big fan of women

and along comes some girl in your class who you've seen in passing but has always glared at you for some reason (what is her problem??) and you've never properly interacted until now. and whether it's through normal class time or the halloween party or maybe even sometime after the second round of the apocalypse, you meet her and she's sarcastic and irritating and you always argue but she's normal.

robin for her part does pick up on nancy’s nervousness, but isn’t able to truly figure out what it’s about yet. at first it’s because she thinks nancy has figured out she’s a lesbian and is in the process of distancing herself, but nancy also keeps coming right back to robin seemingly despite herself. so robin puts that theory on the back burner and thinks about what could have actually been scaring nancy this entire time. she doesn’t really see any other people around nancy (not since barb), so is she getting bullied? or ostracized? she knows about nancy’s boyfriend, jonathan - is he isolating her? but then, nancy spends a lot of time with robin, and the few times she’s seen him he doesn’t seem bothered by it at all. is it outside school, like her parents? or further beyond, like worries for the future or something?

in a somewhat "something wicked this way comes" esc scenario, vecna traps children via a traveling circus. trapped children become acts in the circus and do not retain their memories outside of their roles in the circus. when they do remember, they are still trapped (i'm picturing a similar situation to holly in s5)

vecna is the ringleader operating under the alias "mr. whatsit"

this would operate in a completely separate universe from canon. so everyone's first brush with the upside down is this circus. robin is at the circus with the odd squad and doesn't know anyone yet. stancy is broken up and steve's in his aggressively flirting/trying to get her back stage

nancy's the first one to figure it out because holly goes missing early on and she's looking for her before she gets trapped in the circus. i think the moment nancy sees holly in the circus all her memories come back and she becomes hyperfocused on trying to escape

stobin get trapped as literal conjoined twins. which is so unfortunate for robin because she hates that guy fr (but by the time they end the circus they are aggressively codependent, obviously)

the first person nancy breaks out of the trance is robin, and the two of them (plus steve as an unwilling tagalong) work together to end vecna's curse

when kids are taken, they're in this trance, sort of like their identity was buried underneath their new circus persona. there ARE things that can bring that identity back to the surface (similar to how they got through to will when he was flayed in season 2, except instead of possession it's more like repressed memories). the longer they spend in their circus trance, the harder it is to break them out of it until they eventually lose themselves completely

the whole circus is an illusion. attendees and even performers see this magnificent, gorgeous circus and the performers' appearances all look semi-familiar but different enough to be unrecognizable to the audience. when nancy snaps out of the circus trance and regains her memories she sees it for what it is - this creepy, upside-down-y thing run by monsters

stolen kids are replaced in the real world with shapeshifting demons

i think the mind flayer is the real puppet master, and i think it survives off of human souls. maybe it harvests the energy of humans monsters inc-style (hence the need for performers to farm energy from the audience) and i think when it travels to the next town, it slowly replaces the performers from the last with new ones and consumes the souls of the previous ones. i DO think it has a couple of performers that are "favored" though and have been in the circus for years

on that note, i think mr. whatsit has his own agenda of finding a new ringmaster so he can retire because he was the original stolen kid. so he's sort of always assessing the performers, looking for candidates. he'll put in a good word to the mind flayer in the hopes that they'll be favored and spared from consumption

and a couple small notes that i think are neat:

barb has been in the circus for years

barb and nancy's friendship has sort of been waning ever since barb left for a week to go visit her aunt and uncle in illinois a few years back and came back... distant. nancy assumed something Happened but didn't ever push because it never felt like her place to

in a somewhat "something wicked this way comes" esc scenario, vecna traps children via a traveling circus. trapped children become acts in the circus and do not retain their memories outside of their roles in the circus. when they do remember, they are still trapped (i'm picturing a similar situation to holly in s5)

vecna is the ringleader operating under the alias "mr. whatsit"

this would operate in a completely separate universe from canon. so everyone's first brush with the upside down is this circus. robin is at the circus with the odd squad and doesn't know anyone yet. stancy is broken up and steve's in his aggressively flirting/trying to get her back stage

nancy's the first one to figure it out because holly goes missing early on and she's looking for her before she gets trapped in the circus. i think the moment nancy sees holly in the circus all her memories come back and she becomes hyperfocused on trying to escape

stobin get trapped as literal conjoined twins. which is so unfortunate for robin because she hates that guy fr (but by the time they end the circus they are aggressively codependent, obviously)

the first person nancy breaks out of the trance is robin, and the two of them (plus steve as an unwilling tagalong) work together to end vecna's curse