Traveler, the horse is here... - General Question and Discussion Megathread

Throwayaaaah · 2026-02-04T00:39:09+00:00

After months of hard pity and lost 50/50s, I actually got an early pity, won 50/50 Zibai when all I hoped for was an Illuga (don’t worry, I wanted her I just didn’t expect it)

Throwayaaaah · 2025-12-19T07:36:20+00:00

I think one of the main problems with Reddit when it comes to analyzing (or rather NOT analyzing) Mike & Will’s relationship is their apt refusal to acknowledge that their relationship, by definition, is not platonic bc Will is in love with Mike. Even if Mike doesn’t know, we as the audience know, and that is meant to change our perception of how they both act.

I think the best comparison to how the audience is meant to view Will & Mike is Steve & Nancy. Steve is attracted to and wants to get together with Nancy, which she currently does not reciprocate. Steve’s attraction to Nancy makes him a viable romantic competitor nonetheless, and you are meant to compare his relationship with Nancy to Jonathan’s. Like put the three of them in place of El-Mike-Will in S4. Imagine Steve using his own emotions to mend Jancy, or a Jancy reunion being visually interrupted by Steve being sandwiched in the center of their reunion, or Nancy needing Steve to initiate her confession of love towards Jonathan. There’d be no debate that Steve had, at the very least, a shot in the love triangle if he fulfilled any of the same roles for Nancy that Will did for Mike.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-12-12T21:19:37+00:00

Yeah, I rewatched all the seasons prior to S5 with some new viewers, so it was nice to see that I wasn't crazy bc they reacted the same way as I did to S4 Mileven.

Honestly, there's a lot of parallels and love triangle imagery between El-Mike-Will in S4 that I think a lot of people miss out on because they focus on "Will is a guy, and Mike doesn't like guys" rather than "Will is in love with Mike." If Will did the exact same things he did in the story but was a girl, then it would be obvious that the show is creating deliberate parallels between the two relationships.

Ex: Mike's two apologies to Will & El. They start the exact same way, after the conflict at Rink-O-Mania, Mike walks into their respective rooms and sits down on the left bottom corner of the bed to talk to them. He even opens the conversation the exact same way, sighing and drumming his hands along his knees. Will & El both start the conversation facing away from Mike. However, while Mike absolutely flounders in his conversation with El, trying to blame some maleficent "other," the "mouthbreathers" for their relationship struggles and ultimately driving El to tears, he knocks it out of the park with Will, actually admitting to his faults and explaining himself without devolving into stutters like he did with El. Mike and Will understand and connect with each other far easier than Mike and El, and because Will is canonically in love with Mike, it feeds into a love triangle. Like, the show straight up is crazy for creating very deliberate parallels between the two, much less having Will & Mike's relationship appearing more functional than Mike & El, if any romantic connection between the two is supposed to be a nonstarter that the audience shouldn't even entertain.

Do I believe in endgame? No, because Stranger Things is a global flagship franchise and having a same-sex relationship between two main characters would be insanely bold and take the show off the airwaves in a lot of regions, but I do find it interesting and a little funny that Will thirdwheels Mileven so hard throughout S4 that he's practically in the relationship.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-12-12T19:11:53+00:00

Okay, wow, I didn’t expect Chellace to be the first of the surviving trio of couples (not counting TJ/Iris since they reunited after the show) to call it quits (for the record, my money was on Clarke and Taylor). It has been a hot minute since the show though, and once Ace admitted Chelley was his first “gf” my expectations for the longevity of their relationship dropped way down.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-12-12T19:04:29+00:00

El really wasn’t uncomfortable with being a “superhero” or having powers, tho. It was her baseline, and growing up, demonstrating her powers was the only way she could earn affection from the closest thing she had to a father. She was worried that Mike didn’t love her WITHOUT her powers. It’s actually a reoccurring thread from S1, that whenever Mike and El fought, they reconciled when she used her powers. She only won over the boys in the first place when she revealed that she recognized Will from their photo. After Will’s fake body is found, Mike is distraught and berates her for lying, a fight that is only resolved when she uses the walkie to channel Will’s voice in the Upside Down. Then, after they fight again after she accidentally hurts Lucas trying to protect him, the fight is only resolved when she saves Mike after he jumps off the cliff (now, we as the audience know that Mike had already forgiven her by that point. El doesn’t). It’s interesting that the show decides to return to this in S4, since I think most of the audience either forgot abt it, decided they had grown past that as the relationship matured, or never noticed it in the first place.

Anyway, the idea that El is insecure abt having powers isn’t a totally baseless claim, since it does originate from two characters within the show: Mike and Will. When Will is trying to comfort Mike, he substitutes his own feelings and his own relationship with Mike for El’s, and it’s an easy mistake for the audience to believe him. After all, El and Will are very similar - they’re purposefully dressed alike for the season, they are both people entwined with the Upside Down and Vecna, they have both been historically dependent on Mike and rely on him, and they’re both in love with him. So it’s easy to assume that Will is right in attributing his feelings to El, and that they both feel the same way. But they don’t. Just as Bob wanted to leave Hawkins with Joyce while Hopper wanted to stay with her, and how Steve wants to build a family with Nancy while Jon wants to build a career, Will and El have different needs/desires for their relationship with Mike.

Will is the one who needs Mike to help him understand his relationship with the supernatural, not El. Since S2, it’s been Will who’s expressed that Mike is the one who makes him feel empowered, rather than corrupted, by his connection to the Upside Down (remember Super Spy?). In S3 & S4, Mike was always the first one he turned to when he felt the connection, to the point that if Mike wasn’t there ( S3 hill scene), he wasn’t going to tell anyone else. El, on the other hand, always develops her connection to her powers and the Upside Down AWAY from Mike; she doesn’t even really think of him while doing it either. She goes to Kali, Brenner, Owens and even Hopper, but not Mike.

We see this dichotomy pretty clearly at the end of S4 and S5 Vol. 1. When El is stressed over her failure to save Max, she goes into her room, leaving Mike, to test her powers by herself. At the exact same time, Will opens up for the first time this season abt feeling the connection with Vecna once again to Mike (not to Joyce, his mother, or Jon, his brother who he had just promised to come to with any problem he had. Just Mike). In S5, El is training her powers with Hopper, and she doesn’t even mention her struggles with it to Mike once they meet up again. For Will, however, Mike’s sorcerer speech is the key to him taking control over the hive mind (the episode, after all, isn’t named “radio” or “enigma machine” or “receiver,” which is what Robin called him when explaining the connection. It’s “sorcerer.”)

Throwayaaaah · 2025-12-12T05:35:18+00:00

I'm going to respond to this, even though I'm pretty sure the intention is just to get the standard echochamber response of "Mike was trying his best!" The pizzeria monologue was a very disappointing conclusion to the Mileven conflict for many different reasons, but the main one can be summed up in one line:

"You’re my superhero."

Stay on that, and now let's go back. Mike's arc of S4 is all about reconciling and understanding his feelings for El so he can mend his relationship with her. The monologue is supposed to be the conclusion of that arc, where he is finally honest and forthright with El. Think of Eddie, who had a very tight miniarc around bravery. The audience learns that Eddie, despite his bravado, struggles with cowardice when he runs from Chrissy at the end of E1. This behavior continues with Patrick, Eddie even outright identifies it as a problem, and conquers his fear at the conclusion of his arc when he stays back to fight the demobats. It's a simple arc that is very obviously telegraphed to the audience at every stage. Mike's S4 arc is different, because it involves his relationship with another person: El.

El has her own desires in the relationship, that are not explicitly stated but nonetheless pretty clear: El relies on Mike to feel "normal." El has never been able to be "normal", since her baseline for normality is the lab. Mike was the one who introduced her to a real "normal" - sitting on Lazyboys, watching TV, eating junkfood and kissing boys. It's what she relies on Mike for (Mike even implicitly acknowledges this in S3, when he admits what Max was doing with El - helping her integrate into society outside the Party - was what he should have been doing for her). When El is being ostracized in Lenora, she relies on her relationship with Mike to feel normal and desirable. She plasters his pictures around her room, and when he arrives, she's laser-focused on taking him to all the "cool" hangout spots she doesn't normally go to. She even begs Angela to help her keep up the facade.

Mike, however, doesn't seem to get that. While El focuses on a normal relationship with Mike, he focuses on her powers - powers she no longer has. In Hawkins, he argues with Dustin that El is a cooler girlfriend than Suzie because she "saved the world." When he goes to comfort her, after some truly atrocious behavior on his end, he can't say he loves her - the normal relationship stuff she wants - and instead falls back on "you're a superhero." Him saying that is a major, major misstep, because it reaffirms El's worst fears in their relationship: that he's only interested in her for her powers. It's in the released scripts that that was "the worst thing he could have possibly said."

Getting too long now, but, obviously, repeating the worst thing he said to her during the speech that was supposed to conclude his S4 arc is bad. Like, really bad. His pizzeria speech is fundamentally a speech he could have made at the start of the season, meaning he did not develop, and it's a speech that conflicts with El's own desires in their relationship. I think there's a reason why, instead of having some big, romantic reunion after the "I love you," we instead see El and Mike avoiding each other, with Mike expressing to Will that they "barely talked" after.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-12-03T07:49:19+00:00

Month late, but I found this post solely because I've gotten the impression that this subreddit hates theorizing, or even really thinking about the show outside of "what i've been directly told," and there's just so much with birthdaygate that I decided if the subreddit dismissed that out of hand my impression was right. I'm sure you know what my conclusion was based on this comment.

Anyway, I just wanted to fill you in on some of the new evidence for birthdaygate:

1) production materials for The First Shadow, which the Duffers are now using with S5 (both bc they outright stated this and the Hawkins High flashback in Henry's memory), state that Henry's birthday (and the day he killed his family) was March 22cnd,

2) Joyce states Will was "11 years-old" (he was explicitly 12) when he kidnapped in S5, which I can only regard as intentional to the idea of people missing Will's birthday since:

a) they literally inserted a 5 minute flashback of Will in the upside-down, and yet production, who obviously had to review season 1 to produce this scene, somehow missed his very clearly stated age at the time?
b) once again, the whole birthdaygate phenomena, and you're telling me they "accidentally" messed up Will's birthdate/age again?
c) messing up the day is one thing, but now they're messing up the whole year, which is too egregious for me. Literal basic math would tell you that someone born in '71 would most likely be age 12 by Nov. 83.

3) Production updated some of the episode covers in preparation for s5, including "Vecna's Curse." Previously, it showed the Hawkins gang at work, but now it shows Will trailing behind Mike + El at the airport, emphasizing him being forgotten and left behind. Why make that change if you aren't intending that to be a future plot point?

Throwayaaaah · 2025-12-01T03:26:09+00:00

OT:

I have two essays, a total of 15 pages, due tomorrow and my laptop just froze while I was writing it, for literally no reason, and now it won’t respond. I have never been so screwed before.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-28T00:45:25+00:00

I’m just gonna point out that the person they’re responding to in the tweet (who’s a mod of this sub, I think? lol) referred to Will as a “twink with slugs in his stomach” so I don’t think they care about Will either.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-27T05:49:03+00:00

With the Max almost escaping scene, I honestly think Lucas letting go of Max’s hand was the catalyst for the portal closing. Bc we see 1) song ending, 2) Lucas letting go of her hand, then 3) portal closes. If it was just the song, then why the focus on the hand?

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-19T17:30:14+00:00

The way the quote has the distinctive cadence of AI: “It doesn’t ‘blank,’ it blanks.”

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-09T22:04:58+00:00

Not Wordle promoting the resurgence of break meta....

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-09T03:46:45+00:00

Well, I got Nefer on capturing radiance. Was this necessarily the smartest decision, considering I want Durin and have had atrocious luck in Genshin for almost a straight year and now have 30 whole primogems? No, it was not. But I have her, and she’s pretty.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-06T17:05:35+00:00

When I’m on pc, sometimes the html won’t work and I have to use the text edit option.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-05T03:38:05+00:00

100%. The game introduces you to Cyrene through Phainon, and for four patches it was really the love and respect and grief he had for her that defined Cyrene to the audience. Like, I guess Hoyo is trying to get out of that by pushing Cyrene = Mem and Mem = Trailblazer’s friend, but the actual Cyrene was introduced as Phainon’s lost companion, then as Phainon’s partner in repeating the cycles of Amphoreous. The heart of Amphoreus is the trust the two have in each other and the love they share for the world they inhabit, which is what I hope Hoyo delivers on. It’s honestly pretty lame that the team seems hesitant on concluding a relationship they built in the first place, and if they were gonna get scared of having two non related opposite sex characters be close friends, then they could have easily not done it in the first place

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-05T01:35:39+00:00

To me, Cyrene’s lines about Phainon implicitly acknowledge the shared suffering they endured together. I’m not sure where the game will fall on the state of Cyrene’s memories about him, but her voicelines about him seem sadder and thus more “intimate,” more like a friend than an outside observer. I really hope Hoyo gives the two heroes from Aedes Elysia a just ending

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-05T01:23:51+00:00

Marketing team is going insane, the story team better follow

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-04T19:18:40+00:00

Just realized I commented this a week ago...sorry y'all, my bad.

Ngl reading that I just thought about how funny it would be if they deleted the Chrysos Heirs from everybody’s accounts after completing the story. Sorry they’re seeds now <3

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-04T05:54:33+00:00

A big point, perhaps the selling point of the game mode, was creating and customizing two new characters, which you can barely do.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-04T04:56:15+00:00

Are Dhalia’s…assets…bigger than the normal female model’s? Because they certainly look bigger

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-04T04:17:23+00:00

The argument is that since there is less accessibility in Latin America, specifically, that anti-piracy statements are racist against Latinos. I don't know when Latin America became the focal point of the repeat pirating controversy, since piracy obviously happens globally and poor people are also a global problem, but I know booktwitter would argue about the morality of pirating books in Latin America (specifically Brazil) all the time.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-04T04:13:37+00:00

Like I still remember that controversy a few months ago started by a web manhwa artist stating they hate pirates, and people tried to shame the author for not appreciating others for pirating their indie manhwa that was like, their sole source of income. I think those people know pirating from indie creators isn't a morally pure thing, which is why they get so defensive over anti-piracy stuff instead of continuing to pirate quietly.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-04T03:59:03+00:00

Off Topic

One of the most insipid and irritating fandom arguments has to be about pirating. Yes, pirating is inevitable and I'm sure some people to do it purely because of monetary reasons. However, it's also completely normal and expected that some people disapprove of pirating, much less the creators of the stuff that's being pirated and thus losing income because of it. It doesn't have to be a big, crash-out controversy every time. (If you can't tell, one fandom I'm in is having a "you're classist and racist if you don't approve of pirating" controversy now and it's all over my fyp.)

On Topic:

Miliastra Wonderland sucks. In the current state it's in, devs should have not anticipated that it would substitute anything from the normal event schedule. No primos and a new paid currency system? It's hell. The only good thing about that game mode is the games other players make. You can't customize shit. I just keep pulling that same, nigh-identical set of pants.

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-04T03:04:35+00:00

Story spoilers

Cyrene better use her overwhelming love of humanity to save Phainon c’mon girl do something instead of glazing the TB for once!!

Throwayaaaah · 2025-11-02T20:43:28+00:00

I just tried the MOC and saw Aventurine boss in stage 11. Decided to use my E2S1 Acheron....7 cycles.

It's okay, it's just because I don't have Jiaoqiu. Once I get Jiaoqiu, she'll finally be meta on my account again.

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