#not a nancy apologist

[ghostlyfleur]

Honestly, Nancy could have been a great character, but the show tries so hard to brand her as this sweet, perfect girl that all the shitty things she does get overlooked. It's like other characters, especially those who were wronged by her, aren't allowed to be pissed at Nancy. Robin wouldn't have been so nice to Steve if he had given her the energy Nancy did. And yet throughout s4, Robin wanted her approval, which was so ooc based on what we know about her in s3. Or Steve being so in love with her even though she cheated on him, which is such a sore point for him. It made him look so pathetic in s4. He deserves better than that. All the people who ship stancy only ship it because Nancy deserves Steve's love over Jonathan. They never ask if Nancy is right for Steve. He wants someone who loves him with all their being, which isn't Nancy. He was always her second choice. The fact that he might never know Nancy cheated on him makes me sick because he deserves to know, so he can move on and see it's not entirely his fault for fucking up. The show made such a huge deal of cheating, and Steve, it's the only real knowledge we have from his family life, yet he isn't allowed to react to it. They put him through it in s1 as a joke where he absolutely lashed out and got reprimanded. And then seriously in s2, where he just had to roll over as a sign for change, though he should have been hurt and pissed.

The show refusing to let Nancy learn from mistakes is what's killing the character. But you also have to ask if it's truly the shows fault or is it Nancy's character at this point because we see a pattern, and people like her really exist. She's so stagnant, she's still the same character she was in s2 with more gun experience.

Sorry for this, but I'm also so frustrated by her and the rise of stancy shippers. (If she gets with Steve without any reflection, I'll throw up. Or worse, Steve is dying for her or Jonathan as an act of "true love." I need to get him out of that awful show)

i totally agree, babe! please always feel free to send me your thoughts.

and yeah, people keep trying to make excuses for nancy because she “could’ve been better with better writing blah blah blah” but that’s not the case imo. it’s not that the poor character is being abandoned like i believe steve’s is… nancy has always been entitled and had a superiority complex and a ridiculous need to have boys fighting over her.

her whole persona and attitude makes others feel like they need her approval, you’re right. and she definitely does not deserve this fucked up altar she’s been put on.

and how she acts as though steve owns her an explanation for being friends with robin? and how she treats robin like shit bc she thinks robin’s with steve? like fuck off… what an entitled upper middle class diva. and all the while flirting with steve when she has a whole fucking boyfriend already? a boyfriend she cheated on steve with, mind you.

i hate cheaters. i hate entitled assholes.

it’s not that nancy is a good, straight a’s, perfect girl next door, but the writing is bad — nancy is an asshole that does some good for the group ‘cause she wants to avenge barb or whatever, and uses that an excuse to be a dick.

disclaimer: this is my opinion btw. i def don’t care if anyone disagrees, and please don’t try to rant and change my mind.

[godofstupidsentences]

Sometimes it’s just you and the character hated by the whole fandom against the world

[maxmayfieldghostwrotethis]

lex lore ☆___★

🎸 hi! i'm lex, she/they, 19, lesbian, autistic, and looking for ST friends i have no idea how tumblr works im a twitter child 🎧 mike wheeler and max mayfield kinnie (and platonic bffs truther) they're literally the same person in different fonts.

🌟 full time worker and student but i find time to act unemployed. sometimes i write, sometimes i'm silly

🎮 i enjoy: byler (canon truther), ronance, elmax, lumax, jancy

📼 i absolutely loath: billy, brenner, lonnie, vecna 📽️ i seriously can't wait to know: why will was taken if he wasn't bleeding, why the time stopped in the upside down that same day, the lore behind "let's start a new party, you and me", mike's letter for will, why mike is always late in the first episode, and if they're finally gonna make will curse more 🤍 other things i enjoy: dead poets society, spiderman,

i do NOT support n**h s*****p so don’t follow me if you do.

i stand with PALESTINE. *pfp credit to owner!! i took it from pinterest but i'm not sure who made it :)

[a-healthy-dose-of-apathy]

not my usual content but in 2023 i want more mike angst. there’s plenty of room for it in that kid. fuck him up y’all. mike has all of the “ugly” trauma responses like anger management issues, low self esteem, commitment issues, etc. explore that outside of just being haters 😭.

[ladyinbl00d]

mickey didn’t deserve to die, he just wanted to be a serial killer who had a trial☹️

[magnapinna-sp-a]

Rip Queen Gertrude Robinson you would of love Nancy Sinatra

[ronanceisintheair]

How could someone sane hate Nancy Wheeler?

She did nothing wrong ever in her life.

I know this, and I love her.

The answer is in the question: "someone sane"

Any sane person would not hate nancy wheeler. Any sane person would not have ill feelings towards nancy wheeler.

It's the sheer mental gymnastics that people have to go through to have hate in their hearts for her.

[wrathofthegodsfrontman]

My roommate just said Nancy Wheeler is annoying and now I want to kick her out of my apartment but maybe that’s harsh idk

[nancydfan]

I will die on the hill that scott shouldn’t have been the villain in ToT, and it was lazy writing to have the bitter, nihilistic dude discovering that life was actually always getting worse.

[oh2e]

I love being on the periphery of fandom and only seeing things like “I’d love for people to stop calling [character] the villain and calling her absolutely awful and irredeemable” instead of actually seeing people say those things because I love her

[jonathanbyersphd]

You know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love The slowest way is never loving them enough Do you really want to know where I was April 29th? Do I really have to tell you how he brought me back to life? 

High infidelity

[xirayn]

The photo scene is largely misconstrued by the fandom. Nancy is not naked, she has her bra on and no pictures are taken of her and Steve having sex. Does that excuse it? Absolutely not. Jonathan is 16 in the 1980s, however, and the culture around consent was extremely different than it is today.

As Steve is the trope of the 80's jock bully turned on it's head, Jonathan is the trope of the outcast/loser. In 80s media, this character was supposed to be cheered for using cunning or coercion to circumvent the social hotness hierarchy. Getting a picture of a girl's back in her bra is nothing compared to using a ladder to watch a half-naked pillow fight (Animal House), drilling a hole in a wall to watch girls shower in the locker room (Porky's), looking up a girls skirt and possibly touching her inapprppriately (The Breakfast Club), or any of the other 'boys will be boys shennanigans' from almost any 80s teen movie. The fact Jonathan does recognize that he shouldn't have taken that picture and apologizes (and he does even if Nancy glosses over it) is what turns the trope on it's head.

And it continues with all of the situations Jonathan could have taken advantage of Nancy's emotional or inebriated state. If Stranger Things was written in the 80s, he would have with full approval expected from the audience.

Steve is older than Jonathan. If he is 'just a teenage boy', then so is Jonathan.

okay so I reblogged a post from @thestobingirlie a while ago but I wanted to dive a little more into this so basically

I👏DON'T👏CARE👏 how poor Jonathan is. taking naked photos of your classmates without their knowledge or consent is fucking weird and creepy and it baffles me that people still defend him on this

"he was looking for Will-" in Steve Harrington's backyard??

"Steve didn't have to break the camera tho-" let's keep in mind that not only did Jonathan violate Nancy's privacy but also Steve's. plus at this stage, Steve is like 16, so yeah, he broke the camera. as he should. some guy he barely knows has photos of him and his girlfriend having sex. that's weird dude.

i feel like people really overstate how much of a dick Steve was in season 1. honestly imo for every shitty thing he did there was a somewhat reasonable explanation behind it. he was literally just a 16 year old kid with absent parents and who was heavily influenced by the people he surrounded himself with but that's a WHOLE other thing we're not gonna get into rn

ALSO pls correct me if I'm wrong but did Jonathan ever even apologise?? then he and Nancy just get together WHILE SHE'S👏STILL👏DATING👏STEVE👏 and they both act like he was the problem the entire time????

[theshippirate22]

…

[thembohux]

My god do you all realize how fucking WILD Layla would go for The Craft???? Because I just did lol

[ghostlyfleur]

absolutely! exactly! this this this

all nancy does is piss me off, to be honest. how mean she is to robin for nothing? and even mike at points? how entitled and superior she thinks she is? hell NO. she thinks she’s hot shit, but honestly, it gets to a point where she’s so shitty to other people that her flaws def outweighs the good in her imo as a person. as a friend. as a girlfriend.

like yeah, she helps with upside down stuff, but besides that? she’s an ass to pretty much everyone else.

a cheater is a cheater is a cheater.

my PERSONAL OPINION on ro//nance: 

so a disclaimer: feel free to ship whoever you want to ship. these are just my thoughts and my perspective on the explosion of ro//nance since season 4. it’s not my intention to condemn or tell anyone to stop producing their content, i just want to scream into the void before it festers. 

your wish fulfillment is valid, but so is my opinion. so if that’s not smth you want to see feel free to skip !! 

diving straight in… i wanna talk about nancy wheeler. 

to be clear: i don’t hate nancy. i think she is headstrong and determined and knows what she wants. she sticks to her guns and definitely has the potential to be a truly good person. that being said, she is extremely selfish in canon. 

from season 1, my interpretation of her is that she’s infatuated with the concept of steve harrington and the status that he could bring. he’s a fantasy that’s suddenly become attainable to the nerdy miss wheeler. of COURSE she’s going to relish his attention. 

note: i actually don’t think anyone else except barb, mike, and steve himself, ever called steve an asshole. so . do with that what you will. 

anyway, nancy and jonathan act like steve suspecting that nancy is cheating is SO unreasonable. which honestly? it’s not. catching your girlfriend alone in her bedroom with a guy who TOOK NONCONSENSUAL ILLICIT PHOTOS OF TWO UNDERAGE TEENAGERS… that’s suspicious. perhaps his reaction wasn’t the best, but he’s also like 17 years old and protecting himself the way he knows how to. and of course his friends aren’t going to take that laying down either. 

i don’t know if any of the supporters of ro//nance have ever been cheated on, but it’s not just heartbreaking… it’s HUMILIATING. and such a hit to the self esteem. and i don’t care what the circumstance is, unless it’s nonconsensual. cheating is cheating and i firmly believe that a cheater will always be a cheater. 

in this case, it’s also reasonable for nancy to be pissed when she sees the movie theater because she didn’t actually cheat at that time. both of them had bad reactions but they also both had good reasoning behind their actions. 

YES steve called jonathan a queer, but keep in mind it’s a common insult in the 80s, especially with the AIDS epidemic going on. don’t use modern standards to condemn him, but also don’t excuse his behavior. YES he was wrong, but he grew (obviously what with his friendship with robin). and do you really think he’s not going to go for the throat when he thinks that jonathan slept with his girlfriend? 

it’s a classic case of everyone’s the asshole but everyone’s not the asshole. 

moving onto season 2. BULLSHIT. nancy was projecting. like she felt so guilty about barb and associated that night with the first time she had sex with steve, so she associated steve with barb’s disappearance/death. she was processing her trauma which is totally fine, but also not an excuse to treat steve like that. to be fair, drunk words drunk words. 

what she forgot was that steve also experienced the same thing. maybe not the grief and loss that she felt, but it’s HIS house. he has to stare out at that pool every night and know that it’s a murder scene and a grave site. he may be processing his trauma by trying to forget and be a “normal kid.” and that’s fine. 

and to be SO clear: they didn’t technically break up. you could say that they did, or take that as your interpretation, but in my opinion they’re not broken up until they have a conversation explicitly discussing ending things. couples fight all of the time. it’s not uncommon to want a little space afterwards before apologizing/making up. 

so yes. nancy cheated. and she never thought about the consequences of her actions, especially regarding steve. imagine how he felt. in season 3, he admitted to being IN LOVE with her. and she called him bullshit and cheated on him. be so real, if this happened in real life, you wouldn’t be as kind as steve. he stayed friendly with BOTH nancy and jonathan, and continued to babysit their brothers. 

steve called himself a bad boyfriend, but did we ever see evidence of that? he was constantly wooing her and romancing her. like if she didn’t want that, she could have communicated that throughout the YEAR they were together. the only possible way that steve could be a bad boyfriend was regarding their difference in trauma response. which is not being Bad. it’s having different personalities and perspectives. so ??? just a gripe. 

SEASON 3…. so YEAH nancy is selfish. her and jonathan’s job at the hawkins post … like YES fight misogyny and feel infuriated because of your treatment. however, don’t strong-arm jonathan into supporting you when he NEEDS that job. unlike miss picket fence upper middle class nancy wheeler, the byers don’t have a lot of money. they’re living on a single income and jonathan works too. like he doesn’t have the ability to just drop the job. of course, he follows her in the end though. honestly, that only validates nancy’s perspective that she’s always right and her crusade for whatever is righteous. 

but she doesn’t care about collateral damage. she never took into account jonathan’s feelings. she never took into account the effect this could have on future jobs. employers DO check references sometimes fyi. (also i KNOW that it was due to a lot of misogyny, but irl new hires are often the company mule. like she could have tried to work her way up. she hasn’t even been working there that long, and she a high school student expects to be published within months?? just be a little realistic here) 

i honestly commend her because she’s bold and she’s brave. she makes a GREAT reporter. but she makes a bad friend and a bad girlfriend. from what i observe, she takes things for granted and gives too much credit to herself. these are just character flaws and that’s human to have flaws. it’s possible to be a good person and also do bad things. i actually like nancy a lot, but it has to be acknowledged that she rarely faces consequences for her actions, and has never been confronted with the fact that she constantly puts herself first with no regard for other people. 

just a quick note for season 4 bc this is getting SO long: when nancy told steve he “almost deserved” to get shot in the face. okay bitch. now i’m mad. bc? what did he do? and like. tbh WHO deserves to get shot in the face. i don’t care if it was supposed to be a flirty statement, it was SO out of pocket. 

it’s also clear that nancy takes credit for steve’s “transformation.” if i’m being honest, the only thing she really pushed him to do was to drop tommy and carol. STEVE made the decision to run back in to fight the demogorgon. STEVE made the decision to help dustin and fight the demo dogs. STEVE made the decision to stay behind to watch the kids while they stormed the lab. show me one instance where nancy influences his actions, and i’ll acknowledge it, but i just don’t see it. and i think she gives herself way too much credit. because she wasn’t there by his side working through it with him. she was dealing with her own problems (which is okay), but she can’t act like she completely transformed him and made him a heroic babysitter. think on that. 

into my thoughts on ro//nance: 

robin is steve’s best friend. she’s not JUST his best friend. he’s her platonic soulmate. when they were conceived, they were a being with four arms and four legs. but they were Too Cunt and Powerful so they had to be separated. they are literally two parts of one soul. 

now imagine: ur best friend admits he’s IN LOVE/HAS BEEN IN LOVE with his ex. and she broke his heart. that in itself already has me livid, but if i found out about the “bullshit” spiel, i would have to start throwing punches. 

i believe in season 4 that the reason why robin is so curious about nancy is because she wants to know what type of girl steve fell in love with. like what’s so appealing about nancy that she’s the only one he said he fell in love with? and i also believe she didn’t know about the cheating at this time because NO WAY would she have been nice to nancy if she knew. 

maybe you guys can forgive cheating, but i sure can’t. and especially when it happens to my best friend… it’s over. like sorry i treasure my best friend…. 

reiterating that nancy isn’t a bad person, but she just Doesn’t work with robin. putting aside robin’s opinions, nancy fucking hates her LMFAO. like she is So cold to robin out of? jealousy (a cheater is a cheater is a cheater). so it only really proves me right that nancy doesn’t actually care about the people she’s with. does she think that flirting with steve is okay after playing around with his heart before? has she ever taken into account the fact that steve may have been healing or emotionally unavailable? did she ever consider how steve felt after they broke up? 

robin did. and she’s ride or die. 

and a rebuttal to a post i’ve definitely seen before: yes, lesbians do tend to have a small dating pool which leads to a lot of friends dating exes. (i, a lesbian, have experience with this). HOWEVER, a cheater is different. because you have to acknowledge that a lot of lesbians stay friends with their exes. steve and nancy are AT BEST friendly in canon. if you would date someone who cheated on their friend, FULL OFFENSE, you’re not a good friend. that’s just a fact. 

you’re not only completely disregarding their experience, but you’re also forcing them to be in the same space as someone who betrayed them. and that’s more of a betrayal than the actual cheating imo. sorry but IN MY OPINION, i’d never want to be friends with anyone who ships ro//nance lol. it just shows me that you don’t care about your friends’ feelings like that. 

this is kind of a rant and totally nonsensical, but i have to yell about this bc i feel like it’s not even talked about. nancy is always characterized as a perfect girl, but she’s not. and that’s OKAY! but you can’t erase her history just to have two cute girls kiss. 

it’s also completely ignoring CANON love interests (vickie). which i get because she didn’t get a lot of screen time, but god can’t we find another alternative. 

and be honest: a lot of people ship ro//nance so that jonathan/argyle can get together too. or they act like it’s okay bc steddie get together and steve is happy now. 

THOUGH steve would approve of the relationship bc he’s a GOOD guy and KIND, i think that robin would have rejected it. she’d defend that man to the DEATH. 

so when you ship ro//nance, you’re erasing stobin. because robin would want someone who loves steve just as much as she does. someone who understands that he’s her soulmate and she can’t live without him. and nancy just isn’t that person. their history and nancy’s perception of steve just stand in the way of that kind of relationship. 

not to mention that steve and robin are One. like this is more conjecture but they are Literally the Same Person. and if steve wasn’t compatible with nancy, what makes you think that robin would be?  honestly, the whole concept of ro//nance just completely bamboozles me. i’m confused and i’m irritated. because it’s almost like none of you have actually had a REAL relationship. or YOU don’t care about other people’s feelings. nancy kin i guess. 

again again, my personal opinion. i choose not to consume ro//nance content, but somehow it keeps cropping up so i do have to put in my two cents. by all means, keep shipping and supporting them, but it would be nice if you read through this and thought about the characterization. 

[fallstaticexit]

I know everyone is like.... Geoffrey this, Geoffrey that, poor man and all that..

and I'm like... Did he really not notice her lack of attraction and overall unhappiness 😭 miss Nancy isn't even faking it, poor girl, so I can't help but think Geoffrey is maybe not that good of a partner. I know he probably just wanted to stay blind to the reality of things, but still, I don't trust that man.

As the author, what's your take on this? 😄

Thanks for this take! I love to hear all sides ✨😌🤌🏽

Idk if you follow Missing Moments, but adult Malcolm makes a comment about his parents to Olive. His mother being a “narcissistic liar” and his father a “spineless coward” and he really meant that 😭

To me, Geoffrey would be the “wife” the media often portrays who turns a blind eye to things their spouse does for the sake of the family, as a part of their duty as a spouse and as a parent. He's also stupid in love with this woman too, like so much ahhhh.

He’s made a comment during the college arc with Becca that he knows Nancy is complicated. She’s not like most girls, she’s not all cheerful and bubbly like Becca or the sorority girls, she was always just lost in her own world and he loved her still. So, while Nancy is clearly not innocent in this, Geoffrey not having the will/ strength/ ability etc. to free himself from the Nancy Apologist Club is a battle he'll have to conquer

So. Basically, my stance is......I do stand with Malcolm I fear😭 Geoffrey needs a spine and Nancy needs accountability. ahhh.