hallowed be thy name

Okay, so I’ve been thinking about it and Billy’s tattoo is literally killing me over here.

Like, he was excited about that tattoo. He saved up and drove, probably alone, to some city big enough to have a tattoo parlor. He picked out that image off a wall of designs. Bullshitted with the tattoo artist and pretended it didn’t hurt. He touched it every day when it was still scabbed over and got this little smile, thinking of his lifeguard job in the summer where he’d be able to show it off. Bought a bunch of sleeveless shirts. He was stoked. He was alive and he had plans and he would have gotten more tattoos.

And the thing is: Billy tries to ask for help after being attacked by the Mind Flayer. The instinct to reach out is still there, just as it was there when Billy was a child, hiding with the phone as he called his mother when she left him, begging her to please come back. But calling and seeking that help- that safety- is never answered. Billy has been alone, left to endure the abuse from the hands of others in silence much in the same way it is visually represented when he is left alone on the side of some back road in Hawkins after having been attacked by the Mind Flayer.

And so, the moment the operator asks what the emergency is, the words die on Billy's tongue. We see him live through a flashback of the Mind Flayer attacking his body. The attack itself already took away Billy's agency. And then it happens again, with the flashback of the attack taking away his agency and voice once more.

I talk a lot about how Billy's body has never been his own and how he has no agency and control over his life as a result of the abuse he suffers. But that also includes the fact that the abuse has taken Billy's voice away, too. And how can he speak of it? How can he speak of it when his life has shown him nothing except that people are abusers in all ways that it manifests, that people will look the other way when faced directly with the abuse he suffers, that people will take advantage of him, and that no help ever comes?

Then they’re just crimes.

lover not a fighter

revealing my WTF2020 art p. 7

So are we meant to believe max was in the dark about it? Did everyone just have this unspoken agreement to keep Neil’s abuse of billy from max? Max was just walking around la dee da not knowing anything? Because that’s very much what she was giving in all her scenes. Their dynamic is not one of two people going through the same hell together. I have to believe if max knew their dynamic would be a LITTLE better if only because she would know billy was just following Neil’s orders.

The show very much makes its so that max (and the audience) puts all the blame on billy for being controlling, but he isn’t! HE makes a case for her not needing a babysitter HE doesn’t care if she wanders around by herself. It’s Neil who forces him to keep her on a short leash.

And that’s fucking wild to me that you have that dynamic going on and never address it like idk I think that’s a pretty big piece of the puzzle!

We all already knew the duffers never cared about making billy a main narrative focus but they very much made max a main character…but this choice fails her completely because it completely strips any nuance or insight into her home life which again…given how they just wrote off Susan (and Neil) because they couldn’t be bothered to write for them anymore (or pay them, more likely) it’s not surprising.

If you’re not the Byers or the wheelers your family life doesn’t matter. And even then the Byers were shafted too

This simple child you had inside Long ago like flowers sang in springtime Nothing really stayed the same And nothing really changing in the end

— Child You Were, Isaac Delusion

!!! felt like drawing steve and billy as kids, and then thought wow I never paint, lets try that too. lineart version under the cut!

billy: hey. hey hey hey hey. i heard you were cool. are you cool. everybody says you were cool. and now you're a little bitch. are you a little bitch. look at me look at me. hey cool cool bitch look at me are you looking

#HarringroveWeek gave me the perfect excuse to finish this- I’m utterly in love with the idea of an AU where Billy is a selkie ( his mom was, too ). Billy has to tread a very careful line between bringing his coat with him to risky places like school, where it could so easily end up in someone else’s hands, versus leaving it at home, where it’s not uncommon for Neil to threaten to cut it up, ensuring Billy can never escape to the sea.

I like to think that somehow, it ends up in Steve’s hands and leads to happiness for both of them, but I haven’t really gotten that far with the ideas in my head.