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The “there’s nothing Eddie does this season that couldn’t have been done by Billy” discourse is so fucking funny. Eddie can be around Lucas for more than 30 seconds without trying to murder him. Next.

After twitter, I came to conclusion that all billy and dacre antis are underage fake woke kids who know nothing about the real world and just want to hate with no valid reasons.

Exhibit A;

It might come as shock to the antis, but stans never excuses billys behaviour and dacre basically wrote the character because duffers got lazy.

But imagine telling how dacre stans deserved to get attacked because dacre defends Billy's character? Character he knows the best because he help duffers to write it? Imagine being in thier little brainless head and ignoring the fact Joe and Finn BOTH said how billy is awesome and how it's thier favorite character?

Clearly by this logic they should attack Joe and Finn for saying that, but they have only the air in thier skulls so that would be hard. This is why stranger things fandom sucks, yet ironically, harringrove, Billy and dacre fandom is the best.

While I respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, the opening declaration of this post is guilty of making rampant generalizations that fail to examine the nuances of the issues it presents. Normally I leave the Billy/Harringrove-stans alone and only post my personal discourse on the issue in my own original posts, but this post simply requires examination and refutation.

As a person who hates the character Billy, (as co-opted by the fandom,) I’d like to point out that I actually (vaguely) remember the 80s. So, I’m definitely far from underage. As for ‘fake woke’...nope. I’ve lived long enough to gain some perspective on the world, long enough to learn some harsh life lessons, and also long enough to become pretty familiar with the basic tropes of storytelling. My biggest claim to refute however is ‘hating without reason’. Like, what show was the OP watching? Note: Let’s keep in mind that most Billy-stans were already locked into this mindset before season 3 and his ‘redemption arc’, which is less an arc and more like a face plant a second past the starting line. One act of self sacrifice doesn’t mean a person had actively made a choice to take the hard path to atoning and seeking to correct their previous flaws.

But yes, ‘hating without reason’. In season two Billy is verbally and emotionally abusive to Max. He enjoys terrifying her by driving erratically and threatening to hit actual children with his vehicle. The mind games he plays with Steve in an effort to destabilize his sense of self and security are textbook bullying tactics. This culminates in him physically attacking a scared African American boy (and yes, this is relevant.) and then doing his utmost to kill Steve. Fun fact: If Steve were a real person and not a fictional character he probably would be dead, or would have significant physical and mental permanent damage after a beating like that. Not a guarantee, but highly likely! Billy only stops because he literally cannot continue due to the drugs injected into his system. So, yeah, he isn’t being hated without reason, he is hated by some in the fandom because he was always written to be a villain, and many of us picked up on that fact from the actual canon way he behaves.

What about his abusive father and his mother abandoning him? Certainly salient facts, but not ones that actually absolve him of personal responsibility for the actions he willfully commited. They go a long way toward describing how he became the person he is, but they aren’t permission to attempt to kill other people. If Steve had died, Billy would be going to jail (or juvie, I don’t honestly know the laws in Indiana at the time), not his dad, not his mom. Billy would be in jail because he chose to assault a person and continued to beat them mercilessly after they were unconscious. The show also does nothing to communicate to the audience that he ever felt remorse for these actions. We can assume he felt remorse for what the Mind Flayer did while using his body, as his sacrifice and final words to Max imply, but how far does this remorse go? He performed a single act that might be indicating a future desire to rectify his wrongs, but we’ll never know. Stans who act like this redeemed him seem to lack a proper appreciation of moral scale. One act doesn’t make up for years spent being cruel to others. Especially when that act results in death. Redemption requires a commitment to realizing the magnitude of past wrongs, working to right them as best as you can, and going to the effort to make the right choices in the future. Billy didn’t have a chance to do any of this. He isn’t ‘redeemed’, he just died doing the right thing. Redemption requires a pattern of behaviours.

As for the assertion that Billy-stans don’t try to excuse Billy’s behaviour? I honestly feel like we can’t possibly be in the same fandom, because I feel as though I see nothing but his fans trying to hand-wave away his more atrocious acts as being excusable due to the abuse and abandonment he suffered. I will reiterate: Abuse doesn’t absolve someone of their personal responsibility. It is a definite mitigating factor, but it is not permission to greviously threaten to harm, or actually harm, innocent people. As for Dacre? He’s a talented actor who did a lot with what was really a cardboard cutout of a character. I hate Billy, but respect Dacre for an excellent performance....except when he tries to defend Billy as not being racist. That baffles me. I think Dacre is probably very anti-racist, so in his mind he doesn’t want to see that aspect of the character he put so much time and effort into playing. But that’s a personal theory.

As for Finn and Joe? Yeah, okay, so they may really like the character. You can like characters that are utter pieces of shit. You can like fictional psychopaths. You can like fictional people who are abusive or problematic. Fiction is a good space to explore the themes and traits that we identify with or feel some connection with while not engaging in terrible behaviour ourselves. It’s healthy to do so. That’s why people liking Billy is fine. Identifying with him is fine. I think it’s somewhat dangerous or self-deceptive to engage in this behaviour while ignoring or hand-waving away the actual canon character’s actions as this allows you to convince yourself the character is actually a ‘good’ person, at which point I wonder how one can continue to dismiss actual terrible behaviour in what they’ve convinced themselves is a ‘good’ character, but analyzing that would be getting far afield. Finn and Joe can like Billy as much as they want, But I’ve never heard either trying to rationalize why Billy is secretly a good person after trying to assault Lucas and almost murdering Steve.

As for Harringrove? Encouraging a relationship between Steve and Billy is something that will never sit right with me. It boils down to saying that it’s perfectly healthy to date a person who deliberately and with malice set out to emotionally undermine and bully you, and who then attempted to murder you. How can such a large portion of the fandom think that one boy almost killing the other in an unbridaled rage is the basis for a romantic relationship? Honestly, I’ve privately always supposed that Billy/Harringrove-stans were all underaged children without enough experience to recognize how unhealthy this relationship dynamic is. It’s actually very interesting to see this particular accusation being tossed into the ring by the opposing side, given these private suspicions. But I recognize how easy it is to come to such baseless conclusions in something as large and dynamic as fandom.

Final Note: No one deserves to be physically or emotionally attacked for their enjoyment of fictional spaces and characters. However, I do believe in engaging in discourse as a means to communicate and explore the different polarizing views that crop up within fandoms. I am unapologetic in my hatred of Billy, I think his character was without any redeeming features that warrant the vast amount of appreciation he receives. I think that appreciation largely comes down to Dacre’s talent and chemistry rather than Billy himself. However, I don’t mind when people make arguments and essays to try and explore and examine the character, though the frequency that I see his actions get tossed aside in favour of more fanon-friendly interpretations is somewhat dismaying. But that’s fine, fandoms will always be like this. I don’t appreciate people who feel the way I do blatantly attacking people or advocating for such acts. However, I don’t appreciate when everyone who is anti-Billy is painted in broad strokes in a manner which blatantly dismisses the fact that there are plenty of reasons to hate Billy readily available within the canon of the show. You don’t have to try to invalidate the people who disagree with your perceptions on a fictional character by attempting to say they have no reason for their feelings.

Tl;dr: There is plenty of evidence that Billy is a terrible character. His stans have the right to love him and not be attacked for it regardless. Don’t paint any segment of the fandom in broad strokes in a way that dismisses or ignores their valid reasons for existing. Also my personal pet peeve is the large portion of the fandom’s obsession for shipping Steve with the guy who tried to murder him. Don’t attack others.

The Mindflayer being a true ally and stopping Billy and Mrs Wheeler by whatever means necessary

steve harrington’s ao3 tag if b*lly h*rgrove was never created

just watched s2e4 and can i just say... billy is so insanely blatantly racist and the fact that some people don't see it is ridiculous! he sees max talking to lucas and immediately interrogates her about it, then tells her to stay away from "certain kinds of people" also he says the words "you're a piece of shit" to max so to all of you who say "oh he's just protective <3" fuck off he's literally just racist abusive and controlling

so let’s say, in real life, you knew somebody that was notorious for being an asshole, but you were aware of their domestic abuse and past trauma, and out of the blue they find some goodness in their heart, so much so that they FUCKING DIE (death, an irreversible action, the ULTIMATE sacrifice) for somebody they don’t know, someone you care about very deeply, and you’d be still be like “nah fam that ain’t gonna cover that black eye you gave.”

WHAT MORE COULD HE HAVE DONE TO MAKE UP FOR HIS PAST BEHAVIOR THAN LITERALLY DIE

Because abuse, while absolutely horrible, isn’t an excuse for a life spent hurting others. Billy is terrible to Max, threatening and terrifying her. Yes, it’s because Neil puts expectations on Billy to ‘watch over’ Max, but Billy instead treats it as an opportunity to terrorize her. Not a great trait. We also know via Max’s canon book that Billy did some pretty messed up things back in California, which is why they had to move. He was actively physically hurting people.

He was racist towards Lucas, which is something I find slightly more understandable, as it is hard to grow out of a mindset that’s been forced upon you your entire life. However, deciding to assault a child is crossing the line. We have no clue how far Billy might have gone if Steve hadn’t come back to intervene.

Billy goes from just assault when he’s attacking Steve to attempted murder. He uses a weapon, and then pummels Steve when that attack leaves him disoriented and vulnerable. He hits Steve at least ten times while he is unconscious on the floor. If Max hadn’t intervened we can actually be pretty confident that Steve would be dead. If this weren’t a television show he almost almost certainly would be.

Yes, in the end Billy performs a single positive action by saving El, after she’s able to psychically help him shake off the Flayer’s control. However, can we really say that given the speed of the events that Billy reasonably knows he’s sacrificing himself? Probably not. He’s just fighting back. We don’t even really know why. Was it for El, or was it because this was a monster that had taken over his body and he was royally pissed about that? Waking up a few feet before an otherworldly monster made of human flesh doesn’t leave a person with many options other than fighting. Now, yes, his last words are “I’m sorry”, but we aren’t given any information about what he’s sorry for in this moment. It could be everything, it could be that he’s sorry he’s about to die. We’ll never know how deep or shallow this contrition was.

So in short, yes, there are mitigating reasons that do slightly diminish Billy’s responsibility for his actions, but nothing that excuses them. Inflicting abuse on others because you yourself are abused isn’t okay, especially when you escalate that violence to the extent that Billy does. Redemption isn’t achieved with a single act. It requires dedication and commitment to addressing your past wrongs and working to better yourself and behave better in the future. Maybe Billy would have worked towards that if he survived, but we can’t know. Killing him off was a cheap way to get an emotional impact and make the character seem redeemed without actually having to write him well and continue his journey towards becoming a better person. Based on what we know of his character, if he had lived there is an equal chance that he wouldn’t have changed his behaviour, and at that point could we call him redeemed? No. That’s why killing him there was so cheap. They get to skip all the hard work and say he was a good person in the end without any evidence that he would be.

Also, an important thing to consider is if Steve were a girl people would think H*rringrove is disgusting. No one could see a woman get straight up beat senseless and then think “Yeah, these two characters should totally fall in love”. The H*rringrove fans are basically saying that it’s totally acceptable for gay men to enter relationships with someone who legitimately abused them. I don’t think a single fan of the pairing could honestly say they’d want to be in a romantic relationship with a person who did to them what Billy did to Steve. Even if a person is trying to be better, trying to redeem themselves, I can think of few worse foundations for a romantic relationship than a person who does everything in their power to goad and taunt you and then eventually beats you unconscious, close to the point of killing you. That’s the kind of relationship police actively caution people to get out of, to seek shelter from.

In the very end, it boils down to: Death is EASY. Living with your mistakes and spending everyday trying to be better than you were is HARD. Death isn’t a free pass to absolve you of your past wrongs. Let’s say it had been Neil there who ultimately stood up to the Mind Flayer. Would he be off the hook then for abusing his first wife, his son, and beginning the cycle again with Susan and Max? What about if it were Brenner who showed up? Does he suddenly become part of team-good-guys by sacrificing himself despite how he ruined countless lives? No, because that isn’t how redemption works. Death is not absolution, and our actions have consequences.

whenever i go to complain about stranger things 3 i remember that billy died and the only scene he shared with steve was when steve tried to run him over with a car. and then i’m like This Show Is Good, Actually.