byler-arg.com

call me crazy, but i actually don't want a world where creatives don't intend for you to analyze their work, where the text is spoon-fed to you and there's nothing meaningful to be found underneath it beyond what you see at a first glance.

i want intentionality. i want deeper meanings. i want writers who let their characters lie and respect me and my intelligence enough to pick up on it. i want lighting choices and micro expressions and clothing details and parallels and closet imagery to be on purpose, and for it to mean something, and i want the narrative to then make good on that meaning.

i just can't imagine being satisfied by a story where only the surface level, spelled out for you text of a scene is the only thing that matters. i'm not seven, me and my adult brain can handle critical thought, and i want my media to understand that.

i get the doubt. i get that folks have been queerbaited before. and i get that right now especially, it feels hard to believe a major franchise would break up a main couple to make a lead queer. and there are a sea of people who feel very comfortable calling us delusional all the time which doesn't help.

but like. will is not only canonically gay, he is canonically in love with mike. the show has built up will's love for mike for so many seasons that rejection makes no narrative sense. and the show has intentionally kept mike's internal arc hidden from the audience for several seasons, which is the only thing preventing byler from being shut down, if mike were going to reject will. we're talking about a show that has had the canonically queer main character be empowered by his own queerness and his love for his best friend to save the day. a show about underdogs and outcasts. they have dealt with will's queerness and his character so gently and kindly that i truly cannot comprehend them not giving that same kindness and love to mike's internalized homophobia and to byler as a canon relationship.

it's like... at what point are we going to trust our instincts and the evidence and the contents of the show? i'm not even saying to trust the duffers and ST writers as storytellers, but to trust ourselves and our own understanding of story. we have analyzed this shit to death. and not just tearing apart little details that could feasibly not mean anything, but from a big picture narrative perspective of the kind of story they have been trying to tell for 5 seasons and almost 10 years. the themes of the story, the trajectory of the character arcs that have been set up, the relationships they've developed. it all points to byler, indisputably, and to me, without any doubts.