📽️🗝️🪄who else decodes you? my sweet sweet firstborn—s4 stancy rewrite. this fic fr means everything to me

🌙🏹🎲 most mad and moonly: alternate version of a scene in who else decodes you?

🩼🔮🪞 i can’t afford to lose you (but i’m acting like i can) steve’s POV of the same scene ^ in who else decodes you? lmao can you see the pattern. wrote this to see if i also liked describing nancy instead of only writing from her perspective, even if it is 100% steve just being down bad

🪻🪦🌿 stop a willow from weeping: what if steve had really gone to the hospital to comfort nancy? s5.

⌛️⛓️‍💥🪩 tactless and teenage: stancy in the melting room instead of jancy. nuff said. s5.

🚬🪽🔒 small town joan of arc: post s4, pre s5. fascinating time period to me. character study of nancy after everything that went down in s4 from steve’s perspective. it is ouchie

💌📇💫 an extraordinary time midair: post s5, the conclusion to small town joan of arc. stancy falling apart and falling back together from nancy’s POV, reflecting on cycles in relationships and what it takes to break out of it.

💿🕰️🎤 nowhere on earth i'd rather be: steve waiting for nancy which turns into nancy waiting for steve. s1 stancy to post s5.

❄️🍸🕯️ breathing clean air (i still miss the smoke): steve's POV of chapter 1 from extraordinary time. five stages of grief from his perspective!

favorite things about nancy wheeler!!!!!!!!!!!

1. Everything

2. nancy wheeler is SMART! she is an intelligent woman! she is unafraid to USE HER BRAIN! but not in the way where she lounges around and expects everything to think she’s smart. i love that she actively chooses to push herself and make connections and chase down a lead. i stan critical thinking skills

3. she is also petty. haha. i am too. but the scene where she flips a lid down in the archives with robin is so real. like i too would be Totally Not Okay if i thought a really cool and funny girl was dating my ex-boyfriend. 

4. idk if this is something i want to emulate from her but i do resonate with her inability to communicate her Emotions. why express them when you can shove them down. 

5. one of my absolute favorite things about her is how her courage is presented. she isn’t always right out of the gate 100% fearless. like. the girl is AFRAID but she also doesn’t let that stop her! i would also shit my pants after vecna screwed around with my head but she goes charging back in there with a gun and a dream!!!

6. i’ve seen a lot of people talk about this already but obvi her unapologetic girliness. one thing about nancy is that she will impersonate and break into a mental hospital but she will do it in a Matching Set. and heels. nancy wheeler know the power of accessorizing and in this essay i will point out the flaws of her finale look and

7. loyalty. loyalty and loyalty and loyalty beyond death. i don't think i need to say more about this & i know her loyalty to barb is very wrapped up in her guilt and grief, but nancy's continued restlessness in s1 & s2 speaks volumes about her character.

8. and most importantly, she loves her family <3

hi anon i'm sorry this took eons!!!!!!!

darling: (i just watched all six seasons of downton abbey and i love listening to them use darling.) backstory time: steve threw it out there one time, in a super casual way, i’m talking like this man almost didn’t even realize he said it, and usually nancy doesn’t make a huge deal about pet names, but something about this one was so different! next thing steve knows, he’s looking up to see if nancy heard him, and she is full, 100% paying attention to him, and there’s something so precious about how pleased she is to have been called that. genuine little smile and everything.

peanut: she is just so small to him. squishes her cheeks while she's glaring up at him and he just laughs and says peanut again. no further explanation.

fancy nancy: ik that fancy nancy didn’t come out until 2005, but it rhymes so i don’t think it’s a stretch for him to use this nickname hehe. first time is when they’re going to a new year’s party (ca 1991) and nancy’s dressed to the nines and steve chooses to call her fancy nancy in lieu of passing out because he’s just so darn in love with her. fancy nancy when she’s in a glittering dress and fancy nancy when she’s off to work and fancy nancy when she’s curled up on the couch with him, because she really is so beautiful all the time. <3

schmancy: see above lol. nancy lowkey hates this one because mike heard steve call her it once and things got out of control and ended with more than one person crying, no i will not give more details 

nancy lee: THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A HOT TAKE but since nancy doesn’t have a canonical middle name, i feel like it’s either marie or lee. i know it sort of rhymes rhymes OKAY but as a good 80s girl i just know there’s a high likelihood it’s one of these, and even though nancy lowkey always thought it sounded stupid, steve likes how all the syllables flow together, and this is his most sing-song petname for her <3 he walks into the room singing nancy lee and whereas nancy would have originally pegged herself for a cynic, it just kind of makes her melt.

honey: v influenced by the song honey hehe (especially thinking about how steve transforms this name from something patronizing and sad to something special between the two of them <3). interchangeable with darling but i see this one being thrown around like “honey, where’s the xyz?” and it’s just so perfectly domestic!!!

what a lovely question 💗🌹✨

my favorite thing hands down has to be the idea of a second chance romance/coming back together/right people wrong time. idk if it's the romantic in me or the idea that maybe i've already met ✨the one✨ in the form of someone it didn't work out with in the past, but the growth undertaken by both steve AND nancy (which, for obvious reasons of ignored trauma between s4&s5 and the butchering of her character in the final season, wasn't able to be explored as much) lends itself to such a wonderful picture of mutual love & respect! they each play a powerful role in one another's lives–nancy being the catalyst for steve to realize that Caring Is Cool and steve functioning as a safe, dependable harbor for nancy to realize hyper-independence and pushing everything down can be equally, if not more harmful to yourself as the opposite is to others. it just seems like a very believable and HOPEFUL relationship to me that we can be inspired by! growth and change and letting those good things guide us back together.

...

also they're hot.

the last book I read: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

a book I'd recommend: The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons or Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan

a book I couldn't put down: Red Rising by Pierce Brown haha i saw you post about this (@thelonelybrilliance) and i was intrigued and i FLEW through this like a madwoman

a book I've read twice or more: looooooooooooove A Winter's Promise by Christelle Dabos. actually the whole series.

a book on my TBR: Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

a book I've put down: Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins. wanted to like this but i just couldn't push through 

a book on my wishlist: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

a favorite book from childhood: The Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski. won it at a library competition and it was the best day <3

a book of poetry or lyrics I have: Selected Poems of Robert Frost 

a nonfiction book I own: The Ancient Near East by Amélie Kuhrt. am a huge nerd about the ANE

what I'm currently reading: The Count of Monte Cristo and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

what I'm planning to read next: Jane Eyre lmao i started this and actually have to keep going but i have to finish 2 others first!!!!!

indulgent steve's pov of ch 1 from extraordinary time midair. christmas in june anyone??