#my honest to god. not dictated by my personal opinions of the byers family. perfect ending for jonathan is him leaving his family behind

[thestobingirlie]

there are two aspects of jonathan’s character that seem to get widely ignored by the fandom, and i think it’s one of the reasons his character seems to be misunderstood a lot.

the first being that he was a parentified child (i think a lot of people ignore this because they aren’t willing to accept that joyce isn’t the best mother in the universe, but that’s a different conversation lol). he had to step in and help parent will after his dad left, and tried to intercept to make sure will didn’t see or suffer from the abuse he and his mum did. it’s one of the reasons he’s grown to withdraw from society and put people down. he couldn’t relate to other kids his age, so he secluded himself from them.

the second aspect of his character is that jonathan did, in part, parentify himself. he takes it upon himself to work more hours even when his mum has asked him not to. he’s refusing to go to college despite the fact that they’re clearly more comfortable in life now because he doesn’t know how to let go of the identity that he’s been shielding himself with for most of his life. and a big part of the reason he can’t drop that identity is because he’s convinced himself that it’s what separates him from everyone else. it’s what elevates him above them. he’s not a vapid high schooler that cares about what everyone thinks of them. he’s better than that. but if he loses his status as will’s big brother, who is he? (i think that’s part of the reason he jumps so quickly back into disparaging steve with nancy. steve represents everything jonathan has convinced himself he’s above, and even while he’s lying to nancy about going to college, mocking steve is some form of normalcy for him. even with everything going on in his life, at least he’s still better than steve, right?)

there are a lot of people within the fandom, even his fans, who solely identify jonathan by his position as will’s big brother, and arguably it is hard to examine his character beyond that both because jonathan himself identifies with it and because the duffers have been fairly lax in giving jonathan any other defining characteristics. but idk. i just think it’s kinda sad that even among people that love his character, jonathan never gets to grow beyond the role he was forced to take up as a small child.