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posting this on my main bc I’m proud of it

Bychance is a ship that belongs entirely to it's fandom. Since Chance has so little screen time and he and Will never interact in any meaningful way on screen, the fans are the ones who get to make up every aspect of the ship. If we decide that Chance has some certain characteristic, he does. If we make up headcanons or scenarios, there's nothing in the actual narrative that can contradict what we say. If we can dream it, it's our part of our ship.

We even get to create Chance from the ground up. While Mike was terribly and inconsistently written, he does have an established personality and traits in canon. And they're not very good ones.

Chance, on the other hand, is shown to hang out with guys who aren't always very nice. He participates in bullying against Dustin once. But other than that? He's a blank slate. We can say that he felt guilty about what he did, he apologized later, and that he worked to improve his behavior.

These aren't really allowances that can be made with Mike. The audience sees Mike consistently act like a jerk and never really atone for it. He certainly doesn't ever make an effort to improve in any way, nor to show up as a better partner to El or friend to any of the boys.

So I think that's part of the conflict. Mike had the potential to be a very well written character and to undergo a lot of self-improvement, but the Duffers didn't go that route. Unfortunately, there really wasn't much to him. The negative qualities he'd displayed on the surface from season 3 on were all there was to the character. But with Chance? The possibilities are endless. And I can imagine that it probably doesn't feel great to see a character that you believed in end up being nothing more than an incel self-insert, while the other (somewhat?) popular Will ship has a character that the fandom can imagine nothing but positive traits for.

tbh that makes a lot of sense. it wouldn't be surprising if that's where some of the resentment stems from.

like, my heart BROKE for mike stans after the finale. a character they cherished and related to for years- fully believing he was the way he was because he was closeted- was revealed to be none other than little incel jr man.

all the byler "evidence" went out the window, too.

i understand having anger, resentment, heartbreak, anything like that over the situation, but to take it out on shippers who are literally just doing the Same Thing they're doing and rewriting the script with their preferred ship? lord almighty, maybe the grass died and therefore, can Never be touched again.

if they're jealous, i don't know what to tell them other than "you guys can write fanfic, too. bychance didn't shut down ao3."

i do still believe the biggest reason is lowkey them just not wanting will shipped with anyone else. i feel like the proof lies in the fact that Those Same People ship wheelchance. i wish i was joking. they'll bash bychance and in the same breath go, 'but maybe mike would explore with-' like i can't.

i wish they would just be adults about it for once, regardless of the reason. what's so funny is they'd throw Bitch Fits if bychancers spammed the byler tag or whatever with the hate they spew themselves, but have no problem going the opposite way and acting like a kid throwing a temper tantrum in a candy store.

"NO!! WILL AND MIKE ONLY!!" "EWWWW" "TERRIBLE SHIP" "WILL WOULDNT DATE-"

This is like the third ask I've gotten about this, y'all thirsty as hell LMAOOO!!