Everyone Going Crazy At The Thought Of Steve Dying.. Not Me Tho Im Numb Ever Since I Saw Billy Get Literally

Billy adopting Eleven as a second little sister.

Billy chauffeuring Eleven and Max to school every day acting like it’s the biggest burden and his greatest annoyance in life yet always interjecting whenever he hears them talking about boy troubles or bully troubles to offer (sometimes questionable) advice because he loves them and he’ll be damned if anyone messes with his girls. It happens so often that whenever they’re having an issue, like dealing with a shitty teacher or figuring out the perfect way to get back at Dustin or Lucas or Mike during some prank war, they purposefully talk louder so that Billy will insert himself and offer his opinion.

Billy never shying away when Eleven asks him questions, even if she’s asking about uncomfortable topics like relationships and sex, because it’s honestly next to impossible to embarrass him and he’d rather she hear it straight than get confused by people’s gross innuendos. She feels safe asking him just about anything because she knows he won’t dance around the answers.

Billy waiving his rights to the radio and letting Max and Eleven pick the music whenever one of them is upset, keeping a stash of their favorite cassettes in the glove box just in case. He doesn’t dig their music, but he will dashboard drum and sing along to Madonna just to make them laugh. He also knows their order at all the local fast food joints, can swing through a drive-thru or pop into the ice cream shop and order for all three of them without asking what the girls want, and has been known to detour to their favorite spots when he thinks that one of them needs a pick-me-up.

Billy letting Eleven play with his hair products when he catches her watching him get ready for a date, taking the time to tell her what everything is for and showing her how to use it all. He even gets her some bottles of her own when she finds something that she likes.

Billy teaching Eleven and Max how to drive in an empty parking lot, surprisingly calm as he guides them through the motion. Max is a natural, though she’s definitely something of a speed demon. Eleven is much more cautious and is a little heavy on the brake, but Billy is shockingly patient (even if every rough stop has him wincing for his poor Camaro). Hopper is honestly too much of a nervous wreck to teach El himself, try as he might, so she’s pretty lucky to have Billy there to help her.

Billy being Max and Eleven’s emergency contact. They drank too much at a party? Call Billy. Some guy is making them feel unsafe? Call Billy. Their car broke down? Find a payphone and call Billy. He will drop everything to help them, no matter where he is or what he’s doing. He has held their hair back and made them greasy hangover food. He keeps all their secrets, covers for them if he has to, always makes sure that they are safe because, again, those are his girls.

Billy lowering his guard around Eleven and Max, trusting them more than he trusts anyone else because, time and time again, they’ve proven that they are one hundred percent in his corner. Sure, they bicker with him, pester him, push his buttons. But it’s because they love him, and they feel safe with him, and he feels safe with them, too.

Billy and his two kid sisters, Eleven and Max.

I know I’m about to sound like a petty bitch here but I kind of can’t wait for someone’s fav to be killed off. I’ve had to listen to the majority of the ST fandom saying awful things about my favorite character saying he deserved to die in such a violent horrific way. Saying the abuse he endured didn’t matter at all. So like sucks to be you now. 🤷‍♀️

//Tw For Abuse, Suicide and other extensive childhood traumas, also long post of pouring my heart out cause I take fictional characters to my poor traumatized heart

Can we really talk about the S4 Vol2 Speech, though?

I can understand Max’s mixed feelings about her brother. I have some of my own about my sister, who behaved a lot like him and hurt me in some ways, even if she didn’t always mean to.

First, I want to talk about the fact that Max HAD TO KNOW that Billy was abused, to some degree.

Not because she was living in the same house as him for years, but because she continues the cycle. After she sedates Billy in the fight at the Byers’, she threatens him—

“Say you understand! Say it!”

A few scenes before this, his father says nearly the exact same thing— “Do you understand? Say it.” (Maybe not exactly but using most of those words.)

So Max would’ve had to have heard it used before, because it would mean she knew that’s how you get Billy to “agree” with something. And Max— Max is a good person. She’s good-natured, funny, and clever.

So you really expect me to think that Max, knowing her brother was abused and didn’t have a mother for some reason, after he sacrificed himself for all of her friends and very nearly the world crying and apologizing over and over in front of her, DIDN’T THINK HE DESERVED TO BE SAVED? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

I can understand the idea that he was the greatest “normal-world” terror in her life. My sister didn’t affect me directly, but her problems were a full time job and distracted my parents from me while I was still very young. On top of that, her and my other sister liked to gang up on and bully me. So trust me, I get it.

Let’s take a look at what Billy did.

He grabbed Max, threatened to hit her friends with his car, yelled at her a few times, made a vague comment against Lucas after seeing Max fight with him (which there’s a lot to say about this but I’ll keep it at the fact that Dacre has said this wasn’t racist and that the Dxffers refuse to deal with any issues whatsoever), pushed Lucas up against a wall, and fought with Steve. I’m not including the Vecna/Mind Flayer bs in this because he did it against his will, not to mention the reason he did half this shit.

Yes, I can understand how that could be scary, especially for a thirteen year old. Using my sister as an example yet again, she died at 18, right when she was “starting to get better.” Billy was doing the same, as he and Max seemed to have a truce in between S2/S3. She even said in her book that she wasn’t scared of him, but that’s largely considered “non-canon.” To summarize, she understood he was abused and was even on level terms with him.

With my sister, I was not. I relate to Billy myself, but I largely relate Billy to my sisters, mainly my oldest sister (I really mean this. She acted out and got the attention of older people and went in and out of mental hospitals and was suicidal and got in a fist fight with my mother once, etc etc etc) Like I said before, my sisters bullied me (my parents and grandparents have admitted to me that they even knew they were outright nasty) and my sisters’ problems were largely the cause of one of my biggest issues. My sisters both acted out, distracted my parents from me, my whole family trauma dumped on very young me, etc etc etc. Really, that time of my life was a huge mess. And then my sister died, and even more trauma dumped on me from that (emotional abuse and neglect, divorce trauma, the fact that my sister was fucking dead and never coming back never never never how can someone just disappear, Etc). So we rarely got along and the rest of the time we were mostly neutral.

I’m not going to lie. I don’t really do it anymore, but when I was younger I’d curl up and cry about how I was all alone because my parents were to busy with them. I blamed them. I still do, but not in a how-could-you-do-that-to-me way and more of a these-events-caused-you-pain-and-got-you-attention-and-I-suffered-in-silence-for-multiple-reasons-that-aren’t-your-fault way.

You know what I don’t do? Say she didn’t deserve to be saved. Cause she did. She really fucking did. She could be mean and horrible and cold and she wasn’t even close to me but she was only eighteen, only for a couple of months (like Billy), and she was still a baby, she wasn’t even old enough to drink. She was small, she was always small, she’s just a kid. She was getting better and learning how to cope and being nicer to me and she was finding a purpose and getting a handle on herself and then she was just—

Gone. I still don’t understand how someone can just stop existing. Me and my sister still talk about how we expect her to just walk through the door, smack us on the back of the head, and laugh at us for believing it— that anything could ever kill her, of all people. That it was some big joke and we were dumbasses for believing it. It’s been years now, but I still break down at night crying over her. My sister and I have this bone-deep understanding of each other now that I can’t explain— it’s so genuine and whole that it kinda scares me. We call each other after nightmares and share dreams with her in them. My sister blames all of the “paranormal” activity in her house on her and tells me about it. Every time I see a bug (her nickname) or a rainbow I send it to her. When I was younger, I used to wish something would happen, either to her or to me, just so something would change. Do you know what I think every day? How she deserved better. How it should’ve been me or someone else. How she deserved to be saved.

Because “inconvenient” abuse victims deserve to be saved. People who’ve been broken and beaten and discarded and ignored and assaulted their whole lives aren’t irremediable and they deserved to be saved. My sisters deserved to be saved and I deserved to be saved and people like us, people like Billy, deserved to be saved too.

In short, fuck the Duffle Bag Bitches. I’m keeping this eccentric rat fucker close to my fucking heart and I’ll redeem and defend him eight thousand times if it means someone like me, like us, like Billy gets even a glimmer of hope to keep going.

Max literally said in season 2 that billys “always been a dick but now he’s just angry” which implies that before Hawkins/whatever incident led to Hawkins, billy was just like annoying at best. Which is a typical emotion one feels for their sibling. So clearly shit wasn’t always dire. But now everyone wants to act like billy came out the womb a devil child like get the fuck out of here

ALSO I am thinking about how Sadie said she thought it was weird max was singing and laughing with her friends after her brother just died

I’ve been a stan since the first 3 seconds we were introduced to him.

actually a hardcore argyle stan now after seeing how many people are so fuckin vile towards eduardo

am i a joke to you…

The true tragedy of Billy Hargrove is that he was a too complex character for the world he was set in.

His very existence strikes at the core of the show and its character by inviting the viewer to dive deeper into his motives and the nuances of his character. Which then leads to questioning other characters.

Which is a big problem for some viewers. Once you start doing it, you realise all of your faves are problematic. El is a murderer fueled by rage. Hopper is a murderer. Alexei is a murderer in a way. Jonathan is a creep. Eddie is a drug dealer - and we're not talking just weed, we're talking serious drugs. And so on...

And once you have to step back and realise that all of these characters are flawed human beings, panic might start to set in because your cinnamon rolls aren't that sweet after all.

So you're left with three choices:

To stop thinking about it and enjoy the show casually.

To accept they all have flaws. The world itself is not black and white.

To live in denial and become an anti. Because if you can shut up those who are affecting your core system of beliefs or label them as evil, then you can pretend all is well. (Except it's not and all your favs are problematic. Their complexity is what makes them such compelling characters in the first place. I mean if you're looking for something simple, I'd recommend going back to kids cartoons. Just not Peppa Pig, from what I saw of it, she's a little piece of shit too.)

Friendly reminder that Billy was teaching kids how to swim in Season 3. I can’t get over the image of Hawkins’ resident bad boy, standing waist deep in the shallow end of the pool as he teaches a kid with floaties around their arms how to swim.

Is this someone questioning whether or not their brother should be saved or a teenage girl forced to watch her brother die because there is no way in stopping what's killing him?