#queer trauma

What Will and Mike are going through is the easy, light story of queer people, especially in the 80s.

This? Is best case scenario. You aren't murdered, you don't kill yourself, you figure out you're queer at a young age, you get to fall in love, the most important of your loved ones accept you.

It's representing queer trauma in a way that has not been represented before. But I need us to make sure they also know: this is still the good end of the spectrum.

This is the dream

"They torture Will so much". On the contrary. It's already fantasy escapism.

Any other queer person in the 80s dreamed of crying only as much as they did.

mutsuki was abused growing up physically, emotionally, and sexually. he was never taught what real love or affection looks like. so when haise showed him any kindness, he latched onto it and convinced himself haise loved him romantically. that's why he misinterpreted things like haise accidentally walking in on him naked. in mutsuki's mind, that meant haise wanted him too.

when haise left, mutsuki felt betrayed not just as a friend or teammate, but as someone he thought he was in love with. he spiraled. he thought haise had "abandoned" him, just like everyone else who had ever used him or claimed to love him.

so in chapter 114, when he attacks uta (thinking it's haise), he's not trying to rape him. he's trying to prove he's desirable. he takes off his shirt, arches his chest, because that's what every other man in his life wanted from him. he thinks that's how you get someone back. he doesn't touch uta in a sexual way, only hugs the body and confesses he loves him. it's messed up, but it's not rape.

After analyzing Vecna's exchange with Will in episode 4, I felt compelled to analyze their exchange in episode 6. The two parallel each other greatly, so I suggest you watch the first analysis here if you haven't already.

Will’s awakening in the Upside Down library is not a coincidence of setting but a deliberate reenactment. Trauma psychology tells us that abuse is often maintained not through novelty, but through repetition. By placing Will’s body in the same restrained position he occupied at twelve years old, Vecna collapses time. Grown up Will is denied the legitimacy of his growth; he is treated as though no psychological distance has ever existed between the child he was and the person he has become. This is a core feature of abusive control: the victim is frozen at the moment of first violation, while the abuser alone is permitted development and evolution.

Will’s awakening in the exact location where he was first assaulted at twelve years old is already an act of violence. He is not merely placed in a familiar setting; he is positioned identically, restrained by the same vines, his body forced back into the posture of childhood helplessness. This visual repetition communicates that Vecna does not see Will as a present, autonomous subject, but as a fixed object frozen at the moment of first violation. Trauma, here, is spatial: Will’s body remembers before his mind can intervene. The vines tightening around his torso and throat mirror how abuse removes breath, voice, and mobility all at once. Will does not “return” to this place—he is put back into it.

Henry’s slow approach is crucial. He does not rush. Predators who rely on psychological domination rarely do. His first line, “Do you remember this place… William?”, is deliberately intimate and invasive. The pause before Will’s name elongates the moment, forcing anticipation and dread. Using “William” instead of “Will” reasserts ownership and authority; it is the name associated with childhood, vulnerability, and the period when Will had no defenses. This mirrors real abusive dynamics, where an abuser invokes a former identity to collapse the victim’s present self back into the powerless one they once were. This immediately asserts dominance over memory itself. Memory, in trauma dynamics, is not neutral. Whoever controls its framing controls meaning. He is not attempting to trigger nostalgia or recollection; he is asserting narrative control. In abusive dynamics, the abuser often reintroduces the site of trauma as a way of reclaiming authorship over the victim’s memory. By using Will’s full name, Vecna forcibly reassigns him to a younger, more vulnerable identity. The pause before the name is not incidental, it is intentional; it creates dread, anticipation, and submission. Mirroring the emotional pacing of grooming. This phrase seeks to destabilize Will’s present identity by reminding him that, in Vecna’s worldview, he has never truly left this place. Vecna collapses temporal distance, forcibly returning Will to the age at which the abuse began.

This is not a question seeking information. It is an assertion of dominance. The deliberate use of Will’s full name mirrors real-world abusive behavior, in which naming becomes a tool of ownership and infantilization, anchoring the victim to the age and identity they had when the abuse began. Will’s immediate response—“No, no, no…”—is not denial in the logical sense, but a trauma response: the instinctive rejection of a memory that the body recognizes before the mind can process. It is boundary-setting at the level of survival. Will is instinctively attempting to stop the reactivation of trauma before it fully takes hold. The repetition of “no” mirrors the loss of syntactic complexity often seen in panic responses. Language regresses as the nervous system takes over. Importantly, Will does not say “I don’t remember.” He says “no,” as though memory itself were an assault. This already establishes the imbalance: Vecna controls the past; Will can only try to block it. Will’s response is not a denial of fact, but an attempt at psychic self-protection. His nervous system recognizes danger before his mind can articulate it. This is the language of trauma: fragmented, repetitive, defensive.

Henry’s next words, “Does it… bring back…”, are deliberately unfinished. This operates as psychological bait. Vecna withholds the object of the sentence to force Will’s mind to fill the gap. This mirrors grooming techniques, where the abuser encourages the victim to participate in their own psychological entrapment. The ellipsis is not hesitation; it is manipulation. Vecna is allowing Will’s fear to surface before completing it himself. He employs a familiar abusive tactic: making the victim complicit in their own retraumatization. The staggered phrasing forces Will’s mind to anticipate the word before it is spoken. The hesitation is sadistic. It mirrors the way abusers often let victims complete their own fear, creating psychological participation in the violence.

When Vecna completes the sentence with “memories?”, particularly while shifting fully into his monstrous form, the word becomes a weapon. “Memories” implies something passive and internal, as though the trauma resides within Will rather than being something inflicted upon him. This reframing subtly relocates responsibility: the harm is not something Vecna did, but something Will “has.” This is a classic abusive inversion. He subtly relocates the violence from action to recollection. The harm is reframed as something Will carries, rather than something Vecna inflicted. This inversion is foundational to abuse. Responsibility is displaced inward, where the victim can be taught to feel shame rather than anger.

Henry’s fragmented phrasing is chilling precisely because it mimics the rhythm of dissociation. Vecna oscillates between Henry and his monstrous form, reinforcing the idea that the abuser controls not only the act, but the narrative of the act. Will is denied coherence; Vecna alone dictates meaning.

The flashbacks that intrude immediately after this line—images from the Season 5 opening that echo the Season 1 assault—function as forced memory retrieval. This is not remembrance; it is re-experiencing. Will’s response, “No, no, no…”, is fragmented and repetitive, reflecting a panic response rather than a rational denial. He is not saying he does not remember—he is begging for the memory not to fully surface. His language collapses under the weight of sensory recall. He struggles against the vines, a physical manifestation of his attempt to escape the memory and the control attached to it. Importantly, Vecna does not react to Will’s refusal. In abusive dynamics, refusal is not engaged with—it is overridden.

When Vecna continues with “Does it… bring back…” and then “memories?”, Will’s second refusal—“No.”—is shorter, firmer, but still defensive. At this stage, Will is attempting cognitive resistance. He knows what Vecna is doing and tries to deny him access by refusing engagement. However, in abusive dynamics, refusal alone does not stop the abuser; it often escalates them. Vecna does not acknowledge Will’s answer because acknowledgment would grant it legitimacy.

Will’s sudden question, “Max, Holly… They got away, didn’t they? Did your leg slow you down?”, is not taunting. It is a survival tactic. He redirects the conversation to the present, to proof that Vecna can be resisted. Psychologically, this is Will grasping for evidence that the pattern can be broken. He asserts causality: his actions had consequences. This is a moment of reclaimed agency, however fragile.

Will’s line marks a critical shift. This is the first moment where Will actively reclaims the present. He invokes names, not abstractions. He references a concrete event where Vecna failed. Psychologically, this is Will attempting to anchor himself in proof that Vecna is not omnipotent. It is also an assertion of moral alignment: Will situates himself on the side of protection, not submission. This is deeply threatening to Vecna because it reframes Will not as a passive victim, but as an agent who interferes. Will’s attempt to redirect the conversation—invoking Max and Holly’s escape—is psychologically crucial. This is not bravado. It is grounding. He anchors himself in a present moment where Vecna failed. Trauma recovery literature identifies this move as a bid for agency: the victim asserts continuity between past survival and present resistance. Vecna responds immediately with belittlement, not because Will is wrong, but because Will is dangerous. Any acknowledgment of efficacy threatens the abusive narrative of inevitability. Vecna’s belittling reply seeks to crush this attempt, but Will’s line has already altered the dynamic.

When Will attempts to redirect the exchange—mentioning Max and Holly’s escape—he is not boasting. He is grasping for proof of agency, evidence that he has changed the outcome. Vecna’s response annihilates this attempt with surgical cruelty:

“You think you are clever, don’t you? But remember, I am the one. The one who invited you in.”

This line is central to the abusive dynamic. Vecna reframes Will’s entire history of suffering as consent. “Invitation” is a word frequently weaponized by abusers: it transforms violation into collaboration. The flashbacks of Will being possessed in Season 2 are not shown to inform Will—they are shown to recondition him. Vecna is reminding Will that every instance of survival was also, in Vecna’s narrative, an act of service.

Vecna’s response dismantles that attempt immediately: “You think you are clever, don’t you?” This is classic belittlement disguised as acknowledgment. The statement is designed to humiliate under the guise of recognition. Abusers frequently mock perceived resistance as naïveté, not to discourage resistance entirely, but to make it feel futile. Vecna is not threatened by Will’s actions; he wants Will to believe they were childish and ineffective.

He follows with, “But remember, I am the one. The one who invited you in.” The phrase “invited you in” is profoundly abusive. It reframes violation as consent and positions Vecna as host rather than invader. This mirrors real-world grooming rhetoric, where victims are taught that their vulnerability was complicity, in which victims are made to believe their openness, sensitivity, or loneliness constituted permission. Vecna is not merely rewriting history; he is attempting to corrupt Will’s understanding of himself. If Will can be made to believe he participated, then resistance becomes betrayal rather than survival.

Vecna’s assertion is perhaps the most psychologically violent line in the exchange. The word “invited” reframes violation as consent and erases the power imbalance that defined their relationship. This is textbook grooming rhetoric: it implies that Will’s vulnerability was an opening, that Vecna merely responded. It also suggests inevitability, as though Will’s nature made the abuse unavoidable. Vecna is attempting to overwrite Will’s understanding of himself as a victim with the identity of a willing participant.

The flashbacks of Will being possessed by the Mind Flayer in Season 2 reinforce this reframing. Vecna continues: “You were my vessel. My spy. My builder.” The repetition of possessive nouns strips Will of personhood. He is reduced to function. He reduces Will to functions that serve his agenda. The repetition of possessive pronouns (“my”) reinforces ownership. In abusive dynamics, functionalization strips the victim of moral and emotional complexity; they exist only in relation to the abuser’s needs. By listing these roles, Vecna retroactively assigns meaning to Will’s suffering, framing it as purposeful rather than gratuitous.

When Will asks, “Builder?”, his confusion is genuine; this is the moment where Vecna introduces a new layer of self-blame.

The explanation, “How do you think the tunnels came to be, William? You built them each and every night you slept,” weaponizes Will’s dissociation. Sleep, a state of vulnerability and trust, is reframed as complicity. This line is designed to induce shame: Will is meant to feel that even in rest, he was serving Vecna. This is an attempt to contaminate Will’s sense of innocence entirely, leaving no internal space untouched by the abuse.

When Vecna lists “My vessel. My spy. My builder,” Will’s confused “Builder?” is crucial. This single word exposes Will’s humanity and vulnerability. He is not posturing; he is genuinely trying to understand. Will’s confusion at the word “builder” is devastating in its sincerity. He is not posturing or defying; he is seeking coherence. In abusive dynamics, victims often seek clarity even when that clarity will hurt them, because uncertainty is worse than pain. Will asking this question shows his lingering belief that truth might restore coherence. Vecna exploits this completely. Abuse thrives in ambiguity, and victims often pursue clarity even when it harms them, because a coherent pain feels more bearable than chaos. Vecna exploits this by revealing that Will constructed the tunnels while asleep. Sleep—symbolically associated with safety and trust—is transformed into evidence of complicity. Even rest is colonized. This is coercive control at its most invasive: there is no internal refuge left untouched.

As Vecna explains the tunnels, Will does not verbally respond—but his physical reaction becomes his answer. Tears, shaking his head, refusal to meet Vecna’s gaze: these gestures are Will’s attempt to reject internalization. He is saying, without words, “I do not accept this version of myself.” This is important: Will’s resistance is now somatic rather than verbal, because language has been weaponized against him.

Vecna’s explanation—that Will unknowingly built the tunnels while sleeping—weaponizes dissociation. Will’s unconscious state becomes evidence of usefulness. Abuse here is retroactive: even moments of rest are turned into acts of service. The imagery of tunnels forming while Will sleeps reinforces the horror that his own mind and body were exploited without awareness. This revelation attacks Will’s sense of innocence at its core.

Will’s reaction—silent tears, shaking his head, inability to speak—is critical. This is the collapse of meaning. Trauma often produces disbelief not because the victim doubts the facts, but because accepting them would shatter the self. Will’s refusal is somatic, not verbal. His body rejects the narrative even as his mind struggles. It is the moment where language fails, which is consistent with trauma psychology. Abuse often destroys a victim’s trust in their own perception of reality. Vecna does not need Will to believe him fully; he only needs to fracture Will’s certainty.

The revelation that Will was the builder of the tunnels is particularly devastating because it exploits Will’s deepest wound: the fear that his pain was not only useful, but productive for his abuser. By revealing that Will constructed the infrastructure of the Upside Down while asleep—unconscious, unaware—Vecna completes the cycle of coercive control. Will did not merely suffer; he was used.

Will’s reaction is not weakness. It is the psychological moment where meaning collapses under the weight of imposed shame. Trauma frequently renders language insufficient. Will’s refusal is somatic, not verbal. His body rejects Vecna’s narrative even as his mind struggles to stabilize.

The most disturbing moment arrives not through overt brutality, but through touch. Vecna’s caress of Will’s cheek deliberately echoes previous assaults, collapsing past and present into a single sensation. This is a textbook example of traumatic reenactment: the abuser recreates the conditions of the original harm to reassert dominance. The physical touch is where abuse becomes unmistakably intimate. Touch here is not affection; it is possession. By replicating the gesture from Will’s original assault, Vecna fuses past and present into a single sensory experience.

Vecna’s touch is where the scene becomes explicitly about sexualized power. When he lifts his hand and caresses Will’s cheek, echoing the Season 1 assault and the Season 5 monologue about children being weak and manipulable, the gesture fuses affection and violation. Touch is used not for comfort, but for ownership. Will closing his eyes and turning his face away is an act of resistance, however small. He is attempting to deny Vecna visual and emotional access to him. Even restrained, he asserts a boundary. This is one of the most significant acts of resistance in the scene. Will is denying Vecna reciprocal intimacy. In abuse, eye contact and touch are tools of control. By breaking them, even while restrained, Will asserts the smallest but most meaningful boundary: you do not get access to my inner self. Vecna’s continued speech over this gesture highlights his refusal to respect boundaries.

When Vecna says:

“There is much power within you. But don't mistake, boy.”

the phrasing is deeply manipulative. Compliment and threat are indistinguishable. Will is praised only insofar as he is useful. The word boy is not incidental—it strips Will of adulthood, agency, and consent, returning him to the child Vecna first violated. Power, here, is not something Will owns. It is something Vecna claims authorship over. He employs a common abusive paradox: praise that functions as control. Power is acknowledged only to be immediately subordinated. The word “boy” reasserts hierarchy and infantilization, locking Will into the identity of the original victim. Vecna is not empowering Will; he is reminding him that his value exists only within Vecna’s framework. Praise becomes a tool of domination.

Vecna’s subsequent declaration—that these powers are his, stronger than ever—reveals the core of his psychology: he cannot tolerate Will’s autonomy. Any strength Will displays must be reclassified as Vecna’s creation. This is why Will’s response about Max is so significant. For the first time, Will does not argue about the past; he challenges the future.

The claim “They are my powers, and they are stronger than ever before” is an explicit act of identity theft. Vecna is attempting to erase the boundary between himself and Will, asserting that Will’s strength originates from and belongs to him. This is coercive control at its most extreme: autonomy itself is denied. Will is not allowed to exist as a separate source of power.

He is asserting authorship over Will’s identity. This is coercive control at its clearest: Will’s strength is allowed to exist only if it belongs to Vecna. The promise of a “better world” led by vessels is not ideological—it is narcissistic. Vecna cannot imagine a future in which Will exists independently.

Vecna’s declaration, “Now, at last, it is time. Time for my vessels to lead us to a new world. A better world,” reframes exploitation as destiny. Abusers often invoke grand narratives—purpose, inevitability, salvation—to justify continued harm. The “better world” is not collective; it is Vecna’s world, one in which Will’s suffering is validated by outcome rather than condemned.

Will’s reply—“Too bad your world will never exist, now that Max has one of your vessels”—is extraordinary precisely because it is calm. A tear falls, but his voice carries anger and clarity. He does not deny his pain; he weaponizes truth. This is Will rejecting Vecna’s narrative while still trapped inside it.

This line is extraordinary precisely because it is spoken through pain. A tear falls, but the sentence is structurally intact, logically coherent, and morally grounded. Will is no longer arguing about who he was; he is asserting what will not be allowed to happen. This is reclaimed agency in its most dangerous form—agency that directly contradicts the abuser’s grand narrative.

Vecna’s immediate escalation into threats and dehumanizing metaphors confirms that this resistance has landed. Abusers escalate when psychological control falters.

Finally, “You are going to help me. You are going to be my spy one last time,” mirrors the abusive promise of finality. “One last time” is a lie abusers tell to secure compliance, offering the illusion of an endpoint while maintaining control. Vecna is exploiting Will’s exhaustion and desire for release.

Vecna’s reaction—shifting to threats and metaphors of hunting—confirms that Will’s words have landed. Abusers escalate when symbolic control fails. When Vecna demands Will be his spy again, Will’s answer—“No. Never.”—is absolute. There is no justification, no elaboration. This is identity-level refusal. Will is not negotiating terms; he is rejecting the role itself.

The ultimatum “The more you resist… the more this will hurt” externalizes blame. This line encapsulates the essence of abuse: pain framed as consequence rather than choice. Pain becomes a consequence of Will’s choices rather than Vecna’s actions. This is the moral inversion at the heart of abuse: the victim is held responsible for the violence inflicted upon them. Will does not recant. Instead, his body reacts—fear, rapid breathing, trembling—while his will remains firm. This distinction matters. Abuse often teaches victims that fear equals consent. This scene explicitly rejects that equation. Will is terrified, but he is not compliant. The movement of the vines and Vecna raising his hand signals escalation.

Across all these phrases, Vecna’s objective is consistent. He is not merely trying to control Will’s actions—he is trying to reclaim ownership over Will’s narrative, to ensure that Will understands his trauma not as something endured and survived, but as something that defines him, binds him, and ultimately belongs to Vecna. The cruelty lies not only in the torture, but in the insistence that Will’s pain was never his own.

As Vecna reenacts the ritual of the original assault, Will’s cries and eventual screams are not failures. They are the cost of resistance under coercive force. Vecna closing his eyes mirrors the original assault, signaling inevitability, and entitlement.

Will’s body reacts before his mind can—panic, shallow breathing, terror—until the torture breaks through entirely, manifesting in bloodied tears. His fear does not negate his agency. When Vecna succeeds in entering his mind again, forcing blood to spill from Will’s eyes, it is not a failure of will. It is proof of Vecna’s reliance on brute force once psychological control begins to fail.

What this scene ultimately reveals is that Vecna’s greatest fear is not Will’s power, but Will’s clarity. Vecna needs Will to believe that the abuse defined him, that his pain was purposeful and owned. Will, even in terror and agony, refuses that belief. The repetition of trauma does not restore Vecna’s dominance; it exposes its fragility.

He must return Will to the origin point because Will has begun to move beyond it. The abuse repeats because it no longer works as it once did.

Across the full exchange, Will’s phrases chart a clear trajectory: from instinctive denial, to present-focused grounding, to confused truth-seeking, to somatic rejection, and finally to explicit refusal. Vecna’s dialogue attempts to freeze Will in the past, but Will’s words—however few—continually pull toward the future.

The dynamism between them reveals the core truth of their relationship: Vecna needs Will to believe the abuse defined him. Will, even in agony, insists—sometimes only with a single word—that it does not.

The blood is not gratuitous. It externalizes what has always been true: Will’s mind has been a battleground, and Vecna’s greatest cruelty is not possession, but the insistence that Will’s suffering belongs to him.

This scene is not about Vecna’s power. It is about his desperation. When abusers lose narrative control, they rely on brute force. Will’s screams are not failure; they are the cost of refusing internal submission under coercion. By dragging Will back to the origin of his trauma, Vecna reveals that Will’s resistance has already begun to undo him. Abusers return to the past when they are losing control of the present.

Will’s pain here is undeniable—but so is his transformation. Unlike the child he once was, Will now understands what Vecna is trying to do. Even as Vecna succeeds in torturing him, he fails in one crucial way: he no longer owns Will’s belief.

And that, narratively and psychologically, is where Vecna’s defeat has already begun.

This exchange does not depict a monster asserting control over a victim. It depicts an abuser fighting to reclaim ownership over someone who is slipping beyond his grasp. And in that struggle, the true shift becomes clear: Vecna can still hurt Will—but he no longer owns him.

And it is precisely for this reason that Vecna tortured him as relentlessly as possible—systematically stripping him of hope, warping his perception of reality, and drowning him in gaslighting. Vecna understood something dangerous was happening.

After years of enduring that bond—born from trauma, sustained by abuse—Will was no longer merely surviving it. He was beginning to reclaim control.

Will had already proven this in Episode 4, when he turned his power outward and destroyed the Demogorgons. But more than that, he proved it in Episode 5, when he did the unthinkable: he tried to kill Vecna himself—and succeeded in wounding him, in breaking his leg. For the first time, the balance shifted. The chain tightened around Vecna’s own ankle.

And that was intolerable.

Because Vecna does not see Will as a person. He sees him as a possession. His vessel. His spy. His builder. Something designed to obey, not to resist. Something meant to carry his will, not to develop one of its own.

To witness that object rebel—to see the thing he shaped through fear and pain turn against him—was an existential threat. It was proof that the abuse was failing. That control was cracking. That the victim was becoming something else entirely.

So Vecna did what abusers always do when they sense they are losing their grip: he escalated. He crushed hope. He rewrote the past. He convinced Will that every step toward freedom was an illusion, that every spark of power belonged not to him, but to the hand that once hurt him.

Because nothing terrifies a tyrant more than the moment his captive realizes the cage was never locked from the outside.

Victor/Parent/God

Monster/Child/Humanity

in many cases, parents bring children into the world as a validation of the self more than a desire to create life. the life (with its infinite possibilities and infinite universes) created is largely immaterial to their desire to have children. the parent is not making the choice to take on the responsibility of those infinite possibilities - for better or worse.

Instead, the child is borne out of a desire to prove that they can. they can bring a child into the world and they can do better than their parents. their child will be smarter. their child will be stronger. their child will be healthier. their child will love, honor and respect them more than the parent ever did to their OWN parent because THEY will have earned it.

It correlates to the idea proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche in his Death of God theology

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

Victor performs for his father out of a desire to earn his father's respect. to avoid the (literal) pain and humiliation of being viewed as lacking by his father. this is not a loving relationship. This relationship is violently transactional, with Victor's father holding all of the currency.

Victor's father fails in saving his wife, Victor's mother. And in doing so, Victor loses respect for his father. His father is just a man. fallible, weak, imperfect, powerless. God is dead and Victor has killed him. And in one of their last momentous conversations Victor tells his father that he will surpass him. He will accomplish what his father could not. He intends to prove his worth by becoming God.

And so Victor creates. he becomes a parent in defiance of his failed predecessor. not once taking into consideration the responsibility in creating this life. not once accepting his own limitations or his own interests in investing the time and patience required in the shaping of this life. his interest started and ended at creation.

at no point did Victor think he was creating new life. in his mind he was owed a creature made in his image. Larger than life. Intelligent. Strong. Better. More powerful than his parts in every conceivable way. The Monster's naivety, ignorance, and individuality was a personal affront to Victor. How can he be God if his creation could be so infuriatingly lacking? How can he be God if he can't control The Monster's voice and thoughts?

bringing it back to the queer experience, many parents of queer children fail to love their children as they are because they never expected their child to BE their own person. they only ever prepared for the child to be an extension of them. a flattering, and adulating, mirror of themselves meant to carry on their torch, not light a new flame.

(note that Victor doesn't even have the patience to allow The Monster to look at his own appearance in a mirror and discover himself.)

now faced with a dilemma they never prepared for, these parents frequently choose forced conformity. SPEAK like ME. THINK like ME. BEHAVE like ME. LOVE like ME.

They push their children to fear them and hate themselves. To believe in their own wrongness. To see only broken pieces. To believe in the authority of their creator above all else. These are the children who are at highest risk for death by suicide. But, to the parent, death is an acceptable loss. They would rather love their child in a box than accept the child they can't understand.

And we see Victor do the same. He pushes and pushes and pushes until The Monster is in a corner and lashes back. Now Victor knows that The Monster could very well kill God and that cannot be allowed to happen. So Victor stages the ultimatum. One last chance.

Be like me. Think like me. Speak like me.

Conform.

One word. One last chance. Prove to me that you are worth my having granted you life. Be what I want you to be and nothing else.

But The Monster responds with the one word that proves that Victor is not his God and that The Monster is, in fact, his own person with his own uncontrollable soul.

"Elizabeth"

And so Victor leaves The Monster to burn in the flames of the torch that was supposed to be God's greatest triumph.

(and then we get this INCREDIBLE sequence in which The Monster goes through their own rebirth - shooting out of the tunnel/birth canal, towards life and landing in the waters below - a water birth or a baptism of his new life as his own person.)

and, yet, even through this new life, The Monster comes to learn that he isn't fully his own person. He never was. He was born wearing the scars of his father's sins. his body, his memories, his very heart are laden with the weight of the trauma and destruction that he inherited.

It is only through the love and compassion of Blind Man/Grandfather that he is able to accept the responsibility of the "original sin" he is burdened with and find purpose and acceptance as his own soul. Putting him on the path towards eventually forgiving his father without continuing the cycle of generational trauma.

The Monster forgives God and allows him to fade into powerlessness. God dies without being replaced. God is dead. I am not his. I am not broken. I am not wrong. I am me. And I am alive.

I'll end this with the poem I thought of the second the credits began to roll:

"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself."

As hilarious as all the “how oblivious ARE you?” jokes about Stede are, I think we’re missing the big picture. This isn’t about obliviousness, it’s about trauma.

Stede isn’t ignorant of the fact he’s in love with Ed. he’s been abused his whole life for his queerness and is having trouble conceptualizing that he’s allowed to be.

Notice how Stede immediately has the instinct to walk back his comment of Ed being “lovely”? This is the same man who didn’t even pick up that his very obviously mutinous crew was planning a mutiny, that shit was learned behavior. He’s speaking as a little boy who was tied to a boat and stoned for picking flowers, and as someone who was told mere days ago a man falling in love with him was “defiling a beautiful thing.”

Homophobia/ heteronormativity is alive and well in this world and Stede, being forced to live in the conservative circles he does, would’ve absolutely been painfully aware of it. The fact that he feels the need to ask a woman what it’s like to be in love with a man speaks volumes after he’s already been happily kissed by one and has roleplayed being married to him when lonely. He’s not just casually making conversation then has a eureka moment when he happens to notice the description applies to him and Ed too, he asked specifically to compare them.

It’s him testing the waters and thinking that maybe “they” were wrong. Maybe he’s not broken or pathetic, maybe he never deserved to be treated as such. Maybe he didn’t “seduce” Edward, or “ruin” him, or “defile” him. And maybe his feelings for Ed are just as loving and romantic as Mary’s feelings are for her boyfriend.

It’s such a beautiful moment when he slowly smiles, let’s out that little breath like a sigh of relief, and tells his wife of an arranged marriage with nothing less than wonder in his voice that what he’s found at sea is in fact love. Fuck, it gets me every time.