#lesbianrobin.canon

[danielwaldorf]

i understand ur post but i have a byler mutual saying almost the exact same thing about if they make mlvn endgame because to give will one sole love interest and put him through that much trauma and struggle to accept his sexuality only to have the guy reject him and end up with his sister is homophobic writing and u probably dont agree but i find it hysterical that st have managed to get themselves into such a conundrum that their only option is to introduce mikes secret twin of the opposite sexuality thats been there the whole time so they both get a happy ending. surely this is a perfect plan and there are no flaws whatsoever and everyone will be satisfied

SMCKSKXJSNKE i was literally just talking to sarah about how they've written themselves into a corner by reintroducing the stoncy love triangle in s4 because BEFORE they could have been like yeah steve is over her and now he's finding fulfillment outside of romance etc etc but now they've reignited stancy for some fuckin reason (my fingers are crossed for that theory that says since the upside down is stuck in 1983 it was making steve and nancy's 1983 feelings come back) and suddenly they'll be pissing off Some segment of the fanbase no matter what they do.

re: byler i think. well first of all i think that byler isn't even remotely on the radar of casual viewers as an actual possibility and i don't think it could happen in s5 bc the vast majority of viewers would be like where the fuck did that come from. second of all my el argument is partially a joke but also it's just fundamentally a very different situation where like. for will if byler doesn't happen nothing gets Worse for him shit just stays the same. for el if byler happens something Must get worse for her like she loses her boyfriend of 2-3 years. they're in different situations.

third of all i think it's very silly for people to act like will Needs for mike to like him back in order to be happy when like. it's not The Crush that's making will miserable it's being closeted in a small town in the 1980s and feeling like he can never have what he wants and be truly happy in life. mike liking him back would not fix the misery he feels at having to hide this part of himself from the world.

yknow in s3 robin is a sorta closed-off character who's snarky and prickly at times and she only really opens up in the russian torture scene + the bathroom scene. and in the bathroom scene she is Terrified to tell steve she likes girls but she confesses to having a crush on tammy thompson and... steve makes her feel okay about it. he makes fun of her crush and robin feels Normal and Safe and they laugh together and by the time s4 rolls around robin is a much more open and happy person than she was back before she'd come out to steve. she's more herself. and you know what never happened? tammy thompson never liked her back. robin didn't need a girlfriend. she needed love and support and validation from a good friend. she needed to find comfort with herself and her sexuality and all the other parts of her that she hid behind a tough exterior for protection.

as much as i hate watching will scenes bc noah schnapp can't act for shit, i am kinda looking forward to seeing him finally openly addressing his sexuality in s5 and maybe realizing that his childhood crush on his best friend not being reciprocated isn't the end of the world. i think if will could move on and let mike go (in the romantic sense not as a friend) it might also feel a bit like letting go of all his pain over the past few years and starting over with a clean slate. obviously idk what exactly's gonna happen in s5 we're all just making shit up right now but i guess that's kinda what i hope will happen with him.

it makes me sad kinda that will's most dedicated fans are more preoccupied with getting him a boyfriend than like... self-confidence and shit. but i'm not actually that sad bc i kinda don't give a fuck about will anyway

[danielwaldorf]

what is your top 3 he wouldn't say that Steve moment from season 4??

in no particular order:

arguing with nancy bc he wanted to leave the kids and go with her to pennhurst. like sorry but in s2 and s3 steve voluntarily stayed with the kids whenever he could. like in s2 he's PROUD of his "babysitter" role he volunteers to look after the kids and encourages nancy to go with jonathan for the exorcism! and in s3 he's good friends with the party they come by scoops all the time and he lets them sneak into movies like they're obviously still close AND he never even considers splitting up from dustin and erica once they escape from the russians until he Has to bc the others are in danger. i just cannot fathom him Knowing max is gonna get merked by a supernatural serial killer any second and being like ugh i don't wanna be on babysitting duty 🙄.

letting robin run on ahead by herself in the upside down and being like lol she'll be fine. WHAT. steve you literally just almost died down here like two hours ago what the fuck are you saying. like i know they did this so he and nancy could have a chat but jesus fucking christ he just would not say that.

and the obvious. trying to get back with nancy. like i'll allow the six kids thing bc it's obviously a reference to His Kids and he's just sharing his own personal dream but like later when he's all like i see you there.... i wonder if maybe we could have worked out.... or whatever the fuck like NO. we fucking WENT OVER THIS in s3 he's OVER nancy he literally fucking realized that he's happier now just being himself and having his bestie than he ever was when he was with nancy and i just. it just pisses me off like they literally pushed steve back to like his early s2 character development where all he cares about is nancy and it's such garbage. steve literally spent two whole seasons finding other people to love and realizing he doesn't need a romantic relationship to be happy etc etc and they were like hmmmm but obviously he still wants nancy so bad bc she is so perfect and he could never ever move on or love someone else. god i'm mad. anyway yeah those are my top three

[danielwaldorf]

what do you think of gay steve? i don't dislike the headcanon in theory, but i feel like it's usually done as a way to make steve & nancy's relationship/breakup less important (and often to make it easier to ship r0nance)

i gotta be honest i dont think i've actually ever read any fic where steve is explicitly stated to be gay and not bisexual, besides maybe my own fic nancy drew and the mystery of the magnetic closet, so idk if i'll rly have whatever answer ur looking for re: other people's intent. in magnetic closet i wrote steve as being a bit uncertain as to his identity, leaning gay, but he also explicitly tells nancy that he loves her and their relationship is still significant to him, so like. like MY motivation wasn't downplaying their relationship so at the very least that isn't Everyone's motivation.

anyway like separately from how people Use It in fic i'm into gay steve! i tend to default to bi steve for like fic and headcanons etc bc it's sorta become the fandom standard and a lot of my bi friends like bi steve and i love my bi friends 💖 but if i'm being honest i do think that you can easily interpret a lot of steve's canon behavior in favor of him being gay if you want to do so, and i think i tend to lean that way when i'm writing him even when i don't mean to. just to like preface all of this i'm gay myself and i am terrible about projecting onto steve so yknow take all of the following with a grain of salt.

so like personally i think he never rly had romantic feelings for robin and he only confessed to liking her because he thought his love for robin Had to be attraction since she's a girl yknow? and in s4 it's implied that he's had a string of casual relationships based entirely on sex and he hasn't been able to connect with any of the girls at all which is a bit 🧐🤨. the way steve flirts indiscriminately and talks about wanting a family in the future makes me think like... i think that his search for love is more about wanting a family/wanting love than specifically wanting to be with a woman. like i think in his mind bc of Eighties Heteronormativity the two things are equated, so when he Thinks that he wants to find the female love of his life he Actually just wants a family. and i fear i'm making it sound like steve is a misogynist who just wants a wife to give him kids which is not my intent. like i think steve has a lot of respect for nancy and loves her deeply regardless of whether that love is romantic in nature or not. the fact that he said he was over nancy in s3 while confessing feelings to robin, dated around a bunch, and then suddenly had feelings for her again in s4 comes off less to me like "steve never got over nancy" and more like "steve is unable to find the kind of love he wants with a woman no matter what he tries and he's returning to nancy because he thinks that he just messed up their relationship with his flaws and if they tried again he could be better and everything would be perfect." like nancy was the closest steve ever came to actually being in love with a girl and as time passes he realizes that he doesn't think he could feel that way with another woman. but the thing is that stancy was just not a great couple yknow but they had these external pressures on their relationship that allow them to look back on it and think well maybe NOW we'll be more compatible and we can be happy. like it's this subconscious belief that being in the right relationship could make Everything in his life right.

idk i think at this point i'm just rambling and i fear i'm making no sense but like i think gay steve is really interesting to think about Because his relationship with nancy was so important to him. like it's genuinely really compelling to explore their relationship through the lens of compulsory heterosexuality and consider like the sort of friendship they might have in the wake of steve realizing that he's gay. i also think it's interesting to think about in the context of his friendship with robin and like how radically different their journeys are while simultaneously being kinda the same.

ultimately though since he's like presumed straight in canon i don't think it rly matters whether people hc steve as gay or bi? like it's kinda just whatever you want.

[danielwaldorf]

Would you be willing to share any tropes or pet peeves you have with the fandoms intepretation of HOH! Steve? No pressure at all but I know it’s gaining popularity and that fandoms historically have a shit record with disability and you’ve spoken about your frustrations with that tag. Also thank you for sharing the link to the movie!! I’ve been wanting to watch more historical films especially ones that push back against assumptions of what the past was capable of!

omg YES thank you for asking!!! so to preface for anybody who doesn't know: i myself am hard of hearing and i used to post about steve being hard of hearing sometimes prior to s4, but i haven't posted about it much since it became a Thing in the fandom because i don't trust other people on my posts lmao.

so honestly this is gonna be less about specific tropes and more of a broad ideological discussion bc i don't usually read the hoh steve fics i scroll past and i don't want to act like i Know exactly what all of them are like based off just the few i have read. however, i Have seen the tags and summaries and read the first few paragraphs of a lot of them, and i feel like that's enough for me to have like. an opinion. so ANYWAY.

my first issue is just that pretty much everyone i've seen writing hoh steve is hearing themselves. there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the thing is that hoh steve is like. entirely a creation of fandom, yknow? there's not rly anything in canon that indicates steve has poor hearing--honestly, if anything, he seems to have rather keen ears (picking up on the background music in the russian code in s3, being the first one to hear dustin in the upside down in s4). you can certainly reverse-engineer it and argue that poor school performance can be an indicator of poor hearing, that his head injuries could potentially cause hearing loss, but neither of those are things where hearing loss naturally comes to mind without somebody looking for it, so this begs the question of why. what exactly is motivating these hearing people to write this character as hoh?

i've noticed some things that tend to go along with hoh steve. one is steddie, which is kind of a given in the st fandom at this point, but it's the things that go along with that which concern me. the "babygirl steve" thing where steve is woobified and feminized to the point of being nigh-unrecognizable seems quite common among these fics. steve often has other medical problems as well--he needs glasses, he gets migraines, he has memory loss, he's depressed, he's got chronic pain, etc, etc, and my disability is just another thing on a laundry list of issues that is seemingly employed for the sole purpose of making steve sad and hurt and pitiable so that (usually) eddie can come along and save him/baby him. i'm not gonna act like i've never tossed some shit at steve to make him suffer in a fic, but it's always for like. a Reason. and that reason has never once been just so i could ship him with somebody and make them into his savior.

i think a lot of people writing hoh steve just don't necessarily have great intentions with it, yknow? they see it as a way for steve to suffer nobly in silence and be self-sacrificial, or they think it's cute to make steve deaf since eddie plays loud music (???).

there are a lot of things i love about being hard of hearing. i love that i get to have a unique appreciation of sound that not everybody has. i love that i can take out my hearing aids when the world is too much. i love that i still discover new sounds at the age of twenty-two. did you guys know that dishwashers make noise? i didn't until today! my house was quiet and i kept hearing something strange until i tracked it down and realized! i love that i have a sense of wonder about every noise i hear! and while i don't begrudge anybody their enjoyment of hoh steve content, i have yet to see any that comes remotely close to capturing these feelings, so it's just not for me.

also this is a silly pet peeve but why is it that in these fics steve almost always learns asl and like rarely has hearing aids? like sorry but unless he's completely deaf that's out of character. steve harrington is not learning a whole new language unless he absolutely has to and has literally no other options. they had hearing aids in the eighties. c'mon people.

anyway. sorry that was so long lmao and thank you for asking!! also thank you for actually reading and caring about my within our gates post!! i highly recommend looking up some 1920s music to listen along with the film, though you can honestly listen to whatever you want--at the time, films didn't typically have dedicated scores, and individual theaters would provide their own musical accompaniment however they saw fit. oftentimes this meant a live musician would play piano during the film, and improvise to suit the mood/plot! happy viewing 💕

[danielwaldorf]

i understand why people might think like this but it rly annoys me when people just lump st in as like “nostalgia bait about how nerds are oppressed.”

all of our main characters are somehow "strange" and on the surface it's just like haha they're nerds! but really it's so much more than that!! like they all have their own family issues and will is gay in that terribly realistic way where everybody kind of knows it despite him never saying a word and joyce has unspecified mental health issues that people gossip about and hopper is a grieving father with a substance abuse problem and steve is this golden boy who failed to live up to expectations and has absolutely no direction in life and robin is a visibly Different lesbian in 80s indiana who wears her difference and her attitude like a shield because she's still genuinely so afraid and lucas is the odd man out even among his band of odd men out because he's black and he has this barrier of understanding between him and his friends and max lives in an abusive home and struggles to feel safe and strong without becoming a person she doesn't want to be and el is trying to learn how to be a person after spending most of her life completely ignorant of what "normal" and "strange" even are and like. like the kids aren’t losers because they’re nerds, they’re nerds because they’re losers.

by which i mean that like. in s1. will is poor and his mother is Known in town as like a crazy lady and everybody suspects he's gay so he’s an outcast. mike is a thoroughly unathletic goofy-looking son in an all-american family who loves storytelling and fantasy and like Cannot fit in the way his dad wants him to. dustin has a visible birth defect and a single mother who's shown to be a bit neurotic and spacey and he's often the one having to comfort her and protect her rather than the other way around. lucas is one of very few black kids in a predominantly white area and they call attention to this a few times! all of these kids stick together and find refuge in D&D because in real life they’re outcasts but in D&D they can be the heroes. they get to be whoever they want to be and they're strong and capable and they can save the day.

this strangeness isn’t even limited to the party yknow like the older teens all have some form of Strangeness that manifests in their relationship to gender roles, sexuality, and/or romance. obviously robin is gay but yknow jonathan is this teenage boy who's been thrust into the role of caretaker and has so much rage and resentment boiling just under the surface but everything he does is for his mother and his brother and he’s ultimately rather passive and emotional. nancy is this perfect suburban princess who struggles with empathy and tact and resents her parents for their normalcy while simultaneously craving it herself. steve is this golden boy jock player who falls so deeply in love that it ends up pushing him to change everything about himself. he’s driven primarily by love and is emasculated in front of the “normal” kids through all of the nancy and jonathan drama. once that happens and he diverges from the hegemonic form of masculinity that he formerly embodied, he is alone and ostracized.

anyway yeah i could probably talk about this a lot more but basically the strangeness in stranger things is a lot less about monsters and playing d&d than it is about how difficult it is to fit into the mold that we’re assigned by our communities and how many different ways there are to be “strange” in a suburban context

[danielwaldorf]

this is gonna make me sound so annoying and i do Not mean it as any sort of judgment on people who do ship ro/nance this is just like me realizing why it bothers me so much but. it’s meaningful to me Personally for a lesbian character who’s openly horny for women to be allowed to have a female friend who she isn’t canonically ever attracted to. like that just makes me really happy. it’s so nice to see robin talk about her crushes on women and how women are b-b-b-bonkers hot and then to see her be friends with nancy and have fun with her and admire her without it being sexual in any way.

like i see a lot of ro/nance posts being like “omg robin rambles around nancy like she does vickie!!” but robin rambles around steve too! she rambles when el is hurt in s3 and when steve is hurt in the upside down! yknow not everything she does is indicative of a big ole lesbian crush she’s allowed to be nervous for other reasons. and it just like. idk i’m not trying to argue against a ship like i’m happy that other people are having fun but i always feel so like weirdly guilty for being a lesbian in this fandom and not shipping ro/nance and i see a lot of people saying that like if you ship (gay male ship) but not them then it’s misogyny or something and it’s like. idk i just felt like maybe i should explain. anyway sorry this was a weird thing to post but oh well i love posting shit i don’t need to <3

[danielwaldorf]

(genuine question, not trying to be confrontational) Why do you think Nancy is straight? I personally headcanon her as aromantic, but I can see how people would read comphet into her canon relationships, considering she’s often miserable with and mean to both Steve and Jonathan.

i can definitely see both comphet and aro nancy and i don't totally disagree!!

personally, i think that nancy really does want to be in a romantic relationship with a man, but she has a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms and habits that make it difficult for her to have a healthy relationship. she gets defensive and lashes out with the meanest thing she can think of sometimes (oliver twist comes to mind), and she can get tunnel vision and forget to consider how her actions might impact someone else (getting wasted at the party in s2, getting her and jonathan both fired in s3, her dismissiveness toward robin in s4). most importantly, i think she has a fear of abandonment and failure stemming from barb's death that sabotages her relationships.

nancy had an extremely close friendship that suddenly ended one night in a brutal death that nancy was ignorant of because she chose to prioritize her boyfriend over barb One Time. she blames herself and steve, and i think barb's death left nancy with a fear of ever being ignorant of the danger around her again. that fear drives her journalistic pursuits, which can be a double-edged sword, as i mentioned she tends to get tunnel vision and forget to consider people's feelings.

i think the loss of barb also left her with a fear of being alone, which is why she gets back together with steve post-s1 despite harboring feelings for jonathan, why she immediately hooks up with jonathan as soon as her relationship with steve is in danger in s2, and why she begins flirting with steve again in s4 when her relationship with jonathan is on the rocks. i think she's attracted to both of them and feels comfortable with both of them, and that comfort is enough for her to feel an intense need to cling to it so that she won't find herself alone again, regardless of which person she clings to.

of course this is all like analysis that the writers almost certainly have never considered mdcjdjf but that's just how i personally make sense of nancy's romantic/sexual inclinations :)

also on a pettier note i partially think she's straight just bc she reminds me So Much of the straight girls that bullied me growing up lmao

[danielwaldorf]

What are your thoughts/opinions on Stancy these days?

i really dislike it honestly 😭 i think that steve and nancy are drawn to each other for a lot of reasons, none of which are like... reasons to be in a relationship. like the things that make them interested in each other in my mind are:

the fact that they were more or less each other's first love. even with nancy's "like we're in love" speech i don't think that she would have stayed with steve for a full year after s1 if she didn't love him in some way, even if that wasn't like Real Romantic Love the way we typically think of it, yknow? and we know that nancy was the first person to really make steve feel seen and like somebody was listening to him and cared about him.

the fact that they were together at a very pivotal moment in both of their lives, namely barb's death, the discovery of the upside down, and steve's big change. it's kinda like mike telling el that his life started when he met her. steve and nancy were together when both of their lives fundamentally changed forever, and i think that kinda drives them both to see each other as like... something safe to fall back on.

they each like who the other person thinks they are. sorry i'm really struggling to articulate this but i think that like... i think they've both sorta mythologized each other. steve looks at nancy and sees something more than a scared teenage girl and nancy looks at steve and sees something more than an aimless teenage boy. this might sound romantic but i think that when they were together, they would both act to an extent to try and fit into the image that the other person had in their mind. nancy liked being the sort of perfect, put-together girl that steve sees her as, and steve liked being the sort of carefree, all-american boy that nancy sees him as. when they're together, they get to pretend.

continuing on that note, they both have the desire to feel young and reclaim some of their lost innocence and childhood. for a little while at least, steve and nancy had a normal high school relationship. they kissed in the school bathroom and left little notes in their lockers and snuck around their parents. they never had that sense of carefree innocence again after s1 and i think they both subconsciously think that maybe if barb hadn't died and shit hadn't gone wrong, they could have felt that way forever.

and maybe they could have! there's no way of knowing. but the world they live in and the people they are now are so different from they world they lived in and the people they were back in 1983. no matter how much they might wish it, there's no way to go back and make it so that nothing terrible ever happened. maybe s1 steve and nancy could have worked out and been happy together for the rest of their lives. maybe they would have broken up eventually anyway, but s4 steve and nancy are choosing not to think about that option.

s4 steve and nancy are stressed, afraid, and uncertain about the future, and i think they're flirting with each other again as a coping mechanism. they want different things in life and i personally don't think that they're romantically compatible, they don't necessarily bring out the best in each other, but believing in the possibility of rekindling their romance allows them to indulge in the idea that maybe they can still be the kids they once were. they can still lead the lives they wanted to lead. the upside down hasn't changed everything.

but it has, and unfortunately a dream just isn't enough to build a relationship.