Byler is probably one of the saddest examples of a lost potential in writing a great love story with queer joy. Instead it feels like we got queerbaited for the million time.
This has made me wanna make a YouTube video going through all 5 seasons of Stranger things with a Byler perspective, analyzing what story is being presented no matter the intentions.
We will take a look at Mike's queerness and how the earlier seasons supports this whether they wanted to or not.
Will's crush on Mike and when it becomes visible. The tension we see in season 4 but also in season 3.
What exactly went wrong in season 5 and was it hopeless from the start.
Also I wanna focus on parallels between Byler and Canon couples and how Byler's friendship even differs from other friendships in the party.
It's probably gonna be a long video so I don't know when it will be out.
YES. Byler not being canon literally hurts Will as a queer character. Because now every shred of queer joy we've seen is bittersweet at best and tragic at worst. Now every shred of queer joy has this undertone of "this never mattered, his crush was just a crush, he spent years yearning and waiting and hoping for absolutely nothing".
Now his only canonical queer joy is simply implied, while his canonical queer suffering is at the forefront of his character. We see his queer suffering in excruciating detail, and his queer joy can be summed up to "he will be happy and confident in his queerness later..... maybe."
And don't even get me STARTED on how it fucks over Mike-
FOR REAL! that's exactly the points I wanna make when talking about Will's writing and the way queerness is handled in stranger things. I probably will aldo add something about Robin and Vickie.
There is a lot of writing decisions that makes no sense if they wanted to make a story about outcasts and also uplift that type of character.
Oh MIKE was majorly fucked over, not only do we see that his ending has a real life effect on people (people coming out because they don't wanna be Mike Wheeler) but he also just screams overlooked, as if they started a storyline and decided "oh he's to queer we can't focus on it."
But also Mike's other struggles such as jumping of a cliff, the need to be needed and his leader role. There is so much to touch on with Mike.














