"his eyes were a dead, dull color i'd never seen before, like looking into a black hole."
who's up thinking abt the tragic siblingism of max and billy 5 years later...
they've been rotating around my head for a solid two years now and i have literally nobody to talk to abt them so here i am
it's the fact they never got a chance to talk anything out . that max has to remember billy for longer than she'd known him . that billy wanted to protect max from his own monster, unknowingly pushing her away into the arms of Actual Real Life monsters .
"i was getting a brother, and it was going to change my life." whew boy idk if she meant like That guys....
nobody think abt how the only time max and billy truly talked was billy begging max to forgive him for the horrible things he was forced to do . and max sincerely believing that they could save him, telling him it was going to be okay, because maybe she had thought of him as a monster before, but face to face with him now - she realised he was human in every way it mattered, and loving him was possible . SICKKKK
Thinking about how Billy’s response to Max asking if he was okay after being beaten with a belt in Runaway Max was to tell her to stay away from him. Thinking about how Billy picked up the phone to call 911 when he was violated by the Mindflayer but then hung up. Thinking about how Billy still went into work after crashing his car and getting assaulted. Thinking about how Karen cornered him when he was visibly unwell to explain herself and Billy told her to stay away… to protect her. Thinking about how Billy never asks for help because help never came when he called for help when was a little boy.
I’ve talked before about the obvious difference between these two scenes, but I wanted to make a post specifically about it because it’s an important point in informing both characters’ experiences pre-Hawkins.
Max is surprised and confused in a way she would not be if this was something Billy did commonly. The bickering and shouting at each other was the norm, this is new, she was not expecting it. She even explicitly says so later on that it was not the norm back in California. (It’s also worth noting that it doesn’t become the norm, it’s an aberration. By season 3 they’re back on even keel.)
Billy is not surprised. Even at the moment of impact he is resigned, he is deeply familiar with how this goes. He’s already anticipating the slap. He’s also trying to remain stoic until his father leaves the room to avoid making things worse, he doesn’t allow himself to react until he’s out of immediate danger.
These are not the reactions of two characters with the same experiences with violence.
