Hello!! what do you think about the tag those days? do you have a fav blog? who do you think is saving the tag from dying with posts and theories?

i think the tag is slowly dying tbh and it's sad to see? the reality is that for the past year or so the tag has been kept alive (from what i've seen and my personal experience here) because of art/fic creators and analysis blogs. however, it's been a year since s4 dropped and as i've seen some people around the tag say, everything that could've been analysed or said about byler in the last season or all seasons has already been said. now, i personally LOVE doing analysis even to this day, doesn't matter if i'm probably repeating something someone else spotted and blogged about two months ago. it's fun to make those posts, but we can't ignore that they are becoming repetitive and that side of the tag is burning out. because of that, things like fics/art/headcanons/ficlets/aus are so important now.

we don't have to run out of content to enjoy in our tag, but people should be willing to step outside their comfort zone and accept that canon is limited to what can he done and said about byler. aus however open new doors that this tag hasn't really explored yet, and for some reason there's a bit of resistance? and that leads us to a dead end because then there's no new not repetitive content and the tag starts dying even with its huge following.

another issue is definitely the lack of rb in the tag. i can jump on any post in the byler tag and check the notes and i know the ratio between likes and rbs will be ridiculous. ofc i can't force anyone to rb if they don't want to, but liking a post and not rb kills a post bc it stops reaching new people who will then engage with said post and then it will reach even more blogs. liking does nothing, it's a dummy button.

rb not only allows a post to stay alive, it's also a great opportunity to create conversations in the tags and engage with other people on this side of the internet. and well if you aren't into that or don't like to add tags to every rb, a simple rb still does much more than a like.

i have many fav blogs and i'll probably forget some, but from the top of my head i have @andiwriteordie (writer and au lover) @foodiewithdahoodie (amazing takes and headcanons) @astrobei (writer and artist) @wiseatom (amazing writer) @doriandrifting (analysis and amazing takes) @emblazons (amazing takes and gifs) @mayahawkins (one of the best gif creators in the tag) @perexcri (amazing writer) @likegoldintheair (amazing writer and amazing headcanons/ficlets) @elekinetic (amazing writer and amazing scripts) @kidovna (beautiful art and aus and comics) @noodles-and-tea (art art art i am obsessed) @nnilkyway (again beautiful art) @strangeswift (writer and a fun blog to check out) and many more that i'm probably forgetting right this moment.

if you (anyone who is reading this) have a blog rec pls lmk!!! i'm always looking for new byler content!!

(if you have stonathan blogs recs uh also lmk i need more stonathans on my dashboard thanks)

hi!

i read the tags you wrote about millie in a post yesterday (i think you deleted the post because i cant find it now) and i just wanted to say im glad theres someone who shares similar thoughts as me. i love millie but i cant even say anything on twitter without her toxic stans accusing me of misogyny and insulting her intelligence, even though thats not my intention.

if byler is canon, how do you think she’ll feel about it? im asking because your perspective is interesting! i think shes going to take it a bit personally because she strongly relates to her character and wants el to be on the same path as her (like getting married young). its understandable though, considering her upbringing.

!! I actually took it off my blog because the other day I resolved the issue of my tags not archiving—but when it got resolved, my blog ended up square in the middle as “top blogs” with the full mlvn name tag because I hadn’t been abbreviating their ship in the tag I used before ☠️ that said, I changed the tag to “anti mlvn” so I could keep myself out of mlvn corners, but a lot of the recent posts that I kept under the old tag are gone or private until tumblr tracks the change—hence the missing post!

Still...me and that tag rant was giving “why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave” for sure (lmao), though I certainly meant it less as a comment on her life decisions themselves and more a "I can tell by the decisions you make as a creator, producer of other films, and in general that you are not The Duffer Brother's target audience, but a lot of your fans can't" kind of way...which is still controversial in several corners of this fandom for sure. 😭

the rest of this answer under the cut because it got long lol

Like, yes, she does play a principal character in the show, but playing a character does not mean the character is modeled to you as a person—just look at Emilia Clarke playing Daenerys Targaryen, Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter, or even Rachel McAdams playing Regina George lmao.

Despite playing El since she was a child, as Millie has come into adulthood it's become clearer that she is very different from El—and that The Duffers aren't creating Eleven's arc with Millie's own "coming of age" in mind. Her choices to create things like Enola Holmes, Damsel, and even Nineteen Steps (her new book) showing up as sharp contrasts to not only the women in Stranger Things, but in all of The Duffer's upcoming work on Death Note, The Talisman and The Boroughs prove that well enough, which would be zero problem at all...if a lot of her fans didn't conflate Millie with El is as a character.

To your point though...I honestly don't think Millie is going to be all that personally upset if El ends up single and Byler happens—she's already made clear that she loves El, but is ready to move on and tell other stories and that she would have written the story as a high school drama if she was in control of the direction of the plot (while pointing out that she's not the one in control of it) lol.

Even what she said recently in an widely published and official Seventeen interview shows that she's really just here to finish the story and move on with her career—that she's ready for her role as El (and the drama I'm 10000% sure comes with that) to be done:

At least to me, all of that makes it seem like she is a level-headed young woman who can handle her character not being aligned with how she would live her own life—and will, when the time comes.

That said: imo the real problem is that fans of MBB are confusing Millie's own "I can be young, strong and still have a man" creative and life choices with El's "I am overcoming the bounds men have put on me to become strong by myself" storyline, which only becomes an issue when Millie jokes about things like mlvn getting married—

—and (by nature of being an influential celebrity) ends up with fans who mistake Millie's headcanons (because...honestly that's what they are) based on what she enjoys in fiction as what The Duffers are writing & planning for the ending of Stranger Things.

Basically: as an actress, it's literally MBB's job to bring life to stories that don't necessarily reflect her own values or desires, and she knows it—but because she's been playing the character on people's screens so long (and from a young age) a lot of fans have issues separating the woman from the fiction and recognizing that (as Adam Driver once said) it's not Millie's job to have a feeling about or even agree with who El is as a person—it's her job to bring El & The Duffer's vision to life, even if her life informs how she plays the role.

None of that is particularly Millie's fault (though she, like Noah sometimes, adds fuel to fandom fire with the jokes she makes lmao), though it does get irritating to navigate when you're constantly subjected to arguments rooted in nothing but headcanons when trying to make sense of The Duffer's work itself lmao.

TL;DR - Mills joking about El and Mike getting married feels the same as someone here putting their headcanon out into the world about married & domestic Byler—only, because she's the face of Eleven + has now gotten engaged young herself, people misinterpret her own "cute headcanons" as canonical fact, leaving people who love the actual canon + who enjoy the 'style of womanhood' the Duffers write to arguing with people who misunderstand the actual characters.

Millie is a woman whose had a complicated relationship with celebrity and fame since she was a very young girl, and she has certainly made different decisions than I have (and likes different fiction than I do)—but that has nothing to do with her intelligence or ability to respond gracefully to the character she's played since 12 turning out differently than she would have imagined it if she had written El herself. If and when Byler happens, I'm sure she will meet the reality of it with respect and consideration, even if her fans (and hardcore fans of mlvn) don't lmao.

Hopefully that explains it (and doesn't get me shot for saying lmao). But thanks for the ask!

(sorta?) hot take we should stop being shitty to m!levens and calling them dumb behind their backs because in the end its literally just fictional characters and even if they did it first just hit the block button (its not that hard). 'but they started it-' block them. 'but theyre being ignorant-' its not your job to educate them. block them. literally just stop being an asshole. who cares what they ship. as long as its not some weird adult/minor thing or whatever just let them be. there are real people behind those screens.

my apologies for taking so long to get to this T-T

YES YES YES FUCKING SAY IT

i'm so sick of the blatant bullying from bylers towards milkvans. they are minding their own business on their tag, posting their thoughts and enjoying the characters, and yet there's still so many of us who feel entitled to shit all over them and the things that they like and think, the exact thing that we complain about constantly.

i fucking hate how this tag seems to believe that shipping byler makes you exempt from being a bully. it feels like SHIT to have someone make fun of you behind your back- believe me, i goddamn know! so many of us know! and yet it's still such an issue? LEAVE THEM ALONE! let them make fanart, and write fic, and have headcanons and a deep love for these characters and their ship, because it does not goddamn affect us. it doesn't.

this tag has a serious problem with perpetuating the idea that anyone not picking up on or disagreeing with or even just simply disliking byler makes them stupid or media illiterate, which is NOT TRUE!!! milkvans aren't stupid, the general audience isn't stupid, and we aren't better than ANYONE for looking so deep into this show and finding subtext to analyze that brought us to the conclusion that byler will/should be canon.

maybe they disagree with the way the evidence is presented. maybe they think it means something else. maybe they simply don't want to look deeper into the show- WHO CARES! we all need to stop pretending that the term 'media literacy' hasn't been turned into a weapon that we use against anyone who disagrees with us or doesn't care enough about the show to think about it deeper than a surface level. that's not what media literacy means, but it's been twisted into something it's not, just like with fucking tiktok and 'gaslight' or 'normalize'.

agh. i'm sorry for turning this into a rant, but it makes me SO mad that people can't leave milkvans alone to enjoy their ship and their characters. shipping wars are dumb. have your own thoughts and opinions and talk about them, but don't point and laugh at the people who drastically disagree- because you don't come off looking good, you come off looking like a total twat who can't accept different interpretations of a television show.

anyways. milkvans i love you dearly i hope you're having fun with mike and el and i'm sorry for anyone who makes you feel bad for enjoying them, mwah mwah

After scrolling through the tag for a while and seeing everyone go into a state of panic because of the Noah and Millie interview, I wanted to give some thoughts. This is more or less an incoherent rant, you’ve been warned. Just as a side note I’m not trying to start an argument with anyone online so if you decide to be hostile I’ll block you bbg. I will not be addressing the article but the unlabeled Will discourse that has sparked because of it. Anyways.

Also minor tw some slurs are mentioned and mentioned negative use of the word queer.

I don’t understand what’s wrong with Will being unlabeled. Like they way some of you are framing it seems homophobic. It sounds like you’re saying that unlabeled people aren’t queer. Which they most definitely are and if you think otherwise why is that? The whole modern queer movement is about rejecting heteronormativity, and labels are a part of that.

Of course the 80s gay liberation movement was different form the one today. But at its core it strove to abolish gender norms and the nuclear family. Gay and Lesbian were terms that people used then as a form of their own liberation and a way to distance themselves from heteronormativity. So would Will being unlabeled really make sense? (the answer is yes).

*disclaimer, you can headcanon Will’s sexuality however you want. It still has not been confirmed only heavily coded. All we know is that he is some sort of queer.

I think it makes a lot of sense for Will to be unlabeled looking into how his character is written. He’s been the subject of homophobic bullying for his entire life. Even his dad called him gay. So it’s makes sense that the terms gay, queer, fairy etc would trigger unwanted memories and trauma. I think it makes more sense for someone like Mike to use the label gay (I don’t think he'd use the term bi since there was a lot of biphobia back then but feel free to debate that, respectfully of course).

Robin is an unlabeled character yet I haven’t seen any discourse about that. Would you like for her to be confirmed lesbian. All we know is that she likes women and not men. So why can’t that be the same for Will. We know he likes Mike and we can be pretty sure he doesn’t like women at all. That’s all we really need to know��� sorta. That argument is constantly used by straight people, “why does it matter?” It matters because we need confirmation a character is queer and in passed media we’ve only gotten heavily queer characters. Ones that never got into relationships and were only queercoded or had offhand mentions like “oh yeah I’m living with my roommate” or “I’m not interested in dating a girl/boy right now.”

For the older queer people in the fandom, in your head what would it be like for them to keep Will unlabeled. Would it be similar to Robin or something like what I just stated in the previous paragraph?

But that’s not really what the duffer brothers would be doing (if byler is canon which it will be, just has not been confirmed yet). If Mike and Will end up together and explicitly say they’re a couple/dating then they aren’t really running from confirming the characters as queer. They are telling their audience outright that they love each other. They don’t need Will to say he's gay in order for their relationship to be valid.

In my humble opinion I think if they had Will have a coming out scene it'd feel forced. 1. Because coming out is pretty heteronormative and a way for cishet people to separate queer people from them. Queer people shouldn’t need to declare their truth just like straight people. All the power to you if you want to come out, it’s your decision of course that’s just how I see it. 2. The duffers shouldn’t have to handhold their audience in order to get across that Will is gay. If he’s in a relationship with Mike then it’s pretty obvious. Yes there are slimy incel Elon Musk stans who will debate it on Reddit but like so what. They are a small portion of the audience and for the most part everyone will understand how Will feels.

I think the only person it makes sense for Will to explicitly come out to would be Mike. I think Will knows Mike would need concrete confirmation and reassurance that Will is gay and has feelings for him. As for everyone else I don’t think Will would want to come out to everyone else in the party. I don’t even think he'd come out to his mom and Jonathan, I think he'd just be open if he was dating Mike.

I know one argument is that not confirming Will as gay is them being afraid to say it. But are they afraid to said it if they’ve shown homophobia and that whole Justin/Erica interaction? /gen.

I mentioned earlier how I think it makes more sense for Mike to call himself explicitly gay. He hasn’t been bullied the way Will has. He’s spent most of his life not knowing the feelings he has deep down for his friend, all he knows is that they aren’t normal. Mike identifying as gay could be comforting to him given his circumstances as supposed to Will who has bad memories surrounding those labels. I can imagine Mike saying to Nancy or his mom “I’m gay” way more than I can Will.

Tldr; I think Will is gay as fuck but they don’t have to say it, and for all u bylers worrying about the article, don’t pay too much attention to it. All the evidence trumps it and I think we should just live laugh Byler

omg i finally found you!! I liked ur birthdaygate post AGES ago then forgot your url but im so glad i found you again bcos i have SO many questions- pls pls pls can you explain your theory more bcos its driving me crazy, a lot of people dont like this theory for some reason but im on the fence about how i feel about it :/

damn, I really thought I had the best hiding spot... *climbs out of a dark corner and stretches*

lol, hey!

ok so before I go any further into this, I just want to make something clear: I'm not the person who came up with the birthdaygate theory. I've seen a few people conflating birthdaygate with the post I made about something funky going on with the memories mentioned in the S2 shed scene, but they're like totally two separate things. Birthdaygate is the cool, big-brain theory that suggests Will's forgotten birthday is secretly a planned narrative tool that we'll see explained in Season 5 (whoever first put the evidence for that together, you rock and I have mad respect for you)

Memorygate on the other hand, is just a small expansion of it: my suggestion as to when or why Will's birthday might have been forgotten. Honestly, I'd not given the whole theory much thought before I unceremoniously threw it into the byler tag and watched the horror and heartbreak spread haha I'll do my best to explain it a little more, but I don't think I'll really be able to help much. My intention was never to convince people of anything. It was literally just me going, "huh... hey guys, isn't this kind of suspicious...?"

and the thing is, if you don't believe in birthdaygate to begin with, then memorygate is completely moot. Like, it's just a lot of fun. But if birthdaygate is real, memorygate just might be one possible explanation. Maybe. ?? honestly? I think it would kinda suck if it was real. I totally understand why some people hate it. Whilst I'm sure it'd be a shocking twist, it would also be very deux ex machina, and it'd mess with the character's agencies.

but like, if it WAS suspicious... ...here we have a villain who can canonically a) view people in the present moment like they're all laid out on a chess board ("now-memories"), b) enter any mind he so wishes and spy on their innermost thoughts and memories, and c) seems to have a connection/obsession with time.

This villain is also literally told a bunch of memories relating to one of his primary antagonists. The S2 shed scene helped Will break free of his possession just enough to save the day, but at the same time, what if Vecna was being given precious ammunition that he could utilise for future use? It's kinda convenient that Will's birthday is A Thing™ now, and the ONE time it's mentioned in the narrative is one of the most powerful and important scenes. Coincidence? Yeeeeah, maybe.

and as to how Vecna could have 'used' all those memories for his own benefit, I can only speculate. We don't yet know enough about what Vecna is fully capable of. Can he flit through people’s mindscapes without the victim suspecting anything? Do they always have a nosebleed or a headache, or is that just for when he’s going to kill/ consume you to open a gate?  Memorygate is just the theory that Vecna’s done something to those memories, including Will's birthday, because he knows they helped Will fight back against his possession.

Of course, Will was physically possessed in comparison to the mind possession we saw with Max and the other victims, so we don’t know if that changes things either.  It could be time-related (like, the date itself has been screwed with) or it could be memory-related (e.g. nobody from the shed scene can remember it because at some point, Vecna has messed with their minds, one by one). I can't help but compare it to how Vecna entered Max's memory of the Snow Ball. She did the same thing that Will probably did, and entered a safe space in her mind to escape him. She fought back by remembering the good, anchoring herself to her friends and to her special dance/kiss with Lucas. But then Vecna found his way in to that memory, slowly but surely, and took it over so she could no longer hide there. 

We didn't see it as an audience, but what if that was kind of what was happening inside Will's mind in S2? 

I'm not sure what more I can say to explain the memory stuff because there's still a lot of guesswork when it comes to Vecna and his powers. But I can go a little further into the Byler part for you, seeing as I only briefly mentioned it in my first post and I assume that's what you want me to get into most. So Mike talks about DnD games and their swingset meeting, and I think the latter is arguably the most powerful memory mentioned in the whole scene. A lot of attention is focused on the swingset memory. It's super important. We can also pretty confidently conclude that Vecna is pissed at Mike, especially by the time S4 rolls round. He's long known who he is, and he knows he's directly foiled his plans on more than one occasion, just like El. So go back and watch the shed scene again, and think about what we learned about Vecna in Season 4. Was he watching from Will's eyes, a hulking presence stalking through his mind, clouding Will's sense of self and listening intently to every word Mike was saying? Yeah, probably. Mike was visibly emotional. Distressed, vulnerable, raw, honest. Vecna learned that day that Mike and Will are deeply special to one other. He knows they're best friends. He knows a lonely Mike first approached a similarly lonely Will on a swingset when they were in kindergarten ('it was the best thing I've ever done...'). He also probably knows how Will truly feels about Mike. So that's a lot of ammunition for him to help put his plans into action, whatever they may be. He apparently doesn't want to kill Will, but perhaps he wants to isolate him. To hurt him, to make him feel forgotten by his loved ones, in a long game to win him over? Who knows.......

Vecna plays chess with people. He spies, he collects information, he uses people's memories against them. And the shed scene would have been a prime opportunity. A feast, if you will.

Once again, I hope I'm wrong about this. :)

Not trying to invalidate your feelings or anything like that, but regarding your comment about the 'gay' being heavy-handed in ST4, do you think that it might help to change your perspective a bit? Like, those of us in the byler fandom have all enjoyed the subtle context clues and coding that they used throughout the first two seasons. But if the show really wants to go through with having Will come out, they're going to have to lose a bit of the subtlety for the rest of the general audience-tbc

[I mean, let's face it, Season 3 wasn't even very subtle about it. The whole "you don't like girls" thing was pretty blatant, the look of panic and fear in his face that his best friend of all people had outed him like that. The subsequent scene at Castle Byers. And STILL people were like, "oh, poor Will, he doesn't wanna grow up, he's just not ready for girls yet. Give him time." Like...what? So as much as I love our little corner of the fandom, I think a bit of a firmer hand was sadly needed]

Hi there. Firstly, thanks for the polite way you framed your question. However from what you have said here, I gather that there are two assumptions that you have made about me that I need to clarify and correct.

Assumption 1: That I want or care if Byeler becomes canon or Will comes out on the show.

And assumption 2: That I care whether other Stranger Things fans believe that Will is gay or that Byeler is a worthy or believable ship.

Both of these are not things that I care about. And thats not me saying that other people shouldnt care about them, or that they are wrong if they DO care about them. I'm only speaking for myself here.

I'm guessing you might have only come across my tumblr recently, since I have a long history of not caring whether Byeler goes canon or not on the show. You can see posts I've made about the subject here and here. In fact I've gone as far as to say I hope they don't make Byeler canon, because I can't see how they could do it in a way that I would find satisfying.

And its... proving to be true. Sure we are getting some gay rep through their sloppy heavy-handed hinting at Will's sexuality in S3 and S4. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. In fact I have been very vocal about my dislike of S3. I'm in the camp of if-you-can't-do-it-right-then-dont-do-it-at-all when it comes to Will's sexuality or Byeler.

And as for what you say about the show having to cater to the audience of people who are not on the Byeler ship to convince them that its a worthwhile ship (by making the gayness very obvious)... um nope, I don't really care what the other fans think or whether they share the same opinions as me.

I. Just. Don't. Care.

I'm here for my enjoyment, not other peoples. I'm a ship-and-let-ship sorta gal. I don't really care whats going on in other parts of the fandom or with the wider offline audience. I don't even really care whether other Byeler fans agree with my opinions. I chose to remove myself from the Byeler fandom ages ago.

And believe me, you don't want me in the Byeler fandom anyway. All I would do is moan about the good ol days and harsh everyone's buzz. There are peeps who are still genuinely enjoying the show and good for them. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade.

Which is why I keep my negative opinion posts out of the tags.

Buuuuut... this still be MY BLOG... so imma keep blogging my uncensored thoughts.

And my most recent uncensored thoughts just happen to be about Stranger Things.

¯_(ツ)_/¯