the way billy’s mom leaving would’ve given neil the perfect excuse if people ever started to question billy’s behaviour

This is my first and probably last post I will ever make. I’m here to consume the content, not necessarily create it.

I see all of you fighting the good fight for Billy and his story. And I wanted to add my thoughts into the ring.

As someone who works with children and adults from abusive backgrounds EVERY SINGLE DAY. I can tell you that Billy checks every single box for being in his survival state 24/7.

I have had extensive trainings about trauma, how to recognize it and the effects it can have on a person and how they act. Personally I have endured a lot of trauma myself and had to unlearn a lot of unhealthy behaviors and ways of thinking because of it.

With that being said: someone who is in a state of survival constantly is not capable of thinking rationally, the only goal is to…survive.

Billy Hargrove was an abused child. A CHILD. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Does this forgive his actions? No. But it explains them. Gives us a deeper insight into the “why?”

Neil hit his son, he insulted him, called him a slur and then reminded him that Max, his younger stepsister’s well-being is in his hands. That’s a lot for a 17 year old to go through. Then he goes to the Byers residence where he’s insulted and lied to. His sister (who’s well-being is in his hands) is alone with 5 boys, one of them is his age? THEN to top it all off, Steve punches him? All that built up rage from what just happened with Neil comes spilling out. Oh and to make matters worse, he gets sedated and Max MIRRORS Neil’s abuse by making him repeat himself. Keep this in mind, while all this is going on Billy has absolutely no idea what is going on. He still doesn’t know what Max is doing with all of these boys in this house.

Moving forward- Billy gets possessed by the mind flayer, he still has no idea what is going on and loses control of his own body. He had to watch as his hands take the lives of many people to feed this creature from his worst nightmares. Then this group of children lock him in a sauna, he is FINALLY able to beg for help and sobs. Even then NOBODY tells him what’s going on, no one really makes an effort to help him. It’s only in the final episode of season 3 that El breaks through to him, she see’s his past, his mom leaving, the abuse. Even standing up to the mind flayer Billy has no idea what he’s up against, he’s still in the dark. All he knows is that it’s him or this child that showed him how to come back to himself. It’s him or Max, and as we already know Max’s well-being is in his hands. Nothing is more terrifying than Neil’s wrath. And in his dying breath he apologizes.

For my fellow Billy Stans- Please never let anyone bully you about what characters you can and can’t like. Your ability to see deeper into the characters and push past the hate is needed in this world. Not just in fiction, but in the real world. If you relate to Billy as I do, from past trauma, I am so sorry. I am so very sorry that you have to fight, explain and rationalize your love for him every time. For whatever reason you stand behind Billy Hargrove, it is valid. And unlike Billy’s story, I hope that yours doesn’t end in tragedy. My inbox is always open for those who need to talk.

Now, for the Antis- I want to say, good for you. You managed to take a broken and deeply complex character and reduce him to a heartless villain in your minds. Think what you want about him, it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is how you act to the people who do relate to Billy. The name calling, the hate, the wild assumptions about real people!! It’s so insane to me. I hope that turning into the bully to make a point was worth it. How other people relate to a character doesn’t affect you in any way at all. Somehow many of you have managed to put people down and make them afraid to express their love for a character. It’s not something to be proud of.

I am not willing to argue with anyone on this, this is just my views and my opinion. Dacre Montgomery stated that he worked hard to humanize Billy Hargrove. Seeing his character be dragged through the mud and continuously be turned into the irredeemable monster by the Duffer Brothers and the fans is just really sad.

Billy Hargrove means a lot to me. For a lot of different reasons. He deserved so much more than he was given. He deserved a chance to redeem himself and to tell his side of the story. He deserved a chance to apologize for everything he did in his survival state. He deserved the chance to finally be happy and be surrounded by people who actually cared for him, who wanted to help him.

Just keep going everyone. ❤️

Yes. Riko was an abuser. Nobody can deny that he hurt, sexually abused and tormented people physically and emotionally.

Yes. Riko was abused. He was hit by Tetsuji when he got things wrong, conditioned to believe that he had to be the best or his life wasn't worth living. He was abandoned by his father because he was second born, ignored by his big brother, and not even congratulated after he tried everything to gain their approval.

Yes. He hurt Jean out of anger. He used Jean as an object because that is all he had ever been to his father and family. He was a way to make money, but his father never saw him as anything more than that. It allowed him to feel powerful and in control of someone when everything else in his life was out of his control.

Yes. He flips after his father dies. Of course, he does. When you've worked your entire life to be acknowledged, spending thousands upon thousands of hours training to win, winning trophies, doing sponsorships, raising great chunks of money for the family, only for your father to die before even showing an ounce of pride for you? Of course, he flips. Jean just happens to be there, someone he knows he can hurt and get away with. Someone less than him at the bottom of the food chain. Perhaps the only person who sees the anger for what it truly is: failure. And Riko doesn't like that.

Yes. He hurt Kevin out of jealousy. Riko grew up in a world where failure was unacceptable. Failure meant pain, death and suffering. Exy was all Riko had and all he ever had. He couldn't stand to be second best because second best is all he had ever been. He would not be second in the one thing he was meant to be the king of. He hurt Kevin out of jealousy, and was beaten to an inch of his life for it.

Yes. He grew up sheltered. Riko was groomed to be a star by Tetsuji. He was groomed and exploited for money by the only person who had ever looked at him and seen something. He lost his mother. His father didn't care about him. He had nobody. He lived underground in the nest for most of his life and played exy every single day for most of his childhood. He probably had no friends his own age until Kevin came along. There was nobody who understood what Riko was going through.

Yes. Riko hurt Andrew. He had Andrew hurt as another power trip. It was to show he had great power and could do what he wanted with it. He had no boundaries. Throughout the series, Riko is shown to be insecure. He craves power and acknowledgement and wants to prove he has a place in the mafia family next to his brother.

Yes. Riko is more complex than a simple villain. He is self-destructive and works to the bone to try and be worth something. He uses anger to cover up his blatant abandonment issues. He is never and will never be enough. And if he can't be enough, then nobody else can. Nobody can take his place.

He is scared of Kevin, frightened of Neil, terrified of Andrew. He is constantly trying to stop his precarious tower from tumbling in the only way he knows how.

If all his mistakes were punished with pain, disappointment and anger, how can he know any different? He doesn't know the world really and hasn't experienced it outside his little box of stardom. He doesn't know what is 'normal.' For him, failing means getting beaten. Failure means losing his status. Failing means falling from power. It always has.

No. Just because Riko was abused and groomed does not mean that his abusive behaviours were justified. He chose to become an abuser, despite everything he had suffered.

No. He wasn't born evil. He is horrible - don't get me wrong - but he shouldn't just be cast off as coming out of the womb with horns and a tail. He was shaped by his experiences, negative and positive. We all are.

Riko thought beating people into submission would show his power and prove his worth to his family. In the end, it resulted in his downfall.

just saw a gif set that made my blood boil so let’s chat real quick about how the primary reason Jonathan got the chance to be a cycle-breaker was because Joyce kicked Lonnie out. she cut the thread. she freed her sons. Jonathan was given a safe and supportive environment to process the abuse he’d been subjected to as a child, set boundaries between himself and his abuser that were fortified by Joyce, and express himself without fear of judgement or ridicule by a parent who loves him unconditionally and who was always in his corner. he was able to provide that same support to Will because it was modeled for him by Joyce.

Joyce fought for her children at every turn. Jonathan hid Will, protected him while their mother fought for them. both of those boys knew that Joyce would do anything for them, that she was breaking up her marriage for their safety, that everything she did was with them in mind. she didn’t give the cycle a change to take root. she said absolutely not and dealt with the problem for them, giving them the tools and confidence to stand up to Lonnie in the future. she did not let Lonnie be a black cloud over her children. she made sure that her boys knew that they were loved and supported and worthy of kindness. she fought Lonnie for them.

Billy’s mom, on the other hand, who isn’t even granted a name in the narrative, just…left. she saved herself. whatever safety and comfort she provided while living in the house left with her. no matter her intentions— whether she meant to come back for him or not, whether she had some other plan —she didn’t tell Billy. her actions, on the surface, communicated to him “you’re on your own, kid.” left alone with his abuser. left alone to survive. he had no one. absolutely no one fought for the little boy crying on the phone for his mother to come home. in flashbacks and in the canon timeline we do not ever see Billy with friends. his abuser has him exactly where he wants him: isolated, scared, vulnerable. Neil could do whatever he wanted to Billy without consequences. even if Billy tried to fight back, Neil knew he could threaten and/or beat him into submission. there was no one for Billy to go to, and the older he got the less likely it was that someone would help because to the outside world he just looked like a bad kid that Neil was stuck dealing with.

more than that, Billy did not have a model for behavior outside of Neil. his father was his example for how to interact with the people and the world around him. he had no one showing him that softness or kindness was an option. he wants someone— Max, for example —to do as he says? he’s got to get loud. he’s got to get aggressive. he’s got to the be the bully, because bullies get listened to. that’s what he learned. the one person who might have shown him another path left him in the dust. he had no warm fuzzies. no support.

Jonathan physically, verbally, and emotionally pushes back against Lonnie multiple times in season one because he is free to do so. he doesn’t live under the same roof. he knows that if Lonnie tries to come after him, Joyce will raise hell. he even gets the police chief in his corner by the end, knows that both Joyce and Hopper would defend himself and Will if push came to shove. he has Nancy, too, eventually. she’s tiny and scrappy and even if she never meets Lonnie face to face, she provides Jonathan with emotional support. Will, too, provides safety and comfort and support. even Argyle, with all his goofiness and quirks, clearly loves and supports Jonathan. Jonathan fights knowing that he’s not alone in that fight. for his early-series loner persona, he’s truly surrounded by people who love him and who would go to bat for him without blinking an eye.

when Billy tries to do the same thing, pushing back against Neil because he was tired, fed up, strapped with Max for a full week, thinking there was a set time that his obligation was fulfilled only to have Neil and Susan saunter in three hours late, he gets backed into a corner. manhandled, hit, talked down to. and he knows that no one is coming to save him. he doesn’t have friends he can go to — all of his relationships feel very superficial. Susan is shut down when she tries to speak up, tries to tell Neil to back off. everyone in that house is under Neil’s control. Billy has to choose: keep fighting and get hurt, or shut up and obey. he chooses self preservation. he’s got to keep his head down to survive, because no one is coming for him, there is no one to run to, there is no one to help him. he learned a long time ago that Neil will always get his way, that Billy will always be his punching bag. he doesn’t have the tools to fight back in any real sense, and that is exactly what both Neil and Lonnie likely want. the difference is that Jonathan had support, and Billy did not.

and, on top of all of that, Billy gets immediately parentified when Max comes on the scene. and yes, I do see a problem with the parentification of Jonathan as well. both Billy and Jonathan were far too young to have that much responsibility on their plates. but it is indicative of both the time period and their socioeconomic statuses. the parents had to work. the older siblings had to step up for the younger siblings. it perpetuates today even stepping back from that, Jonathan seemed to like taking care of Will. he loves his brother, and he wants to be there for him in any way he can. he loves his mother, who supports him, who loves him back, and he wants to help her. Billy is just shoved into a big brother role with a literal stranger. he didn’t know Max from a hole in the wall and all of a sudden he’s responsible for her every move, is punished when she does wrong, has to watch his father treat her better because she’s the golden child. all of this while some other woman is taking up the space his mother left behind and not doing anything to help Billy, whether she’s too afraid to speak up or she turns a blind eye.

while these two boys have similar early childhoods, their upbringing is simply not comparable. Billy and Jonathan had two different experiences, and pitting them against each other lauding one as a cycle-breaker and the other as a perpetuator completely ignores the nuances of their individual situations. abuse and trauma is not one size fits all. healing does not happen overnight. cycle-breaking can happen at any time, and Billy was robbed of the opportunity. Jonathan was in a state of healing, surrounded by people who loved and supported him. Billy was actively being abused every day, and never had the chance to discover who he could be without the dark cloud of Neil looming over him. you don’t have to like Billy to acknowledge that his situation is not the same as Jonathan’s, that these two boys were dealing with similar trauma in two very different circumstances.

why do you like the vampire chronicles?

- a fellow fan

Ooh boy, this will probably be an essay blog post at some point, but, I shall endeavour to give the TLDR version to the best of my present ability. None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are and memory is a monster.

Do not ask me to recall my age, I am 20 now, though I often feel like Louis and Lestat, inhuman and haven't been human for 200 years. Plus the pandemic destroyed my sense of time.

Before the pandemic, a dear friend of mine introduced me to gothic literary vampires, I had just read Shelley's Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray of my own accord, and he cast me as Mina Murray-Harker in his production of Dracula (1897) opposite one of my best friends as Lucy Westenra himself as Jonathan and one of our aspiring villain actors as Count Dracula himself. I then got hooked on Dracula (the 1897 novel) and following that I wanted more vampires. We watched the 1994 IWTV Neil Jordan film together and I immediately took Lestat as my pathetic bi meow meow. I read the 1976 novel not that far after and started role-playing and cosplaying Lestat as soon as I understood him enough to make him my bi pathetic meow meow. I wouldn't pick up the chronicles again until catholic school and the move to Canada.

When I was in middle school I was a constant victim of bullying, mostly by the white rich kids for being brown, and vaguely gothic in inclinations and "witchy" and "other." My dad was also emotionally overbearing and expected a lot at an early age from me. He has since gotten better and I'm no longer anyone's victim, but, it's worthwhile to note I was victimized (past tense) for a long time. I've also had my fair share of misogyny + anti brown racism flung at me, and I am bi and genderqueer. For the record I forgive my middle school bullies, we were simply kids who didn't know better. Now, do better. I've also been the victim of emotional abuse and gaslighting, while it never escalated to physical that sort of violence even if emotional violence sticks with you. But as mentioned, victimized, in past tense.

I moved to Canada and suffered the indignity of the Catholic school system. I quit after a year and after their queerphobia made international news. But not before a brief run as a spiteful bi as fuck atheist and picking up The Vampire Lestat, finally.

Before the pandemic, I felt like Louis de Pointe du Lac and Mona Mayfair, during the pandemic and in catholic school I felt like Nicolas de Lenfent, following the pandemic and up til the present I aspire to be something of a Lestat de Lioncourt and Rowan Mayfair meaning less cynical, unlearning my shame, confident, clever at least intellectually but foolishly in love with the beauty of humanity. Now, we're here.

IWTV 1994 lost in adaptation

Vampire Reviews: IWTV 1994 ft @elisaintime

What Constitutes Evil?

Vampire Reviews: The Vampire Chronicles ft @elisaintime

Vampire Reviews: The Vampire Lestat ft @elisaintime

Late Interview with the Vampire author Anne Rice remembered by trans woman she helped come out.

Tagging: @covenofthearticulate, @monstersinthecosmos, @elisaintime & @the-brat-prince-1760, @dontbesylly & @i-want-my-iwtv (no pressure to reply, I just thought y'all would appreciate this story).

I don't say this to invalidate Jonathan as an abuse survivor, nor do I encourage people to treat survival like a competition in any way. This is so that people understand the differences in what Jonathan and Billy were up against. Here's the abuse of children wheel for reference:

Note: This wheel isn't exhaustive. There could be abusive behavior that is unaccounted for. The Duluth Model is also not perfect, as it focuses primarily on the abuse of women and children by male abusers. Still, this model provides a good overview of what abusive behavior can look like.

Long Post Under Read More...

My memory isn't perfect, so feel free to correct me, especially when it comes to Lonnie Byers. I will also reference Runaway Max insomuch that it provides a possible look at Neil's behavior in the overall canon with an awareness that the novel itself isn't actually consistent with the TV timeline. While events may or may not be the same, the abuse that is portrayed in the book and Neil's characterization is consistent with what is implied or explicitly shown in the show.

We don't know a lot about Lonnie's time with Joyce, Jonathan, and Will. What we do know is that Lonnie was emotionally abusive towards both Jonathan and Will for being sensitive. He's not a good father, but in terms of long term power and control over Joyce, Jonathan, and Will, he has none. This is taken from him when Joyce separates from him. This act also empowers Jonathan to take a stand against him.

When we look at the wheel, there is some attempt at physical violence. The extent of violence towards Jonathan and Will is unclear. It's implied that he was emotionally and physically abusive towards Joyce, and a bad spouse who only cared about his desires. He used homophobic language towards Will, and Jonathan as the older sibling tried to protect Will from the ongoing arguments between Lonnie and Joyce, and any possible domestic violence he was responsible for.

Lonnie Byers used intimidation tactics on Joyce and the children. He may have tried to use institutions against Joyce to "win" arguments, but this isn't clear. The Byers are isolated because of their class, but it's unclear if he intentionally tried to isolate his children from their peers. He is emotionally abusive towards both his children. He doesn't appear to be economically responsible, as he contributes nothing to the family and attempts to exploit his son's death for profit. He does attempt to use his privilege as an adult to push and threaten Jonathan who with Joyce's help is able to kick him out.

Any power and control Lonnie has over his family has already been lost by the time The Byer's story is established in the first season. He comes back into their lives briefly as Will disappears and is presumed dead, when he tries to cash in on suing the quarry. He is a cheater, an alcoholic, and an opportunist. He is a dog with no bite, though, as any adult privilege and institutional power he may have had was ruined by his own reckless behavior and neglect. He is an abuser who neglected his responsibilities as a parent. However, he is not as we will see with Neil this kind of "mastermind" when it comes to power and control.

No child should have to take a stand against an abusive parent, but Jonathan did so with a relatively lower risk to his safety as Lonnie had already lost significant power and control over his family through Joyce's separation from him. It was still brave. It doesn't invalidate the seriousness of the situation to say this. It is just to establish that Joyce, Jonathan, and Will were and are in a different stage of "recovery" than Billy who I'll discuss next.

Without a doubt, Billy's father has more power and control over Billy than Lonnie has over Jonathan and Will. That doesn't invalidate anything Jonathan and Will may have gone through, but it's also important to be real about the danger of immediate harm an abused person is in when we have discussions like these. Unfortunately, Billy's story is split up into pieces across different mediums and he never gets to tell his own story. Still, there's more than enough evidence to show that Billy is at higher risk of being harmed by his parent and the kind of harm done to him spans almost all categories in the power and control wheel used above.

If we work backwards, we know that Neil abused Billy's mom. His physical violence is explicitly shown. Billy tries to protect his mother as a child, but he's also thrown to the ground. Then, Billy's mother leaves without taking him making him vulnerable to Neil's violence on a regular basis. This is not true for Jonathan and Will. Neil having full custody of Billy is dangerous for Billy, who has no rights or privileges to protect him as a child. Neil is continually able to use his adult privilege to control Billy and punish him if he does anything "wrong." Again, this is not true for Jonathan or Will.

If we take anything from Runaway Max to be true in combination with what we know to be canon in the show, Neil has used almost every single method on the power and control wheel to abuse Billy and there is no indication that he has stopped the entirety that Billy is on screen. Neil uses intimidation effectively to make Billy do what he wants him to do. This isn't true for Lonnie, who can't force his children to listen to him anymore. Neil threatens to send Billy away in the book (using institutions), and he moves Billy far from California in both the book and show which is a way of isolating Billy and using his adult privilege to control who Billy is able to see and where he is able to go. Lonnie doesn't have that kind of control over Jonathan and Will.

Similar to Lonnie, Neil is emotionally abusive. This kind of abuse is perhaps the most common, and it can do serious damage to a child's well being. This is where I want to emphasize that just because Lonnie isn't as immediately dangerous as Neil doesn't mean he didn't harm his children or that they don't need to heal from his abuse. That being said, Billy was still being subjected to this kind of abuse from his father who also called him slurs and hit him with no one to protect him. He had been abandoned by his mother who was the only one to express any joy or love for him. This did not happen to Jonathan and Will who still have a mother who loves them.

Continually denying a child their parent's love and actively teaching them that they're unlovable through emotional abuse and abandonment doesn't encourage any child to act positively or help others or be nice. Why would it? There's no motivation to try when the child is taught that no matter what they do they will be mistreated. That's what we see happen to Billy.

If you've read the book, then you know that Neil beats Billy unconscious. This may or may not be true for the show, but Neil's physical violence and Billy's reaction to it heavily imply that this happens regularly. Billy isn't shocked and he doesn't fight back. People have argued that Jonathan is braver than Billy because he pushes Lonnie away, but again Billy's situation is much more dangerous as he lacks any kind of support system outside of his father's custody over him and Neil is quantitatively more violent than Lonnie.

When people see scenes of Billy being abused or read about them, I want people to understand that these are not one and done incidents of abuse. They represent a pattern of behavior. A pattern of power and control over Billy by his abuser. When people look at these scenes, they need to understand that these things were happening to Billy frequently even if we don't see it happening frequently on screen.

I've seen people argue that Billy at ~12 years old is "continuing the cycle of violence" by bullying other kids while he's being abused, but I think that it's pretty harmful to compare a child's violence to that of their adult abuser. There are a multitude of cases of child abuse where a child exhibits violent behavior after enduring prolonged abuse at home. To say that child is now becoming the abuser isn't right, and it is that kind of thinking that trap these abused children in a dangerous situation without intervention.

Jonathan and Will weren't surviving the same situation as Billy, and they weren't left with the same choices to make. You can argue that everything is a choice, but a child who is in the custody of their abuser will behave a lot differently from a child who has a safe adult to live with. Children and even teens don't have all the tools to cope with abuse, so to praise one for surviving well and to condemn the other for not surviving well ignores the role that adults in our society play in protecting all abused children. We can't pick and choose who deserves to be treated with human dignity.

Billy has endured more abuse than Jonathan and Will. Neil is more violent than Lonnie. Neil has more power and control over Billy than Lonnie has over Jonathan and Will. Jonathan and Will have a loving mother and friends. Billy's mother abandoned him, and his step mother doesn't protect him. These should not be controversial statements to make, but I think people look at statements like these and think that saying these things invalidates the abuse that Jonathan and Will went through. It doesn't. It's just different, and it's ironic when the people who say that we're invalidating their trauma go on to mock Billy's suffering or use either Jonathan or Will as models of who Billy should be while surviving abuse.

At the end of the day, we've got to stop comparing apples to oranges here. Yes, I know. I've technically compared the two here, but it's only to establish that really these situations are different even if all child abuse can cause harm no matter the "degree" of it. We can't always predict how that will impact a child, but we do know things like early intervention and support systems matter. The fact that Jonathan and Will had that but Billy didn't, does matter.

Is Billy An Abuser?

This may seem like an obvious answer to some, regardless of whether your answer is “yes” or “no.” One of the first accusations that antis will throw at Billy is “he’s Max’s abuser.” I would like to examine this claim in a little more depth.

I will not claim that Max and Billy are the paragon of a healthy sibling relationship. If we are to take season two at face value, Max doesn’t like that Billy is always in charge of her, and Billy doesn’t like being Max’s 24/7 babysitter. Thus, Max rebels against Billy, and the punishment for that rebellion falls on Billy’s head. In return, Billy resents Max for indirectly causing him pain and lashes out at her.

The most important thing to remember about Max and Billy’s relationship is that they are pitted against each other by Neil. Neil makes Billy Max’s keeper, and each sibling resents this loss of freedom. His favoring one child over the other breeds further resentment. Billy, ever the scapegoat and family fuck-up, is fully aware of how Max, the golden child, is given preferential treatment in everything. Billy has next to no control over anything in his life. Thanks to the hierarchy created in the family, Billy cannot find the control he lacks over Susan or Neil. The only family member he has any power over is Max.

I understand that abuse is not always physical, and I am not claiming that Billy never damaged Max emotionally. However, I would like to point out that the most physical Billy ever gets toward Max is grabbing her wrist. It is implied he broke her skateboard, but this is never explicitly stated. Given Neil’s physical abuse of Billy, I think it’s worth noting that Billy never hurts Max. His tactics include intimidation, shouting, threats, and warning Max away from Lucas (why this is does not change my opinion of Billy, I’ve been over this). Max is the one who gets physical with Billy, when she stabs him in the neck with a needle and threatens to put the nail bat through his balls if he doesn’t obey her.

I am not claiming that Max is the abuser in this situation. The point I hope to get across is that Max has picked up on Neil’s treatment of Billy, whether this is because she overheard the abuse or through Billy’s behavior. TL;DR: It is inaccurate to call either Billy or Max the sole abuser, since both are children trapped with an abusive father whose behavior pits them against each other and makes strife inevitable while they live under the same roof.

SO do you think Billy would change his behavior if he had survived the Mind Flayer?!

I do remember that I wasn't a fan of him when I first saw the show but then I read some wonderful meta posts here on Tumblr (and read a few fanfics of course) and now I think it's sad that he didn't get a chance to grow up. To grow up and get away from Neil and be the person he really wanted to be. Try and be the person he could be.

So, if you have some time, I would love to know your thoughts on the subject 😊

Oh without a doubt. Without a doubt he would have changed once he had a chance to escape.

This is going to ramble a little bit cos I have Big Personal Thoughts about Billy so just stay with me here—

People love to forget that Billy is barely 18 when he dies. Barely 18. Ask anyone over the age of 24 if 18 year olds have any clue what they’re doing and the answer is no. Sheesh, ask college kids if barely graduated high schoolers have any idea about the world and for the most part they’ll tell you no.

18 might make you an “adult” but it doesn’t make you an Adult and speaking from experience, I can PROMISE you that while a lot of abused kids carry themselves as a lot older than their age, in several ways we are in fact a lot more immature than our peers.

I was living on my own in an apartment, no roommates, no help from family or significant others, Working full time and going to college at night at eighteen years old. I was paying my own taxes, all my own bills, dealing with landlords and maintenance/car issues, not on any government assistance and partying until I was black out drunk every weekend. I was a stripper for a while, sexually active etc etc.

For all intents and purposes, full grown adult right?

But. The second I was forced to interact with my parents? Emotionally I was fourteen. I lashed out. I screamed. I broke things. I trashed an ex girlfriends apartment because she (rightfully, in hindsight) told me we weren’t good for each other.

I was an adult and out of the bad situation sure but I hadn’t grown up near enough to handle ANYTHING.

It took me YEARS to get to the point of actively breaking cycles and learning my own triggers etc.

So when people look at 17 and barely 18 year old Billy and pronounce him irredeemable? I’d like them to fuck right off.

Because it takes YEARS to break cycles. It takes YEARS to stop hearing Their Voice in your head. Years to even find out who WE are enough to separate from who we pretended to be all those years to survive.

Billy was barely 18. Working at the pool. Making friends (at least Heather). A scared little boy running from his dad, running from monsters and then FACING monsters and apologizing and dying trying to save someone who literally just showed him a little kindness.

Billy died trying to protect El, who showed him a TINY bit of kindness. If he did that for her what would he have done eventually for Max if he survived? The apologies he would have made. The wrongs he might have righted.

Honestly even if he got in his car and ran away and tried to build a life somewhere else— that’s okay too! Because it takes YEARS to heal and he could only make changes if he had the time to heal.

I think it’s really…. “Ableist” isn’t quite the word I’m looking for but it’s certainly SOMETHING to look at an emotionally and physically abused and traumatized child and decide they are evil when they haven’t even had the chance to BREATHE away from their abuser.

The sexism and racism I learned growing up took me AGES to unlearn. Even though I’d always known I was LGBT it took me years before I could kiss a girl without hearing hatred in my mind.

So yeah. Looking at Billy (or even Jason or that one asshole from season one who torments the Party) and just writing them off as a lost cause villain?

Really smacks of “not understanding abuse” and “not understanding learned behavior” and “not bothering to understand nature vs nurture”

Nurture is who we are raised to be. Nature is who we are in our most vulnerable moments.

And Billy? Billy cried when he was hurt. He looked away ashamed when faced with how much max (rightfully from her POV) despised him. He begged for help when he was lost. Died trying to protect eleven.

That’s who he IS and if he’d been giving the chance to grow up and escape and heal, I don’t doubt he would have been different.

if you think that billy is the worst human villain in the series then you grew up in a privileged household with no siblings and two caring parents with everything handed to you on a silver platter. take a step back and TRY and empathize and put yourself into the shoes of the rest of us who don’t have everything nice and have younger sisters and have abusive asshole parents with no way out.

billy is, by far, not the worst. there’s dr. brenner, who KIDNAPS and psychologically/physically/emotionally abuses children and experiments on them; there’s henry creel, who is a psychopath that committed serial child murder on a mass scale, murdered his entire family aside from his father (who’s life is completely ruined), tried to get another child to join him then became a monster and knocked off a couple other kids; there’s neil hargrove and lonnie byers who abuse and neglect their children.

..and the abused teen that received little to no affection in his life is the worst

so, about Billy and Max's relationship, i don't get why everyone is so up in arms about it.

I know not every one lived in abusive households (kids in abusive house holds reflect their guardians abuse but as a love language cause we're so screwed in the head and it's literally the only way we know how to interact with others in a family sense) but still did y'all not fight with your siblings, like fight-fight, physical and emotional... did you not have offensive nicknames that slowly became a term of endearment... did y'all not bond over your hatred for one another... like my sibling was my enemy first and foremost, but right after that he was my best friend.

there relationship felt so normal to me, like yeah, he was rough at times (please take into consideration the character Dacre and the other actors were trying to portray and not the duffers who pushed actors boundaries and forced racist plot lines that both Dacre and Caleb fought against) but everything he did was a trauma response. he's a scapegoat, forced to take the blame of everyone's wrongdoings in the eyes and hands of his abuser. every time Max steps out of line, whether she knows it or not, it gets Billy hurt. there is resentment, but Billy never tries to hurt her. he loses his cool, he lashes out, but he has so much bottled up it to be expected, he's literally being beat emotionally and physically by his dad. he actually shields her, never letting her become aware of the abuse even to save his own skin. he tries to discipline her himself the only way he knows how, so she doesn't make herself a target to Neil. it's a dynamic they were forced into, it needs to be taken into consideration when thinking about there relationship.

I think Billy was a character that could only truly be understood by abuse victims. yeah others like him, but normally the defining feature of their attraction is his looks, his false persona he uses to attract fake friends and older women so he can feels some semblance of control and motherly love, or they want a pity project. which like, is fine, but I think having his character constant dulled down to a hot guy with confidence and anger issues kinda ruins him within the fandom. the second we stop seeing him as the victim he is, the second he becomes a villain. and it hurts as an abuse survivor with a sibling (we have the same age and family dynamic as max and Billy, with me being older) whose abuse made a not so pretty dynamic with said sibling, it feels like shit. I spent so long trying to convince myself that I wasn't just another abuser to him, that I never meant to hurt him, that we were victims of our parents and we both hurt one another because we didn't know anything else. but a Billy is a villain in the eyes of those who ignore all that, and it hurts, that representation for the not so nice side of being an abuse survivor is dragged to high hell cause he can't be babied or infantilized. it's not fair, I don't care if you think that's drastic, it is not fair that abuse survivors who aren't your little beans, to finally get good representation in media immediately have that character demonized.

billy and Max's relationship as portrayed by Dacre, is your typical abuse altered sibling dynamic and we need to treat it as such. it isn't lesser then your average relationship, it doesn't hold less value, it isn't less important. its an abuse victims normal, and hate to break it to you, max is a victim but Billy isn't her abuser, he is a victim as well, and sadly they are forced to bump heads. get over it.

they are allowed to hate one another, they both deserve apologies from a shit ton of people including each other. max might deserve one more then Billy in terms of between each other, but he still deserves one. they can both be guilty of causing harm, whether they meant to/if they were a victim or not. but at the same time, I have lived that dynamic, and I know how deep down, you love your sibling more then you love yourself, especially as the older scapegoat. you feel this need to protect while not physically able to, so you do your fucking best, and it will never feel like its enough.

if they had a chance to grow a siblings, if he could just escape and find a place were he was loved, he would be the best big brother. we know he is an empathetic person, a good, kind person. but even the kindest of people can snap, and only knowing abuse would do that. if he had a chance to grow and he joined the party, he would be such a big brother. none of those kids would know pain or violence if he could help it. he would be their scary dog, so to speak. but he would also be the type of walk them through every scraped knee with a gentle tone, he'd be the silent shoulder to cry on, the person you go to for a big hug, the group punching bag (not like in the bad way, but like the type to just tussle with the kids whenever they were rambunctious). he would probably love Joyce like his own mama. he clearly craves a moms touch and if he found a place were he didn't have to charm and seduce someone into touching him gently, he would break in all the right ways.

I speak from experience, and I will never stop defending him. give him a break, please.

this isn't meant as hate but im interested in how you're justifying henrys killing of innocent people (mostly children) who couldn't be somehow oppressing him or w/e. people like his sister. the other children at the lab. chrissy. max. etc?

I'm not so much "justifying" those murders but more explaining why they occurred, and why, from Henry's POV, they were not entirely evil actions and that I don't believe Henry has ever intended to be outright evil. I actually believe he thinks he's good and what he is doing he is doing for altruistic reasons, even as Vecna. I will die on this hill of there being a lot more to “Vecna” than is being acknowledged currently in the fandom. Which is strange to me because not only do we have blatant text backing it up but we also have people like Jamie backing it up as well. Jamie has pretty much confirmed Vecna’s motives are not entirely evil and that's not what the character is suppose to be, and I trust what Jamie says because he had a big part in helping shape the character. I’m not saying Vecna’s not an antagonist, but I am pretty assured in the idea that he’s actually not the big bad - at least NOT in the way people think he is. 

A lot of the fandom will say Human Evil TM is the overarching theme of Stranger Things and I absolutely agree but I think there is a misconception that Henry is wholly representative of his “human evil” in the sense they think that he is an “evil human” and not in the sense that it was the “human evils” he suffered and witnessed that had a huge hand making him what he is and putting him on his current path. And that's a very concerning misconception I see repeated in the fandom toward all the characters the fandom strangely thinks are meant to be the real “evil humans,” hence responsible for the “human evil” and so are the ones being “condemned as evil irredeemable people” which isn’t really it from what I’ve seen in canon. 

I think a major example of this is the way people think Billy is the villain of Stranger Things. But via canon Billy is literally an abused teenager who was struggling against and falling into “the cycle of abuse.” He was lashing out at his sister because of what his father was doing to him. The human evil / “villain” here was Neil Hargrove. The man who was abusing and controlling his son, physically, mentally and emotionally, and brining these negative perceptions and actions out in Billy, who really was just a fucking child for the most part (16-17 to 18 years old like come on. That was a kid, not a fully formed adult.) 

Later, we see Billy die heroically to protect his sister and her friends. He wasn’t condemned as a monster, he was shown as a victim and “redeemed.” Billy’s sacrifice had a profound effect on Max that helps set up season 4.  So people like Dr Brenner, his associates (People literally employed by the US government and that represent some of its most shady and terrifying aspects), Neil Hargrove (Homophobic abusive racist), Lonnie Byers (Homophobic abuser) and the behaviors and social constructs that validate and perpetuate their behaviors and views, allowing them to victimize those around them, and the disastrous effects this abuse has on their victims, I think, are the actual “human evils” demonstrated in the show and thus the real “villains.”  This is also disturbingly shown with Kali, who the fandom has been VERY shitty toward since day one and that we’re now having a little resurgence of as people are being confronted with the fact Henry and Kali are related and likely wouldn’t consider each other enemies. Kali has never actually killed or hurt anyone who didn’t explicitly deserve it. She has only hurt people who explicitly abused her and her friends. She is shown as an anti-hero type character who, while being damaged and obviously capable of being volatile, has good intentions and has been a savior to other people. (Such as her friends, many of whom literally think of her as saving them. All of these explicitly being people of colour or people who are mentally ill (Dottie)-- or suggested with Axel to be neurodivergent, people who are the most vulnerable members of society and who were noted to have been victims of oppression and abuse, “societies outcasts” This being directly canon text mind you.)  Strangely, instead of accepting that this very much indicates Vecna/Henry isn’t some sort of deplorable, univocal evil, they’re now demonizing Kali as a horrible monster. I’ve seen people outright say she is the MOST TERRIYING of characters to them and just.... What the fuck? Back to Henry though, to explain further, I currently don't believe Henry controls the mindflayer- or maybe more that the mindflayer hasn't had some type of influence over him rather than the other way around. There is little nuggets all through canon that suggest that it was the mindflayer that shaped Henry as much as he shaped it. Both literally and figuratively. And I dont think the mindflayer being some sort of otherworldly entity with some type of conciseness (primitive or advanced) of its own takes away from the theme of the show being “human evil” because the horror genre has always drawn from metaphors and used monsters and demons to represent faults in human behavior and nature. This goes back to old times when people did literally explain darker aspects of the human condition and even instances of mental illness and behaviors that can manifest from trauma as the fault of some "demonic” influence. The mindflayer being something that represents emotions like sadness and anger and Vecna becoming a creature that represents trauma doesn’t take away from the commentary and condemnation of what evils humans are capable of doing. I've wrote posts about this before but to summarize: We've been shown Henry's entire demeanor changed when he moved into the Creel house. In the first scenes in Victor’s memory Henry seems pretty happy and mesmerized by the house like his sister. But this quickly changes. There is a scene in Victor's memories that shows Henry innocently drawing in the living(?) room of the house, when suddenly the lights in the room start flickering in and out. Henry notices this and looks confused. From canon we know a way to make contact with the real world from the upside down is through lights. If Henry was the one manipulating the lights in this scene why did he seem so confused when the event occurred? Victor said he could see that Henry knew something was wrong with the house. We also have the fact that Henry felt compelled to draw some omnipresent super-creature he was apparently imagining. I don't think Henry made it up entirely on his own, I think he was just illustrating what he imagined the “presence” he was somehow communing with to look, even if this was done subconsciously. (Its also possible the mindflayer suggested to Henry that it looked like this, perhaps praying on Henry’s love of spiders to make itself more  friendly/appealing to him) We also have the way Henry's powers kept multiplying and becoming "stronger" while living in the Creel house. Henry, a little boy in the 50s, starts to get some very complex and advanced views about human civilization and everything wrong with it. Which, while I think some of this absolutely comes from Henry’s own expereinces as a minority and the oppression he was already suffering because of it, he was still a little boy at this point. He also starts to learn how to essentially sucks souls out of people. I don't think a 12 year old boy has the capacity to come up with this kind of stuff entirely on his own. He wasn't in an environment where he could pull that stuff without a little bit of help, particularly at that age. We also have other things about the mindflayer that we know from past seasons. We know its a living darkness, that it can invade bodies and minds, we know it emphasizes feelings of anger and sadness, (the feelings Henry says make his powers stronger) we know Max described that it doesn't seem like Vecna is able to see anything else inside of people but anger and sadness, and we know Dustin described Vecna as the mindflayer’s 5 star general. I think that line in particular is extremely important because its not even just a clue, it seems to have completely revealed the truth.  So I don't think Henry was entirely responsible for what the mindflayer is or how it functions. I think they influence each other, I would be VERY SUPRISED if this was actually the case and that canon has been intending to show that Henry is literally the mindflayer and that it isn’t more complicated than that because it doesn’t match up with a lot of the clues we’ve been given. Furthermore, we have the description of the Elder Brain, the final phase of the mind-flayer life cycle from DnD that I think is insanely interesting and relevant:

 An elder brain was the final stage of the mind flayer life cycle. The elder brain lived in a brine-filled pool in the center of a mind flayer city, where it guided its community by filling them with dark dreams of illithid domination. The elder brain's strong mind-affecting powers stemmed from the brains of long-dead mind flayers making up its viscous mass. Being composed of many brains as energy source for its intellect, it could communicate telepathically with any creature within a distance of 350 feet (110 meters) and sense the presence of any sentient creature within 5 miles

Although its intellect was of godlike proportions, its only physical attack was by using its tendrils to lash out at or grapple an opponent. Therefore, mind flayers protected their elder brain by securing it in a well-protected cave inside the city

That sounds a hell of a lot like the mindflayer and seems to me like its used Henry as a tool as much as Henry has “used�� it. We also know from canon that Henry’s “link” with the mindflayer is the reason he became the creature we call Vecna. It is the thing that “transformed” him. He explains it himself as the mindflayer being the “means” to “ascend” his human form. This confirms both that Vecna’s not a human anymore and that the mindflayer is somehow capable of transmogrification, which we also saw with the “flayed” and the spider creature in season 3. That implies whatever the mindflayer is its not just a harmless mass of “”particles”” on its own.  All that aside for Henry’s actual “killings”, I'll start with his sister because in my opinion his sister is the one that is mostly personal. I think Henry was jealous of her and I think more than that its pretty obviously shown in canon that Henry felt deeply, deeply betrayed by his family. We know Henry was a kid who was struggling. The adult figures in his life had decided there was something “wrong” with Henry. He was “different”. He was “broken”. This heavily alludes to Henry being some type of neurodivergent, particularly as a lot of these opinions are coming from doctors and teachers. And surely from his own mother, father and sister. 

It seems that Alice, unlike Henry, didn’t have any of those issues. While its kind of hard to say exactly what Henry and Alice’s relationship looked like I got the impression we were suppose to see the Creels as an inverted parallel to the Byers family. To me this means Henry and Alice probably didn’t have a good relationship. I feel like Alice would have been scornful and rejecting of Henry, due to him being “different”, inverting the relationship between Jonathan and William.  But again we don’t see a lot of Alice or her relationship with Henry so all this is purely headcanon and theory for me. We basically see nothing. And she’s very strange to me because she’s suppose to be older than Henry. She's suppose to be 15 at the time of her death but for some reason the actress that played her was MUCH younger and so she was shown as much younger. She even appeared younger than Henry in the canon and I don’t know if this was lazy casting or what, but we know Alice was meant to be 15 years old in canon and the news paper clipping that talks about “Victors crimes” lists her as 15. 

What we do know as actual canon is that Henry was very deeply angry with and betrayed by his family. Initially, he blamed himself for being different and not fitting in. He felt like people hated him, he felt like people only wanted to get rid of him, he couldn’t understand exactly why that was, but he related to spiders and took comfort in being able to see himself in them as a result of this. Henry didn’t know why he was different, but he knew he was and he knew it caused problems. In contrast he looked at his family as good, perfect and normal. All the things it seemed he couldn’t be and kept falling short of. He was judged apparently pretty harshly for the fact he wasn’t measuring up to the expectations his family and the rest of the world had for him.  Then Henry somehow unlocks the power of reading minds and sees this perfect family that is judging him are not perfect. He is hurt and distraught and labels his family hypocrites. Keeping in mind, Henry never really did anything wrong, he was just wired differently but his family and others made him feel “wrong” and “bad”, they labeled him broken but suddenly he knows that the only thing actually wrong with him is that he couldn’t seem to hide the things that made him “different” as well as his family members could. Something particularly empathized in canon is that Henry’s loving father, the war hero and otherwise someone who would have been very esteemed and someone Henry would have looked up to, was actually someone who had committed a horrible, horrible mistake. He had a terrible dark secret. Henry saw Victor’s actions during the War and the mistake he made in gruesome detail that lead to the deaths of many, many innocent civilians.  This traumatized Henry as well as exasperated Henry’s budding disillusion with the world he lived in, and made him extremely angry with his family. The thing is Henry didn’t just come to see his family as liars and hypocrites, but he came to see them as his enemies. For them to judge him the way they did for being “different” when Henry hadn’t actually done anything extremely bad in comparison, it would have felt to him that these people just hate him. Still Henry tried to show them their faults to level with them:  

As I practiced, I realized I could do more than I possibly imagined. I could reach into others, into their minds, their memories. I became an explorer. I saw my parents as they truly were. To the world, they presented themselves as good, normal people. But like everything else in this world, it was all a lie. A terrible lie. They had done things, Eleven. Such awful things. I showed them who they really were. I held up a mirror.

This is where it gets interesting for me because like... When Henry starts using his powers to force his family to see they’re not what they’re pretending to be and therefore their judgement of him is entirely unfair, Henry only gets blamed and spurned more. For some reason, Henry’s mother begins blaming him for everything going on in the house. And it seems Henry believes maybe he is the one that is “haunting” the home because yeah, Henry’s used to being seen as somehow the bad guy and it makes sense with his other experiences. But as previously mentioned there's evidence that whatever was going on in the Creel house wasn’t actually all Henry. None the less this is what Henry says: 

My naive father believed it was a demon cursing them for their sins. But my mother somehow knew. Knew it was I who was holding up that mirror, and she despised me for it. She called a doctor, an expert. She wanted him to lock me away, to fix me, even though it wasn't I who was broken. It was them. And so she left me with no choice. No choice but to act. To break free.

This suggests that Virginia somehow knew Henry had powers. We could assume that this might actually be one of the reasons that Virginia treated Henry in some kind of way. Yet its odd because VICTOR seems to have no clue Henry has powers and it further seems he’s completely oblivious to Virginias contact with Brenner.  For me the most sensible possibilities here are: A) Virginia knew Henry had powers, maybe because Henry showed her, as his mother and someone he would have trusted in the past only for Virginia to sow that seed of aversion and self loathing in Henry by maybe telling Henry his powers were bad or maybe that he must not ever show anyone his powers and he can’t ever use them. But then we also know Henry’s powers didn’t start becoming really substantial until they moved to Hawkins.  The next theory for me is B) Maybe Virginia contacted Brenner as an “expert on the human mind” and psychologist (Most likely one of the most esteemed in his field, and we know the Creels had money at least on Virginias side of the family so this wouldn’t be beyond her means) and began to explain her situation and the concerns she had about her son (We already know Henry had previous history with not just one doctor but multiples) and it was BRENNER that convinced her Henry might have some sort of powers. We know Brenner was interested in this kind of thing and we know he was predatory and opportunistic. I don’t think it would be out of character for him to prey on a mother like Virginia in order to get access to her son, because whether Henry actually had powers or not, it provided him with a test subject.   Or maybe its a combination of both options, or some other third option that could be revealed in s5. Not sure. But anyway, what canon has shown and explained was that Henry discovered his mother wasn’t the loving housewife she painted herself as. He discovered she not only disliked him and blamed him for the troubles their family had, but she had full intentions to have him taken away by a doctor. (Again, note, it seems Virginia went completely behind Victors back on this, and like. This is the 50s. Women acting without the permission of their husbands would have been a little odd, let alone without their husband even knowing that they were planning to do something that would have a massive impact on the entire family.)  But back to Alice. I think Alice similarly blamed Henry for things he couldn’t control. (She could have potentially blamed him for the fact they had to move to Hawkins in the first place as its suggested the decision to move did have something to do with Henry.) 

Henry obviously thought Alice had to die and I’m not gonna say this wasn’t probably influenced from his own person feelings of jealousy and hurt toward her. There's a suggestion that maybe Henry killed her because he didn’t want her to be an orphan and maybe that factors in somehow too but ultimately for me I think it was more that, yeah, Henry didn’t have a good relationship with her and if she was left alive she would be a witness to Victor’s side of the story that he didn’t kill his wife. To me it seems more like Henry saw her as in the way of his plan to escape his mother’s plans for him and he didn’t have too much empathy for her because they just weren't close like that.  And I think its somehow true that Henry spared Victor alone because Victor was the member of his family that Henry had the better relationship with, even if he ultimately came to feel very betrayed by and angry with him and probably somehow thought Victor didn’t actually care about him, all things considered. But then we could also look at it as Henry having MORE anger toward his father for those exact reasons, because there is a heavy suggestion that Henry’s victims are not actually gone. Those Henry has killed (In his weird soul sucking way) are somehow the real mercy which moves me to the kids in the lab.  I’ve spoke about them before as well but what we know from canon is that the other subjects in the lab were literally created to undermine Henry. Henry was Brenner’s first subject, but Henry failed to be Brenner's obedient little weapon, so he neutralized Henry, made a literal slave out of him. He forced him to stand by and even assist as Brenner made attempts to recrate him in younger, better ‘groomed’ and thus more malleable children that he could actually use for his own means without question.  And this worked. I don’t think Henry hated the other subjects but again, he wasn’t close to them and it seems he wasn’t able to be. It seems Henry was only able to form alliances with two of these eighteen subjects. Eleven (Jane) and POSSIBLY Eight (Kali.) These two are also shown to us as DIFFERENT from the others, like Henry is. Kali was abducted when she was about five, so while she was very young she already had a sense of herself and a knowing that where she was now wasn’t right, something Brenner couldn’t erase from her, so this prevented Brenner from completely controlling her. 

And while Jane was abducted the minute she was born, she is heavily autistic coded and as a result she is shown as an outcast among the other children. They bully her. She is described by Two as “clumsy” and “stupid” which the other children seem to agree with as some of them start giggling when he says these things and others don’t seem all that troubled by them. No one but Henry seems to be on El’s side or have any inclination to want to protect or help her. Canon seems to show that Eleven was thought of as a failure by the other children because she struggled to preform in the group settings. While its also suggested she showed potential in her one-on-one tests. (Again the neurodivergent coding is heavy here). 

I wrote more in depth about Henry and El and the stuff in the lab here but basically Henry took interest in her for these reasons. He literally says he sees himself in her at that age and he even tells her that he struggled “to preform” as well. By his own admission, there seems to be a point when Henry was a test subject that Henry was having trouble with his powers until he figured out that using sadness and anger gives him greater control over them. This is interesting because it suggests that Brenner probably betrayed Henry in a similar way that he betrays El in “Papa”. As in, the moment El gains control over her powers and makes a decision for herself in how she wants to use them (To save her friends, rather than continue working with Brenner.) Brenner tricks her, tranquilizes her, and collars her like an animal to suppress and control her powers for himself. (Along with using the safety of doctor Owens as leverage against her as well) 

We know that the other test subjects (the most powerful) were being weaponized against El. Seemingly for Brenner to really test whether or not she was a worthwhile subject. Henry tried to step in and help El show her powers in a way that wouldn’t require hurting or possibly killing her, but this fails. And I’m not sure why Brenner was so hell bent in hurting Eleven here but it seems possible by his reactions to Henry that he might actually be doing it to hurt Henry as well, as he noticed Henry had formed a type of friendship with her and I wouldn’t put those types of mind games and emotional abuse past Benner as he was very, very interested in dominating and controlling Henry in ways that go beyond what's fair and maybe even what's logical.  Its shown that the other test subjects were very brainwashed by Brenner. It would have taken a lot more than Henry suddenly getting his powers back and showing them they had been lied to their entire lives for them to suddenly become allies to him and Eleven. I actually think if the other test subjects knew Henry had powers and had more potential than them they would become hyper competitive and antagonistic toward him too because it seemed one of Brenner’s ways of keeping complete control over the children was to encourage and foster this weird hierarchy between them, which it seems the children viciously competed to keep. We saw Two was instantly turned against El to the point of being willing and eager to attack and kill her as soon as he was made to feel threatened by her possibly being stronger than him. It seemed the children’s main concern was pleasing Brenner and gaining / keeping his favour which makes perfect sense given Brenner was shown to literally torture them as punishment for doing things that disappointed him.  When Henry got his powers back he knew he couldn’t make allies out of the other test subjects (there was no time for that anyway) and more importantly he knew he couldn’t leave them alive because they would be used as very effective weapons against him and El. They had to go. And by killing them Henry did SAVE El. If any of the other test subjects survived its likely El never would have been able to escape and its also likely Brenner might have terminated the other subjects himself in order to focus more on Eleven who showed potential beyond all others.  But yeah, back to this, Henry does say something very interesting when he tries to explain his actions to El. He tries to comfort her by telling her the other test subjects are not really gone. He might mean this literally, brining me to Chrissy, Fred, Patrick and Max.  Something else the whole fandom seems to have missed about one of Henry’s “new” powers as Vecna is he seems to have wicked accurate precognition. It seems he literally sees and knows the future, something he showed to Nancy. And I really feel like this does not get brought up enough when it comes to discussions about him and potential stuff in s5. Actually I’m the only person I know of who has talked about it. 

But anyway, Vecna himself and his attacks are suppose to be metaphors for things like depression, trauma, PTSD and suicide. I’ve also spoke about this before but basically Vecna’s victims are not random, and the only real reason they're teenagers is because canon needed a way to tie them to the Hawkins gang who are all highschoolers. The victims had to be instantly visible to them for plot purposes, but outside of this Vecna’s victims are heavily suggested to be people who had a future of committing suicide. He chose them specifically because suicided was on the near horizon for them. This is insanely explicit when we get to Max, I don’t know how people miss it. The way she’s completely withdrawn herself from her friends, the way she ended her relationship with Lucas, all her incredibly self isolating behavior, the letters, etc.  Like I said I’ve made a post before talking exclusively about this, about Vecna’s attack rituals and the “symbolization” behind it but nutshell: Vecna is referred to as the “trauma monster” not entirely as a joke but because he in ALL WAYS he represents trauma, as someone who suffered it all his human life and thus as something who's supernatural form manifests and is drawn particularly toward others who have suffered it.  Copy pasting from my private post on this:  

There is definitely something to be said about how Vecna preys on his victims shown in S4. Yes, he targets those with trauma and he “hurts” them but there is this weird, freaky "soothing” quality about it. On more than one occasion he’s shown comforting them. He “tortures” them but he’s telling them he's going to free them, he's going to take their pain away. I’m not sure how to properly explain my thoughts here but its very reminiscent to me of the way Dr. Brenner manipulates the children, he makes them think their suffering is their fault but he has this creepy ass mother gothel esque quality to all of it that serves to manipulate the victim into thinking that he cares about them and what he’s doing has some kind of love / kindness behind it. That he's only hurting them because he has to. Because they’ve forced his hand. Keeping in mind, Brenner was a psychiatrist. He was VERY good at fucking with people’s heads. Vecna’s attack methods seem to mimic this a little in how he tortures them mentally and emotionally. He starts with making the victim question reality, then he emotionally abuses the victim, exaggerates their feelings of guilt and self loathing, breaks them down. He shows them the parts of themselves theyre hiding from or trying to reject. When the victim “gives in” and dies, its over, they’re “free.” They’re no longer trapped waiting to finally bring themselves to end it. That also mirrors Henry’s human experiences. He spent all his time trapped, abused, trying to deny his reality. Suffering. Waiting for it to end. When freedom, or “release” from his suffering did come for him it come for him in the form of “death”. 

Through all this he’s ‘comforting’ them in various ways, he tells them he’s going to take their pain away, he’s ending their suffering. With the idea that these are people who are already leaning toward suicidal tendencies, it seems hes speeding up the inevitable and that this is not a cruelty on his behalf but a kindness. So yeah, I don’t think it would be a stretch of the imagination to think that this pattern comes from Henry’s own abuse. It starts with the gaslighting, making the subject question their reality, then the emotional abuse, judgement, blame, belittlement and finally the physical assault / agony and then freedom. For me, Vecna’s personal attack ritual probably goes like largely in part because this is  a super twisted projection of the pattern Henry internalized from his own life experiences, particularly with Brenner while he was human.

These victims in particularly are ‘visited’ by and ‘taken’ by Vecna as a dark act of mercy on his behalf. (Which is why he’s been shown to sooth and comfort them) On top of that, yes their deaths were necessary components to a greater scheme. (The opening of the gates) But, technically, with that in mind it seems Vecna didn’t seek out anyone to kill personally that wasn’t already “marked” to die.  

Still, Henry/Vecna claims his victims aren't really gone. This pre-dates Henry’s time as Vecna so its not a Vecna-only quality. Again, Henry tells Eleven that all the other test subjects aren't really gone. They’re still with him “in here”, pointing to his head. He never gets to explain what he means by this and maybe we should take it as just he means he wont forget them but I’m not sure that is the case. (Because how would that comfort Eleven, and it seems in that scene he was trying to comfort / reassure her) From the minute I saw this scene I built up a whole theory that he means this more literally. This ties into Vecna/Henry’s method of killing. The way the characters theorize Vecna’s not just killing he's “absorbing” his victims. The aesthetic is to draw parallels to a spider dissolving and consuming the insides of a meal, leaving nothing but a empty husk, but I think its also deeper because freaky supernatural psychic mind fantasy horror stuff. Vecna (and Henry) leaves his victims body as mangled husks after “sucking” out what's inside them and assimilates it into himself, meaning, in some way, they're psychically connected to him. They’re not really gone, as he literally says, their physical bodies are dead but it might indicate that their mental / spiritual selves, THEIR SOULS if you will, still exist within some kind of pocket realm maybe within Vecna somewhere. Which may also be why Vecna, in particular, assures his victims he’s freeing them, viewing himself as their savior and why the whole thing is kind of portrayed to be some kind of twisted mercy by him. Like he’s doing them a service. He’s killing them, at least in our very physical plane of existence but is he? Is he if he’s keeping their spiritual forms in some other realm or something?

It would make sense if you think that Vecna hates the physical world as we know it. He views it as a broken, cruel, oppressive place that needs to be torn down and reset. It would make sense that he must see what he’s doing as a mercy, he’s destroying the physical body but perhaps “rescuing” the soul from crossing into oblivion or whatever other world a soul might drift away to upon the loss of the body and putting them somewhere he might deem “better”? I mean it might not be the case but it seems it might not be a completely insane theory either if you consider how we last see Max and the presence of a book called the talisman. (I recommend taking a look at that book, along with other books linked to it such as Insomnia, Dark tower and Black house because I think its a huge clue to reference that particular universe Stephan King created as far as getting an idea of what season 5 might be looking like.) El was able to psychically interfere with Vecna’s “process” and stop Max’s body from dying but Max “slips” into a “coma.” Later, when Eleven tries to reach into Max’s mind she can’t find her. Max’s mind is completely empty. Its just Eleven standing in an empty space. This could very much indicate that Max’s coma was brought on by the fact her spiritual / soul self has been “captured/stolen” by Vecna. The one difference between her and Vecna’s other victims being Eleven was able to stop him from completely destroying Max’s body, thus killing her in the physical world. So this at least gives her a vessel to come back to from wherever she might be if this theory holds any truth. So theres a suggestion that Vecna/Henry might have been transporting his victims to another dimension, which lends itself to the idea that Vecna isn’t the ultimate villain here, at least not in the way the fandom seems to think, and there is actually a lot more going on with him and in the universe of stranger things in general.  I also don’t believe Vecna’s trying to destroy the world as such and I don’t think hes trying to actually commit omnicide either. He doesn’t seem to be targeting humanity directly, because its not exactly humans he hates. It seems what Vecna wants to do from his own admissions and from things that have been said about him behind the scenes and clues left in canon, is to bring about the collapse of civilization, thus brining about the fall of most major social constructs and institutions of power over the world which lead to the very systems of oppression and hatred that Henry was a victim of and learned to hate as a human. Merging the upside down with Hawkins is a first step in creating some type of ecological disaster that will aid in this.  Which will indeed lead to a lot of deaths of “innocent” people. But I don’t think thats Vecna’s concern because I think in his mind the ends will justify the means. Which isn’t to say he’s “”right”” or anything, but no, I think its clear his motives don't just come from place of senseless destruction and death out of enjoying these things and wanting to kill and hurt people because he likes it and thinks other people are below him. To the contrary. But everything he’s doing he’s convinced himself he has to do for the “greater good.”

FINALLY, also mentioned many times before at this point but Vecna seems to take a LOT of inspiration from the Hindu goddess Kali. I think brushing up on her and mythology about her might also provide clues toward themes that might pop up (particularly with Vecna) In s5 particularly as THERE HAS been a suggestion he’s going to be somehow “”redeemed”” in season 5. I’m not sure if that's actually happening and I don't know if I think it will happen like a lot of people might imagine, but with EVERYTHING ELSE in mind I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some sort of redemption arc does occur with him in the very end. 

Whenever I watch the scene with Neil and Billy, I physically and emotionally recoil from Neil’s abuse, even the first time when I was iffy on Billy, and I felt so much sympathy for Billy when he just had to take it. All I can think when antis laugh about his abuse is “would you do this to someone you hated? Are you the future Neil Hargroves in this world that we have to worry about? Will you put your hands on your child too because they ‘deserve it’?” and sometimes I fear I’m right because so many of them believe the mindset of ‘what you like in fiction, you condone, and you will do’ and it makes me wonder if we’re just seeing the future Neil’s already coming into their own by laughing at the abuse of a teenage boy even though some of them claim to be abused themselves. It’s disgusting, pure and simple, that these children have no sympathy for abuse victims that aren’t doormats, that are all rough edges and need help because without it they’re a danger to themselves and even others (and being a danger to others because of the abuse they’re facing at home, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get support! It proves it’s probably more urgent for them).

They have the energy of the people who ask ‘show us your wrists!’ and call people attention seekers for expression pain in any way instead of offering support.

I do sometimes wonder if a part of Susan downspiraling was because she also felt guilty after Billy's death. Even if she didn't like him or did anything to help, he was still a kid, he was still her stepson who she watched get abused in front of her eyes and never did anything. And now he's dead.

Even if she didn't really know Billy, that'd still be a lot of weight. Like, this kid was under your watch in your house and you just watched him get smacked around and downspiral without so much as a blink. And now he's dead. Not only that but your husband, his father, the man you stood by this whole time, doesn't seem to care, and just got rid of his stuff and rolled out of town, leaving you worse off than you were before. That'd honestly be worse, if the people who weren't even really Billy's family felt more broken and guilty about his death than his own father.

Susan seems to have an avoidant personality from what little we know about her. Instead of dwelling on her failed/failing relationships and the impact on her child(ren), she drinks and refuses to acknowledge what’s happening. My mom is similar to Susan in that regard. She just pretends the abuse isn’t happening or rather, it’s our job to placate the abuser so we don’t get hurt. I know that it’s a result of trauma, but as the adult it’s important for her to be present for her kids and recognize the potential danger that they’re in. She may be physically there but she’s emotionally abandoned her daughter and Billy a long time before he died. I know the guilt is probably weighing on her, but Max is still alive and suffering and in need of a stable adult figure in her life.

Neil viewed Billy as a possession. If the characterization of Susan in Runaway Max is consistent with the show, then she didn’t value Billy’s life much either. She just didn’t want to be the reason why Neil abused him. I don’t think she genuinely cared about him. I do think she was trying to make things work with a sinking ship and instead of patching the holes or abandoning it, she drank while Billy and Max drowned. She escaped the situation in her mind through avoidance, like it wasn’t happening. We have to remember that she also agreed to move her child over two thousand miles away from her child’s father even though it was cruel and detrimental. She did it for selfish reasons. A desire to start new. Avoid past “mistakes.”

Now she has to live with the impact of that decision which resulted in Billy’s death and Max’s near death. So, I would say she feels guilty but that doesn’t mean she has really processed and grieved and shown remorse over the role she played as a bystander in the abuse that her stepson endured and how that impacted her own daughter.

How do you blindly hate John but defend Billy Hargrove? It doesn’t make sense to me

Oh interesting question.

I mean, first of all, I don’t feel like I defend Billy’s actions. I understand where they come from, but I’m not here saying “he’s never done anything wrong and what he did wasn’t that bad.” What he did to Lucas/Max is bad, and I’m not trying to deny that. I like him because he’s complex, he’s human, and all humans are flawed, that’s what makes us interesting.

Okay, to answer the question: the fundamental difference between John Winchester and Billy is their circumstances.

John Winchester is a fully grown man with two young children that he completely abandons after his wife’s death. They talk about “drunken rages,” the way he gets mad when they’re allowed to be children, the way both Sam and Dean talk about life with their father…it’s not exactly an endearing picture of him.

Yeah, he lost his wife, but he has a responsibility to those kids as a father, a responsibility that he shucked immediately in his two decade long quest for revenge. He abused his kids relentlessly (emotionally for sure, and I fully believe physically), and took out his anger on them. As their father.

And Billy…yeah, he exhibits similar signs of aggression and abuse, but he’s actively living in a violent and abusive situation himself. I really believe that he punches down because he can’t punch up. Does that make it okay? Absolutely not, he takes out his temper on children like John does, but ultimately he is a child himself (17 in s2), a child who has been raised by a man who has no qualms about hitting him and abusing him, who was abandoned by his mother, who chose to save herself and leave him behind.

Billy isn’t given opportunity to escape his abuser, he dies still living in that house. He’s never able to unlearn his shitty views likely picked up from his father, because he dies before he’s able to escape from him. John was shitty before Mary died and he was even shittier after.

To me, there are more similarities between John and Neil than between John and Billy, because John and Neil were both shitty, abusive fathers.

Neil Josten (All For The Game) Propaganda

“Serial killer dad and abusive mom who raised him on the run his whole childhood”

“His father is a crime lord and basically sold him to the mafia as a child so his mother stole a bunch of money from his father and went on the run with him and they are hunted by his father's men. While his mother (arguably) loves him, she very much emotionally neglected him and physically punished him when he didn't keep a low enough profile. Then his mom is killed by his fathers men, so after being controlled by her all his life (for survival) he has to live on his own for the first time. And then also his father has him tortured and tries to kill him later on. So plenty of Mommy and Daddy issue to go around.”

“Neil was raised by a father in the mafia that is known as the butcher because he kills a bunch of people with a cleaver like that's his job in the mafia and he's abusive and terrible to Neil. Then his mom finally escapes with him and they have to live on the run for several years while his father tries to track them down. While on the run his mother is also abusive in a way that is trying to keep him safe but still abuse (like hitting him for going out with a girl because she doesn't want them to get too close to people). Anyways his father finally catches up to them and kills his mother and then he has to burn her body on the beach so. He doesn't trust anyone, especially not older men, and he also has to deal with the mental trauma that his mother put on them while on the run and it greatly affects his relationships with other people. He needs therapy so deeply but doesn't believe in it. Sometimes he wakes up reaching for a gun that he used to keep next to him at all times. He doesn't move when he sleeps bc his mom would hit him for it. Most of his actions in the series hinge on the fact that his father will find and kill him. He can't stop thinking about the way his mother's body looked as it burned. He's got so many problems <3 but he meets a bunch of other people who also have a lot of trauma and they bond and it's beautiful”

"Well, his father is the Butcher of Baltimore, a serial killer who's the head of a gang with equally horrible people. His father has his people torture Neil to teach him how to be like Nathan, and also tortures him himself. One incident in Neil's childhood is when he couldn't sit still enough when the police come round and, when they leave, his father whacks him with a hot iron. Then, his dad decides to basically sell him to the yakuza that he works for - or, at least, to a branch of it that controls a sport (Exy). They also mess up the college kids in their care, hurting those they feel they own.

To stop this, Neil's mum grabs him and goes on the run with him, so for a good portion of his life, Neil is moved around, told not to amount to anything so he's not noticed, and lives in constant fear. If he does anything his mum considers wrong or that could get them found, she would beat him, and often immediately moved them on. "

“His mother beat him frequently when they were on the run (out of fear because he could endanger them so she was trying to correct his behavior but still there are better ways). Like his relationship with his mom is so fucked that one of the first things we learn about him is that he likes smelling cigarette smoke to remind him of when he burned her body after she died. At one point he goes I wonder if my mom is watching over me from the afterlife, hopefully not because she would probably try to kill me. This is of course, his good parent.

His father tortured him on several occasions growing up and was going to sell him to his boss for him to become a professional athlete when he was like 10 but if his boss decided that he couldn't be a sports star he would kill him. When Neil is on the run, he has to live in constant fear of his father finding him and his mom. Later in the series his father does finally catch him and pretty brutally tortures him (this is Neil's second time being tortured in these books about college sports) where he is covered in cuts and burns (some of those were from his father's subordinates to be fair) and his father was planning on gutting him and dismembered him until Neil's uncle came in and killed him.

Anyways of course the boy raised by two different mafia families has a problematic relationship to his parents."

"so basically. his dad is a mafia affiliated serial murderer who abused him his whole early childhood, which already sucks ass for neil. but THEN, this guy tried to essentially sell him to a yakuza organization (that also def would have abused him as well, not that he really cared) to pay off his debts, making him property of a yakuza organization that would profit off of him by (im not joking here) making him play a sport that is basically aggressive indoor lacrosse and allowing him to be abused in any possible way. and you may be saying, wow, that’s really messed up and kind of a weird roundabout way to settle debts, but what about his mom? and uh. oh boy. what about his mom.

his mom saw that her son was being sold to be a little lacrosse prisoner for his whole life and took her son and ran away from her husband. so she seems nice, right? wrong. she canonically refused to let him get to know anyone and hit him for even thinking about any kind of romantic feelings towards other people which. okay. i get that ur on the run from ur mob husband that wants to kill you but maybe be nice to ur son?? tbr tho, she doesn’t get that long a chance to, considering that a few years into being on the run she gets murdered by the aforementioned mob husband’s henchmen, after which she asks neil to dispose of her body by Burning It In A Car Fire and Burying Her On A Beach. so. uh. he does that. and then you’d think, oh, that’s quite a lot to happen to one person, he should stop having to Go Through It, right? but no. that’s just his backstory. we haven’t even gotten to the actual plot yet.

cut to years (and two and a half books) down the line, and he’s still on the run from his aforementioned killer mob dad who has sent henchmen after him to kill him. once he gets out of jail (he was in jail for a while there btw. i have no idea why these henchmen stuck with him after that but that’s beside the point), one of his henchmen kidnaps neil and the mob dad is like okay! im going to kill you with a knife now after my henchman tortures you! bye bye son! and neil is like yeah. that’s expected. and later when his dad is killed he is very much like ding dong the witch is dead (sidebar: he was not like that about his mom’s death. his relationship with his mom is very like… she loved me in her own way but she wasn’t kind but did she even have the chance to be? and i’ll never know but she showed glimpses of it i miss her so bad im glad ill never see her again. yk? lowkey the slightest bit complex i’ll give nora that and only that)

(second sidebar: neil looks Just Like His Dad and fully cannot look at himself in a mirror because of it. like he wears color contacts for Disguises while he’s on the run and he takes them out for more than like two seconds and goes out in public with His Dad’s blue eyes and he’s like I Want To Puke this is so bad.)

as a bonus the coach of the basically-lacrosse team he joins meets him and within literally an hour of knowing him was like “oh btw. i don’t hit kids. you look like you needed me to clarify that for you as if that’s not a given” and neil, after only knowing that this guy was roughly the same age and build as his father was like “yeah right” and genuinely does not truly think that this man isn’t out to get him until the end of the second book. it took him 2/3 of the plot to trust this man to even the smallest degree. what is even going on in nora’s brain that made her write this"

Billy antis ALWAYS seem to forget that he’s a child of abuse. Yes, a CHILD, because he was only 18 for three months before he died. Being physically and emotionally abused affects your social skills and obviously Billy did what he did to keep himself and Max in line so that Neil would not go off on either of them. No it’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation.

I was treated this same way a child. Not physically but definitely verbally and mentally. Walking on eggshells, making sure I didn’t say the wrong thing. Sometimes I find myself echoing my abuser’s words. I don’t mean to, of course, but it’s automatic. And I feel so damn bad every time I do.

We can see at the end of s2 how Billy looks at Max differently. And then in s3 where the true Billy comes out. The scared, vulnerable, abused teenager who never got a chance to truly atone for his actions. And people demonizing him just further invalidates abuse victims. By calling them monsters when they’re acting literally the only way they know how. That’s why we need to be guided gently. That’s why Billy needed a redemption arc. Someone to be in his life to help make him a better person. One could argue that the helping hand in the end was El.

I know Billy supporters have probably seen this all regurgitated multiple times, I’m just adding my own thoughts. I love Billy because I relate to him.