#castle byler

[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 (straight outta Mike Wheeler's one-way-signed closet!) but who can wait that long?

Please check it out if you also love Byler, and leave kudos and comments if you like -- the feedback means more than you know. 😊

Love,

Byler Mom

💙💛💚

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

*My daughter @pinksmonkey and I also make Byler Theory videos on YouTube. Follow her for updates and links to future videos.

*link to my fan art:

[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😍

[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

[annoyingexboyfriend]

california dreamin’ :(

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

[kaiminluu]

byler x dirty dancing GRAHAHAA

[janeirl]

WAIT. so if they’re apparently done filming with castle byers as said in the last vid on st day, and if the miwi scenes are being filmed LATER this month, then that means that they’re not gonna be filming the flashback with jon mike & will building castle byers ?? like it would be a DIFFERENT flashback???? AND THEY WOULDNT BE THE RIGHT AGE FOR THEM MEETING ON THE SWINGS RIGHT???? SO THEYRE GONNA BE FILMING A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FLASHBACK WITH THEM… YALL. WHAT ARE THEY FILMING. WHAT IS IT GONNA BE I NEED TO KNOW SO BAD.

[alyxdrawsthings]

Happy Stranger Things Day!! ✨

[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.

[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.

[elephantshoetoo]

BYLER FIGHTS VS. MILEVEN FIGHTS

I've seen a few posts pointing out how Byler fights bring them closer together, whereas Mileven fights tend to push them further apart and are never resolved in a satisfying way.

BUT ALSO...

Mileven fights are not nearly as fun to watch. They tend to be painful or just plain bitchy. But BYLER fights...?

Byler fights are PASSIONATE. There are so many points during Byler fights where it would feel completely natural for them to just grab each other and kiss.

Mileven fights be like:

But Byler fights are all:

In conclusion:

[cannibalismyuri]

something about "only love makes you that crazy, sweetheart. and that damn stupid." and "crazy together?" and "so stupid." just. i know we've gone over this but it's RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR FACES what the hell.

[therainscene]

[ST5 spoilers ahead. This theory is largely grounded in canon evidence from S1-4, but I will be referencing a couple of old S5 leaks below the cut.]

Stranger Things is a show that delights in escapist fantasy; it's packed with nostalgic references and celebrates the protagonists' love of gaming in order to remind us that we don't need to abandon our childhood interests just because we grew up.

But escapism is a double-edged sword that all too easily turns into an unhealthy coping mechanism, and boy is this show also one that delights in the horror of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

I reckon they'd be missing a trick if these opposing themes didn't crash into one another for the final season.

Vecna seems to be motivated by a desire to help the kids he targets -- he wipes away their tears, he reassures them that their suffering will be over soon -- but he also barely seems to notice or care that he's just making the suffering worse. Which is exactly the attitude you'd expect from a villain who personifies the urge to turn to shitty coping mechanisms.

Since S5 is going to focus on Will's coming-of-age, then whatever Vecna is up to must resonate with Will's worst coping mechanisms.

What better fit for Will "wants to sit in the basement playing games for the rest of his life" Byers than a fantasy world in which everyone is forced to be a carefree kid forever while their bodies rot in the Upside Down?

Think about it: Henry wants to transform the world into something beautiful, but the world he currently seems to be ruling over is nothing of the sort -- is a cold and barren facsimile of Hawkins populated with monsters really Henry's idea of beauty?

Doesn't it make more sense for the Upside Down/Mind Flayer to simply be the hardware that helps him run his simulation of something more relatable -- an idyllic vision of the childhood he wishes he had, populated with all the kids he oh-so benevolently rescued from the fate worse than death that is wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and wait for it all to be over?

-------------------

We know for a fact that one of S5's episodes is titled Escape from Camazotz -- a reference to the misleadingly idyllic world from A Wrinkle in Time -- and leaked BTS photos from last year show Henry hanging out with a Hawkins child at a mysteriously pristine Creel house.

It's promising, but I'm not a huge fan of using leaks as evidence. They always come devoid of context, and even difficult-to-fake things like BTS photos could be staged by production to throw fans off the scent -- so what does the canon suggest?

One possible hint is that the Upside Down has consistently borrowed imagery from The Matrix throughout the seasons:

But more importantly, this theory is thematically consistent with what we currently know about Will in S1: while trapped in the Upside Down, he retreated to Castle Byers (his escapist safe space), and that's where he was caught, dragged to the library (another escapist space), and plugged into the vines that connect him directly to Vecna.

It's also subtly implied by Will's behaviour in S3 that part of him wants Vecna to succeed: he sticks with El after realizing Vecna is back, despite knowing full well that being able to spy on Vecna means Vecna can also spy on him; and he makes a suspiciously helpful-to-Vecna suggestion about how the party should go about investigating the monster of the week:

Could Will be under Vecna's control here? Perhaps. But I think this is a choice he's making of his own volition.

Consider: At one point Will destroys Castle Byers in a fit of grief that his childhood is over, and this just so happens to be the same scene in which he becomes certain that Vecna has returned.

He has to grow up and face the horrible truth that he's gay and broken and in love with a boy who can't possibly love him back and he does not want to deal with this -- wouldn't he do anything in that moment to find a way to escape back into childhood? Is this not the perfect moment for a seductive voice in his head to start whispering offers?

Bargaining is one of the five stages of grief, after all.

But then, so is acceptance. Will isn't walking the path of villainy here; he's at the temptation stage of his hero's journey.

S4 took him far away from Hawkins and allowed him to work through some of his feelings without Vecna breathing down his neck, and he comes to a very final-sounding decision about it:

He's realized that longing to sit in the basement playing silly games with his crush all day is immature and turning him (in his opinion) into a jealous asshole--

--and now that he's ripped off the band-aid with Mike he's gonna kill that underlying desire once and for all. Right?

Wrong. I mean, that's certainly what he believes at the end of S4 -- but he's still got a whole season of main character coming-of-age shit left to do in this show that delights in escapist fantasy and reminds us we don't need to abandon our childhood interests just because we grew up.

The visual similarities between the Upside Down and the Matrix aren't the only parallels between these two stories -- a theme present in both is the realization that the rules of the world you were raised in are an oppressive lie that you have the freedom to reject so long as you're brave enough to accept the truth.

Much like Neo, Will has a deeper connection to the horrors than any of its other victims (beyond Henry himself), and that connection grants him the gift of True Sight:

Stuck between the View-Master slides is how he describes it. Will can't bring himself to conform to 1980s expectations of normalcy, but he also can't bring himself to retreat into Vecna's time-frozen fantasy and hurt all of his friends.

The solution is to understand that Will's unique position doesn't mean he'll be forced to pick a side and either become a villain or sacrifice himself for the greater good: it means that like Neo he has the power to transcend the rules of false realities.

Will can defeat Vecna without castrating himself in the process, and he can play D&D in Mike's basement for the rest of his life if he wants to...

...just so long as both he and Mike are brave enough to accept the truth first.

[ermasdoodles]

“You’ve been waiting all this time.”

[ghostlycleric]

Literally S3 Will Byers after the rain fight