i probably liked your fic.

And I don’t care what these two straight dudes say, most of the young queer fans ARE Bylers. And they let them down. They let them down. I don’t care if it’s “unrealistic”. I detest and resent this rhetoric that it’s a good message for the young queer people to learn how to be rejected. They already feel rejected. I’m sure they’ve already been or felt they’ve been.

It makes me sad that they saw Byler as an unrealistic fantasy where “your secret feelings working out will fix everything” when they’ve always had so much more depth than that. I get it, power comes from yourself, but why only yourself? Why put so much focus on the love between them up until this point? It’s sad.

It upsets me that there might be kids now discouraged from love. LOVE! WHERE DID THE LOVE GO? Even if it’s “unrealistic”, when has that ever stopped anyone in tv from showing unrealistic teen straight ships? I just know there are so many young queer kids right now who are devastated. So I can’t sit here and be okay with the idea that this message is better. It just makes me really sad that this was the message that they thought was more important.

Here comes the hetero again, ready to rain on everyone's parades.

I’m ready for this pain to be over soon. It’s eaten so much of my life but at the same time, like anything it’s helped me understand the kinds of stories I want to tell. The kinds of things I want to do for communities like this. The so-called "imaginary" idea of Mike Wheeler being gay actually helped me recognize the signs of internalized homophobia in myself. This ship helped me come out, and grow closer to those around me. I know so much more about who I am and what kind of stories I want to tell now.

I hope that once we feel out this disappointment, it'll light a fire under our asses as a community to vouch for the kinds of stories WE want.