hadley :)

Silly gay outcasts who went through hell and back, got kidnapped, saw their crush fall in love with a girl, suffered through homophobia due to the time in which they grew up, gained a sister, had a complicated relationship with their older sibling due to the fact that said older sibling was forced into a parenting role, have a strange relationship with shadows (and stuff like that), found out the game they were obsessed with growing up is real (DnD and Mythomagic), often get babied by the fandom despite showing how capable they really are, and would do anything for their family. Oh, and they both have overprotective boyfriends who need to get a personal stylist bc… dam.

here she is:

i would love for someone to do an analysis of byler vs kurt hummel and finn hudson (would like to interject here to say someone should definitely do this and do it better with like actually siting stuff) like how a show (also explicitly about outsiders) purposefully creates an unrequited gay man to straight dynamic and how entirely different that is from how stranger things sets up mike and wills dynamic.

i mean they’re completely different shows and glee is a satire so it might be hard to compare them 1 to 1 because glee doesn’t tend to give that much weight to any relationship in its like first twoish seasons but i think its a good example for how it would be so easy to just make mike so obviously straight and not at all into will (it wouldn’t even have to be about el, with finn its not about quin or rachel, its just that hes not into men and is into women) and they’re choosing not to, they are choosing to lean into that dynamic and (this is important for this comparison) NOT in a brotherly way, not in a familial way, their relationship is never once compared to that (mike and el’s is but thats not entirely relevant here). In glee kurt liking finn is much more about his identity than it is about a romantic relationship with finn, they explore their relationship in depth in seasons 1 and 2 (and never again we dont have to talk about it yes i am bitter) but it is never not once implied that kurt’s feelings could be reciprocated, no lingering shots on finn’s face while hes watching kurt, nothing flirty, finn shuts him down multiple times, finn knows kurt likes him, its not used as a big reveal because that is NOT WHAT IS PLOT RELEVANT!!

And Mike’s already signing and telling him it’s going to be okay, that he’s there for him, and really Will, you’re never going to get any quiet or peace of mind with me around.

And would ya look at that...