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#as emma said once he simply won't finish the emotional beats that would sell it
itspileofgoodthings · 2 years
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A Jonathan Byers Meta
I’ve been thinking so much about Jonathan Byers and I have some thoughts (again). (Feel free to reblog if you want but please be nice if you do so!) Jonathan is a person whose core trait, one of them at least, is that he responds so strongly to context and specifically to the kind of context he understands and wants, a trait of many oldest siblings I think. And in that context he can be so many things he is not necessarily in every area of his life. So much of that forward moving momentum he has in the first couple episodes of the show where he’s doing so much so powerfully is caused by it being a context he understands and has chosen to embrace and live out to the fullest- the context of him being the most responsible/capable member of the family. He loves Joyce and Will; he hates Lonny and is going to keep him away from his family at all costs; he considers himself the one in charge. And there is a softness and strength to that that feels absolutely luminous, that feels like nothing can shake it. And so as the show goes on and the lens widens to include more characters and perspectives it feels like Jonathan loses power/feels a little lost/drifts out of the center of the story. And for a long time I considered that a failure of the writers. They paid attention to him at the beginning, I thought, but then dropped him and that wasn’t his fault. But I rewatched Stranger things (seasons 1 and 2) this past spring and actually the thing I saw that surprised me is it makes sense on a character level that he loses that central ground and power so to speak because he is put into a context he no longer really understands or just as importantly doesn’t really want to be in. And yeah I’m talking about his dynamic with Nancy. His dynamic with Nancy in those first few seasons confused me the most and for the longest time because it began so powerfully and then felt like it veered off course. I loved it so much, shipped it so completely, and then lost interest as the show goes. And again I blamed that on the writers (in a way I still kind of do because they’re clumsy but more on that in a minute.) But I think there’s more going on on a character level.
The first beats of Nancy and Jonathan’s story feel so powerful because it’s actually part of that same context of compelling power in which we first meet Jonathan (and if you’re me fall in love with him fast). Will is missing and Nancy steps in to not exactly his place in Jonathan’s family but the position he occupied--and that’s because a) she is trying to solve a problem that is connected with Will’s disappearance, b) she needs help while doing so. Jonathan responds to that context effortlessly and powerfully. He joins forces with her and without any question or hesitation takes care of her physically when she’s in danger. It’s surprising and it’s moving and it feels at first like just an extension of that quiet competence and force of personality we witnessed in the first couple episodes but this time in a romantic context. But actually, it still isn’t romantic with him. It isn’t for him for a long time. Basically until the writers force his hand. And that’s because ---and this SHOCKED me when I rewatched the first two seasons a month ago, almost to the point of anger and quitting the show forever--the show never actually succeeds in establishing that he likes Nancy as a person! It’s clear that the writers intend the audience to pick up on that subtext (or I think it’s clear that that’s what they want) but they bungle it badly if so. The actual basic cues that would tell us Jonathan has a crush on Nancy and have us buy it as a believable emotional experience are missing. There isn’t a scene or even a moment where in any way Jonathan expresses any kind of romantic interest in Nancy at the beginning of the show. It’s not part of the establishing his character. His reasons for taking pictures at the party are muddled from the perspective the show is trying to force and it doesn’t work because all Jonathan has done is be vaguely polite to Nancy at school, caught her eye (quite frankly ACCIDENTALLY that one time), and disappeared down the hallway at the speed of light every time she turns around. She was far more intrigued than he was. The show gives us that moment with tears in his eyes where we’re supposed to believe (I think?????) that he’s so upset she’s with Steve but it’s incongruous and feels so weird and jarring you kind of have to throw it out. Because the show hasn’t done any work of telling us why that would be the case at all. No pining gaze! No mention! No conversation! The conversation they have in the hallway doesn’t communicate longing on his part, only a desire to be away from the cool kids. There isn’t even a time where someone else teases him about his crush on Nancy, the easiest way to introduce the fact of one character liking another. It’s not much of a stretch to believe that he hasn’t really thought about Nancy romantically at all. In fact it’s honestly a stretch to think he does. And there other reasons for his being there that make more sense--though I do think it’s bungled from a writing perspective. He misses Will, he’s out looking for Will, photography is his passion (lol), he doesn’t like the cool kids, he stumbles on their party “eh might as well take a picture and be the cool outside observer that he is.”
And because the writers didn’t give us a clear and unambiguous liking of Nancy from Jonathan as a starting point everything that comes after between them, even romantically or romantically-adjacent in that first season, hits differently once you watch it patiently and closely. It becomes clear that all of Jonathan’s care-taking of her is response not to her as a person he is romantically interested in, but response to context, to being the responsible one, the helper. He gets out her sleeping bag and puts it on the floor because he’s really not thinking with any part of his brain about how he’s in the room of the girl he likes. Because he’s not! He’s there as a larger part of the context the show established for him in the first couple episodes--his family, his role as caretaker. And of course that doesn’t mean that Jonathan couldn’t fall in love with her later just because the story never actually established that he liked her romantically when it thinks it does. Of course that could come later, come OUT of their interactions. but .... it doesn’t. It never really comes through. The most powerful part of their story together is the first part because it’s the only time in their relationship where Jonathan is moving with that characteristic firm decision making and competence. He’s very powerful when he’s saving her life. But everything else feels flat. And part of that is because he’s not a person who changes easily or very much at all. There are things about him that feel powerful and real and RIGHT and then there are things that just feel like him doing what the writers want him to do and those aren’t the same. Everything having to do with Nancy romantically feels like the second thing, like something the writers are making them do. The show even has to use Murray to get their romance actually jump-started because these aren’t really characters electrically drawn together. And so some of the stuff he says, the romantic stuff--it’s easy to handwave. And/or to find other reasons. And no this doesn’t have anything to do with shipping bias, though my shipping has been influenced by paying close attention to his behavior and actions. Because despite the power of Charlie Heaton in a gray sweater backlit by the red light of the darkroom with his hair falling over his face, nothing about it hits the way a Jonathan emotion should hit. And it should hit! The right stuff does! He’s brilliantly and truthfully acted and he’s layered and the right Jonathan moments SING. He’s not really a talker, not fundamentally, he doesn’t show his heart that way but in actions and only some of his actions with Nancy, the ones that really are just part of the context he’s comfortable with, really ring true. The point that I’m trying to get at is that when you look at those first few episodes really closely, emotionally there are only really three things that are actually--in character and in truth-- established about Jonathan’s heart. 
They are. One- he loves Will. Will is his person, his world, the center. The one he’s always going to protect first, think about first. Will tells us he doesn’t have friends and Jonathan protests it but that probably came from somewhere. His favorite person in the WORLD is Will. The context of Will’s disappearance highlights that so clearly of course but I think we’d see it even without that. The second thing is that he loves Joyce but he doesn’t particularly trust her judgment, considering himself more of an authority on what this family needs than she does. This establishes a distinguishing quality in him, a pickiness and choosiness and prickliness that is essential. He won’t love blindly and he certainly won’t let just anyone in. (When he says he doesn’t like people we should maybe perhaps believe him and not pass him off as a secret softie.) Joyce is part of his inner circle (I love their relationship a lot actually) but he is not uncritical even of her. This is someone who likes to keep people out because this is someone who doesn’t have endless patience for people and the way they do things. He wants things HIS WAY. His way is domestic and so is the context- he’s frying an egg and it feels so homey and good you want to say he’s a softie and a cinnamon roll- but it comes out of a character who knows what he wants. And the third thing, hilariously enough, is that he hates Steve! Somehow the Duffer brothers DO establish this in a far more convincing way than they establish him liking Nancy. He tells Nancy “he doesn’t like most people” and this is true but Steve is a little bit of an exception in a worse way, as the leader of the popular kids. He’s the figurehead for all that Jonathan dislikes and despises and wants to keep out of his inner circle. The fight that Jonathan and Nancy have in the woods feels far more about his disdain for the cool kids than it does about him really liking her and wanting to rescue her from that. The nerd lecturing the girl who wants to be cool and telling her she’s better than that is a stupid trope and one far less romantic than it thinks it is but because the show has established, intentionally or not, that Jonathan doesn’t really care about Nancy romantically all that comes through in a truthful way is that he doesn’t like popular kids. That emotion, that dislike and almost disdain that lives at Jonathan’s core, is expressed far more authentically than any warmth towards Nancy and it’s so telling that it’s that dislike that collides with the other strongest feeling of his life, loving Will, and leads him to half-killing Steve in the street. The warmest Jonathan ever acts towards Nancy is the warmth of context and the warmth of Will (in his absence) and when those reasons fall away you’re left with something curiously cold. And Jonathan, when he loves, is not a cold person. He’s not a chill person. And so watching him do things like give Will Nancy’s gift to him (a hilarious moment), make Nancy leave out the window (actually very dark and strange considering that Joyce knows they’re sleeping together), literally forget Nancy exists when Will comes back and it’s him and Joyce and Will again, ---you can try to tell yourself that that’s just how he loves. But it isn’t. Because we know his warmth in his hatred and in his loves. And for Nancy it really is just kind of “ehhh.” It’s indifference. 
tl,dr; the show thinks that it’s telling a convincing love triangle for sure. But because they don’t establish liking Nancy as a person as part of his character early enough and because he isn’t a character whose fundamental traits change or change easily they don’t actually build a convincing enough romance. It’s because Jonathan is a person who responds to context, even the wrong one, and because Nancy has her own journey and insecurities to work through (a different meta) they stay together for a long time. But it isn’t satisfying and it doesn’t work because it doesn’t actually strike deep enough in Jonathan’s heart. It’s not a context he really wants at his core. If he falls in love it’ll have to be with someone he wants to allow right into the very center of his life and heart and right now he’s not interested in anyone being in that place except his family. And so because he’s kind of stuck in this situation (of his own choosing, I’m not absolving him of that) because Jonathan likes routine and to keep doing the same things and is not self-motivated in the most powerful way to be able to get out of this romance—-he drifts to the edges and stops really doing anything interesting at all. He starts doing pot, won’t go visit Nancy on her spring break etc. He’s not really the boyfriend he could be in any way because I think fundamentally he doesn’t want to be. And the show may put other words in his mouth about this, I kNOW that the show doesn’t completely agree with everything I’ve written here. But it seems to me the only true way to read him in light of what he actually does and how different it is when he’s acting with his whole heart and when he’s not. 
#jonathan byers#stranger things#thanks for coming to my ted talk#don't know if i should tag this as j/ncy? don't want to clutter the tag#anyway i think charlie heaton knows this and is playing it that way#for reasons unknown#though i always kind of think one of the actors in a love triangle always knows when it isn't really them and withdraws their character#jonathan through charlie heaton's portrayal is not fighting for nancy#as emma said once he simply won't finish the emotional beats that would sell it#he could have had a pining gaze in the car at the end of season 1 but he didn't want to#he could have watched nancy and steve make out with jealous longing but actually he leaves at the speed of light#and it's not HURT that makes him do so. he's just gone#jonathan hates high school and also steve. is indifferent to nancy but will use her for his purposes. and loves will#i'm telling you it is the absolute a) funniest b) tRUEST reading of his character#anyway love triangle stuff always works like this. you simply can't keep three people in a romantic space and expect them all#to be equally invested#it's not going to happen. the magic of storytelling won't actually let it. there is no 'both sides' in love triangles#because romance is a two-way street#one of the three doesn't want to be there!#actually steve is the only one who genuinely loves here. nancy is on a girlboss journey and needs to UNCOVER her love for steve#which right now is just a liking that is very right but hasn't examined#anyway very funny that jonathan would hate steve#very right that steve actually has romance at his center and core#he has no family!!! no context!!!! not even really any friends!!!!!!!!#romance is the lifeline back to goodness for steve. family is that for jonathan but because it's his first context#it's easy to lose and take for granted which is what he HAS done which is why he hasn't really grown.#i love jonathan he needs to get his shit together in season 5. come save will idiot!!!! he needs you#ANYWAY THANKS FOR READING
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