I Feel So Gross Whenever Fanon Plays Off Snape's Parental Issues As An Excuse That He Actively Uses,

The anguish on El’s face just screams “Well shit, if this is how my best friend feels about her own BROTHER, what will she think of me if she hears about all horrible stuff I did?”

El knows she could have easily been a female version of Billy if she didn’t get an intervention in the form of the party, Hopper, and the Byers family. So to hear her best friend talk about another abused kid like that….it must have hurt deeply.

billy fans 🤝🏽 el: understanding billy's actions and sympathizing with his past

//Tw For Abuse, Suicide and other extensive childhood traumas, also long post of pouring my heart out cause I take fictional characters to my poor traumatized heart

Can we really talk about the S4 Vol2 Speech, though?

I can understand Max’s mixed feelings about her brother. I have some of my own about my sister, who behaved a lot like him and hurt me in some ways, even if she didn’t always mean to.

First, I want to talk about the fact that Max HAD TO KNOW that Billy was abused, to some degree.

Not because she was living in the same house as him for years, but because she continues the cycle. After she sedates Billy in the fight at the Byers’, she threatens him—

“Say you understand! Say it!”

A few scenes before this, his father says nearly the exact same thing— “Do you understand? Say it.” (Maybe not exactly but using most of those words.)

So Max would’ve had to have heard it used before, because it would mean she knew that’s how you get Billy to “agree” with something. And Max— Max is a good person. She’s good-natured, funny, and clever.

So you really expect me to think that Max, knowing her brother was abused and didn’t have a mother for some reason, after he sacrificed himself for all of her friends and very nearly the world crying and apologizing over and over in front of her, DIDN’T THINK HE DESERVED TO BE SAVED? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

I can understand the idea that he was the greatest “normal-world” terror in her life. My sister didn’t affect me directly, but her problems were a full time job and distracted my parents from me while I was still very young. On top of that, her and my other sister liked to gang up on and bully me. So trust me, I get it.

Let’s take a look at what Billy did.

He grabbed Max, threatened to hit her friends with his car, yelled at her a few times, made a vague comment against Lucas after seeing Max fight with him (which there’s a lot to say about this but I’ll keep it at the fact that Dacre has said this wasn’t racist and that the Dxffers refuse to deal with any issues whatsoever), pushed Lucas up against a wall, and fought with Steve. I’m not including the Vecna/Mind Flayer bs in this because he did it against his will, not to mention the reason he did half this shit.

Yes, I can understand how that could be scary, especially for a thirteen year old. Using my sister as an example yet again, she died at 18, right when she was “starting to get better.” Billy was doing the same, as he and Max seemed to have a truce in between S2/S3. She even said in her book that she wasn’t scared of him, but that’s largely considered “non-canon.” To summarize, she understood he was abused and was even on level terms with him.

With my sister, I was not. I relate to Billy myself, but I largely relate Billy to my sisters, mainly my oldest sister (I really mean this. She acted out and got the attention of older people and went in and out of mental hospitals and was suicidal and got in a fist fight with my mother once, etc etc etc) Like I said before, my sisters bullied me (my parents and grandparents have admitted to me that they even knew they were outright nasty) and my sisters’ problems were largely the cause of one of my biggest issues. My sisters both acted out, distracted my parents from me, my whole family trauma dumped on very young me, etc etc etc. Really, that time of my life was a huge mess. And then my sister died, and even more trauma dumped on me from that (emotional abuse and neglect, divorce trauma, the fact that my sister was fucking dead and never coming back never never never how can someone just disappear, Etc). So we rarely got along and the rest of the time we were mostly neutral.

I’m not going to lie. I don’t really do it anymore, but when I was younger I’d curl up and cry about how I was all alone because my parents were to busy with them. I blamed them. I still do, but not in a how-could-you-do-that-to-me way and more of a these-events-caused-you-pain-and-got-you-attention-and-I-suffered-in-silence-for-multiple-reasons-that-aren’t-your-fault way.

You know what I don’t do? Say she didn’t deserve to be saved. Cause she did. She really fucking did. She could be mean and horrible and cold and she wasn’t even close to me but she was only eighteen, only for a couple of months (like Billy), and she was still a baby, she wasn’t even old enough to drink. She was small, she was always small, she’s just a kid. She was getting better and learning how to cope and being nicer to me and she was finding a purpose and getting a handle on herself and then she was just—

Gone. I still don’t understand how someone can just stop existing. Me and my sister still talk about how we expect her to just walk through the door, smack us on the back of the head, and laugh at us for believing it— that anything could ever kill her, of all people. That it was some big joke and we were dumbasses for believing it. It’s been years now, but I still break down at night crying over her. My sister and I have this bone-deep understanding of each other now that I can’t explain— it’s so genuine and whole that it kinda scares me. We call each other after nightmares and share dreams with her in them. My sister blames all of the “paranormal” activity in her house on her and tells me about it. Every time I see a bug (her nickname) or a rainbow I send it to her. When I was younger, I used to wish something would happen, either to her or to me, just so something would change. Do you know what I think every day? How she deserved better. How it should’ve been me or someone else. How she deserved to be saved.

Because “inconvenient” abuse victims deserve to be saved. People who’ve been broken and beaten and discarded and ignored and assaulted their whole lives aren’t irremediable and they deserved to be saved. My sisters deserved to be saved and I deserved to be saved and people like us, people like Billy, deserved to be saved too.

In short, fuck the Duffle Bag Bitches. I’m keeping this eccentric rat fucker close to my fucking heart and I’ll redeem and defend him eight thousand times if it means someone like me, like us, like Billy gets even a glimmer of hope to keep going.

Stranger Things spoilers ahead but I need to talk about Jonathan Byers.

Jonathan, who took it upon himself to organize his baby brother’s funeral because his mother wasn’t doing it.

Jonathan, who dropped everything to *save* Will when he was presented with evidence that he wasn’t dead.

Jonathan, who could not physically bear to watch Will in pain even if it was necessary to free him from the mindflayer, and had to turn away so he didn’t have to see him suffer.

Jonathan, who never treated Will like he was annoying like Mike and Nancy or Lucas and Erica.

Jonathan, who truly *saw* how Will was acting around Mike and knew what it meant.

Jonathan, who admitted he had been distant and chose to be the one to reach across the distance and tell Will he would always love him no matter what.

Jonathan, who gave Will acceptance and reassurance without asking anything of him.

Jonathan, who realized in 1986 that his baby brother was queer and made sure he knew he was explicitly supported without outing him before he was ready.

Just. Jonathan Byers y’all.

Time for something that might be a hot take to some people.

Max attacking Billy with the baseball bat is not the badass move we’re meant to see it as in the narrative. Rather, it shows that she is caught in the same cycle of abuse as Billy. Billy overreacted, but he’s under threat of violence if he doesn’t bring Max home, and he finds her in an undeniably shady situation. He’s already down after Max injects him with the tranquilizer, but Max repeats the same tactics that we saw Neil use on Billy.

“Isn’t that right? ISN’T THAT RIGHT?” “Yes, sir.” “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.” “Yes. Sir.”

“SAY YOU UNDERSTAND! Say it. SAY IT!!” “I understand.” “What?” “I understand.”

Legend of Korra

Any one else still bitter that we did not get a scene where Zuko, Katara, and Toph met up in the Legend of Korea and just TALKED TO EACH OTHER? Cause I am....

A fun fact about me is that I utterly loathe Stranger Things as a clumsy narrative and as a pop culture megalith—except in the areas where it concerns the 5-ish characters that were written with some genuine depth or pizazz and thus too good for the series to effectively explore.

K.J. Apa stars as Ethan in the new trailer for Universal Studio’s, “A Dog’s Purpose” . In Theaters January 27th, 2017.

K.J. stars alongside Britt Robertson, Dennis Quaid, and Josh Gad.