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[haus-of-davies]

OK SO I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. IT ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE. AND I WOULD LIKE TO ADD ON.

I ACTUALLY STARTED EXPLAINING MY IDEAS AND THEN REALIZED I LIKED THEM A LOT???? SO MUCH THAT I WANT TO WRITE A FIC ON IT? WOULD THAT BE OKAY?

WHAT IF ROBIN WAS IN SEASON ONE?? ok this was just a random idea i had but i’m just gonna copy and paste what i wrote on instagram since i’m too lazy to explain again lmao-

robin was friends with barb in the book before nancy SO what if she approached nancy after barb went missing to ask if she knew anything about it since she knew nancy was barbs only other friend??? and then nancy and robin end up looking for clues for barb and will instead of jonathan and nancy??? the second slide is when nancy sees the demogorgon at steve’s house when she goes looking and there’s no way robin wouldn’t believe her since she already believes in UFOs and maybe bigfoot LMAO

and then maybe robin basically takes jonathan’s place so that’s why i drew them in nancys bed like the scene with jonathan and nancy after nancy goes into the upside down. IDEK IF ANY OF THAT MAKES SENSE i might do more though this was fun

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the bond between two mutuals who've never talked but have the same taste. energetically, psychically aligned. sisters in vibes

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I'm so tired of so many ronance fics that are just pages of Robin pining for Nancy while Nancy is either totally unaware, in denial, or too confused and mislead to understand how she feels.

Yes, we do see Nancy getting frustrated with Robin at the very beginning of their relationship at the start of season 4, but this was based off of a lack of communication and understanding that was totally mutual between the two. It took just as long for Robin to appreciate Nancy and see her as a friend as it did for Nancy to come to like Robin.

We should also consider the very obvious connections between Nancy's experiences in seasons 1 through 3 and the way Robin acts, especially in situations with Nancy.

Nancy was majorly underestimated and faced ruthless discrimination by the men she worked with at the newspaper. When Robin and Nancy went to Pennhurst and Robin thought they were being treated differently because they were women, she not only called the warden out, but stood up and raised her voice at him.

Standing up to misogynistic bs like this has been something Nancy has always struggled with, and you can tell in this scene how much admiration she has for Robin.

Robin is, in some ways, the antithesis of Nancy's character, but contrasts Nancy in a way that shows how much Nancy wants to be like her. Robin is completely unafraid to be herself and not conform to what society wants her to be, which is something Nancy has tried to do for the entire show.

Maybe Nancy is so bothered by Robin and Steve's friendship not because she thinks they're together, but because she knows that they're not. Robin is best friends with a seemingly perfect guy who everyone is pressuring her to date, but simply won't. Because Nancy doesn't yet know the exact reason why, maybe she doesn't want to become close with Robin at the beginning of S4 because she's jealous that Robin can totally reject society's expectations and doesn't feel pressured to be with a guy just because he likes her.

Long story short, Nancy wheeler has every reason to be madly in love with Robin Buckley, and I feel like it makes just as much sense for her to fall head over heels first.

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OBSESSED WITH THIS CHARACTER ANALYSIS.

sometimes out of the blue it’s just like “wow nancy rejecting and pushing away anything she views as childish or immature because the last time she really let go in an age appropriate way her best friend died and she’s never recovered from the guilt of that one moment of innocent teenage thoughtlessness so she doesn’t go to parties and she doesn’t make friends and she focuses on work and gives away her stuffed animals and is embarrassed for anyone to know she has posters or music boxes in her room and sleeps with guns under her bed and relentlessly pursued anything she thinks could indicate a threat because she never ever feels safe or in control and Vecna took her back to that swimming pool because she never actually left it in the first place” and then I sit down and cry so hard I throw up

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i totally get this and i don’t disagree beyond just personally loving robin and nancy’s dynamic more (i just love how unexpectedly their differences round each other’s out so well, i really think they’re super compatible).

but it doesn’t change my opinion. my main issue with robin and vickie being canon is that in every other romantic relationship in the show:

A) We get to watch them fall in love and fight and come together again and we get to SEE them being real people in a real relationship, and in some instances it goes all the way back to us watching them meet and becoming friends first (mileven, jancy, lumax)

B) Both people are main characters, so even when there’s not a lot of presence about their romance necessarily, we still get to see them just exist as people outside of it, how they react to everyday things as well as crazy alternate dimension monster stuff (and even in instances where someone is not a main character, like bob, they’re still incredibly prominent and we get to learn a lot about them) (rip bob)

C) They all have very strong and unique personalities. I’m not saying similar people can’t get along or be good romantic pairings, and this also might go back to us just not knowing vickie well, but from everything we know about her, she’s just exactly like robin. which again, isn’t necessarily bad, but it doesn’t compare well to every other relationship where we see them struggle to get on the same page and disagree about opinions and have different dreams.

I recognize that all of these are things that could be fixed in season 5, but for season 4 it was a grave disappointment. all we’ve gotten from robin and vickie is robin talking about her crush, acting awkward around her for a few seconds in one scene, robin being disappointed and heartbroken seeing vickie kiss a boy in another (that also only lasts a few seconds), and them talking at the sandwich station at the end (ALSO not more than a minute or so). THREE SCENES OF VICKIE. it’s not terrible content it’s just SO minuscule and unfulfilling. it feels like a ploy just to give robin SOME kind of plot of her own this season (and it also definitely doesn’t bode well for the duffers treating their only queer canon relationship like that). you can’t question why fans want to see robin with a character like nancy’s, especially queer fans who see how much more fulfilling the hetero relationships are and have been on the show. not only would we get all of this and more, we’d get queer visibility that EXACTLY matches the visibility we see the hetero relationships getting, as the older teenagers relationships are more or less the center of the shows romance (yes i am talking jancy/stancy love triangle). i didn’t mean to go on a queer representation rant, but also didn’t i? (don’t get me started on will byers.)

(also as for season five they might do more with vickie’s character like i already addressed, but regardless there’s going to be a time jump of three years so even if we get canon robin x vickie and main character!vickie, we’re already going to have missed out on getting to see them come together and fall in love and be stupid teenagers like all of the other characters by proxy. so yes, the duffers could give us more later, but either way they’ve already hugely failed to satisfy queer fans and give us everything they give the hetero romances on the show.)

and another thing: the way everyone's reacting to Robin and Vickie is so sad???

like i get that ronance is in high demand right now and that's all fine and good, but let's at least see that scene at the end for what it really is:

we know that Robin is beyond nervous about her crush. we also know that when she's nervous or ill-at-ease about anything, she starts rambling. She just can't stop. She told us both Nancy and Steve about this herself.

So she runs into Vickie at the sandwich station and is naturally flustered, but she recovers beautifully.

And THEN.

Vickie starts doing exactly the same thing as Robin.

She. Starts. Rambling.

I've seen people use this as a point of criticism, but I think those who criticize it are missing what this is telling us about Vickie and especially Robin.

It tells us that Vickie and Robin apparently share one brain cell, which is adorable anyway you look at it. you could even say they're kindred spirits (you knew I had to make an Anne Shirley reference sometime).

It tells us that Robin's fears of not being accepted by Vickie are apparently unfounded because they get along famously when they actually have a chance to talk.

And thanks to our handy-dandy context clues, because we know why Robin starts rambling and the specific situations in which she does ramble, the narrative is drawing a direct parallel between Robin's and Vickie's behaviors when they are nervous. What other cause would Vickie have to be nervous around Robin?

Probably the same reason as Robin's.

"Butbutbut!! She kissed her boyfriend right in front of Robin!!!" Yeah, and didn't she just look so comfortable when she realized Robin had just seen that. And doesn't she just have glowing reports to make about said boyfriend when talking to Robin.

Look, all I'm saying is this: to everyone complaining that Robin and Vickie are acting exactly the same, you're missing the point. They're supposed to be acting the same. It's a narrative clue that they are both likely feeling the same things!! That sounds like a win to me for Robin!!!

And speaking of Robin, her reaction is the biggest part of this interaction that gets ignored.

When Robin is around her crush, she gets nervous. When Robin gers nervous, she rambles. And now, when she's not only around her crush but standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her and actually talking to her. . .

she isn't rambling.

Granted, it may be because Vickie is also rambling, but it's more than that. There's an expression of awe on her face. A peaceful kind of awe. The kind of awe where you've learned something new about the other person and it's something that makes you happy.

Robin looks happy here, listening to her crush ramble the exact same way she does.

And it makes me so sad that people are missing that. It's a win for Robin! Shouldn't we happy about that?? That she found out how compatible they were??

How many of us dreamed of a moment like that when we had a crush on somebody? Again, that sounds like a major win for Robin and Vickie to me.

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GOOD MORNING HOW ARE THE RONANCE GAYS TODAY???? I AM GREAT I JUST READ THIS MASTERPIECE:

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am writing an angsty ronance fic in which robin is ✨not okay!✨ and nancy doesn’t know how to handle it. who is interested. you shouldn’t be. my goal is to make you cry.

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does your brain ever “1985 THE GANG IS GETTING TALL, EVERYONE IS GROWING UP AND SHOPPING AT THE MALL” or is that just me

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this is my current passion project please feed into this for me.

where are my delusional s5 ronance girlies at can i get a hell yeah

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okay, i’m going to take the risk and put this in the steddie tag lol.

can you guys please stop tagging your steddie centric fic with the main ronance tag (”robin buckley/nancy wheeler”)? the level of tag intrusion from you guys is insane, as can clearly be seen here. the highest amount of ronance fics on a page in their own tag doesn’t even break 75% on average because of this. the ao3 filter only does so much. since it excludes every instance of the steddie tag, and not just fics where it’s the first one, filtering it results in losing ronance fics as well where steddie is featured.

so could ya’ll please just start using some alternate tags like “background robin buckley/nancy wheeler” or “minor robin buckley/nancy wheeler” or whatever else you’d like. if it’s a fic where they’re featured about equally, but it’s still from the pov of steddie, you could even use “major robin buckley/nancy wheeler”. these tell readers what other couples are featured in your work without them clogging up the main ronance tag like there’s no tomorrow. we shouldn’t have to scroll past five steddie fics in a row just to find a ronance one in our own tag.

it’s even slowly starting to become an issue on their tag here. i’ve seen several posts as of late that are exclusively about steddie or eddie himself but tagged as ronance. i get it, they’re the “fruity four” so there is going to be some overlap, but if they’re not even mentioned in your post, don’t tag them, and if they’re not the main focus of your fic, at least consider using an alternate tag. 

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forget the steve/jonathan love triangle i believe with my whole heart there will be a robin centered love triangle with vicki and nancy like come on. why else would nancy STILL not have broken up with jonathan??? she’s scared of loving robin. why else would they show all those moments of robin understanding nancy in such a deep way. all those lines about robin’s “one true” crush on vicki??? “the perfect girl” but she can’t even talk to her????? they’re so similar it helps robin feel seen but then they never actually love each other???? then nancy comes INNNNN with the reassurances and the hand hold and all that SEASON FIVE LESBIAN LOVE TRIANGLE PLEASE. (let me know if y’all have questions would love to speak more on this TOTALLY CANON plot.)

where are my delusional s5 ronance girlies at can i get a hell yeah

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I can’t stop thinking about the way that when Robin hears Nancy’s name in Season 3 she rolls her eyes and calls her a priss, but then not five minutes later she runs into Nancy in the flesh who’s apparently in the thick of the insane situation Robin has become unwittingly wrapped up in. Her makeup is smudged and her hair is messy and she’s terse with Robin and all Robin can do is utter a flustered reply while giving her this look:

And then shortly afterwards Robin watches as Nancy plants herself in front of a station wagon full of kids and shoots at an oncoming speeding car with a pistol, fully ready to sacrifice herself to protect them. That night at the Star Court Mall changes everything Robin thought about this dainty, pretty, prissy girl who turns out to be a certified badass with nerves of steel. 

After this, Robin is smitten. She volunteers to go with Nancy the moment an opportunity presents itself. When they’re waiting in the library, she assumes that Nancy has some genius trick up her sleeve because since Star Court she’s built up an idea of who she is in her mind: brilliant and brave and tenacious. Robin is so desperate for Nancy to like her that she loses all pretense of sardonic aloofness that we see around other characters and the words start spilling out, exactly as she described when venting to Steve about how she behaves around girls she’s crushing on. 

Robin is self-conscious and apologetic about how she comes across to Nancy, she repeatedly tries to diffuse the underlying tension between them in any way that she can, and is particularly keen to emphasise the platonic nature of her friendship with Steve. Despite barely knowing Nancy, she starts using the nickname “Nance” right away. There’s a sincere and earnest effort to win Nancy’s approval and affection; Robin needs it more than she even realises.

And the thing is, it works. Nancy starts off cool and irritable and exasperated (which, one should point out, may be in no small part because she’d been up all night looking for her friend who she just found brutally murdered - cut her some slack folks!), but after those two hours with Robin in the library, she realises that she’s remarkably bright and creatively minded and complements her own logical way of thinking so well. You can see the journey she undergoes in that short period of time written on her face: bemusement and impatience soon give way to respect and the dawning realisation that she’s met her intellectual match, someone with the same insatiable curiosity and a whole new way of seeing the world to show her. 

Nancy has so many emotional walls built up from years of repression and trauma, especially surrounding having and losing friends (not to mention, potentially, her own repressed queerness), but Robin despite her insecurities over her lack of filter and tendency to ramble and her other personal quirks manages to steal in past those defences. After that first encounter together, Nancy wants Robin by her side at all times. Even though she knows Steve, Dustin, Lucas and Max so much better, she picks Robin to come with her to Pennhurst, she asks Robin to explore the Creel House with her, she has Robin ride shotgun with her in her car. They stick together as a pair at every turn. 

This is so, so important: Nancy grows to like and care about Robin because of her being totally and utterly herself. The Robin whose mouth moves faster than her brain, the Robin who is relentlessly inquisitive and goofy and clumsy, the Robin who is at her most overtly neurodivergent around her. And Robin is slowly but surely finding confidence in herself and courage through that relationship, she’s taking risks she never would have before, and learning that her perceived flaws are actually strengths. When talking to Warden Hatch at Pennhurst with Nancy, it’s her runaway way with words that saves them and leaves Nancy incredibly impressed. The unmasked, unfiltered, beautiful gay disaster Robin Buckley is the person Nancy comes to admire and develops a deep fondness for. 

It’s been said many times before, but Robin and Nancy complete each other. As we’ve just established, Nancy quickly becomes a source of reassurance, inspiration and affirmation for Robin. And Robin is someone who can keep up with Nancy’s laser-focused fixations and faced-paced thinking, who can challenge her to consider things she never would have otherwise. She also encourages Nancy to be more honest with herself and makes her feel at ease at a time when she’s more lost than ever. Robin is always carefully reading Nancy and respects her opinions and feelings; she’s the friend and confidant Nancy has been missing in her life all this time since losing Barb.

When they’re talking in the woods, it’s not what Robin says about Steve or Jonathan that Nancy latches onto. What truly takes her aback is the realisation that Robin considers them to be friends, and both quietly, bashfully blush and smile to themselves at that confirmation. However adrift Nancy might be from her complex feelings over Jonathan and Steve or her unhealed emotional scars, she’s found an anchor in someone. However insecure Robin might feel about herself, she’s found a girl who she doesn’t have to pretend with.

And then we come to perhaps the most revealing scene of the season so far: when Eddie, Steve, Nancy and Robin are on the boat over Lover’s Lake. The parallels to Tammy Thompson are evident as Robin stares at Nancy who can’t pull her eyes away from Steve, and the way in which the camera focuses on the two characters in the frame imparts so much more than Robin simply being happy for the rekindled feelings of her friends. Her longing expression breaking into a soft smile and the bowing of her head feels like the sad acceptance of something she believes to be unattainable for her. 

Nancy demonstrates her trademark reckless abandon to protect the people she loves when she dives in to rescue Steve without hesitation after he’s pulled under, but Robin’s reaction is gut-wrenching as she cries out Nancy’s name and reaches for her. And then Robin, who beneath her snarky facade is far more scared than she likes to let on, pushes down those fears and without wasting a second moves to go after her with a sense of resigned determination. The framing of this scene, the dialogue and Maya Hawke’s performance make it clear that Robin is willingly following Nancy Wheeler into hell. As Eddie says, that’s as sure a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen. 

Regardless of whether the romantic subtext is intentional or this relationship is supposed to remain strictly platonic, Nancy and Robin’s blossoming friendship is a very special one. Having swiftly dismantled their presumptions about one another, they’ve found true synergy, inspiring and pushing each other to be the best versions of themselves. In spite, or rather because of their differences, the two are slowly but surely forging a profound bond that is already one of the most charming and memorable on the show to date, and with any luck, we’ll get some meaningful and moving payoffs to their arcs together in Vol 2. Perhaps, through each other, Nancy and Robin will finally find the closure, catharsis and connection they’ve been yearning for. 

Thanks so much to @meanlesbianrobin for providing the accompanying screenshots! 

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crash

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Clementine Von Radics, from In A Dream You Saw A Way To Survive; “You are on the floor crying”

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no cause this is all i need. since season one when kate found out alice was beth it’s kind of always been about alice being beth again and i obviously want her to be healthy and heal from her trauma but have we not considered that her trauma makes her who she is? the shows narrative itself has made it incredibly clear that theres no way to simply go back and erase all the bad things that’s happened to her (all the times she a l m o s t escaped cartwright, the wrong universe beth that got saved in the crash, the joy buzzer that ryan and even alice herself said wasn’t meant for alice). alice needs to heal but that healing needs to look like her reconciling her past and agreeing to continue getting help and wanting to stop doing harm and wrestling with her new found family and struggling to not get too violent and learning how to love again and falling down and getting back up and fighting her way to humanity. GIVE ME HEALTHY HAPPY ALICE DONT GIVE ME “fixed” BETH.

okay i absolutely love the thought of alice's redemption arc and joining the bat team or whatever but i really hope that if they do end up doing that, they keep the morally black area of alice

give me alice trying to find a balance of alice and beth, give me alice quarreling with ryan over murdering an abusive rapist who was this close to hurting mary, give me alice saving the city by pushing a man out of a window

alice is as an interesting character as she is because for all of her protectiveness for her family, she doesn't have a moral compass. and rule number one of being a superhero that supersedes even the no kill rule: don't let your moral compass go astray

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disney employees are starting a full week of walkouts leading to their big walkout on march 22nd, 2022. they’ve asked people to not use disney products during this week. (no disney+, hulu, espn, playing games, watching videos, reviewing/blogging about any of their IP, no going to the parks). this is a targeted and timed action you can concretely participate in.

they’re asking people to also support by using those hashtags and to sign their petition in solidarity.