Will Byers: The Final Girl
Looking more at Will through Carol J. Clover's Men, Women, and Chain Saws
After making this post about Will's gender expression in which I referenced and was inspired by Carol J. Clover's book Men, Women, and Chain Saws, a book which was mentioned in this article, an article which brought to my attention my Mori motherthroat, I have since made it through the books introduction and have gotten all the way to the end... of the first chapter. Like I said, I'm a slow reader.
But it's within this first chapter that Clover actually talks about the Final Girl trope, something that I, and others, have suggested that Will falls into.
And to be honest, I didn't quite get the Final Girl labelling of Will until I started reading Clover's book and made my analysis. But now, it all makes sense. So I wanted to do a deeper dive into Will as the Final Girl of the show, how he embodies this trope, and how he subverts it.
Defining Will as a "Final Girl"
The idea of Will being the Final Girl is a way to allow Will to have the masculine hero role that the creators seem to be teasing for him, without sacrificing his more feminine role of victim. The term victim-hero that I used in my original post is one that I got from Clover herself, which she uses in reference to final girls. Final girls spend the majority of their film suffering at the hands of the killer (victim) before eventually turning the tables and getting revenge (hero) or is saved by an outside force, typically (but not always) a male one.
The Final Girl idea for Will doesn't come out of nowhere either, as the show itself plays with slasher tropes. Season one opens with a culling from the killer with the initial lab sequence, and dialogue from Brenner suggests that there were other victims, with only Will being left as the lone survivor. Season four feels more slasher-y, with the kills being on screen and the killer actually given a name and a face (making Max somewhat effectively the Final Girl for that season) and the season ends with the idea that the killer is still on the loose, with emphasis given to his connection with Will.
Carol J. Clover describes Final Girls as follows:
“The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine—not, in any case, feminine in the ways of her friends. Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls and ally her, ironically, with the very boys she fears or rejects, not to speak of the killer himself.”
Where Final Girls are often boyish girls, Will is a girlish boy. So it's not just the narrative that aligns him with other Final Girls, it's his characterization as well. His non-conformity to gender norms, as well as his romantic reluctancy, is part of the trope.
This is most notably exemplified in season three, when Will is unable to relate to the heterosexual-romance drama that his other male friends seem to be intertwined with. Even Dustin, who doesn't share much time with the main crew this season, had a girlfriend, something that allied him to Mike and Lucas and set Will apart.
In season one Will feels more Sally at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, after being tortured for the last chunk of the film by the slaughterhouse family, Sally makes her escape on the back of a pickup truck. Will spends most of the season evading the killer (who we later learn to be Vecna) until he is rescued by Hopper and Joyce. Will and Sally never turn a weapon against the killer, but they endure, out last, and survive long enough to be rescued.
But Sally's case is just one way that the Final Girl story can end, and you're more likely to find a different kind of ending— with the Final Girl turning the tables on the killer and getting back at him. Sometimes, but not always, by brandishing the killers own type of weapon against him.
So now we're in a post-vol. 2 world where the killer is still at large, Will has been confirmed several times now to be the center of the final season, it's said to be Will's "coming-of-age" story and the killer's reign can't last forever.
Clover talks about "phallicization" when describing the journey of the Final Girl.
"The tale is no less one of maleness. If the experience of childhood can be—is perhaps ideally—enacted in female form, the breaking away requires the assumption of a phallus. The helpless child is gendered feminine; the autonomous adult of subject is gendered masculine; the passage from childhood to adulthood entails a shift from feminine to masculine."
But is that really the answer? For Will to wield a weapon against Vecna and brutally kill him? For Will's femininity to be framed as something that needs to be overcome?
To go in the opposite direction (castration) hardly seems like a solution either, especially considering that the phallus belongs to gay man. To castrate would be to suggest that the phallus— sexuality— is one that is dangerous and needs to be removed.
So how do we find a middle ground, one that maintains the phallus without eliminating Will's feminine character traits? And is there a solution suggested in the text?
Oh rod motif, you never get old
In episode one the phallus is represented as something destructive, the rifle, which Will puts down and arguably because so, was afforded more time than if he had used it.
As the series marches on, the phallus never goes away— it just transforms.
The phallus has gone from something of fear and destruction to a representation of love and creation. But Will has yet to self actualize because the above scene is also an act of castration because Will doesn't claim proper ownership over the painting. The phallus is a beautiful display of love, but only if it belongs to someone else.
The show may have (unsubtly) foreshadowed this self actualization as it relates to the phallus and the defeat of Vecna.
And I don't really think that people at this point want to spend the rest of the post reading about Will with powers theoretics so I'll just leave the suggestion there for now and allow you to come to your own conclusions.
Final (Girl) Thoughts
The idea that heroism is male and victimization is female is an idea that is as old as and older than Odysseus, but that isn't to necessarily say that heroism and self-actualization is a purely male idea, something that may have been contended by the existence of Final Girl herself.
"At the moment that the Final Girl becomes her own savior, she becomes a hero; and the moment that she becomes a hero is the moment that the male viewer gives up the last pretense of male identification. Abject terror may still be gendered feminine, but the willingness of one immensely popular current genre to re-represent the hero as an anatomical female would seem to suggest that at least one of the traditional marks of heroism, triumphant self-rescue, is no longer strictly gendered masculine."
101 notes
·
View notes
Thinking about IDW Optimus again and the fandom's aversion to even acknowledging he exists bc he's a cop or whatever and like. Most of the time people literally just replace him in fic with some white bread knockoff archivist/librarian, not even bothering to keep in IDW OP's personality (which just bolsters my theory that the problem isn't him being a cop the problem is that he's too multifaceted but I digress).
And it's annoying because you could totally write IDW Optimus as not a cop while still keeping his canon personality. You just have to realize that the reason IDW OP became a cop in the first place is because his formative experiences when he was young shaped him to basically have two priorities: 1. To help people and 2. To do it by being on the ground actively doing something about the bad things happening to people.
IDW OP would not be a fucking librarian or archivist because even though those are noble pursuits that can help people and change the world, and Optimus is educated/smart enough for the profession, he wouldn't be satisfied just teaching people or spreading information about activism or social-historical studies or whatever. He's a mech of action: he needs to be doing things right now, in front of him, to people he sees/interacts with in his own eyes, improving society with concrete actions rather than indirect action or abstract inspiration.
So basically the alternate job ideas I can think of for IDW Optimus are something like being a firefighter (or any first responder really) or even whatever the equivalent would be to international charity organizations, those ones that send volunteers across the world to do stuff like build housing/infrastructure or distribute food or whatnot. I mean I can't imagine that the equivalents to these things would be exactly the same in IDW Cybertron, so you'd have to get a little creative with it, but these are just some ideas of jobs that would fit IDW Optimus' personality while still filling the niche of "not a cop" for people who are just that opposed to it.
Though I think the revulsion against coptimus is annoying in general tbh because IDW is already a continuity that rejects the idea of easily defined good/evil people or groups. It feels like people really want Optimus to be a good person in a very sanitized and academically approved way, so he has to be nice and squeaky clean but also like, a perfect leftist who knows theory and holds the most progressive opinions on every single issue....
There is no room for the idea that good people join bad institutions, there's no room for the idea that the reason people think cops are good guys who help people is bc of the government propaganda everything is saturated with. Hell there's even later issues of the Optimus Prime series by John Barber where Optimus like, MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES, is shown in flashbacks grappling with the fact that he as a cop/Zeta's regime that he works for might not actually be improving society like they say they are, and dealing with the fact that he feels more like a lesser evil compared to the Decepticons (perhaps not "lesser" at all).
It's like there's this idea in fandom of like, fictional media and opinions on media having to strictly adhere to progressive ideals at all times. So people just go "cops bad, this character is a cop, therefore they suck" without being willing to engage with the idea of like. IDW OP is born wanting to fight injustice and protect people -> a good way to protect people is to fight the people who are hurting them and committing crimes -> surely following the law is a reliable moral code to guide him in this -> becomes a cop because he's been indoctrinated into a society (much like our own) where he was told that the state/the law exist to protect the people and being a cop means you get to fight bad guys that hurt people. There's really so many interesting concepts there that could be (and CANONICALLY IS) explored about how good, well-intentioned people can be led to harmful actions simply because they have been fed the idea that the things they're doing are good/helpful/noble. Which is especially important for a character like Optimus, I think, who has a cultural icon status as The Irrefutable and Perfect Good, so it's really important actually to use IDW Optimus as an example of how even the most noble people you know have held problematic beliefs or done bad things at some point in their life. You know, because no one is born perfect and ideologically pure, and in fact society is constructed in exactly a manner to make people drink the kool-aid and believe that the systems designed to hurt them/others are just a normal, if flawed, society.
I mean the writing in IDW literally has Optimus deal directly and indirectly with the harm he's done as a cop and how people don't/didn't trust him because of that. I don't know what the fuck else this fandom wants if the source material literally saying "OP realizes that cops suck and he hurt people and earned their disdain by doing the things he did" doesn't stop them from going EW cop bastard sucks and is the worst Optimus. Like the narrative barely stops short of outright saying ACAB and Optimus himself would agree with this sentiment.
At that point, the collective fandom beef with IDW OP isn't because he's a cop and the narrative didn't do enough to condemn that. The problem is literally just that people don't read and don't care
TLDR: Consider the fact that good people can do bad things sometimes especially when living from birth in a corrupt society that thoroughly disguises its vices/oppressive structures as completely normal parts of existence
30 notes
·
View notes
Neighbor!Toji hcs
A/N: This got.... very out of hand oops. Started out originally as house neighbors, but decided to focus on an apartment complex concept instead. Might make another for the house neighbors concept as well if i think of more content
Warnings: MDNI!!, fem reader (reader has breasts), voyeurism but listening? (ecouterism apparently); panty theft, masturbation, mention of oral (m receiving), mentions of sex and creampie, jealous!Toji
Neighbors!Gojo and Geto hcs
Neighbor!Nanami hcs
Masterlist
Neighbor!Toji that comes home at all odd hours of the day (and night), many times sweaty and dirty and you just know he's up to something dangerous but it's *not your business*. Still, you can't help but be entranced by his dangerous smirk with the interesting scar across his lips and the feral look in his eyes when you make eye contact.
Neighbor!Toji that makes it his job to “accidentally” corner you in the stairwell at least once a week, overwhelming your senses with his scent and flustering you with his hulking body, making you feel like cornered prey in the jaws of a predator. He’s addicted to the way you squirm under his gaze like a scared little rabbit and can’t wait to catch you in his claws.
Neighbor!Toji that often works on his car outside in the parking lot, shirtless and dripping with sweat. You can't help but ogle his muscles and his scars when this happens and sometimes he catches you staring. At first he brushes it off, but once he realizes how cute you are, he starts teasing you with flexing here and there, picking up heavy shit just to show off. Your blush is the cutest thing he's seen in ages and decides its his new job to make you flush as often as possible.
Neighbor!Toji that feigns innocence when you start realizing your panties are going missing when you grab them from the complex’s communal laundry room a few months into living there, although running into him is too much to be coincidence. Some of them eventually make their way back to you, but some of the more racy ones are never seen again, and you can’t help but wonder what he’s doing with them.
Neighbor!Toji that brings home girls at all hours of the day (and night) and fucks them up against your paper thin walls so often that it drives you crazy. You don’t know if he’s doing it intentionally to rile you up, or if he’s just oblivious to how loud he’s being. But when you run into him the next day, it only takes a second to flush bright red with the memory of the grunts and moans you heard combined with the rhythmic thumping you heard well into the wee hours of the morning.
Neighbor!Toji that pumps his cock to the sound of your vibrator and your moans as you try to work off the heat single-handedly caused by Toji’s rough trysts. Even as he brings other girls home, his mind starts to wander and imagine you in their place, your pretty lips wrapped around his cock or the sight of your tits bouncing as he’d pound into you, imagining what you’d look like bent over his couch stuffed with his cum.
Neighbor!Toji that can’t help but get angry when he hears you bring someone over for once. He knows they’re not giving you the pleasure you deserve, that they can’t satisfy you like he could. He can’t help it as he waits for them to leave your apartment and put on his scariest face, making sure to scare them off. He’s just protecting you, he reasons. You can’t be too safe these days. You’ll learn to appreciate what he’s doing for you, learn to see you can go to him for all your needs.
Neighbor!Toji that, when you arrive at his door nervously telling him how you accidentally got locked out of your apartment and need his phone to call the landlord, knows that he’s finally got you in his clutches. You finally understand as well when he has you face down on his mattress just an hour later, his hips snapping into yours as moans fall out of your mouth left and right.
Sorry they all turned out so long?? Would love to see more neighbor au ideas!
Tagging @peachsayshi I’m also thinking of neighbors Gojo and Geto..... also @venulus
900 notes
·
View notes
i have to ask because i adore you and i want to know about your new blorbos- who are they and what are they and why are they always soaked in blood
JDHSJFHJFDDJFFSDFDF, oh man where do i start cassie.
they're from the anime/manga jujutsu kaisen, and they are:
gojo satoru. love of my fucking life. my fucking everything my boy my man, i am so so in LOVE with this man i cant even begin to tell u. he consumes my every waking thought, my life is dedicated to seeing him get fucked. (he's the guy in my header humping his all into the other's arm)
and (ryoumen) sukuna. beautiful sexy evil man.
(can u tell who's my fave)
so in this world, we have jujutsu sorcerers, who are people with special powers that they use to defeat/exorcise curses, which are basically evil spirits born of negative human emotions
gojo is the strongest jujutsu sorcerer alive. he is insanely strong, not a single person can go against him. his powers make it so that u literally physically cannot touch him. he controls "infinity" and can warp space, and he also has pretty special eyes that let him perceive things at a much deeper level than a regular person. those two things combined make him quite literally untouchable. and insanely powerful.
as for sukuna, he used to be a human who lived thousands of years ago, who used to be the strongest sorcerer of his time, and is considered to be the strongest sorcerer in history. he is the King of Curses, no one could ever defeat him, or destroy his soul, which he divided into his 20 preserved fingers so it would survive through time, even after dying.
so itadori yuuji
this lil baby boy (literally the babiest sweetest boy to exist btw) (he's actually the main character haha)
due to some stuff, he ends up eating one of sukuna's mummified fingers and sukuna reincarnates inside him. yuuji becomes a vessel for sukuna, who lives inside yuuji's mind now and sometimes takes over his body (reason why they look the same)
and now, yuuji is sentenced to be executed bc he holds the most evil sorcerer in history inside him, but gojo goes nope! wait a minute, let's not do that. and manages to convince the people in charge to postpone yuuji's execution, saying that they'll get yuuji to find and eat all of sukuna's fingers and then execute him, getting rid of sukuna all in one go.
ok so that's the context (that's actually what the anime's about haha), but as to gojo and sukuna.
THEY ARE IN LOVE
well, they're there. sdkkhfkjdkfdf
ok no, so like they do their things right. gojo is a teacher (tho we never actually see him do any teaching lmao) and sukuna lives inside yuuji and causes trouble sometimes. they don't really ever interact in the story (they literally meet and have a lil confrontation, decide to kill each other and never talk again djshjfdasdadfd) (until they actually have their Fight, more on that later)
BUT!!!!!!!! they may not interact, but they are completely tied together narratively.
as u can see, they're both the strongest from their respective times, so they have a lot of links when it comes to their characters themselves and what they are referred to in the story. specifically that, in being the strongest, they exist in a plane above everyone else, literally untouchable.
now, in the story, this position of strongest is coupled with solitude, being the strongest meaning u're alone and no one else understands you bc of this
and SO they have their fight. bc plot reasons right. this is obv what it was all gonna lead to. fight of the two strongest.
and the fight, consequently, revolves around that idea of solitude, and understanding each other.
which like. ok. yeah we saw that coming. ofc. no big deal.
EXCEPT, to make reference to their relationship and that idea of understanding each other, the term that is used is, and i kid u not, love.
there's a very specific phrase that is used multiple times between them. which is actually used originally with a character who shows romantic feelings towards sukuna.
she challenges sukuna to a fight and sukuna promises to marry her if she wins. her goal in this fight is to share in sukuna's solitude and show him love (read R→L)
but she says this to sukuna and this. this is his reaction.
SUKUNA KNOWS LOVE ALREADY
to which she gets super pissed bc that's not!!! love!!!!!!!
sukuna defeats/kills her. and u know when the next time that exact fucking phrase is used? when sukuna and gojo finally meet again and set up the date to have their Fight, where sukuna remembers her words
which tells us that.
sukuna was.
thinking about gojo when she said that.
*screams into hands*
BUT IT DOESN'T STOP THERE. this phrase is then repeated. multiple times.
1. right after gojo punches the fuck out of sukuna:
2. said in reference to gojo, when he realizes there's a chance of him losing:
3. gojo reminiscing about their fight:
so, as u can see, they were going to teach each other love. their fight is. canonically. about teaching each other love. what the FUCK.
but ENOUGH love talk (or else i'm at risk of going crazy insane)
LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW THEY'RE LOADED WITH SEXUAL TENSION
this was in their first meeting where they fought (for quite literally 10 seconds)
like... why he do dat.... .......... . ....
next day sukuna goes "hey im gonna kill u first <3" and gojo just goes "teehee omg really? *hair twirl* <3"
they also decide to have their final battle on dec 24 which is like a super romantic date in japan (explicitly said so by another character)
and their FIGHT. it is LITERALLY just them flirting and touching each other
LOOK AT THIS SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i fucking lost it. i still haven't recovered. that is the hottest thing i've ever seen in my life. gojo wants that dick so fucking bad
not to mention thigh grabs and hand touchies
and the entirety of the fight is just them having fun 😭😭 they're supposed "enemies" on opposite sides and the fate of the world is at stake here, but they actually don't give a fuck about that.
they're literally smiling and having a great fucking time. this fight for them is just play. their fight is just for them to have fun as the strongest and to connect with each other. they're enemies but they don't hate each other or anything, they only search for that sense of fulfillment in each other OTL
AND ABOUT THAT, oh my GOD
sukuna wins. he defeats gojo. and at the end, this. is what sukuna says to gojo at the end of the fight:
FUCKING. I'LL NEVER FORGET YOU. SCREAAAAM THAT'S ROMANCEEEEEE.
and the soft smile? the fucking petals falling all over them? oh GOD they're trying to kill me
but that's on sukuna's side, what about for gojo? well
HE GENUINELY TRIED TO REACH SUKUNA, GAVE IT HIS ALL TO CONNECT WITH HIM. TO TEACH HIM LOVE AGFKDHSKFHFKJFHDF (BUT HE FAILED HE COULDN'T GIVE SUKUNA WHAT SUKUNA GAVE HIM 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭)
HHRRRRGJFHSJDFHDSJFSDFA KJHDKFJSFKASLDKS ADKJKFHEWRKJEKRKTRELRW
and if i start crying OTL
but alas *deep breaths*
even without all that they're just very fucking sexy. two insane powerful men going at it? come on. how could u NOT want them together. they both hold the same title of the strongest, might as fucking well fuck nasty about it.
and oh god, when i tell u gojo is a fucking brat and he's so strong and untouchable, but then sukuna is capable of putting him down which is. insanely sexy. and i need it. i need gojo obliterated. and i know sukuna won't let me down (AND HE DID NOT. HE OBLITERATED THAT MAN) can he now obliterate his holes too
agdkhfhdkhdhs, anyways.... yeah.. that is the situation.........
im just gonna end this by saying
SUKUGO MY LOVES
68 notes
·
View notes