warning i am a steve stan but critical of his actions and if that's going to upset you maybe scroll

you have to know you fucked up as a writer when the realism of your ship development is so bad it's in the league of jeff davis à la season six of teen wolf. it's time to go back to the drawing board kings

sipping ice water with an ice pack with my two loud fans and no ac in my adam sandler gym shorts as this heat kills me but I MUST WRITE THIS DISSERTATION ON TWO FICTIONAL CHARACTERS WHO HAVE NO IMPACT ON MY LIFE... i must while i can still formulate semi-coherent thoughts. (edit: 6k words of them apparently)

this is exactly the take i would expect from billy/haringrove stans but unfortunately the misogynistic confirmation bias / complete retconning of the events surrounding steve and nancy's relationship in season 2 does actually seep into every corner of this fandom.

to keep up to speed:

season 1 — steve and nancy have a fling going on that started before the events of season one began. from what i can remember, they've fooled around a couple times, maybe even only once (?), and then we meet steve for the first time when him and nancy make out in the bathroom at school. it's pretty obvious from the get-go that in this 80's revival steve is the archetypal popular asshole that our main "good girl" reluctantly likes for his charm despite all else as she enters the trope "blinded by popularity/love". in the following episodes, he's a generic almost-boyfriend to nancy that the audience is mostly supposed to scoff at and wait for the inevitable moment when he shows his true colours, as happens in every teen drama ever. they have sex. nancy isn't acting like herself according to her best friend barb, who goes "missing" after a conversation with nancy that would evidently lead her to feel responsible later. people at school look at nancy with judgment and steve reassures her he didn't tell anyone they had sex, but we can assume it was carol and tommy because they're bigger assholes and steve doesn't seem too fussed about the whole thing. this problem doesn't evolve until later because nancy is much more focused on barb than her relationship problems. steve is frustratingly indifferent and wants nancy to leave details out when she goes to report barb's disappearance to avoid getting in trouble with his parents. this drives a wedge between them. nancy begins to really feel the despair of being the only one who cares about where barb is. she discovers the demogorgon in the background of one of the photo's jonathan took and spends most of the season with him trying to get barb back. steve does come by to say he was wrong but she's got bigger things to worry about, and he comes by again to check on her but finds her with jonathan as he comforts her after what she saw in the upside down.

the next time she sees steve it's because him and his friends have publicly declared her the town slut by plastering her name in bright red spray paint on the theatre. (steve later feels regret for going that far but like tommy tells him, he didn't ask him to stop.) steve calls jonathan a queer, which mind you is a homophobic slur despite it being widely reclaimed today. this was the 80's in a small town and steve, despite what your personal headcanon might be, has never canonically been shown to be anything but straight. he is using queer as a slur. he says some other really awful shit about will and the byers as a whole and like jonathan rightfully had his camera destroyed, steve rightfully gets fucked up! i'm highlighting this less as a critique of stancy (although personally i think it should make you reflect on any demands you might have for nancy to be perfect when steve was a homophobic asshole in season 1) and more to remind people who are suddenly adamant steve "wasn't that bad" in season 1 that that's both delusional and insulting to what is basically a redemption arc spanning the next two seasons that makes steve a compelling character in the first place. but whatever. in the end he goes to jonathan's house to apologize and when thrown into the paranormal side of things, helps nancy and jonathan fight the demogorgon when he could have run away. nancy and steve are officially dating after the one month time jump at the end of the season and we all anticipate where the writers will go with steve's future growth and nancy's relationship with him.

season 2 (this is a long one so bear with me) — it's been almost a year and steve and nancy are still together. at first glance they seem perfectly content, say they love each other, show pda at school, steve is making plans on how to stay in nancy's life when he graduates, she's helping him with his college applications, etc. but it very quickly becomes apparent that nancy is still grieving barb and struggling a lot with sitting on the weight of knowing what happened to her while her parents literally sell their home to hire a private investigator for their dead daughter. there are layers to her guilt for not being able to share crucial information that would save them from total emotional and financial ruin but also feeling responsible for barb's death in the first place and for not heeding her advice not to sleep with steve and be someone she isn't. nancy doesn't want normal. this has been an established part of her character and the events of season 1 have cemented that in a way that normal no longer feels like some eventual horror at the end of a cul-de-sac in fifteen years, but her actual lived reality as she's shut into this quiet suburbia with steve, the perfect, normal boyfriend, right now. nancy's repulsion at the thought of a nuclear, typical life isn't just based on the single conversation she has with jonathan in season 1, it's literally the subtext of every (admittedly often lazy but there's the duffers for you) arc she has. keep this in mind for season 4.

steve wants normal. he doesn't share nancy's goal of burning down a corrupt system like hawkins lab or the hawkins post in season 3. steve likes being comfortable and doesn't want to stir the pot. he wasn't the smart kid the way nancy is and he's never had real family or friends so he latches onto these teenage ideals of romance and popularity because they're the only thing he knows. with nancy, he finally feels like he's found something good. it's also not unreasonable whatsoever that he doesn't want to piss off the deadly government officials and scientists by breaching an NDA and risking his life along with nancy's and their family's. he tells her if they come out with the truth, it could destroy them. but what about barb's family? steve is right and nancy knows that (her frustration stems from knowing, like him, that she can't do anything) but he's also detached from barb in a way nancy doesn't have the privilege of being, so his complacency is much easier. he didn't hear nancy's last conversation with barb. he wasn't her friend. he didn't grieve or feel that guilt. nancy did. nancy STILL does, and she doesn't even have her boyfriend to truly express herself to because he just doesn't get it. she can think of someone who might—whose lost a brother to the same people, albeit temporarily, and shares her drive and determination—but she doesn't feel like she can go to him either because they've sort of lost touch and she doesn't know what they were to each other in the first place, so she's wracked with this ticking bomb of feelings and nowhere to put them. steve encourages her to go to this party and be stupid teenagers together as a distraction, which is just not something that would work for the person nancy is. to his credit, he's trying, and he does want the best for her, but this is the first example of steve's fundamental flaw in relation to nancy: even with the best intentions, he just doesn't understand her.

the night of the party is basically where it all falls apart and where the audience's strange but unsurprising takeaway of "steve deserved better!!" begins, and i can happily and confidently blame this on a notorious theme in male-led stories which is the Poor, Honest, Nice Guy who just did his best :( and then that EVIL BITCH HURT HIS FEELINGS BECAUSE SHE'S A BITCH! or some similar variation. but i'll get to that later. they go to the party, billy is being an asshole, steve has to prove his macho points or whatever and nancy checks out and goes to get drunk (can you blame her?). steve is disapproving, does try to stop her but not very hard since she raises a valid point that it was his idea to party and have fun in the first place. things get out of hand and they end up in the bathroom with nancy trying to rub the "pure fuel" out of her shirt in the sink. she says steve wanted this and he says he told her to stop drinking, and then the truth spills out. nancy is drunk out of her MIND and she finally confronts steve with her guilt over barb's death, which he's confused by but doesn't really try to gage for an explanation. (in fact, he never does. the following day he mentions it in a pretty mocking way as he only seems to care about her drunken dismissal of their relationship and thinks nancy's suggestion they're at fault for barb's death is ludicrous, as opposed to listening to what it actually implies about what she must have been feeling for the past year. they're teenagers, it's fine, i get it. i hear steve's side and i'd be upset too. i'm only trying to prove how dumb it is to try to make him out to be some wounded animal that nancy brutally maimed.) regardless, nancy goes on to call this whole normal act "bullshit" and steve focuses in on the part where she says "like we're in love", pushing when she doesn't really elaborate and then getting his heart broken when in her intoxicated state she replies "bullshit" to each of his continued prompts. he leaves her in the bathroom where thankfully she's taken home safely by jonathan and then gets mad at her for being taken home safely by jonathan. because there has apparently been unspoken mistrust in the relationship since season 1 when he saw them together in nancy's window that's never really touched on again, i guess. sounds like the lack of communication isn't just on nancy's part but on steve's as well. and the writers.

the season 2 plot progresses with steve and nancy on separate journeys after a poorly written unofficial official breakup (?) akin to, again, the storytelling league of jeff davis (this time in season 5 of teen wolf). nancy doesn't remember anything from the party, and steve relays the night in his own interpretation which is coming from a place of understandable hurt. but like i said, there's still no focus at all on how obvious it was nancy's been drowning in guilt and grief and all his attention is on how she may or may not feel about him. he asks her to say she loves him, she's speechless, and he walks away. nancy goes off fulfilling what's been eating away at her for a year by finding a way to get back at hawkins lab. she grows closer to jonathan in the process while also getting her first taste of her future career endeavours and likely discovering on a deeper level how much passion she has for it. THIS is what she wants to do. THIS is not the normal she feels trapped in. she feels like she has a purpose. she's given barb the best justice she can after all's been said and done, even if it'll never be enough, and can be a little more at peace knowing her family has closure.

steve goes by nancy's house to apologize with flowers but, i may remind you, still hasn't reflected on any wrongdoing on his part, mostly because i don't think the narrative actually thinks he's done anything wrong. (i feel the need to add i DO NOT think nancy is innocent in this, she communicated poorly and hid her true feelings for almost a year and should have known it would hurt steve in the end. i'm only not talking about it much because EVERYONE ELSE is and i think the point has been drilled home. no one hates steve. lots of people hate nancy.) this is similar to his visit in season 1 in the sense that his intentions are to fix things with nancy a little too late and without the proper perspective to forgive and be forgiven. this time it's intensified because he really does love her now, but i actually think in the season 1 scene he's more conscientious than he is now. now, he's not comprehending the reason for their distance itself and why nancy feels the way she does. he's trying to solve things without addressing the root issue. then he's paired off with dustin who is exactly the person he needs right now, and also the most unexpected. everyone knows steve's arc in season 2 is great, i don't think there's much i could say about it that hasn't already been said. he finally discovers real friends and a place for himself in the world distinct from his previous ideals of romance and popularity. he's willing to sacrifice himself for the kids at any moment but doesn't lose his pragmatism or avoidance for unnecessary risk. i would have loved to have gotten even a line displaying his understanding for nancy after finally being in a situation that elicited in him the same fierceness nancy feels for barb—beyond the "i might be a bad boyfriend" line, because i care more about him Getting nancy and coming full circle by doing some self-reflection than being vaguely apologetic for something he still hasn't grasped. again. i don't think the narrative is self aware enough for this.

people say nancy cheated on steve with jonathan in episode 6 but i truly believe this was just a fault of the writing (wow, there might be a theme here) because steve's shock that nancy had moved on was nowhere near the response he or any rational human being would have to being cheated on with the person they'd been jealous of for the entirety of their relationship. EVEN with steve's growth in season 2. i'm not buying it. their relationship was over after steve walked away outside the gym and that's the story i'm going with. the last bits of stancy we get in season 2 are mostly steve respectfully coping with his heartbreak but evidently still having feelings for nancy or at least wishing things had gone differently by the way he looks at her at the snowball in the finale and the tone of his remorse when they interact before. nancy displays none of the same feelings. she's with the person she's wanted to be with and they're happy together. she does mutter a small apology and also seems remorseful when steve tells her to go with jonathan to be by his side when they save will and he tells her it's okay, but it doesn't appear to come from the same place as his. steve regrets what happened between. nancy only regrets how it happened. they both seem to know at least to a degree that this relationship wasn't going to work and they both made mistakes, even if there is mutual care for one another and a one-sided love that's gonna take a while to move on from. it's a fairly amicable break-up all things considered and it paves the way for their respective growth in the next season.

season 3 — this is the only season i've never rewatched beyond video essays on how much hopper sucks in it and how it values nostalgia over substance so i'm sorry if i mess anything up or forget details. it's not my favourite by any means, but i do love nancy and steve's arcs.