chocolatecookie123

I wanted to take a walk through memory lane for his birthday but also think of where he would be in the 90’s (sharing a dorm in NYC with his boyfriend), where he would be now (I think publishing comics he worked on with Will) and in the future (retired, married the love of his life and happy) 🥲

They showed so much queer pain. From episode one, they were calling Will a f*g. Hopper thought he might've been hate crimed and that's why he went missing. In season 3 even Mike was homophobic toward him, and that was never truly addressed. The scene right after, where Will destroys Castle Byers, his safe spot, with the baseball bat his abusive dad gave him trying to make him man up, yelling fuck as he does? I know that feeling, that fear that I won't be loved, that I will never be accepted, that I will always be other. The pain that comes from that. Everyone queer does. It's like he's taking the bat to my heart, like I can feel the bruises all over my body. In season 4, when he all but confesses his love for Mike, just substituting himself for El, and cries after? I cry with him because I get it, I understand. And I'm mostly accepted by the people around me, the people I care about; I can't imagine how much more people who don't have that acceptance relate to it.

These scenes are cathartic to me. Or at least they were, when all signs pointed to a happy ending. But for all the queer pain they showed, they didn't show queer love. Queer joy. They could have told every queer kid that they're worth it, their stories are worth telling, their love is worth showing, their lives are worth living. That no matter how hard it is now, it will get better. That we can have those epic love stories. That we can defeat monsters, not in spite of who we are, but because of it. But all they gave us was a vague "he and Robin might end up in relationships." Nothing good ever confirmed for the queer characters. So now when I watch those scenes, all I see is never ending pain. And I can't imagine the scars that will leave on people who need that happy ending even more than I do -- especially when the finale is very easily read as romanticizing suicide to escape abuse.

They gave us hope, that suffering is not all there is, that queer people can be happy and joyous and loved and worthy and powerful, and then they ripped it all away and left us with nothing but the pain.

WHAT IS THIS THING GOING AROUND????? CONFORMITYGATE???? I FEEL LIKE JOYCE IN SEASON 1 IM PROBABLY JUST PSICOLOGICALLY WEAK AND SLEEP DEPRIVED BUT LIKE?????

The Duffers have had their final say, Will and Mike are ours now. And just like every queerbait ship before them, we will continue to tell their love story for years after the credits roll.

He was born in 1919 and he was gay.

Everyone in the family knew. It became an unspoken secret. And here’s the part people don't really say about the past: he wasn’t cast out. He wasn’t beaten. He wasn’t disowned.

They loved him. They were a close‑knit family.

What they did instead was play a game called pretend.

They never said it out loud. When the family gathered for holidays, his siblings brought their spouses. Uncle Bill came alone. His partner wasn't invited, of course. They didn't even want to know he had a partner. When children asked why Uncle Bill wasn’t married, the adults smiled and said, “He’s just a bachelor.”

That answer was given to my mother in the 1950s. To my sister in the 1970s. And to me in the 1980s.

People like the Duffer brothers seem imagine that the past was only made up of violent, cartoonish homophobes. And sadly, there were a lot of those, just like there still are today. But some families were “fine” with gay people—as long as they were quiet. As long as they didn’t ask for the same things. As long as they didn’t bring love to the table.

Uncle Bill was accepted on one condition: He sat alone.

So when a modern show frames a gay boy’s arc as “learning to accept himself without expecting love in return,” that’s not radical. That’s not brave. That’s not new.

That story is over a hundred years old.

It’s the story of being tolerated, not chosen. Of being loved in theory, but denied in practice. Of being welcome—so long as you don’t make anyone uncomfortable.

My Uncle William lived that life a century ago. We don’t need to keep calling it progress.

I know a lot of people on here are young. So take the pain you're feeling now and remember it as you get older. Write your own stories that embrace what this show denied. Write the story you wanted Byler to be. Be the generation that stops telling this tired old story.

Byler being canon is not the be-all-end-all for the Byler fandom. Fans built this beautiful community with thousands of queer people and allies coming together, analyzing, creating fanart, writing fanfics, and engaging with one another. And that sense of community is one of the best things about fandom.

Fandom isn't defined by canon. It's defined by sharing art, by community, by connecting with one another.

That being said, I do have strong confidence in Byler happening in the finale. It's written into the bones of the show. It's more than cinematography, set design, costuming, couple parallels, dialogue choices, it's in everything. Stranger Things ending without a Byler conclusion will leave thousands of unanswered questions, and will show that it was truly the writers own fears of backlash that got in the way of Byler happening.

We were never delusional. The show, the writers, the cast, the crew, have actively encouraged us to dig deeper into the show, to find the subtext, to analyze each and every tiny detail.

I sincerely hope Byler is endgame, for the sake of queer rep, for the sake of embracing the show's core themes, for the sake of fulfilling Mike and Will's character arcs, and for the sake of media literacy.

The curtains were never just blue. It always is "that deep" especially in a show like this that encourages us to scrutinze everything.

On behalf of those who feel seen and heard by Mike and Will's relationship, Byler will always be real to us, in our hearts and minds. Whether it's canon or not.

I'm to understand that people like Elon Musk have started an anti-woke campaign because of Will's coming out scene. We can not, and should not, stand for this.

Regardless of what you may feel about the episode as a whole, I'm sure you don't see it as a 1 out of 10. Please, I am asking that people go and give The Bridge a high review to help offset these review bombs.