#the duffer brothers themselves could not convince me otherwise

[strangerwheelerthings]

Deep Dive Into The Heart of Nancy Wheeler: The Introduction Scene

Link to the full Heart of Nancy Wheeler Series

I can’t think of a better way to start a character study than to take a closer look into how they are introduced. Barb’s death changed everything for Nancy Wheeler, but her response to that trauma was shaped by who she already was. In order to understand where a character chooses to go, you have to understand where they came from.

The very first thing we see is a typical teenage girl talking on the phone about a boy. She shuts a door in Dustin’s face without a word when he offers her pizza. While her attitude is relatable for many teenagers, it’s not a particularly endearing intro. However, what’s interesting is the care the writers took to quickly flip that first impression on its head. The very next scene involves the Party discussing her, and how she’s changed since she started dating the ‘King of Hawkins High’. Aside from her little brother, all of them seemed to have held her in high regard before then. Her ‘turning into a real jerk’ is recent.

“Nuh uh. She used to be cool. Like that time she dressed up as an elf for our Elder Tree campaign.”

Instantly, she’s given more depth. This is an older sister who was nice to her brother’s friends. She played D&D with them at least once, if not multiple times over the years, going as far as cosplaying for a campaign. She was a little nerdy like them, very smart, and most definitely kind. Especially with knowing what we do now about the boys, it’s the only way they would admire her so much. The previous scene is recontextualized. The very fact that Dustin thought to include her in the offer of pizza implies a familiarity with each other, a relationship beyond him being the boy that her brother invites over sometimes. Her kind of rude response is sibling-like as well. That, along with the comment about Dustin being her favorite during the snowball, solidifies this understanding; they weren’t mere acquaintances. Nancy had her own friendships with each of Mike’s friends before the Upside Down, maybe not super close ones, but still present and good.

One might assume that the change was just a factor of growing up and teenagerdom, which it was in part, but both Lucas and Dustin state that there was a very recent shift in behavior. Something changed for her when Steve Harrington started giving her attention. (In all honesty, just their very knowledge of what the change was, of Steve’s relationship with her, is another sign showing how well this group actually knew each other pre-canon.) What this conversation starts to establish, aside from a small view into the depth of their relationships with her, is that Nancy was in the middle of a good old-fashioned teenage identity crisis when we met her. Her jerkish behavior was not a straight-up personality trait, but a result of typical teenage angst and rebellion. 

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Why do you think so many fans, even those who wouldn’t be considered casual viewers of the show think that those who romantically ship Mike and Will are kidding themselves? Sometimes I feel like I’m missing something, like we’re not even watching the same show. From my perspective, it’s beyond me to how someone could look at Mike and El’s romantic relationship, especially after s3, and think it’s proper.

Great question. I’ve touched on this issue a time or two before, but perhaps never in such a direct manner. I think there’s several things in play here that lead to the more “mainstream” fans considering it crazy when Mike and Will are seen as a romantic pairing. I think these same causes also lead to fans missing how improper, to use your terms, Mike and El’s relationship is. Some of these things are more valid than others, but they’re all valid in the sense that they are real, meaning that people aren’t just being petty. There are those out there who are petty, of course, but I think it’s unfair to cast all fans we disagree with in with that group.

First, let’s get this out of the way, heteronormativity maintains quite the stranglehold on American culture. Yes, we’ve come a long, long way. Gay characters and couples are portrayed in a much more positive light compared to twenty or more years ago. Still, they continue to be treated as a shock, either in behavior or reveal. By that I mean that these characters are either blatantly obvious or a complete surprise. There is seldom any middle ground here. This is, in my opinion anyway, a remnant of the transition of gay characters from caricatures to genuine characters. Fans, American fans at least, want to seem accepting to gay people, but they also want it crystal clear that gay people are different from them. To quote Homer Simpson from Homer’s Phobia, a 1997 episode of The Simpsons, “I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming!”

The 90s were a time when gay people were starting to be seen as decent people instead of deviants. They still weren’t equal, though, and were often used as props and novelties. The Gay Best Friend trope came out of this idea that gay people were fun and exotic, and many would also use them as a way to show how progressive they were. It was a step in the right direction, perhaps, but gay people were still not seen as equals.

Why is this important? Well, maybe it’s not, but not only is Stranger Things the product of two brothers who grew up in that era of thinking, but so is the largest segment of the viewership. Most Stranger Things viewers fall in the 18-29 and 30-44 demographics. I, myself, fall in the latter category. While we all laughed at Homer’s idiotic homophobia, we all knew deep down that we were similarly taken in by stereotypes and heternormativity. That is to say, that being straight was the normal, expected way of things, and gay people was something neat and trendy, but that only happened to other people.

This mindset persists today, though it does seem to be slowly eroding. We still expect most characters to be straight. I suppose, in some ways, this makes sense. The majority of people in America (and likely the world) still identify as heterosexual, so, technically, statistically, being LGBT is “abnormal.” Still, the degree to which I see LGBT people being open about their identities sometimes catches me off guard when I stop to think about it. It’s something that was unimaginable when I was a teenager, barring being in an identified gay club or neighborhood. The fact that it catches me off guard, despite identifying as bisexual, is proof that those mechanisms of my upbringing persist.

I am able to see the romantic undertones of Mike and Will’s relationship because I’ve been there. I’ve been in love with a same-sex friend and been afraid to say anything about it. I’ve agonized over whether it was real or just a phase. I’ve struggled with hiding it. I’ve tried to keep my feelings hidden while also letting them slip out in controlled bursts of not-quite-platonic gestures. I’ve even wondered how I could be “like that” when I acted and dressed just like any other guy I knew. Despite living it, I still saw “it” as something foreign and different. It’s only because I lived it that I can see through the heteronormativity and recognize homosexual love in “straight” TV and movie characters. I’m sorry, but Poe Dameron was definitely into Finn, and Finn, at the very least, idolized Poe, and you can’t convince me otherwise, no matter what Disney tried to pull by giving them both inconsequential female love interests.

(Christ, this is turning into a real rant here, oh well, the bottle has been opened.)

So, yeah, heteronormativity basically tells us that if characters are gay then they’ll act a “certain way” so we know. Mike and Will don’t do this, so, to most fans, they aren’t gay. Heteronormativity and pop culture tropes also tell us that male and female leads are meant to end up together. Now, in defense of other fans, the Duffers do play around with all sorts of tropes, so it’s understandable that people would expect things to be just as formulaic in Stranger Things. The problem these fans don’t see, however, is that the Duffers seem to like subverting the tropes.

For those of you who aren’t aware, subverting a trope means that we are led to believe that we’re being shown something we’ve seen time and time again, only to end up with something else. Season 1 was so big on this that I fell in love with the show. Adults Are Useless? Joyce did not sit around while the kids solved the mystery. Hopper wasn’t the ineffectual drunk cop I was expecting him to be. Jerk Jock? No, Steve is actually a nice, if dopey, guy once he stops letting his friends influence him. Virgin Survivor? No, sex is not seen as a vice needing to be punished, so Barb dies instead of Nancy. The Duffers know what we expect to see, they tease us with it, then pull the rug out from under us.

So, what do we expect in terms of romance? We expect our opposite sex leads to pair up. This would mean Mike & El and Joyce & Hopper as our kid and adult lead pairs, respectively. Mike & El, in particular, seems to be something they’ve tantalized fans with, both in the show and marketing. We can look at that relationship, though, and see that it’s not built on much. That’s somewhat in line with many kid relationships, so, really, it’s expected that it would similarly fizzle out as those relationships generally do. These are two kids who knew each other for a week, then spent a year apart. If anything, they’re more in love with the ideas of each other they created in that time apart than anything else. This could explain why their relationship was so shallow once they’re together again. We all experienced this type of crush or relationship before, the one where we don’t really know the person so we create a version of them in our minds. This version often clashes with the real one once we get to know them. Still, we’ve all been there.

This brings me to my final point: identification. We identify with characters when we watch TV shows and movies. I dare say most, if not all, of us can identify with these kids getting these crushes and early relationships. The youngest fans probably identify even more since they’re currently in those stages of life. I’m sure many young fans identify with either Mike or El, and perhaps fantasize about being with the other (or both?). Whether we realize it or not, we’re casting our own wants and needs onto the characters. Some fans want Mike and El together because it validates their own feelings and experiences.

I know that I certainly identify with Mike and Will through my own teenage experiences. I identify with other characters for more mature, adult reasons, as well. Yes, a part of me ships Mike and Will because of this. The difference here, compared to other ships I’ve gotten behind, is that this actually seems real. There is canon evidence that Mike and Will appear to have non-platonic feelings for each other, feelings built over a very long friendship. Mike legit seems like the closeted, possibly not even aware, gay kid going through the motions of a straight relationship. Will seems like he’s actively suppressing any romantic urges because he’s spent his life being bullied for being queer. They’ve been written to have more genuinely romantic moments than Mike and El have had. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the writers will have some explaining to do if they don’t get together. Many fans will miss it, due to the reasons mentioned above, but it’s all been laid there before us. Nobody should be surprised, but they will be.