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the kid who has been bullied and put down his entire life by his own father and kids at school when he was presumed dead, who knew how to use a gun at the age of twelve likely because his father taught him, who thought that if he liked normal things people would treat him nicely, who survived for a week in an alternate dimension by himself, came back and had his body and mind used to harm others against his will, who tried to sacrifice himself by instructing to close the gate that would kill him, who just wanted to bask in his childhood for as long as possible before it passed him by, who feels like he was a mistake for who he is, who threw his own feelings out the window for the sake of his sister and the love of his life, who has been haunted and stalked for several years by something he can’t seem to defeat… getting a tragic ending involving his death? right…

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here's hoping we get a monster hunt in season 5 🚲⭒˚｡⋆🔦

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quick sketch inspired by S2 promos

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that first frame of byler standing somewhat near each other in season five is going to hit me like crack in the 80s after the last two seasons with them being physically distant most of the time

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2025 i’m done coming up with complex evidence and arguments for byler endgame

byler endgame Real because i’m gay and i say so

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Me when I hear what painting in season 5

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bonus:

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oh yeah! let's fulfill the traumatized gay boy's story arc by killing his brother, having his long-term crush reject him, and y'know we may as well kill him too at this point! yeah, that's definitely what's gonna happen!

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modern party,,,,,,, if you even care,,,,, (hcs under the cut)

will -> does not go anywhere without his earbuds. either listening to his playlists which are meticulously crafted to represent his exact mood or listening to a podcast. probably has an ipod for the vibes. curates his instagram feed & spotify wrapped. big youtube watcher and video essay connoisseur. addicted to iced caps. he is the digital camera person of the group and after every hangout he is uploading the pics to a google drive as fast as he can. sneakerhead. vinyl collector. BIGGG horror buff, is always dragging the party to watch the grossest most disgusting horror films you can think of knowing damn well he is the only one who enjoys that shit. he capitalizes random words when he's texting Like This. whenever he goes out in public he makes sure he's playing the most niche song he can think of so that if someone asks him what he's listening to he can look cool.

mike -> in the emo scene if you can't tell. despite being chronically online he has no social media presence whatsoever. his profiles are completely blank and devoid of any personality.,,, he probably has a profile pic and that's it. this guy is playing mysterious like his life depends on it. MASSIVE cinephile and letterboxd warrior, extremely pretentious when it comes to films, his fav director is either tarantino or fincher. from his taste in music and movies he comes across as a Male Manipulator but he is not trust!! hardcore gamer, his favs are phasmophobia minecraft and the walking dead. probably has a secret youtube or twitch channel that he's been desperately trying to grow (it's failing miserably). has a tamagotchi. can play guitar but he's really, really bad at it. has a collection of saved anakin skywalker edits. scott pilgrim fan. wrote fanfiction for klance. has a tumblr account. owns a nintendo switch, his fav game is breath of the wild. his screen time is ridiculous. cd collector. annotates books.

el -> ticketmaster WARRIOR. she has survived the great war many times . loves story based video games such as life as strange (she picks bae over bay because she's emotionally attached to chloe) and lost records. LOVES minecraft. she forces everyone to get on the server whenever she plays, is the builder of the group. she's more of a tv person than a movie person. her favourite shows are gilmore girls, one tree hill, the oc, etc... has a bunch of hobbies, but she mostly likes to crochet and paint. has a lot of lego sets that she likes taking apart and redoing for fun. has penpals. pinterest user. was a phan girlie in her youth and defo was on ao3 for a hot minute. when she's not in her minecraft phase she's playing the sims. yogurt bowl lover and connoisseur, she has a tiktok dedicated to making yogurt bowls and is really committed to the presentation, she spends more time making it than actually eating it. sinjin drowning watcher. horrible texter. committed to scrapbooking and saves most of her receipts so she won't Forget anything.

max -> crazy curl routine that she gives up on half-way through (diffusing is not for the weak). she's probably the most chronically online after mike. will quote something she saw on tiktok only for no one to laugh because it hasn't reached their feed yet. her favourite show is probably yellowjackets. cd collector. loves gaming, her favourites are roblox arsenal, valorant, and tlou. owns a polaroid camera. in 2020 she had her alt indie kid phase and made videos with her skateboard with the saturation cranked up to max. stephen king fan, her favourite book is carrie. thrifts most of her clothes, music, and books. absolutely HATES fast fashion/consumerism trends with a passion. has a goodreads account, she convinced will and mike to join but they're not as active as her. WILL stalk your profile even if she's spoken to you once. loves victorious. in therapy.

lucas -> embodiment of if he wanted to he would. his entire feed is literally just of max. least chronically online out of the party because he actually has a life. best fashion sense out of all of them. he always has those tiktok interviewers coming up to him to ask what song he's listening to or where he got his clothes from. clairo boy. always sending max instagram reels of cute dogs and going "us ❤️" . he is not immune to those gym bro meal inspo videos and has stacks upon stacks of protein powder in his pantry. doesn't really have a music taste and thinks everything is good music, which will and max can't wrap their heads around. will occasionally indulge in anime . watches love island with max and erica. posts his aesthetic pictures on pinterest. finds brainrot genuinely amusing and will quote it all the time around the party to annoy the shit out of them, even though he doesn't understand what it means.

dustin -> cringe content enthusiast!! matcha and tea enjoyer. can play guitar and has a really lovely singing voice, he posts covers to youtube or soundcloud. he likes all these niche bands and attends local shows. cannot eat a meal by himself without watching good mythical morning, rhett is his favourite. watches markiplier, matpat, kurtis conner, etc... big time star wars nerd, he and mike love reenacting fight scenes with their lightsabers. had a vine account (rip). like el he also loves legos, he especially adores those 3 in 1 sets and has a whole ass city. plays the wii and has a 3ds, his favourite game is either donkey kong or tomodachi life or detective pikachu. on el's minecraft serve he is the designated miner and makes all these elaborate redstone contraptions. abuses the shit out of reddit, he is up to date on all the leaks on his fav marvel movies & shows and is a chronic tech user so he turns to reddit for all of his Information.

if you are interested in more modern party hcs I made a whole post with the party's music tastes ! (thanks for 2k followers btw!!! love you all 🫶 aly nation going strong)

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posting ts on tumblr i thought yall bylers wuld like this

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whenever i’m alone with you

you make me feel like i am home again

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the blue light coming in as he closes his eyes is insane work

what if it gets stronger and stronger until it fills the screen and then we're taken to a sunny afternoon at the kindergarten playground GUYS

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The white goo in the S5 teaser is the Upside Down dimension collapsing. My theory on exactly how Vecna and the Mindflayer will be defeated in S5E8...

So WHAT the f*ck is this white goo in the background? I have a theory... I think this shot is from the final battle in S5E8 when Vecna and the MF are finally defeated.

"But wouldn't a clip from the final battle be so risky to include in a teaser??" You might ask. Well, yes! But they've done it before...

Lo and behold, the shot of Nancy with her shotgun blasting Vecna's ass into oblivion was included in the S4 trailer. And now we know that Vecna was being attacked from two different dimensions in S4 (both in his mindscape by El, and in the Upside Down by the teens).

So here's my theory.

To me, this looks like the walls are collapsing and melting down into formless, colorless nothingness. It’s all going “back to the vat,” so to speak. This is reality (or at least this version of it) being undone. Deconstructed. Returning to its original blank slate.

Visually, the first thing it reminded me of was the white goo that the robot ‘hosts’ in Westworld are made out of...

The robot hosts look like normal humans on the outside, but their building blocks are anything but normal. They are not born, but mentally conceived and then built by human consciousness, and formed out of synthetic-biological material. They’re artificial, yet strangely organic. You catching my drift yet?

The Upside Down mirrors this, with its fleshy portals and that big ass meat wall, and I wrote about that in this recent post and why it supports the theory that Will actually created the UD within his own mind and brain (read the "The UD is Will's Mindscape" theory by @willbyersabyss). UD Hawkins can almost pass as normal, until you look at its building blocks. Outside of the weird copy of Hawkins that exists within it, the building blocks of the UD look nothing like our dimension or even like Dimension X, which both look rocky and naturally-occurring and born of the universe, not made of flesh...

(Spoiler alert below for a line said by Vecna to Will, as seen in the vol 1 merch style guide leak)

All this talk of "building" and "deconstructing" leads me to one of the show's biggest twists: Will is Vecna’s "builder." We know via a leak that Vecna says to Will: “You were my vessel. My spy. My builder.” We've seen Will be a vessel and a spy, but not yet a builder...

Except, yes we have! On the day he disappeared, he built the UD dimension (in which Vecna and the MF have taken up residence after finding a way into it from Dimension X in 1983) in his brain with his own imagination (and possibly with some accidental help from El). It was built out of nothing, and to nothing it shall return. To complete his arc that began with its creation in S1, he will destroy it once and for all in S5, with Vecna and the Mindflayer still inside. He will literally ctrl alt delete them from EXISTENCE by wiping out the entire dimension. With just his mind. And it's gonna be epic !!! It will give our heroes the peace and closure they deserve to live their lives, never again having to always look over their shoulder wondering if another gate will open again when they least expect it. PTSD = cured.

It also makes thematic sense: defeating Vecna = confronting trauma. It will be a psychological battle, not just a physical one.

Stranger Things unfolds through three layers of conflict--the human, the supernatural, and the psychological--with each level shaping and mirroring the others. Vecna and the Mind Flayer symbolize psychological trauma, PTSD, and cycles of abuse--wounds that run deep across the series (we see it not just with Will, but also with El, Mike, Max, Nancy, Billy, Billy’s S3 victims, Vecna's S4 victims, and even young Henry Creel himself in TFS). Season 5 returns to this theme through the anniversary effect, setting its story near the anniversary of Will’s disappearance. The story centers Will bc the show itself begins on the night of his disappearance, anchoring his trauma in fear, isolation, and invisibility.

That’s why Will is positioned at the heart of the final battle--not because of physical power, but because healing his trauma is key to defeating the source of it. His arc also hinges on finally accepting that he is not a ‘mistake’ and IS worthy of love, particularly through his connection to Mike, which will be huge for Will. His healing will not just resolve his own story, but unlock the emotional solution to the conflict itself and the central message of the entire show: that love can overcome hate.

The Upside Down reflects a duality. It is both physical and psychological, just like Will’s trauma. His suffering began long before he got trapped in the UD and possessed by the MF--it is rooted in his father's abuse, the bullying, and the homophobia. Physically and mentally destroying the UD, Vecna, and the Mind Flayer will symbolize Will’s healing from that trauma, as well.

"We'll fix it together, okay?"

This is also why El has never been able to defeat Vecna on her own with just her physical powers. She failed in 1979, even with the power of happy memories, and again at the end of S4. Although it’s an internal battle, trauma cannot be overcome in isolation--real healing happens surrounded by love and community (it’s why sadly, for both Henry Creel and Billy, who are DIRECT foils to Will and had similar abusive childhoods, were kind-natured, and were also called sensitive or faced homophobia, respectively, were NOT able to overcome their own traumas and cycles of abuse). El and Will will face this final battle together, supported by their friends and family.

This is foreshadowed in Season 4, when El gets bullied and she tries to fix her broken diorama alone right before her fight with Mike, rather than accept Will's help and support. That moment foreshadows not only:

How Will tried to fix El and Mike’s crumbling relationship for them all season long

But also how both El and Will continued to isolate and try to deal with their emotional struggles on their own without confiding in and leaning on each other (it's why they barely even felt like friends or siblings in S4, they carried everything alone)

And lastly, El’s failed solo battle against Vecna in his mindscape, because she tried to do it on her own again. It's a recurring issue that the group has always over-relied on her and her powers to land the final blow. In S3 she lost her powers as a result, and in S4 she failed altogether. But this time, in S5, Will and El will fix it together.

In Season 5, Will will not need new powers to defeat Vecna. The battle will be psychological, not just physical. He will realize he has always had a unique connection to the UD because he created it, and therefore has the power to end it. The message being: healing from trauma requires inner strength, and Will's journey will show that love and self-acceptance are what ultimately make us powerful...

So all this brings us back to this set-up in season 2:

If the brain dies, the body dies...

The UD is in Will's brain. Vecna's physical body and the MF are hiding in the UD. If the UD dies, they die.

In other words... if the mind heals, the monsters die.

This is Will's fMRI brain scan from S2 (which kinda looks like Vecna lol). According to Dr. Owens in S2, hippocampal abnormalities are typical with PTSD patients. So in other words, our psychological trauma can literally, physically rewire our brains. Will's gonna have to do some rewiring in S5 (AKA ctrl alt delete the UD, Vecna, and the MF)...

Vecna will be attacked from multiple dimensions again

Lastly... I think that in that shot of Nancy and Jonathan in the S5 teaser, we are looking at Nancy from Vecna's POV (or it will very soon become his POV). Like I said, it'll be a callback to the S4 shot (shown above) of Nancy blasting Vecna with her shotgun in S4 while El distracted him in his mindscape.

The group will once again be fighting Vecna in multiple dimensions (kind of paralleling what I said about how conflict in ST always develops across multiple fronts: human, supernatural, and pyschological!). I think she and Jonathan are cornering or distracting him in the UD, while Will destroys it from the outside/from within his mind. We might even get Max also dealing with him in his mindscape in S5 while all this is happening (that is, if she hasn't woken up by E8 yet and that's where she's been stuck all season). Vecna and the MF will be defeated by being attacked on all fronts, from every dimension, by everyone in our group (TBD on what El and the other characters’ roles will be in the final battle, I haven't thought that far ahead yet but lmk your theories! I’m thinking maybe Joyce and Hop might be helping Jonathan and Nancy escape the UD to let Joyce finally worry about saving Jonathan instead of Will this time lol).

Unfortunately for Jonathan and Nancy though, this means they are also still stuck in the UD, so they will need to find a way to get out of there before it collapses... but I think they'll be ok :)

TLDR: Vecna and the MF's ugly asses at the end of S5

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nancy wheeler + grief is a house

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Shut up