the thing i keep wondering about is why lots of people in ST fd keep applying 2025 behavioural logic to 80s characters. why do they keep expecting them to be inclusive and tolerant and woke? to recognise abuse and manipulative patterns from other, older, characters, to reflect on their trauma responses, life choices and influence of social and polical environment?
is Billy a jerk? well yes he is. was the only good thing he'd done a self-sacrifice? yes it was. were some other characters also abused but still turned out better people? yes they did. is Billy necessarily bad to his core? no he isn't, and i'm standing my ground.
yes, Jonathan and Will also have a shitty father. but they also have a loving and empathetic mother who is actively present in their lives. they have a sibling they can rely on and love deeply and mutually.
yes, El had been being dehumanised for over a decade of her life. but... ok don't get me wrong on this, Dr Brenner was a hell of a man and stuff, but he never treated her necessarily cruelly? if we speak outside of his experiments. he was kind and nice and patient to her, in his way. he ABSOLUTELY DID traumatize her, again, i stress it, all this lab thing is inhumane. but papa wasn't brutal or violent. it was a scientific lab after all, not a russian prison. and then later on, but not too late, El found people outside the lab, people who showed her love and acceptance, taught her friendship and active kindness, honesty, provided her a safe space as much as they could.
"Billy's cruelty was his own choice" how could Billy be a better person when was never taught to be one? he was trapped with his abuser. one person that could've saved him — left him. with his abuser. are we dead sure Will still would be a kind and bright boy if left with Lonnie one on one for years and years? no escape? no talk back? no brother, no mother, no friends, no usual hobbies because Lonnie would not tolerate them — did Billy had hobbies? are we even sure Billy had any fucking clue about who he was and what he genuinely liked?
you cannot start to reflect on and work through your trauma if everything you do day by day is facing this exact fucking trauma. you cannot ask yourself questions like "am i a good enough person?" if you barely see yourself as a person because the only way you see yourself is through the eyes of your abuser. of your own fucking father. the one who was supposed to be a protector, a provider, a role model.
is Billy a jerk by our standards? an exceptional. but it is exactly because we've got to have those standards, we've got to have multiple books on social studies, psychology, child psychology, child education, we've got racial politics, CPS, we've got movies that raise different social and personal issues for us to watch and have something to reflect on, we have internet to find and compare information; that is exactly why we should find it in ourselves to be kind and compassionate to Billy. because he's an abused, extremely lonely, desperately unhappy kid. he was a teen. he was 18. his fucking brain wasn't fully developed yet. the way he treated Max was bad. it was another link of the abuse chain his father had started — or more likely continued, if you please. it wasn't excusable. but it was understandable, and we should understand him. otherwise all those decades of social studies, plunge into child psychology and overall literacy increase have gone to waste.
it is very easy to show kindness to kind people or characters. it is much harder to be empathetic to jerks in real life. no one wants to delve into an abusive childhood of a guy who beat the shit out of you. i wouldn't want either, no matter what a good-natured moralist i'm being here. but bad characters do not actually hurt us. we can take our time to study them, to view from all sides, to look into their troubled mind and find ways for them to change for the better or answers on why they, in fact, can't do it.
i love Billy. he's got nothing to be loved for. that is exactly why i choose to love him, as a character, and show him kindness he was refused by people around him. he didn't die a hero. he died hurt and broken — hurt by a monster, broken by a human.
(the gif, i took it from pinterest but i'm pretty sure it originates from tumblr, i don't know who's to be credited for it but thanks to you, unnamed warrior)
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