billy @severflesh - Tumblr Blog

On the topic of Billy's hair-

As much as I think it's funny to headcanon Billy's hair as greasy, I've been doing some research on trends in hairstyles at the time and I feel the need to point out that the heavily gelled look was extremely popular for his haircut:

^ thats not grease, it's hair product

So this opens up a new possibility that I really like: Billy spends a fuckload of time on his hair.

That shit is gelled everyday and he takes extra time to make it look artfully messy- all those strands falling in front of his eyes? He put them there. It's a look that lets him pretend he doesn't care about presentation, doesn't spend too much time on it because of course that would be gay. He's like "oh me? I just rolled out of bed like this", meanwhile this homo is doing his own version of the Patrick Bateman beauty routine before school.

This feels a bit more in-character for the way I write him in my fics. Every part of himself that he presents to the outside world is carefully curated to present the image he wants, even his seemingly unwashed hair.

It also creates the added bonus of Stu being the only one to see him with un-styled hair because he gets to see him after the shower. Without the product in I imagine it would be a little wavy/curly like Skeet's natural texture, and Stu would fucking SWOON.

Honestly I like this idea so much that I almost want to edit a little mention of it into Debaser, just so it's canon in my fic.

sharpth1ng

Okay wait I have more to add but it contains Wave of Mutilation spoilers, so don't read below if you don't want to know.

Alright so we all know Wave of Mutilation Billy has grown out his hair- initially it's kind of a depression thing but he keeps letting it go after he recovers from the darker part of 1997. By the time he's starting college it's brushing his shoulders, and he can't really style it the way he used to.

Growing it out that much at all is evidence of some of his walls coming down, and even though it starts from a place of nihilism it turns into a tentative form of self expression (not that he'd admit that, even to himself).

He's finally admitted to himself that he's gay and that he's in love with Stu, and he did just tell Stu that he wants to be with him. He's finally, for the first time, having to conceptualize himself as a gay man (and of fucking course that's mostly a really messy process, but this part is less so).

The longer hair is a subconscious test- is he ready to see himself differently? It's also a kind of unmasking, dropping a habit that he did compulsively because he needed to be seen a certain way. To be clear he's far from finished with masking, he's far from actually coming out, and he's absolutely going to continue being extremely concerned about the way he's seen but others, but he is actually loosening up a little.

He might cut it again in the future but it wont be the kind of compulsive-feeling decision it would have been in high-school, because it no longer feels like validity of his whole persona/gender/orientation is riding on the choices he makes about his presentation. He's not in a small town anymore, he's at film school and he's realized he can get away with a lot more than he thought he could.