this might be such a hot take and i would like to preface this as this is not hate to jonathan, i actually really enjoy his character and most of his arcs (when it was written well. not when the duffers completely did him dirty, but they did everyone dirty so)
you cannot fawn over how he’s a hawkins freak and outcast and then dislike robin for similar reasons. and on the other hand, it makes me feel weird when people act like him and robin are on the same level of hawkins outcasts. they are outcasts in DIFFERENT!! WAYS. i see a lot of people lump them in together. YES he is poor, YES he is not as conventionally attractive as steve or other guys his age, YES he’s quiet and moody and weird, but he is not canonically gay. is there substance in the text that has a very good argument for him possibly being queer? absolutely! but he is not. canonically. queer. the only canonically queer characters in this show are robin and will, who explicitly came out, and vickie who was in a queer relationship. do you believe robin isn’t good for nancy even as a friend because you don’t think their personalities mesh? or do you not like it because robin is canonically queer, hyper, and talkative. so many people eat up the dynamic of jonathan being bullied, growing up in poverty and being an outcast, and nancy having a stable home life, relatively well liked, and being wealthy. but when robin has similar traits, they’ll do anything to justify their disliking of it. a lot of people only see her as the goofy side character who is the conventionally attractive dudes property, and because of one (1) very vague throwaway comment she made, she is bad for nancy. but when jonathan takes unsolicited pictures of her? when he disregards her worries of supernatural threats? when he lies to her for 18+ months about college applications? when he almost proposes to her instead of talking out their issues, it’s all forgivable? i’m not saying he has to be perfect, im not saying robin IS perfect, im not saying either of them got great writing in the end. but i am saying justifying everything jonathan and even steve has done to nancy, but disliking robin and nancy’s friendship over one comment robin made is hypocritical
