yeet.

--just a few thoughts I've had that I wanted to get out before s5v2 came out :P--

The show Stranger Things is a very mainstream piece of media, with such a vast and diverse audience. A lot of the time, in shows like these, we find creators trying to meet the general audience and their wants, as to satisfy their main consumers and keep a reliable, consistent fanbase (stream of money). This is why, whenever we have a queer character in mainstream media, specifically, a queer main character, their arcs are often written to be about self-love, acceptance, and growth. And while that’s great – because those concepts are incredibly important, and are recurring themes in all of our lives as queer people – the lesson just doesn’t feel right this time, it doesn’t fit. Maybe it’s because these themes have become the go-to for queer characters: their arcs are always about learning to move on, grow, and accept themselves, as if needing anything more isn’t allowed.

It feels like beating a dead horse, like writers are using self-love as a throwaway reason to check off representation and then doing nothing beyond that.

I really hope that this is not the case, since in the show we see that Will’s main arc (especially in the later seasons) is not about accepting his sexuality, but about how others accept him for who he is – his arc ending in self-acceptance isn’t bad, but it doesn’t resolve his true inner conflict. 

In the show, it is clear that Mike’s arc is much more clearly about self-acceptance than Will’s. Throughout the entire series, Mike struggles with insecurity, identity, and worth: feeling replaceable, fearing abandonment, questioning whether he matters outside of being useful to others, and needing reassurance that he is loved as he is. This is the most classical set up of a self-acceptance work.

Will, on the other hand, has already done much of that internal reckoning. His pain isn’t framed as confusion or denial about who he is, its framed as loneliness, the quiet grief of wanting something he suspects he isn’t allowed to have. His struggle isn’t “How do I accept myself?” but “What do I do when the world – and the person I love – might not accept me back?” Redirecting what is fittingly Mike’s arc onto Will (simply because he is canonically stated to be queer) doesn’t deepen the narrative; it narrows it. They have fundamentally different conflicts. 

So when people insist that Will’s arc must end in self-love and moving on, it feels less like an organic reading and more like a familiar narrative reflex: queer characters are allowed introspection and growth, but not fulfillment. 

Straight characters get to be chosen. Queer characters are told that choosing themselves should be enough.

Why is it that our arcs are always reduced to self-acceptance and “moving on,” as though the hope of reciprocity is something only straight couples are allowed in the media? I'm tired of settling for that kind of arc with queer characters in mainstream media because it's just so disappointing. It hits home because it feels like even in a show that’s supposed to be about outcasts – the freaks, the weirdos – there’s still someone who’s too weird, too much of an outcast, too far outside the norm to be granted a happy ending or have their wants fulfilled.

And that’s why it's become so important to a lot of people that Byler becomes canon here. Because in a show aimed at such a wide, general audience, it would suggest that LGBTQ+ relationships don’t need to be isolated, justified, or framed as anomalies – they can simply exist as another part of everyday life.