#st*ncy is not endgame on this blog.

[phoenixwrites]

Not to go all boomer but uuugh kids these days. I wish they'd learn that complaining about disliking something is not the same as advocating it shouldn't exist! You're writing your views on your personal blog and you even had the courtesy to tag it so that people who do enjoy it can choose to filter. That's basic online courtesy. And to top it off, complaining about paid showrunners writing a dynamic and either ignoring or being ignorant of vile implications inherent to that dynamic is also different from going after unpaid fandom creators playing in a sandbox for fun. Please dear universe can we bring back some nuance.

I want to MARRY this ask. YOU GET IT.

The lack of critical thinking that I see from these antis is genuinely appalling.

I talk about things I dislike all the time. I am NOT a St&ncy fan at all and I will be very annoyed if they are endgame. I will consider it crap writing that ignores characterization previously setup and dismisses Nancy's personhood since it has been well established that she has zero interest in motherhood--I think it encourages the "until you meet the right man!" mentality people have when they come across a woman who is career focused. If Steve and Nancy got together, they would both be giving up significant parts of themselves for the other, and that's a recipe for disaster--Steve giving up his desire for kids and to be a father, Nancy giving up her desire to NOT be pigeonholed into motherhood and marriage. That being said!

I'm not going to harass St&ncy blogs or be shitty to St&ncy writers because they have a different perspective than I do.

The same applies to Billy and Karen. I find it a hideous ship, one of the worst subplots Stranger Things ever wrote with horrifying implications, and I intend to complain about it for a long time (and maybe even write a Karen-gets-her-comeuppance fic).

But I'll always be clear about tags to ensure that those who disagree--who DO like the ship and find it sexy--they can block my anti-Karen Wheeler rants or even block/mute me.

Curate your internet experience.

[netflixnormalthings]

in my cliche fandom blog era anyway ship rating (filters for poorly rated ships so as not to bother you guys who do ship those im not fond of. oh except for billy ships i am keeping those uncensored given billy is a racist abuser) also lol no hate i am filtering for a reason (apart from the above mentioned)

milkvan: 2/10 romantic 7/10 platonic. all of their best moments are the ones that arent inherently romantic, like messing with hopper, or like. being the first people to not hate eachother. good duo, kinda toxic as a couple what with communication breakdowns and el not really being given a chance to understand her feelings... yeah i dont like it

lumax: 9/10 i love them so much they communicate have a fun dynamic support eachother i love them i love them. really care deeply about eachother and i love that

elmax: 9/10 so much understanding and girls having fun

elumax: 10/10 oh my god it is everything it is perfect showstopping amazing incredible- but seriously! look at them! understanding! support! theyre just adorable!

byler: 9/10. im chill about them though. endgame truther but i dont really go insane over them

st*ncy: why why excuse me why so bad for both of their characters oh my god uh uh 1/10 i guess very bad i could write an essay on why it is bad im just incoherent right now

j*ncy: uh alright ig??? peak was s1 and s2 but it sorta broke down after s3. they care they just cant and wont communicate and tend to lash out which leads to less care. pretty cute but ah well 6/10

ronance: 10/10 literally so insane about them like the dynamic, the way their characters work well in terms of narrative...

st*ddie: somewhere between 5 and 7 out of 10. idk i dont really interact with st*ddie content given that i ussualy filter it out for the sake of getting to the content i want to, but theyre all right. overhyped, but all right. cute maybe??? idk

jargyle: 10/10 they are weed smoking boyfriends they are funny they care about eachother so much they are supportive they-

stonathan: solid 6 or 7 out of 10, but im more willing to engage with this content than st*ddie lol. better dynamic imo, just ignoring that steve called him a slur one time but he got better about that. i would be willing to see them in the background so yeah ig i ship

jopper: 10/10 that being said i dont go out of my way to find stuff about them. they just kinda exist and i like them

r0ckie: 5/10 sorry. too similar. not really developed. i am biased

harringrove: so far in the negatives. so very far. please seek help if you stan billy

byclair: 7/10 cute ig wont scroll past on my dash just dont really care that much. fun dynamic. lucas would treat him right, i just dont know if they would work as a couple so i sorta ship

[harringtontmaa]

this blog is canon compliant through ST3. my main canon divergency occurs in the ST4 canon timeline : namely that by that point, my steve is not still in love with nancy. & regardless of what the duffers do, i will not be writing st*ncy as endgame. here is an extensive post outlining why. this post will be to outline exactly how & where i diverge from the canon. so let's get into it.

in the ST3 bathroom scene, when robin asks steve if he has ever been in love, he says yes & names nancy before miming shooting himself in the heart. but just a moment later, when robin asks if he is still in love, he says no.

steve goes on to state that he's not in love with nancy anymore because he's "found someone who's better for" him. & while it's true that he is using this as a segue to ask robin out, i do believe that he was being honest about his feelings. therefore, as of the end of ST3, steve is in his own words no longer in love with nancy. & though robin rejects him & his relationship with her is destined to be platonic ( with a capital P ), it is through this crush that steve finally realizes that there are other girls out there for him — maybe even girls that might be better for him than nancy was.

for ST4, i try to change my portrayal from the canon as little as possible, while still bearing this subtle shift in mind. all scenes early in the season with steve & nancy go as they did in canon, up to & including the winnebago scene where steve reflects on his dream of having a big family with 5-6 lil nuggets. any 'tension' between the two of them is just a result of steve still being not entirely sure how to act around nancy, not lingering romantic feelings on his part. what he says to dustin in the car is also true — he doesn't still have romantic feelings for nancy, he's just worried about her diving headfirst into a dangerous investigation & doesn't want to see her be hurt by vecna.

however, while i try to keep as much as possible compliant, there are a few small but significant differences between the show's canon & what will be considered canon for my portrayal : per plotting with scoopstrooptm, in my canon version of ST4, robin is actually the first person to jump into the lake after steve, not nancy. robin is also the one to wrap his injuries while they are still in the upside-down. however, just as in canon, steve falls into nancy a bit when the earthquake starts. he also does still make the remark that she almost shot him with her revolver. but unlike how it's portrayed in canon, he's not flirting when he says it, just teasing her as he would any friend. which is what he's trying really hard to be to her now : her friend.

perhaps most importantly, the ST4E09 scene where steve & nancy are talking in the upside down goes very differently. rather than saying that he believes that under different circumstances, he & nancy "could have made it," steve uses the moment to express that while he will always love & care about nancy, that he knows now that they never would have worked. steve will express that he's not hung up on her anymore, & that he would really would like for them to be able to be friends. as in canon, steve will still take this moment as an opportunity to thank her for giving him the thump on his head that helped him become who he is now. but my steve notably DOES NOT say "you're there — you've always been there," when calling back to his sharing with his dream for her from earlier, because my steve does not still picture nancy as a central part of his dreams of the future. instead, steve would just like to have an honest conversation with nancy about their relationship, including offering apologies for what he did wrong & build up enough closure & understanding so that they can actually be in each other's lives & show genuine support for each other moving forward.

TLDR ; steve still loves nancy — steve will always love nancy. but as far as my portrayal is concerned, he's no longer not in love with her after ST3. she's not still part of his dreams for the future, & all steve really wants from her as of ST4 is to finally be able to communicate well enough for them to be friends.

[shreya11111]

post volume 2 byler hope

i know volume 2 has left us feeling very pessimistic and hopeless for the possibility of byler. yet, i do still think there is reason to hope and so i have compiled a list of amazing posts that have definitely increased my faith in s5 byler.

(here is a small disclaimer that even though byler just makes sense to us narratively and overall, there is still a chance that the duffers won’t go through with it. if you choose to have hope regardless, that’s great! but pessimism is absolutely valid too. cautious optimism is definitely recommended)

on tumblr:

1) Ok This may be something that can give us bylers a little more hope. by @beepboop358

3) Five act structure: reason to hope by @reservoir-god

4) Will’s First Lie & First I Love You by @aurorabyler

5) Listen, I know that feelings are mixed in this tag right now but hear me out. by @admirablespoling

6) wanted to put this on here bc it perfectly summarizes my thoughts 🙃 by @lesbos4robin (and cr to @/causeineedu on tiktok)

7) i guess the thing giving me the most hope right now by @queerstshit

8) Mike’s monologue sorta feels like a (weird) Wikipedia article (also check comments) by @wakeupthemembersofbylernation

9) insanely steaming hot take but the Will / El / Mike arc was kinda insanely well done by @mssingrls

10) it’s so insane to me how mike just hasn’t been able to tear his eyes away from will the entire season by @heliumcake

11) I just actually watched season four all the way through and byler is 100% gonna happen it’s so obvious. by @tinyteenieworld

12) This scene reminded me a lot of the beginning of s3, when Mike is goofing around by singing in the middle of kissing by @howtobecomeadragon

13) Piggybacking off of and inspired by this rad post by @admirablespoling. by @tsugarubecker

14) there really is no point to byler if it's unrequited. by @11byers

15) The m!leven flowers are rottin— by @dancing-in-our-snow-globe and @beepboop358

16) It would appear I am indeed one of the very few optimistic (delusional?) Bylers left. by @chirpsythismorning

17) a part of me feels like it's possible that the end of episode 9 was preparing the general audience for Eleven going off on her own, and a Byler ship by @merthurfan-blog

18) my analysis of mike’s “feelings” for el and what leads to the monologue/his feelings behind it by @strangerfigs

19) Here’s a handful of cautious optimism as a treat, my brothers in byler by @hopfields

20) Mike's S4 jacket (and who his heart is really pointing to) by @mlchaelwheeler

21) St@ncy’s revival is like one of the biggest byler proofs in V2. by @neverforever09

22) michael’s airport outfit by @prfctmxxnlight

23) analyzing ST S4/Byler from someone with a film degree. by @swift-fated and credit to @/joannimal on twitter

24) Somebody on twitter noticed how the scene at the roller rink… (parallel to Little Women) by @justmeandmyships

25) Do you find it possible that Byler will definitely happen in season 5 and if so why by @upside-down-byers

26) volume 2 & instant vs delayed gratification by @chartreuse-goose

27) Whenever you doubt Byler, remember that… (a little reminder of all the things pointing towards byler as endgame) by @byernation

28) i just rewatched “the piggyback” and oh. OH. !!!!!!! by @hawkinsp0st

29) i can’t get over “we’re friends. we’re friends.” and “are ‘friends’ electric?” on mikes official Spotify playlist by @strangerfigs

30) “False Confessions” & “Piggybacking” in ST4: Ask Yourself if We Are Being Encouraged to Pick Apart the Inconsistencies... by @bluemeetyellow

31) Byler is going to be Canon and Here’s Why: by @allnaturalapplejuice

on other social media:

1) this beautiful twitter thread on ‘stranger things and the art of slow burn’ by @/hawkinshermit on twitter

2) any and all videos by @/causeineedu on tiktok. this one is one of my personal favs.

3) all the videos by @/naturallybrielle on tiktok

4) the analysis videos of @/girlskth on tiktok. she made a really cool discovery here and here.

5) this post on the use of little women parallels in the show by @/sbyleril on twitter (check comments! there’s a really good video with the parallels too)

6) this perfect harry potter chamber of secrets/byler parallel by @/folklorent on twitter

7) this twitter thread on the parallels between the romances in little women in stranger things by @/rosiec4ke on twitter

i will definitely be adding more posts to this list if i come across any. thank you to all the bloggers for giving me permission to include their posts! i really appreciate it. i also really hope this helped restore your hope in s5 byler, even if just a little bit :)

[buck-yyyy]

an explanation of stranger things tumblr <3

okay so the thing with the stranger things fandom is that it’s VERY divided by ships- so i’m like. in one very specific corner of it yk? i’m in the crowd of literally ~74k~ people on tumblr who are focused on byler, which is primarily about analysis.

so we’ve got the film and english majors analyzing the SHIT out of cinematography, writing, micro expressions, etc etc in order to compile evidence towards byler endgame in season five. it’s lowkey really really impressive some of the stuff that people have picked up on, i can show you if you’re curious. but we just kinda stick to our own corner? there’s a conscious effort not to cross tag, and for the most part people are chill about letting other people do their thing.

then you’ve got the m*levens, who a lot of are fine and really nice, actually, but there’s a fairly decent chunk who devote way too much of their time into invading byler inboxes to spew made up shit about m*leven and rant about byler, most of which is wildly homophobic or borderline pedophilic at worst. we don’t talk about them. for a while m*levens had an issue with crosstagging, and invading the byler tag with shit, but that’s gotten a lot better, so theyre fairly chill now. so despite the shipping war we both just tend to stay in our own spaces to quietly fire shots at the other ship that are properly tagged so the other people never see it- peaceful m*leven shippers ily and you are never included in my ranting about the other members of your tag <3

then you’ve got the st*ddies. the FUCKING st*ddies. a lot of them are really cool! but a LOT a lot of them crosstag SO MUCH. they tag their fics and posts with other ships and characters that aren’t at all mentioned in order to gain more traction, meaning that a good chunk of the byler fanfiction on ao3 is really just st*ddie fanfiction that’s horribly tagged. fuck the shitty taggers, y’all SUCK.

lumax, ronance, jopper and elmax shippers are super chill, just kinda peacefully doing their thing while everyone else goes absolutely apeshit over everything.

j*ncy and st*ncy shippers are constantly at each other’s throats, that’s,, a lot to unpack.

and one other section of the overall stranger things fandom. the fuckin weirdoes.

this section includes the billy stans who are willing to forgive him for being a racist abusive fuckwad simply because he’s pretty, the stobin shippers who enjoy erasing the fact that robin is literally gay, and the m*levens who spend their time popping into byler inboxes practically drooling over the thought of a m*leven sex scene, which is the most fucked up part of relatively surface stranger things tumblr. we don’t talk about any of these people.

i’m not even going to bother talking about the h*rringroves.

and a bit more about byler tumblr because i have a lot to say on the matter- it’s kinda subdivided into smaller sections of people each doing different things, even more so than most other divisions on the overall fandom. there’s of course some overlap, and people will reblog stuff from all over the board, but for the most part people stick to creating one or two specific things. the divisions are the artists, fanfic authors, theorizers, shitposters, and debaters.

the artists and fanfic authors are self explanatory.

the theorizers are absolutely INSANE at what they do, i’m constantly amazed by how much smarter these people are than me.

the shitposters just kinda hang around making jokes and screaming about whatever new crumbs we got that day.

the debaters are.. interesting. they’re the ones that get the most hate in their inboxes, and rather than ignore it, or post it and just make fun of the asker, they end up starting huge arguments on their blog with anonymous askers. they’re pretty cool tbh? they do a really good job of summarizing all our evidence into clear concise points, it’s just. a little overwhelming to see constant fighting over in one corner.

but yeah! stranger things tumblr as summarized by a byler who enjoys poking around other tags :)

[harringtontmaa]

⚡ — portrayal notes : season four  &  beyond  steve  +  nancy            spoilers for st4  &  personal opinions under the cut !

    so with steve  &  nancy getting set up for a romantic reunion by st4  &  being very clearly positioned as endgame for the suffer brothers as we look ahead to st5, i want to take a moment to say that regardless of what happens in the canon,  I WILL NOT BE WRITING STEVE  &  NANCY AS ENDGAME. this post is my attempt to explain why.     let me start by saying that i do see the foundation for them getting back together as a concept,  &  i can see why it appeals to people. i’m not here to bash the ship. i think it’s both incredibly obvious  &  absolutely crucial to his character arc that steve was deeply in love with nancy at the end of st1  &  beginning of st2.     &  i also think that steve is the type of person that does not know how to fall out of love with someone. once he loves you, he will love you in some form or another for the rest of his life, no matter what happens. therefore, it is true that regardless of how their relationship is, steve always holds love for nancy  &  always will.     so therefore, i do think that steve still loves nancy,  &  while i personally don’t want them to be together, as someone who tries hard to study steve’s character  &  be true to the decisions he would make, i do honestly believe that he would take her back  &  try again if there was any indication that she wanted that. this romantic boy might even get the romantic notion into his head that the reason that nothing with the other girls ever felt right was because nancy was always The One for him. he essentially admitted as much when he said that she is always a part of his dreams for the future, which... i really don’t like, especially as it flies in the face of what he had just said the sentence before about learning to crawl forward  &  grow  —  which i loved seeing that self-awareness from steve.      so let’s say that at the end of st5 everything works out, steve  &  nancy both survive,  &  they decide to enter into a relationship again. everything’s great, right ?    well here’s the issue : steve has severe abandonment issues,  &  the honest truth is that the way that he  &  nancy split up the first time fed into those fears in an incredibly harmful  &  toxic way. it’s important to remember that nancy didn’t just fall out of love with him; by saying that he  &  their entire relationship was nothing but bullshit, even when he asked if he loved her, nancy implied to him that  she had never loved him. that every time she had said that she loved him over the year that they dated, she had been lying. it had all been, as she said, nothing but bullshit.        &  the thing about that which really fucked steve up was that he couldn’t tell. he had always believed her when she told him she loved him. &  yet even when he asked her the next day at school when she was sober to tell him that she loved him, she couldn’t say it. so he is left to believe that for months, she lied to him about how she felt  &  her desire to be with him  &  he had no idea.         so now, if they get back together, not only does nancy specifically set off his abandonment issues  ( because steve really could not handle being left by her a second time ), but every time she said that she loved him, it would trigger his anxiety. because she’s lied about loving him before, he would always have that voice in his head whispering that she might still be lying to him still.  &  what’s more, that if she is lying, he wouldn’t be able to tell. so deep down, though he still loves her, steve cannot ever again fully trust that nancy loves him. no matter how many times she said it, there is just something broken there between them that cannot be fixed.    & i think that would lead to an incredibly unstable  &  unhealthy relationship. steve would likely become incredibly clingy  &  insecure, possibly to the point where he stifles nancy’s big ambitious dreams, which would easily builds resentment on her side, which then feeds right back into his anxiety. i genuinely believe that it would be a toxic spiral that would only end up with them hurting each other even more in the end.  &  i don’t want that  — for either of them !           this isn’t even mentioning the simple fact that they clearly want different things from their future.  i mean, did no one else hear how when steve was discussing his dreams of having five or six kids that nancy replied with “sounds like a nightmare” ? like they are just continuously not on the same page,  &  getting back together without even addressing what happened between them or what they want going forward does not seem like the road to a happy ending for me.     plus, this is all not to mention that making steve  &  nancy’s arc lead back to each other after everything would be so incredibly regressive for them both. i think that loving nancy made steve into the man he is today, but that returning to her would set him backward to the place he was when he was with her. one of my favorite things about steve is that even when he doesn’t get the girl  &  he doesn’t get rewarded by the plot for trying so hard to grow  &  be better than he used to be, he never stops trying. it would have been so easy for the end of his relationship with nancy to be the end of his growth, but he continued on entirely of his own volition, not out of hopes of reward but purely because he genuinely wants to be a good person.  &  he’s had so much growth since then that i want him to keep moving forward, not go back.        &  while i don’t write from nancy’s perspective  &  can’t speak to her motivations, i feel that she deserves better as well !  one of the things i hate so much about the way that they executed the steve  &  nancy relationship plot is that it came at the expense of literally everything else nancy had going before that, from her career to her college prospects to her relationship with jonathan  ( which is intentionally  &  consciously not talked about on her part btw ). after they start pushing her with steve, none of that is so much as mentioned again.  &  watching her flip-flopping back  &  forth from jonathan to steve like this  — always without having her ever communicate about it with the person she’s actually in a relationship with — does her character an appalling disservice. i have liked nancy very much as a character,  &  this also upsets me, because while she is not my area of focus, i genuinely don’t think that’s true to the character of nancy; i think that’s reflective the duffers sacrificing consistent characterization for the sake of plot drama. personally, i think that the best thing for nancy would be to not be in a relationship for awhile  &  focus on her career, which is clearly her priority.  &  there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever !  it’s just... not sustainable as a foundation to build a romantic relationship with someone like steve, who clearly hopes to build his life atop of a romance.     so to sum up: while i think that steve  &  nancy getting into a relationship again is probably going to be endgame in st5, i just don’t want that kind of relationship for my muse. so while i will happily explore all aspects of steve  &  nancy’s relationship throughout the timeline,  &  will never downplay how much steve loves nancy in my portrayal,  i will also not be writing them as endgame.  &  if the duffers do indeed make them endgame, i will be going canon divergent.