#but the point is that I don't think Steve mourns his current family

[kedreeva]

Honestly, I don't think Steve even noticed what he did or didn't feel or what he was or was not actually lacking in his parents until post-Nancy. He's exactly the sort of person who doesn't think about something unless he has to. I'm NOT saying he's stupid, just that literally he does not think about things he thinks aren't worth thinking about, and I genuinely do not think he thinks his parents are worth thinking about unless it's to plan around them.

"My dad's a grade-A asshole" and Steve worrying about getting in trouble if his dad finds out what he's done is in direct opposition to his willingness to do the thing in the first place, if he thinks about his father beforehand. "My parents are not home" and "my parents are somewhere else" are separate thoughts, and what matters to the plans Steve wants to make is the latter, and I'm not entirely sure he recognizes the former as a problem. His parents not being home is the solution to 'my dad's an asshole.' His parents not being home is a point in his favor, not a problem

And honestly, why would it be a problem then? Season 1 Steve has parents he prefers to be absent, and friends that are quicker to sneer and bite than they are to smile. Season 1 Steve, prior to getting sense literally knocked into him, is concerned about getting in trouble rather than worrying about his gf having just lost her best friend. Season 1 Steve takes one look at Jonathan in Nancy's room and his first reaction isn't to worry about Nancy's well-being, not yet. His first reaction is to rile up his sharp-teethed friends and go be destructive. Before Nancy scolds him and Jonathan hits him and an entire fucking monster drops through the ceiling and tears his paradigm of the world apart, I don't think it really occurred to Steve that things should (or even could) be different. Parents are just like that, right? Everyone's parents and family and friends are just like that. Right?

Except, then he's seeing what Jonathan and Nancy will do for Jonathan's little brother, how all the kids stick together and fight for each other. What Joyce will do for her son, what Hopper will do for her kids, for the small, strange girl they're saying has superpowers. The way Dustin's mom loves him, even if she's a little oblivious. How even the parents who know nothing, like the Sinclairs and the Wheelers, actually do love their kids; it's not a show. They're not in the news, they have no reputation to keep up, there's no one to impress. They just genuinely love their children. This friend group genuinely cares about each other. even when they are at odds with each other, they care. Absolutely mindblowing to the kid who couldn't get his family or friends to give a shit about anything, including him.

And I think he gets a bigger inkling about it all at the start of season 2, when he gets more involved in the whole group, but I think the moment he realizes he's got to protect Max from her family that it really clicks about his own family. She's scared about what her brother will do, and Steve remembers being scared about what his father would do. And it's one thing to kind of Know that your parents are not good, and be in the middle of coping with it, but it's another to see that reflected in someone else and realize oh.

And I think that's.... I think that directly leads to what's going on with Steve in season 3. He mentions his dad wanting to teach him a lesson and we can assume it's about Having A Job and Work Ethic etc, and maybe it is, but I think no small part of it is also that Steve got more defensive toward his parents about them being bad parents. I think instead of just being mad that he wasn't gonna get his way with them like in S1, or cranky they were gonna punish him for doing Teenage Stuff he thinks he should get away with, that he was actually a little hurt that his parents were more like Max's family than like Dustin's or Will's or even Lucas or Mike's. And I can imagine his dad reacting the way Entitled Parents act when their kid figures them out, and saying well if we're so terrible how about you experience what it is like without us, so you can see how much you owe us for everything we do for you.

and he ends up at Scoops Ahoy, because his dad is trying to teach him a lesson, but it's NOT a lesson about work ethic, it's a lesson about how to be grateful for the things his parents give him, as if taking care of their child was a favor that Steve now needs to pay back.

Except the lesson he learns is that he can pick his family. The lesson he learns is that his family sucks. And yeah, the lesson he learns is that he hates the way things have gone, he hates the big empty house, he hates the distance his parents put between them (while simultaneously being grateful for it because he doesn't want to be close to THEM, he wants to be close to better parents). And his reaction to that isn't to want better things with his family. Maybe if he was someone else, but this is the boy who doesn't think about things that aren't worth thinking about, and it's not worth thinking about something that will never happen. His parents will never be those people and, frankly, he doesn't want them to be. It's too late. Cut that loss.

His reaction, rather, is to imagine having a new family, one where no kids are going to be alone because there will be more than one of them, a family where no kids are treated like Max was, or untreated at all like he was, because he'll be there for them. That's something he can think about as long as he likes.

#steve harrington #stranger things #stranger things meta #i forgot where I was going with this #but the point is that I don't think Steve mourns his current family #I think he's lonely for the family he wants looking forward #not the one he knows he doesn't have looking back