#St5 ramblings

[will80sbyers]

thinking about s5 and Max maybe she wakes up on her own but without memories maybe and El and Lucas go to Vecna to find her memories and not her whole mind Idk I also wonder how is Vickie going to be connected with everything and also like what is it about water being kinda important and focused on this season and how is Dustin's trauma going to affect him like what will it make Dustin do, why was it important to make him experience Eddie's death was it only to torment him with Vecna's visions or there is more... is El going to be feeling ready to fight or is she going to feel insecure about her abilities now that she lost Max, is Lucas going to want to go inside Vecna's mind with El if El tires to or what is he going to do... and the adults are staying to fight random monsters in Hawkins and act like generals for an army of the people of Hawkins? but like we can't have the big battle at the start I think? or can we? the portals are said to keep spreading so the gates are going to swallow Hawkins if they don't find a way to close them all and they have to close the gates before the time jump or everybody is going to have to move to other random places but it's not what the Duffers said because they said we are going back to the vibe of s1 so like they should be in Hawkins imo

is Max being saved and waking up going to give El the power to close the 4 gates because she's using love and that makes her superultra powerful

is the big monster attacking immediately or is it something for the final battle in the last episode

and if the real battle with the real monsters happens at the start of s5 does this mean that after 2 years if they do the time skip all the torture and the battle they are going to fight will be mainly in the upside down itself against the mindflayer plus in their minds because it will be mostly or entirely mental

but if El closes up everything then why do they decide to go back to the upside down to finally kill Vecna if he's not dead

what could be a reason? just to finish him? maybe someone gets kidnapped again? or is Will going to start having dreams about Vecna being alive after two years and they get lured to the upside down because Will decides to go there on his own secretly and the party goes after him? in that case maybe Vecna lures Will back to the UD using Jon if he died in the previous battle... maybe Vecna wants him to go because Will has powers even if he doesn't know?

[miikewheelers]

scene of will drawing mike in s5

scene of will drawing mike in s5

scene of will drawing mike in s5

scene of will drawing mike in s5

SCENE OF WILL DRAWING MIKE IN S5

SCENE OF WILL DRAWING MIKE IN S5

SCENE OF WILL DRAWING MIKE IN S5

SCENE OF WILL DRAWING MIKE IN S5

[lemonycranberries]

i swear i'm not ready for stranger things 5. like. i'll see will and mike interacting for literally 2 seconds and i'll start hyperventiilating then dramatically faint like a cartoon character

[lesbylertruther]

byler bts pics dropping in pride month was NOT a coincidence idc

[himboextraordinaire]

I love domestic/fluffy Byler so much, but what I really want is for them to be a mess.

Everything about their relationship with the involvement of the upside down and Eleven is a mess. Will is carelessly lying to Mike about El and his painting, Mike is not communicating and was being particularly distant to Will for virtually no reason on his birthday (which btw I totally don’t buy it that the Duffers and the writers room just “forgot” Will’s birthday when they remembered Will’s favorite candy just so they can have it as a silly little easter egg in like two scenes). Everything about it that has been building up to this point is just a huge pile up at this point.

They’re going to likely be with each other for most of season 5 because of the promise that they made to each other at the end of season 4 (and the BTS photos but yknow), which gives time for a lot to happen. Will and Mike are not perfect people, and it’s clear that their friendship isn’t either. The confession isn’t going to be light and fun. That pileup is going to collapse under it’s own weight and it will not be pretty at all. It’s going to be a mess, it’s going to hurt, and I am HERE FOR IT.

[findafight]

Funniest possible way for stranger things season 5 to have another character come out isn’t byler or whatever it would be Steve and Robin and Vickie packing up a moving truck and Steve saying “hey, once we’re in the city I betcha it’ll be easier for me to find a better man to kiss than Tommy fucking Hagan. And then I’ll have double the chances to find The One.” And both Robin and Vickie going “yeah hopefully you get better taste in men though lol” before driving off into the sunset to live their best lives together. Nothing else is made of it.

[conflictofthemind]

I can’t sleep because I just have so many thoughts rolling around in my head. The more and more stuff we get about S5 the closer I can get to being able to ‘predict’ where they’re going with it, not with hard facts about plots and locations but the thematic aspects as well.

The way children and childhood seem to be highly symbolic for this last season is very juicy. The random children in the mansion. The Derek kid at the farm. The supposed leak about Robin with all of those kids. The disappearance of Holly Wheeler. The rest of the kids in the Creel House / Playground scenes. The kids on the military school bus. The multiple flashbacks to our characters as their younger selves. Taking inspiration from children’s novels such as a Wrinkle in Time.

I said before I think this show is actually presenting lots of commentary on childhood nostalgia, meanwhile almost the entire media and general audience dismisses it for being un-self aware. But it’s very aware.

[thefirstlioveyou]

the fact its already been 2 years since s4…. time will definitely fly by. (i just gotta keep reminding myself that 🫠)

i am predicting the release date to be in 2025, around either september or october, or if they really want to bring everything to a complete circle, november 5th 👀 would make sense since the season begins with will in the upside down, and every season (besides s1) takes place in the season/time the actual season is released.

if i remember correctly, they plan to wrap up filming by january of next year (1 year of filming). there will be 8 episodes that are lengthy, so i can see post production taking a similar amount of time as they did for s4. their editing process for s4 took about 8-9 months (assuming they began immediately after wrapping filming).

remember this is just speculation. but unless something hinders production, i can’t imagine it releasing any later than 2025

[notsohehehahanow]

I have no problem with the like "*blank character* x reader" things I just ignore it

UNTIL these bitches pull up with actual images of the actors

That is not Mike Wheeler that is Finn Wolfhard and that is a real person and you are now being fucking weird

It's not even BTS I've been seeing it's straight up just Finn doing interviews, photos from Instagram, photoshoot photos, screenshots from videos, concert photos, literally nothing that has to do with MIKE WHEELER.

[chirpsythismorning]

Noah saying, "I don't think Mike likes Will back" doesn’t equate to him not knowing about byler being endgame, and here's why.

Noah and a majority of the main cast have been given a rough idea of how the show will end, broadly in terms of the entire story, but also more specifically in terms of their personal character arcs.

Actors are out here acting. This is nothing new.

Any of the the main cast insisting they have no idea how the show ends at all, are lying. This is because their safest bet is playing dumb.

There's nothing safe about them revealing they know how the show ends, least of all to an audience that is dying for any spoiler they can get their hands on. It just puts them in a position to have to think very carefully about everything they say, which is something they already have to do regardless.

It's a lot easier to just say you don't know, because then you can give vague answers or even just flat out lie and get away with it, as opposed to saying you know and then having everyone take whatever you say as gospel since you admitted to knowing what's coming.

David is pretty much the only actor who goes around explicitly saying that he knows how the show ends, which is something he's been doing consistently since s2 premiered back in November of 2017.

Something David has also mentioned on a few occasions since then, is how much input the Duffer's let him put into his character. He's literally praised them for having a collaborative process, because it allows him to play Hopper more authentically.

And so yes, I do think it's safe to assume that the Duffer's extend this approach to their other cast-members as well, at least among the main cast-members. I do not at all think this is some exclusive treatment only David gets, because this seems like more just something the Duffer's do out of respect to the actors. How else can they expect them to portray their character accurately if they don't know what they're going through or what their motives are or what's right for them going forward?

We obviously won't know all the details about who knew what at what times or how long they've known certain things, until they themselves come out and reveal after the fact, if they even do it at all.

Still, I do think that when it comes to byler actually happening, it's going to be very satisfying for fans who saw it coming.

This is because we're dealing with something the Duffer's are predicting a good portion of the ga will be bitter about, with the main argument at the forefront being that Mike and Will came out of nowhere.

And so, how do you think they're going to combat that?

With the literal proof.

They have David, who has been used happily as their main scapegoat through the years, whose words are literal proof that things were planned for quite some time. We have him saying all the way back in 2017 that there are easter eggs in the first season which we won't understand until the end, how it's beautiful and surprising and it will explain why certain characters acted certain ways...

Not only that, but there's just no way people are going to be able to use the whole 'it came out of nowhere' argument (at least without looking like idiots), because we'll have the Duffer's themselves out here confirming shit like blue meets yellow in the west and other theories that were entirely intentional (as we predicted).

And because of this, I think I can guess roughly how things will go moving forward and it's honestly already panning out in some ways I expected.

Because while season 4 ends in a way that seems to be leading towards Mike and El ending up together from the perspective of the ga, there are numerous details in the subtext and just outright in the literal text that's trying to tell us this is not actually the case.

And so now the Duffers and everyone who knows are in this limbo of tricking their audience in plain sight, hoping to keep this act going for as long as they can, and that's obviously not easy to do.

What I think makes it most difficult is that they want to surprise fans, but they also want them to be satisfied and happy with the ending.

And that is why the whole Milkvan straight bait is indeed very near its end.

If they want ST to live on as a cult classic with rewatch value, they can't keep this straight bait going on into the last season.

They'll want Mike and El to definitively give off platonic elmike for s5, with byler being endgame and Willel being wonder twins.

This is why Mike and El's dynamic HAS to blatant in a way that will come across as platonic to the ga in s5. And the shift needs to be immediate, otherwise byler will not be satisfying.

I feel like a lot of bylers already predict this, which is why a lot of us assume that the milkvan breakup with happen (or be acknowledged as having already happened) as early as 5x01 or 5x02.

Honestly, I do think that Will's painting being plastered on merch recently was one of the big moments which is representative of a shift we're already seeing start to happen. We're going to continue to see milkvan be promoted as elmike, while byler is being promoted in a way that is, well byler.

What I think is most noteworthy in terms of how they're approaching this conflict going forward, is how the actors themselves have talked about it when asked.

For example, there was one Con specifically that I remember Noah attended right around when Vol 2 dropped, where he mentioned byler at least 3 times. Two times when asked and one other time unprompted.

And no one ever talks about this, but full serious you guys, it was dead silent at that con whenever he mentioned byler. There were maybe a few hoots and claps, with Noah literally looking kind of worried. It was obvious he noticed the silence the first time it got brought up, and so he felt the need to mention it a second time when asked about what he shipped and then AGAIN, with a note of defensiveness in his voice:

"Byler is just, at it's peak right now, okay, so definitely ship that--"

And while in the background, all you hear is maybe 2 bylers supporting him, otherwise, it's mostly crickets...

Let's try to remember that while Byler is a lot bigger now undoubtedly, unless you're active online, most of the ga does not see it coming. And so byler is by no means fan-service. If anything it's show-runner service.

This means Noah had literally no obligation that day to go all out with referring to byler in a positive hopeful light, nor does he still. And yet he did and he hasn't slowed down much since.

His approach makes sense. Because his character has been revealed in canon to be in love with the other, he can freely say he ships it and even take the opportunity to hype it up in an attempt to open peoples minds to it, who might not have considered it before. And he can also do this because in canon, Will assumes Mike doesn't love him back, so Noah can just co-opt Will & the ga's assumption that Mike doesn't feel the same, and get away with it, without anyone whose close-minded giving it a second glance as evidence.

If they wanted to avoid queer-bait and get people to not look at byler that way, they had the chance to. A majority of the ga didn't read byler romantically and so they could've just kept things casual by not bringing it up, nor humoring it at all.

The byler tag didn't even hit 30k followers until AFTER vol. 2 dropped! Most people were oblivious (including bylers).

Undoubtedly, Noah in particular around that time, was a big part of why people started to look deeper on their own and it's how a lot of people ended up here, now with 277k of us.

Like seriously, listen to me ya'll, Noah would NOT put himself in a position to broadcast his support for byler like this and the Duffers would probably be begging him not to, knowing he would be subject to a lot of criticism in doing so, if byler was not in fact where the story was going. Point blank, period.

His tweet "vol 2 got me shipping byler over everything' has to have been the most obvious stunt of all. He was not saying that to be quirky or to appease a few thousand people, he was saying it to wake up the hundreds of thousands that might be open to it, and who just need a push to see what's right in front of them.

Then we have Millie's approach. Her approach for a long time has been to say stuff that she thinks the audience wants to hear, that being anything pro-milkvan. And up until Vol 1, she was still mostly on board with referring to it in a super positive light.

She also insisted during s4's run that she has no clue how the show will end (lies, Millie is a good actress pls give her more credit), and this also explains why she's tended to feel somewhat comfortable lying about milkvan positively...

Though as Vol. 2 neared and ever since, a shift has started to happen, where in interviews Millie is getting a lot more into depth and real about El's personal arc. She mentioned right before Vol 2 dropped that El was insecure in her fight with Mike at the start of the season because she thought he only considered her a superhero and didn't see her as more than that.... Then more recently she has doubled down saying that she is her own superhero, having been shaped a little too much by the men in her life.

SHE IS OUT HERE SAYING WHAT WE'VE BEEN SAYING FOR MONTHS (SOME YEARS)! SHE KNOWS HER CHARACTER BETTER THAN ANYONE!

Honestly, even though I understand they are trying to trick people into thinking they're clueless and so I guess I'm happy for them that they've succeeded in that, I can't help but admit I feel a little disappointed upon hearing some bylers say that they are convinced Millie doesn't know, but that Finn does and even Noah does, but that she's entirely in the dark about it and that they're okay with this I guess?

First of all, why would anyone be okay with that? Why would we be okay with Millie not having insight into where her character is going. What, do you guys think they're just going to pull up on her at the last minute like, "yeah sorry we didn't tell you sooner, but this is where your character is going to end up. anyways back to byler!...."

I don't care, it would seriously be fucked up to keep her in the dark about this because El IS important to the story and Millie, just like everyone else, deserves that closure so that she can understand her character better and therefore perform to the best of her ability. She also deserves a say somewhat in where she feels her character should go, just like David has said the Duffer's afford them.

Now lastly, when it comes to Finn, I think most assume at least he is aware of byler, and I do agree he knows, so let's start there.

Again, we don't know when they found out and so for now I don't feel like going too far into guessing the exact point and so I won't. However, I do think that Finn also as of late has had an approach that manages to somehow be very different from both Noah and Millie's, and for reasons that also make a lot of sense.

Because Finn's character is assumed to not return Will's feelings, he has to be more careful than all of them. This is arguably why he goes to the least cons out of everyone (most recently everyone attended a con in person, with Millie present over zoom even, but no Finn or Noah... seems very intentional at this point).

Why I think they need to be more strict with Finn in particular is because he's in the exact opposite situation as Noah.

His character is assumed to not return Wll's feelings, and so he can't go very far with what he reveals. What we've got up to this point is actually quite revealing enough as it is, which is why that's all we're getting for now.

What I find interesting is that Finn's approach is quite similar to David's. I know Noah is known for spoiling things, but arguably Finn is just as bad, he's just a lot more sneaky about it. He has a harder time lying, which is why I think he actually looks uncomfortable when asked milkvan questions. Not necessarily because he doesn't ship it like lots of bylers assume, but because he's having to dance around and lie outright and he probably feels bad.

His most common approach though is that he likes to make jokes and say things that could be looked at from multiple perspectives, where it could be looked at now as milkvan evidence, while simultaneously being looked at from the future as byler evidence. Him saying 'I think everyone knows how Mike feels about Eleven' was him quite literally gaslighting the audience just like Mike did with El in s4:

'I care for you so much" "I say it" "You know how I feel about you--"

But do we? Do we really? Or does the audience THINK they know, and so Finn can get away with saying something cryptic and vague like that? When really, in the future, everyone will be laughing looking back because to Finn and all the cast, it was actually abundantly obvious Mike's feelings for El were platonic and his feelings for Will were romantic.

Same for his response when asked if El and Mike would be together and happy in season 5. He dances around it, doesn't deny it, but also doesn't confirm it. Instead of just being like yes they will (which is what we're being led to assume is inevitable at the end of s4, and so he has no reason to dance around it), he starts by deflecting, talking broadly in terms of the stories overall ending, only to say he hopes they find happiness... Again his answer fits with the ga's assumptions now, but it also fits with the surprise of byler in the end as well.

Also important to note that Finn and Noah are the ones to repost about the show most out of everyone from the main cast. A LOT. In fact, they were the only main cast-members (besides Brett LOL) out of everyone to repost about the episode title name for 5x01 being released on ST day...

And it's because THIS is their character's big revelation going into the final season and they had a say in it going this direction. Even if it's what the Duffer's wanted all along, they still gave them and everyone to an extent, a say in things. And now that it's all slowly happening, they are front and center standing by that decision, because they insisted they could do it and wanted to.

I can't say for certain that things will just be smooth sailing from here on out though, by no means is everything just going to shift completely.

There is still undoubtedly this element of the Duffer's and everyone wanting to have the pleasure of tricking the audience. In an industry where everything that happens is usually expected and predictable and therefore rarely exciting, and with an audience that is always figuring stuff out before their supposed to through leaks and stuff, byler is something they have finally been able to successfully trick most of the audience to think will never happen. And that is fucking impressive when considering the heaps of evidence.

And yet still, they don't want to be yet another show that is considered to have a bad ending.

So, going forward, I think things will continue the way that they are, but we'll slowly see them be more comfortable in this element of acknowledging endgame in a way that will be easy to look back on positively when everything is all said and done.

Because if byler is endgame, IF they want people to look back and go oh Oh OH during all those moments where they misread things, but now they can see the other side of it, there needs to be more of an approach that gives Byler equal playing field and allows the ga to actually start to appreciate it and even want it and root for it. Which means buh bye predictability and heteronormativity and hello surprises and gayness (but also be open ended about it so the homophobes will stay tuned until the last second).

[zipzaptoastainthebath]

Will with the fluffy bowlcut this season. I win.

[lesbylertruther]

guys once byler is canon, i'm leaving the local village and finding the three waterfalls to celebrate who's coming with me?

[blueskiesandstarrynights]

Survey Time!

As always, pls rb for larger sampling size.

[henrysglock]

Ramble...7? I think? Anyway: On the topic of Radiation

So. As per the ADHD. I was getting sucked into a morbid curiosity black hole re: radium.

And I found out about this guy, Eben BYERS, whose entire jaw fell off after being treated with radium in the late 1920s. (Disturbing image of Eben Byers below the cut at the very end for reference.)

So obviously I went "lol What the Fuck", because of course I would when something horrific happens to someone with the last name Byers, and when I tell you this guy and his brother (L and R respectively) are DEFINITELY from the ST Byers family??? But like...if the ST Byers were real people. I mean just look at them.

So of course I was like "Okay. Jesus Christ. WHAT is going on in the house of commons, because this is peak Stranger Things-type body horror", which landed me back in human experimentation territory.

Turns out, there was a whole raft of radium based shit going on, mostly between 1940-1970, mainly children being used as test subjects for nasopharyngeal radium irradiation (NRI), which was meant to treat a bunch of conditions.

(An aside: NRI is known to damage the soft tissues of the nose, and you know who has no fucking nose???

Vecna/Henry. Do with that what you will.)

One thing that really stuck with me, though, is that radium glows bright green. Sound familiar?

I know plutonium was mentioned, especially in regard to the manhattan project, where plutonium is depicted as glowing bright green. That said...plutonium is not a bright, glowing green in real life. This is plutonium in solution.

Either way, discussing this with Aemiron brought me around to looking at radiation in regard to MKUltra. Lo and behold...

Radiation treatments. In MKUltra. Which was canonically happening in Hawkins.

And then Aemiron brought up the point about Will and the Jaws poster, as well as The Thing, which evidently starts with the mouth when it turns victims inside out. Which, this all sounded an awful lot like the Flayed (melted) to me.

I don't have a point here, not yet, but I could have some absolutely horrifying ST5 Mike Vecna vision theories in regard to this weird coincidence (?).

One last thing about the Byers family (irl)? Eben's brother had a child named Nancy and a child named Buckley. Interesting on the names, huh?

--

Another thing that interested me while I was reading the case document (where the screenshot about MKUltra came from) was the Green Run project back from 1949.

Xenon-133 is an asphyxiant. You know who "officially" died from exposure to an experimental chemical asphyxiant? BARB.

There's already some radiation fuckery going on in Hawkins. But it just keeps going.

--

Along the lines of radiation in general, though.

The demogorgon, Henry's transformation, and just ST4 in general smacks of Chernobyl. If any of you have watched Chernobyl, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I have comparison pictures here for cinematography and character design, but also others under the cut (those ones are kind of gruesome).

What is going on here?

In conclusion: What on earth????????

And more importantly...what the hell are we going to see in ST5?

Eben Byers (Jawless)

Henry vs Vasily Ignatenko's Radiation Poisoning

(Plus the Demogorgon for good measure re: skin texture vs radiation burns)

[conflictofthemind]

going off of my last post where I was talking about who was filming together and how much it proves milkvan being total bones at this point, for reference we can place:

j/ancy: at the radio station, at the hospital, at the farm, in the upside down, at the mansion j/opper: at the radio station multiple times obviously, and at the mansion l/umax: this one is different but lucas' plot will naturally revolve around max m/ileven: at the radio station... only we know they didn't film together at the mansion because their schedules didn't align

meanwhile byler: at the radio station, at school, in mike's basement, at the farm, in the upside down (going to make a post about this later but I highly believe they are going together with robin)

[lunabug2004]

I’m kinda over these lip-reading theories. I do think the theories and speculations are fun but I don’t think they should cause craziness on either side (mileven or byler) because we are not going to know for sure until the show comes out. I just keep seeing people arguing about which ones are more accurate, and the new AI one is making things worse. We’re not gonna get any takes that aren’t biased (except maybe Nina’s but even then idk it’s still just gonna be a theory), and idc how reliable this person’s AI is, it is still posted by a person who has their own opinions and biases, I’m sorry but I won’t believe anything til the show comes out.