messy and complicated and difficult and it's something that everyone, both in the show and in the audience, would need to spend a significant amount of time wrapping their heads around, and i think it would be a fantastic way to wrap this thing up

this turned out insanely long, so i hope i answered your questions, anon. if not, or if i sparked some more for anyone, feel free to send any follow ups my way!

[nonsensical-ramblings]

Hey! Strap in guys, it's byler music analysis time.

So, was somebody going to tell me that Being Different (from the van scene) and The First Lie / The First I love You ARE FUCKING IDENTICAL TRACKS??? OR WAS I JUST SUPPOSED TO LEARN HOW TO EDIT AUDIO TO FIGURE THAT OUT MYSELF???

LISTEN TO THIS!!!!

I thought they sounded similar, but I had no idea that mixing them would give me something this amazing. I didn't do any editing to these tracks other than adjusting the tempo, balancing the volume, and clipping off the ends.

So then you're telling me the track that plays while Will is pouring his heart out to Mike in the van. It syncs up perfectly with the track that plays when Robin comes out to Steve? With the track that plays when El tells Mike she loves him for the first time? With the track that plays when Jonathan and Nancy first get together?? That these songs and their associated scenes are clearly and deliberately tied to themes of romance and/or queerness in every instance, and that the result of mixing the songs together is something agonizingly beautiful, like they complete each other, like they were meant to be the other half of the words left unsaid? YOU'RE TELLING ME that the names of these songs are The First Lie, The First I love You, and Being Different?

excuse me while I go into cardiac arrest. ahem.

It's a through-thread that's impossible to ignore once you see it. Idk about you, but my third eye is wide fucking open right now and all it sees is byler endgame and a kiss scene in the pouring rain as a final variation of these tracks swells in the background, finally complete with all its parts in sync, finally with its full potential realized, finally seeing this arc to its well-deserved conclusion. Somebody sedate me I'm going insane.

(Some extra rambling about combining the tracks under the cut)

Being Different has, from what I can tell, three distinct segments if you listen to the original. The track starts off with these long, droning tones, slowly building in intensity as time goes on. Then, around the 1:10 mark, the second segment introduces the melody of eight (four? sixteen? idk, however you want to count it) repeating notes that originally tipped me off to its similarities with the other two tracks. (Just listen, you'll hear it!) This is the segment that I used in the mashups. At 2:32, that melody is suddenly overtaken by some audio distortion and reversed instruments, and fades out to leave us with the rest of the song.

So since the tracks are drastically different lengths, I had to cut off the beginning & end of Being Different, because The First Lie / I love You matched best only with that middle section. Just fyi.

But other than that, what you see is what I did, nothing more. I cannot stress that enough. Go listen to each of the songs on their own, and then come back and realize that I didn't splice anything, I didn't go in and sneakily add a couple extra bars to either track. They just work like that.

It's literally "yeah you can copy my homework just don't make it too obvious" levels of subtlety going on here. Same key, same number of repetitions, the way it's not just a parallel it's a PERFECT COPY- they go quiet and then crescendo and switch between variations of the melody at the same time and I am losing my mind.

If I'm remembering this correctly, The First I love You was a bit too long, so I had to trim off a part of the end in order to prevent it from spilling past the threshold of the second segment of Being Different. But The First Lie specifically was EXACTLY as long as that segment. Note-for-note. Like they just took The First Lie, without cutting it down at all, reworked it a bit, added some extra stuff on the ends, and put it in the van scene. To tell you I was flabbergasted does not come anywhere close to the reaction I had when I realized how well these tracks fit together.

And a little something I noticed while I was looking for a good version of each of the songs to use- The First I love You, from El's love confession scene to Mike in season 3, pay attention and you'll see that "love" is never capitalized in the title of the song. Not on Spotify, not on Youtube, not on Wikipedia, I couldn't find a single official source that capitalized "love", which is WEIRD because all the other songs have consistently capitalized every word in their titles! I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions from that but all I'm saying is... I'm pretty certain it was on purpose. Do with that information what you will.