thinking about how part of what actually makes steve seem gay is the duffers weird obsession with humiliating, objectifying, and harming him. of course he gets some "cool stuff," too as mr. keery always tends to describe it, but that is because they like mr. keery and want to please the audience, not because they actually like steve.
it's odd because you will see people claim he is only popular because he's pretty (and this almost always is coming from a mike, will, or jon fan), but it doesn't seem to me that steve's popularity was ever... by design? in my opinion, suggesting that it was intended would be giving the duffers too much credit. they are petulant, self-victimising man-children and steve's character is kind of a great example of just how deep that really goes.
steve was only meant to be an asshole jock that died at the end of the first season, but as I mentioned above, they kept him because they liked mr. keery. but that doesn't mean steve was automatically given a bunch of special treatment. when the duffers were splitting the cast off into duos for S2, steve was a leftover they stuck with the other leftover- dustin. they admittedly didn't know what to do with him, whereas shit like jancy getting pressured into having sex by a creepy old guy in a secluded bunker was apparently something that came naturally to them. it was "good," in their minds, because that was jonathan, the guy they can identify with, winning the "battle" against the popular jock. in S3, the dynamic that helped steve become even more popular, his friendship with robin, came into existence only because a woman on the writing team, kate trefry, came up with the idea for robin to be a lesbian, and miss hawke then supported this idea. it never really had anything to do with steve himself, but rather with robin getting more depth and therefore subverting the expectations of the viewer (y'know, part of what made stranger things popular in the first place?) the duffers, on the other hand, had originally planned to make robin steve's girlfriend because that was something they thought the audience would have deemed a good reward after putting steve in a silly outfit and having him be tortured. they never really gave a shit about robin as an individual, as I feel is abundantly clear to most people now, and it was also never about giving steve meaningful character development either, because they just aren't capable of doing that on their own. it was only meant to be a "win," for him as a man. I would even go so far as to say that part of the reason why the duffers relented and allowed robin to be a lesbian was because steve represents the type of male they self-victimised themselves over, so they didn't really care about letting a little more diversity in if it came at what they perceived as "steve's expense." which is also why I think they just let him take it when nancy cheated on him in S2, beat him senseless every season, framed him being brutally beat by a foreign military as comedic while hopper's similar experience was framed as traumatic, abandoned any romance endgame for him altogether after robin, ultimately only used the love triangle in S4 & 5 to ridicule him and his dreams, didn't take the stobin friendship seriously despite always remembering dustin's importance to him, and gave him a pretty depressing epilogue that traps him in a seemingly endless cycle of failed relationships with women. of course, they still had to acknowledge how much the audience loves steve along the way, so they threw some fanservice our way, wrote up a whole other character to kill in his place, and then proceeded to take time out of the final season to grovel at the feet of people who shipped that character with steve because they are still greedy, capitalist swine who will happily profit off of a dynamic two actors created (I am referring to the romantic interpretation of it, because that was mostly pure improv from what I can tell). they don't really think about the finer details of steve's character or story. it's just about sticking it to the popular guys that they were, and somehow still are, jealous of, whilst doing just enough to satisfy the people who make netflix more money.
it's specifically because they are such unbelievable losers themselves that characters like mike, hopper, and jonathan end up with nothing all that deep or likeable. because they can relate to them. but they can't really do that with steve, and that, ironically enough, made steve a far better, more likeable character at the end of it all.
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