mostlylurkinbarelypostin

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Mike, Joyce, and Jonathan when it comes to Will

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I don’t know what I’m doing

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Will the Wise, El, hiding and fireballs: Is Will's arc him becoming his DnD character?

So this post is about to be.. A lot. Some of it is plot, some of it is character analysis, some of it is insane, as usual. Beware. It's also my day 7 @bylerween2023 contribution 💖 Now let's start with some basic stuff, taking season 1 as our source of information, about Will the wise.

What we learn about Will the Wise

One of the first things we see on the screen is the boys playing dnd, how much they love it and all that. However, even though Mike does talk about the party and El to Max in terms of their DnD characters, Will is the only person that has a very prominent DnD persona with a name and costume. @pinkeoni Robin has talked a lot about what this could mean when it comes to Will's abusive childhood, but it's besides the point here. The first subtextual internal character conflict we see starts very early : Should Will (the Wise) cast protection or should he fireball the demogorgon? Should he try and protect himself, or attack the threat head-on? Should he stay or should he go? He ends up taking the risk, but it fails. A little after, he doesn't get to use his gun either. Lucas lays the thesis of 80s ideals for masculinity that hurt Will as a gnc and gay kid out for us :

Will the Wise turns out to be a violent character. He uses his destructive powers to exterminate evil when his wisdom isn't enough. This, aka using violence throughout the show, is proven to be something that real life Will never does. In fact, it's the exact opposite from what he does. But there's a character that matches this description very well : El.

El's vs Will's bravery

El appeared in the story as a force to be reckoned with, a threat, a weapon. Meanwhile , from the get go , we see a disconnect between the Will the Wise we learn about and the Will we see in s1.

In juxtaposition with this, we have a season of Jonathan reminding us of how well Will can hide, him running from the demogorgon, hiding in the UD, and in general clearly engaging in a passive way of dealing with allathat.

Will's bravery and his strength as a character isn't based on attacking, or any sort of violence. He can't use the gun even though he loads it. Will's bravery is persevering through all the hardships he's been through, remaining kind and still seeing the good in the world even though he's never really known a world that's kind to him ; Lonnie's abuse was a constant of his early childhood , and even when that stopped (in exchange for being actually abandoned and deemed worthless by his own father), the homophobic bullying and the alienation caused by his experiences that no one relates to started.

Will is the character we see prove that needing support, protecting yourself, running away from the threats, hiding , sometimes is the best approach. It is never condemned in the narrative : he needed to run, and when he stopped, the demogorgon AND the shadow got him. While he needs to learn how to confront the threats and not hide from them, there's still no indication that what he needs to do is fight back, or be tougher, or change himself so that he can be the attacker for once as a gotcha. Because that's El. The foil. El matches the descriptions of Will the Wise MUCH better than Will does. El is the weapon and Will, even though perfectly capable of loading a gun , can't actually go through with it... And that could be foreshadowing of how their powers will be developed.

While Will does later offer to sacrifice himself by asking them to close the gate in s2, saving everyone but leading to his death, El kind of beats him to it. She did everything Mike says here, before Will ever could. El keeps replacing Will in his own narratives. She is Will the Wise , in every way that Will can't be: she has actual powers (Will doesnt know about his own), her powers are destructive (proven time and time again), she is brave in an active way, she put herself in danger by attacking the demogorgon leaving what appears to be burn marks in the wall behind it :

Through no fault of her own, El just takes and takes from Will, she is his foil, her mere presence is an accidental but constant reminder of what he can't do. He can't actually do all the things Will the Wise does, he can't confront the bad guys, he can't be the person that Mike loves , he can't ever take back the space he left open for her to take in the day of his disappearance (which we get reminded of in the monologue, as , to him , El's appearance replaced meeting Will as the most important thing to happen to Mike). If this kid had a buzzcut, could it be Lonnie's kid? But Will doesn't have a buzzcut, he isn't a lab kid the way El was. He isn't a vicious attacker or a weapon like her. They go pretty hard reminding us how things don't really align with El and Will, antithesis is always present. Their arcs take them to a place where they get to grow and incorporate some characteristics of the other, but not become each other.

Will the Wise's weapon of choice being fire, and fire throughout the show

Will's powers have been a point of great speculation in the fandom. When it comes to Will as a person, we know he has true sight and a robust yet vague connection to the supernatural. It's pretty much guaranteed that he has some powers (time and electricity, as well as world building have all been hinted at) but for Will the Wise it's mainly fireballs. And dragons. Lots and lots of dragons imagery.

Fire has been deemed the UD's and its creatures "weakness" ever since the first season. Alongside it, firearms as well (pun intended..by them lol). And it is always, always tied to someone else other than Will. And it seems to work. A little. Let's see:

Season 1

Notably, the first time we see fire be used against the UD, it's when Jancy burn the Demogorgon. This works very well to banish it (?) to the UD, buying them a little time. The creature goes back to the UD to regenerate and comes back like nothing happened. This is the first of many violent attacks against the UD creatures. Nancy, with her love for guns, and Jonathan, doing what is necessary, even though he resents violence as well, by pouring the gasoline and throwing his lighter. He is our Will the Wise for the scene, with his fireball-like attack. Jonathan, who shot the rabbit but then cried, and Will, that couldn't even fire the gun. Jonathan will do whatever necessary, and is definitely not as averse to violence as Will is, which we already know from the Stonathan fight in s1. Finally El's attack "burns" the Demogorgon and ""kills it"". 3 characters fill in for Will the Wise.

Season 2

With the knowledge that fire is a powerful ally, s2 follows a similar path. The soldiers use fire against the tunnels; the first one we see doing it is called Teddy (hi @wheelercore) lol. Once again, used just for "stopping it from spreading". "It" can't be stopped with fire. (my thoughts on how insane this scene is at another time)

Then, fire again. The soldiers use fire, and Will falls to the ground in agonizing pain. He feels burns all over his body, and then fire is once again used as a test to see if Will is connected to the hivemind. Fire is used repeatedly, and the only person that is hurt by it is Will. The supernatural threat is not phased in the longterm. Even when the extreme heat is used at last, it still doesn't kill the particles, just expel them.

Season 3

Ok so season 3 is a mess like we love her but she's a mess so there's not too much to say here but. First we have the whole thing covered up as a mall fire so fire again, the works. Oh and you can't forget Mike and Lucas setting fire to the chambers in DnD but still dying. But we also have the use of. You'd never guess. Fireworks!!! The fireworks kill the flesh monster but since the dark particles are still intact, in Russia, and Vecna and every demothing are still alive, all that really died there is the zombie hawkins residents and rats who were dead already. Not good. Once again fire may buy time by killing the lesser threats, but the supernatural evil perseveres. (+ Lucas's iconic line and fire being a threat to the heroes again)

Season 4

Again!!!!! So much fire! Nancy fires her gun and Robin throws her fireball-molotof SIMULTANEOUSLY and Vecna literally catches fire and all his tentacles burn and he still. doesn't. fucking. die. Murray uses his flamethrower to kill the demodogs, and it works, but the demogorgon had to be decapitated, as fire doesn't do the trick. The open rifts make everything else catch fire and we see Hawkins, in Vecna's words, "burn and fall" so it can be "remade into something beautiful". Fire as a cleansing destructive power from the God like character. Very old Testament.

So we got firearms, fireworks, fire in the form of gasoline and a lighter, the flamethrowers of the soldiers and fire in the form of a molotof. And they are all just...ineffective. That's a lot of fire things missing the goal, right? Could Will's fireballs really be literal if fire just...doesn't work? What could differentiate them from all the other fires? Is Will's fire the superfire or something? Even if Will's fire has some Magic Powers Slay Juice in it, that STILL didn't help before, aka El even after her nina-powers-steroids power level couldn't win. It's...not what I think is gonna happen.

(Also. And i know like i know that is (probably) not intentional like even when my heart tells me otherwise. Isn't it so funny that "cabbage shoot"

has these properties:

i fucking yelled when i saw this like ok radiationgate cancer metaphor cancer cell regenairation slay!! lmaoooo ok this section is for em and james let's move on)

Will the Wise as a presence tied to Will's "hiding" motif

If we are to believe that Will the wise is something that Will should aspire to become, then why would they tie the character so irrevocably with the very same thing that Will needs to overcome in his coming of age? Let's see when Will the Wise appears (not just will playing dnd, but will the wise as a persona) :

Flasback of Joyce going into castle byers and calling him sir at the very subtext heavy conversation of Will not getting scared anymore, clowns (more in Robin's @pinkeoni clown imagery posts chef's fucking kiss) and with the knowledge that castle byers is where Will goes to hide (which he's also good at).

Conversation about outsmarting the bad guys to not get hurt and your normal self and "human" nature/intellect not being enough to defend yourself.

Will trying to use DnD escapism to cling to a bygone past where his friends didn't mistreat him in favor of their relationships and he was the person Mike loved the most. In DnD , when he's Will the Wise, nothing has changed from that time of his life and he can be powerful again (and he doesn't have to face the reality of the entrance of Max and El in his life and how that changed everything, something we also see in season 4: see below)

The drawing of Will the Wise prominently appearing during the mental anguish right before the destruction of castle byers, the defining moment when Will's trauma and loss of childhood, his difference from others, queerness, growing pains, and his utopian-yet-almost-attainable-until-recently future of being with Mike being ripped out of him come to a head. The drawing is torn apart, the Will the Wise costume is forcefully removed as well. Will the Wise is not compatible with the harsh reality.

The most overt Will hiding moment we see in the whole show, the painting. Will literally hides his true feelings by presenting them as El's and by showing himself in his Will the Wise costume, and all the other members of the party in their dnd characters, because in that world the girls don't exist and can't take his friends away nor do any changes in their dynamic occur (e.g. Dustin being left behind). Time can stop in a better place for him. (I know that the common fandom angle is that DnD is a love language between Will and Mike , and I don't exactly disagree , but to me the very fact that DnD is used as code between them means that the real situation isn't dealt with yet; Will using a) the entire friendgroup b) their dnd personas c) El in order to convey his truth is still him using barriers. When the real talk between them happens, there will be no dnd characters in sight. This doesn't negate the place DnD has in their love, but its use as a literature device is a double edged sword,since its very existence signifies censorhip and false selves that can live what Will perceives to be unattainable.)

All these moments are points of regression for Will. When his true confident and assertive self can come out, he does not use barriers between him and the others, be it his talks with Jonathan, fighting with Mike, not hearing Lucas's apology, all these moments of Will progressing are his and his alone.

Will and the cycle of violence in the show

I have talked about it before but in ST in general, people who go on to invoke harm on others that was inflicted upon them are condemned in the narrative. Will's not a violent person. He doesn't hate his dad, he doesn't want to use a fucking gun, and his character development is not meant for him to grow out of his sensitive loving nature. This can not coincide with the Will the Wise powers we have seen, which align perfectly with the violence around him, and with El's destructive powers. It's like, what, Will can't use a gun because it goes against his characterisation, but he'll start shooting the equivalent of a firey cluster of bullets and it's cool because it's wizard stuff? Hm. And even if he does end up using whatever powers he has against minor threats, it just doesn't make sense to use them against the real opponent, because Will is not the macho man that kills the monster and gets the girl, and Vecna isn't part of the hive mind; he is the hive mind.

Will's extreme Christine coding (everyone say thank you James for the amazing og POTO post) and his immense ability to sympathise, love, understand, and see the good and human in everyone means he is bound to be the key to understanding Vecna's humanity and see behind the facade, which is not the same as forgiving him. But unless they Mary Sue Will to death, they can't just be like oh yeah Will is just more powerful than El so in HIS battle with Vecna he's going to kick some ass!!!! Will's approach has to be different and be true to his character and that can only happen if that ISN'T the way things go. Besides, Vecna already has Can't Be Killed ™ coding, and Will's only scene where he expresses violent intent is paralleled to a scene where the dialogue between Byler ends up not being true.

Will knows what and how Vecna thinks, but there's a lot he doesn't know. The very existence of this foreshadowed-to-fail line in a scene bathed by light and Mike's love for Will is all i need to know ; in the most sappy and corny way possible, love will conquer. Just not in the way Will thinks is the only way.

Will is a creator, an artist, a sensitive soul that never wanted to harm anyone, he just wanted "this to be over". But "this" can never truly be over; there are some wounds that time can not mend. Personally I think that Vecna's immortal coding is a super good writing choice, since he signifies darkness and trauma and all that. You can't really erase these things even if you do defeat them. Anyway.

Adding to all this the weight of needing to turn into what the abusive bullies and Lonnie always wanted to in order to survive, win and "grow" ? Yeah, no.

And let's not forget the highly symbolic-yet-also-magically-realistic nature of the show and its DnD foreshadowing...If the shadow monster was nothing like the dnd mindflayer, the demogorgon nothing like the DnD demogorgon, and Vecna n o t h i n g like DnD Vecna, why predict s5 Will by DnD Will? Judging from the pattern so far, with DnD being just a manual, I can see the whole party's roles being referenced in a much less straightforward way.

Besides, the party keeps on using superheroes as a way to frame and comprehend El's very existence, even though she's actually nothing like any of them. The ST real world always proves itself to be much less impressive and polished, and more gloomy and underwhelming, compared to the fantasy equivalents the party adore as nerds. Enough things are similar for the comparison to have merit, but that's it.

But miss heroesbyler, is it possible they gave Will all this imagery for no reason? They went pretty heavy on Will's fireballs thing. I wanna see that.

So while I'm conflicted about how fire will inevitably play a role in this season as it always does, and there is always the matter of the dragon ™ imagery going on that simply needs to lead to something. So even if we do see Will manipulating fire to participate in a battle with a dragon (?) I still don't think that it's going to have much if at all with the confrontation between Vecna, Will and what happened with HNL. What I do believe is going to happen resides... Below the cut because it's super speculatory 💖

Imo, the Will the Wise fireball thing can very well have to do with "the light". Will found a way, through the lights, is what Nancy says when they touch the light particles. Beware, this whole discussion stems from my beloved Denise @bylertruther and her genius posts on Will using the light particles that changed me as a person.

Now the show does not do cartoon villains, it's not an epic tale of The Evil Evilest Child Turned Man vs pure perfect angels (be it el, will or the rest of the party) because it bothers to humanise its characters, whether by giving them flaws or sympathetic conditions. What it does very much do though, is deal with heroes vs villains, and as has been very heavy handedly clear in s4, light vs dark = good vs evil.

Max informs us that Vecna only sees the darkness in his victims but she'll run to the light, which she literally does in his mindscape (the hole in the crimson mindscape is very bright in contrast, in a sunny day etc).

Vecna is darkness. The dark particles, the sky immediately darkening in Vecna vision, the shadow monster etc are all dark. Will is constantly bathed in light and we get pointedly reminded that Will very probably did what the teens are doing in s4, but in a bigger scale, most probably because he wasn't just using his hands to touch the particles but his powers to manipulate them. This could explain what Will was doing with the lights since he seems to not remember that week in the UD.

The sappy mfs that the writers are, I wouldn't be surprised if the fireball imagery ended up being about the light particles, and Will's powers to be all about creating and love. Can love defeat fear seems like a question carved out for a final girl like Will and his coming of age. But unless the only way they show him resort to violence only in self defense, and against the democreatures at that, it doesn't work the same way. But... I'm waiting to see.

Thank you for sticking through this epic of Gilgamesh with me teehee 💖💖

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I DID SOMETHING AND IM SUPER PROUD OF IT, I had this idea for months but didn’t feel capable of pulling it off so it was waiting all this time to jump out of my brain

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WHY IS JACK'S (Jack McPhee, aka gay guy from Dawson's Creek who is heavily paralleled to Mike Wheeler) FIRST TIME AT A GAY BAR SCENE LITERALLY RINK 'O MANIA???? WTF

I know the duffers LOVE to parallel Mike to Jack, but idk if those were just a common combination of lights or if this means something lol, I know that the rink 'o mania scene is EXTREMELY queercoded with all the music and queer imagry in the background so I think the Duffers did this on purpose

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Thinking about how both Mike and Max observe their other half from a far and come to mistakenly believe that they’re doing fine without them as a result of what a third party says. Both El and the radio announcer were wrong though. Lucas wasn’t feeling on top of the world and there was never a girl that Will was painting for. In reality, Will and Lucas were busy thinking about and missing them just as much as they were.

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📼

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You’ve Got Mail ❤️

I’m obsessed with the fact that You’ve Got Mail is on the list of movies that inspired S4. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, the whole premise is that the main character is torn between two men, one that she knows in real life and initially hated but grows to love, and one that she met online who she doesn’t know the true identity of. She rejects the guy she knows in real life for the anonymous online man, but when she goes to finally meet him for the first time, she learns that they’re the same person.

Most importantly, she tells him “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”

There’s no way that this movie wasn’t the inspiration for the painting lie and I would bet any money that Mike is going to say something similar to Will when he finds out that the painting and those words in the van were all from Will and not El.

Also did I mention that the reveal scene in You’ve Got Mail is set to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”? 🥲

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The matching worried looks for Mike and Max

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The perception of time expressed by El, Mike, and Will reveal where their respective focus lies:

El expresses how time can speed up or slow down based on emotions, but then goes on to say that for her, time is going by fast this week: the same week at the end of which Mike is supposed to arrive. Which had initially seemed odd to me because if you’ve ever waited for a burrito to heat up in the microwave, you know that anticipation notoriously slows time down. Yet for El, time is speeding along.

So what can tend to make time speed by? Exactly what El proceeds to talk about: completion of a goal.

"Not only does time pass by fast when I enjoy an activity, but it moves even faster when I am also focused on reaching a goal. I may be excited about the result, which makes me focused on the activities that will achieve my goal."

In the case of El, she is focused on completing her diorama for her school project. And sure enough her words are supported by what we see on screen, our establishing shot is of El painting the figure of Hopper.

That is her focus. Commemorating her dad. Not Mike. For her, time moves regardless of his presence or absence.

Meanwhile, both Mike and Will—well, we both know this one:

“You knew she was having trouble for like a year and you didn’t tell me.”

“It’s been a year, Mike”

“The past year has been weird”

They both refer to the time they’ve spent away SPECIFICALLY from each other as a year. Even while referencing El, Mike is referring to Will and his [in]actions in the context of the “year”.

And as Taylor Swift (as well as common knowledge) says, “When you are missing someone, time seems to move slower”.

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I have conflicting feelings about Karen but one thing I’ll never do is pretend that she puts so much effort into getting Mike to talk to her and that Mike just keeps so many secrets that there’s nothing she can do.

Like… wtf? What the hell????

Are we talking about the Karen who only sat Mike down and talked to him after she realized that Mike is skipping school even though Mike has shown to be in distress beforehand? Are we talking about the Karen who told Mike that she’s there for him once and then never again? Are we talking about the Karen who tells Ted that he shouldn’t go to Mike after Will died because he will come to them? (Something Mike never did and has never done before?!) Are we talking about the Karen who sees that Mike is in distress but doesn’t take action because she waits for him to express that he needs help? The Karen who was wanting “patiently” for Mike, a child, to make the first step only to then get fed up with his behavior and decide to take away his toys as her first action? The Karen who indirectly told her 13 year old son that one year is enough time to get his shit together again after his best friend went missing and died? (public knowledge that everyone knows to be true! Karen and Ted literally attended Will’s funeral, like, it doesn’t even matter that Will is still alive and that they don’t know about the UD)

Are we taking about the Karen who made Mike’s need for getting support and comfort and help entirely dependent on Mike, a child who clearly lacks the ability to verbally express that he needs comfort/support/help??????

Like, sure Karen is shown to be there for Mike in some aspects and we see Mike going to her for physical comfort but Mike never talks to her and she doesn’t do anything about it even when she sees that her son isn’t doing well. Karen could be worse, yes. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t still bad.

So again, I have conflicting feelings about Karen but I’ll never pretend like she’s some saint of a mother who does enough to ensure that her son’s need for comfort etc, is met. I’m not gonna pretend like the child is equally as much at fault for not getting those needs met at home!

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Do not talk to me. I might throw up. Look what I have noticed in S2E2:

A little close-up gif:

Just look how he looks at Will, he's concerned, and he brushes his arm against his, as if he wanted to grab his hand. He wanted him to know that he was there. It was going to be okay.

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Kind of an extension of my last post, but Karen makes me so mad in the Halloween episode. Just the night before she was mocking Mike for saying his toys had sentimental value and made him give away two boxes worth. Now she wants him to smile and be goofy for the camera the next morning as if nothing happened?

You can’t mock your child for their interests and punish them for struggling and then expect them to feel comfortable being playful around you. You lose that privilege.

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This frame always gets me. The camera sits just off-center - effectively pushing Mike to the fringes of the shot and to the literal and figurative edge of the family. He’s also completely cloaked in darkness. Unlike the rest of his family, who are all wearing lighter coloured clothing and are framed in front of the bright yellow walls, Mike is positioned in front of a dark brown curtain in his sharply contrasting dark navy outfit. He’s so far from his family and so far from the light. It’s a painful portrait of alienation that is only further enforced through the following scene in which Mike sits, not eating, while his parents punish him for his behaviour that has resulted from his unrecognized PSTD, guilt, grief, depression, and other mental health struggles.

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jonathan byers: byler observer (x)

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I’m surprised by how many people want Will to have a new haircut next season. Besides the fact that the bowlcut looks fine as is, doing anything more than maybe letting it grow out a bit would make it look like they’re trying to do the ugly duckling turned swan thing.

Even if the new haircut was “wtf is on your head” kind of terrible, it would still look like they’re trying to do the trope by waiting till the final season to do a big change. And we all know that if there’s one thing Stranger Things is gonna do, its subvert an over used trope, which means that it would be way more on brand for them to let Will rock his bowlcut to the very end and show everyone that you don’t have to change who you are to be loved.

TL;DR : Long live the bowlcut