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willel · 2 years

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Unfortunately, I still hear whispers saying "People just copy all of El's traits onto Will" and it bothers me endlessly. YOU DON'T GET IT. AT ALL. And you'll probably never read this, but I'm going to type it out anyway.

The point is NOT to copy El's traits onto Will! The point is that Will ALREADY has a lot in common with El! TVTropes is not an official source, but have you looked at their trait list? They've been mirror each other since season 1! Their similarities only become more obvious as each season progresses.

Let's look at some and you tell me if it's really that ridiculous to point out how similar they are.

Beware the Nice Ones: Will is a polite, sweet kid. However, the very first episode shows that when he was threatened by an unknown entity, he immediately ran into a shed to load a gun, and then point it in the direction of said entity. Beware the Nice Ones: Her sweet natured and mellow personality is genuine, but so is the fiery temper she has deep down; push her too far and this girl will not hesitate to melt your brain with a literal Death Glare. Also overlaps with Beware the Quiet Ones.

Does "Beware the Nice Ones" seem ridiculous to you? Does this seem like something someone just made up for the sake of ships or to copy El's traits onto Will? If you want to get logical here, Will's example came before El's did in the show, not that it matters because IT ISN'T COPYING, it's just similar.

Heroic Sacrifice: His D&D character, "Will the Wise", performs a heroic sacrifice during their game in the first episode, a fact which Mike uses to convince his friends to continue the search for Will even when it gets dangerous. He was also willing to die in order to close the gate on the Mind Flayer. Heroic Sacrifice: In "The Upside-Down", El, already exhausted from repeated use of her powers to protect Mike, Lucas, and Dustin, finds herself faced with the Demogorgon about to kill her friends. In response, she pins it against a wall before disintegrating it, but seemingly dies herself in the process. She's Not Quite Dead, though, and returns in Season 2.

They both made a pretty important heroic sacrifice, thinking they were giving up their lives to help their friends and family. Are we gonna pretend like they DIDN'T do that? Even Hopper has his heroic sacrifice moment. We gonna pretend like he didn't because it'd be "copying El"???

Daddy's Girl: She becomes this in Season 2 to Hopper after a year living together, some healthy, plentiful bickering, and her going "runaway-train" on him. When he ends up (apparently) dying in Season 3, she is utterly devastated. Momma's Boy: If having your head screwed-on enough to survive what he goes through, partly thanks to how Joyce has raised him to keep going in a physical and emotional crisis by seeking support, is being a Momma's Boy, then his dad is right.

Season 2 played these tropes so clearly. Every scene that Joyce had with Will was pretty much mirrored with Hopper and El. You know what happens right after that scene where Joyce catches Will in a lie, gets him to confess, and has him crying in his arms? It switches right to Hopper being the opposite of Joyce and not handling the situation well, resulting in El tossing stuff around and crying in her room.

Even at the end of the season, we get Joyce hugging Will so tightly after that terrible ordeal. It's followed by El hugging Hopper after using all her strength to close the gate. Will and El are hugging their parents in the exact same way, on the same shoulder and everything. Guys please. IT'S NOT COPYING, IT'S ON PURPOSE.

Nice Guy: Even though Will spends most of Season 1 trapped in the Upside-Down, he is still shown to be an honest and kind person. Before his taking in the first episode, he admits to Mike that the former's roll landed on a seven and finished him off in their D&D game. When he's rescued and hospitalized near the end of Chapter 8, one of the first things he does when he wakes up is ask if his brother is okay when he sees Jonathan's bandaged hand. Nice Girl: She has a strong sense of right and wrong, even when she has been almost completely socially deprived for most of her life. She also lacks malicious intent and does her best to help and protect her friends, though she goes overboard a couple of times.

If anyone tries to argue Will and El aren't good sweet kids and that this is just "copying El", then you're just straight up completely wrong. They've always been nice, good, and sweet. BOTH OF THEM. Yes, they have their moments, but so does literally everyone else.

The Quiet One: Not to the same extent as El, but he's definitely on the quiet side. The only times he talks at length are when he's around his closest friends and family or when he's being asked about the Mind Flayer; otherwise, he usually hangs back and lets other people do the talking. The Quiet One: Given her upbringing, she's a quiet girl, usually talking only when spoken to and during times of conflict, often preferring hand gestures to get her point across. She's more vocal in Season 2, which in no small part seems to be due to being around Hopper for nearly a year and picking up a lot more vocabulary from him. By the beginning of Season 3, Eleven can talk like a normal girl her age, though she tends toward the terse side, and she sometimes struggles with pronunciation. However, she struggles to articulate herself when stressed, and nearly becomes mute when interrogated by police in Season 4 which… does not help her case with them.

Like... come on. Are you really about to pretend like Will and El aren't the super quiet ones of the group??? You really think this is just "copying El's traits onto Will"??

Trauma Conga Line

Not even gonna copy and paste that one, it's two long for both of them and UNDENIABLY TRUE FOR BOTH.

Unwitting Instigator of Doom

Another undeniably fact that they both caused some oopsies with the Upside Down shennanigans. First it was El. Then it was Will. Then it's El again in season 4. Who knows, maybe it'll switch back to Will again. Either way, IT APPLIES TO BOTH OF THEM and HAS applied to both of them since at least season 2.

For now, I will leave it there. I did not include all of them, nor do I feel inspired to compare the tropes that are very similar for the sake of this essay. I did it in the past and maybe I'll do it again in the future.

It's not a theory that they're similar. It's not something fans are doing because "misogyny" or "because ships". It's literal. It's official. This from the Duffers:

In the episode, Will unveils his painting from Volume 1 and explains the complexities of El and Mike's feelings for each other. To Mike, he's talking about Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), but for Will, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and the audience, we can see that he's also talking about himself. The Duffer Brothers both wrote and directed these final two episodes, and through this scene, in particular, they use a variety of camera angles to create a sense of duality on top of Will's speech.

source: https://collider.com/stranger-things-season-4-will-byers-speech-car-scene-sexuality-duffer-brothers-comments/

Ignoring the shipping aspects of this (for the love of god PLEASE focus on the characters here), they are creating a duality between Will and El on purpose.

Will and El are MEANT to be similar, yes, even down to their love lives unfortunately. They have similar personalities. Similar interests. They're similar people, period.

Have you all never got invested in two character who are very similar interacting with each other or forming a familial bond??? Have you never enjoyed some found family??? Do you scoff at the idea of found siblings or not-actually-twins twins? Like???

I'm so confused how you see all these similarities between the characters and what they've gone through and you come away from that thinking, "You're just coping El" or "You just don't want to support a female character". ??????????

The point of them being similar is to BE SIMILAR TOGETHER. That requires TWO characters who are not identical, but SIMILAR ENOUGH.

Will and El HAVE similar trauma because of the Upside Down and the lab. Literally Will was so tired of the tests and questioning that he begged Joyce not to take him back after he that horrible experience in the field in episode 2. Even that wasn't enough to make him want to go back to that place where El was held captive for years and experienced the same stuff. Will KNOWS what it's like.

Will and El have similar personalities. We already discussed them above. Quiet. Kind. Self sacrificial. A little bit snarky when they want to be. Genuinely good kids who easily pass as siblings raised by the same mother. What, is El copying Will now cause she got some bowl cut bangs??? Of course not.

Will and El have/had similar parent dynamics. Season 2 did not spend all that time comparing and contrasting Joyce and Hopper's parenting styles for you to be like "You're just coping El and Hopper's bond." El and Hopper's bond isn't the same as Joyce and Will's bond, it's just similar! As for Hopper and Will, in season 1 and season 2 we saw Hopper step up as a protector and savior for Will, but obviously it's not quite like being a father for him. Still, it was cute that he called him "buddy", showed up to all their appointments at the lab, and carried him around while he was unconscious. Not to mention Will ALSO be paralleled with Sara in season 1 as Hopper and Joyce were trying to resuscitate him. 🙄. I almost take back what I said, Will and Hopper do have a connection, but it still isn't like El and Hopper's.

Will and El are BOTH tied to the Upside Down and the supernatural and have been since the beginning of the show. All of these similarities of theirs? All of it leads back to Henry Creel.

Yeah, I saw some people saying "You're copying El's connection to Henry!" Please sit down and listen.

Just because Will and Henry unfortunately met in 1983 does not suddenly erase all the events leading up to El yeeting Henry through that gate in 1979???? Do you think Will just took a dry erase board and washed all of that away???????? Don't you see how ridiculous that is???

It's CONFIRMED that Will and Henry are tied. We saw with our own eyes how El and Henry are tied. These three are a trifecta of crazy shenanigans that is finally coming to a head, but all you can think about is "They're just copying El"??? SIGH

The conclusion you should be drawing from this is not "Will is copying from El" or "Will is stealing her spotlight" or "If you like WillEl you're probably misogynist" or whatever else you're implying.

You should be realizing that Will is the backup and support El has always needed to defeat this uniquely powerful foe. Just her strength isn't enough to undo all the harm he has done. We've seen her strength and her power. It is unmatched.

But as Will once said, "Sometimes, the bad guys are smart too."

It will take more than her power this time, wouldn't be nice if you know... she had a partner who can take care of the "background noise" so that she can focus on the front lines??? Doesn't that not sound cool? Is that not a satisfying conclusion to all their similarities and parallels rather than making this about your ship wars with Michael Wheeler?

I'm asking you to think big. Think Vecna. Think plot. Think story. Think conclusions. Stop thinking small and digging your heads in the sand. You could be enjoying this story and these characters so much more if you didn't determine their worth and their story through the lense of your ships.

I'm asking people to stop saying WillEl is the equivalent of copying El or being misogynist. I'm asking people to stop using WillEl for their ships. Let them be individuals who can come together to defeat the big bad and live happily ever after with their family, friends, and loved ones.

#stranger things #will byers #el hopper #willel #analysis #sorry I ranted again #I am legit so.....#so angry #I think it's ok to say I'm angry now #because things are just getting worse and it's legit pissing me off #I don't get why people are like this #how did they watch season 4 and get WORSE???#people say that willel hug and were like #'gasp el hugs people that means will is copying her' that's how silly they sound to me ok #and the whole misogynist angle is even more stupid #I WANT EL TO HAVE A BROTHER LIKE HER AND A FAMILY WHO CAN SUPPORT HER SUPERNATURAL NEEDS #is that so wrong???#wth??????#I did not wait allllllllllll these years for willel moments for people to be trying to tear them apart like this

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