#not talking about the racial side of it because i've made three essays about that already

[emzular]

jason vs billy, some thoughts.

tldr: jason wanted to kill eddie in cold blood, vs billy who was only violent because violence and abuse are all he's ever known.

i'll start by saying that when it comes to 80s tropey high school bullies, jason fits the bill perfectly. he's the jock, the cool rich guy. he's what steve was meant to be in season one. jason is your basic, white, rich school jock bully.

billy's different. he's a metal head and he doesn't conform to the sleepy town aesthetic of hawkins at all. he struts in, double denim, thick boots, curly long hair, rock music blaring loud as fuck. billy hargrove instantly doesn't look like the jock bully stereotype. he's the metalhead outsider, the new kid. but he tries to fit into the jock mould all the same. he plays basketball, he goes to the parties, he flirts with all the women, he fights king steve to be the top dog. because that's how he survives. his dad abuses him, we know that, but if billy has 'friends' and sports and parties and a reputation as the popular guy to uphold, maybe his dad won't end him. so billy plays the bully. and it's easy because he was raised by one. it's easy to play that role.

then again, it's likely easy for jason to play his role too. his dad was probably the popular guy at school, and he grew up rich. well off. of course jason's going to be popular, of course he's going to be a jock. but where billy's trying to fit the mould, jason is the mould. you can see that billy's trying to fit in by the way he practises his smiles, and his lines in the mirror. he's trying to be this perfect image. whereas jason already is.

anyway, jason goes on a rampage across hawkins, starts accusing literal children of satanism and accuses eddie of being a cult leader, all because his girlfriend died. and while that's heartbreaking as fuck for jason, his girlfriend died and he went crazy. jason wanted to kill eddie and the hellfire club. the worst thing in jason's life is that his girlfriend was hanging around with a potential satanist, and he decided he wanted to commit murder.

the worst thing in billy's life? pick one. he's abused by his dad, controlled by his dad, forced to live under his dad's strict rules; and then he's captured by the mind flayer, abused and used and controlled by the mind flayer until billy literally kills himself because it's the only way out. billy never wanted to kill anyone - yes in season 2 he makes comments, says he'll kill them, but he wouldn't. he's a seventeen year old angry hurt boy, and he's lashing out. he wanted to hurt, but that's because he was being hurt. he wanted the easy life he thought king steve had, he wanted the friends that max had, he wanted what everyone else had. but he never wanted to kill anyone, even if he said it. you can see his threats were just an excuse to throw fists (because fists is all he knows, from his father). he never started a witch hunt:

that was jason.

so tell me how the rich, easy life jock boy jason is better than the poor abused and tortured new kid? tell me why billy deserves to be vilified and called the worst villain in the show, when all of his actions stem to the fact that his father beats him up? jason became unhinged so fucking fast, because his perfect life and his perfect girlfriend was taken from him.

jason fought lucas in the end, literally encouraged the witch hunt of a group of kids. he was not going to stop. he did to lucas exactly what billy did in season two. but where jason is somehow "understandable" in his actions because his girlfriend died, billy isn't? billy found his thirteen year old sister in a strangers house with a bunch of boys, one of them being his own age; tell me he's not got a reason to be angry.

and hey: jason wanted eddie to die. he wanted to fight him and to kill him. jason wound up the entire town, and got a bunch of his friends together, convinced them to tag along in his murderous quest. jason was willing to commit murder.

billy never would've taken it that far. he got close, in season 2 with the fight at the end, but he's not a murderer. he didn't go there intending to kill steve, or lucas. he went there (weaponless) to get his kid sister back home. unlike jason, who went to the house in season 4 with the intention to kill.

billy was just looking for his sister, and found steve, an eighteen year old guy, with his thirteen year old sister. of course he fought. but jason? jason went after eddie with the intention to harm.

look at jason and his gang in season 4, vs billy and his in season 3.

jason rounded up a gang, got weapons, and was ready to kill eddie. billy was being mind controlled and abused the entire time. he didn't have any part to play in the villainy of season 3. but jason? in season 4? that was all him.

it reeks of classism, you know? going crazy/bloodthirsty for love vs finding your kid sister in the middle of the night with an adult male is not the same motive: one has privilege, the other does not. and also, jason does what he does by choice. billy never had a choice, he’s abused and mind controlled. jason chose and had the freedom to turn on eddie and to spread hate against him. billy was being told what to do by his father and then the mind flayer. billy was not acting of his own wishes. but jason was.

at the root of jason, is someone willing to kill.

at the root of billy, is someone willing to be killed.

and saying billy is worse than jason, saying billy is worse than someone who wanted to kill someone is saying that anyone who's trauma comes out in a way that isn't deemed "perfect" or "normal" is a villain. anyone who doesn't "fit the mould" of society like jason does, is a monster, and deserves to die.

[ithappensoffstage]

hey there I'm just curious about why you guys love billy from st so much bc personally I didn't sympathize with him until towards the end of s3 and really only thought of him as abusive to max and a bit racist, and not super redeemable but I've noticed you mentioning a lot of stuff about him being queer coded etc which I never picked up on- I'm not trying to start anything, just genuinely curious about the other side of things (and wishing we got to see a bit more of a redemption arc for him)

Hi! Jas here! Thank you so much for this ask. I love talking about Billy and I LOVE that you didn’t come here to pick a fight. I’m so tired of toxicity in fandoms. Sigh. Anyway! My interest in Billy started from his introduction; I always worry seeing aggressively heterosexual character intros, and that’s what his was, but it seemed so performative that I couldn’t take it at face value. I will also admit a personal pull toward 80s aesthetic boys with the denim and earrings that may have skewed my feelings a bit at first. But I digress! More under the cut!

(Sidenote: There’s a lot to unpack about queer coding villain characters that I could go into, though that would be vastly academic—I’ve written university essays on the subject--, so I will suffice it to say that the antagonist strutting about, wearing tight jeans, grooming his hair, liking perfume, and worrying about his appearance, which are all stereotypical homosexual tendencies, is quite telling).

I know this isn’t exactly what you asked BUT it’s so integral to my feelings about Billy and his behavior and his possible redemption that I have to mention it... I started shipping Harringrove rather early on. I’ve seen the closeted-gay-bully-hyperfixates-on-his-crush trope in myriad forms of media, including another Netflix series called Sex Ed, that it was difficult not to notice in Stranger Things, too. Billy’s immediate attachment to Steve is explained as the need to compete in some sort of macho fest/fight for the crown, except that Steve has already forfeited that spot. There’s no real competition rather than the one that Billy manifests so that he can be near Steve and constantly aggravate him to the point of physical altercation on the court or insults in the locker room.

Speaking of the locker room! THE SHOWER SCENE. That scene was as homoerotic as you can get, really, and Billy was staring at Steve the entire time. Billy’s eyes were on Steve and his ‘relationship’ with Tommy and the other popular guys is, again, performative and strictly to build up that tough guy image.

Internalized homophobia is a prevailing blight upon queer youth. In the 80s, when being gay was attached to HIV/AIDS, pedophilia, and all other unpleasant connotations, not many men were out. In a small town in Indiana, we see it peripherally, such as the three instances of using the word “faggot” but not one gay character until the end of S3 (and a gay character that wasn’t written as gay until shooting had already started, according to Maya Hawke).

I noticed the racism, too. That made me uncomfortable and was on-brand for this semi-homicidal maniac/bully/white hypermasculine narcissist, though Dacre and the Duffers all denied his racism because his antagonism toward Lucas allegedly just involved protecting Max or keeping her alone in his fucked-up big-brother control-freak dynamic. I don’t really buy that it wasn’t racially motivated because the internalized homophobia and sexism inform other biases. I believe, however, that Billy could learn, grow, and change in those aspects. He is only 17 when we first meet him. So I imagined redemption from the start. I saw the beginnings of a redemptive storyline with the look between Max and Billy before the Snow Ball in the S2 finale.

I perceived the possibility of redemption when Billy’s dad hit him. There’s a story there: domestic abuse starting from childhood, and Neil is the one to use homophobic slurs toward Billy. I don’t think that’s a coincidence and it was absolutely an intentional script choice. Various studies indicate children who are hit by their parents will hit others; Billy’s dad strikes him, and that same night, Billy almost beats Steve to death. Whenever Billy’s dad expresses verbal disappointment, Billy is mean to Max. Billy grabs Max’s arm to intimidate her, and in the S3 memory/flashback we see Neil grab Billy’s arm and call him a pussy. Billy then jumps another kid and calls him a pussy. Replace that word with “faggot” and I see the actuality instead of the metaphor that I think the Duffers subconsciously injected into this character.

Does a tragic backstory excuse a character’s awful behavior? God no. It simply explains it. Billy, though, had time, room, chances, etc. to improve himself. What did I get instead? A slap in the face of Billy being infected by a virus in the 1980s that turned him into a literal monster, and a small little redemption, not even an arc, but a two-minute moment, that culminated in death.

I wish we had a lot more for Billy, too. Regardless if you loved or hated him, I think his death was unnecessary, harsh, and poor storytelling, because it told people the only way for change to occur is with physical sacrifice and not, y’know, a good fight and an amazing, conscious decision to become a better person.

Thank you again. Please let me know if I didn’t explain anything super well and I’ll be more than happy to elaborate!