#whatever steve/nancy is called (can you tell i don't do this fandom)

[makesometime]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, Eddie Munson Additional Tags: Bisexual Nancy Wheeler, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Minor Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler, Polyamory, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship

Summary:

Nance has this way of looking at him, sometimes, that he’s still not quite figured out. Like she’s trying to figure out if he’s playing dumb or genuinely lost, and god he hopes she realises it’s the second this time. He doesn’t like it when she sasses him.

[fastcardotmp3]

you are the only person in this fandom i trust to talk about nancy so i just need you to know that during my rewatch i noticed nancy says “bullshit” SEVERAL times in season one, then obviously calls steve/their relationships bullshit at the halloween party in season two, then murray refers to the evidence nancy and jonathan bring him as bullshit (to the general public) and i just feel like that is so delicious to me. like i’m over fics where steve has ptsd related to the word bullshit and i need nancy to reclaim it lmfao

me, trying to proofread my fic all night: I have lost all grasp of the english language I can no longer Read

me, seeing an ask about nancy: OKAY SO-

anyways first of all I'm honored you trust me with nancy but I promise there are plenty of us out here who get her! nancy haters are So Loud about telling on themselves (even when they think they're being subtle) but we are here in our little corner of the fandom where we use our critical thinking skills <3

second of all!! AGREED!!!

steve is out here having been assaulted, tortured, drugged, weighed down by the responsibility over children being threatened by a violent white supremacist etc etc that's not even getting into the MONSTER stuff but people are still making up triggers for him so he can be soothed by (insert man of choice here)

you don't need to do that! you don't need to color Nancy in a light that even Steve "go with Jonathan" Harrington would absolutely not just to see him hurting, I PROMISE. I do it ALL THE TIME. Steve can even be actively heartbroken without him seeing Nancy as some unfeeling bitch of a villain like that is. literally canonically true PLEASE.

I might be wrong but the very first thing I remember Nancy calling bullshit was the fact that no one was hearing her when she said something happened to Barb. THAT'S the canonical origin of her using that word, THAT is Nancy's first moment of looking at the world around her and saying "this isn't right, I can't stand for it, and I'm going to do whatever I have to in order to tear down the facade distracting everyone from what actually matters- that my friend is missing."

Nancy calls bullshit when she and Jonathan are trying to infiltrate the Lab; the evidence that Barb isn't just a runaway is deemed bullshit; the relationship between her parents which makes her feel forced into a box is bullshit; these things that hurt Nancy are bullshit.

Let's look at it from that perspective, huh? Because you know what Nancy was feeling the night she called her relationship with Steve bullshit?

She was feeling hurt. She was lashing out at the thing that was hurting her in that moment and that was the fact that Steve was asking her to try and be normal for a night when she didn't know how.

Only yesterday she was visiting her dead best friend's parents and watching them still trying to find her and she just didn't know how.

Bullshit really isn't a lasting trauma in Steve's story, but have we ever thought that maybe it's a tell in Nancy's? A sign of crumbling walls in the girl who keeps trying to stack them all high enough to read as unaffected when all she's ever doing is trying to survive her own grief and responsibility and fear?

Nancy calls bullshit and her vulnerability slips, her search for justice heightens, her reasonable levels of paranoia intensify.

Nancy calls bullshit because at the end of the day she's still just a teenage girl who will never fit into the boxes anyone wants to put her in whether they be small and delicate or tough and badass.

Nancy calls bullshit because they didn't listen to her about Barb, but one of these days she'll make them.

so yeah, anon, we should definitely let her reclaim it. that's her fucking word, babey 💜

[pappydaddy]

Tiktok is literally hell, most people have the worst takes for characters and completely lack common sense. Stancy is popular there bc they see two pretty people together who had history, slap a Taylor Swift song over it and call it a day. If Jancy had any screentime together we wouldn't see so many edits because people can apparently only focus on one season and disregard any other shit.

A few days ago someone commented under my anti Stancy comment that Nancy was the one who made Steve in the fan favorite character he is. Lmao yeah give all his development to his cheater ex gf who did nothing, she never begged him to change. Steve left his friends at the end of s1 bc he wanted to, granted bc he liked Nancy but still. To completely undermine his character in such a take is disgusting.

In my humble opinion Nancy never truly loved Steve, not in a way he loved her. For her he was a safety blanket, in a way he was kinda like her dad (not personality wise) but in terms of being wealthy and stable so instead of choosing Jonathan, who she always wanted she dragged Steve along for year. Steve represents the suburban life even back in s1 which she absolutely hates and Jonathan was always painted as like rebellion and adventure. I've seen tiktok comments saying oh Steve probably doesn't force her to have kids or that many, so it's fine she can live her dream and he will be a malewife. However why is that Steve is the one who has to hold back his dreams? Like yeah he wouldn't force her but that will only result in them resenting each other. It's clear he wants someone to raise those kids together with not just him alone. They just don't work so I hope the take you mentioned of him confessing to Nancy is him finally moving on he said everything he needed to let go. I'm begging at this point lol.

I still didn't like Nancy in s3, the way she treated Jonathan and their argument said more about her person than anything else. Granted both were wrong but her actions got never any repercussions, instead Jonathan was the one apologizing to her and she was like yeah now never doubt anything I say or do bc I'm never wrong. She can't own her mistakes and the show never addresses it. I like mean women but if there are never any consequences to her actions it's infuriating. Steve never got an apology from her after she cheated and still believes he's the worst bf ever but that's okay bc Nancy is our girlboss with guns.

The best outcome for those three characters would be anyone stay single. Stancy is toxic af, and Steve deserves better. Nancy deserves her career and Jonathan deserves someone who doesn't emotionally cheat as soon as he's not there.

Back to tiktok and their takes, I've seen so many people now saying if Stancy isn't endgame bc it's not going to be they kill Steve off. In fact I've seen ppl beg for it to happen and I'm sick to my stomach. Why doesn't he deserve a happy ending just bc his ex doesn't take him back. Steve dying would impact so many people, especially Dustin it would be cruel of the writers to take away Dustin's other big brother figure. And Robin losing the only person who truly understands her??? How is that fair. The fandom focuses way too much on ships than on the actual characters. I'm just saying how can you ship Stancy and claim to love Steve?

I'm so scared for s5 bc after what they did in vol2 I don't trust them. I love Steve sm as you can probably tell lol, he's like top3 of fictional boyfriends for me and him potentially not getting a happy end or dying for his toxic ex is making me ill. I just want him to live, find a girl or guy whatever to have his big family in the future. He deserves it sm, like I know the show doesn't address his trauma, physical or emotional, but he gave so much for this group and to just die it's not fair.

Obx anon

Ps I'm so sorry for not checking in more regularly life is crazy lol, I hope you're doing good ❤️

ugh, i know! tik tok is pretty bad sometimes, though not quite as bad as twitter yet. they claim that general flaws are toxic, but yet, they are supporting/shipping stancy? make it make sense.

nancy and jonathan's fight in season 3 kinda shows how privileged nancy has been all her life compared to jonathan. she jumped head first into this hunch because she wasn't scared of getting fired. she never once considered how much work jonathan had to put in just to get that job and he wasn't going to lose it over a hunch because that could ruin jonathan's future. they were both at fault in a way, so they both should have recognized their roles. this is exactly what i mean when i say the writers seem to want us to hate nancy because they do shit like what happened in season 4 and what is listed above.

i want nancy to grow as a character and i think that can only be done by her being single and exploring herself. and, whatever they do, not have stancy get back together. their dynamic in season 4 literally made me almost physically sick. hopefully, that was just a repercussion of the upside-down being stuck in 1983 and season 5 will not have this horrible content.

and, back to tik tok, they were all just saying that if steve was killed off they wouldn't watch it anymore? like make up your mind, please?

and, to your last point, that's okay lovely! i love how you back me up with really good points when i post rants like this! and don't i know life is crazy! but i'm surviving and keeping afloat, how about you?

[n0isetanks]

man i’ve never realized how little i interact with the fandom outside of stonathan things—why did i never see all the jonathan hate??? people are so shitty about him like whyyyy

like clinging to the thing about the pictures and calling him (a literal 16 y/o at the time) a sexual predator??? like bitch? and then blaming him alone for all the jancy drama in S3? and then whatever ppl are pissed at him for now?

it’s all such surface level hatred for him like did we watch the same show?? hello??

jonathan hate........ literally the stupidest shit ever. people who still equate him to his season 1 self (as if he didnt suffer and understand the consequences of his actions in that season anyways) are really blind. they're literally just wildly ignorant because they either just don't really care for his character or see him as someone who gets in the way of ships or whatever. you can not like a character but to use faulty and rather unstable reasoning that has been dismantled by canon is really stupid.

jonathan is definitely nuerodivergent and can even be seen as autistic coded, especially with his actions in s1 with the whole taking photos of nancy thing. he didnt know what he was doing was inappropriate at the moment because of how focused he was in his photography and he explains how his brain functions with his artistic lens later with nancy. eventually he does understand what he did was wrong– and honestly it was a very realistic reaction for steve to have broken his camera and make him pay for the consequences that comes with taking those pictures. jonathan never had any nefarious intentions over the pictures, and to say that he was a sexual predator is totally just..... out of left field. bro he was 16 and didnt understand the consequences of his actions like how did that not convey.

and okay, the s3 jancy thing. both of them were wrong and right which is what made the conflict very interesting and torn between the two. nancy will never understand how it is to come from a poor household and jonathan will never understand the discrimination of women in the work place. both are very real issues and are two parts of a jancy Dilemma of season 3.

people just hate story telling or something ...

[mirkwoodmunson]

Why do you like Karen in stranger things? She literally creeps on a 17/18 year old. She doesn't even really care about her kids either.

fair question! i’m not very eloquent when it comes to putting my thoughts into words but i’ll do my best here

with your first point, yeah, you can argue with billy she and the other women at the pool maybe overstep some bounds with their ogling as he is much younger than them — to be frank it’s the norm in a lot of situations (take fandom space for example). not excusing it but, y’know. people look at things they think are pretty. she gives into his heavy flirting and agrees (at first) to meet up with him. and again, yes it’s weird with the age difference; however billy is 18 in season 3; not to be that person but it’s not illegal. i wouldn’t quite call her actions ‘creeping’ though, if anything billy is pretty intense in coming on to her and is the one who invites her to the motel which she later realizes is wrong and backs out of because she can’t do that to her family, which leads to your next point.

i honestly completely disagree that she doesn’t care about her kids, because it’s shown in every interaction she has with them that she loves them very dearly. kids are kids and they’re hard to connect with but she makes every effort to do so even when hers push her away. and when they do realize they need her she is always there to comfort them.

season one, when nancy comes home from sleeping with steve, she pushes karen away but karen doesn’t reprimand her for it; she’s just worried about her daughter. then when nancy becomes really worried about what happened to barb she goes to karen. when mike is coming up with a plan on how to help el after they bring her back to his place, his first thought is his mom, ‘she’ll know what to do.’ he knows she’d be the kind of person to immediately come in and try to help eleven. when mike comes home after they pull ‘will’ from the water, she’s the first one up from the table because she knows something’s wrong, and when he reaches out to her she just wordlessly comforts him. when he’s scared about her being upset that he’s stayed home from school she urges him not to worry, she knows he’s dealing with a lot. when joyce is going through it, karen almost seems to be the only one that bothers checking in on her, brings her food, sits with her and talks with her.

my goodness, boop, this exchange alone with nancy in season 3;

“It's not easy out there, Nance.”

“I know.”

“People are always saying you can't, that you shouldn't. That you're not... smart enough, not good enough. This world, it... it beats you up again and again until eventually, I... Most people, they just... they just stop trying. But you're not like that. You're a fighter. You always have been. I honestly don't know where you get it from.”

“Dad.”

“I think you were swapped in the hospital, to tell you the truth.”

“No. I get it from you, Mom. I get it from you.”

“Well, wherever you get it from, I'm proud of you.”

“Proud of me for getting fired?”

“That you stood up for yourself. That you stood up to those... shitheads.”

“Mom!”

“Yes, those shitheads. And if you believe in this story... Look at me, Nancy. Finish it. Then go sell it to The Indianapolis Star or whatever and... I mean, can you imagine their faces when they read a story about their own town in a big paper like that? That would be... pretty amazing. So, why not?”

“Why not?”

“Finish it.”

does that sound like something a mother who doesn’t care about her kids would say?

and in season 4 where literally the majority of the parents are doubting their own childrens’ morality — she steps forward and defends them, demands to know where they are and what’s going on.

karen wheeler is an unhappy woman. she’s unhappy in her marriage, she’s unhappy with the small box she’s tried to fit herself into but by god does she love her children, she finds happiness in watching them grow and change — and she learns from them too. she changes through the seasons to become who she wants and needs to be, and who her children need her to be. we learn from nancy that her mom married young to a much older man, had kids young. karen never got to be what she wanted, only what others wanted her to be. but she’s learning now. she has faults but jesus who doesn’t?

setting aside how much she loves her kids, she loves everyone?? for another example, i mentioned joyce, but in s4 when the party starts coming up from the basement after saving max she comments how she thinks it’s so sweet everyone is sticking together over their break. she loves seeing that the younger kids are hanging out with nancy again and vice versa, loves that they all camped out together in her basement, that they’re all coming up together to have breakfast — and she wants to provide for them! she wants dustin to have his fill because let’s face it she’s probably his 2nd or 3rd mom at this point (mrs. sinclair we love you too i wish we saw her more).

idk man i lost my train of thought a bunch in there but suffice it to say — karen wheeler is a wonderful, multi-faceted character. she reminds me of my own mom in some ways. she has faults, but i don’t think she’s done anything outright horrible to negate all of that.

thank you for sending this beep i appreciate the chance to go off abt karen! i’m sure someone has put it more eloquently than i have. i really do love her, i think she’s a great character and ted fucking sucks.

[shelobussy]

I've literally never seen a single episode of stranger things tell me your opinions

Here's some stale cold takes from ur local fandom blog:

Stranger Things is actually really really good show all the way up to the end of season 2. Thereafter it becomes a kinda mediocre show that only gets as much hate as it does because the first two seasons (especially the first) is so strong.

Steve Harrington did nothing wrong in season 1. At best you can nail him on an accessory to slutshaming that lasts like a few hour before he backpedals. (He also did nothing wrong in season 2 or season 3 for that matter, not that I'm seeing people say that he did.)

Mike Wheeler starts being unbearably annoying starting mid-season 2 and I can already tell by his haircut that he's going to be even more unbearable in season 4.

Nancy Wheeler is one of my least favorite characters, but literally every piece of criticism I hear about her is sexist and stupid and you're all wrong.

Actually the entire Wheeler family is annoying.

Eleven peaked in season 2 and she's only going to get worse. Her character arc was interesting and Millie Bobby Brown is an exceptionally good actress, but after season 2 her character is completely trashed except for a few cute moments between her and Max.

Byeler is cute but it never going to happen. Yes I ship it. No I'm not delusional.

As long as we're talking about ships, there isn't a single canon pairing in the show that I enjoy EXCEPT for season 2 Jopper and season 2 Lumax.

If we're talking noncanonical ships, Steve x Nancy x Jonathan is big brained and if the writers had balls they would make it canon. Again, Byeler is cute. Elmax is even cuter.

Noah Schnapp is the best child actor on the show and they're wasting him. Kudos for giving him something to do in season 2 though.

Billy isn't interesting stop pretending he's interesting. I'm kidding we don't know each other you can do whatever the fuck you want. But he's not interesting.

Literally every outfit they put the characters in post season 2 are ugly as fuck. ASH IT'S THE 80S-shut ur fuck everyone looked FINE in the first two seasons. The only outfit in season 3 that I liked were the gayass uniforms Steve and Robin got to wear. All the season 4 promos are disgusting and make me want to throw up and NO I'M NOT BEING DRAMATIC GIVE THESE KIDS A HAIRCUT AND BUY THEM CLOTHES THAT DON'T LOOK LIKE WHAT MY MOM THINKS I THOUGHT SHE WORE IN THE 80S.

Robin and Steve were the highlight of season 3 and I can’t remember a single goddamn thing from that season (I’m lying the Byeler breakup plays on repeat in my head 24/7 I mean when Mileven broke up in that season, Mike looked a little bummed out BUT in the Byeler break up they’re literally standing IN THE RAIN and Mike all but CALLS WILL GAY and the looks on BOTH OF THEIR FACES ARE ABSOLUTELY TRAGIC AND-) is the interactions between Robin and Steve it was literally so good and the only in character dialogue.

If you don't read Will Byers as queer, you weren't paying attention.

Actually, on that note, Will Byers is the most interesting character on the show besides Eleven. They literally had so many parallels and there were so many links between them and the fact that they aren't best friends and don't already have sibling energy was siblingphobic of the writers. Do better in season 4 or else.