i'm still here in case you were wondering

an eyebrow scrunch.....a lip stare.......a smile.........he is sooooo crazy

I have to admit that the scene in the finale where hopper gets vecna‘d is actually SO GOOD, like I knew that el wasn’t dead (plot armour bla bla) but still, THIS is what I wanted the entire final battle to look like

a battle of the minds, showing the main characters their darkest fears come true, slowly driving them insane

THIS is how you do a final battle with horror instead of action, to show that you can’t win with guns, but with love

it could’ve been so good

so this was yet another coincidence too ?

some college byler stuff yay

Meet up after 4 years on yellow-dresscode Jopper wedding ♥ (song: Danny's Song by Loggins & Messina)

I wrote this before the finale came out, but it ended up being very similar to #that scene, so I guess you can pretend this is a rewrite. With flirting as it should be.

and the storyteller paladin, what about him?

welcome to circus life where we are all trapped forever and cant leave

we must simply stay on the conformitygate bus. it doesnt make any sense for everything to go wrong post episode 4 because they did not film in chronological order. it doesnt make any sense that the duffers would be so out of it in the documentary and write a shitty ending when they are known film snobs and this is their biggest show. shawn levy directing queer relationships before stranger things and using the same framing with mike and will makes no sense. someone WOULD have caught the chatgpt tabs before documentary release and cut that bit out because they know that only people interested in directing, filming, etc. would want to watch it and are the very creative put at risk by generative ai. none of it actually makes sense. things only started to go completely wrong plot wise after will was put in that trance in episode 5, or even when will unlocked his powers in episode 4. think about it.

why would vecna leave will alive but kill his friends? vecna all but tells him that the children are in his mind, ‘some people belong in [my world]’ as he taps his temple. its a waste of time to confront him specifically only to leave him alive—unless that was the plan the whole time.

think: if will gets his power from connection to the hivemind, he becomes like henry creel. its will thats most like henry, NOT el, whose powers were genetically passed to her from her mother who was infected with henry’s blood. THATS WHY DR KAY IS IN SEASON 5!!! SHE IS A PARALLEL TO ‘GOD’, BRENNER AND THE HIVEMIND. she wanted to make more superpowered children as an army, as weapons, just like henry, just like brenner. THATS why will is left alive in episode 4. remember when he drew what he saw in the abyss in the barn and the framing had him at the centre, where vecna was in volume 2 and the finale? the ‘pain tree’, or the heart of the mindflayer, connecting twelve children but with him at the centre. then in episode 7, the framing of the wormhole drawing with the bridge iver his face and the x over his heart? he IS THE BRIDGE! as in, he is what is holding the upside down together. remember episode 1? when he’s jumping from tree to tree and we see a flash of light in the clouds, almost like the ‘exotic matter’? doesnt nancy shoot it while will is in a trance but it suddenly stabilises and everything is ‘fine’? will is the connecting piece, but we already know that.

this makes jane’s death all the more strange and unsettling. she is not like henry. her death will not prevent the military from persecuted her friends and family. her death does nobody any favors. so why does she ‘die’?

its simple. she does not die. that episode is mike’s perspective: it is what vecna uses will to make mike see, to trap him in a camazotz. now, we cant be sure if its just mike in camazotz or the whole of hawkins because what we see is mike’s perspective in the last episode and most of volume 2. however, we also know that in the end credits will is listed as an illusionist, which he has never been before, which suggests will is hijacked by vecna to cast the illusion. so why kill jane in mike’s illusion?

because it will isolate ‘will’ from intimacy, so nobody can get close enough to understand that Will byers is not Will Byers. vecna is already having trouble with characterising will. he messes up the part about melvalds in episode 7. we know this.

for mike, this entails killing off eleven, because eleven to mike is not who eleven actually is. eleven to mike is an embodiment of his love for will, and after her death becomes the embodiment of his guilt, permanently preventing himself from approaching will and being true to himself. he has to conform. we see this in how mike talks to el in the ‘trance’. he cannot touch her properly, he cannot say he loves her. he imagines her telling him that he was the only one who ever understood her, he remembers her dressed in a costume in season 1, when she had a buzzed haircut, did not yet know her name or even what a friend was.

he did not see her then: he saw the version of her that had only just escaped her abuser and started to try and find herself. and before that he saw somebody in the forest that was ‘not will’ but could have been mistaken for him with a buzzed haircut and a yellow shirt on. she was a replacement and a key to will until the end of season 1, where he misconstrued his feelings of friendship to her, the only girl he’d ever befriended as something that had to be romantic. he didnt love the girl—he resented her friendship to max. he didnt understand her in season 3, clouded by imagined futures and misplaced feelings. he only saw the superman he stumbled across in those woods.

by season 5 he knows this. actually by season 4 he knows this (realisation at end of season 3), and cannot not say he loves her without drawing upon memories of will at the same time. for mike, el’s death is the final nail in the coffin of guilt, from which he cannot move on. mike cannot pursue will as long as el is dead: she is the embodiment of his love for will. which is why, despite it all, will’s painting is beside his desk and he pretends she is still alive.

by season 5, in fact, i believe they were great friends in volume 1, even parts of volume 2, in a way they hadn’t been since season 1 and the end of season 2. which is what makes me believe they never got back together in the timeskip. they simply work better as friends without imagined gender roles and heteronormativity hanging over their heads. they ONLY kiss in that fake trance intended to make mike feel guilty again. it is literally his worst nightmare. they were not even together.

byler forever 🫡

I can't be the only one that was convinced this scene...

...is gonna be this scene...

...and for Mike to realize he's stuck in the Midnight Realm *cough* Vecna's vision?? And then nothing happened but...

Call me crazy but conformitygate is real whether they intended it or not I don't care. It's canon bc nothing else makes sense...

Not to mention that Mike's story had people coming out because they didn't want to share his fate... which is exactly what "I Saw The TV Glow" did and was most likely meant to do.

The concept of Mike never even attempting to get back into the dating scene post-canon because he feels like he has to remain loyal to El now that she's dead because deep down he knows that he was never truly loyal to her while she was still alive and Will breaking hearts left and right because no matter how hard he tries he just can't stop searching for Mike in every man that he dates.

anytime hermits refer to each other as family I start crying and screaming and hollering etc