#yes. there will be byler. and elmax

[fluffyfangirl]

Me not forgetting Mermay and actually preparing for it?? (Character called Maala from an Indie Game called "Elements Destiny", but Mermaid 💗)

[haluton]

No you don't understand how important the gay people in my phone are to me

[cleric-byers7]

happy pride to every stranger things character

[jaegerisim]

[nobodyinourstars]

Wlw mlm hostility and wlw mlm solidarity are so PLATONIC mileven coded

[yourelosingains]

gay people are real and they live in california and indiana 

[st-twitter-sillies]

blushing n everything? 🥺

[cringengl]

Sometimes there's ships where you would be genuinely angry/upset if they weren't endgame and sometimes there's ships where you would be upset if they were endgame, but in another universe, they would make a great couple.

[ronancebyler]

"these chronically online gay people are taking over the fandom this is why i want to leave"

okay?? leave. you guys are the reason the bullying started in the fandom. this show was made for nerds let us have this. the mcs are literally dnd fans, will canonically cosplayed. those are the main characters. the show was never for you. you're allowed to enjoy it, but dont act as if we're the intruders. you came into our space, took over, and then started acting as if we showed up midway.

we're making the show unnecessarily gay? everything we're saying will never happen? this is clearly your first fandom because the thing about FANdom is that people can use these preexisting characters and have fun with them so they can create content outside of the show. so yes, we are going to be shipping characters that never showed any romantic interest to each other canonically. we will be shipping characters that never met. that is the POINT.

the theme of the show is accepting your differences and not trying to change parts of yourself for the sake of normalcy and general acceptance. we have fun with the out there fan theories, the impossible ships, the alternate universes. this always has been for fun. for some reason though, you have decided to have a stick up your ass at the idea that someone enjoying themself. have you never heard about curating your own online experience? the block button is free. use it.

stop acting as if you have some weird superiority above us. idgaf if you think it's cringy. it was never about you in the first place.

[luzuraaa]

byler little mermaid au byler little mermaid au byler little-

[bethhiraeth]

...I may or may not have written a fic

[groovinrightalong]

Somebody needs to actually put me down because I can’t get a Byler Juno AU out of my head

[antisociallilbrat]

Dustin has the worst gaydar lol. He’s genuinely surprised (and supportive!) when his friends come out. Even over Will.

And when more come out, Lucas, El, Mike, he’s just like?? You’re gay too?? Is everyone here but me gay??

The answer is yes Dustin.

[lunastigerlilies]

me: noooooo i don’t ship elmax or byler that’s weird they’re BABIES!!!!

also me: *likes and reblogs every elmax or byler post i come across with a big smile on my face*

[taylorswiftshipsbyler]

OH MY GOD

Y'all imagine Byler and Elmax in these outfits during the 90s

Max and El

Will and Mike

[eddiezpaghetti]

It has come to my attention that SOME OF YOU who read my last Byler post remain UNCONVINCED. So I'm gonna tack onto it this:

I'm older than fucking God and air, and I've been out and proud since 2007. Yes, I know what homophobia is, and yes, I know what queerbaiting is. I know about Supernatural and Teen Wolf and Sherlock and blahdyblahdyblah. No new ground is being covered here. I thought I made that clear in the original post, but, clearly, I did not.

I am aware of queerbaiting and homophobia, and I'm still wholeheartedly certain in Byler being canon anyway.

Okay, so there are three types of relationship I want to discuss when it comes to queerbaiting. They're all, like, "queer relationships that could have happened, but didn't".

First off, queer-coding. This isn't really a thing so much anymore, but it still crops up every once in a while. I'd argue it probably happens most with male-male relationships in family shows these days. First example that comes to mind is Mr. Smiley and Mr. Frowny from Steven Universe. You can't make a relationship canon because some shitty overhead bastard overhead said no, so you get as close as you can without compromising the show. Can't make someone gay? Well, now their comedy routine is a blatant allegory for a romantic relationship. Boom-shaka-laka. This is something I don't see being a problem with regards to Stranger Things, but I want it to be there as contrast, a demonstration of one of many things queerbaiting is not. However, one could argue that, thus far, Will Byers is, canonically, queer-coded. It's pretty fucking heavily implied in the show, and the creators have confirmed it, and you're gonna be able to see it if you're not FUCKING BLIND, but word of god is not technically canon which means that interviews don't technically make something canon, blahdyblahdyblahdyblah, technicalities, Robin has been explicitly stated in the text to be queer while Will has, thus far, not, outside of good ol' Show-Don't-Tell. Of course, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell that that's going to change by the end of Season 5, but, hey, for what it's worth, I'm throwing this out there.

Alrighty, Thingamajingama Number Two: "Oops, I accidentally made the greatest love story known to man." AKA, a genuine, honest-to-goodness mistake. Unfortunately, we do live in a heteronormative society. Sometimes people who don't think about being gay much write a friendship that's incredibly compelling and don't even consider the possibility that it could have been read as romantic. Something something Top Gun something. This is, again, not queerbaiting. This is Steddie, this is Ronance, this is Elmax, this is your favorite flavor of non-canon ship this week, this is not Byler. The creators know DAMN well what they're doing. They've talked about it. We know this. Nothing new here.

Which brings us to the topic of discussion here. Actual queerbaiting. This usually starts out as an "accidental greatest love story", and then reacts to fan response. And when I say "reacts", I mean like a goddamn chemical reaction. Like bleach and ammonia, bitch. It's noxious and it's gonna kick your fucking ass without mercy. This is when a creator is like, "Hey, let's get our queer audience invested, but we're not actually going to give them what they want because our straight audience isn't here for that/we personally think it's gross/we don't give enough of a shit to want to research a goddamn thing to write a real gay character," blah blah blah whatever excuse they want to come up with this time.

And when you think "queerbaiting", I want you to think "bullying". Because that's what it is. It's lucrative bullying, like beating us up and taking our lunch money, but it's bullying all the same. And it's a real goddamn thing, even if people misuse the word a lot, often when they mean one of the two above, sometimes when they mean "bury your gays", which is another homophobic thing entirely that I'm not going to get into here. Queerbaiting is the thing we're focused on, and it's real, and it's bullying. And here's the reason I want you to think of it as bullying:

They

Think

It's

Funny.

They are actively making fun of us.

That's why Dean had the "Cas, get out of my ass," line in Supernatural. It's why the "Do you like boys?" line happened in Teen Wolf. It's why "Lie with me, Watson," happened in the RDJ Sherlock Holmes movies. Because "It's just a joke, mate." "It was just a prank, bro." "You didn't really think it would happen, did you?" "You should see your face."

So here's probably the biggest reason I don't think it's specifically queerbaiting in this specific instance of Will Byers and Mike Wheeler.

Stranger Things has never, not once, made a gay joke. Ever.

Every single time queerness comes up, it's dead serious.

Lonnie calls Will a fag, and the show is not at all reluctant to show what a goddamn horrible person he is. And when Hopper latches onto that, it's not as "Hahah, is he gay, though?" It's because he's trying to determine a potential motive for Will's disappearance, and even if someone had interpreted it as a joke, Joyce immediately has a line that functions as snapping her fingers in front of the audience's face and yelling "FOCUS" when she says "He's MISSING." Basically outright saying "This isn't funny!"

Troy calls him a fairy, along with targeting Lucas and Dustin for their skin color and disability respectively, and Mike gets damn near murderous. Troy is portrayed as a goddamn monster and the show portrays it as justice when El makes him piss his pants and later breaks his arm.

Steve calls Jonathan "queer" as a slur and gets the shit beat out of him for it.

Billy's father is revealed to be homophobic and abusive in the same breath.

Mike says "It's not my fault you don't like girls!" and we're shown how devastated Will is and Mike immediately follows him to beg for forgiveness.

There is a joke in Robin's coming-out scene, but it's not at Robin's expense. It's at Steve's. Specifically for being heteronormative.

Jonathan has multiple scenes where he's trying so hard to tell Will that he's always going to love him as he is, whether he's gay or not, without pressuring him to come out before he's ready.

Even when there's a little bit of ribbing at Robin's expense, it's always because she's an awkward nerd who's nervous around pretty girls, just the same as Lucas and Dustin are teased when they both first develop crushes on Max, and even then, even then, it always comes as a package deal where they make fun of Steve's girl problems at the same time.

Stranger Things is an emphatically pro-gay show. It may not be the core point of the show the way it is in, say, Our Flag Means Death, but there is nothing less than respect for its queer characters. Its queer characters are always taken completely seriously. No one is making fun of us. They never have. That's why I have serious doubts that this is queerbaiting. It would come completely out of left field for the bullying to start in Stranger Things' final season.

So it's not at all likely to be queerbaiting because queerness is taken completely seriously. The creators have talked about Will's queerness, at least, so it's not an accident. And queer-coding would be silly to expect from this show when it's already on its final season. Like, what is Netflix gonna do? Cancel it? Not to mention all the explicit queerness that's in there already. And no one's gonna "What about the children?" a show that's had sex scenes in it since the first season.

There's no fakeout here. It's gonna happen. Breathe.