#byler youtube comments

[tal-vez-o-quizas]

Here's some Byler hope: yt comments I liked and saved. I don't remember where I took them from, lol, but I think these are from a scene compilation.

Gotta love that "I don't rock with the lgbt" one, hahaha. It's so funny!

[greenfiend]

Shoutout to The Take on YouTube (they have almost 1.5mil subs!) understanding Stranger Things better than most!

[dont-open-dead-inside-25]

y’all

[chirpsythismorning]

Seeing every theory from the GA about Suzie's house, including how Suzie's sister choking was foreshadowing Eddie's death, with no mention of El at Surfer boy... Like that almost infuriates me more than byler denial because like... are you serious?

[your-friendly-neighbourh00d-fag]

?????????

what do you actually mean

be serious right now.

[microwavedmetal]

tfw you trynna pick a fight in the youtube comment section, and your sarcasm flies right over the other person's head to the point they think you agree with them 😭

[kiirotoao]

Don’t mind if I do 😉

So I just went back to compare these reunions, and the differences are actually pretty incredible. El’s hold is already pretty damning, but I wanted to add things about these scenes in general:

These are Hopper’s reactions during his and El’s reunion. His expressions are clear and absolutely heartwarming. Also note the Byers hold he does right back to her! These shots were easy to capture for me as I was watching and screenshotting. And look at the lighting and background, so dim and warm and comforting. The mood is very tender and intimate and full of the relief it brings, and this moment takes almost two minutes of screen time.

Meanwhile, these are Mike’s reactions during his and El’s reunion. They’re sweet, but they’re a little less gentle, strained by squinting in the harsh sunlight. And on top of that, they were pretty hard to capture. That first expression happened in a split second, and I had to rewind and pause five times just to screenshot it. The lighting is loud, the background even louder (the open van making a huge contrast, Argyle right behind Mike, and of course Will Byers smack dab in the middle of them), and this whole exchange takes just under thirty seconds.

Mike and El’s cinematography is not only pretty damn similar to a familial reunion, but it also does not serve as emotionally at all.

we've really gotta talk about this more

[teambyler]

Will's anti-Vecna song should be David Bowie's "Heroes"

We know from the new BTS pic that he has headphones and a Walkman. Like Max, he might be fending off Vecna:

Max's anti-Vecna song was highly personal to her. It helped her through her guilt and depression and feeling like she deserved to die.

For Will, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" is cute, but it doesn't have emotional weight. It might have helped a child Will in the Upside Down in s1, when it made him think of home and Jonathan, but he's all grown up now. He's changed.

If Byler becomes realized, David Bowie's "Heroes" is the perfect song for Mike and Will's relationship that would help Will resist Vecna. It's canon that Will likes David Bowie: kid Mike prefers the androgynous rock star over Kenny Rogers (s2e1).

@surferbeto on YouTube comments:

This is a heroic love song. Bowie starts out crooning but pretty soon he ramps up and belts it out hard. This song is about risking getting shot by East German border police and dragged over barbed wire for love. This is about young love against impossible odds. It's about that gloriously tragic fantasy... of giving our life in some grandly romantic way to save the life of our beloved. Maybe by taking a bullet for them and dying in their arms in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

Having David Bowie's "Heroes" in the show would call-back to Peter Gabriel's somber 2010 cover from s1, when Mike hugged his mom thinking Will was dead. But Bowie's original is defiant, triumphant, and bittersweet. (Seriously, if you haven't yet, listen to it before reading further. It's perfect.)

It would play when Mike and Will have their first kiss. Their song of losing each other is now of finding each other.

If Byler is realized, it could play as Mike and Will dare to hold hands in the school hall, as we fade out to the end credits.

Will would put it on his Walkman. If Will and Mike are bullied for their relationship, "Heroes" perfectly expresses their defiance and willingness to love each other despite the harm that might come to them.

It's the song that would most help Will in case he gets Vecna'd. It doesn't just remind him of Mike; it culminates his journey over the five seasons. As a kid he told Jonathan he's not a baby, not just a victim. Despite seeming shy and weak, he has a huge amount of quiet courage, but his struggle in s3 and s4 was largely internal. ("I'm not gonna fall in love.") Show creator Matt Duffer says about s5: "Will's going to be a big part and focus... We're starting to see his coming of age, really... You're starting to see him come into his own." If Byler becomes real, then his fight becomes external, confronting the homophobia in Hawkins and the literal hell threatening his friends. He will rise to the occasion.

"Will really takes center stage again in [season] 5," Ross Duffer told Variety. "This emotional arc for him is what we feel is going to hopefully tie the whole series together. Will is used to being the young one, the introverted one, the one that’s being protected. So part of his journey, it’s not just sexuality – it’s Will coming into his own as a young man."

In s2, Will only allowed Mike to protect him because he didn't feel pitied by Mike; Mike saw his strength. A stronger Will will pay him back and protect him from the twin dangers they face.

It's Will's turn to be the hero. His fight for others is his fight for himself. "Heroes" perfectly expresses his journey of defying all odds to fight for HIS RIGHT TO LOVE.

-teambyler

[starbylers]

Okay I’ve seen snippets from Noah’s meet & greet at the con floating around, so here’s all the relevant info & why there’s no cause for concern:

He was asked what he hopes for for Will, and he said a happy ending but didn’t elaborate

There was a question about Will dealing with different struggles including unrequited love & separation from his friends (early s4), and the questioner asked how Will handled & evolved from these things, and if it was hard to portray. Noah said that it’s difficult to answer because he does know how Will deals with everything so it’s spoilers but that it was a personal challenge he enjoyed from an acting perspective

While asking a question about Will & El’s relationship, someone stated that Will had let go of his feelings for Mike and Noah didn’t address that. I saw someone misattribute this quote and claim Noah was the one who said it, but this isn’t true

He was also asked what’s his fav theory about Byler & I think he was confused what they meant so they explained flickergate to him as an example? 😭 I’m not gonna comment on that but apparently he said he sometimes watches fan theory YouTube videos and always admires the creativity but that the theories are quote “Wrong. So so wrong”.

He said if he was writing Will’s coming out he’d have him dramatically die after (obviously a joke)

So yeah…? Idk what we can take from that other than:

If someone directly questions him about Mike not requiting Will’s feelings he’s obviously going to have to go along with it but we knew we’d have to deal with that so 🤷‍♀️ (and also Will as a character does think his feelings are unrequited presumably at least for a while into if not through out most of s5, so it’s not even really a lie because Noah will have to portray that)

Many if not all theories regarding how s5 Byler is going to go down are probably so far from reality but again we’ve known this the whole time

The individual who shared this information is a very dedicated MiIeven. I’m not saying they’re lying necessarily but sometimes people take what they want to take from things. For instance, they made a point of mentioning that him & his mother nodded along after a questioner mentioned unrequited love being a typical teen experience, which could just be simple agreement with the concept but this person obviously interprets it as some kind of confirmation lol. So yeah just take things with a grain of salt. If there was a vid we could get a sense of his attitude, facial expressions, hesitations etc. throughout all this but all we have are words which could be somewhat paraphrased based on this person’s opinion

Anyway that’s all :) just a reminder to brace yourself for the next year or so because at the end of the day an actor’s ultimate job when fielding questions is to not spoil. I really wish people would quit asking him about Byler tbh because he literally can’t say anything

[tal-vez-o-quizas]

I was rewatching this Stranger Things 4 video from MTV UK and I came across this in the comments:

You, me and the entirety of Byler Tumblr want Noah and Finn interviews, my little YouTube user, we really do 😞

Hopefully we get them for Stranger Things 5...

[gay-episode]

I love finding youtube shorts where it has like "guess the stranger things character based on the emoji" because sometimes they put this picture as the background and all the comments are from people who are in the GA and don't ship byler and they're like "what's up with their hands😰?"

For example:

[obsessionatthemoment]

I've been planning on making a YouTube video that's a concrete argument that Will Byers is not a bad character. It pisses me off so much when people say he is, so I've been rewatching the show and finding examples of his plot relevance, his possible character growth (in all honesty, he hasn't had much, so I'm coming up with possible character growth in season 5). I'm making a section on solely his personality traits, and how I think he's an amazing person. I even have a section addressing his controversy's (e.g., his vaguely sexist comments on occasion), because I want to play devil's advocate and show that I am not completely biased. I have been researching reasons people don't like Will (most of it is BS and based on bias). I'm addressing how terrible it is that people make fun of Will for wanting to play DnD, when he has just experienced a severe childhood trauma, and it makes sense that he would want to play a super fun game that comforts him (that isn't even geared specifically towards kids, so I don't know why people call him childish). I'm probably addressing even more that I can't remember right now.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about it and have been working hard on the script for a while (it probably won't be done for another while), so I thought I'd share a bit about it. (I'm probably going to make one on Mike eventually too, and they will both most likely have byler crumbs, but that won't be the main focus of them.)

[mikewheelerisaboykisser]

Saw someone in a comment section under a youtube video say that they wouldn’t make byler happen after all the connection they built between Mike and El in s4💀

At this point i think these people have been watching a totally different show or have a brain the size of a cashew cause what is this.

[pinksmonkey]

The first episode of Byler Theory is up on my YouTube channel now! Go check it out if you're interested. Please leave a like and subscribe for more Byler videos eventually, and leave a comment with any of your thoughts.

If the whole video is too long for you, I made some shorts from the video with a few of my favourite highlights and funny moments. You can find them in my Stranger Things Videos playlist. :D

I will be updating this playlist with all my Stranger Things related videos, so if you want to know when I post new videos, you can save this playlist on YouTube and/or subscribe to my channel to get notifications. ☺️

[therainscene]

Crazy together: Byler, Cthulhu, and cosmic horror

Cthulhu is a queer horror film from 2007 that I've always been fond of. I rewatched it recently and was struck by some of its similarities to Stranger Things: small town vibes, conformity themes, cosmic horror as queer allegory, a gay protagonist with a childhood best friend slash love interest named Mike...

The film has an ambiguously villainous ending for its main character, Russ Marsh, and it's an ending that suits this story pretty well, imo -- so given how much it reminds me of Will's story, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two.

[Content warning for rape and (bloody) attempted suicide, both depicted in the movie and mentioned below the cut.]

👆 [That's the entire movie available for free on YouTube, courtesy of its director. You don't need to watch it to understand this analysis tho. Spoilers ahead.]

Cthulhu is a (very) loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, a cosmic horror story about an outsider who arrives in a small fishing town and unearths a cult that interbreeds with immortal sea-dwelling monsters. He ends up making the horrifying discovery that he's descended from the cult's founder and thus doomed to turn into a monster himself.

The film uses this premise to talk about queerness: As an openly gay man, Russ has always been an outsider and was never going to participate in his hometown's, uh, traditions. Unfortunately, his father is the cult's leader and his sister is infertile -- Russ must participate.

[Yes, that's Cara Buono. If you enjoyed her portrayal of Karen as a loving but deeply conformist family member who does a better job of supporting the status quo than supporting her loved one, but just wished her character was more one-dimensional -- then this is the movie for you!]

Russ doesn't actually know much about the cult at the start of the film -- he fled to the city in his teens and dismisses his father's proselytizing as "Joseph Smith frontier horseshit" -- so it isn't until he returns for his mother's funeral that he begins to unravel the truth.

It's a good metaphor for how it feels to look back on a bigoted or abusive upbringing and realize: wow, that was a lot more fucked up than I thought it was.

As you might expect from cosmic horror though, this isn't a healing or empowering process for Russ.

Rather, he just keeps running into brutal reminders of how powerless he is in the face of the town's overwhelming, ingrained homophobia: at one point he's raped to satisfy his father's need for an heir; at another he's falsely jailed for the rape and murder of a boy he was trying to rescue from the cult.

It's similar to the torture Will endures in S1 and S2: he's kidnapped and symbolically raped, reflecting Troy's coded "killed by some other queer" comment, then bullied for having the audacity to survive it. He even stands up to a literal eldritch monstrosity and is rewarded for his bravery with yet more loss of autonomy.

You might be wondering if these stories even count as cosmic horror. Cthulhu only ever vaguely hints at the existence of, well, Cthulhu, and Stranger Things (which deliberately tweaks its genre every season) reveals that the Mind Flayer was basically just some guy all along.

But I think it's a bit of a misconception that cosmic horror is about star-sized masses of eyeballs and tentacles that drive you insane with their inhuman incomprehensibility.

Really, cosmic horror is about powerlessness, inevitability, and comprehending all too well. To know that horrors exist beyond the everyday facade of human existence -- whether they take the form of unknowable monstrosities from the void or of violent bigotry in an otherwise pleasant town -- is to know that your existence is nothing more than a delicate soap bubble floating in a vast, uncaring universe made exclusively of sharp edges. Even if you return to the everyday world, you can never return to blissful ignorance.

And that’s what drives you insane.

Will has something of a knowledge motif following him around: He's a wizard named Will the Wise. He illuminates. He has True Sight. He's a super-spy. He's part of the hive mind. He was studied in the lab. He was violated at school and in a library. His neck prickles when Vecna is close. He knows what Vecna is thinking.

It's too much cursed knowledge for one little boy to bear.

But he doesn't have to bear it alone.

Will is lucky to have a bunch of loving friends and family, and their support does a lot to help him cope... but even his fiercest supporters, Joyce and Jonathan, tend to be absent for long swathes of time. There's only one character who can be consistently found by Will's side through the majority of every season, and that's the boy who promised to go crazy with him.

[Strictly speaking Mike wasn't by his side in S1... but he fought hard to bring him home the whole time they were apart. Tomayto tomahto.]

Russ has a Mike too. (Literally -- his name is Michael Shields lol.) His childhood best friend reconnects with him soon after he arrives back in town and pretty much immediately becomes his sole trusted confidant as Russ falls down the cultist rabbit hole.

A quick aside -- Russ's past with Mike is a glimpse into a possible future for Byler.

Russ and Will have both been saved by their Mikes from giving in to the despair of being treated so brutally by their towns: Russ's Mike caught him mid-suicide attempt when they were teenagers--

--and Will's Mike, of course, helped rescue him from the Upside Down and sat patiently with him the whole time he was possessed.

Unfortunately, both Mikes are also conformists who are unwilling to leave the safety of comphet. Russ ran away to a more liberal environment where he could exist in peace, but Mike stayed behind and married a woman. This could easily end up being Byler's fate too.

So while Russ and Will might be alive thanks to their Mikes, they now have to live the rest of their lives without the love of the boy who gave them the drive to face it in the first place.

And it isn't as though the boy doesn't want to love him back.

The jury is officially still out on Byler, but Russ's backstory is very much not about a sad gay boy having to get over his sad gay crush on his straight best friend -- it's about a pair of would-be lovers getting torn apart by a town that refuses to let them be themselves.

I want to emphasize that both of these pairings consist of a visibly gay guy and a straight-passing guy.

In both stories it's typically the visibly queer one who actually interacts with the horrors, while the straight-passing one tends to observe from a position of relative safety, either escaping before anything too nasty happens to him, or more often, simply learning about the horrors second-hand from the visible one.

(There's one key exception at the end of Cthulhu -- but we'll come back to that.)

This is such an important dynamic that it's even unsubtly foreshadowed in Byler's first scene together:

This informs the way the characters support each other. We've already seen the obvious the safe one acts as a mental tether for the endangered one so he doesn't go insane with despair dynamic, but there's a reversal too: the authentic one inspires the conformist to join him in what was never really insanity so much as a different way of looking at the world.

Russ doesn't have any designs on seducing Mike -- much like Will, all he expects is some support from his best friend -- but his dogged questioning of the town's status quo still leads directly to Mike breaking out of comphet and admitting to what he's always really wanted:

[Learn from your elders, Byers: this is the proper way to respond when your love interest says that home just isn't the same without you.]

But Cthulhu's protagonists are confident adults who know how to quickly resolve their romantic tension. Byler are frightened kids in a five-act coming-of-age story -- their version is a little messier.

Mike has always been inspired by Will, right from the very first episode -- he decided to risk looking for him in the woods because he figured that's what his brave and kind friend Will would do.

The first two seasons thus show us Byler's dynamic at its best: an endless feedback loop of Will's strength and insight inspires Mike and Mike's devotion supports Will. (Very cleric and paladin of them.) But they're still children at this point, and don't really notice the blossoming queerness in their relationship yet.

S3 adds puberty to the mix and oh boy do they notice the queerness now. Too scary no thank you cancel unsubscribe uninstall. Will's bravery falters. Mike devotes himself to the grim duty of having a girlfriend. The loop breaks under the pressure.

They fight about it in the same location that introduced us to their dynamic and call each other out on failing to hold up their respective ends of the bargain:

"Why aren't you there for me anymore?"

"Why are you refusing to face reality all of a sudden?"

Note that Will's knowledge motif makes a return here -- just before the fight, he dresses up in his Will the Wise costume in an effort to inspire Mike again. But the tone of the scene is silly and cringey -- as correct as Will is to point out that they don't need to abandon their childhood dynamic just because they're growing up, pretending that it isn't going to mature as they age is, um. Unsustainable.

Deep down, Will knows that he'll eventually have to address the terrifying truth that keeps tapping insistently at the back of his neck.

By S4, Mike is starting to come around -- he's still deep in comphet, but he at least recognizes that it's making him unhappy, so he reaches out to Will the Wise for advice. Unfortunately, Will learned the wrong lesson in S3, and all the advice he offers is designed to push Mike back into the arms of comphet.

By the end of the season, Will has even orchestrated a grand heterosexual love confession in the foolish hope that sacrificing his heart on the altar of heteronormativity might finally make the horrors go away. (How's that working out for you, Byers?)

And so we've arrived at that ambiguously villainous ending.

By the climax of Cthulhu, Russ has uncovered the awful truth: his mother was murdered by his father to lure him home, extract offspring from him, and trigger the apocalypse. It's already begun; there's no stopping it. Shambling horrors -- his ancestors -- emerge from the rising sea. Russ is expected to become the immortal leader of this sunken new world.

He and Mike make plans to flee town together, but Russ runs into his father. He's brought to the shore to admire his kingdom before being handed a weapon and commanded to make sacrifice to Cthulhu:

Russ glances between Mike and his father, assessing his options. Soon even the cities will be consumed; he can't Smalltown Boy his way out of this again.

He raises his weapon--

--cut to black, roll credits.

All too often, queer villainy is shown from a straight perspective, presenting queerness as inherently threatening. This is the type of villainy embodied by Vecna: he's a vengeful and predatory outcast who forces his version of reality on others (especially children) and refuses to compromise his dangerous nature.

Cthulhu shows us queer villainy from a queer perspective. Russ, like Will, is harmless: he's kind, has no interest in vengeance, and just wants to live his life in peace. What drives him to villainy is the temptation to throw queerness under the bus in the twisted belief that appeasing the majority is the key to escaping homophobia.

Of course, there is no escape. Sacrificing the man who trusted him to guide him gently into the reality of queerness just means he's succumbed to the madness and become a homophobe himself.

S4 concludes with Will in a similar position to Russ: teetering on the precipice of madness as he helplessly watches the world fall apart at the hands of the villain who would stop at nothing to force him to join his cause.

But where their situations differ is in what cause that villain represents.

Russ's antagonist is a straight homophobe, representing societal homophobia -- far too powerful a force for one man and his lover to have any hope of defeating. But Will's antagonist is that offensively queer-coded-for-straights villain, representing internalized homophobia -- all along, the prickling at the back of Will's neck has been his own instincts warning him of what happens when you allow bigots and abusers to have a say in how you define yourself.

True love can certainly defeat that.

Unlike Russ, Will hasn't reached the end of his story yet--

--and unlike his older namesake, Mike isn't kneeling on the sacrificial altar, but standing by the side of the boy he promised to go crazy with, ready to face the horrors of Hawkins -- together.

[@bylerween2023 day 4 🐙]

[love-kurdt]

hey y’all, i’m going to be making a q&a video on my youtube channel and was hoping y’all would want to participate! (please participate)

it can be related to byler, theories, fanfic, the writing process… or anything about me within reason. u can send questions in the comments section of this post or through my asks on my profile 🖤