fagguy

I was reading a Harringrove fic recently, and there was a line in there about Steve being able to talk freely with Billy about things he couldn't talk about with Robin or Dustin. And that's part of what I love about Harringrove. There are these dark parts of s1 Steve that canon never really addresses. It instead discards them at the end of s1 so that the audience will accept Steve. But that's not really how a work should deal with darkness in a character. And while I get that s5 Dustin was kind of meant to reflect s1 Steve back at Steve, s5 Dustin still had friends and family who genuinely cared deeply about him, both in the past and present. And so his temporary grief didn't quite equal the ingrained cynicism, frustration, and isolation that I think both S1 Steve and s2 Billy represented. Both of them tried to grow up way too fast and engaged in self-distructive behaviors for years because they wanted certain things that they either didn't know how to ask for or were too afraid to. They dealt with people and did things that neither Robin nor Dustin have reason to understand, and would likely want to shut-out, ignore, or completely divorce from the Steve that they've come to know (much like the audience). And while Billy's isolation comes mostly from trauma and Steve's comes mostly from emotional neglect, there's a similarity of experience there that inevitably creates a kind of understanding that I don't know that either could find with anyone else.

Another thing fandom needs to start doing more of is projecting on tops.

To quote myself: Domtops in fics are always written to have such uncomplicated and healthy relationships to their sexualities and for my mental health I need us to collectively start giving them complexes about being some kind of monstrous predatory freak of nature instead.