steve-harringt0n:

Personally I don’t think either boy deserves Nancy but we work with what we get

Steve actually evolves a little during the series. He realises the people he’s hanging out with aren’t particularly nice (and calls them out on it like how often do people actually stand up to their friends? underappreciated), he develops real feelings for Nancy, he does shitty things but realises they’re shitty and tries to fix them. And he doesn’t do this just to try and win back Nancy, either, he does it because he realises what he’s done is wrong. We don’t see him tell Nancy he’s cleaned the movie sign and I doubt he ever does – that’s not why he does it. And when he turns up at Jonathan’s house, he’s surprised to see Nancy there – he hasn’t gone expecting to see her, he’s gone to apologise to Jonathan for what he said and did because he acknowledges it was a shitty thing to do. We see him ask Nancy whether she gave Jonathan his Christmas present and personally I believe it was probably his idea to replace it, or at the very least a joint decision by both him and Nancy. Steve wants to make up for what he’s done and in many ways redeems himself. Yes, he’s completely out of order sometimes, with what he says to Jonathan (though he is, of course, extremely hurt himself because he thinks his girlfriend cheated on him – not that this excuses it but it’s important to take into account) and destroying his camera (again, not excusable, but Jonathan did literally take pictures of them half naked without them knowing which is stalkerish and super super creepy imo), but he’s human and he makes mistakes, and it’s in trying to fix them that he shows what kind of a person he really is. He’s also brave – yes, when Nancy tells him to leave he does, but he doesn’t make it past his car before he decides to go back to help them. Bear in mind Steve has no idea of any supernatural goings on whatsoever and this is the first he’s seen of this literally terrifying monster, and yet he’s willing to go up against it with nothing more than a baseball bat to try and protect both Nancy and Jonathan – a girl he has good reason to believe cheated on him and the guy he thinks she cheated on him with. Steve is willing to risk his life to save both of theirs and this is seriously not appreciated enough.

As for reasons why I prefer Steve to Jonathan – Jonathan’s taking pictures of them makes him a stalker or pervert, albeit an opportunist one, and I don’t like the way that’s excused as “he loves her” or “he’s an artist”. Yeah, maybe he likes to take pictures he thinks are ‘meaningful’ but he doesn’t have permission from any of them to do so and it’s seriously wrong. Jonathan also doesn’t apologise for his mistakes – he doesn’t apologise to Steve for beating him up (whilst provoked, still wrong) or to Nancy for beating him up despite her repeatedly begging him to stop. He also never really apologises for the photos, just gives this weird explanation and then twists it into attacking Nancy. He’s conjured up this fake version of her, the ‘different, not-like-other-girls girl’ that he’s so desperate for and he gets angry that she doesn’t live up to his idea of who she is. Does Steve have some imaginary version of Nancy? No. He loves her for who she is, whereas Jonathan loves who he thinks she is and acts like he understands her and I really fail to see what’s romantic about that at all. He also doesn’t exactly go out of his way to ‘save’ Nancy when he shines a torch through a tree – Steve goes at the monster with a baseball bat to save Jonathan, let alone Nancy. Jonathan won’t put himself in anywhere near as much danger. He will, of course, to save his brother, but that’s a different argument – I love Jonathan’s relationship with his brother and the lengths he’s willing to go for him, but I don’t think he’s a better match for Nancy than Steve. Jonathan has a lot of good points and I’m even willing to accept that he loves Nancy – but it’s a weird, possessive love, and at the end of the day, Steve loves Nancy, and Jonathan loves his made-up version of her.