There was now queerbait in stranger things. Please educate yourself what queerbaiting really is.
-yours truly, someone who lived through the early fandom tumblr days
i might sound a little blunt because i tried to answer this before, yet lost the draft to everything i had written twice. itās also late as i type this, because of the new year. for those things, i do apologize.
what i wonāt apologize for is calling stranger things queerbait. iām going to provide my interpretation of queerbait, followed by the oxford/google definition, as well as reasons why that i believe support those definitions.
queerbait, to me, is a mediaās purposeful hinting at some sort of LGBTQ+ representation for the sake of gauging LGBTQ+ fan interest despite not following through with/not having explicitly stated that representation.
above is the oxford/google definition, which i believe is fairly similar to my own.
yes, we were queerbaited by stranger things. no, this is not in reference to confirmed LGBTQ+ characters, like robin being lesbian or will being gay respectively. this is more in reference to mike reciprocating willās feelings in the byler pairing.
a lot of the queerbait i think came from season five in particular; however, there were signs before that. people shipped byler because of those signs, because we believed there was a chance of it happening.
iām going to list particular promo that gave me hope personally.
the below images wouldāve been as early as post-season 3, when we first saw explicit signs that will was gay (iāve heard that not many people seemed to pick up on will being referred to as queer in s1).
iirc, korrasami got together in the last few minutes of the last episode; catradora had feelings of āshe doesnāt love me the way i love herā in the penultimate episode before getting together officially (these tweets felt relevant recently, after episode 7 (the penultimate episode of the entire show) with will coming out and describing mike as his tammyāāwho isnāt like me.ā)
then thereās also media parallels. first ones that come to mind are eyewitness/the s3 rain fight and high school musical 2/the s4 rinkomania argument.
(let me preface with the fact that i have not personally seen either of these respective medias in full, but i have seen the bigger scenes of what they refer to. if i am wrong about any of these descriptions, however, i would prefer to be corrected!)
first is eyewitness/the rain fight, where, as far as i know, the character on the left (lukas/mike) is secretly gay and the character on the right (philip/will) is in love with him. almost frame to frame.
then hsm2 with troyella (a canon couple)ātheir song āgotta go my own wayā is more of a stretch imo, but also similar to the rinkomania scene. particularly in regards to willās āand us?ā and the āwell, what about us? what about everything weāve been through?ā at around 2:07 of the song.
and even after that, as mike starts talking about āreaching out,ā the song āin the closet (at rink o mania)ā starts to play. which is connected to el hiding in the storage closet at the time, yes, but also felt a bit on the nose to start playing during the byler argument.
and thereās little things too, promo-wise. like the entire painting/will airing out his feelings through el, the promise of it being addressed/āmikeās obliviousness paying offā (i believe is something similar to what was said, correct me if im wrong. itās almost 2am as of writing this portion.), and then having the fact that will painted it never brought up AS WELL AS mike CONTINUING to have it up in his room at the end of the show!!!
but thereās little stuff throughout the show as well. thereās the constant blue/yellow color symbolism between mike/will, and things only going ārightā when theyāre wearing their respective colors. thereās ācrazy together.ā thereās mike wanting reeseās pieces (willās favorite candy) in the hospital in s3 (i forget which episode), the vending machine getting jammed, and, when el uses her powers to get candy, he gets practically everything but the reeseās pieces he wanted. thereās will being milevenās Biggest Supporter in s4, to him suddenly asking robin how she knew vickie wanted to date her. not make out like robin assumed, like weāve seen mileven do. thereās robin talking about signals (brush of the elbow, shared looks) and snowballs and avalanches, and byler does exactly what she lists signal-wise, as well as the coke-spurring everywhere when will catches rovickie vs the pipes bursting being the most common interpretation of snowball vs avalanche. thereās will being basked in light when mike talks to him one on one (one of the ending scenes of s4 where will talks about āstill being able to feel [vecna]ā comes to mind). thereās the creelby connections. thereās the one way sign pointing to mikeās closet. thereās ted wheeler, who is shown to be homophobic (in regards to will, and believing that his disappearance was due to him getting hatecrimed for being queerāāsee, michael? this is what happensā is the quote, i believe) crashing through said closet. thereās mike being referred to as āthe heart,ā then will running towards cardiology(?) after catching rovickie at the hospital. thereās the byler-lumax parallels (lucas/mike & max/will, notably in the hospitals s2/s5). thereās the mileven-stancy parallels. god thereās so much i can barely name them all.
all these signs, and so many more that i couldnāt possibly name because itās late, and for that i am sorry, gave me hope. gave us hope. if the duffer brothers supposedly āknewā that willās storyline was always going to be about self-acceptance, they did not need to drag out all these signs that we noticedālucasā āi donāt believe in coincidences anymoreā this season comes to mind. these arenāt coincidences.
but, sure, maybe it wasnāt queerbait. maybe weāre insane for thinking a show about outcasts with all of the signs i mentioned above wouldnāt break the norm of giving the queer character the arc of self-acceptance and an epilogue partner. maybe none of the above was intentional at all, despite how insane that would be.
byler fans had hope from details in the show across almost ten years. thatās not us looking too into things at that point; thatās more than likely intentional rather than not.
so, yes, stranger things queerbaited its byler audience. you either believe it, or you donāt. what happened today in the finale still happened, that wonāt change.
iām not going to go out and say that i now hate the show because byler isnāt canonāif you hate a piece of media because of a ship and its stance in the canon material, then i personally doubt you could consider yourself a fan of that media. stranger things can have queerbaited us and still hold a special place in our hearts. i know how much itās meant to people. i just also think weāre allowed to be hurt by what happened.
anyway, i think iām rambling. itās late. i just hope whoever reads this takes care of themselves. happy new year šš















