Desiree the Wise

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@furbetii:

@officialspec:

@cinnabarfangs:

@bobbibitybob:

@the-everlasting-ash:

@polartss:

@sylairaa-commsopen:

@marz-rm:

@pbeeanjay:

@skipppppy:

@simplytomh:

@l00106:

@rainbowcryptid:

@yvainart:

@maersiel:

@shinkomiii:

@dyleeart:

@chimneyz:

@leon-donovan:

I wanted to compile a list of inconsistencies and plot holes relating to Mike and Will individually as well as their narrative set up due to byler being queerbait

Will being hopeful — at the end of season 4, it was established that Will had given up on his love for Mike, ripping off the bandaid as he said, yet in season 5 we see that he is suddenly hopeful again and even believes Mike could want to date him with zero explanation. This retcons his s4 plot. Done purely to bait queer people.

Mike not hugging Will — in season 4, Mike is shown to be unable to hug Will at the airport despite being shown to hug every other character in the same exact season, now with zero explanation as to why. Mike canonically did not know Will was gay, so his behavior makes no sense now.

Mike and Will’s rain fight — in season 3, Mike and Will have a fight in the rain (clearly a romantic trope) where Mike yells that “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” Seeing as Mike canonically didn’t know Will was gay, why did he say this to him? There is no explanation now.

Mike saying they are friends — in season 4, Mike and Will have a paralleled fight in a roller rink where Mike yells that he and Will are “friends, we’re friends!” Will did not imply they weren’t friends nor did he imply they were more than friends, so why did Mike say this?

Mike seeming homophobic — because these two scenes were not recontextualized via Mike being made canonically queer despite his queercoding, he now seems homophobic, which is character assassination because Mike is established in season 1 to NOT be homophobic.

Phone calls — in the roller rink fight, Will accuses Mike of never having called him throughout the half a year they were separated. Mike just lets Will think the worst, never correcting him about the fact he did call and was “always whining about it”, as the show itself specifically states. We now have no explanation as to why he just let Will assume he hated him. He now seems like not only a homophobe but a shitty friend.

Signals? — in season 5, Will asks Robin how to tell if someone wants to date you. She then lists off signals to look for, all of which we have seen Mike either do in prior seasons or do on screen in season 5. None of this matters in the end because Mike is apparently straight.

Snowballs becoming avalanches — in season 5, Robin tells Will that all of these signals eventually became an “avalanche”, which led to her and Vickie dating. This dialogue was clearly meant to set up us seeing said signals from Mike becoming an avalanche. We never see this happen. This dialogue makes no sense now.

He’s just my Tammy — in season 5, Robin tells Will she had a crush on a girl named Tammy, and that she looked through a film reel she found and saw only herself in it, therefore knowing that Tammy did not feel the same. This is directly contradicted on screen when Will thinks back through his memories, shown to us as a literal film reel where MIKE IS IN IT. If Tammy wasn’t in Robin’s film reel and that means the love is unrequited, and then Mike is IN Will’s film reel, how does that also mean it’s unrequited? These two things directly contradict one another!

Mike’s eyes being wide open — at the end of season 3, Mike and El have a scene directly paralleled to Mike and Will where they say goodbye to each other before El and Will both move away. El says she loves Mike in this scene, to which he does not say it back. She then kissed him and his eyes are wide open the entire time. There is no explanation as to why now.

The painting lie — this utilizes a very famous romantic trope called “Playing Cyrano”, wherein person A uses their own romantic feelings for the love interest and pretends said feelings are from someone else, often through letters or some other object representing the love. The love interest then falls for the lie, eventually finding out the truth and ending up with person A who played Cyrano. This entire trope was unresolved. Mike never found out the truth about the painting or the love confession. He remains canonically in love with Will’s feelings for him, believing it was from El. Aka, he is canonically in love with Will and will never know it. Insane.

Mike being stupid? — Mike was originally establish to be incredibly perceptive to Will and he was also originally characterized to be one of the smartest characters, often piecing together plot points. So why is he too stupid to figure out that Will lied and is in love with him? He not only has the painting and the confession where Will hid behind El’s name, but he also has a letter El wrote him where she specifically states the painting was for someone Will had feelings for. As such, he has every piece he needs to figure out on his own that Will lied, and is being character assassinated to keep byler non canon.

Will having a crush — in season 4, it was canonically established not only by the actor that plays Will but also by the creators that Will was in LOVE with Mike, and had been the entire show. Given Will was 15 in s4, and 12 in s1, he was canonically in love with Mike for at least 3 years. In season 5 in episode 7, they retcon this by saying Will merely has a hallway crush on Mike, severely downplaying romantic love because it is felt by a gay man.

Feel free to add on to this, too! As I’ve already shown, the only reason byler isn’t canon is due to the creators being homophobic, or otherwise too pussy to make it so. It was narratively set up, and is a huge glaring plot hole and unresolved storyline, making the entire narrative incomplete forever now.

Mike can’t say “I love you” — this was a 3 season long arc wasted on Mike’s character, with zero resolution. Mike claims he couldn’t say he loved El because he was afraid she wouldn’t “need” him, directly responding to Will’s love confession in the van via dialogue parallel. This explanation does not make sense, due to the fact him not saying he loved her was the entire reason he was losing her. Not only that, but his dialogue to Will throughout season 4 continues to contradict the idea he ever loved El.

Mike’s entire s4 monologue — in season 4, he gives an ily monologue to El due to Will pushing him into it. He then lists off dialogue that the show itself directly contradicts, meaning Mike is a liar. There is now no explanation as to why he lied to her, but he did, and the show itself proves it regardless of what the Duffers want to say.

Finn saying Mike was trying to be normal in season 4 — during s4 promo, Finn stated he felt like Mike was simply trying to appear as normal as possible. This now makes no sense at all.

Crazy Together — in season 1, a character tells Nancy that “only love makes you that crazy”, and in season 2, Mike asks Will “if we’re both going crazy, we’ll go crazy together, right?” to which Will agrees. In season 3, Mike tries to say he loves El by saying “well they do say it makes you crazy”, to which she doesn’t understand. This paralleled dialogue of “love” equalling “crazy” and Mike having asked Will to be crazy aka in love with him now is meaningless and the entire scene can be omitted.

I felt like I lost you — byler being paralleled to numerous romantic couples in the show who all have dialogue about feeling as though they’ve lost one another is now pointless along with, yknow, the hundred or so other parallels we have.

Mike’s devotion to Will — Mike is established from the very first episode to have a different dynamic to Will than other characters. He is often the first to find Will, and/or protect Will. For example, in s3, he does not chase after El when they break up but he does chase after Will when they have their rain fight. This is now meaningless, and it’s also retconned in the last 3 episodes when Mike acts out of character.

Mike and El’s final scene — this entire scene is literally just them retconning all of s4, by claiming Mike understood El better than anyone when she on screen states he doesn’t understand her. Even the actress that plays El has stated in interviews that Mike does not understand her. This is a blatant rewriting of a prior season with zero explanation. Horrible writing and was clearly shoved in with no thought as part of the queerbait.

Mike STILL not saying he loves her — in this final scene, as El is literally about to kill herself, she says she loves him. They try to paint this as a huge romantic moment for them, as if it was ever established to be a problem El herself had, which is not canonically true. They are again retconning s4. And for some reason, Mike STILL refuses to say it to her when she’s going to die! If Mike is not in love with Will as the Duffers claim (which is not what they have canonically depicted or narratively set up) genuinely WHAT is Mike’s fucking problem?????

Mike and El ambiguity — the entirety of s4 and s5, mileven is ambiguous. We don’t even realize they’re still apparently dating until the last hour of the final episode. They intentionally wrote them ambiguous to 1) retcon s4 and 2) bait. They intentionally tanked their supposed flagship couple to queerbait. Insane. And it ruins any emotional weight this scene could have had. Instead, it comes across as ridiculous and comical at best seeing as we never see them actually resolve any relationship issue.

Dick bathrooms? — in season 5, Robin makes a whole joke about dicks and bathrooms and “liking dick” to which Mike and Will immediately stare directly at each other. They then put Mike and Will in the bathroom that represents dick and liking dick???? Insane bait. No purpose.

Mileven post s4 — yet again, mileven still being together after s4 is canonically built upon a lie that was never resolved. Mike thought Will’s words and painting were all from El, and canonically said he loved her because of it. Mike is canonically in love with Will’s feelings. This was never fucking resolved! The Duffers lied to Finn and said the painting lie would pay off, and it did not. As a result, the entire story is not finished and never will be finished due to their cowardice!

Will omitting who he had a 'crush' on during his coming out. This sets him up for failure against Vecna had he wanted to get at Will for his sexuality and puts him in a still vulnerable spot. Having that conference of a coming out was entirely useless as well and had no payoff. (especially because he started listing things Henry canonically likes??) (also using a term 'Tammy' that only 2 other people in the room would know??)

Mike's song choices. Butthole Surfers being queer. Robin telling him to pick a better record, just to pick a GAYER one that describes his and Will's relationship perfectly. Makes no sense, especially when they highlighted it and his d&d character model is sitting on the bomb.

Mike forcing himself not to touch Will was for nothing i guess? When Will flies back after talking to Max, Mike reaches for him but stops himself. Mike made to approach Will while he was unconscious only to steer himself away towards the window. This happens multiple times after where you can tell Mike wants to grab Will but holds himself back VERY visibly. People say it stopped after Will came out, but it stopped right after their Ep. 5 hug. Just no explanation for that.

Mike not letting anyone else touch Will?? What was the look to Lucas for? Why does he migrate to Will's side on purpose? During Halloween why did he yell at the others to back off and then take Will to his own house calling it Will's home? Was he just possessive for fun and got bored? Especially since he does it with words too when Will got powers. ('NO LUCASE HES NOT JUST WILL THE WISE AND IM THE FIRST TO KNOW' 'EXACTLY ERICA YOU UNDERSTAND ME IT MATTERS' 'THREE TO BE EXACT')

What was all this for

I will fix all this shit if I have to write it myself because it’s absolutely insane and ridiculous that they created nearly 30 plot holes and inconsistencies just by refusing to follow the narrative of the show they themselves created!!!!!!!!!!!!! And this is not even all of the plot holes that exist as a result of this, btw. There’s way more, specifically in regards to the supernatural aspect of the story, which could have been solved with byler and should have been.

They deadass created Creelby, a romantic couple in the first shadow play which was specifically written to set up s5 and give origin to Henry and the mindflayer, the writers of the play SAID that it was meant to parallel byler, the entire resolution of the story lied within this parallel and should have played out to close s5. Why write it and create a whole different production and then do nothing with it? It infuriates me. I’ve never been so pissed off at someone’s writing in my whole life. Gotta do everything around here ourselves because these show runners are fucking man children.