based on this tweet i made as i jumped on the bravebyers bus:

fem cleradin byler fanart

i can’t even begin to describe how disgusting and tone deaf it is to have your canonically queer character close out their arc by comforting their abuser because “we are all human at the end of the day and they, too, were victims of abuse at one point or another.”

this is the type of cliché character development script writers would give school bullies with less than ideal home lives, NOT the type of redemption you give your predatory, psychopathic, villain

because this is the way i see it:

1) no matter what you call it, consoling, relating, or even just simply trying to gain the upper hand by exploiting vecna’s weaknesses in battle, you cannot argue and say that will wasn’t comforting henry here. or trying to, anyhow. i was specifically talking about those two lines, not the subsequent scenes and developments that happen later for will once vecna stands firm on his “the stone didn’t make me evil, i chose to be evil because i am evil” bullshit. it is only after that that we see the switch that leads to the “i’m not afraid anymore” dialogue. i understand, as a whole, what this confrontation meant for will’s character. but that wasn’t the point of my post. no, i was pointing out how gross it was for that dialogue to be included (and how stupid a forgiveness arc was in the first place.)

2) i was being tame with my language before by only calling vecna will’s abuser. will was stalked, hunted, kidnapped, then forcefully (and unconsciously) violated & orally penetrated with a (btw phallic looking) object during the worst of his trauma. his stomach was pumped full of demodogs and he was used as an incubator at only 12 to fulfil the purpose of infiltrating the right side up with the UD. the sa allegories were right there, clear as day, if only you took the time to pick apart the symbolism of scenes instead of solely focusing on the black-and-white of what was in front of you on screen. so, let’s get the record straight: vecna was more than just will’s abuser, he was will’s rapist. he was the last person in the world that should have ever been offered an olive branch of forgiveness. especially from his victim.

3) and yes!!! will being canonically gay matters a metric ton here when the words “you’re just like me” are involved. maybe it wasn’t the intention of the duffers, but it shouldn’t be dismissed or forgotten that there was very damaging stereotyping happening to the lgbtq+ community at the time. (that homosexuals and homosexuality went hand-in-hand with pedophilia.) this was a strong and existing belief back then and is still something that’s thrown around, even today. it was already believed that homosexual behaviour was a perversion - a moral corruption, so when studies came out in the late 80s and early 90s claiming that the lgbtq+ community saw higher crime rates of pedophilia, the general population ran with that. gay = pedo.

i do think having a queer character say they are like another character (that has been shown and depicted as predatory towards specifically children) IS problematic because it reinforces that harmful stereotyping. even if that’s not how it was meant within the context of the scene.

The Sorcerer and The Heart