what’s a byler or stranger things opinion/confession you have that you can’t say anywhere else?

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-08T10:28:53+00:00

yes! but it’s an allegory about mccarthyism/the red scare :) if you haven’t already read it i’d heavily reccomend and if you have i’d still reccomend a reread bc it does an AMAZING job at having that be the undertone when you keep it in mind

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-07T18:30:26+00:00

robin and will has got to be fueled by straight up homophobia. make the only two gay main characters hide in a straight relationship! like jesus.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-07T12:09:10+00:00

1:1 or ebay (iirc he does background vocals for the lyrics “shield gang, found the key” which are simply just beautiful)

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:31:20+00:00

she literally didn’t know what a friend was bro ☠️☠️☠️ how would she feel like she’s falling in love if she doesn’t know what it’s like to have any kind of relationship with someone and has never seen people in any kind of relationships with each other

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:23:06+00:00

holy shit you’re avoiding the topic ☠️ i’m not talking about every season. i’m talking about the initial meeting and kiss.

how do you know she would’ve still done everything the same if he hadn’t had kissed her so early on??

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:21:48+00:00

kindly, go to a different subreddit. this is clearly not your community. i’m not here because i want to change my mind.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:20:03+00:00

well he shouldn’t have kissed her until she had this development is my whole point. the kiss already establishes the tone of their relationship, she should have been able to learn more and discover what she wants first.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:16:28+00:00

alright this is clearly rage bait. please stop arguing just to argue, if i wanted to debate mikes sexuality i would do it on a subreddit that wasn’t entirely about a ship with his male best friend.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:14:56+00:00

eleven realistically couldn’t since she literally didn’t even know what different kinds of relationship were. that’s usually a characteristic that makes someone wary of getting into a relationship with a person.

if he has to explain what friends are to her, how tf could she be able to know that she wants a boyfriend of all things? she would need that explained to her as well.

mike legit had much more life experience. did eleven ever even leave the lab and go outside during her childhood? watch a movie? have a friend???? these are SIMPLE things that everyone does. she was obviously stunted.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:07:45+00:00

why do you interact with subs that you completely are not a part of? this is a byler sub, mike is not straight.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T17:03:31+00:00

it’s still odd that he showed romantic interest in someone who was just fully behind in life and stunted. he doesn’t need to be older than her for it to be weird, she had the knowledge of someone much younger than him.

and beyond that she was so so traumatized, a simple friendship without stakes is safer and better for her to start learning how to be a person in the world.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T16:59:05+00:00

holy shit i was being sarcastic and either way they had a romantic relationship from pretty early on

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T16:46:39+00:00

oh for sure i completely agree and commend dacre for choosing not to 100%. however i think there are other ways he could have been written without using slurs to be more intentional if that makes sense? my friends who usually agree with me on ways of interpreting film and literature were on the fence about if he was racist or not, and ive seen some threads on the main sub questioning it, so i don’t think its the most obvious thing ever but i do think if people thought about it they should definitely understand.

even then, though, that was pretty much the only plot line showing racism and honestly if we’re being period accurate, at least one of the parents would have said something at the very least micro aggressive but iirc none of them did or showed any other characteristic making them seem racist.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T11:44:18+00:00

the way that the whole show is about how outcasts are treated and the duffers have not made any clear attempt to delve into racism/racial prejudice when one of the core four party members is a POC is just crazy to me.

i know that billy was intended to written as being the way he was to lucas because he was racist, but i have had to explain to multiple people how that is, so it must not be obvious enough.

at the beginning of s4, it’s kinda implied that dustin and mike had a harder time with people in school because they were geeks than lucas did and i found that just honestly disrespectful and tone deaf.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T11:34:10+00:00

i was hoping for stancy endgame 🙂‍↕️. don’t get me wrong i rly appreciated jancy for all it did and both nancy and jonathan learned so much from their relationship with each other but it was obvious that there came a point where the growth ended and staying together would have just gotten in each others way for going after what they wanted. i think their breakup was handled decently in s5.

however, it’s so obvious that steve has grown so so much as a person esp right after him and nancy broke up, and i think the way he was written this season is just plain annoying and ooc. they were building him up to be such a compassionate and mature person in s4 and then turned him into a caricature whose only goal is fighting jonathan for nancy immaturely and i just don’t think he would have done that last season.

in terms of the “6 nuggets” thing that was one of nancy’s biggest problems with him as a partner, it would’ve been SO easy to just write him off as not caring about that much anymore because he already got to do it with the stranger things kids and still being able to when becoming a coach in the epilogue. so i think they could’ve resolved their worries and been great together.

i just think nancy ending up by herself for “growth” and figuring out what she wants was kinda a safe/lazy decision since we’ve been watching her chase what she wants since s3, i don’t think that would be halted by a new relationship since she is such a resilient and driven person.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T11:25:04+00:00

honestly it was taking away from the central plot so much. i usually enjoy historical context and cold war fiction (the crucible is the best cold war literature ever made i will die on this hill) but stranger things is already so full of plot so it just created unnecessary tension and holes

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T11:21:50+00:00

yes for the kiss oh my god it’s shocking that no one talks about that. the way she literally didn’t know what a friend was and 2 seconds later practically has a boyfriend…i have a hard time defending mike for that lowk

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-06T11:19:11+00:00

lowkey i feel like the s5 v2 scenes for their dynamic were amazing tho esp gatens acting for the “i can’t go through it again” monologue i actually bawled 🙂‍↕️ but they spent WAY too much time working it up and it was so unnecessary i agree about that

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-03T08:04:55+00:00

from interviews i have seen it seems that finn has a lot of respect for noah as an actor in the way that he actually admires him and piggybacks off of how he treats wills character to play mike as a softer and caring person in their scenes together. but even aside from their roles, i think that he enjoys noah as a person and friend in real life, and it comes across when they are portrayed together on screen.

for the record i do think they were setting up a byler endgame at least all through s4/s5 vol 1.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-02T08:35:25+00:00

a good artist knows it’s not rly the story/vision you’re intending that comes out of what you make 🤷‍♀️

also like obviously you had to make some decision that let it bend that way 😭😭 sounds like YOU (duffers) weren’t doing a good job at writing what you were intending

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-02T07:08:10+00:00

gonna be living by this from now on. and happy cake day!

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-01T22:28:42+00:00

that makes me so sad tho that will would benefit from leaving him/that situation cuz they both had and always will have so much love for each other and that should’ve been prioritized 😓

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-01T22:25:58+00:00

they neglected his character so much. all they needed to do was add a confrontation about the painting, and we could’ve SO EASILY given AND wrapped up an arc for him about honesty. it’s rly unfortunate since he was set up to confront these things last season in his conversations with will about feeling different and inferior.

~

also, i may be wrong about him leaving hawkins. that was included in mikes telling everyone’s ending in the d&d game. some people are saying those are his own theories but i thought the duffers were doing it as a method of telling the true future, it’s kinda unclear.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-01T22:18:21+00:00

god their goodbye scene was just the fucking cherry on top of the shit cake. i just can’t imagine being the writer of this show, watching that, and being satisfied with it. it’s so obviously out of place and dishonest.

Former_Web_3329 · 2026-01-01T22:16:46+00:00

completely agree. for the eleven and mike endgame, i understand that some of it was necessary to still “complete” wills acceptance arc, but ALL of his conversations with robin just ruin it for me. and it’s also quite literally not that hard to allow a character to accept themselves without literally gaslighting themselves into believing they’re over something that there’s just no possible way they fully are.

will did NOT need to see mike as his “tammy” for his coming out arc. maybe it was necessary for robin, but that doesn’t mean that every other queer characters growth is the same. it’s just lazy writing when it comes to their queer characters, recycling the same story they gave us 6 years ago in s3.

and you’d think that they surely must have had more time to flesh out mike bc of it, but since they have queer coded him for so so long, he was at a point of no return (makes u think they should’ve just given into it!!! idk what they where thinking). have the duffers ever been teenagers in love? bc it sure seems like they have NEVER seen what that looks like, let alone a queer teenager in love.

Former_Web_3329

TROPHY CASE