will byers as a teenager who’s scared to get drunk, high, or receive any sort of anesthesia out of fear that he would accidentally admit he has a crush on mike
Something about the particular generation of gay person that Will Byers is where he grew up believing there wasn’t anybody like him out there, or at the very least not anyone happy. He witnesses the AIDS crisis in his formative years and sees unimaginable pain for people like him and the indifference of the straight majority. He sees the way the community rallies around each other and the way gay people with fight for justice and liberation, and as a teenager finally meets another gay person who gives him hope for the first time. He gets to move to a big city to live openly in his community and realize how big the possibilities are for him. He gets to go on dates and hold hands and kiss and fuck and unlearn shame and feel normal if he wants to and completely disregard the idea of normalcy and write his own script. He goes to Pride and realizes how much joy there is in being himself. He can dream about the future he once thought he’d never have with stability and safety and a partner and a house and a dog and kids. In 2003, Lawrence vs Texas changes his rural middle American queer perception of having to go somewhere else to be himself. He starts to gay people on TV. In his thirties, after spending his twenties watching his childhood friends and his brother and his mother all get married in his and wondering if that was that was the one thing the world would still hold onto keeping from him, he gets to have a husband. The rings and the ceremony and the legal documents and the first dance. He wants all of it because it’s an option now. He takes it.
It’s not perfect, it probably never will be, and he’ll fight like hell to stop this progress from being taken away, but it’s so much more than he let himself hope for as a child. A pipedream is now his reality. He’s seen so much change. He fought for it. He earned it. He shouldn’t have had to, but it was worth it. It’s beautiful, it’s better than he could’ve imagined. His own little slice of heaven. He’ll protect it with his life.
Little Will Byers couldn’t imagine how adult Will Byers gets to live. He thought he would never fall in love. How he can get married and have kids and have a viable career making art for and about people like him. It makes my heart swell.
so when will got his powers, he had his film reel/ flashback scene, right?
well in that moment, mike probably saw his own film reel. a different kind of film reel.
his would've been filled with every time he's ever believed in will.
"you're like a spy now. a superspy."
"if anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's will."
"in real life, you're more like a sorcerer."
and in that moment, as he watches that demogorgon snap above him, he realises how much faith he's had in will this whole time. because he's always known what will is capable of, more than anyone else.
and this isn't exactly his "oh." moment, but he sure as hell realises how much he really needs someone to believe in. how much he really needs will.
plus will is not too sensitive and that alone is not something he needs to work on. it’s his self esteem, his guilt, state of mind, and people/places/things he relies on that specifically cause that sensitivity to come out negatively. he also does not express himself to others in that way, which contributes to how “fragile” he might seem. but sensitivity is not a bad thing and very deeply who he is. of course bad situations won’t be as detrimental to his wellbeing, but not in spite of him being a Sensitive Kid
can we talk about how will really broke down 𝙖𝙛𝙩𝙚𝙧 he came out, even though it was met with a positive reaction
can we talk about how the worst component of coming out for him wasn't the fear of saying it aloud, it was people 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 because he wasn't ready for people to 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬
he didn't choose to come out, he was pressured to by his abuser to the point where he desperately gathered everyone available 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙤 𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙗𝙚𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙘𝙣𝙖 𝙙𝙞𝙙
will was scared to come out, yes, but will was 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 scared of the fact that he 𝙘𝙖𝙣'𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙞𝙩 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠
Will cannot even talk about his personal trauma and stuff that he has experienced clearly because it's such a unique trauma and experience that no one would really understand him.
Being kidnapped to another dimension and having a tube stuck down your throat and then having to suffer from upside down related visions in the aftermath of what you experienced, and on top of that having to throw up slugs and literally birth monsters and THEN... and then it just never ends too, you constantly get bullied still, people are calling you a zombie boy, you constantly see the upside down because even though people saved you from there... you never were truly saved. it just keeps coming at you, and then you see this big spider smoke monster that stalks you and you try to escape and forget because that's what people think you should do, that what you see isnt real they say, and then you try to escape and save yourself and stand up for yourelf but this monster literally enters your body on every front. Literally takes everything away from you, your body and your mind and your soul and your innocence. And then you are still not saved even after the exorcism, you are still tied to the UD and your abuser aka the man who has been stalking you and done every fucked up shit to you since S1. You are forced to feel this man's thoughts and feelings, with the knowledge that you literally live with him inside your mind and can do nothing to stop it or turn it off. This is the man who ruined your life, kidnapped you, chased you for a week in the Upside Down, r4ped you, and then sent you visions after visions, and then possessed you, and made you connect to him forcefully, and tried to take away your freedom completely, who forced you to kill several soldiers, forced you to kill your only father figure (Bob), almost choked your mother (Joyce) to death and he doesnt stop and he never will (as Will also says ''he is never going to stop'') and he just keeps coming... and you cannot prevent it because whenever you tried to stood up to him it never worked.
The power imbalance, the outright disturbing text, a child being constantly violated against his own will and not being able to do anything about it, his mind and body not belonging to him... yikes.
I often find myself genuinely shocked how one dimensional the perception of Will is in both the ga and the fandom. They didn’t try to hide the rape plotline at all, and made it very much evident in many other situations in the show as well regarding the mf (which we now know was Henry) . And yet people prefer to latch at his supposed so prevalent ih as his main source of trauma. The same Will that for many reasons we’ve seen in the show, definitely seems to have way less ih than Mike. Anyway.
The point is, there’s so much to it exactly as you’ve so eloquently pointed out in this heartbreaking message. His trauma is one of the most if not the most multifaceted in the entire story, and also he literally is the main character foil to the big villain. Saying that Will hates himself for being gay is such a gross oversimplification of what we see. It’s haunting to know that people want to project a stereotypical situation to his nuanced one; being gay and not wanting his childhood to go away , gripping it tight because it was stolen from him and being a csa survivor who can’t even really talk about his trauma are all extremely important things that make up Will as a character.
But to deny the straight forward plot that is being presented to us in order for more cool supernatural horror or whatever? Yeah i mean, suit yourself, but this is not the story being told here. Stranger Things has masterfully integrated the very real themes and horrors that are happening every day and that to me is a story worth telling. This dynamic of abuse alone is the basis of the whole story as we know it. I just wish people didn’t ignore Will’s multitude of different traumas in order to just. What. Maintain the sanitized holy image of ST they have in their brain? Avoid talking about harsh realities, clutching pearls for the children? It still baffles me to this day how many people want the characters to be their little lifeless ken dolls to play with.
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