#rollforempathy

The Mileven vs. Byler divide has become one of the most charged discussions in the fandom...but it doesn't have to be a fight. What if Mileven and Byler aren’t competing, but are two halves of the same story?

I'm writing a more in-depth essay on the Stranger Things subtext and had been planning to keep this perspective to myself until it was finished. But the more I see people fighting the ship war (and it’s difficult to avoid at this point), the more I want to share at least some of it. I believe Mike and El's relationship is essential to understanding Mike and Will's on a symbolic level. These pairings are connected and strengthen each other’s story.

From my reading, El is more than just a character. El — a child locked away in the Rainbow Room, treated as monstrous, misunderstood, who emerges wearing a yellow shirt into Mike's life when he goes looking for Will — could be an embodiment of love (her nickname is even the first letter of the word). More specifically, Mike's feelings for Will. By rooting for El, I believe you're rooting for the part of Mike that's learning to understand and accept himself. Through this lens, the progression of Mike and El's relationship makes a different kind of sense.

(For the next few paragraphs, El = love/Mike’s feelings for Will.)

In Season 1, El escapes repression at the same moment Will vanishes. She appears to Mike as he's searching for Will, linking the two events. When the boys bring El back to the Wheeler's house, Mike is the most comfortable with her. The following day, when El points to Will's picture, Mike's feelings stir. He hides El in his closet as Karen arrives home — this is deeply triggering for El.

I’m not the first to notice a queer-coded tone to the conversation that follows. Karen's words can be read as her suspecting that Mike has romantic feelings for Will and she's letting him know that it's safe for him to come out to her when he's ready. Mike considers telling his mum about El. There's a sound from the closet — they both hear it. Mike's not ready; he tells Karen there's no one else home.

Seen through this metaphor, Mike becomes a frightened child experiencing internalised homophobia, with El representing his repressed feelings. "What is wrong with you?!" suddenly lands very differently.

This closet metaphor centring around Mike and El is relentless. When El first says "I love you" — as many have formerly noted — they stand in front of an open closet with a lightbulb above Mike's head. This is often mentioned as significant to Mike, but I think it means something for El too. She’s not being forced into the closet this time; she’s expressing herself, and she’s elated at finally being able to do so.

The first time we see Mike in Season 4, he is framed in front of his closet while El's letter plays in voiceover. She mentions Will's painting and her suspicion that there is “someone he likes”. Mike is visibly annoyed and moments later he is framed with the "One Way" sign pointing to the closet. This is not a very hopeful image for Mike’s journey. Indeed, when we see El, she's not doing great at all. She's hiding her true self and the pain she's experiencing, trying her best to just be "normal". Mike’s repression blinds him to her suffering.

When Mike arrives at the airport, El wears Will's old, blue and yellow shirt and we immediately see that something is off as El's face falls reading "from Mike". This is followed with the uncomfortable interaction between Mike and Will. Mike spends the day so focused on ignoring his feelings for Will that he doesn't see the harm it's doing until it erupts — right at the moment Will finally says something to him. And where does El go after this complete disaster at Rink-O-Mania? The Closet.

The detail of El's presence in the closet is often glanced over in favour of highlighting the relevance of the "In The Closet" soundtrack to Mike and Will. But if she represents Mike’s feelings, El being in the closet is just as (if not, more) significant to what is happening between Mike and Will.

"WE'RE FRIENDS! WE'RE FRIENDS!" Mike is still trying to deny his feelings. As a result, he hurts Will, in turn hurting himself. El then lashes out in front of everyone, projecting his turmoil. Mike is terrified of his feelings and the possibility of being seen.

“What did you do?!”

“You think I'm a monster too..."

"...you were scared of me."

I've heard it said that Mike does nothing throughout Season 4, but maybe it’s deliberate. Self-acceptance is rarely a straight line. Mike apologises to Will, admits he was a jerk, acknowledges that he focused too much on El — read symbolically, too much on suppressing his feelings. He takes a step forward...and then retreats, redirecting his energy back toward worrying about El again (his feelings). Growth happens, but haltingly.

I believe Mike's monologue also fits this reading. On the surface, it's a love confession to El the character. Beneath that, it's a displaced confession to Will. But listen again to the choice of words — clichéd expressions of the power of love itself. "You can move mountains" and "You can fly" aren't about telekinesis; they're about what love makes possible. Mike admits he was scared, that his life began the day he found El — the day he found his feelings. He admits he doesn't know how to live without her — he can't separate his love from his identity.

In a surface reading, you'd expect Mike's attention to stay on El after this confession, but it doesn't; his attention shifts to Will. Maybe that’s his progress. He's still unsure of himself, but he is finally ready to take action. The monologue is not a lie, just a different kind of truth. Will is in every shot for a reason.

In this light, Byler and Mileven aren’t opposing forces. They’re reflective—two parts of the same process: learning to love without shame. And as I see it, Byler cannot exist without El.

Roll for Perception — The mirror test: did you see the reflection? (DC: 17, Advantage if your party values collaboration over combat; Disadvantage if you're still rolling initiative).

Other posts in this series:

Roll for Empathy — An Introduction

Part 1 — Forced Conformity: That’s the Real Monster

Part 2 — Mileven on a Pedestal

I think out loud a lot. I rely on verbal and written processing to make my thoughts coherent, which means I often share my realisations with my partner as they are forming.

One realisation that I had a few weeks ago—while pondering my investment in Byler, despite being someone who is often uncomfortable with romantic plot lines—is that it isn't just a romance in a TV show. It's political.

I talked to my partner about how I’ve always been invested in political issues and injustices (to the point of being tiresome to my family), and about my belief that if The Duffer Brothers deliver on this set up, it will be monumental for LGBT representation in mainstream media.

His response honestly shocked me.

My partner is progressive, supports LGBT rights, would likely consider himself an ally, and is highly intelligent. So it caught me off guard when he said he didn’t think it would be that monumental—that the gay rights movement happened decades ago, that there’s already a lot of representation, and that it’s everywhere now.

That conversation made me realise that I’ve been operating with a bit of projection bias: I’d assumed that people with similar political values shared the same background knowledge and understanding of LGBT issues that I do.

As I tired to explain the gaps in his perspective, I realised I’ve hit this wall before.

What follows are some personal experiences that might seem harmless on the surface, but which illustrate how heteronormative assumptions persist even among well-meaning, progressives people.

I am neurodivergent and have always struggled to make friends. Whenever I did connect with someone, I latched on hard. They became my whole world—I talked about them constantly, drew pictures of them, and got excited about seeing them. This was almost always platonic.

But whenever the new friend was a boy, the teasing would start.

My family would assume I had a crush. They'd joke about it whenever his name came up. This happened repeatedly.

When the friend was a girl? Nothing. No teasing. No suspicion. Including the girl who later turned out to be the first person I ever developed romantic feelings for.

Eventually I snapped. I was so sick of being made to feel uncomfortable about my friends just because they were boys.

It’s not like that! We’re friends, for god’s sake! Friends! Can I not care about someone without having a crush on them?? And, for your information, he’s gay!

I regretted outing my friend—not because I expected my family to react badly, but because I knew it wasn't my information to share.

Still, my mother—self-proclaimed “open-minded individual” and progressive—bit my head off.

Oh really?? And did he tell you that? No? So you’re just assuming that he’s gay? Well you know what they say about making assumptions….

For anyone who doesn’t know, “to assume makes an ass out of u and me”.

At the time, I didn't have the words for why that response felt wrong. But later it clicked.

She (and many others) had already assumed that my friend was straight. She assumed that we had a crush on each other. Those assumptions were treated as harmless and normal.

My assumption—that he was likely gay—was treated as inappropriate, reckless, and offensive.

I was right, by the way. He came out a few years later.

But the point isn't that I was right. The point is that even allies often live under the assumption that you are straight until proven otherwise, while queerness is treated as something that must be confirmed, justified, or proven before it's allowed to exist.

Another example.

I accidentally revealed to my younger sister that I was attracted to girls. I believe the extent of her response was pretty much “so does that mean you like girls?” and “cool”. End of story.

My older sister on the other hand:

You mean you’re bi-curious.

Not a question. A statement.

I mean, you’ve never been with a girl before so you can’t know. That means you’re bi-curious.

Excuse me, what? Apparently lived experience is only required when your attraction isn't heterosexual. Straight people don't have to "test" their orientation to have it taken seriously.

Again—my family are progressive, left-leaning, and would consider themselves allies.

Next, I want to draw on an experience Noah Schnapp shared in an interview recently. When he was younger, he thought he was romantically in love with Millie Bobby Brown. In reality, it was a strong platonic love—filtered through heteronormative expectations that told him intense affection for someone of the opposite sex must be romantic.

Strong, platonic love between boys and girls is not normalised. From a young age we're taught that opposite-sex affection is romantic as the default, and same-sex affection is platonic as the default. That framework persists even in progressive spaces.

So, no. There is not “plenty of representation”.

Representation isn't just about the existence of queer characters. It's about whether queer experiences are normalised.

I started by trying to explain this to my partner with statistics: higher rates of depression and suicide among queer youth, ongoing discrimination, abuse, family rejection, gay conversion therapy hiding behind different names, and the political backsliding in countries such as the US.

None of these things really shifted him.

What did was hearing my experiences with my own family— people he knows and likes—because it made the issue tangible and personal.

This is why representation matters.

People don't often change their understanding through numbers alone. They change when they're forced to emotionally engage with experiences they don't live themselves. Storytelling does that. Studies even show that reading stories increases empathy.

So when I say that putting queer characters at the centre of Stranger Things—making them heroes rather than side plots or diversity tokens—would be monumental, I mean it.

In Stranger Things, the monsters aren't just the creatures from the Upside Down — they're the way people change when fear and conformity take hold.

The show has always been about people learning to see difference as strength, not danger. But somewhere along the way, the fandom built around that message started reflecting the very thing the story warns us about.

It's been such a joy to follow discussions, get hyped over new promotional material, and theorise about Season 5. There's something special about feeling part of a community that's just as excited as you are.

And yet, that same community can be disheartening to witness. Comment sections fill with hostility; hate laced with homophobia, ignorance met with smug superiority, a need to win. It's a constant reminder of how easily the internet strips away people's empathy.

This is a show about empowering outsiders and accepting people for their differences, and yet the discourse often feels like the exact opposite.

The hate directed at Finn Wolfhard and Gaten Matarazzo simply because what they found most entertaining about a scene wasn't what fans wanted to hear...that's not passion, it's petty.

Likewise, the hostility toward the Duffer Brothers, the cast, the promotional team — with accusations of pandering to "Byler" fans or sidelining "Mileven" fans — comes across as a refusal to step back from a narrow view to consider other possibilities. Most people don't want to seem close-minded, so you'll see demands like "show me the evidence", though rarely with genuine curiosity. Evidence doesn't land when someone feels their sense of self or worldview is being threatened — and if it did, the mountain of analysis already circulating would speak for itself. It runs deeper than just wanting your favourite characters to end up together.

When people snidely remark "it's not that deep," what they really mean is "I don't want to think about it." We've been trained to treat emotional or analytical depth as pretentious rather than participatory, even though curiosity is what stories are for. Anti-intellectualism is a sibling to forced conformity: it punishes those who look closely. People with different life experiences often notice truths we can't yet see — not because they're inventing them, but because the story speaks their language.

And that's what makes the fandom discourse feel so eerily on-theme. The need to be right, to have your ideas affirmed, to silence or ridicule other interpretations — it's all a kind of forced conformity. You can see it play out in every comment section: "Mileven endgame!" and "Byler endgame!" shouted under every post, each side circling back to mock the other with "your ship is sinking" sentiments. It stops being discussion and turns into performance, a ritual of shouting until everyone agrees.

Even language like "Milkvan" the Byler community began using to avoid harassment from Mileven fans, even seems to have been weaponised. The irony is hard to miss: a word invented to create distance from hostility has become another way to signal allegiance.

But the show we're fighting over has been telling us from the beginning that this instinct — to demand sameness, to crush difference — is the monster. The Mind Flayer spreads by making everything a part of itself. When we treat fandom like a battlefield instead of a conversation, we're doing the same thing: trying to force each other into one mind.

The challenge we all face is learning how to stay curious — even when we disagree.

Roll for Insight — Can you spot the monster hiding in plain sight? (DC: 15, disadvantage if keyboard is weapon of choice.)

Other posts in this series:

Roll for Empathy — An Introduction

An introduction to a Stranger Things meta series about difference, fandom, and a fight for empathy.

Sometimes it's hard being part of the Stranger Things fandom.

On one side, there's excitement and community; people sharing theories, edits, fan art, and that electric sense of belonging. On the other, there's a current of anger that's become impossible to not see. Comment sections overflow with hostility between "Mileven" and "Byler" fans, often spilling into harassment of actors, creators, and each other.

I've been thinking about why this happens, and what it says about both the show and us. Because Stranger Things has always been about difference — about how people who don't fit are treated as monsters until someone finally sees them.

This is going to be a series of posts. The following posts are not a debate. They're a conversation about forced conformity — how it operates in the show, in the characters, and in the fandom itself.

Here's what to expect:

Part 1 — Forced Conformity: That's the Real Monster How fandom behaviour mirrors the show's central theme.

Part 2 — What Mileven Teaches Us About Expectation Exploring Mike and Eleven's relationship as a story about pressure and performance.

Part 3 — Why Mileven and Byler Need Each Other How the two relationships work together to tell a story about repression and authenticity.

Part 4 — Don't Close the Gate Reflecting on empathy, conversation, and how fandoms can learn to talk instead of fight.

You don't have to agree with every interpretation. You don't even have to ship anyone. My hope is that, by the end, we all remember the heart of Stranger Things: the real monster isn't difference — it's the fear of it.

Roll for Empathy (Wisdom check, DC: humanity).

Posts in this series:

Part 1 — Forced Conformity: That's the Real Monster

Few parts of Stranger Things spark as much devotion — or argument — as Mike and El’s relationship, but the way it’s idealised says a lot about what we expect love to look like.

Inevitably, this connects to the ship-war conversation, but even setting that aside, El’s arc has never read as one leading toward a conventional romantic ending.

From the show, the scripts, and the cast and creators, it seems clear: El’s story is about self-discovery. It’s about breaking free from the people who’ve defined her (Papa, Hopper, Mike), learning that she isn’t the monster, and understanding what love really looks like through friendship and chosen family. It’s about finding strength without seeking approval.

I'd like to take a moment to look at Mileven from a perspective of social conformity. Mike and El became a couple because that’s what everyone — them included — expected. We’ve been conditioned to expect the boy-meets-girl trope to end with a romantic “they lived happily ever after”. In Season 1, El hasn't had the chance yet to absorb that template, but Mike has.

Even the kiss at the end of Season 2 only appeared because of social pressure; Millie Bobby Brown brought the idea to The Duffer Brothers because she knew so many fans would expect it after seeing the Lumax kiss. It was added out of cultural momentum, not narrative intent.

And yet, the show gives Mileven just enough relationship tropes to hide how flawed it is from the general audience. So many people seem to see Mike and Eleven’s relationship as “aspirational”, and yet, while it does have tender moments, it makes them both deeply insecure.

In a healthy relationship, curiosity and respect go both ways. You listen, you share, you make space for mistakes and accountability.

In Season 1, Mike is eager to show Eleven his world, but she’s often portrayed as disinterested — wandering off, ignoring him, or failing to understand what he’s trying to express. And while they’re only children, Mike rarely shows empathy for her confusion or trauma, and yells “What is wrong with you?!” on more than one occasion, adding to her fear that she is the monster. Mike hides his own vulnerability out of fear she’ll see him as a loser. Those insecurities don’t fade with time; they grow.

In Finn Wolfhard’s words, Mike changes between Season 2 and 3. Mike believes that being in a relationship means being “grown up” — things he sees as "childish" like games, toys, and presents are no longer things he thinks he can enjoy. He represses his feelings, he lies, rarely takes accountability, and he’s desperate to cast himself as El's protector because that’s the traditional role he thinks he needs to fit. El is understandably upset by and suspicious of Mike’s behaviour, but also oversteps boundaries by spying on Mike.

At the end of Season 3, it momentarily feels like these problems are resolved if you only focus on El, but by Season 4, both characters are stuck in a dynamic of performance. El is now the one lying, desperate to fit in and live a “normal” life, while Mike is presenting a "cheap knock-off" of his former self. They both love/care about each other, but they also need each other to fill roles that neither of them can sustain — Mike can’t tell El what she needs to hear, and he feels insignificant next to her. He can’t reconcile what his role is in this relationship if El doesn’t need his protection. When pressure hits, the façade cracks.

Many Mileven fans argue that Mike's confession in the finale of Season 4 resolves these issues, but it doesn't. His monologue, while heartfelt on the surface, leans heavily on clichés and borrowed lines from others. The only parts that sound authentically Mike are small and human: the too-big t-shirt; not being ready to lose her. Everything else reaffirms the superhero fantasy that El previously rejected.

It's also worth noting how Mike's claim, "I love you on your bad days," clashes painfully with how he actually treats her during those very days: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?", "Lucas was right about you", "What did you do?!", "...she didn't look fine...", "You're being ridiculous!".

After the battle, El barely speaks to him, not just because she's grieving, but because their connection has become hollow. The silence isn't due to lack of time; it's intentional.

Real love is not about being idealised; it's about being known. Mike and El spent all their time fighting monsters and making out — they were never interested in getting to really know each other.

Everything here has focused on what we see on the surface: two people in an insecure relationship, trying to live up to an idea of what love should look like. That's where a lot of the discussion I've seen stops. But Stranger Things rarely stops at the surface. In the next post, I will explore what we're seeing here from another angle — one where I believe Mileven and Byler can coexist.

Roll for wisdom — Can you tell the difference between love and performance? (DC: 14, advantage if you've failed this check before; disadvantage if your OTP modifier overrides your insight score.)

Previously in this series:

Note: this was written prior to the S5 release, but may have a thematic spoiler in the final few paragraphs.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

Some of us have spent years of our lives yelling that at ourselves.

But Stranger Things has been yelling back for the last decade: "There's nothing wrong with you. Forced conformity is the real monster."

When Eddie said that in Season 4, it made me laugh — partly because it was a funny performance, but mostly because it was so on the nose. It was as if the show wanted to make absolutely sure we didn't miss the point.

Operating differently from the people around you — being queer, neurodivergent, disabled, from a different culture, holding a worldview that doesn't fit neatly — can make it hard to see yourself kindly. It's easy to internalise the voice of "What's wrong with you?" and mistake difference for defect.

Throughout Stranger Things, we've watched characters wrestle with that question. Some fight against conformity, some drown in it, some claw their way out. It was literally forced conformity — being pressured to shotgun a beer leading her to cut herself and attract the demogorgon — that killed Barb.

And yet, outside the story, the same pressures repeat. In the very spaces built to celebrate it, difference is once again treated as defect. For a show that preaches empathy, the conversation around it can be merciless. People ridicule, mock, and shout down perspectives that don't match their own — sometimes in the same breath they claim to defend a story that's fundamentally about love and understanding.

What Stranger Things teaches better than any monster metaphor is that empathy is not agreement. You don't have to share someone's experience to let them exist. You don't have to like a ship, a theory, or a reading to treat the person behind it with decency.

If Eddie taught us anything, it's that belonging doesn't come from sameness — it comes from refusing to let fear dictate who we are and who we care about.

Open-mindedness, love, and a refusal to accept the status quo are what saved Will Byers in Season 1. This show has always been about him — a boy whose empathy and love are his superpowers. The world tried to crush it out of him, and it didn't work.

Maybe that's the real victory condition: not proving who's right about the story, but proving we can live that story.

Roll for Empathy — Can you keep the gate open? (DC: Humanity, Advantage if you passed the previous rolls; Disadvantage if you didn't complete mission "Open Gate.")

Mission complete. Everyone gains +1 humanity.

Other posts in this series:

Roll For Empathy — An Introduction

Part 1 — Forced Conformity: That's the Real Monster

Part 2 — Mileven on a Pedestal

I was watching @teambyler's new "lawyer's evidence" video yesterday morning, and a few things struck me. As I got to the chapter addressing potential backlash should Byler be confirmed in Season 5, I was interested to see a sort of response to my own words. Whether or not this was intentional — or simply a coincidence — it was fascinating hearing Ronald’s perspective. 

When I posted my Roll for Empathy series introduction, I already had drafts of the 4 parts completed. I’ve been deliberately spacing them out to give myself time to reread with fresh eyes, but I knew doing so meant delaying the full context of the argument I’m building towards. Funnily enough, Ronald’s comments represented the kind of reaction I anticipated — although I certainly didn’t expect it to surface in this particular context. 

I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me question, for a moment, the point of posting this series. When someone with more influence and reach expresses ideas that brush close to your own — even if the approach is from a different angle — it’s easy to wonder if you’re still adding anything meaningful to the conversation. But upon reflection, I realised that’s precisely why dialogue like this is important. We’re part of the same ongoing conversation, each trying to make sense of the same emotional landscape: how we process hostility, how we respond to it, how the online space distorts our perspective, and how empathy is affected.

The following are excerpts from Ronald’s discussion that stood out to me:

“…we would be justified in reveling in their anger and tears because they get to finally experience what LGBT people have had to endure for decades of queer baiting.”

“Shippers obviously are not the majority of viewers of Stranger Things and homophobes and bullies are not the majority of shippers.”

“The recent video where Finn Wolfhard reacted to the scene where Mike is reunited with El […] caused a very loud ruckus online among some anti-Bylers, some of whom harassed Finn…” 

“Feeling misunderstood, it’s natural to feel a little tribal and a bit egotistic towards the general audience…”

These sections mirror the ideas I raised about the way hostility and moral certainty can crowd out compassion. Whether or not he saw my post, it felt like the fandom thinking aloud through multiple voices at once.

By the end of my Roll for Empathy series, I think my point will be clearer. For now — and without giving too much away — I want to make it clear that I do not, for a single second, blame anyone who responds to harassment, dismissal, and disrespect with defensiveness or anger. Nor could I look down on anyone for celebrating their triumphs while feeling a bit of what I described as “smug superiority”. These reactions are justified and completely human. 

As a final note, if something I write ever comes across as offensive or trivialising, I assure you it’s never intentional, and I will always appreciate feedback. I’m a perfectionist, but alas, I am not perfect.

I watched an interesting interview today with Brennan Lee Mulligan — for anyone who doesn't know, he's a D&D Dungeon Master (among other things). I wanted to share it because there’s a couple segments starting around the 9:52 mark (timestamp included, in case the link doesn’t behave) where he discusses fan expression and community, and the "social good" of ttrpgs. He mentions a few things I think tie in nicely with the post series on Stranger Things I’ll be sharing over the next couple of weeks.

Some quotes that stuck out to me:

“…people can feel there’s lots of forces in the world that are trying to make people feel alone and outnumbered and maybe like things are not going their way and no one’s on their side…” “…to me, the highlight of the work is seeing other people that come together on this little hinge of a shared interest and then they make a community or a relationship that spins off from that.” “…it’s real because everyone agrees it’s real….everyone feels real emotions even though they’re not seeing anything happen.” “If it makes people happy, then that’s got to be fun, right? It’s got to be at least good for that reason.”

Brennan then talks about a study where they did an ethical survey where people were exposed to some different stimuli.

“There was a control group that was exposed to nothing; there was a group that was given philosophical tract; there were people that were given a religious commandment against immoral behaviour; there were people that were given a legal statute. The people that scored absolutely highest on the ethical survey afterwards were people that had read a short story. And this little piece of fiction...the findings of this study were essentially: nothing was as potent as a piece of fiction to remind people that other people are real. A little thing that makes you go, “Oh, I remember empathy. Oh, an experience communicated from another person’s perspective. Damn.””