STEVE doesn't know what a healthy friendship looks like
Finished re-watching S1 and one thing that became very clear after seeing tommy and Carol is that steve does not know what a healthy friendship looks like. Like yeah, the two of them were mean to Nancy.... but they were to STEVE TOO
Like
He was worried bcs Nancy was acting OOC after Barb's disappearance and they were making fun bcs " oh, someone finally dumped Steve?"
I understand the teenage need for the grafitti art, and poor impulse control, but they were actively encouraging Steve to fight Jonathan's, and they didn't seem particularly worried when he started to get his ass kicked.
We know that Steve has no problem cutting them out of his life once they went too far - aka, drove Nancy away ( " you're just jealous cuz she's not as miserable as the rest of you) / put the image of her and Jonathan in his head,
Dustin's behaviour later, makes me think he does not believe that behaviour to be toxic.
And look. I love dustin and Steve as bffs. I NEED more platonic relationships in media. But, with recently having seen S5, as well as whatever i remember from prev seasons, Dustin made fun of Steve's intelligence quite often. And yeah, you could say it doesn't bother him, but at the same time...
Season 2 opens w Steve asking Nancy to check his essay. He was trying to do it well, he was applying to early admission, and his " i can take a gap year and wait for you" felt very much like " if i don't try i can't fail " than him not wanting to.
He WANTED to go to college, and yeah, Nancy's grief stricken self should not have had to encourage him, but it doesn't change the fact that no one ever does.
I've seen someone go " Steve doesn't mind it bcs he has confidence" but literally no one ever like... praises him seriously? At least not abt his intelligence, and his role as the " muscle" of the nerd group is seen less as inpressive and more as default.
Again, i like Dustin and Steve seems to consistently nail platonic relationships, but i doubt he can actually tell when a relationship is unhealthy unless it affects someone else he cares about
TLDR: i see lots of fics make Steve the emotionally stable and aware person and, with all due respect, he has not made all the deconstructions necessary for that
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some thoughts about hangman adam page, seth rollins and redemption via finding yourself in pro wrestling. etc
i have talked ad nauseam on this blog about how, due to a combination of tragic storytelling and bad booking, seth's inability to understand and really reckon with his identity is crucial to his storyline post shield, and i want to compare that with One Moment of hangman's weekend: his entrance.
hangman comes out of the face tunnel with his old theme, mustache gone. someone on twitter pointed this out: but the camerawork itself is almost shocked; it starts on the heel tunnel, then jolts over to the face tunnel when it realizes what's happening. hangman adam page has Found Himself again, everything about his presentation screams it. it's a return to form for a man who's spent the last year sinking into his lowest lows, and then having to face those lows and crawl up out of them.
i love the moment in the match where he hits the angel's wings- he will carry retiring daniels forever, but he's taking it with him and moving forward. i love the promo with swerve, where both men recognize that it's impossible to forgive here, but that they have both chosen to move forward because it's impossible to live otherwise.
hangman adam page has found himself, irreparably changed but Himself nonetheless. both this and his 2021 world title storyline are so impactful because they're so hopeful. even if you're fucking struggling, even if everything is awful and you think you're awful. you can still fucking make it. you can still be a person worth being. there are no permanent happy endings in pro wrestling (his 2021 title reign certainly ended in a Way), but it's kind of beautiful because that aligns with Everyone's lived experience. that lack of permanence doesn't make life Meaningless.
and. well yeah. this is thematically the opposite of Everything Seth. there are a lot of moments i could point to (and i Have), but i'll focus on the most recent (and in terms of booking quality, the most egregious) example: post WM 40. for seth, WM 40 was about forcibly ending a chapter in his life. the chairshot is a thing that happened a Decade ago, and he's looking to finally find some form of absolution, even if it isn't coming from the deeply flawed person he wronged, and he can move on with his life.
after a decade of failing to atone, of babyface runs that crashed and burned, of not knowing who he is anymore (see: the promo after he stomped out edge's neck, the 2017 promo where he tells hunter he liked himself before he knew hunter), he can finally be a person worth being, and live a life worth living. (i have talked about This Specific Part a million bajillion times, i think this post is probably the most. direct but comprehensive version of All Of It if you're interested). he recreates the scene of that original sin, and he does the selfless sacrifice. cody wins, cody shakes his hand. woohoo.
and then the rest of 2024 happens, and sami accuses him of hurting jey, and they forgive roman, and they forgive punk, and nobody can quite understand why seth seems to have a problem with any of it. every bit of anger is taken as evidence of his inevitable downward spiral, both by the fans and his friends. the february promo he did with cody (wow fork found in kitchen, can't believe i'm talking about that promo) is an excellent distillation of all of this conflict. seth warns cody about what, sigh, the Rock wanting cody's soul (it's been 5 months and i still. okay whatever we'll move past it), and cody points out seth's own hypocrisies and imperfections. it always comes back to the chairshot, to that unerasable crime.
in the months post wrestlemania 40, one thing becomes very clear. no one will ever let seth move on (the question of whether he deserves to or not is, like. let's not touch that for now). so he doesn't. he links up with paul heyman, re-re-re-creates the chairshot with himself as the leader rather than the pawn. his fall became inevitable to everyone, including himself. if seth couldn't look at himself and like what he saw in 2017, i don't think he has since.
holy shit what the fuck was i saying. where am i. okay yeah. seth and hangman both go through the pro wrestling waves of heel-face turns, but i would argue that part of what makes their overarching story arcs good is a sense of internal consistency and the importance of all their history. they're both characters that fall hard and then have to work hard for their redemptions. however, the tones their stories set are completely different. hangman falls and you know that somewhere, no matter how far away, he's going to get back up again, and he will find himself. seth rollins succeeds, and everyone waits for the other shoe to drop.
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randyseth does a lot for me because they have such a filthy bad disgusting golden child black sheep dynamic. like randy is watching hunter recreate all these abusive manipulative tactics on seth, and seth is at the apex of hunter's favor that randy once had, and that makes randy so, so angry. it's a real "i see myself in you and that pisses me the fuck off" situation. and seth is also, notably, the worst at this time. he constantly nips at randy's heels, flaunts the fact that he's hunter's golden boy. randy gleefully destroys him because seth stands in for everything randy hates about himself, all the weakness that hunter exploited. they can't find solidarity in their common ground because hunter pits them against each other. also, they want to fuck each other so bad it makes them both look stupid. seth rollins bootlicking video my beloved
something something "assigned-judas-by-the-narrative" seth trying to redeem himself through a christ-like sacrifice and then saying fuck that and trying to ascend to the more distant, not-man holiness of the father. can't be hurt by people if you delude yourself into thinking you're an omnipotent all-powerful god above it all
Steve is not bad at flirting, he's just traumatised
Starting S3, we all know Robin making fun of Steve for not landing ladies. But, having just watched season 1....
He is a lot less confident. Like, yeah, we only saw him flirt w Nancy, but he was nailing it, he was fun, they had chemistry. S3 tho?
He's less confident in almost every interaction. Less ease. And people feel that.
Charisma doesn't just vanish without outside factors. And yes, those outside factors are undealt with trauma, but also, he is at ease with Dustin and, a certain extent, Robin too
Makes me wonder if him trying to get girls is less " he wants a romantic relationship " and more " he wants A relationship and he's leaning onto what used to work, but now his heart isn't into it, so it fails"
