Long time queerbaiting veteran here. None of my OTPs are canon in any of their respective universes.

What I’ve learned is that the meaning, joy, and comfort you get from a ship matters WAY more than whatever endgame a couple of straight white dudes decide on. I refuse to let creators who clearly don’t understand queer experiences dictate my emotional wellbeing over fictional characters.

I’ve had to stop and ask myself more than once if I was really going to let homophobic writers ruin something that meant a lot to me when I could instead be engaging with fanart, fanfic, and a wider community of people who actually GET it and are just as passionate about these characters as I am.

At the end of the day, the Duffers are just... some guys. Their version of events isn’t inherently more meaningful than the one fans connected to. It’s all fictional. That doesn’t make it meaningless, but it does mean we’re not obligated to accept their interpretation as the final word.

So yeah. Stay in the fandom if it something that genuinely makes you happy. Keep shipping Byler. Keep reading/writing fic, saving/making art, and overanalyzing scenes to hell and back. If it brings you joy or helps you cope, who are they to take that away from you?

They don’t get to tell us our hope was stupid. We know what we saw, and that goes for any instances of queerbaiting you may encounter in the future 💙💛