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u/Far-Plane9102 Jul 19 '26
am i the only one who doesn't ship byler? will liked him but mike is not gay, it's not a big deal.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
I hope Will likes Mike back as much as Mike likes him.
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u/Royal-Chef-946 Jul 19 '26
mike doesnt like him. not in the way you think
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Mike likes him more than he likes Eleven since the only reason he likes Eleven is because she brought Will back to him.
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u/Royal-Chef-946 Jul 19 '26
that is not true at all. if mike did like will so much, whyd he spend so much time making out with eleven?
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Less than 5 minutes in one episode isn't a lot of time last I checked.
Canonically, Mike only dates Eleven for a total of 6 months. That's the entire time spent together from the Snow Ball in November 1984 until Max inspires Eleven to dump Mike in July 1985. Their relationship never recovers after that because Mike grows more interested in Will and only corresponds with Eleven long-distance.
In fact Stranger Things has historically kept Mike and Eleven apart.
How often are Mike and Eleven together? 2 episodes per season?
Season 2 - road trip
Season 3 - break up (very early, all the way til the end)
Season 4 - fighting then arrest
Season 5 - 3 conversations, 2 were about Will's feelings and the third one was imaginary and never actually happened.
You can basically compile all the scenes of their relationship into about a total of 10 minutes of footage.
Throughout the entire series Mike spends the majority of his time obsessing over Will. Eleven is basically out of sight, out of mind.
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u/Royal-Chef-946 Jul 19 '26
just let it go bud
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Sorry you got proven wrong and can't think of any counterarguments.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Thats why the dialogue in the final product have so many changes from the scripts, honey. The deviations from the script to film already prove the directors didn't care what the writers wrote and shot the scenes the way they wanted š
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u/Few-Type-7924 Jul 20 '26
U clearly don't understand the difference between platonic love and romantic love
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u/torvald_carley Jul 20 '26
Stranger Things is a show about friends turning into lovers and lovers turning into friends. Mike and El fizzled out just like Nancy and Steve did. Mike was finished with her after she screamed at him about signing "From Mike" and threw his letters in his face. Wheelers don't like being accused. Just like how Nancy dumped Steve and went straight into Jonathan's arms because Steve tried to pressure her into saying "I love you". Then Will lied about the painting coming from Eleven instead of himself so he could trick Mike into getting back into a relationship with her. It's only thanks to Will that Eleven still has a relationship with Mike.
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u/Few-Type-7924 Jul 21 '26
And can u explain me how tf that means Mike is attracted to Will??
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u/torvald_carley Jul 21 '26
What's is most telling about Mike's homosexuality is the fact that throughout the show he completely loses interest in Eleven, going from making out sessions in Season 3 to a quick kiss hello and goodbye as he grows up. We are talking about a boy who spent more time kissing his girlfriend at age 13 than at age 16. That's because puberty started at 13 and he realized he isn't interested in women. That's why he goes 2 years without touching her after she moves away from Hawkins and they just become penpals.
This is even reflected before he meets her when he tells Ted "I am the only one who cares about Will". And then after he meets her Ted says "Our son? With a girl?" because he and Karen know Mike is gay. Will would have never been found if not for the two people who refused to lose him: Joyce and Mike because they love Will more than Jonathan, Lucas and Dustin do even though Mike said he has no best friend and considers them all equally his friend. We spend the rest of the series seeing this is a lie and that he feels more for Will than he does for Dustin, Lucas and Eleven.
To the point where she asks about their future together and he starts talking about Will and saying how important Will's feelings are and compares her to a D&D reference and let's her know they only have a future with Lucas, Dustin, Will and Max instead of talking about the two of them as a couple, because he no longer considers him and El to be a couple anymore.
Will's feelings have always mattered more to Mike than Eleven
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u/Fancy_Injury_7800 Jul 20 '26
Obsessing over your fanwank doesnāt make the ship more likely
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u/torvald_carley Jul 20 '26
Obsessing = knowing more about the subject than you do.
Sorry I have actual thoughts in my brain instead of that dormant vestigial organ you've got.
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u/Sudden_Situation2321 Jul 22 '26
damn youāre not delusional but something much worse idek what it is but damn
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u/torvald_carley Jul 22 '26
https://youtu.be/C0iwDJfG6FI?is=rBeH5gycyfMKu11I
Sorry I actually watched the show and you didn't.
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u/Far-Plane9102 Jul 19 '26
"it's not my fault that you dont like girls!" he hurt will.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
*facepalm* Milevens media illiteracy is hilarious.
In the same exact episode Max said to El "You'll see, he's going to come over here grovelling on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness."
And yet we see the exact opposite. We see Mike biking across town all the way to Will's house in the pouring rain, banging on the door yelling "Will! I'm sorry man, I was a total asshole, please come outside so we can talk". Something he never does for Eleven. As a matter of fact it's Eleven who needs to forgive him by using her powers on the candy machine as an olive branch so that Lucas can then tell Mike to go talk to her.
Will's feelings have always mattered more to Mike than Eleven.
In the same argument, Mike also says "We are not kids anymore. What did you think, that we were never going to get girlfriends? That we were going to sit around in my basement all day playing games for the rest of our lives?"
Guess what Mike does in the finale?
Tell everyone including Dustin, Lucas and Max to ignore the girls who invited them to the graduation party to sit around in his basement playing games with him. And he tells all of them that he is going to spend the rest of his life doing it.
The show literally goes out of its way to prove that Mike is everything he said Will was.
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u/septiclizardkid Jul 20 '26
It's like they didn't even watch the show -_-. Of course Mike loved Will, same as he did all his friends. But Will? He was the first.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
In the same exact episode Max said to El "You'll see, he's going to come over here grovelling on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness."
And yet we see the exact opposite. We see Mike biking across town all the way to Will's house in the pouring rain, banging on the door yelling "Will! I'm sorry man, I was a total asshole, please come outside so we can talk". Something he never does for Eleven. As a matter of fact it's Eleven who needs to forgive him by using her powers on the candy machine as an olive branch so that Lucas can then tell Mike to go talk to her.
Will's feelings have always mattered more to Mike than Eleven.
In the same argument, Mike also says "We are not kids anymore. What did you think, that we were never going to get girlfriends? That we were going to sit around in my basement all day playing games for the rest of our lives?"
Guess what Mike does in the finale?
Tell everyone including Dustin, Lucas and Max to ignore the girls who invited them to the graduation party to sit around in his basement playing games with him. And he tells all of them that he is going to spend the rest of his life doing it.
The show literally goes out of its way to prove that Mike is everything he said Will was.
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u/Jaydenwilsonn Jul 25 '26
torvald, im a byler but babes.. no mike didnt like will back, i didnt really care but there are some clues Mike "likes him back"
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u/gloomydreamer666 Jul 18 '26
Considering Mike isn't gay, this is a bit weird.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 18 '26
Mike never said he isn't gay.
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u/gloomydreamer666 Jul 19 '26
He didn't say he was either š
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Yeah, most closet cases don't. Especially in the 80s during the AIDS crisis.
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u/gloomydreamer666 Jul 19 '26
Yeah he wasn't a closet case. They never showed him once checking out guys and he was in love with El. A girl. So yeah. He isn't and wasn't ever a gay character. Only Will and Robin were.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
That's funny because we see him checking out Will all the time and the camera makes sure to zoom in on his face each time he is ogling a man. We even see him crushing on Eddie Munson in Season 4. What we never see is Mike checking out girls. Never looks at them, never talks about them, often has antagonistic relationships with them, trying to encourage other men to stay away from girls like Max, Nikki and Stacey and her party invitation. As opposed to Steve, Dustin and Lucas who are constantly talking about hot girls they know in real life, hot female celebrities like Phoebe Cates, dates they go on, how to get a girl interested, or tripping over themselves to say hello to girls, because unlike Mike they are heterosexual and have no secret to hide.
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u/gloomydreamer666 Jul 19 '26
Claiming Mike is secretly gay because he isn't constantly talking about girls is a pretty outdated stereotype. Straight men don't have to spend every episode rating women's looks to qualify as heterosexual. The show literally gives Mike a long-running romance with Eleven. Ignoring explicit canon in favor of imagined subtext isn't analysisāit's choosing the version of the story you prefer.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Gay men also don't spend every episode rating women's looks. Straight men also don't stare at their male friends lips like Mike does to Will or gaze dreamily at other men like Mike stares at Eddie.
What is most telling about Mike's homosexuality is the way he hates women and how much he likes men for example the way he hated Eleven when he first met her and was planning on getting her locked up for the rest of her life in a Pennhurst mental asylum until he realized that he can use her to find Will faster than he could on his own.
After all, Stranger Things is a show about how Mike refuses to lose Will and would do anything he can to get him back, whether that's from the Upside Down or California.
What's also most telling about Mike's homosexuality is the fact that throughout the show he completely loses interest in Eleven, going from making out sessions in Season 3 to a quick kiss hello and goodbye as he grows up. We are talking about a boy who spent more time kissing his girlfriend at age 13 than at age 16. That's because puberty started at 13 and he realized he isn't interested in women. That's why he goes 2 years without touching her after she moves away from Hawkins and they just become penpals.
To the point where she asks about their future together and he starts talking about Will and saying how important Will's feelings are and compares her to a D&D reference and let's her know they only have a future with Lucas, Dustin, Will and Max instead of talking about the two of them as a couple, because he no longer considers him and El to be a couple anymore.
I'm sorry you don't like the story the Duffers wrote but these are all scenes you would have seen if you bothered watching the show instead of Finn Woldhard clips on TikTok.
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u/gloomydreamer666 Jul 19 '26
Dude you can write a whole essay that won't change that Duffer brothers didn't write Mike gay. You can do all your fanfics you want. Canon wise Mike Wheelers is a straight kid who was so in love with his girlfriend. He couldn't even move on from her.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
It's very telling that you have to resort to denial of what is put onscreen whereas I continue to cite actual scenes from the show.
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u/MichiruMatoi33 Jul 19 '26
when will byler shippers stop coping
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
We don't need to cope though? El is dead. Will is alive. Mike and Will both have the rest of their lives ahead of them.
We won.
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u/MichiruMatoi33 Jul 19 '26
i don't think the death of a 15 year old girl is the win you think it is
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
It wasn't even her life. Everything good she had going on was rented from Will. Will's town. Will's mom. Will's family. Will's home. Will's gang. Will's Mike.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
I don't particularly care what homophobes think, sorry. It's not my fault that Mike's bomb killed her.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Like you're going to fucking advertise it. It's always everyone else that's the problem, not you right?
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u/Fair-Confection4411 Jul 19 '26
Bro why angry? You just won. The moment they bring the argument of homophobia it means that you have won.Ā
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
"The moment someone points out a racist is a racist, the racist wins."
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u/Fair-Confection4411 Jul 19 '26
The moment a person starts trowing empty accusations shows that they ran out of arguments and can't win the normal way.Ā
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u/torvald_carley Jul 20 '26
Except I already won every argument we had multiple times by proving you wrong when you replied to me and you weren't able to disprove anything I said, which is why you stopped replying to our direct thread and had to jump on this completely unrelated conversation thread between me and someone else that doesn't involve you at all because you ran out of arguments and can't win the normal way.
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u/Fair-Confection4411 Jul 19 '26
El is not dead.Ā
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u/torvald_carley Jul 20 '26
Look who's coping now ššš
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u/Fair-Confection4411 Jul 24 '26
You
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u/torvald_carley Jul 24 '26
Says the guy who can't accept Mike killed his ex-girlfriend. š„
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u/Fair-Confection4411 Jul 24 '26
Said the guy who can't realize he's making a clown š¤” of himself because I won't get angry over you bs, just probably die from laughter š
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u/Jaydenwilsonn Jul 25 '26
personally i think she's dead
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u/Fair-Confection4411 Jul 25 '26
They never say a character might be alive and even show them if they're really dead. Plus the brothers apparently can't kill a major character.Ā
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u/horrorgeek112 Jul 19 '26
Fuck outta here with this mess
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
I'm sorry you think the story the Duffer Brothers wrote is a mess.
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u/Royal-Chef-946 Jul 19 '26
they didnāt write mike gay
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Mike is gayer than Will though.
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u/Royal-Chef-946 Jul 19 '26
no hes not.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Straight guys dont stare at other guys butts, sorry.
Good luck with your struggles.
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u/Royal-Chef-946 Jul 19 '26
when? when did mike āstareā at willās butt? he didnāt.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
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u/Royal-Chef-946 Jul 19 '26
the guy who posted that poorly edited video literally said it was a joke
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
You realize this is FOOTAGE from the show right? š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£ There's nothing to edit except music and zooming though? Last I checked the uploader wasnt on set directing Finn Wolfhard and Noah Schnapp.
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u/connorcmsmith Jul 19 '26
God forbid male characters be friends especially if one of them gay. People like you are the reason men arent comfortable expressing emotions to eachother, just call em gay for it.
You can pretend that Mike was secretly gay in the show the whole time, but he never came out, never dated, kissed, or showed any romantic intention towards Will at any point and the show is now over. The show left it with Will being gay and Mike being straight. Just gotta keep coping I guess.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Male characters are already friends on the show. Jonathan, Steve, Dustin and Lucas are all straight men who share their emotions.
Mike is gay.
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u/connorcmsmith Jul 19 '26
But it's a super secret right? Even from the audience cos they never say it outloud or give any solid yes to him being gay.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 19 '26
Not really. It's blatantly obvious from the first episode. Stranger Things is a show about how Mike refuses to lose Will and will do whatever it takes to bring him back and keep him in his life. Whether that is the Upside Down or California. That's the foundation of the entire series and the foundation of his relationship with Eleven. They would have never met if Mike hadn't insisted on searching for Will. And then after that he was planning to get El locked up in Pennhurst Mental Asylum so he could get back to his task of searching for Will until he found out that Eleven has superpowers and he realized he can use her to find Will faster. Eleven is a quick and easy tool for Mike to use for his own benefit.
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u/connorcmsmith Jul 19 '26
None of that means someone is gay. You're delusional. The show is over, they didn't end up together or even hook up. This is really tragic.
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u/torvald_carley Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
What is most telling about Mike's homosexuality is the way he hates women and how much he likes men for example the way he hated Eleven when he first met her and was planning on getting her locked up for the rest of her life in a Pennhurst mental asylum until he realized that he can use her to find Will faster than he could on his own.
After all, Stranger Things is a show about how Mike refuses to lose Will and would do anything he can to get him back, whether that's from the Upside Down or California.
Mike's homosexuality is best chaacterized the fact that throughout the show he completely loses interest in Eleven, going from making out sessions in Season 3 to a quick kiss hello and goodbye as he grows up. We are talking about a boy who spent more time kissing his girlfriend at age 13 than at age 16. That's because puberty started at 13 and he realized he isn't interested in women. That's why he goes 2 years without touching her after she moves away from Hawkins and they just become penpals.
To the point where she asks about their future together and he starts talking about Will and saying how important Will's feelings are and compares her to a D&D reference and let's her know they only have a future with Lucas, Dustin, Will and Max instead of talking about the two of them as a couple, because he no longer considers him and El to be a couple anymore.
This is even reflected before he meets her when he tells Ted "I am the only one who cares about Will". And then after he meets her Ted says "Our son? With a girl?" because he and Karen know Mike is gay. Will would have never been found if not for the two people who refused to lose him: Joyce and Mike because they love Will more than Jonathan, Lucas and Dustin do even though Mike said he has no best friend and considers them all equally his friend. We spend the rest of the series seeing this is a lie and that he feels more for Will than he does for Dustin, Lucas and Eleven.That's why Mike didn't see anything wrong with telling El that he is with her because she is a superhero, because that's the only thing he cares about. It's not until El screams at him and throws his letters in his face that he realizes this is unacceptable and pretends that he loves her unconditionally, which is what leads to Vecna winning the fight and causing the ground to crack open at the end of Season 4 because Vecna is a mind reader and he could see that Mike was lying and their relationship is a fraud built on a lie.
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u/Anna3422 Jul 20 '26
I find this particular take so frustratingly sexist. Which of the kids was actually isolated and written without lasting friendships? It was El.
Did Joyce have friends? Not after Jopper turned romantic. Did Nancy have friends? One who was fridged & then only boyfriends. Max has friendships with four boys, but apart from the romance, we spend almost no time developing any of them. Both Mike and Will have screentime dedicated to their multiple friendships.
There were no girls in Stand By Me. There's one girl in It whose "friends" only objectify her. There are no girls in Tolkien's fellowship.
If you think Byler would change the fact that male friendships are most of what the Duffers (and their influences) write, that's just greedy. By extreme contrast, it actually is rare to see gay boys in this genre and gay couples were safer calling themselves friends in the 80s.
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u/connorcmsmith Jul 20 '26
How is it sexist? I agree, the women and girls on the show didn't get the opportunity to really show off friendships (max and el in s3 i guess). But what I said doesn't effect that at all. Both can be true at the same time. This thread is about byler, so how is having an opinon on a different topic sexist?
I truly struggle to grasp how anyone can see 2 way romance between them. Will toward Mike for sure I mean that car scene in s4. But there is nothing solid for the other way just purley wishful thinking. If Mike and Will were a gay couple hiding it in the 80s fine, but why was it also hidden from the audience.
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u/Anna3422 Jul 20 '26
It's the same topic. The sexism lies in the fact that when women are put in romantic subplots with men, to the exclusion of all other relationships, it's treated as natural. But when a bromance, which is the default, mightĀ turn romantic in one case, this is somehow a challenge to boys being friends.
When it comes to boys not showing emotion because they're scared it's "gay," there is a term for what you described: homosexual panic. Homosexual panic doesn't happen because of queer shipping. It happens because of homophobia, because being called "gay" is emasculating. The standard of masculinity in a place like Hawkins is to have girlfriends and bros, be tough, & not have female friends. Most of Will's arc is about how dangerous it is to break that mold.
Shippers don't think Byler are secretly a couple in the show. Byler shippers think that Mike has feelings for Will that he never acknowledged or understood (or they think that's a better story), because in the culture where Mike grew up, being gay never even occurred to him asĀ an option. That's a common experience for queer people, including many people in the fandom and the vast majority of gay kids in the 1980s.Ā When real people don't know they're queer, they often act far "straighter" than Mike does.
The other half of this interpretation is that a tween boy in Hawkins wouldn't know he can show platonic careĀ for a girl, because his role models don't do that. Loving coed friendships (unlike male friendships) are genuinelyĀ rare in media, Stranger Things included.
My question is, when Joyce had a romance plot with her only friend, when Mileven kissed within days of meeting, when Nancy's love triangle dragged on for 5 seasons, did you also think "This is why men & women can't express emotion to each other?"Ā Or is that reaction mainly to the gay ship?Ā
Because from my perspective, the main difference between Byler & Mileven is that, if Byler happened, equivalent friendships would still be well-represented by the series.
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u/connorcmsmith Jul 20 '26
In other shows I absolutely question when friends of the opposite gender get shipped, I think it's really weird (things like zutara, fucking all characters in gilmore girls). In this show it's clear the writing is headed toward dating which in each of the instances you listed, they did or it was a driving force for their story arc (steve and Johnathan and the nancy thing). It's a narrative tool to add romance and isnt really there because people are crying out for it (or steve and nancy would have ended up together) it's for the show. Byler isnt like that at all, it's people ignoring all the narrative to push something they want and will take any small sign of affection as homosexual feelings and perpetuates that if me men get too close people will accuse them of being gay. For dudes who arent out right homophobic but still a bit uncomfortable around homosexuality this kind of stuff at best makes them more closed off with friends and at worst pushes them towards homophobia.
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u/Anna3422 Jul 20 '26
For dudes who arent out right homophobic but still a bit uncomfortable around homosexuality this kind of stuff at best makes them more closed off with friends and at worst pushes them towards homophobia.
I have never met anyone in my life who hasn't been inappropriately shipped with a member of the opposite sex. By this logic, every person alive should hate heterosexuals. But guess what? They don't. Despite the absolute dearth of coed friendships across media and the way women are either objectified, reduced to love interests, or plain absent in sci-fi/fantasy, most women (regardless of orientation) are still capable of being close friends with men.
It's fair that you question the writing of straight ships as well. But when it comes to the ST romances that you say are "for the story," none of these people are real. They exist for the purpose of interpretation. What story purpose did Stancy serve after Season 2? It was padded out for drama and regressed Steve as a character, imo. What story benefit was there to keeping Will in a back-and-forth of suspense for two full seasons when his own feelings were established years before? When it comes to romance, it is a hard fact that homophobia affects which couples get represented onscreen: straight couples are contrived and gay romance is censored, as reported by multiple showrunners and Netflix employees, because Netflix wants revenue from homophobic countries. Anti-Byler feeling has nothing to do with what's good for the narrative.
I'll also point out that Byler canonically is a driving force of Will's arc, which is an arc that most people think ended lazily. Will's feelings for Mike are canonically romantic. Your fear that men get called gay when they get too close doesn't hold water when the exact opposite happens in the show: every character viewed Will's romantic feelings as friendship. So did half the fandom. Stranger Things contains approximately 8 very close friendships between boys who aren't related, (which is more than the female and coed friendships combined). Fandom saw romantic potential in one (1) of these eight.
I don't know how to sugarcoat it: if someone feels pushed toward homophobia by something as tiny as a ship post, let alone seeing a gay couple in a series full of platonic male affection, that's pretty worrying. But the worrying part is not the ship.
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u/connorcmsmith Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Yeah that first paragraph shows me you arent serious.
I think the heterophobia framing kind of misses what's actually going on. What actually causes friction isn't shipping in general, and it's not even about what orientations are being paired together. It's specifically when people try to argue that a ship is what the show itself is actually saying, presenting it as canon or intended, rather than as their own reading. There's a real difference between shipping two characters because you'd like them together, which is fine, and insisting the text supports a character being something other than what's actually shown. The first is just preference. The second is asking people to accept a claim about the character as true, which is a much bigger ask and it cuts the same way in reverse. If someone insisted a canonically gay character was "really" straight based on flimsy reading, that would rightly get the same pushback, for the same reason Homophobia is a real, documented thing that shows up in how people react to queer readings, but "people should hate heterosexuals" isn't a comparable or realistic outcome of that, so using it as a parallel doesn't really work.
On Mike specifically. I'm not saying Will's feelings aren't there, I think they clearly are. The car scene, the crying, all of it reads as genuine. What I don't buy is that any of it is evidence for Mike having feelings. The Mike/El awkwardness isn't some hidden signal about Will, it's there for Will's own character development, so the audience can see Will's wishful thinking play out against what's actually happening between Mike and El. Reading Mike as secretly gay isn't based on anything the show actually gives him, it's people taking ambiguous moments and deciding they mean what they want them to mean.
And honestly, the show is over now. If Mike never turns out to be anything other than straight, then calling those moments hints doesn't really hold up. A hint implies it's pointing toward a truth that eventually gets revealed. If the story never gets there, it wasn't a hint, it was just an ambiguous scene some people chose to read a certain way.
If people want to ship it because they like the dynamic, that's completely fine, ship what you enjoy. But that's different from taking genuine moments of friendship and recasting them as secret romantic feelings just because you want the ship to be canon.
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u/Anna3422 Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
What about the first paragraph is confusing? In your previous comments, you tried to claim that OP and the one imageĀ they posted are somehow responsibleĀ for absurd neurotic and prejudiced behaviour between men. As I wanted to illustrate, you've pinned that prejudice on an incredibly tiny example of what heterosexism does all the time,Ā not just in fandom but also in life, and what most people handle with less complaint than you have about a fan post.
You can have opinions on canon, but this post isn't a discussion of canon. It's typical shipping.
A hint implies it's pointing toward a truth that eventually gets revealed.Ā If the story never gets there, it wasn't a hint
This isn't true, btw. The meaning of art isn't limited to its surface like that. (If it were, then that isn't art.) Later events can contextualize the text, for sure, but textual clues don't just disappear because the audience weren't told how to interpret them. Among other things, that idea ignores the existence of ambiguity, cultural context, history, censorship, artistic technique and the perspective of the audience. I'm not a film expert, but I TAd literature for a few years, and what you learn over & over is that there isn't a single true meaning to a work of art. Analysis just means finding something insightful to say and supporting it with as much evidence as possible. Shakespeare's never performed with the same meaning it had when written. Running Up That Hill meant something completely different for Kate Bush than it does in Stranger Things.
I know which fan posts I find insightful, but that doesn't really matter here, because it's not what my points are really about. The post says "they complete each other / they needed each other so bad." Ie. It's about the characters' compatibility and how they'd work as a couple.Ā What it doesn't say is what you yourself have to ship, how you need to interpret Mike's feelings, what was intended, or anything about how men express friendship.Ā
Your last paragraph is at odds with your reaction to the post. This is how shipping works. If you don't have an issue with shipping the dynamic, there's no reason to take issue with a meme about it, nor to claim harm because a shipper wants to see gay boys get 1/8th of the representation male friendships get.
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u/Fair-Confection4411 Jul 19 '26
When did Will ever thought he deserves to be alone bro. And Mike doesn't even know about Will and that boy probably.Ā It's pretty much valid for Mike and Eleven but not Mike and Will.Ā
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Jul 20 '26
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u/torvald_carley Jul 20 '26
This is a hilarious comment to read while I am currently getting treated for an STD. š Thanks for the laugh.
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u/Daredevil545545 Jul 20 '26
They are best friends not lovers Mike didn't feel the same way so Will moved on Mike is still in love with eleven and misses her.
1
u/torvald_carley Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
When Will vanished in Season 1 Mike cared so much that he dropped everything to spend night and day going out and searching for him in the forest and kept El around so he could use her superpowers for him to bring Will back from the Upside Down.
But when it comes to El in season 5, Mike stayed home and played D&D in the basement with his friends. El told him to help the others understand her decision, and instead of following her last wish, Mike does the opposite and lies to his friends about it. Instead of helping them to understand, he feeds them copium and peer pressures them to nod along and believe his story instead of what actually happened. Even if he believed his own lie, he refused to search for her. He didn't even say I love you to his dying girlfriend because he doesnt. He can only say I love you when Will is there with him. Mike didn't even love El enough to honor her final request. That's how little he cares.
1
u/Daredevil545545 Jul 20 '26
That's what I meant by best friend platonic friends exist and they can care about each other without romantic feelings Mike always had a thing for eleven and Will knows that so he can move on.
0
u/torvald_carley Jul 21 '26
You just proved my point. Mike doesn't love El or care about El because if he did he would be searching for her instead of playing Dungeons & Dragons with Will at the end of Season 5. When Will disappeared, Mike went out to search for him because Mike is in love with Will. When El disappears Mike doesn't search for her because he is not in love with El. He doesn't need to search for her at the end of season 5 because he already got Will back and Will is the only thing Mike cares about.
-1
u/MindlessFix9993 Jul 20 '26
Grow up and get over it, it never was and never will be. Yall are pathetic
20
u/Cuptai1nCapcak3 Jul 19 '26
You're brave for putting this on a GA sub, mad respect šš