Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler

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Pairing
Pairing: Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler
Alternative name(s): Ronance, Robinancy
Gender category: Femslash
Fandom: Stranger Things
Canonical?: No
Prevalence: Popular
Archives:
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Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler is the femslash pairing of Robin Buckley and Nancy Wheeler in the Stranger Things fandom. Their popularity as a pairing grew throughout season four, when the pair teamed up on multiple occasions to work together.

Canon

Nancy and Robin first meet on-screen at the end of Season 3 but interact little, only exchanging a few lines of dialogue.

During Season 4 they share a lot more screen-time, working together on multiple occasions and having scenes with just the two of them. While Robin initially believes Nancy does not like her, thinking that it's jealousy arising from Robin's friendship with Steve, they start to appreciate and respect each other over the course of their work together. After their undercover mission, where Robin has to undergo a makeover so they can pose as psychology students to get to speak to Victor Creel, a friendship forms between them. In canon, this is significant for Nancy, who has struggled with the trauma and guilt she carries over Barbara's death in season one.

Fandom

The fandom has a strong presence on Tumblr, which was fuelled by the premiere of the fourth season and additional interactions between the two in canon. There was also a notable growth in fanworks on AO3 as season four progressed and continued. A number of Ronance focused Discord servers were also set up in 2022 and 2023, and events focused on the pairing or including the pairing have been run in the gap between seasons four and five.

Shipping Fuel

There are a number of in-canon scenes or events that fans of the pairing reference in fanworks or discuss as parts of meta, some of which form the basis of fanworks about the pairing.

  • Robin tells Steve that when she's around a girl she likes, she begins rambling and cannot get herself to shut up. This mannerism is then demonstrated when Robin and Nancy go to the library together for research.
  • Also at the library, the tension between Robin and Nancy has been the source of much discussion and meta, and the shared looks are frequently recreated in fanart and GIFs.
  • When the teens are walking through the forest, there is a scene between Nancy and Robin during which Nancy asks if she and Robin are "friends, officially?" and Nancy's shy interactions with Robin have been discussed by Ronance fans.
  • Once the older teens are in the upside down, there is a scene where Eddie informs Steve that Nancy dived in after him and suggests that is an example of her feelings for him. Ronance fans point out that, following this logic, as soon as Nancy dived in, Robin called out for her and then immediately went in her her, implying Robin has feelings for Nancy.
  • While not considered entirely canon compliant, the Robin Buckley focused tie-in book 'Rebel Robin' has a scene where Robin sees Nancy storm off whilst on a date with Steve and goes to look for her, concerned Steve has done something to upset her. She finds Nancy crying in the toilets of the cinema and talks to her briefly about Barb's disappearance.

Statistics

  • By the end of May 2024, Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler was the fourth most popular Stranger Things pairing on AO3 with 8589 works, and the most popular femslash pairing in the fandom.
  • According to AO3 Ship Stats 2022, the ship was the 32nd most popular femslash pairing on AO3 that year.[1] By 2023, it was the 9th most popular femslash pairing[2].
  • Ronance was the fifth most popular ship on Tumblr in 2022.[3]

Common Tropes in Fanworks

Controversy

The Ronance Tag on AO3

Fans of the Ronance pairing have discussed on Tumblr and Twitter the difficulty locating Ronance focused works as the pairing tend to be background tagged to the Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson pairing[4][5]. While some works tagged with both pairings contain story-lines focused on both pairings, many have fleeting appearances from Ronance, leaving fans of the pairing frustrated[6]. This prompted some fans, such as those who run the Stranger Things Femslash event, to create curated bookmark collections on AO3 or rec lists to help other Ronance fans find works focused on their OTP.

In early 2023, fans began to comment that there had been a noticeable number of works with a particular focus posted to the tag over the past few months[7][8], all from one user called TATAMONIQUELAGINETTE[9] (often shorted to TATA in discussions online). From March 2023, the number of works being posted increased considerably, with anywhere from 8-20 works being posted some days. Most of the works were Omegaverse, had less than 2,000 words, and often with the additional tag 'Robin Buckley Has a Penis'.

Ronance fans had mixed reactions to this. Some expressed disgust at the premise of the fics, with some fans kinkshaming TATA and trying to encourage other fans to report the works. Other fans pushed back on this, pointing out that no rules were being broken, that AO3 had introduced the muting capability that year and this was the sort of scenario it should be used for, and that AO3 was the place for any kind of fanworks, not just works individual people found palatable[10].

Other fans were concerned with the impact on the fandom, the possibility of plagiarism or AI use given the speed at which TATA was posting[11], and some comments they had made on social media which people felt were misogynistic and transphobic[12][13]. Others felt that the posting was a form of deliberate trolling of the tag[14].

As there were multiple occasions where the front few pages of the Ronance tag consisted almost entirely of works by TATA, readers of the pairing began to drift away from the tag; as readership dropped, authors became discouraged and stopped posting[15]. People reported reaching out to discuss this with TATA, suggesting that similar works be posted as multi-chapter works. It was from these discussions that it emerged that TATA wanted Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler to be the largest tag in the Stranger Things fandom and was posting the way they did to achieve that aim[16]. They also greatly disliked Eddie Munson and him being a part of the largest pairing in the fandom seemed to fuel this aim.

In March 2023, an author for the Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski pairing posted on Twitter that they had reported TATA for plagiarising one of their works[17]. They had initially asked TATA to just mark that their work was inspired by the Sterek work, but TATA responded by blocking them. The work was eventually taken down, either by TATA or by an AO3 volunteer following review.

By mid-late 2023, many fans in the Ronance tag had TATA muted. In September 2023, readers noticed works that shared the same tags and writing style as TATA's other works were being posted under Anonymous[1] [18]. Some people felt that this was a deliberate attempt to get around people's mutes[19]. This prompted some readers to use skins to block Anonymous works and Stranger Things Femslash to update their bookmark collection inclusive policy to exclude anonymous explicit works.

Also in September, an author for the Steddie pairing, posted on Twitter to say their work had been plagiarised by TATA[20]. They went on to report the work. After comments were posted to their works calling them out, TATA began moderating and closing comments. This prompted people to look into TATA's works, with one person finding indications that Find and Replace was being used on other people's fanfics. Screenshots were posted showing that "wherpered" and "wherepering" were present in some works[21], which likely came from using Find and Replace to change "his" to "her" without considering the impact in the middle of words.

In October 2023, someone posted online that TATA had decided to stop posting[22]. Given that this was at least the second report of plagiarism to AO3, it was possible they received a temporary ban for plagiarism, but there was also considerable backlash from the fanfiction community because of the evidence of plagiarism. They have not posted under TATAMONIQUELAGINETTE since September 2023. From October 2022 to September 2023, the author posted 1,350 works to the Ronance tag under their name. With additional works posted under Anonymous in September, their total work count for the tag is probably around 1,400.

Fan Events

In 2022, Tumblr user lionydoorin created an October prompt list for the Robin/Nancy pairing called Ronancetober [2]. There were 16 prompts for the pairing and it was a low pressure prompt event for any kind of fanworks.

The event returned in 2023 on a dedicated Tumblr, @Ronancetober, again with 16 prompts throughout the month.

Example Fanworks

Fanfic

Podfic

Fanvids

Fanart

Gif sets

Archives & Fannish Link

References

  1. ^ AO3 Ship Stats 2022 Femslash Top 100, Archived version by centreoftheselights. Posted 4 August 2022, archived.
  2. ^ AO3 Ship Stats 2023 Femslash Top 100, Archived version by centreoftheselights. Posted 7 August 2022, archived.
  3. ^ Ships, Archived version, part of Tumblr's Year in Review 2022. Posted 1 December 2022.
  4. ^ "The Ronance tag have more Steddie than actual Ronance, June 28, 2022". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  5. ^ "'The ao3 Ronance tag is so hard to find content in', 23 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  6. ^ "'Steddie Writers HATE Her! Find out how to rescue Ronance shippers with this one weird trick!', 14 August 2022". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  7. ^ "'How does that one person in the ronance tag...', 19 May 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  8. ^ "'Pov you're trying to scroll through the ronance tag', 18 May 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  9. ^ "'I open up the ronance tag on ao3 and 6393473947 CONSECUTIVE fics', 14 July 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  10. ^ "'Idk what Ronance fan needs to hear this', 24 May 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  11. ^ "'Is there a way to report a bot account?', 12 August 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  12. ^ "'we should introduce hazel & tata', @odderstuffao3, 23 April 2024". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  13. ^ "@chylerdyer quote tweet response, 12 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
  14. ^ "'that user who's spamming the ronance tag...', 18 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-30.
  15. ^ "'I sure would like to feel like I could get back into writing ronance for ao3', 18 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
  16. ^ "'apparently their goal flips btwn making ronance the top ao3 ship and guilting everyone that isnt writing bc of them', 13 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
  17. ^ "'It's been brought to my attention that a Teen Wolf Sterek story I posted in 2020 'Sudden Rut' story was copied word for word', 6 March 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.(Additional archived tweets from thread here and here)
  18. ^ "'wait what's happening in the tags?? I've been off ao3 for a minute, I feel lost', 11 November 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
  19. ^ "'My favorite ship in my fandom is being over run with a spam poster.', 20 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
  20. ^ "'HEY DONT DO THIS!! I work really hard on my fucking fics so for you to fucking steal from me???', 12 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
  21. ^ "'With all that absurd output they might straight up have an automatic script for word replacement', 12 September 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
  22. ^ "'guys guys i don't want to get anyone's hopes up BUT a certain someone hasn't posted on ao3 since last month', 22 October 2023". Archived from the original on 2024-05-31.
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