#castle byers

[zunaki]

Repainted an old Byler illustration 💖

[therainscene]

The Morning Visitor by Dino Buzzati reminds me of Will Byers so I redrew it with Will Byers, enjoy 🙃

[wlfhardinc]

What if this is Byler:

Maybe they’re both in the upside down for some reason taking a little walk together and they walk past the destroyed Castle Byers and then Mike apologizes again and admits his feelings😍

[annoyingexboyfriend]

california dreamin’ :(

one year of will’s diary so i now present 9 pages of his life

[alyxdrawsthings]

Happy Stranger Things Day!! ✨

[jelly-gelly]

When the Duffers thought they could post Castle Byers backstage pic and we won’t notice it. Oh boy, they were wrong

The flag is the same, and the date of filming matches

[gayofthefae]

I can rewatch the roller rink fight. I can rewatch the fight in the rain. I can even rewatch the van scene (kind of. I cry but I CAN). Because they are either resolved or such a clean payoff that I can see the resolution in my mind and it's desensitized me.

But you know what I can't rewatch? You know what I don't put myself through unless in the context of the episode? This scene.

Because it hasn't been resolved. Because the van scene might be resolved by him sharing his feelings, but he needs more.

He needs to not be "Stupid. So stupid" for believing Mike could love him.

[teambyler]

Byler kind of HAS to end this way in Season 5 - Let's talk #Castlegate

Let's have another Gate, shall we? =D

We're all freaking out and speculating how Byler will culminate. I've already given my best guess how it'll happen. But it's still a guess.

But I'm PRETTY SURE on a scene that would happen late in the season, If Byler is endgame. It's almost borne by NECESSITY.

I'll explain:

In s2 we saw Mike donating his toys, like his parents told him to...

In s3 we saw him tell Will, "We're not kids anymore. I mean what did you think, really? That we were never gonna get girlfriends? That we were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?"

And Will destroyed Castle Byers...

As someone points out in the comments, this wasn't just Will thinking he was "stupid" for wanting to play games, but for wanting a life with Mike...

A theme for Mike has been telling himself to put away "childish things," to "grow up" and be "normal." But he doesn't really want to: in s4 he's playing D&D again. He tries to bury his feelings for Will, but he gives up on that also.

If he and Will get together in s5, then there's no use trying to be "normal" when you're a boy with a boyfriend in small-town Indiana. They will start defining for themselves who they are. And that could include "playing D&D and Nintendo for the rest of their lives."

That's why, at the end of Season 5, after Mike and Will get together, they have to rebuild Castle Byers. They get to rebuild their childhood dreams and hope for the future.

We've already seen that Castle Byers will be featured in the season 5 BTS video:

Castle Byers is probably important in s5 for a number of reasons. It's where Will hid in s1 while in the Upside Down.

It's a possible place for the planned Miwi flashback(s) of young Jonathan, Mike and Will. Jonathan helped Will build Castle Byers when Lonnie left. Young Mike and Will must have spent a lot of time there playing pretend, playing out stories that became their D&D games. (I'm hoping for a flashback of a young Mike playing a paladin swearing allegiance to Will saying he'll always protect Castle Byers!)

When Gaten Matarazzo read the script for the final episode, he called it a "full circle" moment. I'm sure there'll be several moments. I'm willing to bet money we'll see the Original Four playing D&D together. I'm pretty sure another will be Mike and Will going to Castle Byers together and rebuilding it.

And of course, they'll kiss there!

This, more than anything, is a way to show they've fully accepted who they are, who they've always been, and always will be.

It's a perfect way to culminate the "childhood friends to lovers" trope: they end right where they began.

-teambyler

[imactuallyreallycool]

Mike showing Will that he rebuilt Castle Byers.

Castle Byers 💛

(Probably has spelling and grammar errors but idc lol)

(Will's shirt is from one my previous posts lol)

[milliebugydementia]

i like to think that the parallel between mike destroying the pillow fort el slept in and will destroying castle byers is actually very meaningful -

i like to think that the choice of a pillow fort was deliberate for hiding el. it's a childish object in the same way castle byers is, and the destruction of it symbolises a loss of a kind of softness and innocence that will never come back.

when will destroys castle byers, it's after trying to make things go back to how they were before he went missing. it's the emotional culmination of all of his angst that the things that have happened to him have happened, and that he's stunted in place when everyone else is moving on and managing to be straight. especially because castle byers was something he & johnathan had built to cope with their father leaving.

when mike destroys the pillow fort it's because he's lost el, and with her any hope of finding will.

it's notable that in the scene, he first stares at the door as if waiting for el, or even for will, to come back. he cares for el at this point as her own person, but i think in this scene he is angry because he feels stupid for ever letting himself hope that he could find will again, and that things could go back to normal - just as will felt trying to get the party to play D&D with him.

for both of them it is a deep embarrassment holding frustration and grief of losing their childhoods, and of losing each other, as two people who were boys together.

the fact that mike has this development so much earlier than will in the show is testament to how the trauma changed the both of them - mike grew up too fast, and will didn't get to finish growing up.

i think mike's actions in the show all follow on from here. his grief of losing will - first when he went missing, then when he came back and was wounded - was so much that he shut it out in favour of being angsty about eleven. and then once she came back, he couldn't understand why everything still felt wrong, and instead he rejected childish notions and preferred to think of his woundedness as maturity, getting obsessed with eleven in order to avoid doing things that reminded him of how things used to feel when they were still kids. this is why he is so mocking and cold to will, because he hasn't really processed how much will going missing shook the security of his world at such a young age, and he never acknowledges that it did. he also hasn't been able to grow up, he's just trying to hide it from himself.

[bylertruth3r]

Mike and Will are gonna kiss here

[halfpricedpages]

can’t stop thinking about season three when will destroyed castle byers… it was built after lonnie left and it was this way of reclaiming the parts of will that weren’t able to be expressed with lonnie under the same roof. so when will destroyed it after feeling so ignored and dismissed by mike it felt like him trying to destroy himself. his identity. his queerness. because it didn’t feel right anymore. it felt shameful and it felt like something that he had to get rid of.

[elephantshoetoo]

💙💛💚

Hello fellow Bylers!

Because I care about Byler a normal amount (I swear!) I wrote the fanfic "The Byler Files" for my daughter, who is equally obsessed with Will and Mike from Stranger Things and needed to see them get their "crazy together" happy ending. Hopefully, we'll all get to see the real thing next year when season 5 comes out (pun intended), but who can wait that long?

Please check it out if you also love Byler, and leave kudos and comments -- the feedback means a lot to me.

(Fanfic writers get paid in compliments.😊)

Love,

Byler Mom

💙💛💚

*If you follow my daughter, @pinksmonkey you've probably seen her posts about this already.

*This fan art, "Castle Byler," is also drawn by me specifically for the fanfic, and available at RedBubble under the username ElephantShoe.

*link to my fan art:

[shinpikurage]

Besides the painting making a comeback, I really want Castle Byers to make one too

Castle Byers is everything that Will represented, it's his love for his family, the fear of his dad, the good moments with his friends, his artistic side and even the Upside Down, because he hid from the Demogorgon there

Breaking it, after the fight with Mike, was him letting go of his too short childhood and part of his feelings for Mike. He lost his favorite losing spot, that meant everything to him, just to hide into himself

I need Castle Byers to make a comeback, so Will can restore part of himself again, can make him feel less scared of his feelings for Mike, and make peace with his wasted (because of the UD and his father) childhood

[skinsliver]

IM HAVING A FUCKING ANEURYSM

CASTLE BYERS BYLER KISS???

[alcalystrasz]

I know a lot of bylers are bored so here is a new gate I had the idea of. @teambyler made a similar gate called Castlegate which says that Mike and Will are going to rebuild the castle together. Note that I didn't know it before making my post :)

So, I present to you: Castlebyersgate

So, in my mind whats Castlebyersgate? It is a theory that says that Mike rebuilt Castle Byers while Will was in California, so he could remember him and also use it as a way of saying "sorry" because of what happened in S3 when Will destroyed this place. It can have 2 branches, either he just rebuilt it as Castle Byers or he rebuilt is naming it Castle Wheeler-Byers.

Annnd, it it also a theory that says that Byler is going to share their first kiss in this very same place.

It could be either in the Upside Down or in the real world, doesn't really matter honestly.

So yeah, what do you guys think? Do you believe in Castlebyersgate?