#nervousdiscourse

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anyone saying nancy "clearly cheated" also isn't watching the show. tommy says out loud, to steve (who does not dispute him) in the gym shower "you and the princess BREAK UP for one day and she's already running off with the freak's brother." they are broken up. they are broken up clearly enough that their classmates know it. it's not ambiguous. it's clear. tommy says it.

Agreed. If Steve wasn’t on board with that being the situation too, wouldn’t he you know… ask Tommy wtf he means by that? He just looks defeated and possibly embarrassed. Steve goes to Nancy with flowers to win her back, bc they broke up.

Ofc I agree that the writing was muddy and clearly put together in an afternoon with a heavy helping of sympathy for heroic Steve, which makes things worse, but also…it was there. Nancy and Steve didn’t have a heart to heart where they literally said the words “we’ve broken up”, but there are lines from others, told directly to the characters involved, reinforcing that that’s what happened. This is what happened behind the scenes, between the lines. I still think the writing for how Jancy was supposed to happen in between all of that incredibly forced and not at all given the care it needed. It was a checklist the Doofuses had to clear for S2 based on S1 fan demands. And we know they love giving in to those.

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Also, Max’s "arc” (nobody had an arc in s3 lol) was far from feminist when one of her main purposes was to act as a sympathizing force for Billy. Suddenly all the abuse was gone, the abuse she endured under Billy and the racist violence he acted out on Lucas, her boyfriend. Completely erased, and suddenly Max totally loves Billy? He’s just a bit rough? Disgusting. I understand that abuse is not always simple for the victim, but the writing made zero attempts at explaining that complexity.

It’s also not super feminist to me when a female character, in this instance Joyce, is treated like shit the entire season, having to endure Hopper’s condescending, immature, selfish ways to then by the end still act like she wants him??? Hopper doesn’t deserve Joyce by a longshot and it’s incredibly obvious here that the writers are cis men. This furthers the incredibly toxic idea that men are always allowed “another chance” after they keep screwing up. This is the stuff Joyce was trying to get away from with Lonnie.

the storylines of Joyce Byers, Eleven Hopper, Max Mayfield, and Nancy Wheeler in Stranger Things 3 are the most truly feminist and radical storylines in the past year. These characters are all dismissed, controlled, or both by the men in their lives and persevere through those things. Not only are these characters given room to grow, beating the men around them is integral to their growth and encouraged. At the end of the season they are proven correct and worthy of all that we knew they were. The duffers took the ‘crazy woman’ trope and reversed it, allowing these women to flourish and grow in their own way. In this essay I will-

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i don't understand you logic. nancy was pining for jonathan for a whole year. in your head, nancy didn't physically cheat on steve when she fucked jonathan that night but that does not change the fact that she emotionally cheated on him. i mean those are just the facts lol.

Lol, a girl can do nothing right when someone is set out to hate her. Once it’s been proven she wasn’t physically cheating, then the goalposts are moved so that it’s now about “emotional cheating”.

First of all, anon, please go outside and look at how real humans interact. Relationships grow and fade with the tide of emotion that we develop for different people. Emotions are complicated and cannot be put in neat little packages. We fall in love with others constantly. That is how romance happens. A relationship fades as one or more people of that relationship might develop feelings for someone else. You might’ve been growing apart in your current relationship and realize that you don’t fit together and find someone you truly click with. This is a natural part of being human. Being confused about your emotions is part of being human. You can have more than one thought in your head at any given time. That is not a crime.

Also you’re making it sound like she had a super close relation to Jonathan during this time, which is what one would constitute as emotional cheating. Simply thinking of the other person is not something you can hold against someone. It is stated that Jonathan “disappeared” after the events of S1 and they never got to actually hang out (”We only seem to hang out when the world’s about to end”), by which I mean things like outside of school. He needed to be with his family a lot. At the same time Jonathan and Nancy don’t seem to be able to even be in the same room as each other before Steve swoops in and steals Nancy away (hallway scene), marking his territory as Nancy being his. Jonathan backs away respectfully from this.

It is Steve that Nancy attempts to turn to for emotional support and only turns to Jonathan when Steve time and time again shows that he’s not going to support her the way she needs and they break up. Nancy has tried very hard to make things work during this time and she supports Steve in any way she can (and Steve tried in his own way for her), but in the end she has to think of herself, and that is where a lot of people can’t deal. She sets out to avenge Barb and being able to finally hang out with Jonathan again proper probably reminded her of how she feels like she clicks with Jonathan in a way she wanted to but never did with Steve.

Also, not really using this as an argument, but, it was about a year bc the story called for it. The story needed to happen at Halloween the following year for a bunch of reasons so Nancy had to bite the bullet and stay with Steve for this extended period of time bc the writers had to have the love triangle happen. Ofc I’m not sure how long it’s acceptable for a 16/17-yearold girl to be confused about her emotions before we have to call her a lying, cheating bitch. Is it a week? Two-three months? Does anyone have any info on this? I never got to that part in the giant book of “Things Women Are Allowed To Feel And Do”.

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It'd be nice if these "Jonathan is a creep" people showed the same energy towards Steve when he watched Nancy through her bedroom window after she told him she didn't want to see him, especially since he did this more than once, doesn't seem to think he did anything wrong, and was never called out for it in the show. It's almost like these people don't actually care about men being creeps, but are actually just looking for an excuse to hate one man in particular.

Would be nice, wouldn’t it. I don’t think it’s out of line to criticize bad behavior, but it falls flat when you’re not willing to look at what other characters also do. @jancys-blue-bayou have a bunch of good posts on the hypocrisy of shaming Jonathan for the bad things he did (that EVERYONE agrees on are bad and that he was rightfully punished for by having his camera removed for the last gd time), but completely ignoring all of the problematic/over the line things Steve is seen doing throughout both S1 and 2, like this one.

Steve makes a number of dick moves/mistakes towards Nancy, but he is redeemed by changing his behavior. The same sympathy is not often extended to Jonathan. And that makes no sense to me.

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If the shower scene wasn't verbally confirming a breakup then it did absolutely nothing to move the plot forward and it had no business being in the show. I have plenty of issues with the Duffers' writing but I need to believe that wouldn't have kept in a pointless scene while cutting other more important ones out for time.

Lol ikr. So they cut jancy having a talk in the car the morning after, but mindless hs gossip that never leads anywhere and has nothing to do with anything stays? I think the Doofuses are slightly smarter than that.

Also that whole bit including the basketball scene right before are there to show how humiliated Steve is to garner sympathy from the viewers. He’s not the King anymore, he just broke up with his gf and people are making fun of him. Ofc people took that sympathy and upped it to eleven (sorry girl), distorting the narrative, making Nancy look even worse and Steve even more sympathetic by making up a love affair story to boot. The sympathy is already in the canon material, it just takes some extra misogyny and some accessible handsome white guy to make that narrative a reality in some people’s heads.

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OP, you just explained why yourself. Bringing government agencies to justice is no small feat. The phone call was, as you said, a ruse to lure agents to kidnap/take them in for questioning. The plot in itself is incredibly badly written; like why would Nancy’s purse not be confiscated upon entering what is now the most secret location in the entire nation, so I’m not sure why this is a huge point of concern. Nancy couldn’t explain the actual truth to the Hollands bc it’s uh...really complicated, horrifying and dangerous. Jancy didn’t have the means to do this. Their idea wasn’t to explain to the Hollands right away, but, as @kirabook put it, get back to them later. In the end they settled on a half truth bc what they’ve been through is just too improbable to have people believe it, which Murray helped them understand.

It’s not reasonable to blame Nancy for not being everywhere at once or satisfying everyone’s worries at any given moment. It was part of the plan for the grand scheme of things. I’m not sure how they were supposed to arrange a fake phone call with their resources at the time. Jancy put their lives at risk to bring the Hollands and a ton of other people’s grief to rest by shutting down the facility that had destroyed the lives of so many, not least Eleven, one of the main characters of the show. In the end this was a good thing.

Maybe I'm just stupid or maybe this is an actual plot hole

because, does anyone have a proper explanation for Nancy's phonecall to Mrs Holland in season 2?

I understand that Jancy set up the whole "meeting" solely to get kidnapped by Hawkins Lab, and almost every Reddit/forum result about this query is someone snidely going "She never had any intention of telling the Hollands anything." I know that. But it just seems uncharacteristically cruel of Nancy to actually phone her friend's parents, and claim to have something to tell them, then not follow through. Well, come to that, if the Hollands weren't in on the plan (and how can they have been? Come on) why didn't they turn up at the rendez-vous site?

I get that the viewer is supposed to be alarmed when Jancy are spirited away, and not entirely clue in to the fact that they wanted to be taken until afterwards, so maybe they couldn't have done something so obvious as show the rigging of a fake phone call, but...? I can't reconcile this part of the plan with what we know about Nancy's feelings toward Barb's parents. She already feels tremendously guilty. Even if she planned to explain it to them afterwards, why didn’t we see any fallout from that?

I'm not saying Nancy's above manipulating people to carry out a scheme. I just don’t think she’s cruel to people who are already victims. So is it just an oversight in the script? Or what?

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They left too much open to interpretation with Nancy. I also don't agree with the idea that she just felt nothing for Steve the whole time they were dating, but unfortunately, nothing in the canon actually contradicts that idea. We know that, as of 2x02, she was not in love with Steve, and we know she was hoping that Jonathan would approach her before. Misogynists were always gonna take that to the worst possible conclusion, especially as they are able to over-victimize a white man as a result.

True. We definitely needed more of Nancy’s POV and less of a sobfest for Steve. The writers have admitted that they angled the writing to make Steve look more sympathetic and it shows. A lot.

In short, they butchered Nancy’s character to leave room for Steve to still be in the show. Without Nancy being with him for a year there was no logical way of keeping Steve around. The solution should of course have been that Nancy never got back with Steve or they broke up sometime post S1 bc she was not into him bc simultaneously she was supposed to fall in love with Jonathan somehow. As @nancykali explained, feelings are complicated, and I wouldn’t hold it against Nancy to be conflicted about her emotions, but damn did they not give her any room to express that. I will be forever bitter that they chose to sacrifice the sympathy of a female character so that some male character could stay, never considering the consequences and people’s misogynistic bias.

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The point of the locker scene was to show that the school was in high gossip. Nancy and Steve have this messy fight and she shows up to school the next day with Jonathan. Tommy is not a friend and is goading Steve at the idea she's moved on, but it does matter what he and Nancy think of their own relationship. 2 scenes inject ambiguity & show they believed things between them unresolved: Steve wants to get past the fight/attempts to apologize; Nancy pushes back at Murray/says no she loves Steve.

Ok, but like…what is the point of a hs gossip thing if it’s literally never mentioned or involved plotwise ever again for the rest of the show? Scripts are very deliberately written in shows and film. Nobody just says something that may or may not mean something unless it is later revealed that they’re lying for plot-related reasons. Tommy specifically uses the words “break up” bc that’s what happened. If it was “just” a fight, his line would reflect that, saying “You and the princess have one little fight and she runs off with…”, etc (and also again, Steve would interject if he didn’t agree). It’s such a big topic to talk about bc of the dramatic and sudden way this breakup happened, right in the middle of a big party where everyone could see. Hs teens like Tommy love that stuff. It was ofc a huge topic on everybody’s mind.

Steve goes to Nancy with flowers bc he’s trying to win her back. This is not unusual in relationships that break up very suddenly and where one part is still in love with the other. He’s trying to make amends bc he’s in love with her and wants to try to make things right so they can get back together. There’s no evidence this was bc they only had a fight, in fact it’s reinforced by the previous scenes (”break up”) that this is a case of trying to start the relationship anew.

The scene with Murray is moot since Nancy is clearly lying and Murray detects this. The point is that Murray is so on point in his analysis of them both that it makes it supremely awkward for Nancy and Jonathan. Nancy tries to stutter that he’s wrong, but he obviously isn’t and she knows that (and the scene that happens basically literally right after confirms that). This is Nancy trying to the very end to deny the way she feels, and also Jonathan is sitting right next to her so she ofc tries to smooth things over. They both defy his analysis bc they don’t want to admit to their feelings, something they’ve battled with for about a year now and not acted upon. It’s part of the arc for Jancy to happen. Jonathan also denies that he likes Nancy as more than a friend and that is also clearly a lie.

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People try to argue that Tommy isn't an authority on Steve's relationship, but lbr, if Tommy thought there was any chance that Steve's still-girlfriend was off cheating on him with Jonathan then he 100% would have said that, because that would've hurt Steve worse and that's what Tommy was trying to do. If Tommy mentioned they broke up then it's because he has no doubt that a breakup happened.

Correct. He specifically said “broke up” instead of pushing that Steve and Nancy were somehow still a couple when this happened.

Also lol wtf does “not an authority on Steve’s relationship” even mean. Tommy is there to give the audience exposure on what’s going on, and Steve not disputing that confirms that this is indeed the case. Even Billy joins in and talks about how there are “plenty of bitches in the sea”. Billy is telling Steve to get over it and just get with someone else. Why? Bc Steve and Nancy are no longer a couple.

The entire point of this scene is to get this across to audiences. It’s there to confirm that Stancy are no longer dating. Without that explicit intent in mind, the scene is meaningless and tells us nothing. This is not how ST write their scenes.

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Yeah, and also like, I don't think everything was simple and linear anyway. Maybe she waited because she somehow deep down kind of wanted to see if anything could happen with Jonathan and it didn't and she went back to Steve and surely made a big attempt to get to know him and develop that relationship with him. Emotions develop over time and maybe she felt like Steve and her could be something for a while but then realizing that it wouldn't work out because they're too different and she clicks more with Jonathan. That can be a whole journey to wade through in itself. I don't think Nancy just kept thinking about Jonathan nonstop from the word go, but that it was a process that also involved a lot of guilt at points. That's how you go from one relationship to the next. You develop feelings for someone and at one point you make the decision if you want to stay or go. It's not from one day to the next.

@nervousalligator but when did she realize she didn’t want to be with Steve? The song frames it as nearly from the moment she was with Steve but had spent time with Jonathan in s1. So no matter how you see it, the song sees it as her never wanting to be with Steve but staying with him anyway. And she was never “stuck”, the song makes it sound like she is but she isn’t. She chose to stay with Steve bc she wanted to - or she was forcing herself to. She shouldn’t be seen as forcing herself to stay with Steve, and I don’t think the canon represents her doing that. The view she was feeling “stuck” is why she’s been called a liar and manipulative, or leading Steve on. So do you see her as feeling stuck for 11 months, or any amount of months? I don’t see her forcing herself to stay with Steve and only thinking of Jonathan whenever she was with Steve.

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Some fandom sexism I don't see talked about much: Nancy and Mike. They're both grieving their loved ones at the end of s1. But while Nancy gets called a bitch for not neatly burying her feelings to support a boy (again), I've never seen Mike get any hate for not supporting Nancy, only the other way around. It's also entirely possible that Nancy tried to reach out to Mike and was rebuffed, yet the fandom assumes the best of the male character and the worst of the female character, as always.

I wouldn’t expect Mike to like..take responsibility of Nancy’s well-being, as a younger sibling and a kid. Mike did get some hate for letting his grief be “taken out on others” (Max mainly), just like people see Nancy’s revenge plot being her “taking her grief out on others” (like it would be in Will’s best interest to keep going to the lab). In that way they’re treated somewhat similar.

They also both kind of swerved into destructive behavior because of their similar traumas, like Nancy losing control of her alcohol and Mike being disobedient in school, etc… would’ve been so nice to see some kind of parallel or support there. However, I can see Nancy not really being able to fully confide in Mike as that’s pretty difficult to do with a younger sibling you supposedly have some responsibility for. Like…I get that about Nancy. But I also understand that Nancy might’ve had a ton of shit on her plate and Mike just withdrew, so expecting her to be there for him 100% of the time is also not realistic and I can get that she got caught up in her own life.

The assumption that Nancy willfully neglected Mike all the time because she’s a selfish bitch, tho, that’s just the misogyny talking as you said :) Always assuming the worst, while giving male characters some leeway to stumble and be dicks (except when they have feminine characteristics like Jonathan, interestingly enough).Nancy’s whole “let’s tell each other everything from now on” was a very sweet gesture, and she clearly cares for Mike (”I was so worried about you!”), but never gets a chance to follow up on it. She gives us reason to believe she cares, so why do people then come to the conclusion that she doesn’t give a fuck later on? Does that mean that any conversation that didn’t literally happen in s2 is also proof that a character never talked to the other? Are we for example to assume Joyce never once talked to Jonathan about the events of s1? I would call that a bigger concern.

In short, I just would’ve liked for Nancy and Mike to have like…anything, at all? They literally had one brief scene together where the only thing that happens is her calling him an asshole lol They had so much shared trauma that the show otherwise was so quick to point out to bring characters together.

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It seems like Nancy gets punished for not being psychic. She has feelings for both Steve and Jonathan at the end of season 1. For all she knew, she could have fallen madly in love with Steve and totally forgotten about Jonathan after a few months. That's not how it worked out, but how was she supposed to know that? None of us know what our relationships are going to look like in a year. She made the choice that made sense to her at the time, and when it no longer made sense, she ended it.

Didn’t you know that women can predict the future and when they make a single mistake that’s bc they’re a bitch and want to watch the world burn and hate everyone???

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I was reading a bit of Anons hating on Nancy, and two words came up in my mind, that describes perfectly what is going on: interiorized misogyny. Having in mind that a large proportion of the ST fandom are young girls aged 13-16 (correct me if I'm wrong), who still get fed by patriarchal standards on females and still don't have the mental skills to refraim from this mindset, this does explain a lot. A way to deal with this would be questioning them the reasons to dislike this female character.

Lol, anon, if only. There is definitely a ton of adults on here that think the same. (Internalized) misogyny is not something one escapes easily, unless you really start to question your priorities when it comes to male and female characters. If Steve had been a woman, everyone would’ve thought he was a selfish bitch. We claim to want flawed female characters, we claim we’re feminists, but yet when a female character makes any sort of mistake we tear her to pieces while her male counterparts are allowed to stumble around as long as they’re “charming” or “hot”. Hell, they don’t even have to be that, they just have to be white cis men with a one-liner or a baseball bat.

We know this is misogyny. @nancykali talks about this all the time. And it’s not limited to the fans, the writers are ofc not super aware of their own sexist bias when writing. It sucks that so many female characters on this show have a ton of potential, but it’s never fully realized bc they’re always intrinsically tied to male characters first and foremost. It makes no sense for Nancy to be this hated unless you apply the sexist bias that everyone has.

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i mean, i don't really understand and i probably never will understand your pov since you ship nancy with her stalker who acts as a duffers bro self-insert for creepy "good guys" everywhere who dream about getting the hot smart high school girl wish fulfillment. the same weird creepy white boy who claims to know exactly who nancy is, after taking creepy photos of her. try to make it deep and pretentious all you want you but don't really care for nancy's well being.

Omg lol, what prompted this sudden sourness, anon? I give you reasonable responses to your hate and you get so pressed that you have to change the subject to try and attack me now? I’m talking about the people slutshaming and hating Nancy for no reason. It’s not a ship war.

Anon, this is just… sorry, this is just so sad.

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Today was stressful for me to watch too. Can we all just group hug it out now and admit that we are all really bored in this wait for new content? Everyone remained mostly civil and I’m glad for that, but I hope we don’t start turning into a fandom that starts lashing out and creating drama because of boredom, lack of interesting or new content, etc. It’s hard enough to see Jancy never/rarely mentioned in s3 promo so it would be easy to turn negative right now. Sent with respect <3

Sure anon, I understand that. I felt like it was time I create a separate tag bc I also felt like this is a lot of stuff going on for my followers that might be more interested in jancy talk than the General Discourse on things.

However, I don’t think this is a case of creating drama bc of boredom. I voiced my concerns when I saw something that I deeply disagreed with bc to me denying that Steve bullied others felt wrong bc of the hurt and difficult lives victims of bullying lead and wanted to speak up on it. I had a valid point to make and this was obviously a conversation that a lot of people got engaged in which I think is a good thing. I hope some people learned something, maybe realized things they hadn’t before. The tone might’ve gotten intense and I know I’m not always perfect when I have argued for an extended period of time, but it’s things we learn. In the end I hope there are no hard feelings. I still am baffled that what I see in canon is not interpreted as Steve at least having been a general bully prior to S1, but I’m not going to hate anyone for saying they disagree.

I respect you too, anon <3

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@nancykali I saw your post where you tagged me and I'm not sure if you expected me to respond to it. I have little to add except that we simply disagree on some points. I looked at the material at hand and saw clear patterns that added up to a story about characters and their interactions with one another, based on what I saw, what I've seen before, common tropes in media that the show wanted to point out and play with, how society works at large and also what I have been through as a victim of bullying myself for years in both hs and before and after that. I can only base what I see based on previous information I have accumulated during my time on this earth. To me certain contextual cues, reactions and words come together to fit a narrative. That does not mean that I lump every character together, but that I look at the particular character, how they’re acting and reacting, what they’re saying and then assuming that everyone is a product of their history and their behavior is based on that.

Everyone can make mistakes in their youth, and that doesn’t make them irredeemable. It’s their shown desire to change and do better that makes them redeemable. I saw characters make these mistakes, which I found engaging bc I then became very impressed when they grew. I found it relatable.

I think it’s time we put this argument to rest. We can agree to disagree and that is fine.