A Sideblog For My Stranger Things Anxieties

Angela | They/Them 18+ (Minors DNI) Main Blog: @oneshortdamnfuse

[stranger-rants]

It took me a long while to feel empathy for Billy Hargrove, because that’s how it always is with me. I judge people very harshly before I get to know them and that extends to how I interpret characters in media. Perhaps it’s just a way that I have learned to protect myself. I grew up angry at the world, and the casual cruelty of others fueled my anger. So, Billy immediately put me on edge.

Do you know what broke me, though? What really hurt me and radically changed how I thought about this character?

It was when Billy begged for his mother to come save him and she never came to get him. It was that moment that really did it for me, because from that moment onward Billy didn’t try any more. He was no longer the sweet boy who would do anything to protect his mom from her abuser because her abuser was now his and his alone and no one was going to save him and no one ever did.

And I know exactly what that feels like.

And I am tired of talking about him with caveats. ‘Oh, I relate to his suffering but I don’t excuse him…” No. I’m tired of it, because abuse survivors like myself are regularly trapped in an endless cycle of self destructive shame and guilt for things we said and did when we were surviving and we don’t get anywhere because of it and I don’t think people realize or care that what they say about us matters.

I want to be able to talk about him in a way that instills some empathy in people towards abuse survivors because there are far too many of us who don’t make it out alive. To say people like us don’t deserve to survive, that we can’t get better, or that we’re too far gone to be saved is casual cruelty and you have to take responsibility for that mindset as much as you demand he take responsibility for himself.

You cannot dig our graves and then demand we crawl out of them without any help.

[stranger-rants]

Forever upset by the lost potential with Billy actually being in the loop and part of the “resistance” so to speak because he would not only have a chance at a proper “redemption,” but as someone who certainly had CPTSD, he would be wired to handle stressful supernatural situations considering his nervous system probably couldn’t tell the difference between being hunted down by upside down creatures and his dad asking him where his sister has been all night. Every day was terrifying and uncomfortable for him so what does it really matter if he’s got to fight a shriveled red skull wannabe and his army of goop… it might as well happen. He would just begrudgingly do what needed to be done and then fuck off to freedom but noooo we can’t let people with CPTSD survive even though they’re already maladaptively equipped to survive horrifying situations. It’s just not realistic.

[elowmojo]

Please help 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[thediktatortot]

Billy's got a leaky pumpkin! I wonder if his friends in the back can help him out 😏

[lazybakerart]

first billy hargrove of 2026 🩷

[stranger-rants]

What could the duffer brothers due to address systemic issues in stranger things because the Lucas and Billy thing is so weak to me

I don’t think they should touch on systemic issues in general if they’re not willing to actually address them with fidelity throughout their work. If they never intended on showing how racism impacts characters on a systemic level, then they shouldn’t have shown it at all. Being motivated by a desire to show violence towards a marginalized group of people rather than a desire to humanize them is bad.

Creators should not be thinking, hmmm… “I am writing a character who is from a historically marginalized group of people, so I must include scenes of them being marginalized even though the story I’m telling isn’t about their experiences with marginalization” because it comes off as if they’re checking a box instead of actually giving a shit about that character’s identity as an integral part of the story.

Oh, we have a character of color? Someone has to call them a slur or else it’s not realistic. This character is gay? We need a coming out scene with everyone present. Check. Check. Now people will think we are being authentic in our portrayal of marginalized groups of people despite the fact our overarching story does not center their experiences with marginalization nor their voice in the matter.

[stranger-rants]

If runaway max could be published I would love a book of billys perspective but I rather have it be written by Dacre to be honest

With all due respect to Dacre, I do think he would write a compelling story about Billy but it would also be the most unhinged thing you will ever read considering he, at one time, pitched the idea that Billy was the son of a virgin and Billy was the modern day Jesus. His brain is on another level and I fear no one would appreciate his genius.

[rigginsstreet]

billys choice of watch being a thick band...

i know he would love a pair of these

thats all

[stranger-rants]

Can we call what Max experienced with Billy abuse? If yes/no, why? I tried to dig into that topic myself and put many things into context, but I still can't make a solid opinion on that. I don't want to call Billy an abuser wrongly. The same with making some things seem less serious than they actually were. We know Billy doesn't have any desire to control Max. He does whenever he's in charge of her because of Neil. His father is controlling Max through Billy, and he's at fault for pitting the siblings against each other. Everything is understable, and I feel terribly sorry for both Billy and Max, but it doesn't change the fact that when Billy looked out for her, he did things that could count as psychical, emotional or verbal abuse. He threatened her through Lucas, tried to control who she's hanging out with, tried to intimidate Max & made her feel scared/small, used degrading words n was controlling, etc. Does the context change the possible label of Billy's behaviour towards her, even if we know where some things were rooted in? At the end of the day, no matter if Billy didn't wholeheartedly mean everything he did to her, Max still faced his violent behaviour, which took (or could take) a tool on her.

I feel like a broken record when I say this but anyone can say and do things that are “abusive” without necessarily being “an abuser,” and there are a multitude of characters who say and do things that are abusive in the show without demonstrating a pattern of behavior that would warrant such a title. It’s okay to accept that there’s nuance to these situations.

Neil is an abuser because he consistently seeks power and control over others, which includes Max. Yes, Billy is not nice to her but when it comes to “controlling” Max, that is a result of Neil commanding him to. His words and actions may be abusive, but he is not trying to have systematic power and control over her and more importantly, he stops as soon as Max demonstrates she can stand up for herself.

Neil doesn’t change his pattern of behavior, which makes it more justifiable to call him an abuser. That’s like a profession to him. He’s spent his life manipulating and wearing down his victims, and he enforces his “standards” through Billy because that in itself helps him maintain power and control.

…why are you so attached to the word abuser and needing a concrete answer as to whether or not you should use it on a teenage survivor, when you can acknowledge his actions were harmful and abusive without having to do all that. Also, really need everyone to understand that Billy is not her parent and should not be responsible for her nor does he ever try to be outside of Neil’s demands.

[stranger-rants]

Apparently the reason why byler nor some of the other couples were endgame happened is because in an interview the duffer brothers said growing up their crushes never returned their feelings

They really used their own insecurities of never having a girlfriend and hating the popular kids for a nostalgia bait tv show

And now I’m starting to believe the #divorcegate theory

I wouldn't be surprised by that, but it also doesn't really matter to me if popular fanon pairs become canon to me. Divorcegate seems less theory and more an observable impact on the success or lack thereof of season 5. An astute observation at that.

[stranger-rants]

Lonnie Byers 🤝🏻 Neil Hargrove: Calling their respective sons named William, a f*ggot

[stranger-rants]

What are your opinions if Billy ended up having a girlfriend

I have no opinions of Billy having a girlfriend. Though it’s implied he’s had sex with women, I view Billy as gay. Not for shipping purposes either. I think there’s a lot of evidence indicating that Billy could be gay, even if it was unintentional. People had theorized prior to Runaway Max that Neil could have moved the family to punish Billy for being gay. A lot of queer people have also talked about how the contempt that Neil feels towards Billy is similar to how their parent(s) made them feel for being queer.

I do think that Billy was at least to some degree attracted to or interested in Steve, regardless if the feelings were returned. Again, this is my opinion outside of the context of shipping. He doesn’t have to have a requited relationship with Steve in order for me to view him as gay. I also think that Billy is gender non-conforming to an extent, and that he is punished for effeminate behavior by his father. I think that Billy’s hypermasculinity is a front, and he uses it as a sort of protective layer around Neil and people he doesn’t trust.

I don’t particularly care if people view him as straight or bisexual, mind you, but I truly don’t think about Billy’s relationships with women outside of Billy trying to fill a void created by his mother’s abandonment. I think his mom allowed him to be soft and sensitive, and that perhaps it is easier for him to be that way around women - to look pretty for them and be adored by them. But his attraction to women is assumed by his peers and even the audience, when he could very well be idolizing them.

We don’t really get to see how Billy feels about this because he’s not given a voice in the narrative on this. Max says Billy gives women happy screams. Billy tells women he can give them the night of their life. There’s girls hanging off of him as soon as he enters Hawkins. Billy is put into a role traditionally given to women in 80s film and television. He is objectified by women. He exists to please women - the first time he meets Karen is prefaced by her reading a romance novel with a beautiful man on the front. Et cetera…

So obviously he’s meant to end up with a girlfriend, right? Well, that’s not how I feel about it and I find queer readings of Billy to be subversive especially when he’s posited as a young gay man, punished for effeminate behavior, desperately seeking out attention from male peers and trying to fill the void of his mother’s abandonment with meaningless hookups with women which are the easiest and “safest” transactional relationships he can have in a small conservative town.

There are gay men who have spoken out about having similar experiences to this, and it’s what I think makes the most sense for his character in the context of everything that he experiences. There’s many gay men who dress and carry themselves the way that Billy does, especially gay men of Billy’s time. There’s also a lot of gay culture specifically that informed the metal scene at the time, which Billy is a part of.

There’s also the fact that Billy has multiple things in common with Will, who is also gay. They’re both William. Born in March, Aries. They were both used by the Mindflayer. They both have abusive fathers, but the main difference between them is that Will’s mother protected him and Billy’s mom abandoned him. It would make sense narratively to read both of them as gay, too. This would deepen the message around the power of love and acceptance from family and friends that helped Will survive, but lack thereof killed Billy.

So, that’s my view on that.

[stranger-rants]

Your answer to one of asks really interested me. Could you elaborate more on your opinion of Billy being at high risk of being abused again in a relationship as an abuse survivor?

There's something called ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) that I've discussed in the past. ACEs are measured by researchers using a non-exhaustive point system, so it does not necessarily account for all types of trauma. However, the goal is to see what kind of life outcomes people with ACEs experience.

Studies have shown that adults with high ACE scores are more likely to experience a wide variety of adverse outcomes in adult life. This does not mean that all people with ACEs are doomed to have adverse experiences throughout their life, but to show that people with ACEs are at risk.

I have an ACE score of about a 7 or 8 out of 10, depending on how you interpret the questions. I have a very successful life and I don't have poor interpersonal relationships, but I do have chronic health problems stemming from some of the ACEs I've experienced.

ACEs are associated with poor physical and mental health outcomes, poor interpersonal relationships, substance abuse, as well as increases one's risk of being a victim of violence including further abuse and exploitation. This is made more likely when no one intervenes to support a child with ACEs.

PACEs, or Protective and Compensatory Experiences, are interventions meant to negate the harm of ACEs. They help children with ACEs not only survive, but thrive. This reduces risk for adverse experiences in adulthood, like facing violence in a relationship.

Billy is already preyed on as a teenager. He is seeking out partners, participating in risky sexual behavior, not just for enjoyment but because he is not safe in his own home, he has no adult family or mentors to support him, and he does not receive love and kindness from his parents.

Billy has no frame of reference for what a positive, healthy relationship looks like. He knows what it is like to be abandoned. He knows what it is like to be controlled by another adult. He views relationships as transactional - he must give of himself (his body) to get something he wants (affection).

Like, yes, Billy is at high risk of experiencing these things in adulthood (if he survived). However, we already have evidence that this was his reality before he was killed - and death at a young age is also a poor life outcome associated with ACEs regardless of the cause.

Everything Billy's witnessed and experienced has taught him that he should just accept being abused and abandoned and violated because no one will help him. That's why he hangs up the phone after being assaulted. That's why he doesn't expect anyone to intervene on his behalf.

Billy as an adult would need to learn about boundaries, self advocacy, sexual health and safe practices, identifying abuse in a relationship, and so on and so forth. Children in stable loving homes learn these things from positive models around them, which Billy did not have.

[stranger-rants]

What's your opinion on Jason from st?

I don't really have much of an opinion of him.

I don't really think about him outside of the narrative purpose he served in season 4.

[stranger-rants]

Looking at the abuse that Billy endured and how he acted during the series (with the proper context, ofc), do you think he would be in any way abusive or controlling towards his partner in a relationship? Not with js a hookup, but like official thing. I'm curious about your point of view.

Billy wouldn't be perfect, that's for sure, but he's unnecessarily portrayed by many people as some kind of master manipulator who would beat the shit out of his gf. I bet you've seen at least a few hcs like that. It doesn't sit right with me

I think it's problematic to assume that any survivor of abuse will become an abuser. We don't know how he would behave in a long term relationship because we never saw it.

Anyone can become an abuser. As a survivor of abuse, Billy is at high risk of being abused again by intimate partners but no one wants to have that conversation.

[stranger-rants]

It’s horrible to read about the way some of the stranger things fandom treated Caleb.

I also don’t like what happened to Lucas’s hairline in season 5 which shows that black actors still have a hard time with stylists because a majority of these stylists in the industry don’t know how to do style black hair or do makeup on darker skin tones

I don't know much about any issues related to season 5 because I did not watch it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Caleb was still being mistreated.

If you're going to work with black actors, you should have people on set who know how to style their hair. Bare minimum.

[demo-stapelia]

billy hargrove is so ridiculously strong it's so far beyond the suspension of disbelief. a girl he doesn't know being nice to him for five seconds which gives him enough strength to fight off the mind flayer's control is one thing, sure

but then the fleshy physical mind flayer, who is a result of about 30 people and an unspecified number of rats, is also ridiculously heavy. taking just the 30 melted people and assuming an average weight of 84kg, that puts the flesh flayer already at ~2500kg (~5500lbs). and again, that's not accounting for the rats.

and sure billy held back only one of the mouth tentacle things but that's the weight behind it.