ST

trying to find photos of will being all crushy over mike is showing me how much better will is at hiding it cause for every 1 photo of will being super intense toward mike i have 40 of mike staring at will like he’s the last cookie in the cookie jar

the way mike is the leader of the party but s2 shows will as the party mike's mediator is priceless to me: dustin and lucas don't ask mike if he's cool with inviting max on halloween, they ask will. i can see that being a constant in their party shenanigans, what with mike being short-tempered and willful (aha) a lot: if will greenlights something, lucas and dustin know he's probably already factoring in mike's reaction, and even if it turns out that mike disagrees on a thing will's already agreed on, what is he gonna do? argue with will? impossible. once they've cracked the code, i can see them going directly to will every single time they just know mike is going to be difficult about something.

i loveee when i read a modern au byler fic and one or both of them go on to reddit for advice and the replies just tear them to shreds lol

if I was Mike and heard my best friend I have feelings for say my name in the softest, sweetest voice ever, I don't think I'd survive.

concept of mike not knowing what joyce's maiden name is so when he finds out that will is now going by will maldonado, he thinks will's married to someone else and took their name

I do delight in the fact that in the one scene in s5 where jonathan is present for a byler conversation, it's the only one where they revert back to their s4 byler dynamic (aka, will is performing emotional labor and is the number #1 miIeven shipper) so naturally jonathan is looking at mike like he's already got a grave picked out for him. jon, I promise they were flirting right before you got there! they were gazing into each other's eyes in a field at dawn! they held hands over a pipe that represented their overflowing feelings for each other, I swear!

You know how characters sometimes put words in other character's mouths when actually they're very obviously expressing their own feelings? It happens in real life too. And I honestly can't see the line "What did you think, that we were never gonna get girlfriends, just sit in our basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?" from the Byler rain fight any other way. This entire thought is coming from Mike. It's sheer projection. Will never said anything implying this is what he was thinking. All he did was rightfully criticize Mike for being an asshole to the people he promised to always stand by and not even caring where Dustin was. Will's point - a good and reasonable one - was that Mike shouldn't let his relationship with El be an excuse for mistreating his friends and devaluing the Party, especially after all they'd been through. It's Mike who conceptualized dating and playing as two entirely incompatible things between which he must choose. It's Mike who declared it impossible to let their special quality time be on the same level as dating women. It's Mike who'd been considering all this, and came to this conclusion. And it hits even harder in light of how D&D symbolizes Mike and Will's overall relationship in the show. Mike felt the social pressure against the expression of his love language. The chance of continuing his and Will's close bond felt forbidden, because they're boys and they're supposed to be with girls now. The whole thing reads so much like that token scene in any romantic drama where outside pressures and expectations drive one of the central lovers to say to the other that they cannot be together and the future they want to share is an impossible dream.