TW/CW: Swears, Eating Disorder Mention
I've talked a lot about what Ned's personality/character is actually like, but I've never really said why it was practically lost in the first place.
The short answer is it was a part of the many character assassination attempts that took place within the Files series
Both the Nancy Drew Files and Hardy Boys Casefiles have a well-documented history of character assassinations. Character Assassination refers to the act of basically completely messing up a character's character and making them do things they wouldn't do pretty much for the sake of drama or plot or something. There's probably a better way to put it, but basically they fuck shit up. Like Joe being a sexist pig with his woman in the fridge character arc, Fenton being a skeevy dick who may or may not cheat on his wife, Bess becoming skinny and straight up having and eating disorder, Nancy becoming extremely inconsiderate and a cheater, the list goes on.
The things that stuck for reasons I don't get is a lot of the stuff they did with Ned
Ned in Mystery Stories and later both Girl Detective and Diaries loves mysteries and adventure. He loves them a lot, and loves helping, supporting, and trusting Nancy. Many times trusting Nancy with his life. Occasionally jealous of losing her attention to other things, but quickly gets over it when she asks him to help with said things. He fights alongside her because he knows she can protect herself, but will protect and take care of her in the moments when she can't help herself. Reflected in some of his pet names for her like, "Miss Detective", "Sleuth", "Boss", and the occasional detective with a complimentary adjective in front of it. Nancy also called him "Mr.Detective" and commented that she preferred to have him around to help her because his mind worked a lot like hers did. Perfect man written by a woman, and loving mysteries almost as much as she does. He adored and was 100% down for the insane bs she put him through.
Then came the Files series
There are many times where this borderline insane spin-off did have many canon complacent moments. Like they did actually pay attention to who the characters were. And there were a lot of times where parts of their personalities would just randomly disappear or any flaw they had would become so exaggerated that it almost didn't fit them anymore.
Ned would randomly lose any interest in mysteries and bitch about Nancy solving them in one book, but love them and be excited to be a detective again by the next book. It was weird and random, but convinced some people this is how Ned acts when looking at this series, it's almost too inconsistent to actually say he suits either character.
Super Mysteries made it worse
With the whole Francy vs Nedcy thing that series has going on, they leaned a lot more into the Ned that doesn't like mysteries or adventures or Nancy solving mysteries. Like barely even willing to risk his life anymore. To make Frank seem better they made Ned worse and no longer compatible with Nancy. Even though he was created to be compatible with Nancy. For a lot of people this again further convinced people that this was Ned's personality.
The games definitely aren't as bad as the books, but HerInteractive kinda messes up the characters too. Ned the most. They don't even let him have a body, he's just an advanced version of that old dating sim Mystic Messenger. He just not allowed to like be a finished character for some reason and that's a whole different problem.
TLDR: Ned's, like a lot of other characters, personality got fucked up for drama in both the Files and Super Mysteries book series and for some reason it stuck with a lot of people.
A Ned Nickerson that doesn't love mysteries isn't a true Ned Nickerson
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