#infp rant

Stop, and I mean STOP, calling Bylers 'fetishizers'. I, unlike you, am a member of the Byler community which means I actually KNOW who's here. A lot of us are LGBTQ. I'm actually present and participating, unlike you, so I know what this community is largely made up of. It is homophobic to try and reduce queer people to a 'fetish'. The popularity of BL doesn't mean that the fans of queer mlm characters/ships are just straight BL fans. BL doesn't erase queer people in fandom or reduce our numbers. And it's homophobic and ignorant to say otherwise. Queer people will love and support queer ships, including mlm ones. We don't just disappear because BL exists.

BL fans are welcome and I don't have a problem with them in this fandom: I have a problem with people who dislike Byler insisting that Byler is essentially a BL ship with 'straight' fans. That is not what makes up a large chunk of this fandom. And it absolutely pisses me off to see queer people called 'straight fetishizers'. Even the Bylers here who are straight are not fetishizers, like come the fuck on. I'm actually here and see people.

I hate to see Bylers, who are incredibly smart, always surprising me with genius theories that the other side could never come up with, called this damn word. I love and admire this amazing community here. I love everyone here.

And I am so damn tired of people arguing that queer people shouldn't get the story that is actually uplifting and inspiring for them, instead of a story that is a heavy reminder of how shitty real life can be as a queer person. Absolutely no one who's queer wants to see a [checks notes] 'real representation of gay life in the 80s' where they fall in love and experience heartbreak. Queer people in the 80s met each other and fell in love. It's not somehow 'more 80s' to be rejected by a straight person. And absolutely no queer person who experienced the 1980s really wants this story. Who the fuck does? If you want to demand a 'real representation of the 80s' you might as well demand to see men with AIDS. We're not seeing that because this is supposed to be hopeful and inspiring.

And I'm sorry but the argument that El is 'disabled' and therefore deserves love with Mike is very questionable. El is arguably not disabled, though she does have trauma from her abusive upbringing. If she were disabled, I don't think what she needed was a silly boyfriend who made her feel insecure in season 3, and then made her feel ashamed and 'like a monster' in season 4. Even between 3 and 4, she felt deeply insecure about herself with Mike. Let's be real, when a girl is recovering from a deep trauma, and in this case joining society after being isolated and abused, what she needs is family, a real father, and good friends. What she absolutely does not need is a boyfriend and all of the immaturity and insecurity that typically comes with that. Who would recommend a boyfriend for a girl like this, from 13, in real life? I do not understand why people are genuinely trying to argue that El having this boyfriend is of great importance. El having a family, a found family, including platonic friendships that she feels secure in, that's what's of importance for a character like El.

Queer people have every right to be concerned about the potential for queerbaiting, and no, we're not going to direct our anger at Noah if we do get queerbaited because guess what? Noah is gay. It's not his fault. He's a member of our community, yes, the lgbtq community, which a lot of Bylers are members of. And it wouldn't be directed at anyone but the creators, writers, producers. The people who put that queer subtext between Mike and Will in the show.

What pisses me off the most, is that Stranger Things is clearly a show for queer people, to inspire and uplift queer people, and yet the queer fans who have seen all of the Mike/Will subtext are reduced to 'fetishizers' (and teenage girls, which is a misogynistic way of dismissing Bylers and their intelligence), and called 'delusional'. Despite many of them having the skills, acquired through education and actual professional jobs, to see that Byler is real. People who actually know about film and storytelling are seeing Byler.

What Ifs, paradox, overthinking and anxiety...

All too familiar to those that are the INFP type. Crisis after crisis of the possibilities. Sometimes carrying a weight so heavy that we can barely take it anymore. Then when it seems that we can handle ourselves, we take on the problems and burdens of others. The weight crushes us and again get heavier as the time moves on. It can send us into a spiraling sadness and even depression. A never ending circle that makes us think constantly. Thinking of a situation 25 ways. Even if the situation is not real. Some of it is protection for ourselves. Some of it is daydreaming and playing. Allowing our minds to escape down a path that could be likely, yet even if is not, we allow ourselves to go down it anyway. 

Much of my work involves being bathed in the cold, cold reality that most of those who oppressed had monuments built for them, while those who have fought against oppressors had their bodies buried, unmarked and undiscovered, in a ditch somewhere, whose names are never to be uttered, least of all remembered, again.

It hits me hard, because idealists are either mocked upon their whispers of yearning for a better world, or simply tossed and slain when they dare effect the world with this vision.

And yet, it is by these people’s blood that we get to roam a little more freely, it is by their corpses that there grew all of our rights that we deem to be basic today.

As an INFP activist, I thought getting out of my own head to act and to join worthwhile movements would be the end to my sense of alienation from this world, but it has only made it worse.

At my worst moments, I have come to doubt my sanity and my practicality, along with those who fight with me.

Surely, there is derangement in seeing something where others could not, in fixing something people don’t see to be broken.

And it is in these moments that I come close to giving up my fight.

But being myself, I don’t want to stop fighting. Not when I too strongly see, smell, taste, hear, and feel what others could not.

I’m an INFP activist, here to say, I’m very disappointed in this world.

I’m honestly too good for it.

But like the others — unsung, yet unbridled — I’ll still fight for a better one.