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Day 1: Knife

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El-Max parallels implying Billy's physical abuse of Max

quick mostly-gif analysis. we're told that Billy "takes his anger out on Max" and that he "made her life living hell." was he physically abusive to Max all along? nobody ever says that.

we see Billy physically abuse Lucas and Steve. but if we're talking strictly about Max, those phrasings leave room for people to argue that Billy might've been emotionally abusive, but didn't actually hit her or anything. that that arm-grab in the car is just sibling behavior and not necessarily indicative of abuse.

and, hey man, look, you're right that they never say. but there's lots of things this show never explicitly says.

note that we only see Billy hurt Max twice, and both of those are parallels to ways we also see him hurt El.

the Billy-Max arm grab is suspiciously similar to the Billy-El arm grab. surprise grab, struggle/yanking, and then a rough release. he makes the same face.

(I've seen the argument that Max's daring snark before, and surprise at, the grab suggests he's never hurt her before. but I think both could just as well be explained by the fact that they're in public, where she thought she was safer from this than at home.)

we also see El and Max take facial injuries from flayed Billy at Starcourt. these close ups of their injuries are in consecutive scenes:

and we see him hurt El lots more times than we do Max.

so if the only two we know about are parallels, it makes me wonder about all the other times:

Billy strangling El

the way Billy pauses to look pointedly at Max as he starts strangling El, like he's getting something out of her, in particular, watching this. and then the way Max later looks guilty about the bruise it leaves on El's throat. (I will be discussing this at length soon)

Billy throwing the weights at El

that scene where he's lifting weights and yelling at Max (who's duct taping the skateboard he's heavily implied to have broken as punishment about Lucas)... hmmmm.

hey it's almost like the skateboard is a symbol of / scapegoat for Billy's abuse, because remember:

baby Max with the broken arm

maybe she broke it skateboarding. she did tell Nancy and Jonathan that skateboarding is why she knows first aid, but they don't look like they're buying it.

however, we just so happen to have seen another flashback of baby Max before, which makes it clear that she already knew Billy around this age. (Runaway Max says Billy broke her friend's arm btw.)

Billy repeatedly leaning over El at Starcourt

the "stay still" shit and the way he's repeatedly, unnecessarily, on top of El in that scene, using his body to trap her in. (like. if he wants her to quit struggling, it'd be easier to kick her when he's already standing than to get back on all fours and headbutt her. why does he actively get in the way of the MF to keep Doing That.) we've seen Billy block Max in before with the silent threat of his physicality. a subtle taste of a commonly overlooked form of abuse.

those all leave me wondering about the ones I can't think of Max screenshots to pair with.

Billy slamming El by the face... throwing her into the wall to knock her out... dragging El by the foot as she tries to crawl away from him (only to get back on top of her once again)...

but hey. no worries. they never said any of that.

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"redemption arcs are toxic, you shouldn't try to fix someone!"

actually it is so important to me that being in community and experiencing human connection can save people. thanks

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Billy Hargrove 1986 VENICE BEACH CALIFORNIA Photo ref

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Billy loves strongly, and that's a problem, because no one ever strongly loves him

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“Billy Hargrove was ‘complex”

-being a racist asshole that abuses his little sister and Happens to have daddy issues does not make you complex it makes you a racist asshole.

You know what does make you complex? Having depth beyond ‘oooooh hot bad boy upset by father lashes out.’

You know who else got abused by their father? Jonathan Byers. WILL Byers. Max Fucking Hargrove.

You know what none of the characters did? Became a racist asshole.

I don’t care how dark your backstory is, if it’s not Interesting and worth my time it’s not complex.

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I wanted to do a Billy piece. I thought what if he survived and moved back to California? And, what if they met him at the Skater Rink that Eleven clobbered that bully at? So I did a sort of pin up of him, because why not? lol 😍

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Something about how punishing people forever doesn't work, etc...

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“Such a good boy. “

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you've stripped him of so many of his qualities that it's no longer "he would not say that". it's "who the fuck even is that guy"

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writers: *intentionally write villain as sympathetic*

fans: *sympathize with villain*

the purity police on tumblr dot com: 

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-GLITTER-

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Very different than my usual post, but this is a commission I got to draw dogboy billy hargrove from @spotteddogfan ໒・ﻌ・७

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My aesthetic would be Billy smoking a cigarette while covered in monster blood

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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.

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I have a theory about daddy-issues in the Stranger Things universe...