i’m confused because is that not literally how she’s written in the show- her storylines do revolve her love life 99% of the time

like as shitty as that is, it is canon & surely you can’t blame fans for how crap the shows writing is and how characters are depicted?

hmmm let’s do 8, 9, & 24 🔥

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

hmmm i think people are generally wrong about nancy. i disagree with a lot of characterizations/head canons/discourse around her bc i just so often feel like people…… in the pursuit of trying to argue that she’s a strong female character actually end up diluting her most interesting and unique character traits. i know this is kinda what i said for will but people make nancy overly nice and passive when that doesn’t match her personality at all. even the SHOW does this like in s4 when jonathan is like “i just know that nancy would throw away her career and future to be with me 😔” like oh my god have you met nancy??? no the fuck she wouldnt!!! i think nancy is very similar to my beloved gale weathers in that they’re both very driven and determined to get what they want, and in the pursuit of whatever that is (justice for nancy, money for gale) they don’t really stop to think about if they’re affecting others. it happens with nancy Every Season bro like in season one she shows up to jonathan while he’s PICKING A COFFIN FOR WILL and she’s like knock knock hi :) come talk to me :), in s2 she cannot stand steve’s coping mechanism of just bottling things up so she ditches his ass, in s3 she ignores all of jonathan’s reservations about investigating and then can’t understand why he’s upset when they get in trouble, in s4 she goes to investigate the death of a student for The School Newspaper and literally walks right up to wayne and is like hi. everyone thinks your nephew murdered that girl whose body was found in your house last night but i don’t :) And im not saying any of this to criticize nancy because THOSE BEHAVIORS ARE FASCINATING!!! i WANT to see characters who think and behave in unique ways, esp if they cause conflict among the characters, but everyone in the fandom is soooo insistent on making sure we never imply that nancy has ever done anything wrong in her life and thus we end up stuck with this boring fanon version of nancy instead of embracing that she won’t hesitate to get what she wants no matter the cost!!!!

9. worst part of canon

sorry that last one was so long i’ll keep it brief here: evil russians plotline

24. answered :)

It's kinda annoying when people act like Steve's relationships with the kids are completely made up and he is just close with Dustin. In Season 3 the kids have him sneak them into the movie theater and his response is basically "really, again" and Robin says "your children are here" but when Dustin returns he says "you got the job" establishing that Dustin had nothing to do with him letting the other kids in the movie theater. Hence Steve has to have been close enough to at least one of the other kids to make that happen (fanon decides which kids and how many). Max gives a letter to Steve and none of the other older kids. And the stuff with Erica in one of the comics. I get that they are mad that Steve is the one considered "the older sibling of the party" despite Jonathan and Nancy being older siblings to party members however Jonathan is pretty much only displayed as there for Will and later El, and Nancy is barely displayed as there for either of her siblings let alone the other kids. Steve is rarely not grouped with one of the kids since season 2 showed he worked well with them and hence has a ton of scenes with them. People like the idea of Max having a not shit older brother and the best fit for that is Steve. And they want Lucas to have support from people in the know as well, so people tend to just go with the older teen they seem to be closest to that's in the know. You can wish that Jonathan or Nancy or whoever else was portrayed as closer to party but you can't complain that people put Steve in that role in fanon instead of your fave when he is closest to it in canon.

yeah, it’s funny that so many people complain about fans replacing jonathan and nancy with steve when i really don’t think that happens. like, jonathan and nancy just aren’t really close with all the kids, jon has will and in s4 el, and that’s pretty much it! even when he shares plot lines with mike they don’t really talk. and nancy is so rarely in scenes with her siblings it’s honestly funny to me when people try to say that’s she’s a devoted older sister. like, in s1 and s4 she hugged mike, and i’m pretty sure that’s it lmao.

steve is the oldest teen that’s closest with the most kids! he just is. it’s not the fans inserting steve into the other teens roles, it is how he was written.

like you said, all the kids have been using him to get into the cinema, they’re close enough to blag him and then not take his threat seriously. max gets free ice cream from him and he knows enough about el to know she’s shouldn’t be there. max wrote him a goodbye letter, and only him out of the older teens, and dustin has literally proclaimed that he would die for him.

obviously with the other kids it’s a bit murkier, we have scenes of them as a group clearly relying on steve, trusting and looking up to him, but they don’t really have any individual scenes with him. so that’s obviously a bit more fanon, but even then, there’s a lot of evidence in the show of steve being close to all the kids.

but yeah, if you wanna write about nancy and jonathan being super close to all the kids, you can do that!! but you can’t get annoyed when steve is already in that role. because if the duffers wanted jonathan and nancy to be close to the kids, they would’ve written it that way. but it’s steve that’s consistently taking care of them.

if you want to talk to asks, not to drop my haterism here (just came across a horrible post), to each their own hcs, but i feel like you'll get me; i'm SO confused by the popular "Ted thinks Mike and Will are already dating, he doesn't know about El", "Ted will be revealed as an ally" ideas because they just directly contradict canon? as a headcanon i would just ignore it but i know a lot of people Genuinely believe it fits the show canon which is crazy to me

Ted's whole deal is that he's a proud patriot republican and doesn't really care about Mike or Nancy at all. and the only interactions we ever get of him with Mike are not only passive aggressive but also both carry homophobic connotations "see what happens", "our son with a girl"

i know a lot of people have that hc but i Really don't get where it even came from and this is one of these cases where hcs get framed to be feasible in canon, despite there being actual canon material directly disproving them (and meanwhile "you can talk to me" Karen is right there, but nooo Ted's Reagan conservatism is just his casual hobby he's secretly a queer ally parent)

those canon twister hcs bothers me every time lmao. i know you have some Opinions on canon getting conflated with fanon so i'm curious if you have thoughts on this specific canon butchering or if you've not seen much of it

much love and guten abend(nacht) 💖

OH. MY. GOD! Of course I have thoughts on this! How can I not?

It is one thing to not pick up on the queer coding for Mike through Ted at all, but it’s a whole other thing to not recognize/acknowledge that Ted’s remarks are said derogatorily! “Our son with a girl?” is ridicule. “See what happens?” is a warning.

Even the “Ted doesn’t care at all” headcanon is already not a possibility in canon because of the simple existence of his remarks.

If people wanna headcanon Ted to be like that that’s fine but I just wish those people would acknowledge that this is not how Ted is in canon. And it’s just so bizarre to me that people actually believe that it is a possibility in canon, because, as you said, it does directly contradict with what we see on screen. Ted makes derogatory remarks about Mike’s lack of interest in girls, he’s being insensitive towards Mike/almost entirely lacks empathy for his son, he belongs to the majority of people who overlook Mike’s struggles, in s4 he asks Karen if she can remind him when their children will become reasonable human beings, in s1 he tells Karen to trust the government because they’re on their side, he’s a Reagan supporter and he also didn’t care at all about Will’s disappearance even though Will disappeared on his way home from Ted’s house!

Ted being an ally makes zero sense.

I also don’t think that Ted actually assumes that Mike is gay. He does of course pick up on the fact that Mike does not show interest in girls but I do also very much believe that Ted just thinks that Mike is a loser whom no girl shows interest in either. Because that’s something that gets brought up in the story as well. But with the rumors regarding Will and Mike being so close to Will I do think Ted tries to get Mike away from “becoming gay”. I think his remarks are his way of making Mike “not want to be gay”. But his remarks also kind of strike me as his way of coping with the idea that Mike might not like girls which absolutely does not mean that Ted is open for it, nor that he has any kind of suspicion about Mike’s sexuality.

It’s kind of difficult to explain but I personally think that no matter how much fun Ted pokes at his son for not being interested in girls, at the end of the day he still expects Mike to like girls.

Moving on, I do agree that when it comes to Ted and Karen people should definitely focus more on Karen’s ally potential (as that’s the one that does exist) but I also think that we shouldn’t forget that Karen did not join the search party for Will either even though it was just as much her house that Will went missing from.

And no, I have not forgotten that Karen brought Joyce a casserole to comfort her, but that is something she did because she cares about Joyce, not because he cares about Will. And my point is not that Karen doesn’t like Will, I do think she actually does like him, but my point is that due to the gay rumors Karen didn’t find it necessary to go look for him. That he isn’t really worth the effort. Mike’s statement: “I’m the only one that cares about Will” was kinda very true regarding his family.

And while Mike thinks that being gay is only a bad thing if it’s him who’s gay, I can imagine that Karen thinks the other way around. Being gay is only okay because it’s her son who’s gay. And while Karen is obviously lacking in her role as mother she does love her children. She does love her son, and I don’t think that finding out that Mike is gay (if she does) would change that. To me it seems like Karen’s ally-ship will be very selective though, and she’ll have a whole lot of unlearning to do.

Thank you for the ask and much love to you as well and guten abend hahah🩷