#but of what i've seen of ste/ddie

[qprstobin]

i used to like steddie but tbh its just boring now. everyone writes the same tropes and now there's a/b/o flooding the tag and like fine whatever but it's just so boring. not to mention most fics are so out of character...and don't get me started on how they treat robin, she's completely sidelined it's annoying. they make steve this feminized uwu babygirl and robin into a mean lesbian that contantly berates hi its disgusting!

I'm ngl. Same. Ste/ddie is what got me into the fandom! I still really like the characters a lot but the way fandom has been handling them is just not my thing lol. I like both my Steve and my Eddie a little mean and rough around the edges but carrying and that's just... not what I am seeing at all lol. The fandom trends in this ship have been absolutely wild. Like I said last night, the fic that we were getting in October/November of last year is soooo different from the fic we are getting now.

I miss early days Ste/ddie, the relationship just felt much more balanced? Like both sides brought things to the table? But yeah, I'll admit I've gotten pretty bored with it too. I have a fic or two in my wips folders that I still want to write that have Ste/ddie in them, but I've sort of hit my limit with fandom consumption of it lol.

Omegaverse stuff can be fun on occasion but I'll admit aside from one or two fics I've seen so far, I don't super vibe with it. (Where is my alpha/alpha and omega/omega content!!) Omegaverse has always been a "my hormones are out of whack" fic time for me lmao. But this is one of those things I don't think is ST exclusive, a lot of fandoms I'm in have seen an influx of omegaverse and mpreg lately. I didn't even notice at first because Star Wars fandom is always a mess of kink, but it's legit everywhere now.

Gods yeah, the babygirl Steve was fun at first, I love me a pretty boy. (Anakin Skywalker fan here lmaooo) but yeah it's been taken to an extreme that feels less like oh this is just a little sexy thing on occasion or "yeah gender exploration!" thing, and more either fetishizing or heteronormativity. Like I was talking about yesterday I swear some people write tradwife Steve which is just wild to me. Love househusband Steve but tradwife Steve?? Where am I??

And yeah, even back when I liked the fanon characterization better, Robin so often got sidelined. Literally only there to be a supportive best friend without her own plot or to help further drive Steve into Eddie's arms, which is sad! This show is about friendship first and foremost and it feels like fandom doesn't appreciate that anymore.

(I will be fair though, pushing aside the best friend for the sake of romance is a tried and true shipping thing across many fandoms, but it did feel startling when so many post s3 fics about either of Stobin were about their friendship, and it just kind of all got taken over by shipping fics in s4.)

Like idk, I will say I still like the ship and Eddie but the fandom has definitely exhausted me a bit lol.

[dxringred]

Oh thank god I’m not the only one who thought a certain “senate” is wildly out of character and makes no sense. I’ve been seeing so much of it lately and it’s kind of exhausting

i don’t go in the ron/ance tag anymore anyway, thankfully, and i have the senate’s individual tag blocked too, so i haven’t had to see any of it lately. (please... begging y’all to google what the fuck senate actually means. it’s not like there aren’t words beginning with s that describe what you’re going for.)

i did see some posts back when it initially rose to popularity for whatever reason though, and i've never understood the characterization(s) that part of the fandom has collectively settled on. (and if you have a different one, sucks to be you, get out, apparently.) not sure what the obsession is with making chrissy and vickie both act like quirky, crazy anime girls, but it’s gotta be one of the weirdest things i’ve seen. is there something wrong with a shy, bookish vickie and a chrissy who’s a little ditzy, both of which would actually at least be true(r) to what we do see of their characters? 

i’m not a poly shipper, so i don’t really care, but it is eye-rolling to see how their shippers have decided they must act, because most of it is completely out of left field. if i had to ship the sapphic squad, at least a cheerleader and a bookworm would be more of an interesting dynamic with ron/ance than what reads largely like genderbent ste/ddie. 

[dxringred]

no, this is not intended to be anti-ste/ddie or mlm ships in general, i’m just an extremely tired lesbian who needs to vent.

i know i’ve already complained once today, but my god am i bitter about the amount of attention ste/ddie gets over ronance. don’t get me wrong, good for them, whatever, but they had significantly less canonical interactions, and yet somehow they’re doing double -- triple -- the numbers, and it infuriates me. i’ve seen numerous ste/ddie posts in my explore page on instagram but only one or two ronance ones despite actively searching for and saving them.

the ste/ddie ao3 tag has triple the amount of fics in it than the ronance tag, and a good 50% of the latter’s are also ste/ddie fics because for some reason people can’t type “background robin buckley/nancy wheeler” instead of the primary ship tag. meanwhile, the ste/ddie tag isn’t being even remotely clogged by ronance fics. and yes, i checked. on the first page, as of writing, ste/ddie only had two non-ste/ddie fics. ronance? thirteen. thir-fucking-teen. out of twenty!

the ronance tag on here? 9k followers, with 111 new posts today. pretty fucking cool! that’s easily the most popular thing i’ve shipped since swan/queen, like, four years ago. okay, well let’s look at ste/ddie.

oh.

29k followers. 489 new posts today.

[dxringred]

HELLO FELLOW ST/DDIE NOT-QUITE HATER BUT JFC DO THE DOUBLE STANDARDS REALLY NEED TO BE SO OBVIOUS?

i love the fandom, but this issue has been present since. forever. since steve stans were shitting on nancy after the halloween party scene, making fics and long-ass paragraphs bemoaning steve’s puppy-dog eyes when he heard that nancy say that she was pretending to be in love. as if the scene wasn’t about NANCY and her grief??

and then again! when robin came out, the initial “holy shit, we finally have some canon queer rep of quality!! robin’s such a cool character, and this was a beautiful scene!” people immediately latched on to the fact that she didn’t label herself explicitly as a lesbian in order to shove her and steve together. and again, the steve stans raved about what an excellent ally steve was, when the scene was about ROBIN and pushing past her obvious fear to tell steve something like that.

and most recently, with the vickie and robin scenes. i personally don’t ship them, but even that was, apparently, content tailored for the steve stans. the fact that the directors might be leading into an actual romance life for a canonical lesbian character (though nancy has literally been right there. even the actors are in support of the ship)? unimportant because look!! look how proud steve looks in that scene, look how happy he is for robin. wtf.

steve’s a great guy, a fun character and he’s got depth and kindness etc etc. eddie… i mean. he’s also really cool and i get why people like him, i really do. but he barely had a season’s worth of character development, and already he’s a fan favorite. i like the ship, but i hate the fact that once again, the fandom is full-on obsessing over the “cute white boys” and neglecting the wlw pairings

and it’s so much more than a bunch of people upset that their ship isn’t as popular. this is an actual issue, where the lack of wlw content and attention is forever being overshadowed by the mlm pairings.

damn, i didn't even know it was possible to send asks this long-

sadly, i don't know any history of the stranger things fandom since i've never watched the show, let alone engaged in the fandom, but i can attest to the rock/ie one since i've seen several posts mentioning how steve looked like a proud parent or w/e, and then others being all "poor steve" since he's single while robin has vickie and nancy has johnathon. (for now.)

on his own, steve's an okay character to me. his development was good until 4B messed it up with him latching onto nancy again, but even with that, i've never gotten the impression that there's a lot of. depth to him? like it's very much the basic character arc of "popular highschool asshole realizes it is bad to be an asshole and that he actually cares for others". totally fine but hardly groundbreaking lol. and if i see his chest hair one more time-

i haven't watched the show, so i can't attest to eddie outside of gifs, but again. nothing special from what i've seen. his little arc seems to be 'manning up'? instead of fleeing like he did with chrissy (which i thought was a perfectly valid reaction, frankly), he dives into lover's lake, helps save steve and then sacrifices himself which ultimately then lowkey negates the development because he's fucking dead lol.

maybe it's just because he's a far cry from my type of male character, but. yeah, don't get the fan favorite thing. don't get the petition with 75k signatures. don't get the ship (no issue with it yet though) when they barely had any scenes. it's definitely a case of them both being (arguably) attractive white men. cishet girls in particular will eat that shit right up.

the fact that ste/ddie shippers are now going around reporting ronance shippers and calling them names for giving them a taste of their own medicine and/or politely asking them to tag their fucking fics correctly is disgusting imo. it's giving lesbophobia. they seem to think their ship is more important, and therefore nobody else's tags and spaces matter. the way they behave, you'd think the average age of that fandom is 12. (and i wouldn't be surprised if it is, honestly.)

the only canon lgbt+ character is wlw. (i can't speak for will. i don't know if his sexuality has actually been definitely stated yet, and it hasn't in the show as far as i'm aware, so. vickie also isn't confirmed anything as far as i know.) and yet somehow mlm pairings with minimal scenes are heavily overshadowing any wlw content. (first it was billy/steve which. what the fuck, actually. now it's ste/ddie.) i don't know what the huge disparity is rooted in (lesbophobia, misogyny, mlm fetishization, all of the above) but it's fucking annoying and boring. broaden your horizons. get a grip. uggggghhh.