Professional Screw-Up

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?

Surfer brochachos

A rant (kinda?)

Billy's story was told based on his importance to the overall plot of Stranger Things rather than the importance of the issues the story brought up and I'm still kinda pissed about that. Obviously, each character can only get so much time. But if you know from the start that you're only going to give a certain character a small amount of screen time, you shouldn't add elements as huge and complicated as parental abuse/abandonment. Or, if you do, you should also consider devoting a very large portion of that character's on-screen time to those things or giving the character more time.

Because I'm just really sick and tired of posts where Billy is erased or censored or called irredeemably evil. It's really not fair to fans of his with abuse in their pasts who related to him. It's not right that what people seem to have taken from his storyline is that there is a right and wrong way to be a teenage victim of child abuse, and that if your anger at your home situation causes you to lash out (generally in ways that you would need a fairly high level of emotional maturity not to), you're not worth anyone's time.

And it sucks that parallels were drawn and then dropped in ways that encouraged the fandom to compare Billy to other characters in different (currently non-abusive) situations and with different levels of support, and find him lacking. Because it inevitably places a lot of really unfair blame on a victim (why didn't he just make friends like Eleven did that could have helped him? Why didn't he reject his father's violence like Jonathan (apparently single-handedly) did? Why wasn't he able to still be gentle like Will?). Especially because the situations of all of those characters are drastically different than Billy's was.

Billy wasn't his abuse, but the abuse was an inescapable part of him. Much like a plant choked by weeds isn't defined by the weeds but is massively affected by them. And you can't expect a plant still covered by weeds to be anything like a formerly choked plant that has been moved to empty soil and given water and a clear path to the sun's light. You can't expect it to be anything like a plant that's been properly cared for all its life. If the choked plant happens to have enormous reserves of strength and resilience and manages to bloom as brightly as the other plants despite the weeds, that's wonderful, but it's never something that should be expected without help. Ever. And I wish Stranger Things had been clearer on that.

Stranger Things stans went on a mission to make everyone hate Grace Van Dien and instead earned themselves the title of most toxic and annoying fanbase on any social media platform and helped Grace earn even more defenders while everyone (even people outside the fandom) started to call them out on their shit, as they should.

Your shit backfired.

am i the only one who’s sad that joe got to play metallica and meet the band, even though billy’s favorite song is the four housemen and metallica is probably his favorite band?

i know that eddie’s character is its own but i can’t shake the feeling that eddie’s character was given a storyline billy could have had (if anyone had cared about him)

no offense but the relationship that y'all seem to think steve and eddie have is actually the relationship that jonathan and argyle have.

everyone going crazy at the thought of steve dying.. not me tho im numb ever since i saw billy get literally suction cupped to death

Yeah, let’s be honest. Many people view Steve through fanon colored glasses. He is always reluctant, and even annoyed, to be dragged into whatever schemes the kids concocted. And yeah sure, he protects the kids when it comes down to it but it’s mostly out of a sense of obligation (being the oldest), not because they’re his uwu children. The only one he has a genuine bond with is Dustin (and maybe Max but even then we can’t be sure since we don’t see Steve visit Max in the hospital). The rest of them are kinda just there lmao. No hate on Steve, but his character has really been warped from how he really is in canon.

Real talk… the babysitter steve narrative is very fanon. Steve within the show never like… actually cares about the kids? Lmfao this is the same man who let a random 10 year old join his Russian conspiracy plot because no one else could fit in a vent like… I think y’all need to start opening your eyes

The cast did a recap of seasons 1-3 and when Joe explained Billy’s sacrifice, basically states what I put in quotations. If you wanna see it, it starts at 6:55 :)

“Billy…FULLY redeems himself”- Joe Keery (Steve Harrington)

It warms my heart to see the beloved Joe Keery being Billy’s #1 fan and antis frothing at the mouth for it, that some fucking good food lmao