#this is incoherent but lol i'm just mad over who nancy could have been

[tibby]

If you dont mind me asking, how do you think the writers should've actually written Nancy in S2 and S3 keeping in line with the way she was written in S1 - in regards to everything including Jancy, Stancy, Murray, her interactions (or rather lack thereof) with Mike, etc.

first of all, i would not include murray whatsoever. or at least, i would not include the version of murray from the show: a man who takes advantage of grieving parents and thinks there’s nothing wrong with getting minors drunk and encouraging them to fuck in his house. keep him as a conspiracy theorist who’s friendly with hopper if only because he’s unfortunately pretty important to the plot at this point, but take away all his creepiness.

make the monster hunting trio her core dynamic as opposed to making it all about jancy. it’s what makes the most sense for all three characters, and it meant we could have avoided people demonising nancy for the breakup and also less freaks would be shipping steve with their glorified racist. even if steve still had to be separated them for the plot to advance, establishing that the three of them are friends would have done so much for the narrative. it would have also given steve and nancy the chance to have a more clear breakup in which they both get to express their feelings and apologise for what went wrong, actually showing that they can’t live out the perfect high school fantasy anymore instead of steamrolling right over them to make room for repression central.

my hatred of jancy is hardly a secret, but if the show had to go in that direction, then having them established friends of s2....makes so much more sense? like people refer to them as friends to lovers in canon which they are...absolutely not. make them friends, cut nancy’s line about how they only talk when the world’s about to end and how she ~waited~ for him (for a month, as if jonathan and his family weren’t recovering from so very traumatising stuff.) their friendship with steve means throwing away making their entire relationship based on “shared trauma,” but that’s underdeveloped nonsense anyway, and if their relationship can’t exist without it, then that’s just bad writing anyway. also, don’t have them get together because a middle aged man told them to fuck, holy shit???

don’t have nancy go off with the byers family at the end of season two. have her stick with her sibling, the one she promised she’d be closer with following the events of s1. she contributed virtually nothing to the plot in the last episode, and at least putting her with steve and the kids would give her the chance to a) work things out with steve because they might be breaking up but they’re still friends and b) show that she actually cares about mike.

also, cut the weird line about how girls are stupid but they grow up or whatever it is she says to dustin at the snow ball. the scene itself was sweet, but that was such a weird “i’m not like other girls....i’m written by two men who never got over high school and are using me to fulfil their jerk off fantasies” line.

season three nancy is barely the nancy i fell in love with, lmao. more than anything, i’d have her not to be incredibly classist and just kind of...rude and disrespectful to jonathan’s experiences of abuse? like she’s just mean in season three. 

also, if you really want to make a narrative about sexism in the workplace and overcoming it, then don’t combine actual harassment with...having to run coffees as a teenage intern? acting as if it’s ridiculous that jonathan (who has EXPERIENCE with photography) got a more prominent role than her? basically being like “wow how could these adults NOT believe two teenage interns rambling about insane rats....sexism wins again.” the message was completely undermined by including all this petty bullshit, as well as being written by two men who don’t respect women in capacity themselves.

oh, and cut her fucking ~girlboss~ moment with predator, reaganite, and neglectful mother, karen wheeler.

honestly as much as i love “i just think there’s something really wrong with this rat”, did jonathan and nancy’s actual plot in s3 even contribute to the overall narrative? like, why did they even have this plot in the first place? it was pointless. i’d honestly change it, completely tbh: have jonathan get possessed instead of billy (who still gets flayed though, because fuck that guy), have nancy drawn into the kids plot earlier when she realises jonathan is acting strange, actually give her character emotional depth and weight.

keep her being a bitchy little dyke to robin though. that was fun.