this is the second post breaking down the results of my byler survey. to see the first post, click here.
if you don't want to see a long post and you have twitter, the thread i made with the exact same information/commentary is here.
part 3: byler culture
do you consider yourself to be a part of the byler fandom?
81.7% of responders do, with 16.3% saying partially! we welcome all lurkers 😁
do you consider yourself to be a part of the stranger things fandom?
similar, but not the same! 81.7% went down to 81.2%, and people saying no jumped from 2% to 3.8%.
was stranger things/byler your first fandom?
i asked this because some ppl on twitter especially act new-ish to fandoms - however most people (84.3%) have been in another fandom before, with only 11.3% saying that this is their first fandom.
have you heard of the byler slideshow?
classic byler material - however, only 38.2% have read all 326 slides! a lot of people (29.5%) have only partially read it, with some people having heard of it but not read it at all (28%).
if you want to revisit it, look no further. my mutual on twitter also made a fantastic video on it, which if you haven't seen you should totally check out!!
have you heard of the byler lawyer video?
edging the slideshow out as the byler 'bible', 66.5% of people have watched it all compared to the 38.2% who have read all the slides. 13% have not finished watching it, and only 1.7% of responders haven't heard of it at all.
if you haven't watched or you want to rewatch, add another view to the 209K!
what byler gates have you heard of?
the most well-known gates are birthdaygate (98.3%), loverslakegate (97.1%), lettergate (95.4%), phonegate (93.4%) and flickergate (93.1%)!
what byler gates do you believe?
not only is birthdaygate the most well-known, but 83.7% of responders also believe it! this is followed by phonegate (79.9%), soundtrackgate (77.6%), colorgate (76.4%) and lettergate (66.8%)!
(scriptgate was eventually removed as an option)
have you heard of chance?
sorry to 3.5% of responders including my irl
out of mike and will, who do you prefer as a character?
will, the people's princess as always, with 58.4% of the vote. the 15.9% of mike stans (including me) are fighting for our lives
out of mike and will, who do you relate to more as a character?
interestingly, while only 15.9% of people prefer mike, 30.6% of people relate to him more!
i then had a write-in place for any in-jokes and theories! these were the most popular ones:
dart (who represents homosexuality)
lobegate
miniongate
mike gave ring el gave painting
mikhailgate
hosegate
"what painting?"
triangle symbolism
hosegate
part 4: other parts of stranger things
what other stranger things ships do you ship?
bylers are most likely to ship lumax (94.8%), jancy (89.3%), jopper (87.3%) and rovickie (79.5%)! this is followed by elmax (56.9%), ronance (53.5%), stonathan (38.4%) and henderhop (35.5%).
what stranger things characters do you NOT like?
for the most disliked characters - billy hargrove was overwhelmingly a least favourite with 86% voting for him. this is followed by murray bauman (20.4%), eddie munson (13.1%), and steve harrington (11.1%).
let me point out the characters who no one said they disliked, all with zero votes - joyce byers, lucas sinclair, max mayfield and robin buckley <3
what is your favourite season of stranger things?
s2 was the most popular response (67.8%), followed by, s4 (17.4%), s1 (9%) and s3 (5.8%)
what is your LEAST FAVOURITE season of stranger things?
s3 was overwhelmingly the most popular answer (76.2%). it is followed by s4 (10.2%), s1 (8.1%), then s2 (5.4%).
do you think will will have powers in season 5?
53.3% said yes! a note that this came out before the teaser - and of course, the new lawyer will powers video - which led to further will power believers.
who do you think will die in season 5?
accordingly to bylers, the character who is the most bones is el, with 42.8% of people voting for her. this is followed by murray (42.2%), karen (31.7%), then steve (30.2%).
part 5: demographics
what is your gender identity?
i had a lot of write-ins for this one, which i tried to incorporate as much as possible in the graph! most responders were female (61.6%). there was also an option to not specify microlabels, so note that this may not be completely accurate. also, thank you to the intersex person who wrote in to educate me that intersex shouldn't be categorised as a gender identity - i have still included it on here as people did vote for it :)
how old are you?
most bylers (45.9%) are between 15-17 years old! this is followed by 18-19 year olds (19.5%), 20-24 year olds (18.6%) and 12-14 year olds (5.8%).
what is your ethnicity?
a few write-ins again! i incorporated all of them in the graph. 65.7% of responders were white, followed by 21.8% for hispanic/latino/spanish responders, and 11.9% for asian responders.
what country do you primarily live in?
it turns out... a lot! below is a map from all the countries. 49.4% of people were from america, followed by 8% from the uk, 4.9% from australia, 4.6% from canada and 2.5% from argentina and brazil.
to make it easier to digest, here are each of the countries divided by continents!
what sexuality/sexualities do you identify as?
most of us are queer, with only 7% of people just putting straight down. 33% of responders are bisexual, 24.6% are lesbian, and 21.7% are ace/on the ace spectrum! i tried to incorporate the write-ins on my graph.
do you consider yourself to be transgender?
63.8% of people said they were cis. i tried to allow for nuance, with an additional 12.2% saying they don't consider themselves trans, but they are not cis.
are you neurodivergent?
only 16.8% directly said that they are not! 21.2% have been diagnosed as nd, while 6.1% are in the process. however, 35.8% of people said that they think they are but have not been assessed.
finally... the most important question. are bylers beating the unemployed allegations?
unfortunately, no. 40.3% of responders have a job - everyone else is either looking for a job or are just unemployed. i only realised after i closed the survey that i wrote the options wrong so i have no idea who is actively searching (but keep in mind 15-17 demographic!)
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let me know if you have any questions about the data! i am always happy to talk - you can either respond to this post or shoot something in my ask box. thank you for reading till the end :)
thank you to everyone who participated in this survey. in the end, i got 346 responders after leaving it open for around a week.
if you don't want to see a long post and you have twitter, the thread i made with the exact same information/commentary is here. but let's get on with it!
(if you've read this all and missed the link at the bottom, here's the link to part 2 of this breakdown)
part 1: being a byler shipper
what season did you start shipping byler?
the most popular result was season 2, with 27.9% of people voting for it! this was closely followed by s2 vol 1 (25.5%), season 3 (19.9%), season 4 vol 2 (15.5%) and season 1 (11.1%) in last place. without splitting the volumes, most people (41.1%) started shipping byler during season 4!
what year did you start shipping byler?
most people (56.9%) started shipping byler from 2022-2025. shoutout to the 8.5% of people who started shipping in 2016-2017! 16% of people started shipping in 2018-2019, and 18.7% in 2020-2021.
where are you currently consuming byler content?
there were a few write-in answers for this, which i tried to include in the graph! twitter (82%), tiktok (77.6%) and tumblr (77%) are the most popular websites. this also reveals the sample size bias as i only promoted this on twitter and tumblr, with more people replying to my original tweet than my original tumblr post. so take everything with a grain of salt!
where have you consumed byler content in the past?
not huge changes from the last question - this might've been confusingly worded based on some write-in responses. shoutout to past amino survivors!
where have you posted byler content?
again, quite a few write-in answers which i tried to accomodate for. shoutout to the lurkers in the 22.7% who have not posted anything!
do you read byler fanfiction?
a high percentage (84%!) of the byler fandom does read traditional byler fanfiction! only 3.8% of survey takers said they have never read any byler fanfiction.
where have you read byler fanfiction?
ao3 is unsurprisingly the most popular place to read fanfiction! a few write-ins clarified that they have only read socmeds on twitter.
have you written byler fanfiction?
quite a few bylers have, with 38.5% of survey takers having written byler fanfiction!
where have you posted byler fanfiction?
if you took this survey earlier, you might have not seen the option of writing but not posting - i added it a bit later after getting so many write-ins. this ended up being somewhat popular, with 19.7% of people later choosing that option.
what other forms of byler content have you posted?
a lot of write-ins for this one! i lumped memes/jokes/shitposts in one category on the graph.
have you ever shipped mileven?
47.5% of survey takers were converted into bylers at some point! shoutout to the 4.1% of multishippers - thank you for helping maintain the peace :)
what season did you stop shipping mileven, if ever?
most ex-mlvn shippers (28.1% of total survey takers) stopped in s3. after that, it was s4 v1 (8%), s2 (5.9%), s1 (4.1%) then s4 v2 (3.8%).
do people in your life know you're a byler?
17.2% of people said no one in their life knows they ship byler! however, for most people (37.6%), a certain group of people knew. 28% said close friend and family knows and 17.2% said that everyone knows! byler pride!
do you know people in your life who ship byler?
most people also know other bylers who did not have to be convinced (38.2%) (shoutout to my irls stalking this account...). the 2nd most popular answer was knowing no one (33.5%), and 22.3% successfully converted people!
part 2: the endgame of byler
(note: this originally came out before the teaser, which may or may not have changed ppl's opinions)
do you think byler will be endgame?
there is room for more nuance later, but overall 89.2% of survey responders said yes, they think byler will be endgame! keep the faith!
how confident are you that byler will be endgame?
the average confidence level of a byler endgame is 7.67/10! the mode for this data set was 8, with 25.4% of responders choosing that. 16.2% of people are 100% sure!
how confident are you that mlvn will not be endgame?
the faith in mlvn not happening is stronger than byler itself, with the average response of 8.38/10! 10 was the mode of the dataset, with 42.8% of people having zero faith in mlvn happening.
when do you think byler will be endgame?
57.8% of people think byler will be endgame by volume 2, followed by 33.5% of people thinking it will happen in the finale. 4% of responders thought it would happen in volume 1!
how do you think byler will be endgame?
the options i wrote aren't completely nuanced, so i hope people found one they could relate to! 65.1% think it will be very clear! 19.8% think it will be partly ambiguous, 7% think it will be ambiguous, and 4.7% think it will be open!
if byler is not endgame, do you think it will be queerbait?
71.7% of people think it will be queerbait, and 24.6% of people think it would partially be queerbait! only 3.8% of people said they don't think it will be.
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but wait, there's more! click here to go to the second post breaking down more results.
as one direction once said, "you and me got a whole lot of history (whoa)," so we thought that this timeline might be a useful reference for you (and us!) to keep track of mike, will & co.'s very loaded history within the acswy universe! this will be updated as more information is revealed -- that said, feel free to holler at us if you feel we've missed anything!
only significant months and/or dates will be highlighted. if a month is skipped, nothing significant happened and/or significance has not been revealed yet. if there is a timeframe, it means no set date has been determined, but the event happened within that ballpark.
timeline begins below the cut:
MAY
mike, will, lucas, and dustin's first year as campers; jonathan's first year as a jr. counselor; joyce's first year as camp nurse
JULY
steve (yellow cabin counselor) and jonathan get into a physical fight and end up in the isolation cabin together (referred to as the Isolation Cabin Incident of 2017)
AUGUST
mike and will share their first kiss with each other
SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER
will comes out to joyce and jonathan
jonathan and steve start dating
will and max become close friends at hawkins middle
JANUARY-APRIL
will comes out to max
hopper fosters el
chester, the byers family dog, passes away 💔
MAY-AUGUST
el and max's first year as campers; jonathan's first year as a counselor (blue cabin)
mike and will rivalry begins
canoe incident of 2018
mike and el begin dating
MAY-AUGUST
slime incident of 2019
mike and el break up
hopper and joyce start dating
steve and jonathan's last year at camp whiteman
SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER
hopper officially adopts el
MARCH-MAY
hopper and joyce brady bunch the shit out of el, will, and jonathan (home from nyu bc of the pandemic)
discord era
pasta sauce incident
JUNE-JULY
condensed version of camp (two weeks, monday-friday, daytime only)
mike, will, lucas, dustin, max, and el's first year as junior counselors
DECEMBER
18th: will starts dating derek, who is a year older than him
between christmas and new year's: mike comes out to will, lucas, dustin, max, and el as bisexual
MAY-JULY
will and derek break up
mike is there for will during his break up
will pushes mike off the dock (but in a #fun and #chill way)
MAY
follow the sparks (i'll drive)
out of focus, eye to eye
mike, will, lucas, dustin, max, and el's first year as counselors
MAY-
events of a cruel summer with you begin
offscreen, during ch08: events of you know that i caught it
my stupid ass JUST realised that Jonathan heard both monologues in s4: wills AND mikes. thats why he looked so fucking pressed when mike opened his BITCH ASS mouth and started confessing his love to el by throwing wills words in her face
hello everyone!! i made a survey for you fun people to fill out because i'm a data nerd and i'm interested to get some info from all your minds!! none of the questions are compulsory, so fill out what you're comfortable with. rb to share and tysm!!
A short(ish) survey for Byler shippers. If you don't ship, don't take!
(an older version of this post didn't embed the link for some reason idfk)
I’ve wanted to change the focus, putting this angle and in the foreground position the 3 head dragon.
As for the characters, i changed their outfits creating my own design for them.
Plus i adore the idea of Will being an elf, i read that somewhere but I don’t know if was canon or not (i mean sometimes he is just an old wizard!). For Lucas I wanted him to be a ranger because I think is better for him than a knight, and obliviously with arrows and a bow! Mike and Dustin are the most similar to the original as you can see.
I’m so excited for this project, but it will take so long for finishing it, since i have some commissions to do (ahh money are so important) and I really hope there’s not a deadline.
I’ve always wanted to recreate will’s iconic painting!! Nothing will ever compare the the original, of course… but I still enjoyed messing with the colors and other details and giving up on technique :D in fact, I ended up making the dragon a lot more huggable then initially planned, but who’s to say they’re the enemy? In this universe, the party is just makin a new friend :))
andulkaphoto
2087
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
titsay
kianamaiart
jacobvanloon
baratheonpilled
