I'm convinced that when people heard billy hargrove apparently had a crush on steve, a small but dedicated portion of eddie's followers started jokingly stanning billy. the cross section of conspiracy theorists / shitposters absolutely clowns all over eddie's comments with shit like "simping for the man who hit you with his car is king behaviour" and "wow, steve literally ran this guy over and he really just said thank you m'am. pathetic. I'm kissing him on the mouth btw."
I also like to imagine eddie would absolutely loathe this development
Oh my god, this is hilarious and very, very apt for internet culture. People were jokingly stanning Billy and then someone with an old Hawkins High yearbook posts a picture of him, and people realized he was hot then, game over. Itβs the worst week of Eddieβs life and he once was on the run for murder, fought an interdimensional slime monster with daddy issues, and died in the same week.
I think Eddie absolutely adores fan art. His studio is lined with art that people have given him and that heβs bought from fans. He was even more over the moon when people started drawing art of him and Steve, but then. Then, these very talented jokesters in his comments are posting fan art of Steve with Billy.
Just imagine the amount of discourse Billy would create on the internet. Itβd be worse than the discourse in the ST fandom, because Eddie has never had an opinion that he hasnβt shared. Heβd let people know that he hates this. Billy was a bully who harassed him and his friends and liked shitty music.
This would egg people on more, I think, because thatβs how the internet works. But Dustin, as president of the Steve Harrington fan club, would not let that slide. He posts a Tiktok like, βUh, guys. Youβre very talent artists and all, but uh. Billy Hargrove tried to kill Steve. He *picture of Steve after Hopper took him to the hospital* beat Steve up really bad and he wouldnβt have stopped if Max didnβt drug him. He ran me and my friends off the road once. And he was racist. He tried to fight Lucas.β
Max also posts. She talks about how hard it was after Billy died and how it nearly killed her, but she also talks about how he wasnβt a good brother, how afraid she was of him, and how he attacked Lucas and attacked Steve for sticking up for them. She doesnβt really want to see him on her FYP.
This leads to so much fighting between people who view Billy as their new white boy of the month and people who are like, why are you retraumatizing that girl in a wheelchair (I imagine post-season 4 Max does have mobility of her legs and walks with a limp or a cane, but sometimes still has to use a wheelchair). Itβs just very annoying until the next big scandal happens and people stop talking about it.
It's kinda odd to me that there hasn't been a Jack Black via Brutal Legend crossover with #Bowser, so drawing this for #Bowserday2022 seemed like the best venn diagram for me personally :P