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Stereotypes aren't good, but they do tend to form for a reason. Most of the time it isn't a good reason, it's things like a reporter taking the worst interpretation of a person and others copying it for everyone similar to that first person in one specific way.
Dragons, Steve thinks, aren't one of those types of stereotypes forming. No, the ones he's subjected to constantly are because the worst dragons, such as his parents, are also the loudest, the ones vying for everyone's attention. They entirely fill the stereotypes even as they speak out about the harm they do, which oddly enough is barely any because one of the dragon stereotypes is that dragons are ferocious.
Hell, he hasn't seen either of them in years since they decided at 8 years old, he was old enough that he might steal from their hoard of jewels and moved it to some second home somewhere in Arizona. Even then they didn't know him well enough to realise they'd already made him so disgusted with all the trimmings of wealth and if anything would have likely added to it for them, from the things that Tommy and the other kids latching onto him for an illusion of popularity tried to give him.
Too late for them to change their minds though, Steve had instead either re-gifted the jewels he was given, or found ways to sell it quietly away from Hawkins and gain a bank account in case he ever needed to leave unexpectedly.
Robin asks him whether hoards were a lie once, and he laughed. He knew immediately it was because he keeps everything tidied away and has never shown any collecting tendencies. His entire room could probably be emptied and leave space in his car so long as the furniture like his bed was left behind. That doesn't mean he has no hoard though. It's just not one he could go out gathering for himself. At the point Robin asks, it's perhaps a few dozen small items he'd been gifted over his life that clearly said the person giving them had thought about him. The items said the person giving them has wanted it to be something personal, silly, or specific for him. If Steve were to describe what he hoards he'd say it's the kind thoughts people spare for him.
