as someone who initially defended the decision to line up the s5 release with the major holidays (back when i believed it would be good), I’m now thinking about the way they intentionally got our hopes up, knowing that they would be crushed at a time of year that’s already so difficult for many queer people.
so many of us struggle with unsupportive families—either being around them or feeling the pain of estrangement—and for many, that pain is most pronounced during the holidays. young queer people, especially, often have no choice but to spend these days surrounded by family that ranges anywhere from close-minded to outright abusive.
the decision to build up fans’ hopes and expectations for so many years, encouraging speculation and insisting that the small details were meant to be analyzed, was misleading. the intentional air of mystery, and the refusal to dismiss the possibility, was strategic. the choice to continue building those hopes up so high at the very end, just to let the other shoe drop on christmas day, is blatantly cruel.
they told us in an interview on christmas day that they had never intended to take the story in that direction. if they always knew, they could have said it before the final season started. they could have said it three years ago. they could have said it seven years ago. they chose to hide it until the very end because they wanted our views, wanted our speculation, wanted our attention and apologism and support.
while we were theorizing and making excuses for the growing cracks in their writing, they were planning on fucking us over at the last possible minute. it didn’t matter to them that we loved their characters, that we believed in their potential, that we cared about their story in a way that writers aspire to bring out in an audience.
crafting volume one the way they did—mike and will’s soft interactions, the complete absence of overt romance between mike & el, the snowball-to-avalanche conversation, ‘how obvious?’, 'a shared look, a bump of an elbow' literally shared between them the very next episode, will unlocking superpowers to save mike’s life, mike’s words (and will’s love for him) playing a key role in discovering those powers, the volume finale literally closing on their shared look—it was written this way, intentionally, to feed audiences’ false hopes that their story would lead somewhere.
if the writers intended to end mike and will’s story the way they did, then the vol. 1 buildup should have reflected that. it was strategic writing meant to string us along until the very end.
knowing how much audiences had invested in these characters and their relationship makes what they did, at best, a tasteless choice (or rather, a long series of tasteless choices).
but the writers had to have known the way their queer audiences were treated by the wider audience at large. gay viewers, and those who supported byler especially, were openly hated and harassed by homophobic members of the GA for years. we were mocked for wanting a canon relationship that spoke to our experiences, and called delusional for hoping for it.
they knew the level of vitriol that their (primarily young, primarily queer) fans were subject to, and decided to bait those fans anyway—finally crushing our hopes at a time when many of us were already hurting, when so many of us were looking for something good to believe in.
they paid lipservice to the ideas of nonconformity, of overcoming societal expectation, of finding love and connection in unexpected places, of finding difference in strength.
but when it came down to it, they didn't really believe in any of that. they chose to vindicate the people who hated us. they chose to treat our characters as props, tortured and sidelined and used to prop up other characters' 'normal' relationships.
they never saw us as anything but viewership and engagement numbers.
we may never be anything more than a joke to them. but the truth is that all the potential we saw in this show came from us. the magic came from us.
we were not wrong for hoping or for caring. we saw something beautiful because we are capable of creating beautiful things. and i would rather have been wrong with all of you than to have been visionless and right.
one day we will be the ones writing the stories, and we won't have to settle for bait and crumbs. until then, please remember that you're not alone, and you're not wrong for being different. keep caring, keep hoping, keep making art. we are going to be okay.
