My clownery

you could go the route of the stricter beauty standards and how they deal with it, you could use an arc similar to nancy about dealing with sexism.

depending on if you hc them as more or less conventionally attractive, you could explore pretty privilege(if you have willow are more conventionally attractive and michelle as less, you could explore the 'fridge protecting the snacks' shit)

if you write them as neurodivergent, if you're a woman and DARE be a little weird/conventionally unattractive it's like you committed murder

since will is already "perceived" as gay, you could explore how society perceives lesbians and the whole "i can make you change your mind" "you haven't found the right man"

and last but not least, you have the entire spectrum of sexualization that could pair with Will's canon sa(works in both conventionally attractive and unattractive bc for unattractive girls it becomes part of the bullying)

henry using this opportunity to introduce himself as “mr. henry” to will and befriending him in secret

their friendship / will’s trust in henry grows and grows and it all comes to a head after mike and will’s rain fight in s3

will runs away, destroying castle byers, at his lowest

henry decides it’s the perfect time to finally steal will away into his mindscape

He was born in 1919 and he was gay.

Everyone in the family knew. It became an unspoken secret. And here’s the part people don't really say about the past: he wasn’t cast out. He wasn’t beaten. He wasn’t disowned.

They loved him. They were a close‑knit family.

What they did instead was play a game called pretend.

They never said it out loud. When the family gathered for holidays, his siblings brought their spouses. Uncle Bill came alone. His partner wasn't invited, of course. They didn't even want to know he had a partner. When children asked why Uncle Bill wasn’t married, the adults smiled and said, “He’s just a bachelor.”

That answer was given to my mother in the 1950s. To my sister in the 1970s. And to me in the 1980s.

People like the Duffer brothers seem to imagine that the past was only made up of violent, cartoonish homophobes. And sadly, there were a lot of those, just like there still are today. But some families were “fine” with gay people—as long as they were quiet. As long as they didn’t ask for the same things. As long as they didn’t bring love to the table.

Uncle Bill was accepted on one condition: He sat alone.

So when a modern show frames a gay boy’s arc as “learning to accept himself without expecting love in return,” that’s not radical. That’s not brave. That’s not new.

That story is over a hundred years old.

It’s the story of being tolerated, not chosen. Of being loved in theory, but denied in practice. Of being welcome—so long as you don’t make anyone uncomfortable.

My Uncle William lived that life a century ago. We don’t need to keep calling it progress.

I know a lot of people on here are young. So take the pain you're feeling now and remember it as you get older. Write your own stories that embrace what this show denied. Write the story you wanted Byler to be. Be the generation that stops telling this tired old story.