#Stop trying to make her an accessory to a dude's character arc yall

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Man I’m gonna start taking Nancy Wheeler rights from a good chunk of y’all... You people treat this girl like garbage. She ain’t a villain in ST, she’s like, a regular teenage (for most of the series) girl who went through significant trauma, is coping badly with it, and who’s greatest sins according to y’all are- *checks notes* dating Steve and the relationship not going well, having a complicated relationship with her brother, and being an independent female character who stands her ground and is pretty emotionally stunted from the trauma she’s been bottling the whole series long.

Nancy is a really nuanced character with a lot of layers you aren’t supposed to be able to peel away from a first glance, a huge part of her character is upholding expectations of her and hiding her problems because the girl’s never had the healthy space to unpack all of the really awful terrifying shit she’s been through. A well put together girl who’s actually got her shit together (in the 80′s) doesn’t sleep with guns in her closet. 

She went through a severely traumatic loss that she blames herself for, lest people forget, it’s canon that she spent a YEAR visiting Barb’s parents and spending dinners with them after her death, because the girl has a guilt complex so deep it’s actually heartbreaking. And also discovering that the regular world she thought she knew is actually full of real actual monsters and another dimension. Yeah, her relationship with Steve fell apart during that, it’s very difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with all of that on your plate. They were both teenagers who sucked at managing it.

Her and Mike have the same sibling squabbling that you see in a lot of places and as we’ve been shown in canon when they’re both not performing the classic Wheeler Family Bottling-up-all-your-feelings schtick, they clearly care about each other a lot and Nancy does a lot of little things to try and look out for Mike where she can. But neither of them want the other (or anyone else) to worry about them so they don’t talk about what’s going on with them. And that tends to translate as them seeming distant. (They both struggle to open up about what’s going on with them unless under duress, we have so many instances of both of them doing this through the show.)

God forbid she be a girl through her teens with some self-respect and who despite the shit she’s been through, wants to make something of her life and be able to stand on her own two feet. She’s got issues like anyone in that show has issues, they are all meant to be portrayed as realistic people with both good and bad traits that make them understandable and relatable. People’s expectations of Nancy to be some kind of perfect girlfriend ideal big sister saint is a really weird wash of her character.