I have dinner plans

Just wanted to make a fic recommendation masterpost :)) Because I get a lottt of asks for fic recs and yeah here you go!

Byler Fic Starter Pack

My Fav Fics of all Time!!

Secret Relationship

Cleradin Fics

Fluffy Established Relationship Fics -> Developing Relationship Fics

Byler being strangely obsessed with each other Fics

Predominantly Miwi Fics

Spicy Byler but they're Sweet and Tender

Explicit Byler Fics

Byler Dad Fics

Jealous Mike Fics

Fluffy and Funny Byler Fics

Lesbyler Fics

Bravebyers/Wheelerwise Fics

Will Byers was Never Found AU Fics

Churchgate Fics

Season 5 Rewrite Fics

Historical AU Fics

Mike Wheeler Heavy Angst Fics

Willel Fics with BG Byler

Fics where Byler reunite

Bottom!Mike Fics

Jealous Will Fics

Time Travel Fics

Spidey Will Fics

Fics where Byler communicate in Morse Code

Apocalyptic Fics

Platonic Madwheeler Fics

Conformitygate Fics

Fics similar to the Power Outage Fic

Friends with Benefits Fics

Merbrave (Mermaid Byler) Fics

Surfsahoy Fics

Band AU Fics

not in a “it was all terrible” way.

but in a “how did we fumble THIS many narrative balls in the FINAL season of a billion-dollar show” way.

and it all starts with:

⸻

THE HOLLY WHEELER PROBLEM

i said it.

i meant it.

i’ll say it again louder for the people in the upside down.

the holly plotline was useless.

not “bad.”

not “poorly acted.”

just… narratively unnecessary.

she had more screen time than half of the original cast.

HALF.

characters we’ve known since season 1 were standing in the corner like forgotten coats while holly and her little stranger squad were running around having their own side quest.

and for what?

what did it actually change?

remove the holly plotline and you still get:

• vecna

• the final fight

• the upside down

• the world ending

but suddenly you also get:

• more time for mike

• more time for will

• more time for joyce

• more time for literally anyone who mattered

they said they were “circling back to the core themes.”

FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE PREVAILS MY ASS.

this season was:

doom

gloom

crying

death

suffering for no actually reason

apocalypse

action packed bullshit

⸻

HOPPER SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD

i love hopper.

he is a king.

he is a dad.

he is a real life hero.

but.

HE. SHOULD. HAVE. STAYED. DEAD.

bob’s death in season 2 hit because it told us something:

no one is safe.

that’s what makes horror work.

that’s what makes you hold your breath.

now?

steve falls off a TOWER in season 5 and i don’t even blink.

i was like:

“he’s fine.”

because he is.

everyone is.

they have so much plot armor they could walk into the sun and come back with a mild tan.

when everyone is guaranteed to survive, nothing feels dangerous.

and when nothing feels dangerous, nothing feels important. Or real!

hopper staying dead would have:

• raised the stakes

• fixed the fear

• and forced eleven to grow on her own

which brings me to—

⸻

LET ELEVEN BE A PERSON, NOT A PET

this is not about ships.

do not come in here with that energy.

jane needed independence.

she needed to exist outside of:

hopper

mike

the government

netflix’s marketing department

kali should have lived.

period.

eleven could have escaped.

built a life.

been a person.

instead we got:

more suffering

more trauma

more reset-to-factory-settings arcs

girl has been through ENOUGH.

⸻

THE WILL BYERS SITUATION

they should not have dragged will being in love with mike this long.

there were two options:

1. follow through

2. shut it down early and give will a new love interest

they did neither.

they just let him suffer in the narrative corner for five seasons.

and that robin pep talk?

wasted time.

led nowhere.

gave him false hope.

then did nothing with it.

you know what that time could have been?

what were all those clues? those glances? the touches? the tension?

all these for a big Nothing Burger!

THE FINAL FIGHT.

people are not wrong when they say the final battle was barely longer than will’s coming out scene.

priorities were in hell.

⸻

CONFORMITYGATE AND THE MARKETING MACHINE

netflix knew this was controversial.

they fed it.

they promoted it.

they tweeted about it.

because controversy = clicks

clicks = engagement

engagement = money

we are not viewers.

we are metrics.

we are little corporate pawns in netflix’s chess game.

and they’re playing 4D chess with our feelings.

⸻

BACK TO HOLLY (BECAUSE I’M NOT DONE)

they aged her up.

ignored her canonical age.

made her important.

why?

new kids = new audience.

but what was their actual purpose?

“to merge the worlds.”

okay.

why.

how.

to what end.

no answers.

Pure aesthetic, zero explanation.

we didn’t need 12 new characters in the FINAL season.

we needed:

the kids we started with.

that’s it.

⸻

IN CONCLUSION

the choices this season were… interesting.

that’s the nicest thing i can say.

this could have been a beautiful, focused, emotional ending.

instead we got:

corporate storytelling

safe decisions

marketable drama

and a finale that felt like it was trying to please everyone and satisfied no one.

anyway.

i’m going to go lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling now.

reblog if you agree.

reblog if you’re mad.

finn and noah had the kind of chemistry you don’t teach. it’s the sort of on screen connection that directors build entire seasons around, the kind that lets you hold a shot a beat longer because the actors can carry the silence. their scenes already had that charged stillness, that soft, trembling intimacy that cinematographers dream of capturing. the camera loved them, not in a flashy way, but in that quiet, instinctive way where the frame leans in because it knows something is happening.

and maybe that’s why it hurts so much. because from a craft perspective, they were positioned to break boundaries in a genre that desperately needed it. they could have shifted the emotional centre of the story, not through shock value, but through honesty. through the kind of queer tenderness that rarely gets to exist in mainstream sci‑fi without being coded, sidelined, or softened into metaphor.

there was magic there, real, cinematic magic. the kind you recognise instantly when you’ve studied this stuff, when you’ve spent years analysing how performance, blocking, colour, and subtext braid together to create meaning. it was all right there, humming under the surface, waiting for someone in the writers’ room to trust what the camera was already telling us.

But.

- They fridged Jane (fridging is a trope to describe a plot device where a character, usually female, is physically harmed or even killed to motivate the character development or actions of another character, generally male) (the Duffers said she represented childhood magic and that she had to go away for the others to move on)

- Their only queer couple is the only couple that didn't get their ideal date

- Their only queer couple is the only couple that is up to interpretation

- They made Vickie and Suzie completely disappear, Vickie in the epilogue and Suzie completely in s5

- They give the queer main kid (and us) hope by asking for signals just to not even use them

- Kali comes back just to make her completely hated and killed (bringing a poc character back just to completely butcher her character and her 🫩..)

- Saying that "it's ok sometimes your crush doesn't like you back" is a more important message for the "youth", like queer people need to be taught that when they know that already. Some queer people saw themselves in Will and they wanted him to get his "Vickie" because if he did, that means they could too. Instead, they reduced his character to "the gay one that has to accept himself and doesn't need to have someone else". His imagined ending had nothing to do with his art, we could've seen both of those things, like Will is painting and a guy comes in and hugs him and gives him a kiss. But they reduced his character to the gay one.

- Will's coming out scene was so impersonal. They acted like it's unrealistic for a gay guy to date a girl to try to conform in the 80s, but another gay guy coming out to almost 20 people and having an 100% support rate IN THE 80S is totally realistic, right?

- We barely know anything about Lucas and Erica's parents, while we see and know more of the other's parents (of the kids, not the teens)

- Lucas didn't have any story arc other than his love interest

- Erica was barely there in s5

- Queerness treated like a punchline (as much as I love stonathan, that "Hey lovebirds" was exactly that)

Stranger Things epilogue tweak - Mike the Wise

bonus below

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 to 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.

- Your abuser is actually just misunderstood, just like you!

- to break the cycle of abuse, you must kill yourself

- there's no happy relationship for gay people because they're GAY. They exist only so that we can make gay jokes, claim we're woke and help along the bland ass fuckery of the straight ship

- stay in that closet little gay boy. Stay. Be like your father.