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[deadboywalking]

william h. byers zombie boy

PERSONALITY Will is one of the nicest, most earnestly well-meaning kids you'll ever meet. He's shyer and more reserved than his (much louder) friends, but that doesn't mean he won't meet kindness with kindness. Most of Will's readily evident personality -- his shyness, his tendency to be quiet and introverted, his fear of being honest -- comes from a very upsetting, traumatic childhood. Living on the poverty line with an alcoholic father and a stressed mother isn't a great environment for any child, and even though things drastically improved once his father left, there's a lot of guilt that Will carries still, for not being "good enough". He's not your typical teenage boy -- he's "soft", "gentle", "sweet". All the things his father didn't want in a son. In his friend group, Will is absolutely the peacemaker. He's affectionate and attentive to his friends, easily embracing them in joyful moments and reaching out for them in moments of stress. Unlike the stronger-tempered boys, he wants everyone to get along and have fun, clearly finding a refuge in the games he and his friends play -- especially after the trauma of being abducted, then possessed. This irks his friends, who are eager to grow and change, while Will stubbornly digs in his heels and wants to cling to being a child as long as possible. As he's grown, Will's sarcastic nature has come to the front more and more, as he becomes more jaded and less afraid to get snippy with his friends. He's more blunt and savage (whether intentional or otherwise), and easily gets annoyed and short-tempered with what he perceives as his friends being annoying or stupid. Especially about girls. Especially. Under the soft, gentle persona Will projects most of the time, he has a backbone of steel. He's had to, in order to survive what he has. The myriad monstrous encounters have only made him stronger, and his ability to fight through the Mind Flayer's thrall (even after a week of constant torment) wasn't even approached by others it possessed. When Will's pushed to the edge he has immense strength -- he'll do anything to protect his loved ones, up to and including sacrificing himself. or screaming down an enormous eldritch abomination. Y'know, kid stuff.

ABOUT Until November 6th, 1983, Will Byers was a fairly normal nerdy little kid -- he liked drawing, music, hanging out with his friend group and playing Dungeons and Dragons. The younger son of a single mom, Will never got along well with his gruff, overly-toxically-masculine father, being inclined to like softer, gentler things. When he'd left the year before, Will grew closer to his mother Joyce and older brother Jonathan, and seemed perfectly content like that. Then, on his way home from his best friend Mike's house after a D&D campaign that ran late into the night, Will was in the wrong place at the wrong time and crossed paths with...a monster from another dimension. And vanished. After a week spent in the Upside-Down -- a deadly, empty hellscape dimension populated by monsters, which killed (almost) every human it dragged inside -- Will was rescued by his mother and the town sheriff. He survived, but came back...different. Puking-slugs-a-month-later kind of different. A year on, Will was caught between two worlds (literally), trying to balance being a hormonal, emotional (closeted) tweenager in Indiana with the frequent visions of the nightmare dimension he barely escaped. Worst of all, the big bad of the Upside Down (a sinister shadow creature nicknamed the Mind Flayer) had decided that he'll be a good gateway host into the real world. Will underwent another week of hell, during which the Mind Flayer possessed him completely and used him to cause havoc and destruction. In a show of pure ferocity and courage, Will was able to communicate to his friends and family the way to destroy the monster -- close the gate it had come through. This, plus an impromptu exorcism, was enough to send the Mind Flayer fleeing, leaving Will with a sort of sixth sense about it's presence. Now, in the summer of 1985, Will is trying to act like a normal teenager, despite being everything but, even if he isn't as interested in dating girls as his friends are (wonder why). But that Upside-Down-centric spidey sense means things aren't going to be normal for long... Important Note: In case it isn't obvious, I play Will as gay, but extremely closeted and repressed about this fact (at least in canon). He's known essentially his entire life and has definitely nursed hidden crushes on all of his friends at LEAST once. Canon might confirm or deny this, but this is the interpretation I go with.

BASICS NAME: William H. Byers CANON: Stranger Things CANON POINT: End of S3 AGE: 13 going on 14 STATUS: Canonically repressed OCCUPATION: Student RESIDENCE: Hakwins, Indiana LINKS Permissions Visuals Playlist Deerington Part 1 Deerington Part 2 OOC NAME: Cee/Jolie JOURNAL: ceedawkes PLURK: ceedawkes

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