not a strigolactone but close enough

The first is that Will is "owed" Mike in some way, or he at least deserves the chance to express his feelings for him. As an adult who's been in more than one long-term relationship, I cannot express how shortsighted this sentiment is.

First of all, Mike isn't a "prize" for Will. Even if Will is in love with him, even if Will were a girl, Mike isn't a "reward" for Will. Frankly, this is incel logic.

Also, canon!Mike is in love with and in a committed relationship with El. As long as Mike expresses to Will that he wants to be with El — which he does ad nauseam, especially in Season 4 — then Will has the only answer he needs: Mike doesn't reciprocate. It's actually incredibly selfish to put someone who's already in a committed relationship on the spot and express your feelings for them.

Canon!Will knows this. He's empathetic and emotionally intelligent. Even in Season 5, where his catching Robin and Vickie making out leads him to temporarily short circuit and see if Mike reciprocates, he immediately takes the hint.

More to the point, Will is deserving of love, but he isn't owed any specific person. That goes for all of us.

There are other people who say Mike is a bad partner to El, but would magically be redeemed if he were to date Will.

Some of these are from young queer people who simply want more representation in mainstream media. I agree, there needs to be more, but I honestly doubt straight people's ability to write coming out arcs. We saw how much the Duffers fumbled Will's, and it's been a pattern in many, many shows over the years.

These shippers aren't thinking about the deeper implications of what they're advocating for. Here's the thing: I don't think Mike is a bad boyfriend to El, but if I did, then I'd say that Will would deserve a better boyfriend than Mike.

Why?

Abusive people do not change for the "right" person. Will, a canonical victim of CSA and homophobia who is also introverted and empathetic, deserves a partner who gets him from the outright.

It bears repeating: I don't think Mike is an abusive boyfriend by any means. If I did, I wouldn't ship him with anyone.

There are also the Will Byers stans. These people often identify with Will or simply infantilize him, as some young women and girls do with queer men. (Not all Will fans are women and girls, but it's a large portion, especially the most vocal section.) Even though they don't like canon!Mike, Finn Wolfhard is hot, so they really want to see Mike and Will get together anyway.

This leads to them going the extra mile. It also requires a lot of mental gymnastics, which inadvertently leads to the following:

Ableism: El is slow, she's BSY when she's a goddamn child, that she still doesn't even know what sex is by Season 5

Misogyny: Mike liked her in S1 because her short hair reminded him of a boy, labeling her as BSY from the time that she's 12, dismissing her trauma when talking about her relationship with Mike

General IDK: A lot of Will stans claim they love El, but say that anyone who thinks she's still alive at the end of the series is delusional. That's because a lot of them would rather an abused girl be dead than alive and *possibly* have a chance, no matter how remote, of reuniting with the person she loves one day. Can't have that when shipping is involved, amirite?

Byler Twitter is, as one would imagine, a cesspool. Tweets celebrating El "dying" get hundreds, if not thousands, of likes. One tweet begging for a link to a fanfic where Mike tries to kill El got over two thousand likes. This isn't funny. It's just misogyny.

Byler Tumblr isn't much better. In fact, I'd argue that the latter can be even worse since, as adults, they should know better. (At this point, Tumblr users are often older than Twitter users.)

I'll end this by saying that, of course, most Byler shippers don't partake in this behavior. Unfortunately, of the few that do, some are the most visible within the subfandom. This creates a feedback loop.