#so i'm gonna sit here and be a billy apologist and stick him in my handbag

[kitwilsonsass]

No no! Just curious why

Man it's literally so hard to sit here and try to describe, because there are so many reasons why I should absolutely loathe the character. In a lot of ways I *do* loathe the character. Like I actively feel guilty about liking him since rewatching. Of all the fictional assholes I love, he's the closest to *real* and that makes it really hard to excuse. But sometimes good *characters* are not good people, they just play a good role in the story.

THERE'S A WHOLE ASS POORLY CONSTRUCTED NOVEL OF A THING UNDER THE CUT!! 1k+ WORDS OF ME BEING ABSOLUTELY BORING AND FULL OF BAD ANALYSIS! YEEHAW!!!

I am really drawn to sibling dynamics. I am an absolute sucker for a big brother figure. And again, this is why I should completely hate him. I wouldn't typically sit around and project and come to backwards ass conclusions about shitty brothers. I have enough of a fucking complex about them on a very personal level (and fathers, while we're at it) to want to sympathize with it in my escape media. But I'm not going to give every bummer 'got left waiting sat on the stairs all day' life story I ever had.

Point being, a lot of my feelings towards Billy come from the fact that I would take a fucking bullet for Max, and he's terrible to her. Absolutely fucking terrible. She thinks he hated her. She hated him. And that's 100% understandable.

Yet, in *hindsight*... I just... don't think he hated her. At all. I think he was possessive and little co-dependent and more protective than he'd ever admit? She's, weirdly, the only one who really understands all his issues, and she might not even know that. Not to mention he probably took a lot of literal hits for her she never even knew about. This doesn't make it okay. He's a piece of shit. But it fucking *compels me though dot gif.*

(Sidenote: Haven't read the Max book, heard S3 contradicts it anyway, but I do know apparently he gave her her nickname which is adorable if true. And that he took a bunch of belt lashings. Please get fucked, Neil. How is that guy still allowed to be alive?)

The Lucas scene is rough because it is framed SO fucking badly. It is. It's hard to watch.

...but when I go back to it:

Suddenly I'm stuck knowing this dude gets his ass beat because of this girl all the time, and this dude grew up watching the only woman in his life that gave a shit about him get the shit beat out of her too.

...and now I'm stuck knowing he watched this girl try to walk away from some kid who kept yelling after her, watched them argue, watched Max storm off visibly upset

And despite the really off-kilter music and the wording after that, I'm stuck thinking 'he was pissed at him because he *made max upset*'

Is that it? Probably not. He's probably just shit and it's exactly what it says on the tin and for some reason wasn't pushed despite them not really shying away from a few other choice blunt subjects and words. But I also can't *not* see it this way now. And I can't *not* think about the dad at all, given the things he said and clearly believes about people (and all the toxic masc. bullshit expectations). Be that directly influencing behaviors or the fact that if Max came home with Lucas, shit would probably go down. Explained but not excused, abused kids do take after their parents a lot of times, he's still young and people can change, etc etc.

At best it's still a bad look.

Jump forward. When he gets called out for losing her at the end of the season, he says she doesn't need a full time babysitter. Maybe, probably, he did just really want to get to his date. But he also knew damn well where she went. He goes to Lucas's house. He immediately knew she went with him. He didn't HAVE to make a case for her taking care of herself. But he did? That sticks with me for some reason.

When he finds them eventually, as insincere as it is, there's a real big Jerkass Has A Point moment where he points out that his sister is in the middle of nowhere at a stranger's house, with a high school dude who is insisting she isn't. We know better as the audience, but from a more realistic perspective, he ain't wrong.

Then she physically stands up to him and he backs the fuck off like a scared puppy and seemingly leaves her alone from then on. Which, to Vec's point, is a lot braver than him, when he didn't stand up to *his* abuser the episode before. Suddenly next season the dude who was grabbing her arm is on the floor begging her to believe him when he says he didn't mean to hurt anybody.

(Sidenote Numero Dos: Somehow despite sharing a house, none of them ever got flayed. Probably just an oversight, but if you're gonna give me blanks to fill in, I'm gonna make assumptions.)

To get to Season 3 and sum stuff up *without* Max for the most part:

His biggest declaration at the end of Season 2 was that "no one tells [him] what to do." He gets flayed for that effort. This happens to him after he stares at himself in the mirror, which his father previously called him slurs for. I really, really hate that.

The dude objectifies the living fuck out of himself probably because it's the only control he actually has over anything and anyone in his life and at the end of the day and he gets punished for it.

His heroic sacrifice moment is all just standing up to a big giant oppressor which he was never able to do before in his entire life. Both his oppressors turned him into someone he never would have wanted to be. Something something, even evil has standards. Yes, like they said, he *is* a gross bully but he's not a murderer who ties people up in his trunk.

...............Also he just looks *extremely fucking small and vulnerable* in this shot despite the camera looking up at him, and despite him being an imposing monster the entire episode:

i'm going to wrap him in a blanket and give him so much hot cocoa and so many buckets to throw up bleach into and you can't stop me.

also also this cinematography is just really fucking cream pants worthy:

like god i want to watch that episode on imax.

ANYWAY

I basically skimmed the entire season but nothing was necessary to point out other than the fact that he's crying like every single fucking moment of every single fucking day and that he's apparently GREAT with little kids. Like people trust this asshole. With their children's literal lives. Huhwha. Probably because he gets out of his house and gets to be his own person, in his literal subverted element.

His last significant memory is "this is your new sister" and he fucking yeets himself for some kid he just met that knows more about him than anyone has any right to (and I say that very pointedly. It's AUTONOMY, PEOPLE. SAY IT WITH ME.).

TL;DR BILLY IS A WATER PERSON MOMMA'S BOY WHO DIDN'T WATCH OUT FOR THE RIP CURRENT SHE WARNED HIM ABOUT AND HE ONLY EVER JUST WANTED TO PROTECT HIS SHITTY LITTLE SISTER (AND DID IT CONSISTENTLY IN A REALLY SHITTY WAY)

He's terrible and Max and the audience have every right to have wished him dead, or not to be "redeemed" or think it wasn't enough. I'll sit here all day and come up with 'if he'd lived.....'s but it doesn't mean I even think he should have.

but i'mma still hug him and i'mma still sit here and say the first thing el did when she got to cali was send back some really cool shells she found on the beach with a note to leave some for billy. YOU CAN'T STOP ME.

Other shit I think is worth noting: That time he had the audacity to say "Here I am," as if he didn't enter the show to that fucking song. The Camaro is a thing of beauty. The Lost Boy aesthetic. Moving in Stereo. And if I haven't stressed enough the propaganda of this post that Billy is a Hero To Women, Actually, he apparently makes them happy scream. So he's doing something right despite seeming like the biggest self involved douche on the face of the planet.

Oh, and his summer wear photoshoot. Obviously. That's just fun marketing.