Give my Regards to the Inferno!

*bumps into inanimate object* ah i'm sorry

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Based on a few posts against Stancy that I’ve read in passing that last few months, I realized that to ship Stancy, you have actually have to believe Steve and Nancy’s stories as they are being told. Specifically, you have to accept two things: 1) Steve and Nancy have changed and 2) they have shared trauma (Barb’s death), and to complete their arcs, imo, they (specifically Nancy) must dissociate themselves from the shame connected to that trauma.

Dealing with shame

Yes, Vecna tells Nancy that she killed Barb, but that’s just as ridiculous as him telling Max thinking she was to blame for Billy’s death. Vecna’s not a reliable narrator here. He’s a manipulator and feeds off people’s isolation, secrets, and shame. We saw that most recently in s4 with Chrissy, Fred, Patrick, and Max, who were all struggling with negative self-images based on past trauma.

Nancy once also told Steve that they killed Barb, but again, that makes just as much sense of Max believing that wishing for Billy’s death literally led to his death. None of that is true, but it is reflective of the shame they are both carrying, and both Nancy and Max have pushed their partners away (Steve and Lucas) because that shame has led them to think less of themselves and their relationships.

Ultimately, Max is not to blame for Billy’s death. Nancy and Steve aren’t to blame for Barb’s death. Both Max and Nancy need to understand that to free themselves of Vecna and move forward (assuming Max gets out of her coma).

Accepting change

This is the hardest part for a lot of viewers online who are against Stancy imo. I’ve seen a lot of posts that have said Steve deserves better than Nancy or Nancy deserves better than Steve based on how they’ve treated each other in the past, which is more fan projection than anything to do with the story being told. Nancy hurt Steve, but he literally thanks her for it, and Nancy got back together with Steve even after his friends publicly slut shame her after thinking she was cheating on him with Jonathan. People may not like that she forgave him after that, or that she forgave Jonathan for the photos, but all of the characters have moved on from those events.

The only thing haunting Steve and Nancy is the baggage left after Barb’s death. Just as Lucas says he didn’t truly see Max or what she was dealing with, neither did Steve in seasons 1 and 2. Steve did not help Nancy in the way she needed it. He wanted to comfort her and keep them safe; she wanted to take action. However, that’s not the dynamic at all now. Nancy leads the charge against Vecna, and Steve follows as support. Steve now leaps into danger every season to protect people he cares about deeply. Steve and Nancy as they are now would function entirely differently than Stancy of season 1 and 2, which is why Steve doesn’t yearn for the relationship as it was but thinks they would work because they have changed.

People can enjoy Steve in non canon relationships, prefer him in previous seasons as much as they like, or ignore his character development as much as they please, and they can have fun with Nancy in other non-canon relationships or imagine her as feeling differently than what they’ve show onscreen. There are all kinds of ways to engage in media.

But the show’s only obligation is to be consistent in the story it’s telling, not the story other fans are telling themselves based on their own biases, desires, and personal experiences. What the story the show has been telling us so far is that Steve and Nancy is that have changed and that carrying shame and negative self-evaluation based on trauma is detrimental to the traumatized person, their relationships with others, and their growth. That to me makes for an infinitely more interesting story than two people whose feelings never change, who never evolve, who define themselves by the shame they carry, and who can’t see each other for who they’ve grown to be.

Saturday 98

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c-kiddo

(/lh .. im just infodumping for fun)

obsessed with watching behind the scenes clips of hyper-realistic cgi movies like lion king 2019 or avatar 2 and the director or whatever is talking about how since they used mocap or a fancy virtual reality camera the expressions and movements are extremely realistic and better than anything before, , and then on-screen it shows the most absolutely dead-eyed character i’ve ever seen lmao . like these side-by-side comparisons …man

its like theyre ashamed of it being animation so they have to try get it as realistic as possible, especially the d*sney remakes have this vibe*, .… and then everything looks absolutely soulless. also like immediately dated somehow?

and then you compare that to cgi animation like in arcane or spiderverse that isnt trying to be hyper realistic and its extremely expressive, like huge attention to micro-expressions and faces that are absolutely full of life., like look at this!!!! ⬇️

shaking n crying please realise that realism and cgi as close to live-action as possible isnt the final purpose of animation in cinema

(*sidenote, remember when lion king 2019 came out and the guy who made it was going around saying it was live-action for some reason.. that was wild . girl it is fully 100% animated)