#just because your dad says ''stop preening like a queer'' doesnt give you license to abuse your sister

[theundeadmetalheadapolagia]

Hiya! I'm sorta coming off Anon to point this out: I never said half of the shit you pointed out? Neither did op. I'm gonna argue it anyway, though.

Let me start this off by saying that if you're into dissecting Billy & seeing how he ticks, cool. I don't begrudge people for finding him interesting as a character, but I do think that writing off genuinely criticism of his behaviour that is addressed in canon is a whole other thing. At the end of the day, Billy was written, explicitly, to be an antagonist. He hurt, attempted to hurt, &/or traumatized a good chunk of the main cast. He's very heavily implied to have held sexist beliefs ("your bitch" etc), homophobic beliefs (that "princess" was not in good queer fun), & yes, racist beliefs and actively acted on them.

And the thing is, the racism is basically spelled out as explicitly as can be in the show. He actively does not give a shit where Max is until it's possible that she's with Lucas. He breaks her shit & threatens her mental & physical health & nearly kills some kids to punish her for "talking back", but suddenly when Lucas is involved he gives a shit about her safety? He threatens Lucas with some pretty pointed dialogue, holds him against a wall despite the fact that he did absolutely nothing to Max (and if you said he made her feel bad, 1. He's the first one to reach out & try to explain and 2. Bite me that's still an overreaction to put it extremely mildly) but he's not racist? I would love to see how you can disprove it because Jesus wept, that's a very flimsy argument to say that the racism isn't there.

Point two: I'm so correct & hot & smart for my point about how Billy views femininity & queerness, because it's true. I can see why people read him as Heavily Repressed Queer but I don't buy it. I've met plenty of capital-S Straight guys who get so fucking incensed at the idea of being even slightly implied to be queer. I stand by my reading, even if I can accept that others don't have the same.

Third, yes, Neil sucks. Yes, he's definitely instilled some awful ideas about masculinity & whiteness in Billy. That doesn't excuse his actions. And yes, it all probably stems from fear and abuse, but abuse is a choice and Billy makes it at every single opportunity except his literal death, arguably. I do think, in the real world, a person can unlearn awful shit & become better after doing awful shit, but Billy's just a fictional guy. He's limited by his very nature to what's on the page, and the book is closed. Could they have handled it with a bit more tact & nuance? Maybe. But he's a character, not someone who can grow & change independently.

Plus, as a contrast, let us view Jonathan: also had a shit dad who used homophobic slurs as an insult, but didn't choose to abuse his little brother and instead stepped up for him. Very noticeably, Will & Jonathan are in a lot of S2 in contrast to Max & Billy (I can think of the car scenes off the top of my head). Hell, Steve's dad is implied to suck shit too, & he gets a better "growing up" arc than Billy. Because he chose to. Plenty of people, in the series itself and real life, have shitty dads and don't end up trying to run over children & mutilate cats, or beating someone to a concussion, unconsciousness & almost coma because they stopped you from committing a hate crime.

And yes, I think his death was a bad decision. I think Billy shouldn't have died a heroic death at the end of S3, and was wary that S4 would give him a delayed hero arc where everything was wiped away. I'm grateful that the nuance was held, somewhat, by Max having complicated feelings about it. Because abuse survivors often do. I think it would've been far more interesting if he does try to change, provided that his actions are never forgotten and, realistically, probably never forgiven by those he wronged.

And yes, I think if people are equating Eddie with physical filthiness just because he's from a trailer park, that's shitty as fuck. But if you're referring to the headcanons that he's into kinky sex as "filth", I kindly ask you to read up on why equating the two is dangerous for irl queer people. I will only ask once.

(Also, yeah, op, I do think most of Eddie is conjecture and wishful thinking. I do think the writers haven't provided much & most of it is a give & take between the fans & his actor)

Also, yes, Eddie's decision to run away is also motivated a lot by fear? So? Self-preservation is one thing. Actively physically, emotionally, mentally hurting people because you're too scared they're gonna nebulously affect your world view is a whole other.

Also, bonus round, did anyone say the actor did a bad job? Show of hands?

Tl;dr: I never said that Harringrove fans are stealing Eddie's characterization. I am saying that the accusations of steddie fans plagiarizing Harringrove, unless it's specifically referring to fics being copy/pasted (which, do not do that. That's bad.), are most likely baseless conjecture regarding "vibes", as the differences between the two are glaring. Also, that Billy sucks & pretending he doesn't is like. Ignoring what his character is about. As if other characters with bad dads don't also grow up and do better. But I got wayyyyy off point holy shit

"Steddie are just stealing from Harringrove!!!"

Eddie: genuinely good dude who acts flirty in a way that doesn't seem to use queerness as an insult

Billy: genuinely awful dude who calls Steve "princess" because by all accounts in canon, he thinks women are bitches & that queerness IS an insult

Like say what you will about Steddie, they get like 5 minutes of onscreen time, but at least those 5 minutes are not full of like. Blatant animosity & Eddie caving Steve's face in.

ooft……. yeah.

like i have to genuinely thank you for bringing this up because i had a bunch of billy stans basically try and make the argument to me that because he never said slurs he wasn’t homophobic. he wasn’t calling steve princess or pretty boy because he thinks highly of women or feminine men. let’s think about this critically people. for once it being the 80s is relevant and billy was being latently homophobic. this was not a big boy moment said in flirty jest. 

the boy was raised with a father that throws around the word fag with such vitriol i’d be more surprised if somehow billy wasn’t a bigot. and i’m sorry whilst i think he’s queer, in the show we’ve only ever seen him pursue (older) women

whereas eddie is very heavily queer coded. doesn’t seem to have a bigoted bone in his body. is very against the system. even when he thought he was at great risk didn’t actually hurt steve. and within the entirety of their dynamic, steve at the very least doesn’t object and at best seems to mutually play along just fine

i think a lot of steddie material is entirely fandom conjecture as well. to give the show credit would be too much credit to be frank. but that’s what makes the plagiarism comments so egregious. at least eddie’s characterisation is somewhat based in reality 😬