Stranger things finale was so bad. Byler fucking bones. That’s why I hopped on the Bychance bus. Everyone join me!

ngl this crack ship saved my sanity like im so deadass if i was still a byler by the time s5 + the finale dropped i wouldve been so upset id have cried for DAYS im not joking

i feel so bad for my fellow bylers though i genuinely GENUINELY thought byler was gonna happen hence why i didnt really talk on main about my "byler doubt" more openly. i thought we would get poorly-written byler but here we are ...

I introduce you to: X-Gate.

Just saw this post by sylviethewise:

Reblog by @o11yradio:

RIGHT. My thoughts exactly. 🍀🏀🐅

If anyone's curious about this, check this recent post of mine:

…but also, X-Mas. 😀🙃👇

❌ Dimension X

“You tricked me” “No, I saved you” (deception), banishment, electricity, fire, heat, yellow, danger, suffering, alien environment, harsh conditions, predators, mindflayer/shadow particles aka virus…

#DimensionX #DeceptionGate #BanishmentGate #ElectricityGate #FireGate #TemperatureGate #AlienGate #SAgate #VirusGate

❌ Hardcore punk / youth culture → the Straight Edge “X”

#PunkGate #PartyGate #ViceGate #TraffickGate

❌ Film ratings & censorship → “X/XXX” = adults-only / explicit

#ViceGate #TraffickGate #SIgate (Sex Industry) #TabooGate

❌ Nightlife & drugs → “E / X / XTC” for MDMA

#PartyGate #ViceGate #TraffickGate

❌ Computing & design → “X11” Window System + network

PS.: “X11”??? Eleven??? “Athena” the Greek goddess of war??? 1987, the year ST5 is set in???

#MetaGate #ComputerGate #CodeGate #WarGamesGate #ManifestationGate #AvatarGate (El is an avatar/manifestation of Mike and/or Will, born from & tethered to certain specific aspects of their psyche)

❌ Advertising & anonymization → “Brand X”

PS.: “generic unnamed anonymous inferior competitor”??? S4 Argyle going “that’s a shitty knockoff” at Mike??? Are you guys following me???

#ByChance #ChanceGate #ShittyKnockoffGate #ManifestationGate #AvatarGate (Chance is also an avatar/manifestation of Mike and/or Will, born from & tethered to certain specific aspects of their psyche)

Bonus connections I remembered:

❌ 'The X Files' (TV Series, 1993–2018)

BRO idk who that on the left is, but that is the same fucking guy as the one on the left of Brenner in s1. They're also SO similar to Murray Bauman tf??

#XFilesGate

❌ X-Men

All the ST / X-Men connections we already know about...

❌'Dimension X' from TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Which reminded me of my olddddd post about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Stranger Things Comic.

Tagging... ❤

@offsidetracked @ven0moir @greenfiend @eeriesilkworm @anotherjlynn @threemanoperation

X = Chance?

M = Mike?

okay this post has got to be one of my favorites! Also, adding to the Holly scene ....

Chance mention. Coincidence ..?

Bylers pleases top tagging Will Byers/Chance or Bychance on your fanfics when using him as a plot device. I'm trying to find fics of my comfort ship and keep getting ones where he's only used to make Mike jelaous 😭

BYCHANCE PUZZLE - VOL II promo

DECEMBER 15

yeah i get it. they just like that word, i guess. been there, done that .....

ok yeah hunter's back at promoting the show bc he's in vol i, he's not returning for vol ii there wasn't anything about the jocks there ...

SCREECHES .........................

ok that's uh ... interesting .... rowill + chandy ft dustin ... i mean i guess it means nothing ....

just funnily enough reminded me of the rockie + will + chance mention scene ... where Will experienced queer joy for the first time by actually seeing a queer couple with his own eyes ...

wait .....................

>>> REWIND TO NOVEMBER 4TH

we failed. we never stood a chance

vs

no one stands a chance against us ..................................

that's uh, very mundane yes but also specific wording ....

wait w

was .....

...... was that on purpose, hunter? hunter did you ... like did you do that on purpose ...? like was ... was that like ... an actual, intentional hint ...?

Alexa, play I Know There's Something Going On by Frida ...

WAIT ... hold up,

>>> REWIND TO OCTOBER 31ST, 2025

vol i had the Queen song i made a whole post about, all of this is "Will hints" in a way though

The Golden Shadow, yes ... but like ... the lyrics ...

only ONE sweet moment set aside for us .......? bc yknow limited screentime + episodes left ... what .... the fuck ....

nah, there's .... no way ......

>>> FAST FORWARD TO DECEMBER 16

Diana Ross + Upside Down lyrics from the VOL II trailer

there's no way .... like ... it's probably just ...

right? unless ...

release .... being in command of his own ability ... & tapping into the hivemind at will ...

and that's that on self love / self-worth / self-respect ...

FREAKING THANK YOU ROBIN FUCKING BUCKLEY

HE'S FREE. HE'S FUCKING FREE, ISN'T HE?!?!!??!?

IS MY BELOVED WILL FINALLY FREE? IS MY POOKIE FREE FROM THE SHACKLES OF FORCED-CONFORMING!?!!?!?!?!? IS HE EMBRACING THE FREAK, THE WEIRDO!? THE MONSTROUS!?

BIRTHDAYGATE ..............................

COME THE FUCK HOME.

COME.

THE FUCK.

HOME.

WAIT ...

YES /.. EYHS

YEAH ROBIN AAISAID IT IHN HIS SPEECH AND WILL REMEMBERED HE'S LITERALLY FUCKING FREE

FREE WILL

I CAN'T STOP FUCKING FREAKING THE FUCK OUT THIS WAS ON MY DRAFTS BEFORE VOL I DROPPED

Their ship name being ...🚢🌈 ....

I'M .....................

........ hello?

I HAVE SO MANY FUCKING QUESTIONS THOUGH WHAT THE FUCK

anyway that's it for now i think i'm done screaming about this now it's just time to wait and see wtf is actually gonna go down

the s4 Rink-o-Mania catastrophe foreshadows Byler suffering a shocking and MAJOR HIT (probably because of Bychance) in ST5 vol 2, but 99.9% are not ready for that conversation.

All of us, as Bylers, need to eventually realize that metaphorically/mythologically speaking, Eleven acts as a personified manifestation of Byler’s love.

Eleven SYMBOLIZES an idealized, childish & naive version of Byler that is pure, wholesome & cute—but also needs to eventually adapt, change, be integrated or put to rest in order for their love to be able to evolve into a more mature, renewed version that healed and learned from past trauma, embraced rebellion, developed independence and “emancipated” itself. The character that encapsulates or is tethered to this evolution is Max Mayfield, but that is a topic for another post.

Eleven lying, feeling jealous and possessive, being bullied, publicly humiliated, reacting with thoughtless violence, experiencing brutal guilt, reliving flashbacks to her most traumatic memory at Rink-o-Mania—ON WILL’s FORGOTTEN BIRTHDAY of all possible days, mind you—is NOT just about Eleven herself, at least not in a superficial character sense.

What it means is that, in the past—probably on the dreaded & forgotten 1979 birthday party event where Will turned 8 years old—the love between Mike and Will ALSO went through some kind of traumatic experience involving lies, emotional turmoil, severe bullying and humiliation, violence and guilt. To the point that its memory had to be forgotten, buried or erased in-universe by the characters themselves, SOMEHOW.

And in true Stranger Things fashion, this very same core traumatic series of events are going to be mimicked and replicated in s5 in a similar way. AKA, involving similar beats, motifs, themes and emotions.

Eleven GOING THROUGH IT after all that, being ARRESTED by authorities, and TAKEN AWAY from Mike and Will, while Mike and Will themselves are both angry and distant at her and also each other—this quite literally means Byler’s relationship SUFFERING, being PUNISHED, FRAGMENTED and WITHDRAWN while Mike and Will become ANGRY and DISTANT at eachother.

What’s Birthdaygate’s connection to Bychance, you ask? Well COUNTLESS things, but most importantly, and to make it short, 22Gate. Chance quite literally WEARS Will’s birthday on his basketball tanktop. He is PLAYER #22. This was a discovery by @ven0moir btw, please check her brilliant posts.

Bonus point among a billion others: Mike, in his desperation for finding El (aka BYLER aka Will’s love for him after feeling the stinging pain of jealousy), stumbles into an ORANGE 🍊 WASHROOM no less; to witness something he shouldn’t.

In the official s4 scripts, he originally even goes as far as PEEKING UNDER A GODDAMN BATHROOM STALL. You cannot make this shit up. It’s insane.

In s4’s case, the “something he shouldn’t” was girls in their privacy; in s5 vol 1, it was Will stumbling upon Rovickie; in s5 vol 2, let’s see what they have in store involving jealousy, a washroom, invaded privacy, and the color orange.

It’s also right after this scene that Mike goes on his famous fake IDGAFer butthurt jealous cokerant about how Will has been neglecting their relationship. With multiple orange extras and set pieces in the background, for some reason.

Mike: You should have told me Eleven was having trouble. (You should have told me our relationship was having trouble AKA you searched for love somewhere else.)

Will: i didnt know they were gonna be here, Mike. (I didn’t know you were queer / interested in me / going to catch us here.)

Mike: yeah, but you knew she was having trouble for like, a year, and you didn’t tell me. (Oh, so you’ve been having this secret relationship for like a year and didn’t tell me.) — Now we finally know why later in this scene they say “a year” instead of the 6 months that have actually passed since Will left Hawkins (AKA left Mike lmfao). It’s because the purpose was to foreshadow Will meeting Chance in late 1986 and Mike finding out their secret relationship a year later, in Nov 1987 (ST5 vol 2).

But yeah, as always I’m sure it’s all just a totally random coincidence with zero implications to the wider narrative.

There’s so much more to say about this, but after volume 1 and by now, I think it should be obvious that the Byler plotline still needs to get severely worse before it gets any better (and eventually pays off in an actual, truly satisfying manner).

The Byler issues haven’t been processed or addressed. The true conflict and drama still haven’t happened in the story. THE STAKES HAVE NOT YET BEEN RAISED.

tagging fellow chancegate theorizers in case yall are interested: @ven0moir @offsidetracked @eeriesilkworm @o11yradio @nocturnalgrey @maplesyrup75 @90shorrorpaperback

my face whenever i read your posts 👀 im SO curious where this all goes

staring at the date of this post and blinking

just discovered bychance and im so intrigued this is hilarious

This exchange before Andy finds a SNAKE in his locker...

Andy: "See what Donna was wearing?"

Chance: "No."

Andy: "She's gone up like two sizes since last year."

Chance: "Yeah, right."

...Was there any reason for this exchange other than to indicate that Chance is not interested in women?

And do I even have to go into the snake symbolism here?

"...Was there any reason for this exchange other than to indicate that Chance is not interested in women?"

lemme add my two cents here.

I'd say it's moreso that he's not interested in fat-shaming people. I say that not only because of the deflated, non-committal responses he gave, but also bc I like to refer to the text itself when trying to piece together writer's intent and this scene reminded me of the car conversation between Billy and Max in S2, where Billy fat-shamed the girls at Hawkins High ( calling them 'cows' ) and Max didn't indulge him and Billy was an ass to her for it.

Something about Max telling Lucas about not wanting to be like Billy but saying she's also angry like him.

A similar thing is happening here in a way ...? Andy is fat-shaming someone named Donna ( I have things to say about that name, but later ) and talking about clothes ( of course ) but Chance is passive and non-confrontational about it. Like he's Very Aware of the consequences of going against Andy / being 'banished' from the basketball team.

He would end up with no place to belong bc he doesn't really fit in anywhere and there's no way the freaks would adopt him after the crimes he has committed against them, or smth like that 😔 will Chance remain a coward through and through, the unimportant NPC most people think?