will in the water

... only this was actually a double-edged sword that Mike didn't even get to wield not only about how to leave a beloved show behind, but grieving the loss of something that was, in my opinion, a far more beautiful story - one that never came to be.

I've known and loved other queer stories that did indeed end in a happy way, or a way that made sense to me - mainly in literature rather than on screen, which is its own conversation - so I know it's possible to follow the trail of vibes and visual storytelling like we did for byler. I know it wasn't all in my head. And as a side note, I struggled to figure out how this connected the hurt queer fans with the disappointed straight - often female - byler fans like me, who are often dismissed as fetishisers of gay romance. After all, what byler fan, no matter their personal identity, hasn't been vehemently called 'delusional' ?

That word. 'Delusional'. Ugh. What do they even mean by that? Clearly the majority of us are not actually suffering from some kind of painful, psychosis-induced illusion. We've seen, with our own eyes, people open their minds to byler in real time, including a straight male viewer called Matt's Multiverse on TikTok who documented his whole journey. I know friends and family who were similarly open-minded. So we know we're not crazy, even if we are crazy together, because the story was not over when s5 rolled around and byler had everything going for it.

But I realised the ending of s5 hurts not only because byler was fumbled, but because the entire show was - including mileven, in its own way. When I look at what appealed to me about byler as a straight female viewer, I have to look at the fact that I used to enjoy Mike and El pre-s3. I have to look at the way society views romance itself, and especially how girls/women view relationships and intimacy. When romance is a major element of a story, it is often dismissed as fantasy or fairytale, whimsical or silly - even though every single human on Earth needs love of some kind, and a great many chase romance.

With byler, I saw a relationship that could be sweet, romantic, tender, anti-conformist, special, genuine, and caring in the face of internal and societal pressures. It made me believe not only that queer romance could be alive and well in media, but that romance in general was not dead. Byler was for the queer folk, but it was also for anyone who dreamed of goodness and respect and intimacy and emotional connection and freedom in human relationships. Of overcoming what society told you to be and embracing what makes life beautiful: genuine feeling and vulnerability.

With the byler view of the show, I was able to not only vicariously walk a mile in the shoes of queer people, opening my heart more and more to both Will and Mike as their story moved me deeply, but I could also see my own experience reflected: in the way that men often struggle to meet the intimate needs of women, in the way women struggle to discover the elusive emotional needs of men that society so often tells men to hide. A s5 story that fleshed out Mike's struggle with masculinity and sexuality was not a baseless hope - it would have followed s4 beautifully.

And yes, I suppose the show subverted a cliche trope by having Mike dream of a fantasy land instead of El, the girl... but do the Duffers really think that women are always the sappy idealists and men are the logical thinkers? Were Mike's tasteless jokes in s3 about species and 'emotion not logic' instead a reflection of their actual views, rather than heavy-handed irony?! Do they think Mike being the dreamer is subversive, non-conformist storytelling?!

It's not. At least, not in a story that's already about outcasts who don't fit cultural norms and who explicitly claim to be proud of their differences.

Yes, Stranger Things is the 80s, but this show needs to also make waves for a current audience to be relevant and meaningful. And modern society is more aware than ever of toxic masculinity, male emotional repression and the 'Nice Guy' type by now. I don't exactly see Mike as this dangerous kind of 'Nice Guy', but the way the Duffers wrote him certainly implies, somewhat, that they are. A hidden danger, only revealing itself when its too late.

And Mike certainly has the potential to become that Nice Guy in the future, judging by that little epilogue scenario he dreamed up for himself. Plenty of space for lonely writer Mike to become Mr Nice who pities himself a little too much, and whose frustration ends up curling outwards, harming women and potentially men alike...

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but if we want to be really bleak (and really truthful), we could even find the seeds of this in his character from as far back as s1, when he tired of El every time she stopped providing him with a service - i.e., finding Will. Even if we read that as a nerdy boy who is just madly excited that he found a real life superhero and doesn't want to waste time, there was a stark difference between Mike's impatience and the tenderness towards El exhibited by, say, Dustin.

There's always been something spiky and a little scary about Mike, but I was happy to lean into it, because I thought that was leading towards some kind of character reveal, something deep and dark and fascinating that we'd discover as he grew up. Something like insecurity and self-loathing that could only be remedied by love and acceptance. Something that, as the show continued, seemed to soften whenever he was with Will, because something about Will made him want to be a better person.

Because I was all for Mike and El. I was desperate for their intimate conversations as I awaited s3. But they never came. I lost faith in the show, happy to give it up and enjoy the early seasons, not willing to look deeper and see if the issue was performance or direction. But now, the comparison between byler and mileven scenes is too blatant.

I hope I'm not speaking out of turn about their performances, because I certainly would place blame mostly on the writers and directors here; for not being able to create compelling writing, for not being able to summon chemistry between the actors of their main romantic pair. But it now seems the Duffers don't seem to think these character traits for Mike were anything out of the ordinary at all. As countless mileven fans have said to excuse his behaviour over the years: 'he's just a kid'. Might they simply say 'boys will be boys' and be done with it?

Of course Mike was just a kid, but isn't this his coming of age story too? I'd hoped it would have more development in order to achieve what the greatest stories do: push Mike to the limits of his possible experience, not only regarding his external obstacles, but his internal ones, too.

Sadly, not only did Mike - and the audience he stands in for - get very limited time to actually process his grief on screen (a pacing inadequacy made more startling by the way that Dustin's grief was thoroughly explored throughout s5, and the way Mike's own prior grief for El had been explored through s2), but mileven had already been completely ruined by the entirety of s5's lack of clearly intimate scenes. Nothing hit home, nothing had emotional resonance to make you wonder if they were the ones to root for, or at the very least, keep believing - keep feeling in your gut - that they should be. The most convincing aspect of their dynamic were their fights, sounding almost like a passionless older couple well into adulthood who have been having the same domestic fights for years. El filling the tub, saying she should warm the water up, while Mike tries to get her to open up? It was straight out of an adult divorce drama like Revolutionary Road (2008) - not exactly an inspiring portrayal of young lovers who are not yet 17, although I suppose Mike and El have, indeed, been having fights like this for years. They've lived more than a childhood by the tender age of 16.

But the Duffers do them a disservice by not allowing that serious tone to influence the rest of the narrative, including any positive intimacy they should be sharing in such high stakes moments.

Unwilling to give up, I went back and actively tried to watch the finale from the perspective the show seemed to intend, where Mike is oblivious to Will and completely in love with El.

I tried to recall how I felt during s1 and s2 when I rooted for Mike and El. I even looked at things from the POV of an emotionally stunted Mike with abandonment issues who clings to his childhood crush/friend El until the last pathetic moment of their goodbye (an interpretation many of my GA family hold).

Do I think the Duffers drive the latter perspective home hard enough if this was their intention? Not at all - but no matter, because any version of this show with oblivious Mike + sad Will still technically works, after a fashion. I can see what they tried to pull off. But this version of the show is also mediocre, shoddy, and perhaps even a little cruel.

What better demonstration of that than the fact that half of Mike and El's romantic montage clips during their tearful farewell overtly feature a devastated Will in the background? Even after Will and Mike's closure is apparently done and dusted in that dingy radio tower scene (thank you Noah for your work, but I'm so sorry) - we are still not allowed to forget Will's role in this relationship.

Do you remember November? Remember the finale to Vol 1?? It was set in the Mac-Z too, a flaming warzone bombarded with bullets and dead bodies. And yet that sequence with Will coming into his powers was more epic, wondrous and romantic than the grand climax of the whole series between Mike and El. I mostly mourn for my current byler self, but a tiny part of me mourns for the mileven enjoyer I used to be, the casual viewer I used to be, who was satisfied with Mike and El. She would not be satisfied now.

So this is what this whole mess comes down to, for me. Queer rep, yes, romance, yes - but mostly, artistry.

Because the chemistry, the glances, and the feeling between Mike and Will leapt off the screen, didn't they?

I had no cause to invent seeing this. I had no bias or agenda because I had no need for a bias or an agenda - a straight privilege, I know, but also a confirmation that anyone who calls me delusional for enjoying byler is merely mocking the ability to see from a new perspective and dream of stories with real meaning and resonance.

Because isn't that what byler was? If we're being really honest? A better story?

Isn't the fact that a solid portion of byler fans used to be mileven fans the very proof of that? I mean, who did the opposite? Who preferred mileven in the end having previously preferred byler??

No one.

And when I say the show is shoddy, I don't mean to downplay the pain we all feel. I don’t mean to dismiss queer people's devastation by saying "this show is just a bit crap, but not terrible enough to really get upset about". What I mean is that when it comes to craft, to something that goes beyond subjective enjoyment, it turns out that the show actually is just...

Careless. Shoddy workmanship. It's not even horrendously bad - that, at least, might elevate it to cult status, like The Room (2003). Nope, it's just plain old mediocre.

And as someone who loves beauty and craftsmanship, that's what hurts the most.

How embarrassing for the Duffers. And what a god damn waste of our boys, fictional and real. This was a show that so many people loved, both in the audience and in the cast of creatives who made it, and they just let that slip away like sand through an hourglass.

The curtain behind the curtain is not a total lie, but a shallow truth, referring only to the first layer: the conspiracy Nancy was uncovering, not the rest of the show’s dynamics and mysteries. When Mike saw El in the blonde wig for the first time, it wasn’t leading to performative heterosexuality, but simply him seeing and loving the ‘real her’, aka the girl who was not a lab rat with a shaved head, but a pretty blonde girl. It's not even her real hair colour. That alone tells you so much about how the Duffers view girls and women, and breaks my heart even more as I lament what this show could have meant to anyone who longed for something that captured a modern healthy sensibility of young love.

Listen, Mike's struggles and insecurity issues are a worthy story to tell. These struggles affect real people and can indeed end in happiness or tragedy in life as we know it.

But this is a story.

And did it make for great storytelling?

No, I do not believe it did. 

The very first thing I read in my book on screenwriting by Robert McKee, Story, the one that inspired many of my byler analysis posts, was that a story can still exist without perfecting its execution, but that it will suffer in quality and reveal the humanity (or lack) of the storyteller.

Robert McKee’s screenwriting book was never about what is or isn’t a story. It was about what makes a good story, or, if you work hard enough, a brilliant one.

But what the Duffers have instead done is create an unfinished story, and with Mike, their apparent stand-in, an unearned tragedy.

I don't even have the capacity to write in depth about Will or El's stories right now, but Mike is impossible to ignore. He did not begin in a place of high happiness that would foreshadow his deserved downfall into earned, inevitable tragedy. Yet they've taken him to the limit of the human experience on the negative end of the scale - what Robert McKee calls the Negation of the Negation in storytelling terms - and left him there.

If Mike's story value is Freedom vs. Slavery, what they've done is left him enslaved in the worst possible way a human can be enslaved: denial.

Mike ends the series not only lying to others, but to himself, too - telling himself that El is still alive, and not allowing himself to tell his true story - whether you believe that story is about El's existence, or his love for Will, or both.

When I read Robert McKee's Story last summer and rushed to make byler posts from what I'd learned, I accepted the possibility that byler could be handled poorly alongside my hope that it would be magical. But never in my worst nightmares did I imagine they'd do this to Mike, because the result is not a story that I don't subjectively like, but a story - and a coming of age story at that - that does not truly allow its main characters to come of age.

Had Mike really started to grow towards maturity during s5, or was he thrown right back to his s3 self when he grabbed El in the finale and begged her to never leave him?

Did he sit and stare at the memorial statue for 18 months, just like he sat inside El's fort for almost a year trying to reach her in s2? Or was it just the turning point of graduation that made him reminisce?

And where was his best friend, Will, during all of this? Did they share any moments, learning to grieve what El meant to each of them and helping each other to heal?

Yes, there's beauty in the cinematography of the final DnD scene that is so reminiscent of beloved byler scenes from s4 - in fact, it's full of the kind of warmth and whimsy that has been a throughline in byler's story as a whole, such as Mike Wheeler's repressed queerness bursting forth in the form of wanting to plunge his vampire teeth into the hot-blooded flesh of his best friend, if that's your read of this scene (and what a read!)...

... but it's all weighed down by an abstract gloominess that is not solely about thematic change and moving on from childhood. The graduation scene before it felt uncanny, a bittersweet ending that was heavy on the bitter and sparing with the sweet, and it's not because of what is happening on the surface, but because of the subtext.

Because even at the end of this story, when subtext can finally be brought into the text... when things should finally pay off in a story...

we still don't know enough.

El's death is supposed to be the great ambiguity of the finale, but for me, the ambiguity is all Mike's.

Mike's hopes for his friends' futures are set up as flash-forwards rather than just fantasies, telling us how the party will end up. But the details elude us, leaving a strange subtext of uncertainty that might be realistic for the characters, but is unsatisfying and unmooring for the audience, who expect closure. Lucas and Max will live happily together, but are they in Hawkins? Dustin will go on adventures and continue his love of learning - but why do we know exactly which college Robin is at and not our original boy Dusty? We know Will is going to further discover himself, community, and a new love... (or is it? They don't even commit to sealing it with a kiss).

Yet somehow Will's line to Mike, 'And the storyteller? What about him?' holds as much romantic subtext, even in a non-private group setting, than everything else that came in Vol 2 + the finale combined. The unspoken thoughts of the actors float beautifully to the surface, telling us more and more about these characters even in the denouement where things are supposed to be petering out.

It all feels so vague and flimsy, and it's all because of Mike.

We know he will write. He will tell stories. But as he places his DnD manual on the shelf, lingering longer than any of the others in a way that not only implies so much about him and Will, but about his childhood as a whole, what we don't know is whether writing will truly save him.

I always jokingly said Mike was a tragic period drama man, but I wasn't prepared for just how true that would turn out to be. Someone get him a chemise and cravat and a black stallion so he can ride off into Hawkins woods. He can tear through the countryside until his thoughts stop chasing each other, and when he returns to the mountain of papers in his office, dreading yet another evening of twirling society beauties around the ballroom, he can stumble out into the fresh air and come across a stable boy he grew up playing alongside before life pushed them apart...

That's a story we've heard before (kind of), but it's the mark of a good writer to be able to weave what are time-old tales into something fresh.

Maybe, for the Duffers, something stood in the way of them doing that - of creating a good story, well told. There's certainly been many theories about why that might be since I first started writing this post, back on January 2nd. They've said they found it hard to move out of childhood, and spending their lives making a show about nostalgia illustrates that rather well. I also remember an old interview where they wondered why they'd want to heal their emotional wounds when such wounds are what contributes to artistic expression. It seemed a very childish and stubborn way to regard creativity, and it makes me think of things that Finn Wolfhard, a guy twenty years their junior, has already spoken about in interviews regarding his own creative output: whether an artist needs to be tortured to make art, or whether creative expression can be born from the co-existence of healing and pain.

So maybe the Duffers' obsessiveness took a different shape, something more insular and self-regarding that led away from brilliance rather than towards it. I mean, art can be therapy for the artist, but what I’ve learned is that if you’re going to make something designed to be an experience for an audience as well as yourself, you also need to actually consider the experience of that audience.

So you see why I cannot feel shame for seeing something that wasn’t perhaps intended with our boy Mike - his being in love with Will - because that hope was built on the belief that artistry and quality and beauty would prevail, in both the storyteller and in their story.

It’s been said that when it comes to story, art exists in the space between the screen (or page) and the mind of the audience member.

What we loved was a version of the show with more depth and artistry than it actually held. We chose to believe that beauty could transcend chaos to create the kind of meaning that resonates through the ages, a work of art so intricate that it would never be lost to the sands of time. 

I take solace in knowing that stories with such depth do exist - I’ve seen them. I’ve experienced them. Stories made by artists, inventors, dreamers, visionaries and obsessives with extraordinary empathy and attention to detail are something the world will always need. Writers who would still write even if their work never saw the light of day, just for the thrill of it, for the love of the craft alone. 

And maybe the Duffers are happy with their mediocrity. But honestly, if so, I pity them, because I have this secret feeling that if Mike is their stand-in, then Will - and maybe even El - is the person they subconsciously dreamed they could be.

The artist, the wizard with innate powers that remain a mystery in everyone’s eyes, including Mike’s.

Why do writers create characters? Where do they come from? Because the character of Will Byers is a certain kind of miracle to me, one that is perhaps a result of chance, luck and magic as much as skill or intention. I’m so happy to have had the feeling, long before I had even finished s1, that he was a very special little guy indeed. 

So go ahead, hateful fans! Call us 'delusional'. But I’m not sure that’s an insult anymore. All it means is that while others were happy with mediocrity, we dreamt a little bigger. We saw beauty where it might not have even existed, and what is an artist if not someone who is capable of that?

And though I’m not bargaining for a redo, I know that on the horizon somewhere long down the line, it’s possible that we may see this story again, a future remake or adaptation where Mike and Will are finally brought out of the subtext by a storyteller from the generation who grew up watching this show. Someone who loved what this story gave them, and might one day think to themselves...

‘Hey, what if…?’ 

Isn't it interesting how they don’t say something like ‘Wow, that would be hard to pull off!’ but instead, ‘I just don’t see how it can be pulled off’ ?

Here’s a direct response to that comment:

‘If it happened it would be a big surprise.’ 

But… isn’t surprise what screenwriters are going for? 

Luckily, Robert McKee speaks about both concern and surprise in his book. So let’s entertain the less open-minded view first, that Mike being queer = a bad twist, and ask good old Robert: how do you even pull off a good twist? 

To keep an audience’s attention, you need to create curiosity, concern, or best of all, both.

Curiosity is intellectual; the audience’s need to know more.  Concern is emotional; their need to see positive values in life/story restored. 

McKee says:

‘Human nature is instinctively repelled by what it perceives as negative, while drawn powerfully towards positive. As the story opens, audiences will instinctively inspect the landscape to find the ‘centre of good.’ 

Hmmm. Already you may be thinking about how certain Stranger Things fans have a very different understanding of what is considered 'good', or a ‘positive value’, when it comes to queerness (as well as and many other things, like Hopper’s parenting skills - another drama our boy Mike just happens to be in the middle of!)

But while fans bicker, at the heart of this debate are very interesting questions about how morals are subjective. Writers love to challenge audience ethics with questions of perspective; it makes for rich, memorable drama. 

So what of Stranger Things and its 'centre of good'? Well, if ‘goodness’ and morals are subjective, then in fiction, ‘good’ must be in relation to the fictional ‘bad' of a specific story.

‘When a story is weak, the inevitable cause is that the forces of antagonism are weak', says Robert McKee.

In short, a story is only as good as it's villain.

(Ok, that wording was misleading. But you know what I mean.)

So let’s take Henry’s evil villain speech in s4. Psychopathic, yes, but I could relate to some of it - not the whole genocide malarkey, but certainly the part about life often feeling like it’s just a big pointless farce. The Duffers complicated one of their villains by giving audiences a chance to see themselves in him, but then twisting his viewpoint so you think he's gone too far. This is how you create empathy for a character that the audience has located as a 'centre of bad', and therefore create conflict in that audience.

You don’t always need to feel empathy for a villain, but you do need to find them powerful enough that the heroes only have a chance of winning. If an antagonist does not provide a compelling case, the fight will seem easy, and we lose interest, knowing how it will end. 

Remember this about empathising with antagonists. We’re going to talk about it later, as well as why some fans want to believe they already know how things will turn out. 

So how to create curiosity and concern to compel the audience?

With…

Mystery - when the characters know more than the audience Dramatic irony - when the audience knows more than the characters Suspense - when the characters and audience know the same amount

Which do you think this is?

Mystery, suspense, or dramatic irony?

To figure it out, let's look at a thorny problem for storytellers, and something that anti-bylers think Mike turning out to be queer would be...

Coincidence. 

Did the boys encountering El in the woods make us roll our eyes? What a stroke of coincidental luck it was for them that the very person they needed to save Will was out there in the woods!

Right? Everyone hated this moment, right? It was too much of an easy coincidence - right??!!!!

Nope.

But why not?!

A story is a carefully-shaped expression of meaning, while coincidence is pure meaningless chaos. Surely coincidence has no place in a story? 

Robert says...

'But coincidence is part of life. So how to include it in a way that feels satisfying? Don’t avoid coincidence, but dramatise how it enters life meaninglessly and gains meaning over time.'

Oh, yes. El meeting the boys in the woods certainly did gain a lot of meaning over time, didn't it? Didn't it, Mike, with your love confession talking about how this was the day your life started? Hmmm???

But wait...

... Robert also says a writer MUST bring out coincidence early, and never use it to escape an ending when they’ve written themself into a plot hole. This is known as a deus ex machina, ‘god from the machine’, a lazy way out that was often used in classical theatres of Greece and Rome.

'There's a reason only a few of the thousands of classical playwrights from ancient times are still known today - they didn't use deux ex machina.'

Robert has been throwing shade since 1998. But he's right.

Deus ex machina insults the audience because it tries to convince us that a god-like force will come along and save us - but in real life, we are accountable for the course of our lives. We must make our own choices, and so too must characters in a story. 

Pro-milevens say the Duffers would commit two cardinal writing sins by using byler as a deus ex machina in the last fifth of the story simply to tie up Will’s arc.

But unlike a hurricane or a flood that sweeps in to destroy Vecna because the writers couldn’t figure out a way for the heroes to do it, Mike Wheeler is a sentient character who can make his own choices. Therefore, if Mike chooses to be with Will, that’ll be his choice.

The other options are that 1) Mike was forced into the relationship by Will. Laughable! Can you imagine Will forcing Mike to be with him? 2) Mike pressuring himself into a relationship with Will. But why? Forced conformity? Who in 1980s American society was forcing people to be in queer relationships?

The whole thing about pressuring himself, though... hmmm.

But pro-milevens don't want to think about this option for some reason. So the only other option is to believe that the Duffers themselves are the deux ex machina, inserting themselves into the story like kids playing with a Barbie doll to shove Mike and Will together and shout ‘now kiss!’ just to save their own asses because they’ve written themselves into a corner.

Yes, pro-milevens have actually stated this, because they say Mike, a sentient character, has already stated who he loves and who he wants to be with - El. What Mike in fact said is that he loves El, doesn't know how to live without her, has loved her since the moment he met her, and that she's his superhero.

But remember, coincidences need to gain meaning over time. Mike springing the fact that he fell in love with El the moment he met her on El herself (and the audience!) is not the slow gaining of meaning over time.

But maybe some pro-milevens genuinely think it is. Maybe they truly think that the whole show has now been re-contextualised, just because Mike said so, which explains takes like "It's an insult to Mike and to Finn's performance to say he's lying."

Erm... I'm insulting the writers, not the character or the actor >:)

But actually, not at all. Instead, it's a bit rude to think the writers are incompetent enough to think Mike's monologue is a satisfactory love confession.

Why is it so hard to accept that there could be more at play here, and that ultimately the writers might actually want to write gay romance - not to tick boxes, but just because they want to?

We'll get to that. I can't wait. But first... the second writing problem for screenwriters:

Surprise. 

My guy Robert says:

We go to the storyteller with a prayer: "Please, let it be good. Let it give me an experience I’ve never had, insights into a fresh truth. Let me laugh at something I’ve never thought funny. Let me be moved by something that’s never touched me before. Let me see the world in a new way." In other words, the audience prays for surprise, the reversal of expectation. As characters arrive onscreen, the audience surrounds them with expectations. But if what the audience expects to happen happens, or worse, happens in the way they expected it to, they will be a very unhappy audience. We must surprise them.

Here's a good surprise in Stranger Things:

Oop! We're back here again.

Not only a coincidence, but a surprise.

But for whom - the characters or the audience? Or both? Did the writers use mystery, dramatic irony, or suspense here?

I’d say suspense - we seemingly knew as little as the characters did.

Maybe the writers will be clever and reveal there was more going on than meets the eye, with another character like Henry or Brenner masterminding the entire meeting by planting El in the woods... but during the scene as we watch, we are seeing from Mike’s POV, and he certainly did not know what he would encounter. (Remember this - it’s important. This scene was in Mike’s POV). 

So we have the element of surprise as well as coincidence - we thought the boys might encounter a demogorgon, or even Will, but it was El! The audience is thrilled, because

1) we saw earlier in the episode that El was on the run, making it a meaningful coincidence, and

2) the suspense has paid off in an enjoyable surprise. Is there a viewer out there griping because it was El and not the demogorgon? No! We can see how interesting this will be and want to know what happens next.

Successful writing! Hurrah!

But pro-milevens don’t only think queer Mike would be a meaningless coincidence, but an unpleasant surprise. Oof!

If curiosity and concern are ways to drive interest by using mystery, suspense, or dramatic irony, then false mystery creates fake curiosity, concealing things that should have been revealed earlier to trick the audience into watching for longer, and resulting in a frustrating, disjointed reveal.

Pro-milevens say that having Mike come out as queer after confessing love to El would fit this box. But usually, false mystery is used as a way to force audiences to watch boring exposition they’d need to see in order to understand the interesting parts of the movie that come later.

Is the Mike-Will-El love triangle just boring exposition so far?!

No! It's kept the internet arguing for three years!

Pro-bylers think this love triangle forms crucial parts of Mike, Will and El's arcs, and pro-milevens can at least acknowledge the value of Will stepping up to prioritise Mike’s relationship as a sign of his love. 

But it’s interesting that many bylers seem happy believing byler is a false mystery, saying this storyline was only left until the final season because audiences would not have continued watching Stranger Things for this long if Mike or Will were revealed to be gay earlier. So the view is that queer love is not boring exposition, but offensive content that needs to be hidden or audiences will switch off.

This sparks a conversation that is as much about cultural landscapes as it is about artistic expression. Certainly shows have diluted all kinds of content before to appease audiences, but this dilution is usually thorough, with so-called sensitive content (like queer love) kept hidden throughout by euphemism or code.

How can a story that eventually reveals sensitive content as a major part of the story - as Stranger Things might in s5 - be considered coded or euphemistic?

There is a difference between false mystery and plot twist. Plot twist is a narrative device used for great dramatic impact, and byler being left until the final season could mean it’s a headline act, with the choice to keep it hidden until the end being part of the story’s meaning itself.

Now.

If false mystery is the opposite of a good plot twist, then cheap surprise is its ‘dim-witted cousin’, says my guy Robert McKee.

‘Cheap surprise is an abuse of the writer’s power, taking advantage of the audience’s vulnerability.’ 

It works well in some genres, like horror/comedies, but in drama - which is what the romance elements of Stranger Things are - cheap surprise is unpleasant because it means the writer resorts to shocking images, relying more on the momentary emotional outburst of the audience rather than the real meaning of the revelation within the narrative. 

But just as byler could never be a deux ex machina coincidence because of Mike’s autonomy to make his own choices, any viewer who thinks that Mike being queer would occur simply for shock value does not understand how the world of Stranger Things operates. Shock and surprise are not the same thing.

Shock images in the Stranger Things universe look like this:

Queerness is not a universally-recognisable repulsive image that could only ever be viewed as abhorrent to any sane human being. 

But wait…

Perhaps a reason so many people dislike the idea of queer Mike is because they conflate sexuality with sex itself. Many viewers, including pro-milevens, refer to Mike and El as 'children’, saying kissing and love is ok, but ‘sexuality’ (meaning sex) isn’t.

Sexuality does not have to mean actual sex, but thoughts around sexual attraction are a key component of sexuality as children, teens AND adults discover themselves at different stages of life, making them a worthy topic for a writer's exploration.

Robert mentions sex and sexuality in his screenwriting book, when describing how a writer might portray it on the scale of positive to negative within a story.

Positive -> contrary -> contradictory -> negation of the negation

(Don’t forget we are working with the ‘centre of good’ - the things most audiences will resonate with, relative to the 'centre of evil' of each story.)

Robert places ‘natural + sanctioned sex’ on the positive value.

Natural = sex for procreation, pleasure, or expression of love Sanctioned = accepted by society 

You may already see an issue here…

The next value down is contrary...

Natural sex that is frowned upon by society - (e.g. adultery) Unnatural sex that is nevertheless still sanctioned by society - (e.g. chastity)

(Robert clearly thinks abstinence from sex is unnatural in biological terms, because humans are supposed to be driven to procreate, even if individual specificities don’t allow for that. I imagine he means 'the most common course of healthy nature' - remember this book was written in the 90s, so I doubt Robert was as well-versed in the complexities of sexuality as people are today).

The third step towards negative on the scale is contradictory...

... containing things Robert describes as 'human sexual inventions that are 'both unnatural and unsanctioned by society’ - nymphomania, fetishism, incest, rape, paedophilia, sadomasochism, etc.

(Again, note how some may seem worse than others - but asking yourself why is interesting. Are your views instinctive/based strongly on what society thinks?)

But even these are not the limit, says Robert. For the negation of the negation...

We have things that are both unnatural and condemned by society. ‘Such perversions like the contradictory values are at least committed between human beings. But when the sexual object is from another species - bestiality - or dead - necrophilia - the mind revolts.’

These things are still worthwhile subjects to explore in fiction, as they take characters to the limit of what is possible.

But what of homosexuality? Not long ago this was seen as negative in many places.

Robert McKee says:

‘Homosexuality and bisexuality are hard to place. In some societies they’re thought natural, in others not - in some, they are legal, in others, a hanging offense. Many of these designations are arbitrary, for sex is relative to social and personal perception.’ 

And isn’t that exactly it? Yes, we can take a stance and show our values as artists, but we must also acknowledge context - how values change in different places. Stories are always relative. Values are never objective, because morals are not objective. But usually, humans can agree on the things that truly make the healthy mind revolt - as Robert described with necrophilia and bestiality. 

But how can queer love - consensual expressions of affection and desire between two teenagers, two living human beings - possibly be anywhere near the negation of the negation?

How can that be a repulsive image, a shocking revelation for a sane 2025 audience, especially in a show like Stranger Things? 

Who do you think the Duffers are writing for?

What do you think their overall values in this story are?

Have they shown that they understand the context in which a queer character of theirs would live, and shown empathy towards them?

When it comes to Mike being queer, where do you think the Duffers would place that on a value of positive to negative?

Or, perhaps a more pertinent question is: do you believe in the Duffers’ ability to re-shape the values of an audience who may still be predisposed to place queerness on a negative value via the power of good storytelling? 

Robert McKee cites The Godfather, one of the most popular films of all time, where audiences find themselves empathising with murderous criminals, because the writing gave them something to empathise with: while everyone in the film is awful, at least the gangster Corleone family are loyal to each other. The audience always finds the ‘centre of good’ in a story, even if it looks like evil from an objective standpoint, because they understand relativity. 

Good, in story, is only relative to the evil that is the opposite of it. 

Would empathising with Mike, a young queer boy, really be the straw that broke the camel’s back when audiences have already managed to empathise with Vecna himself?

If you don’t believe in the Duffers ability to pull off such a feat via emotive storytelling (like that very first TikTok commenter, ‘concerned’ with the execution), is this because you are holding Stranger Things to its own standard, or because you are comparing it to other unrelated TV shows and the choices they made - ones that may have disappointed you in the past?

If I was the Duffers, I would be saddened that my audience was holding me to a standard that is based on a work that has nothing to do with my own work.

Right, so that’s coincidence and surprise covered. But there are 3 main arguments against queer Mike, and me and Robert are going to cover them all, so we can reveal the real reasons people are anti-byler...

Problem 1:

‘Gay people didn’t exist in the 80s!’

I touched on realism in fiction in this post, where Robert McKee describes how factual accuracy in storytelling is not as important as what the writer is trying to emotionally express. But now I'm looking deeper at why people hold the view that facts are so important.

A pro-mileven might say: “Even if queerness isn’t inherently shocking, Mike being queer would be a meaningless deus ex machina because Stranger Things is a period piece and therefore an homage to the 80s, meaning it has to portray the period as it was - a place where two queer boys wouldn’t be together.”

It’s remarkably narrow-minded to assume that one’s individual experience of a period is total. Some people think gay people didn’t even exist in the 80s, by which I have to believe they mean ‘exist openly’, because the other option is so ridiculous that I’m genuinely embarrassed for them. But it’s still not true - some gay people did live openly and happily in the 80s. Even if it wasn’t common - why should the Duffers only want to tell a ‘common’ story? In fact, why should you expect their show, called Stranger Things, to be a story that portrays ‘common’ things?

A period piece needs to be respectful both to the period it portrays, and the current era it is released, or else it risks irrelevancy. But stories are also, by their nature, remarkable, otherwise they wouldn’t be worth telling.

And why should two boys falling in love in 80s smalltown America be outside the realm of ‘strange and remarkable thing that is worth telling a story about’ ? 

Ok, people say, "they can’t live safely and openly in Hawkins, Indiana."

Well, whoever said they were going to stay in Hawkins, Indiana? There are many viewers of this show who want things to revert back to how things were at the start, with the party back together playing DnD. It seems like lots of viewers haven’t accepted Hopper’s speech:

It’s naive to think that the Duffers operate under one of two extremes: either ‘Mike and Will can’t be together because it wasn’t realistic/safe/possible’, or ‘Mike and Will will walk happily hand in hand down Hawkins High Street like this is a modern teen queer romance.’

Stranger Things is going to have a bittersweet ending. The party probably won’t stay together at the end. Should we even want them to?

Mike and Will leaving Hawkins together in search of a better life is a perfectly reasonable and bittersweet outcome if Mike is revealed to be queer.

Ok! Me and Robert have grabbed a cup of tea and a biscuit. Time for...

Problem 2:

'El would be too sad! :('

The next argument against queer Mike is how much it would hurt El to have Mike and Will together. This is where things get tricky, because subjectivity comes into play. 

Of course, Mike and Will’s love story does not exist in isolation, but rather is part of a love triangle. It’s foolish to underestimate the power of rivalry and belonging when it comes to being a fan of fictional romance; if Mike and Will had no other love interests, there would not be the same vitriol there is against them now, even as a queer pair. 

But do you think the writers aren’t aware of this? They are in fact capitalising on the very drama such rivalry creates, and have been since s3. I’m not saying they’re feeding the ship wars, but rather using a common storytelling technique of love rivals to explore ideas about identity and attraction.

In s4, Will is the shoulder to cry on for Mike’s relationship problems, creating a deep discomfort for the audience by making it seemingly impossible for El, Mike and Will to get what they want, knowing that the audience should feel empathy for all three, and employing suspense to leave us wondering that all important question: how will this turn out? 

The narrative then becomes self-reflexive when Mike refers to his own meeting with El as a coincidence to none other than Will himself - a character detail I find very interesting and unexpected.

Mike, our practical boi, believes in fate?!

… and later, during the pizzeria monologue, we return yet again to that first meeting in the woods to ensure the audience ask themselves: was this coincidence, or was it fate?

In s1, this first meeting seemed like a coincidence, but as I mentioned earlier, Mike’s speech has convinced pro-milevens that it indeed was fate. For them, the coincidence has been recontextualised to take on a new meaning.

In writing, this is a fine feat to pull off.

But do the Duffers pull it off? Does it work? Do we believe Mike?

And was it even meant to work?

In the monologue, we have a beautiful mix of:

Mystery (how does Mike feel? Will he explain to El?) Suspense (is this confession going to help save El?) Dramatic irony (Mike doesn’t know how Will feels, but the audience does, which causes us pain and detracts from Mike’s speech being a purely positive moment).

The scene turns on its blend of all three techniques.

But look deeper: there’s more. 

Mystery: Does El know about Will’s feelings for Mike? Did she spy on them from Nina? Has she figured something out? 

More mystery: Does Mike know how Will feels? Did he figure something out in the van?

And what of that coincidental meeting in the woods? Was it fate after all? What does El think of it?

We finally get her POV!

Remember how this scene was from Mike’s point-of-view in s1? We followed him into the woods as he led the search -> he turned around and saw El -> the camera zoomed in on his face to show us what he was thinking and feeling. 

But in the monologue, there are two El's: the one in the parlour that Mike can see, and the one in Vecna's lair, that only the audience can see.

And this clever use of POV in the editing means the same footage from s1 that was originally in Mike’s POV has now become El’s POV as she recalls her own memory of that same night, giving the scene new meaning for the audience.

But does that first meeting scene, seen now from El’s POV, match Mike’s description? Does it look like El is thinking ‘Ah, yes, I can see how you fell in love with me and that you’ve loved me ever since we first met’ ? Is that what is being conveyed to the audience as we see her respond?

Or does it look like this scene is employing more dramatic irony to throw El’s memory of their meeting into sharp contrast with Mike’s description?

Good old subjectivity again - let's believe for a moment that some pro-milevens genuinely do think that El's response (which I read mainly as anguish) is instead overwhelmed relief at Mike's confession of love. Either way, El is experiencing a cocktail of complex mixed emotions at this moment.

Some pro-milevens may even dismiss the context of this scene within El's arc: that she's since been on a journey of self-discovery since the fight in her bedroom, where all she wanted from Mike was a confession of his love. Her self-perception is a world away from the lost girl trying desperately to fix her diorama.

But subjectivity aside, there are some things about filmmaking that you cannot deny, one of which being the use of editing to switch between character POVs. The monologue scene is not solely from Mike’s POV as pro-milevens insist, because POV does not mean a character telling us how they feel. It means the way the camera follows a character to show the audience how they are feeling.

Mike may remain a bit mysterious to us all, but El? Her reaction is pivotal for the end of s4 to work. If we don't think she is upset at Mike, we cannot understand why she ignores him at the hospital when he looks to her for answers about how Max survived. We cannot feel the desperate overwhelmed relief (which no viewer could deny she was feeling) when she finally collapses into Hopper's arms.

The truth of the situation - whether Mike really did fall in love at first sight - is only as important as whether or not El (and the audience) believes him. This is why El's POV is so important.

But hey, wouldn’t it have been great if we had seen El and Mike have a conversation after the confession, so we’d know more about their dynamics? Or even just a single moment of them alone?

Robert McKee says: ‘The more time spent with character, the more opportunity to witness his choices. The result is more empathy and emotional involvement between audience and character.’ 

But the writers clearly wanted to hide that for some reason. Instead, they chose to keep Mike and El apart at this pivotal time, while bringing Mike and Will together.

Pro-milevens rationalise this choice by saying Mike and El's problems are resolved and El is just grieving Max, hence why she's not talking to Mike.

Sure, El is confused and saddened and grieving, and I don't know about you, but if I was going through a hard time cos my bestie had literally just experienced WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY BRAIN DEATH and was now comatose, and my boyfriend finally confessed his love and it saved me and sorted out all our problems (even though there's still some things we need to work through)... I'd probably be sobbing into his arms, ya know?

'El just processes grief differently,' they say.

Maybe. But that sounds like another excuse I've heard before...

The other thing pro-milevens say is that Mike and El are in fact totally fine, no issues at all.

Erm... then wtf is this:

We may not know all the details of why El is upset for certain, but we can reasonably see that she is, indeed, upset - with Mike and probably Will, too, because just look at her face and body language, and the way this scene is presented to us, and what Mike says, and what Will implies.

But this pro-mileven still disagrees!

They also said that if El was still annoyed at Mike after he confessed his love, that would make her petty af.

Actually, they said something like "El still being annoyed at Mike after he made a mistake and compensated for it tenfold is like being angry because he stepped on her toe or something. How petty, vindictive and frankly ungrateful do you think El is???"

Why are pro-milevens so dramatic?! There's good dramatic and there's... whatever that was. I really need to make a post about Robert McKee's chapter on melodrama lol.

If El had qualms with Mike after his confession, it wouldn't make her petty. Humans are complex.

I'm so interested to watch that making-of documentary after the show is out. I'm interested to see how pro-milevens react if the Duffers ever speak about Mike's monologue and say it was deliberately overblown instead of romantic. Will people feel offended that the Duffers’ idea of romance is different to theirs? Will they feel tricked - hence the accusation of cheap surprise?

Because that pro-mileven commenter above is not appraising the scene as it's been presented by the storytellers, they are shaping their understanding of a new scene based on what they think is already happening - or worse, what they want to happen. "El has no reason to be upset."

They are engaging in something called naive realism - the belief that one's perception of the world is objective truth.

It's both a philosophical and psychology concept. In daily life, it usually works fine - we have expectations of what will happen at every moment of our lives, even down to things like putting one foot in front of the other: we expect the ground (and our own limbs!) to support our weight. You might see a red box on the table, and you probably don't question whether it is indeed a red box or something else, until someone says 'hey, that box seems orange to me!'

When I was at art school, there were lots of conversations about perspective. Almost every art student knows the the nonfiction book Ways of Seeing by John Berger, talking about how there are endless different ways to look at something. At art school, you can't really avoid other people's perspectives. Indeed, I'd say that when engaging honestly with a story in any medium, including watching a TV show, you can't really avoid other people's perspectives.

Which is why I can't fathom how some viewers of Stranger Things think there is only one way to see this story: their way. Either they truly think everything in the world is just that simple, or they have reasons to deny the show could be more complex. It feels a little dishonest as a way to view a work of fiction, though. Why would you even bother engaging with a story in this way?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the ethics of analysing this, because it's no longer just about the show, but about the people who watch it. Of course I could be wrong, but all I see are bylers questioning and doubting and theorising and wondering if they are wrong. I never see that from pro-milevens - and there has to be some explanation for this strange fandom phenomenon.

Speaking of new perspectives, it's fun to flip a 180 and reappraise random scenes from the show using pro-mileven-esque logic, where we fit new data to our existing worldview rather than adapt our understanding to include new data.

I wonder how they'd respond to Joyce chain smoking in s1.

‘Oh, Joyce is smoking again, but it doesn’t mean she’s stressed because Will is missing, she just wanted to try a new brand of cigs, which is why she’s so eager to buy the Camels from the store. The store clerk gives her a weird look because he doesn’t like that brand. It has nothing to do with Will going missing.’ 

I mean… sure, Jan.

But what reasonable audience member is going to come to that conclusion rather than the more obvious, and frankly simpler, ‘Joyce is stress-smoking’? 

Likewise, who is going to see El quite literally ignore Mike and shut the door in his face and think ‘Hey! Absolutely nothing wrong there! Plain sailing between those two love-birds!"

LITERALLY NO ONE OH MY GOD. 

Ok, it's not quite comparable, because El being annoyed at Mike could be genuinely confusing for people who think the monologue solved all their problems - meanwhile Joyce hasn't already had a big storyline where she's tried to give up chain smoking and has now cracked, wherein some people could say 'she's not going to chain smoke again, she just wanted to try some new cigarettes and she's only going to have one a day, it's fine!!'

But pro-milevens engaging in naive realism are ignoring one crucial detail:

Screenwriters don’t have long to make their audience understand what is happening. Clarity is key, and visual storytelling is the medium.

Will is the thorny problem in the pro-mileven read of the epilogue. Mike and El talked a little, sure, but it was so minimal that Will - who has been with them the entire ride back from Nevada - had to ask Mike if it even happened at all.

The emphasis is not on 'we talked', but on 'we didn't talk much.'

Pro-milevens will call this nitpicking. A screenwriter would call it their hard work paying off. Every detail matters, and they work hard to make things as clear as possible for the audience.

In season 1, Joyce is clearly stress-smoking. No one questioned this.

The only difference is that there wasn't a subsection of fans who had a reason to deny that Joyce would be stress-smoking.

Thinking the box is red, despite thousands of people saying it looks orange, is not a crime. But now imagine there's a poster on the wall behind the box asking: 'Are you sure the box is red?'

Would you look around and start to wonder... 'Why do so many people say it's orange when I think it's red?'

Or would you buckle down and say whoever thinks the box is orange is just plain old crazy - which is yet more melodrama?

These are two very, very different approaches to life. I think we’re getting closer to the real reason people still push for Mike and El.

But first...

Problem 3:

The Will Problem™

This lil guy???

Some viewers sulk that they simply hate love triangles and romance. Sorry, babe, guess the show isn’t doing it for you. Fortunately (or not), art isn’t compulsory, so feel free to jog on. 

There are also some pro-milevens who think exploring Will’s sexuality is great, but it doesn’t have to happen via him falling in love with his best friend, ruining both his friendship with Mike and Mileven’s relationship. 

"Why can’t Will come out to Mike without admitting his love for him, or just move on? Why couldn’t they just do that instead of making him fall in love with Mike?"

Don't worry, my man Rob's got it covered! Have you ever heard of Levels of Conflict?

Level 1 - Inner Conflict  Level 2 - Personal conflict Level 3 - Extra-personal conflict 

It’s true that we already have exploration of Will’s sexuality via inner conflict - Will vs. himself (his struggles with internalised homophobia and self-acceptance), and extra-personal conflict - Will. vs. society (such as bullies like Troy and Lonnie, who represent societal views).

So why bother exploring personal conflict, aka Will vs. another individual - like Mike, who he's fallen in love with? 

Well… to enrich the story. To make it deeper, better, more complex. Of course Will technically could move on, but why on earth would doing so make Stranger Things a more compelling story?! 

It takes at least two to tango when it comes to romance, and the writers have decided that Will’s love for Mike will be a fantastic vehicle to explore his sexuality on the personal level.

Thank god, because it seems like some of the audience aren’t capable of understanding inner conflict - Will’s longing gazes and silent stares went right over their heads. And they don’t seem to care much about the extra-personal conflict either - speaking of Will’s homophobic bullies, they say ‘that was just life in the 80s!’ 

Besides, imagine a version of the show where Will was best friends with three boys but didn’t end up falling in love with any of them. No one would believe it! "Why didn’t they explore Will’s sexuality by having him fall in love with one of his friends? They’re all cute and they share the same interests! They rescued him! How could he not have fallen for one of them? That would have been so much more interesting!"

And sure, technically, Will could have a personal conflict story that’s just about acceptance. But him being scared to come out is inner conflict - even if he does come out to his loved ones by outrightly saying ‘I’m gay’, it must serve a larger purpose for his character than pure exposition for the audience’s benefit. In a show for adults, you shouldn’t need to be directly told Will is gay just to be able to understand what is going on here.

David essentially says that you should have figured out who Will likes by s4. I hadn’t, but was I pissed when it was revealed?

Nope. It was a thrilling surprise, because who doesn’t love a bit of romance?

It wasn’t a false mystery, because of course Will would feel the need to hide his crush and sexuality until this point.

And it felt like an earned coincidence: of course Will likes Mike - why wouldn’t he, after all they’ve been through and how sweet Mike was to him? 

“But does it have to be Mike?” 

Well, a personal-level conflict would be Will coming up against an obstacle as a result of his queerness. If that doesn’t take the shape of a love interest, it would have to be an individual who dislikes that Will is gay.

Hmm… I wonder if a specific character will have a compelling personal vendetta against Will in s5, a way for the Duffers to explore personal conflict re: his sexuality from an adversary…. hmmm… who could this be?

Oh yes.

I heartily believe we’ll get multiple kinds of personal conflict for Will in s5. There's no pics of Lonnie yet, but I think he's coming back in a big way for Will via memories, too. Bullies like the jocks could even be involved - it could be great, narratively, to see them target Will (or Mike!) as well as Dustin for his Hellfire association.

But if Will has all this personal conflict against villains, I think we need some balance, don’t you? Something to bring some joy for our boy Will…

It doesn't even have to be total plain sailing. I'm of the rare camp that thinks it's possible for Will and Mike to have a complicated ending. I am all about perspectives and possibilities, and I want the Duffers to surprise the fuck out of me. But at some point, they'll come together romantically.

“But WWhY DoEs it have tO be MiKe!!???!!!1” 

Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? If Mike being queer isn’t a false mystery or a cheap surprise that would repulse audiences via a shocking image, why do people still dislike it? Is it really about craft and storytelling, or do people just use that as a way of saying ‘I don’t like this, therefore the writing is bad’ in order to hide their true beliefs, many of which are homophobic?

I’m not really interested in just dismissing anti-byler attitudes as simple homophobia and moving on with my life. To me, all this does is continue the us vs. them divide.

Dismissing anti-bylers as merely homophobic is like dismissing Troy, Lonnie, and even Jason as merely homophobic, without being interested in how they operate in relation to people like Will or Robin, and what the Duffers might be trying to say with these storylines.

When you see the question ‘Why would they make Mike gay?’, isn’t it more interesting to answer the question people are really asking, no matter how clumsily they go about it…

‘Why would the Duffers want to tell the story of two boys who realise they’re queer and fall in love?’ 

To which the answer is almost laughably simple:

Well, why wouldn’t they? 

Just like exploring Will’s sexuality at all three levels of conflict, the creative choice to make Mike queer may well come from an innate sense of what would make a good story. Perhaps it was personal for the Duffers; perhaps not.

Either way, Mike being queer makes for a richer and more unexpected story compared to the everyman ending up with the supernatural girl - a romance that, while still unusual enough to be thematic of Stranger Things, is nevertheless something that many works of sci-fi fiction have done before:

Stranger Things reminded me immediately of Dark Angel (2000), with it's training camp full of weapon-children with shaven heads, psionic powers, and barcodes tattooed on the backs of their necks. It involves a romance between a psychic woman and a regular man who can never physically touch due to some kind of allergic reaction caused by her powers.

Perhaps an abstract ignorance is at play here; the idea that a same-sex couple will be carbon copies of each other, with no differentiation between their respective experiences. It’s true that much of the magnetism within opposite-sex couples comes from the mystery of difference, but there are many ways to explore how different characters find their way to love and sex. Heterosexual love stories do this all the time, even without the problems caused by the closet. 

Some people also say byler would 'ruin' the depiction of a close male friendship, making me wonder if there is a straight male subsection of the audience who long for socially acceptable intimate male friendship in their real lives. But the Duffers' plans for romance between Mike and Will shouldn't be scrapped for their sakes, especially when there are plenty of homoerotic but unconfirmed-romantic male friendships out there, including another fan favourite in Lord of the Rings.

A simpler truth about why queer Mike is great storytelling is that queer romance is still... well, romance. 

All great romance needs something to keep the lovers apart. Back in the day, it was taboo for lovers from different class or racial backgrounds to be together - in some places, it still is. Think Great Expectations by Dickens, or Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (I maintain that Stranger Things could essentially be Pride and Prejudice and Demogorgons).

Think of Save The Last Dance (2001), including a scene where an older lady frowns at the main couple - heterosexual, interracial - kissing on a train. 

They ham it up! This scene is so funny, and I loved it when I first saw the movie as a teen. (And now I'm kind of interested in those poles bisecting the characters' faces... very Will Byers-esque...)

In 2001, such racial scorn was still common enough for this film to push boundaries with its romantic couple. But look - other people on the train are giggling at what the couple are doing in the face of that woman. The woman eventually gets off at her stop, having been able to do absolutely nothing but gripe and grumble.

Queer romance is a very worthy topic that could well be the successor to the other great drivers of romance in fiction: class divides in historical stories, and racial divides in 20th century stories.

It is still scorned and judged and questioned by much of the global population, just like these other societal romantic obstacles lovers face. But in thirty years, it could be the height of mainstream romance, where the majority of audiences don’t even entertain the notion that it should be taboo. 

But that won’t happen unless culture and media pushes boundaries today.

With byler, the Duffers could encourage audiences to stop focusing on preconceptions about how queer people are different (the same preconceptions that make people like Will feel ‘different’ in the first place) and find the similarities in how people of all kinds love each other, and in so doing, create a timeless work of art that challenges prejudices by touching people’s hearts. 

I’m personally hoping religion comes into play for this storyline, because what better way to boldly challenge cultural prejudice? Henry is already associated with the church…

El? Will? Or could it also be the boy with a conservative family who are seemingly on the white picket fence about whose side to take in this town? Perhaps the Wheelers, too, will become social outcasts in a community that seems to be relying on religion to save them from the devil. 

This isn’t to say that the battle will be black and white - I doubt the Duffers are going to blindly condemn all religion, but rather explore its effects in order to say something about society’s treatment of moral divides. Because for some, yes, queerness is amoral: but isn’t the acknowledgement of that exactly what makes for incredible storytelling?

Know your enemy, yes. Understand your enemy well enough to write them well, and in so doing, express your views in a way that might even change said enemy’s beliefs?

That’s timeless storytelling.

Lastly, the part Robert only speaks about vaguely in his screenwriting book: that of audience personal preference.

Mike's character is not for everyone. People have different ideas of what his character even is. But as for Will - the person so many people really do not want Mike to be in love with...

Whether related to his romance with Mike or not, so many people seem to have no time for our boy Willeth. I think this is very interesting when you consider what the Duffers are trying to say when they talk about outcasts. It’s reflective of Western society that even amongst the outcasts themselves, people flock to the more extroverted ones, like Eddie or Dustin. Sadly, society seems to prefer bold go-getters to deep artistic thinkers, and this is apparent in how Will’s inner conflict goes over so many people’s heads. You even see pro-bylers calling for him to become more extroverted, a classic hero who saves the day with a gun in his hands. 

I’m sure Will is going to step up, but just as many people think female characters are only strong if they display traditional masculine strength (I’m looking at you, 'badass superhero El' fans), many people think that strength only takes one form in men, too.

Will is going to save the day somehow, but it might not be how anyone expects. He is a soft boi, and soft bois should be celebrated for the unique qualities they bring.

It's not a crime to hate Will

Yes it is

but it's pretty nonsensical - Will is clearly one of the main heroes - what business have you not connecting with him, at the very least as a worthy player in this story, if not one of your favourites?

But how much responsibility lies with the writer in terms of changing the audience’s allegiance to certain characters?

Well, quite a bit - but look how Max changed in audience perception in s4. People just don't seem able - or willing - to apply existing situations to the future, and believe it could happen with Will.

Writers can only do so much, especially in the face of people who view the story through the lens of naive realism or preconceptions. They use techniques that they believe will tell their story best - at art school this is called the study of context (how well other artists have executed similar ideas) and the study of intent (how well you succeed at executing your own idea). Considering how difficult it is to get a work professionally made, if a story is not understandable, let alone remarkable, it simply won’t make the cut, which is what makes the fervour of the whole mileven vs. byler debate so fascinating.

How can there be two such different, pervasive interpretations of one story without that being the intention of the writers? If you as a viewer find you must explain away the whole story just to make it make sense, wouldn’t it be easier to just accept that this story is not for you, and walk away? 

Maybe not.

I think it goes back to viewer attachment. Fandom will inevitably contain extremism in terms of personal attachment, with higher demand for vicarious experiences compared to the writer's target audience (know in fandom as the 'general audience'). And to an extent, deep personal attachment to characters is fine - the writer wants their audience to live vicariously through their protagonists. If they don’t, empathy can’t form and the story-viewer bond is broken. 

But it's also possible that fans find, in character relationships, a 'love map' of their own desires for a perfect relationship, an extreme form of fandom wherein removing their attachment may be difficult, even if the show is asking them to. 

In the case of pro-milevens, maybe their ideal version of Mike and El is strong enough to override the moments they consider disappointing. You see this when pro-milevens hate anyone who interferes with Mike and El’s love, including Max and Hopper. They want Mike and El to just live happily ever after with no more ‘forced separations’ (meaning narrative conflict). These are the same naive folk who want the government to just leave El alone so she can enjoy her powers in peace. It’s a daydream. No level-headed audience would buy that some corrupt authority, somewhere in the world, at some point in the future, wouldn’t eventually get wind of El’s abilities and set out to exploit her. 

And do you remember what we said about antagonists? About finding the 'centre of good' in a story?

Maybe, rather than simply wanting a story to compel them - rather than even paying attention to the actual story at all - some fans use story as a way to validate themselves and their pre-existing beliefs, to prove to themselves and others that they are aligned with 'good' against 'evil'. Maybe believing the box is red is more important to pro-milevens than wondering if it could actually be orange instead.

And I'm sure they'd accuse pro-bylers of doing exactly the same thing. But the difference is that many pro-milevens reasons for disliking queer Mike go against the values of Stranger Things itself.

No matter how many Stranger Things viewers may find queerness distasteful, their own views and baggage do not apply to the world this show has set up already. If you can’t engage with a story’s values, instead replacing them with your own, the story-viewer bond will break.

I can't imagine engaging with a story at this level of cognitive dissonance, but hey, maybe there are deeper issues at play.

Maybe this isn't about good storytelling at all. Perhaps, at heart, it is about ego.

Look at this pro-mileven commenter, who seems to conflate theorising with winning and losing, with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. 

Jesus. Like Steve said to Dustin - a little humility wouldn't go amiss! It makes me wonder if this pro-mileven is projecting their own fear of ridicule onto everyone else, because they also implied that the worst fate that could ever befall a Stranger Things fan is to be laughed out of a fandom community.

Laughed off the sub? Don’t threaten me with a good time!

I don’t have a reddit account but can someone please respond with ‘Unlucky for you, I’ve got a ridicule kink’ and see what they say. I mean, some pro-bylers ('byelers'!) have been spending… what… nine years being laughed off the sub?

What’s new, babe?

The commenter also implied that pro-bylers must hang around and explain why they were wrong, enduring ridicule, elsewise they’re cowards.

And I can't help but relate this to themes of the show.

Standing your ground is often admirable. You might win, you might lose. But leaving to protect yourself is not necessarily cowardly, either. There's a middle ground, and I'm very interested to see how the show handles this idea in s5, especially with Will.

Pro-milevens seem to think being wrong is the end of the world, that losing is something you can never come back from. And doesn't that just seem like a fundamental misunderstanding of the core themes of this show about losers, outcasts, and resilient people who never stop holding out hope?

I arrived in this fandom because I noticed Mike and Will had romantic chemistry, and stayed because this queer love story has captured my heart. I seek truths and answers and beautiful storytelling, and being wrong doesn't scare me. I hope and expect to be wrong, in some ways.

As Robert McKee said, when speaking about mystery in crime storytelling:

‘Of course, if we could win the race, we’d feel like losers. We try hard to guess the who or how, but we want the writer’s master detective to be just that.’

So there is the crux of the reason for queer Mike hate: a heady mix of homophobic tendencies, a dislike of Will’s character, and personal attachments to Mike and El as a way to reaffirm existing beliefs about the self.

But wait... there's just one more thing.

Form.

We all chat about the context and the content, but the form, baby! The structure!

Let's quickly return to the same pro-mileven commentor from above, because they also said, on the byler v. mileven debate as a whole:

'I would argue... that I have far more basis to back my stance. And it has nothing to do with interpretation. Regardless of whether you think [Mike and El] didn’t resolve their issues at the end of S4 or that I did, the fact the remains that the Duffers have kept El and Mike together as a pair for four seasons. Based on a vastly long experience watching TV, it would be incredibly rare, so rare in fact, that I can’t think of a single example, to have a romantic pairing like theirs, where it’s been built over multiple seasons, blow up in the final one. I’m sure it’s happened a time or two, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s unlikely to happen.'

I'll ignore how they said that Mike's romantic attraction is the 'blatant reality' throughout s4 and therefore still don't understand subjectivity, as they claim to.

And let's also ignore their use of the sunk cost fallacy: thinking that it's a good idea to keep doing something just because you have always done it... which is exactly the opposite of the Obligatory Scene, a.k.a the essential turning point that a story must have in order to actually end...

Because even if they genuinely don't like the idea that the Duffers could have been breaking mileven down to explore how 'conformity is killing the kids', this commenter is still implying, whether intentionally or not, that Stranger Things cannot, or should not, do something that has rarely been done before.

This is known as the normalcy bias. And it just makes me wonder...

DO THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT ART IS?

What screenwriter is quaking in their boots at the idea of doing something that no other screenwriter has done before?

What screenwriter is in fact not designing something precisely because it is unlikely, especially the guys who wrote a show about being different??

Story is an art, not a science. Probability, likelihood and normality does not have the same function in artistic design as it does in the scientific method. Besides, even scientists get creative and have fun with theories that cannot yet be proven.

To limit not only the content of art, but it's very form, on the basis of what has come before curtails artistic originality itself.

It is suggestive of traditionalism in ways I don't even want to think about. But it makes me wonder how big of a reader this pro-mileven is; whether they like novels and cinema and philosophy and psychology and theatre and contemporary art as well. Because while they compare Stranger Things to every other TV show they've ever seen, they fail to acknowledge that Stranger Things isn’t really like any other TV show at all.

It's different.

Its form does not take the shape of a multi-season show, or even an anthology. The Duffers have named each season as though they are movie sequel instalments, but that's not quite right either. Instead the whole thing is one big story, a sweeping Stephen King novel brought to the screen, jumping between character POVs and locations and periods in time until, like a theatre play, it comes full circle with a reprise that throws you back to the very start.

So to say Stranger Things won’t do something because no other TV show has done said thing is, quite simply, ridiculous.

Darlings, it’s already doing it. 

Surely there will be other TV stories taking on unusual formats. I don't think people need to study story craft to enjoy TV. I'm not trying to be a snob. But to not be able to recognise that Will was always a very important part of this story (and that queer Mike is a valid extension of that) doesn't only tell me that anti-bylers are homophobic or attached to their ideal of Mike and El, but rather that the way they engage with story itself is... limited.

Ok, I'm sounding like a snob, but I'm not sure if I even care at this point, considering the amount of warfare I've seen pro-bylers go through in the years since s4 aired alone, just to defend the simple idea of possibility. And hey! I could be dead wrong in the end, but it could also turn out that the people who enjoy byler are quite simply people who just enjoy art itself - creativity, freedom, the unknown, possibility, emotional expression, truth.

In short, all the good stuff.

And that kind of makes them a lot like Will and Mike themselves, doesn't it? The artist and the writer.

To finally conclude...

I fully believe that part of Stranger Things' brilliance is in its form as well as its content, a meta-exploration of queer invisibility that also causes the audience to miss the queer people hiding in plain sight... resulting in a beautiful and unexpected surprise that combines realisation - the payoff of curiosity - with intense emotional understanding - the payoff of concern.

Of course the bottom line is that none of us have control, because the Duffers are telling their own story, and we are just audience members along for the ride. But if somewhere along the way, you turn out to be wrong, or if your personal identity is challenged, even just a little bit, in the dark of a theatre or a cosy living room as you watch the end of this show, would that be such a bad thing after all?

I'll finish with this quote from brilliant author Donna Tartt, who herself quotes Stephen King, a major inspiration for the Duffers:

"Skills are needed to understand when characters do something so black and white that there's no deep subtext needed to understand it."

My main man Robbie McKee is shaking his head right now. He ain't got time for nonsense like this, because:

1 - Subtext does not exist to help the viewer 'understand' a surface action that is otherwise nonsensical. It is not a communication aid - rather, it is an aspect of cinematic language that adds to the meaning of the story.

2 - (and Robert is very adamant on this one) There is always, ALWAYS, subtext. The only time there might not be intentional subtext is at the very end, when characters have been 'taken to the limit of human experience' and the writer has exposed the true meaning of the story - but even then, a deeper symbolic meaning may be interpreted.

The reason for this is simple:

Stories are metaphors for life, and life is full of subtext.

Those who don't agree are simply unaware of the subtext that exists all around us constantly, both intentional and unintentional. In fact, its a reason for so much miscommunication in life - which is a major theme of Stranger Things. There's even subtext for why I'm creating this post - maybe you can figure out what it is as you read :)

Now, as we go on, I'll be quoting direct passages from Robert McKee's wonderful book on screenwriting, Story. They'll be in italics and quotations, but bear in mind this book was written in the 90s so any wording should be taken as contextually appropriate. For example, Rob substitutes ‘he’ for ‘any gender’ when referring to the writer, but he explains why he does so in a foreword. Spoiler: it’s for ease. Being economical is typical Robert - and you'll see why later!)

Let’s crack on!

‘Just as a personality structure can be disclosed through psychoanalysis, the shape of a scene’s inner life can be uncovered through a similar inquiry. If we ask the right questions, a scene that speeds past in the reading and hides its flaws brakes into ultra-slow motion, opens up, and reveals its secrets.’ 

PAUSE.

Already, Robert is letting us know that it’s great and good and wonderful and important to analyse your media if indeed you are interested in the craft of storytelling. He probably didn’t think he had to write that one down for us, but sorry Rob, the internet can influence a bitch sometimes.

I mean...

Many pro-milevens are happy to explain away any byler fan as someone who just has a prior agenda to see a gay romance on screen at any cost, which is not only wildly presumptuous but also shows a complete lack of curiosity.

And so few people understand the concept of Mike and Will's romance being latent. That it has future potential, that it is coming into being - and therefore any hints and clues are just that: hints and clues that could support a later reveal, not incontrovertible signs that are supposed to be THE things that show an audience byler is already happening. And some bylers do indeed speak like Mike and Will is inevitable, but honestly, Stranger Things is not a completed work, so anyone who says they know how it will end...

Well. What would Robert think of that? His advice to writers is as follows:

'The audience is not only amazingly sensitive, but as it settles into a darkened theatre its collective IQ jumps 25 points. When you go to the movies, don't you often feel like you're more intelligent than what you're watching? That you know what characters are going to do before they do it? That you see the ending coming long before it arrives? The audience is not only smart, its smarter than most films, and its all a writer can do, using every bit of craft he's mastered, to keep ahead of the sharp perceptions of a focused audience.'

In short, what screenwriter wants their audience to know how their story will end?

And why should you, as a viewer, even want to know?

It's a violation of the story ritual; the pleasure of sitting in 'a darkened room' and watching something play out from beginning to end. I think its worthwhile, in fandom, examining exactly why fans on both sides might need so desperately to speak for Stranger Things when it hasn't finished speaking for itself.

Looking to see where the story might go, however, is part of the joy of being a viewer. The writer wants to keep you hooked; they do everything to peak your curiosity.

But takes like this one confuse the heck outta me:

Do you find them confusing? Do they have you scratching your head, wondering what exactly it is that this person is railing against? Is it subtext itself? Do they think symbolism and subtext truly doesn't exist, that art really is shallow?

That's sad. Clearly my man Robert over here is just a joke to them.

But maybe they simply deny anything that is used as a hint towards byler, for whatever reason. I'm more interested in that, so let's have a closer look.

There's lots to unpack here!

New language! 'Supertext'.

The One Way sign means one thing only

Who Mike loves has been clearly shown both in action and dialogue

First, 'supertext.'

Chill out Officer Callahan, it could be a real term. Let me just consult Robert McKee's book while I loudly sing ‘supertext’ to the tune of 80s funk classic Super Freak by Rick James.

("That girl’s a super text, she’s pretty textyyyyyyy") 

Ok, I'm being facetious; they clearly mean the 'text', as opposed to the 'subtext'. I’m all for inventing new prefixes and suffixes, but I just think that if you're going to discuss the craft of writing, especially in such condescending terms, you should probably use the right words.

So, what's the text?

‘Text means the sensory surface of a work of art. In film, it’s the images onscreen and the soundtrack of dialogue, music, and sound effects. What we see. What we hear. What people say. What people do.

'But subtext is the life under the surface - thoughts and feelings both known and unknown, hidden by behaviour.

Nothing is what it seems. An old Hollywood expression goes: If the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep shit.'

Oh my god.

Does Robert even know how hot and bothered I am right now? My mind is 95% Mike Wheeler and 5% the pressing need to plunge my head into a bucket of ice-cold water.

Second point of contention: 'The One Way sign is just a One Way sign.'

Knowing what we now know about scenes never being what they appear, that doesn't seem very likely. But maybe that commenter thinks other subtext exists, but that the sign itself is not one of them.

Is the sign even subtext?

The text is that Mike is in his bedroom, late for school and needing to get dressed because Nancy is waiting for him.

The subtext is that Nancy and Mike have a fraught relationship, and that Mike's going through a difficult period in his life, signified by the state of his room, his lack of care for personal hygiene (wearing yesterday's clothes), and his tardiness. Oh, and that the letter from El has him preoccupied in a way that for some inexplicable reason contributes to his overall disorganisation and foul mood.

Some people may disagree with this subtext. They may say this understanding is just subjective, that Mike is just a teenage boy so of course he's messy, and it means nothing.

But nothing ever means nothing in a story, because all artists have is subjectivity. Emotion, implication and connotation is their very currency. As Robert McKee's book will show us later, facts and objectivity have no place in a story. Instead, writers work with signifiers that they believe their audience will understand, able to infer reasonable meaning about what is going on.

The other option is bad exposition: telling an audience exactly what is happening in a way that feels contrived. That's bad storytelling; lazy, easy, and undisciplined.

It's reasonable to infer that the state of Mike's bedroom tells us something about him, because not every teenager in this show has a messy bedroom. But Mike does.

Why?

And why does he have that One Way sign on his wall?

I mean, sure, it could just have been a gift or something cool he saw, but it also appears right where Mike's head just was when he bends down, drawing momentary focus to it, and it forms a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for diving straight into the closet. So if that's a coincidence, it's a hilarious one. I would also say this is symbolism rather than subtext.

'Symbolism is very compelling. Like images in our dreams, it invades the unconscious mind and touches us deeply - as long as we're unaware of its presence. If, in a heavy-handed way, we label images as 'symbolic', their effect is destroyed. But if they are slipped quietly, gradually, and unassumingly into the telling, they move us profoundly.'

Don't forget that Robert is speaking to people who want to write screenplays. If you want to write subtext and symbolism, he says, you must be subtle. This alone validates the One Way's sign's potential importance as a symbol of Mike's queerness, despite only being on screen for milliseconds. Perhaps the fact it's only seen briefly is part of its subliminal power.

Another example of symbolic imagery in the show could be El hanging cruciform in Vecna's hellish red lair and the field of flowers dying at the end of s4; things that enrich the telling rather than carry it.

Now for the trickiest and most prevalent take against byler: 'Who Mike loves has been shown in both action and dialogue.'

Let's get into the weeds of what subtext is. Here's a worthy scene to analyse.

Robert McKee says...

‘Often a first draft [of a scene] falls flat or feels forced… the problem won’t be in the scene’s activity, but in its action; not in how characters are talking or behaving on the surface, but in what they’re doing behind their masks.’

‘Nothing is what it seems. This principle calls for the screenwriter’s constant awareness of the duplicity of life, his recognition that everything exists on at least two levels, and that, therefore, he must write a simultaneous duality: first, he must create a verbal description of the sensory surface of life… second, he must create the inner world of conscious and unconscious desire, action and reaction. As in reality, so in fiction: the writer must veil the truth with a living mask, the actual thoughts and feelings of characters behind what they're saying and doing.'

It's time to talk about facts vs. truth, baby.

First, here's some of Robert McKee's Essentials of Being a Good Fiction Writer.

The love of duality - a feel for life’s hidden contradictions and a healthy suspicion that things are not as they seem The love of uniqueness - the thrill of audacity and a stone-faced calm when it is met by ridicule The love of beauty - an innate sense that treasures good writing, hates bad writing, and knows the difference. 

Construct a story in a way no one has ever dreamed, says Robert, including fresh insights into society and human nature coupled with in-depth knowledge of your characters and their world.

In-depth knowledge of your characters and their world.

Sorry to interrupt Robert, but I think I just heard someone say that the Duffers genuinely forgot the date of Will Byers’ birthday despite it being included in the text of the show - in dialogue during a major climactic moment, no less - and that the date of said birthday just coincidentally happened to also be the very same day that Mike Wheeler arrived in Lenora to celebrate spring break, after which a season’s worth of chaos ensued, but that the writers just forgot all of this, or didn’t once think to check. 🎉 🥳 🎁

But sorry Robert, please continue, by telling us what makes a bad fiction writer. 

'The writer of spectacle mistakes kinesis for entertainment, creating an assault on the senses that bears no resemblance to life whatsoever.

Meanwhile the portraiture writer believes that the more precise his observation of day-to-day facts, the more truth he tells. But because this writer sees only what is visible and factual, he is blind to the truth of life. Fact, no matter how minutely observed, is neutral. It is truth with a small ‘t’. Big ‘T’ Truth is located behind, beyond, inside, and below the surface of things, and cannot be directly observed. 

The weakest possible excuse to include something in a story is ‘but it actually happened!’ Everything imaginable happens. Indeed, unimaginable things happen. Mere occurrence brings us nowhere near the truth. What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what [the writer] thinks about what happens.’ 

So.

It kind of looks like all those arguments about Mike and Will ending up together being unrealistic are moot, doesn't it? Not because the show is about supernatural monsters and a girl who flings stuff in the air with her mind, though. Emotional groundedness is still important, even in fantastical sci-fi.

Stranger Things, however it turns out, will be the Duffers’ views on life and the world, dramatized. If the Duffers want to express a view of the world that includes a teenage gay romance in smalltown 80s America, then they will find a way to do that. What people are saying when they say that byler is 'unrealistic' is that 'The Duffers would never want to tell that story.'

To which I say... really, bro? That's the impression you're getting?

So far, I don’t find the Duffs to be overly concerned with making something just to appease a certain subset of conservative audience members, do you? If so, would they really have chosen to make a show with overt anti-conformity, anti-authority themes that dramatizes a real and declassified US government program involving illegal human experimentation? Seems kind of like asking for trouble if you want plain sailing, don’t you think? 

But what about Mike's actual actions and words? He said he loved El NINE TIMES!!!! AND COUNTING!!!!!!!!

Welp, looks like we've got to look at the meaning of dialogue. Robert, help me out.

‘Text means the sensory surface of a work of art. In film, it’s the images onscreen and the soundtrack of dialogue, music, and sound effects.

Dialogue is not conversation. Eavesdrop on any coffee shop conversation and you’ll realise that you’d never put that slush onscreen. Real conversation is full of awkward pauses and poor word choices, while dialogue requires compression and economy. It must say the maximum in the fewest possible words.’

This makes Stranger Things very interesting, because the conversations themselves are often self-referential, with the narrative acknowledging how the things people say are often different to what they mean. Do you remember when Robert said this:

'An old Hollywood expression goes: If the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep shit.'

‘This means writing on the nose; writing dialogue and activity in which a character’s deepest thoughts and feelings are expressed by what the character says and does, a.k.a writing the subtext into the text.’ 

I love that he said ‘on the nose’ - who else said that in Stranger Things?

Our boy Will :)

Oh, Will is well aware of subtext and implication. Did we really think that, as a young gay boy in small town America, he wouldn't be well-versed in what things might mean?

He even downplays the implication he knows his painting holds, by drawing Mike's attention to the heart, not away from it, yet changing the meaning of that heart into something else. Will is a master at hiding in plain sight.

Now for an example of some bad dialogue with no subtext.

Robert McKee considers the following to be bad, 'on the nose' screenwriting:

‘Two attractive people sit opposite each other at a candlelit table, the light glinting off the crystal wine glasses and the dewy eyes of the lovers. Soft breezes billow the curtains. A Chopin nocturne plays in the background. The lovers reach across the table, touch hands, look longingly in each others’ eyes, say ‘I love you, I love you’ … and actually mean it. 

'This is an un-actable scene and will die like a rat in the road.’

Lmaooooooooo Robert!!

Ok, hackles might be raised now, because I’m sure there’s plenty who want a love confession between Mike and Will where they tell each other their truth. But...

'Actors are not marionettes to mime gestures and mouth words. They’re artists who create with material from the subtext, not the text. An actor brings a character to life from the inside out, from the unspoken, even unconscious thoughts and feelings out to a surface of behaviour.

The candlelit dinner scene is un-actable because it has no inner life, no subtext. It’s un-actable because there’s nothing to act. Self-explanatory dialogue convinces no-one.'

This is what is so interesting about Mike's monologue. Do some fans really believe what he is saying? Are they really happy with the lighting, visuals, mood, tone, music for such a grand - as they think - declaration of love?

Eh, maybe not, but this isn't as important to them as words. For some reason that is beyond me, they think words are superior to other cinematic language, like mood:

Listen, Mike's insecurity is a perfectly valid artistic reason to be unable to say 'I love you'. In fact, it is likely a huge part of his entire struggle - I'm sure we'll return to the Wheeler Family Values in s5.

But the Duffers just had to go and ruin mileven, didn't they, by 'resolving' this storyline with an entire season to go.

If Mike's monologue is genuine, it means they've done that big no-no: they've written the subtext into the text and created an un-actable scene. No wonder people said poor Finn did a terrible job. It also means this scene is 'the end of the line' for Mike and El's romantic arc, making it a subplot that resolved itself long before the story is over.

But we can reasonably infer that Mike and El as a romantic pair will indeed be a part of s5. Obviously they will not just be happily fighting evil side by side, because - and Robert says this in his book - that would be boring as fuck.

Ok, he doesn't actually say boring as fuck.

But he does say that such fantasy would be boring. 'Stories are not daydreams', he says. Mike and El with zero conflict and a perfect relationship throughout s5 is, indeed, a daydream. And a boring one at that. They will have a storyline in s5, and there will be conflict. Therefore this scene is not a resolution, and must contain subtext.

Another big reason why there is clearly more at play here is because these shots form a part of the text:

Will is one thing, but Jon, bro? Get the fuck outta here if this is just a romantic Mike and El moment! Makes no god damn sense.

Some people think the Duffers are totally inept and somehow accidentally included some meaningless shots in the climax of this arc. Some people really think that. I despair for art itself.

But others think 'It's just to let you know that Will is still sad that Mike doesn't love him'.

Let's combine it with this take for maximum impact:

'Mike saying his life started the day he found El in the woods has nothing to do with Will, because it was the day after Will went missing.'

Robert has something to say about this, too:

‘Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Wittingly or unwittingly, all stories faithfully mirror their maker, exposing his humanity… or lack of it.’ 

Ouch!

Stranger Things is unfinished. Therefore, by theorising, we are writing our own version of what we think this story will be. Anyone who writes Will out of this narrative reveals their humanity - or lack of it.

Now, Robert elaborates on the subtext-free, un-actable dinner scene.

‘Why have this couple gone out of their way to create this romantic scene? What’s with the candlelight, soft music, billowing curtains? Why don’t they just take their pasta to the TV like normal people? What’s wrong with this relationship?’ 

Because isn’t that life? When do the candles come out? When everything’s fine? No. When everything’s fine, we take our pasta to the TV like normal people.

So from this insight, the actor will create a subtext. And when we watch, we think: He says he loves her and maybe he does, but look, he’s scared he’s losing her. He’s desperate.'

But wait... how does a writer reveal character to an audience, if we cannot trust their words?

'The character must be tested by an ultimate event, a pressure-filled choice and resulting action.’ 

This is called a dilemma: either the choice between two good things when they can only have one, or a choice between two bad things where they must choose the lesser of two evils. 

'Human nature dictates that each of us will always choose the ‘good’ or the ‘right’ as we perceive it. If a character has an easy choice, where the ‘right’ thing to do is clear, the audience will know in advance what he will choose.'

And no screenwriter wants their audience to be ahead of the game. 

Clearly this is a 'lesser of two evils' moment for Mike. But what higher stakes could there be than El's life? What makes this a dilemma at all? Shouldn't the choice be easy, Mike?

So why did you hesitate?

Maybe Mike's choice was a little more complex than his own vulnerability vs. El's life, as mileven fans believe, hmm?

So what do you think Mike’s actual choice is?

Did he see through Will’s veiled confession, and is now choosing to lie to both El and Will, pretending he loves El to save her life while accepting he will hurt Will in the process?

Or is he still in the dark about Will's feelings, and is lamenting the loss of being able to tell Will he loves him, sacrificing that in order to save El instead - the one in more dire need?

I'm not even sure we're supposed to know yet. It's all a big cliffhanger mystery, left unresolved to keep us on our toes going into the final season. But no matter which theory you believe, it's clear that any lie Mike told was a white one - a lie with good intentions.

'Subtext doesn't make people insincere. It’s a common sense recognition that we all wear a public mask. We say and do what we feel we should, while we think and feel something else altogether. As we must. We realise we can’t go around saying and doing what we’re actually thinking and feeling.'

Robert acknowledges that humans typically choose not to express how they truly feel, sometimes out of self-preservation - especially the things that we fear society might not accept - but usually because so few of us truly even know ourselves.

Either way, Mike is ever the paladin. He sacrifices, in some way, himself - always.

Now, if you’ve got the energy, here’s a final exercise. I’m so excited about this, and I hope you’ll stay for this last piece. 

In Story, Robert McKee includes a method of analysis to break scenes apart and make them give up their subtextual secrets. He also shows you how to write a love scene that is filled with subtext, to contrast that monologue un-actable candlelit dinner. 

‘Picture two people changing the tire on a car. It’s a virtual textbook on how to change a flat. All dialogue is about wrenches, spanners and jacks. 

“Hand me that, would ya?” “Watch out.” “Don’t get dirty.” “Let me just… whoops.”

Beneath the text, the actors will interpret the real action of the scene, so leave room for them to bring romance to life wholly from the inside. As their eyes meet and sparks fly, we’ll know what’s happening because it’s in the unspoken thoughts and emotions of the actors. As we see through the surface, we’ll lean back and smile:

‘Look what happened. They’re not just changing the tire on a car. He thinks she’s hot and she knows it. Boy has met girl.’ 

Oof! Boy meets girl, a tale as old as time. But what about boy meets boy, hmm? Could two boys lock eyes while changing a tire?

Or, perhaps, while packing to escape the military?

Are locked eyes and flying sparks exclusive to heterosexual people? 

I don’t think so. 

So, to finish, we’re going to do Robert’s subtext analysis on the infamous Dear Billy heart to heart.

Step 1: Define conflict. 

Who drives the scene, motivates it, makes it happen? I think it’s Mike. He comes to Will’s room. Therefore we must ask:

What’s the subtext of Mike’s actions here? What does he want?

Desire is always the key, or as it’s called by actors, the scene objective.

So what does Mike want? To reconcile with Will?

Now look at which forces of antagonism are blocking Mike’s desire. Is it the military, come to capture everyone?

Nope, no military are here yet.

The force of antagonism is, instead, Will.

How interesting. This lil guy, with his utter surprise that Mike is even talking to him?

An antagonistic force isn't always a villain - instead, just the force that prevents a protagonist getting what they want.

What does Will want at the start of this scene?

To keep packing? On the surface, perhaps - in the text. But the subtext of that is… what? To find out, we must find the opening value of the scene. What Will wants should be in direct opposition to what Mike wants.

Step 2: Find the opening value of the scene. 

If anyone saw my previous post about the potential values of Stranger Things, I theorised they are Truth/Lies or Freedom/Slavery. But what’s the value at stake here in this scene specifically, when Mike enters Will’s room?

I think it’s Self Preservation/Openness, or Peace/Conflict - because Mike and Will have been arguing. The protagonist who actively drives the scene (Mike) is in the negative of this value; he has been surly and dishonest with Will, and they have unresolved conflict after their Rink-O-Mania fight. 

So what does Will want, in direct contrast to Mike?

To keep the peace. To protect himself. To not let Mike in. He isn’t ready.

(An alternative view would be that Mike himself is also his own antagonist. You could do this exercise by viewing Mike as battling against himself, too.)

Step 3: break the scene into beats

A beat is an exchange of behaviour between characters, action -> reaction. Look at what they are literally doing, and also what they are actually doing beneath the surface with emotion attached to it. Name this subtextual action with an active phrase, such as ‘pleading’.

Action -> reaction.

Mike -> Will. 

Text and subtext. 

And keep in mind the value of peace vs. conflict.

Beat 1:

Mike comes into Will’s room, readying to leave.

Mike’s subtextual action: approaching Will. 

Will: ‘Packed already?’

Will’s subtextual reaction: diffusing potential tension with small talk. 

Mike: ‘I never really unpacked’. Mike sits down on Will’s bed. 

Mike’s subtextual action: making himself at home + a further hidden symbolic subtext within the dialogue that suggests he is keeping secrets.  

Will keeps packing, facing away from Mike.

Will’s subtextual reaction: refusing to further acknowledge him. 

Beat 2:

Mike thanks Will for giving him a reality check.

Mike’s action: trying to get Will’s attention.

Will - ‘I didn’t say it.’ 

Will’s reaction: playfully teasing. 

Mike - ‘You didn’t have to.’ 

Mike’s action: reciprocating the teasing. 

Will smiles and turns away, speechless.

Will’s reaction: protecting himself.

Mike smiles at Will’s turned head, then shakes himself.  

Mike’s action: redirecting his tactics. 

Beat 3:

Mike: ‘Hey also, erm, about the other day...’ 

Mike’s action: apologizing.

Will: ‘You don’t have to say anything…’

Will’s reaction: resisting. 

Mike: 'No, no, you didn’t do anything…'

Mike’s action: insisting.

Will turns to him in surprise.

Will’s reaction: paying attention.

Beat 4:

Mike starts explaining himself and how he has felt over their time apart. 

Mike’s action: humbling himself. 

Will sits and listens.

Will’s reaction: listening. 

Mike tells Will that he sets him apart from their other friends. 

Mike’s action: confessing.

Will keeps listening.

Will’s reaction: considering him.

Mike asks if he is making any sense. 

Mike’s action: wanting to be understood.

Will nods.

Will’s reaction: understanding him.

Beat 5:

Mike: ‘I have no idea what’s going to happen next.’ Glances away and back.

Mike’s action: making himself vulnerable. 

Will listens still.

Will’s reaction: anticipating.

Mike asks Will if they can be a team, friends once again. 

Mike’s action: supplicating/pleading. 

Will nods.

Will’s reaction: yielding.

Mike pauses, then says that he wants to be best friends again.

Mike’s action: showing Will that he listens to him.

Will: ‘Cool.’ 

Will’s reaction: making himself vulnerable.

Mike smirks and repeats Will’s ‘Cool’. 

Mike’s action: solidifying his reconnection with Will. 

Well well well.

Do you remember what we said about the value of the scene being Conflict/Peace or Self-Preservation/Openness? What value did we start on? 

Negative. 

And what value are we ending on? 

Positive. It looks like Mike got his desire: he reconciled with Will. No wonder the boy looks so smug. 

But what of Will, as the antagonist here? He did not get his way: to keep protecting himself from Mike.

If we look at the overall pattern of action -> reaction in this scene, the theme is of Mike approaching and Will resisting, over and over again until finally, Will succumbs. Maybe what Will wanted for himself was not something that would actually have benefitted him in the long run. As so often, Will is his own worst enemy. 

But this scene is a favourite for a reason - there is more than one layer of subtext here.

We have the text of what Mike and Will are saying and doing - coming into a bedroom, packing, having a conversation.

We have the context: They've been fighting. There's tension. El is missing, and it is the first time in many months that Mike and Will have been properly alone. What will happen?

We have dramatic irony: the audience knows Will is gay and attracted to Mike, but Mike doesn't. You might reasonably infer a subtext that Will both enjoys and is self-conscious about Mike looking at his body. The camera is certainly not shy about including Will's behind prominently in frame, showing us exactly what Mike can see.

And now we have the first subtext: Mike and Will don't need words to understand each other. And isn’t it fascinating that, despite Will being on his knees, it is Mike, in the end, who is the one pleading?

But look! Good friends can understand each other without words, too. It might not mean anything!

But remember - the good writer must stay two steps ahead. And because good stories well told are not just about the what, they are about the how... they use elements of both the text and subtext together to create yet another layer of meaning that rises slowly to the surface.

That meaning? Tentative romantic interest.

We have a tender melody: 'On the Bus.'

We have a slow tempo and warm lighting, creating comfort and safety.

We have camerawork that pans in slowly, creating a mood of intimacy and curiosity and asking us to look closely at their faces and question their inner thoughts.

We have the acting itself: facial expressions and body language that convey a mood of tentative physical interest and flirtation.

What would Robert say?

As their eyes meet and sparks fly, we know what’s happening because it’s in the unspoken thoughts and emotions of the actors. As we see through the surface, we’ll lean back and smile: ‘Look what happened. They’re not just packing, or talking about their friendship. He thinks he’s hot, and he knows it.'

Listen, there may well be plenty of people who genuinely don't see this as flirtatious for whatever reason. Seeing as Stranger Things is unfinished, it doesn't really matter. No one should rob those viewers of the pleasure of having their own insights while watching the rest of the story themselves. We all came to byler at our own pace.

But there will also be people who deny this could be romantic for other reasons. They might say:

'Mike wouldn't be flirting with Will, because he's not gay / in love with Eleven / doesn't fancy Will.'

There are two approaches to life: adapt new data into your understanding and work from there, whether you like it or not, or alter new data to fit your existing worldview. It doesn't matter that you don't think Mike is gay, or that he'd never like Will, or he still loves Eleven, because a good storyteller parses out exposition little by little, and we are being shown, not only in subtext but in the text, that Mike Wheeler is smiling flirtatiously at Will Byers - so now what?

Well, they might say:

2. 'This isn't flirting, he is just smiling at Will.'

Give me a break. This is not a smile. This is a smirk.

But, what is the thing we must acknowledge? Art is subjective. And because Stranger Things is still unfinished, both byler and mileven are reasonably inferred outcomes right now. You could make a case for them both.

The question instead becomes: do you think the Duffers are writing a good story, well told?

Have the Duffers chosen to write bad exposition, un-actable scenes with no subtext and a simpler plot? Have they brushed off their own mistakes and neglected to know their characters inside out?

Or do they instead have a mastery of their craft, a comprehensive understanding of their characters that goes beyond anything the audience can yet imagine, and the ability to lay depths of subtextual groundwork and show empathy for all kinds of characters?

I've seen milevens openly say that the editing in the monologue was shoddy and that the epilogue of s4 should be redone, but that they are happy to accept what even they see as a badly written story as long as it's the outcome they want.

Me? Not so much. Remember what Robert said?

The love of beauty - an innate sense that treasures good writing, hates bad writing, and knows the difference. 

I'm a byler fan because all signs, from my man Robert McKee and beyond, point to byler being the better story - not just in content or theme, but in craft.

This is known as the Major Dramatic Question. It is the hook that makes the audience want to watch, planting in their mind what is known as the Obligatory Scene (or Crisis), an event the audience knows it must see before the story can be done. 

It’s important to note that stories are about the extremity of the human condition. They push characters to the very limits of their possible experience, on the axis of a value, reaching the highest highs and the lowest lows. What might the value of Stranger Things be? All stories have one overarching main value, even if they have many smaller values. I think it might be Freedom/Slavery, or Truth/Lies. More on this later. 

Now, if your story is a happy ending (called Idealist), the Inciting Incident might be the worst possible thing that could happen to your protagonist, a negative on the value axis, with the following story then being why it turns out to in fact be the best thing for them. Tragedy is the opposite - a great turn of events turns out to be their downfall - and an Ironic ending is bittersweet, stretching the protagonist many times between joy and tragedy, over and over, until the ending rests at a place of both happiness and sadness. 

Was El sending Henry into another dimension the best or worst thing that ever happened to her? Was it THE original incident that upset the balance of her life and set her story in motion? And what would be the Obligatory Scene that results, the thing the audience just NEEDS to see before the story is done?

Many argue it’s seeing El defeat Henry for good. Sure, this is an intriguing idea, and we do need to see El's plot tied up.

But is this the greatest mystery of Stranger Things that we need answered? Really? I don’t think so. It was not the event we saw at the start of the story that set things in motion, because this particular cast of characters would not necessarily have even met El if one thing hadn’t happened. 

What is the thing the audience has always been dying to know about Stranger Things? What is the Obligatory Scene the story must provide us before it can end? The thing that never quite made sense?

How, and why, Will Byers went missing. 

"But El has so much screen time! She’s so bold and active! A true protagonist!" the people shout.

Well, of course we don’t have the missing puzzle piece yet. If ST is treated as one large story, then s1 would be the Inciting Incident and Progressive Complications...

... s2-s3 Progressive Complications...

... s4 Progressive Complications and Crisis...

...s5 ongoing Crisis and Resolution. 

It’s also an ensemble show, with many subplots that expand off of one Inciting Incident. Will going missing is, for example, also the Inciting Incident for another beloved character.

Guess who.

Hi Mike :)

Will going missing is an event that happens to Mike. It upsets the balance of his life and his quest becomes about restoring that balance by saving his best friend.

But by the end of s4, Will is still not safe.

Mike still has not saved him - not really. A huge part of Mike’s quest is incomplete. 

So where does Mike lie on the value spectrum of Freedom/Slavery at this point in the story? (Note that the concept of slavery is contextually appropriate, meaning 'trapped or controlled' here).

Mike's early narrative values were mostly external: having fun playing DnD with friends = positive freedom. His mom cuts their game short = negative, controlled. He isn't allowed to search for Will = double negative. Then later, Mike’s story becomes more internal and complex, with Freedom/Slavery coming to represent his place in society and inner battles in a subtle subplot. He breaks free by playing DnD, but is then trapped by his idea of being a good boyfriend, and so forth as we progress into s4. 

But the very best stories push to the limits of human experience. They go beyond the positive and negative, and reach a double negative, what McKee in his book calls the Negation of the Negation. What could this be for Mike on the value of Freedom/Slavery or Truth/Lies?

Slavery masquerading as freedom, and denial - lying not only to others, but to oneself.

Mike comes from a seemingly perfect middle class suburban conservative family. It's the definition of white picket fence America. Everyone should, technically, be happy - but they aren't. If Mike continues down this road of normality, he could end up in a life where he tricks himself into thinking he has everything, but is actually in denial.

And what about Will? What’s his quest? Was being taken - his Inciting Incident - the worst thing that ever happened to him? Surely it wasn’t the best. On the value axis of Freedom/Slavery, he was captured - a negative value. If Will’s story is not to be a tragedy, his quest must be about how his vanishing will turn out to be something good in the end. And as Stranger Things will be a bittersweet (Ironic) ending, this Inciting Incident will turn out to bring both happiness and pain for Will.

So in what way could going missing have been a blessing in disguise for Will, allowing him opportunity for growth? What positive values could come about on the potential axes of Freedom/Slavery and Truth/Lies?

Will is enslaved by his secret - his sexuality - as well as by the shameful trauma inflicted on him by the creatures of the Upside Down, a possible metaphor for abuse. He experiences brief moments of freedom - positive value - when he is rescued, when he plays with his friends, and when he escapes the supernatural in California, but his sexuality secret remains - negative value.

But what is the Negation of the Negation for Will?

It's remarkably connected to what Vecna's ultimate goal is. Vecna wants to control the world, forcing people to live under a tyranny that he deems ideal, even if no one else wants it. He apparently wants to free people, but all he would be doing is enslaving them.

For Will, slavery masquerading as freedom could take the shape of Vecna trying to manipulate him into joining him, forcing Will to live in a form of denial where he accepts he can never have the freedom he craves.

Now, it’s important to note that while Will is a seemingly passive protagonist, he is in fact not passive at all, because his actions and choices have profound effects on the narrative (such as the painting lie, his choice to fight back against the Mindflayer in s2, etc), making him an active character.

And this is when I came across something very interesting in my screenwriting craft book.

A film called Ordinary People was mentioned. It’s a social drama about a family with a dark secret. The son has psychiatric problems and is freshly home from hospital. His mother is cold and resentful towards him, and his father is the passive, kindly man who wants everything to be right. There are two plots: the central plot, and the subplot. But the two are often mistaken.

People think the main plot is about the mentally unwell son, who has been despairing ever since the death of his brother in a boating accident.

His story is action-driven and draws the audience's eye with big emotion, a plotline given more screen time and more emphasis, leading people to think it is the crux of the story. 

But the main plot, the central plot, actually belongs to the father - quiet and seemingly passive, he is the spine of the story. And because he is so quiet, the writer chose to do something highly unusual: to build the main dynamic of the film around the subplot, foregrounding the young son’s despair at the loss of his brother and how this rends the family apart, while subtly increasing the momentum of the main central plot in the background; that of the father figuring out what actually caused his family to fall apart. 

I won’t spoil Ordinary People for you. But I found it very interesting when my hunch was confirmed and I found that this movie, this simple domestic social drama, was included on the Duffers brothers’ s4 film inspiration whiteboard. 

So, in Stranger Things, what could be the hidden central plot? Who could the main character be, even if they are quiet and seemingly passive? What was the true Inciting Incident of this story, the thing that set everything in motion, sparking a burning question that the audience needs answered? 

And is Will capable of restoring the balance? Is this his quest - to reclaim his childhood? Is this what he truly wants? 

Or is he in fact on a journey towards an 'Ironic' ending, both happy and sad, where he learns that his unconscious desire - what he actually needs - is something else entirely?

And how could the Inciting Incident - being taken - actually turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him? 

Could it, somehow, give him the courage to finally grow and reclaim power over his own life? To turn the Freedom/Slavery axis back to positive? Could Will not only gain the courage to live truthfully, but gain a double positive, and receive the thing he's too hopeless to actually want for himself?

Will thought he wanted to have his childhood back, but perhaps what he secretly wants is to grow up. To grow up into his true actualised self, a gay man, free and able to love and be loved in return. 

And Mike? If his Inciting Incident was losing Will, then could that also turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him? Mike says befriending Will was the best thing he's ever done - but that might not have been enough to make him confess his feelings had they both lived relatively normal, untroubled childhoods. 

But losing Will? And potentially losing him again in s5?

That might do it.

Mike’s quest, his conscious desire, his want, has been to save Will. Maybe it's also to be saved, from his humdrum life.

But perhaps what Mike needs is not just someone to save (Will), or to be saved by (El).

Perhaps, deep down, his unconscious desire is to find the courage to be able to save himself. To be his own superhero, the paladin from his fantasy games. To live a life unchained by the expectations of society - a life of freedom and truth.

Byler has a beautiful symmetry to it not because it’s the restoration of original balance before the Inciting Incident - not because it’s what the characters have spent the entire show thinking they want - but because it has the potential to be the perfect Resolution; the unexpected outcome that neither Mike nor Will consciously let themselves need.

Of course, they would both have to weather terrible losses as well - this will be a bittersweet 'Ironic' ending, after all, and the Obligatory Scene might well be a showdown between Will and Vecna, but Mike and Will coming together romantically would certainly be an event of irrevocable change, something that upheaves the characters’ worlds and not only restores, but renews them, ending their quests and rearranging their lives in a way that the audience knows can never be undone. 

Rather than imply parallels/inspiration as many of you have on here, I will be analysing the use of implicit detailing, subtext, tropes, hints and clues in queer fiction; the devices an author in 2023 has used to suggest and acknowledge that queer folk have had to hide in plain sight for centuries. Every trope, every coded Byler bit we have discovered, was here, in this book.

Picture if you will: a young man named Ellwood.

He is a mix of Will and Mike - poetic, artistic and romantic, but also sweeping and theatrical and  and loud and outspoken, with a terrible temper when provoked. He is extremely reckless when unhappy. 

And picture, if you will: a young man named Gaunt.

He is also a mix of Will and Mike: shyer and more reserved like Will, but pragmatic too, preferring the classics over the romantic poets; tough and tall, he is a boxer, using his fists instead of talking about his feelings. 

And it was this mix, dear reader - this intoxicating mix of both of our boys in both characters, that had me thrilled throughout (along with, of course, the fantastic story in it’s own right). The story explores how these two young men navigate their growing hearts, from boarding school onto the WW1 battlefield - with both revealing their inner psyches to the reader (it’s written in a dual-character pov, deftly switching perspectives throughout). The book explores many themes beautifully, especially WW1 and its effect on mental health, alongside, of course, queer love in a time of fear. But it is the miscommunication that stood out to me, and no matter how dissimilar the stories and characters are in other ways, I couldn’t help but notice the semblance between this love story and that of Mike and Will’s in Stranger Things. 

Most notably:

Two friends from childhood, both in love with each other

Both presuming the other entirely uninterested (Gaunt thinking Ellwood simply enjoys being loved by all and any, and Ellwood assuming Gaunt ‘utterly decent and conventional’)

Gaunt having a twin sister, Maud, whom he presumes Ellwood loves and will one day marry (Maud is also rather taken with Ellwood)

The period-accurate setting also means terms for queer folk are dated. I was interested by the term ‘invert’, which I had not heard of and found interesting in relation to the Upside Down. (Examples include ‘he’s inverted’ and ‘he’s an invert’, both of which are used in a friendly/informational situation rather than a derogatory one) 

You may also notice some other similarities that make you chuckle! I hope you will indulge me in a deep dive of an unusual sort, in comparison to my other Byler posts. 

Shall we begin?

Cast of (analysis-relevant) characters:

Sidney Ellwood / Elly (nickname by Gaunt only)

Henry William Gaunt / Gaunto (nickname by Ellwood only) / Heinrich Wilhelm (he is half-German) 

Maud Gaunt - Henry’s twin sister

Maitland - an older schoolboy; a former ‘particular friend’ and paramour of Ellwood’s

Hayes - a working class soldier at the front, Gaunt’s unlikely friend and confidante 

.

Where else to begin, but with Maud? She is our El... Gaunt's twin sister, and Ellwood's presumed suitor. The parallels are already manifold, and the author gently explores the implications of Ellwood settling for Maud when she looks very much like Gaunt.

Gaunt goes to war first, leaving Ellwood behind. As you can see above, he does not write to Ellwood often. And yet, though consistent, Ellwood's correspondence to Maud is unsatisfactory for her. And him? Well, he barely notices her letters as the war (and other heartaches) take their toll.

In another letter, this time to an old friend, Gaunt writes of Ellwood:

It's maddening that he can still have my attention in such a place as the frontline of a war.

Remind you of anything?

That's right, they're straight up pining over a dead body, in the middle of an urgent mission.

Not to mention Mike dismissing his own personal tribulations in the van scene. And that last little bit about Lantham? That flavour of bitter jealousy has Mike Wheeler written ALL over it (and s3 Will, too).

By now you might have noticed that letters are also a theme of the book.

Yep, letters!

There is a large epistolary section of the narrative, wherein letters are used to reveal inner psyches not only to the audience, but to other characters.

Letters are even mentioned within letters.

As the war slowly devastates him, Ellwood writes to Gaunt:

The tone is one of vulnerability; Ellwood explicitly (and riskily) acknowledges to Gaunt the nature of his relationship with Maitland, revealing his homosexual leanings. He recalls how Gaunt defended him in front of their entire class. He mentions how he recorded what happened; how he remembers Gaunt's every choice and action.

Who does this sound like?

and

Both boys also notice things about each other, storing the information away...

and they even take mental note of when they do or don't touch.

oh, and...

when Ellwood finally shows up at the western front? Well, Gaunt can't even look at him. In fact, he's been getting drunk on whisky to cope with... the war. That's what you'd have us think, right, Gaunt? But their cook accidentally reveals that supplies are low because Gaunt drank two bottles of whisky the day Ellwood arrived. Lmao! Sounds like poor Jonathan and his weed.

But check this out. At night, when they're alone sharing a room, they revert to their true, vulnerable selves. Bear in mind that they have not confessed anything to each other at this point, and the roomshare is a standard set up for soldiers.

Male affection was clearly different in the Edwardian era, it's true, but sharing a bed and kissing? Nope. That's mad intimate. Both of them know their friendship keeps treading dangerously close to something else.

And do you know why Ellwood had climbed into Gaunt's bed in the first place?

He was having terrible nightmares of what he'd seen and done in the trenches.

Nightmares that wouldn't leave him alone, nightmares so vivid that he writhed in bed and awoke the whole house every night. Ellwood comforted him - 'it's just a bad dream' - clambering into his bed as Gaunt slumped into him, all frost between them gone in an instant. 'I keep telling myself that, but it's all so terribly real,' Gaunt replied.

But what else is it about that roomsharing scene that sounds familiar to our boys in the 80s?

'When I got here, you couldn't even look at me...'

and of course, when they're alone, (almost) all is reconciled, explained, forgiven.

and look at this!

Some remark about women and marriage. Sounds like...

Because, yup. This line of questioning comes up a lot. From both Gaunt and Ellwood.

So much to unpack here. The boys are about fifteen, still ensconced in their boarding school. They're in a bathroom, getting 'sozzled' with a bunch of friends (whose banter is remarkably fantastic - any fans of Dead Poet's Society or The History Boys will adore, but it also aligns nicely with the vibe of Lucas and Dustin and the party as a whole).

We have Ellwood intruding on Gaunt's personal space by leaning against his chest in the bathtub. We have the alignment of homosexuality with immature, boyish desires. We have two side characters speaking about what it means to be a man (drowning gallantly rather than surviving like a coward - oh, the Edwardian times). We also have delicious miscommunication: Ellwood constantly hinting to Gaunt that he loves him, all whilst assuming Gaunt is utterly uninterested, and Gaunt, in turn, utterly hopeless and protecting his heart by suggesting Ellwood marry his sister instead. And then to finish it off, their friend notices just how close together they always seem to be.

And indeed, later, we see from Ellwood's viewpoint:

because, of course, it has been Gaunt all along, for Ellwood.

Ellwood quotes a poem that connects to Maud as a coded love confession to Gaunt.

A poem... a painting. A confession of sorts.

And Gaunt tried to tell Ellwood how he felt once, too...

...tried to send him a letter, but couldn't find the words.

Ellwood writes too. He writes poetry, and recites Shakespeare's love sonnets to Gaunt, who is still dense enough to not understand the subtext (<3). He promises, angrily, that he will write Gaunt's in memoriam if he is killed in the war. Gaunt does not understand why he is angry, but then we are taken back in time, to a springtime some years before...

And we see Ellwood responding to his feelings with anger; we have him desperate to spend the rest of his life with Gaunt, knowing his love will never fade; and we have him distracting himself by romancing someone else.

But it is Gaunt, too, who reflects Mike when he also takes up with a woman... Elisabeth, whom he meets while held in a prisoner of war camp (the camp is hilariously lax, relying on honour and gentlemanly rules rather than security to ensure no one escapes. Again - oh, the Edwardian era). He is using Elisabeth to escape, but she doesn't seem to mind - she also has a beau somewhere, and they're making the best of a bad situation.

But:

'Withhold no atom's atom'? What's that about? We'll get to that later.

because if this doesn't sound like a certain someone who is associated with cliff/falling imagery.

There is recognition of choices: choosing an easy life that is a lie, or choosing a difficult one, full of truth and love, and yet of fear.

Let's return to Maud.

She's barely in the novel, but her presence is significant, and her story a powerful one full of independence and agency. When Gaunt and Ellwood both return from the war, Maud confronts Gaunt.

And doesn't this just look like a trajectory we could be on for s5?

Not understanding, at first. Realizing.

A conversation with her brother, where she demands information and defends herself.

And finally... accepting the truth. Supporting.

You mustn't keep anything from me anymore... he doesn't want me... I don't want him... I'm afraid I've been a terrible brother.

It's all so WillEl coded. And that ending! What can Will do to make it up to El? What can Mike do, for that matter? Perhaps... persuade Hopper to let her go explore the world? To let her become free (yet still tethered to, and loved by) all the men in her life who have tried to control her? Maud gets what she always wanted: her independence. She decides not to marry ('I haven't time!'). She leaves England, going to study at a top university in Germany, where she assists the famously-progressive German LGBT activism movement, which was in its foetal stage after WW1.

And here is where we deviate from any theories I have seen! The idea that, even once they have confessed, Gaunt and Ellwood (and therefore, for the sake of this post, Mike and Will) might still continue to doubt. The angst! I wonder if this is the route they will go in s5... it's taking long enough to even get to a first confession, but perhaps more drama will unfold in the shape of revealing themselves not only to each other, but to their friends and the world. If their love confession is a mid-season beat, the climax of s5's rising action, perhaps it will be finding the courage to live as their true selves boldly that will save Hawkins itself in the finale. They'll confess, but fear and doubt will get in the way; I can see Will pushing Mike away, fearing for his safety when Vecna climbs back into his mind. And it will be the realisation that living truthfully, openly and with love is what saves you, not what weakens you. I can picture a second kiss, the Heroes kiss, the one where they kiss like nothing could fall... a kiss that will come not in the first confession, but later, when they reconcile after one of them having pulled back. And that will be the final dramatic beat of their storyline.

But that said, there are so many opportunities for back-and-forth angst in s5 as Mike and Will navigate their feelings and whether to confess or not. Will Mike realise the significance of the painting of his own accord? Or will it take Vecna playing a Tik Tok-style supercut of his and Will's entire relationship for him to understand? Or will he simply understand how dire their circumstances are, and confess to Will in desperation, consequences be damned?

Cryptic confessions. But the painting has a god damn heart on Mike's shield, and El is nowhere to be seen on the canvas (shade, Will!). Like Ellwood says: how thick are you? (<3)

Is Mike going to get annoyed at Will for creating confusing messages, or will he only ever have nothing but love for Will's art? Will he be understanding of Will's predicament? Will it be Will's selflessness itself, his sacrifice, that finally causes Mike to break, to confess, to fling himself into Will's arms and admit everything? Perhaps even - shock horror - before everything is resolved with El?? It's possible.

And will they once again be interrupted at a crucial moment?

Or will it be Will who finally realises something, just like Gaunt, who finally puts 'two and two together and comes up with infinity'?

Mike Ellwood devasted when Will Gaunt left... distracting himself from the real thing...

And talking of people distracting themselves from the real thing... in one segment, Gaunt holds Ellwood tightly on a London train to ease his panic attacks, in a brilliantly wry nod to everyone who has ever witnessed the ignorant disregard of queer culture (or dare I say, disregard of portrayals of queerness in media?):

Every trope we've seen in Byler so far is in this book; this queer love story. There are a million more that don't fit into this post, including a couple of injuries that @lesbianmindflayer would be proud of (if I remember her Byler limb-loss predictions correctly?)

You may have picked up that the story has many more sexual themes than Stranger Things (explicitly, anyway). The boys are seventeen, and yet, the nature of the all-boys public school world they were in is revealed by the author to have been one of darkness and sexual predation, with boys frequently ‘using each other’ in secrecy, while sometimes - though not often - finding true tenderness, connection and love. This begins quite young, and the book tussles with desire of all motivations, including power, attraction, desperation, isolation, curiosity, and genuine love. Our main two never mistreat each other, and regularly save each other. When their desire is expressed at a young age, it always has agency: Gaunt says how he had ‘wanted Ellwood’s hands on him since he was thirteen’.

Of course times have changed in over a century, but I also found the implication that this is not just a thing of the past to be a particularly interesting aspect of the narrative, especially considering the negative discourse that has spiralled on here in the past year regarding Byler's sexuality, and not least because I have no personal experience of growing up in an elite boys boarding school. The way Winn depicted young men in the upper classes of this era navigating their coming of age, and queer coming of age at that, was fascinating to read. My post on sexuality in Stranger Things (with specific regard to Mike and Will) is available here!