just thought about father's day for everyone in stranger things and nearly keeled over in pain

Jane Hopper

El's sense of identity is linked to her name as well as her clothes. Eleven is her lab name, which is dehumanizing, but it's also often linked to her being a superhero. The party calls her this several times - Steve and Robin call her this when telling Eddie about the upside-down, Max and Mike both call her this too. Max does in reference to her superpowers in both season 3 and 4 - both times it's when El is trying to save them (or in reference to her saving them in the past). Mike calls her this during their fight in season 4. He struggles to see her as anything more than her superpowers. He tells her she's being ridiculous when she's upset with him for not telling her he loves her. (There is a lot going on in this scene. I wrote about it more here).

The name El was just a shortened version of Eleven given to her by Mike. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it wasn't for the unhealthy attachment styles between these two. I think, at least subconsciously, Mike was realizing that it wasn't ok for her to be called a number and was uncomfortable with doing so. He shortens it so that it sounds more like a normal name.

Through most of the series she is referred to as El by her friends and family. This name is transitional and matches the life that she has. She is still a superhero but also sometimes has a normal life. She's out in the world a little more (but still hidden away) but she also is responsible for saving everyone when things get bad.

Jane was the name her mother picked out for her and we see her get called this by her aunt. They are in the house she was supposed to grow up in. It's the normal life that was taken from her.

She is also called Jane by Kali. Kali is the only other person who can understand what she went through in the lab. She makes a point to call her Jane and not by her number. Kali views her as a person and an equal. She accepts Jane but she also only sees her (and herself) in more of a superhero role. There is no separating either of them from their powers. El doesn't really fit into this home the way that she hoped she would so she leaves.

We see her go by Jane this season at school. She no longer has her superpowers and is just a normal kid. But she feels vulnerable and can't defend herself from being bullied. She struggles to figure out where she fits in and a lot of that has to do with her not knowing herself well enough yet.

Will, Jonathan, and Joyce still call her El while in Lenora. So now she goes by three names - Eleven, El, and Jane. She doesn't ever express a preference for any of them so it's unclear what she thinks of them.

It's not just Mike who struggles with seeing El as someone other than a superhero. El is struggling with this part of her identity, too. She doesn't know how to fit in with the other kids at school and being without her powers made her feel helpless. So she doesn't hesitate for a chance to fix it. Brenner (for all of his horrible behavior) does help her see that it's not as simple as superheroes and monsters. People are more complicated than this.

I don't think having her powers back is going to fix her problems in the way she expects. She became a superhero again but she didn't save the day. She is struggling to figure out who she is and what her role within the group is if it isn't to save everyone.

Moving forward, I think she is going to get more comfortable figuring out who she is without her powers. Max was a big part of this in season 3 and once they are able to save her (strongly believe she won't die) they can re-connect and she can continue figuring out what she likes. She needs to establish a stronger sense of self away from Mike and Eleven.

I think she's eventually going to realize that she doesn't want to be a superhero and shed her name that's associated with all of her trauma (both Eleven and El). I think she will choose to not use her powers by the end of the series and just be herself as Jane.

This is The Care

Holy shit I wrote a Mileven fic. 

Mike x Eleven

One Shot Fluff, Rated G

References: 1x06 The Monster 1x07 The Bathtub 4x08 Papa

Dedicated to my Mike, my soulmate, my best friend. 

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            40 minutes after Eleven explained everything she saw when visiting their friends in the void, the back of the van got quiet. The soft jams of Bob Marley pumped from the speakers. Jonathan is still at the wheel, nervous, checking the mirrors to see if anyone is tailing them. Argyle is quietly stoned, sunglasses on, looking over the map. The sun will be setting soon and they need a phone to book a flight home. Will, always quiet, is worried, staring out the window, his knee bouncing wishing the van would go faster to get there faster, El has to help their friends. His painting to Mike is rolled back up behind them; there are other more important things.

               Mike and Eleven are sitting facing each other, their legs touching. El is staring into space, a tear rolls down her dusty cheek. Mike, who is letting El have some space but not too much, has his hand on the side of her thigh in support, his thumb rubs her softly. He’s trying hard not stare at her but for the last days only wished he could see her again, keep her safe. Loosing Dr. Brenner for El must be difficult. She shared he used her to find Henry, 001, re opened the gate and the rest of the story begins. Her tears double as she tries to hide a sob. Papa is dead. She didn't give him his wish, but her pain about it is more complicated than that, but it’s still loss. Eleven would not forgive him for what he did to Terry, her Mama. There was no kindness there. But her powers had returned because he believed, Dr. Owens believed. Now Papa is dead and Owens was captured, they’re so far from Hawkins and Max’s plan would not work. All felt lost.

               Mike watched her hide under her skin.  He reached for a clean Surfer Boy Pizza napkin in the van, not one dried with agent man’s blood or pizza sauce. He bundled it in his fingers to soften it. He touches her chin so gingerly with his long fingers to turn her head a little. She turns slowly with his touch to see him, holding to her stoic face with teary eyes.

             "Hey" he whispers in their little bubble. He dabs and wipes her tear away still holding her chin, wiping the new ones too. "I know it hurts" she closes her eyes to squeeze the rest out. She shakes her head no, lowering it. He raises it for her and looks in her pretty brown eyes "it’s ok.” His voice is full of love. “I understand." Mike dries her tears; his thumb touches her so softly, like a feather. This is the care he spoke of and El felt it. She stares back before she holds his hand with hers, she nods in agreement. Mike leans into her cheek and gives her a sweet kiss. The touch warms her. They lace their fingers together, palms together.

               His lips curl to a smile; he remembers when he cleaned her in his basement bathroom. Eleven saved his life from the quarry, in more ways than just lifting him up. She called herself a monster which was the opposite of what she is. Mike knew she was an angel, he just knew. His angel. His superhero. The feelings sounded right but the words…the words always escaped him. He wanted to tell her I love you, I love you so much El Hopper, he wanted to say it in this van. But in his life those words, so many times, meant goodbye. His Grandpa Sully only said it to him on his death bed; Mike was 9 and didn’t understand. The fear of telling El and then something would happen…it kept him up at night. It kept him from giving her what she deserved in her letters.

               He wiped a bit of dried dirt under her ear lobe with the napkin. He kissed her on her neck, she folded closer into him. His fingertips ran through her new buzz cut. He whispers into the ear he just kissed "Still pretty." She cracks a smile; he can feel it on his face. It feels like sunlight. "Really pretty."  

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This is just a rant and is in no way my full thoughts because it’s very hard for me to organize it all but I’m so conflicted about s4 that I just have to write something.

Okay… so retconning isn’t USUALLY supposed to happen until your try to make a spin-off or soft-reboot of an original story,

And while there are certainly elements of s4 I like, (thank you to Tumblr for supplying me with Ronance and Steddie. We’re witnessing the birth of fandom and I must appreciate) it just feels like a different show and I have kept it that way in my mind.

I’ve done so much with Stranger Things because there is so much to analyze and I’m always so surprised when people say there’s nothing under the surface in this show!

But the Duffers are trying so hard to push that THIS is the story they’ve been telling all along and while they have covered it well, like with giving Vecna powers that can make it work that it could’ve been him chasing Will in s1 ep1, I cannot believe that that’s how it is. Maybe it HAS always been this way and the Duffers have a very different eye than I do, but I feel I’m equipped to enjoy my original ideas about s1-3 and keep s4 as a separate entity.

I in fact made myself an ending to the series a while ago because I knew s4 was going to rip up my worldview but I put myself into a state of false hope for a while that lead me to believe that just maybe my complicated view of the show would actually come to fruition and that everything I’ve seen and theorized could work because I was able to make it work by myself.

But they went the simple way, of course they did. I don’t want to say they bullshitted through the writing but they certainly focused on the directory elements and visuals very heavily.

The mindflayer as an antagonist was never exhausted, in fact they set it up for him to come back at the end of s3 and they were using him quite brilliantly. The gate was closed but his influence remained since he was able to manipulate the Will/El alternates (ie. Hawkins scouts as I call them that Chrissy and Max were in the beginning of s4 before they forgot what they were doing.) (I’ve called the mindflayer the “puppet master” before, pulling the strings behind the wall that El closed.) (I’m not going to get into how that’s representative. I do not have the energy though unfortunately I don’t think I ever will and it’s just going to be locked in my head forever. I can’t get it in order.)

I don’t like the whole rainbow room thing and the restructuring of the workings of Hawkins lab. (That connects to how they’ve changed Hopper but I also don’t need to get into that right now. I should just stop the parentheses and WRITE but I’m an idiot)

The “sympathy” shown for Brenner in the beginning initially made me think someone was in denial, particularly denying the trauma caused by a father figure and they’ve just thrown Lonnie away. (I never thought I’d be upset to see that bastard not exist but they just lost that the story needs to be sort of central to the Byers. S3 was a divergence in every way but ON PURPOSE. They were supposed to look back at s2 for this season and build the balance back after our teenage dramatic capitalist over show that was in my opinion over the top and bright on purpose. That season, which I initially hated and there are still parts of it that I dislike (I still don’t understand the Hopper character development reset) works really well since all of the characters are growing and it gives us a chance to see the villain powering up again but also focus on the VERY HEAVY relationship element of the show. Both familial, especially with the Wheelers in s3, and romantic. We see relationships start to lose their stability like Jancy and Mileven. The parts of the season that shine are where they do tone shifts, the hospital, the byler fight, the end when the Byers’s are moving. The tone shows the significance and everything down to the costume design and things Mike looks at help build the characters. The best balance of the viewer being able to see the facade crumble are Billy eating dinner with heather’s parents (intentionally/blatantly unsettling as El and Max figure out what is going on) the scene of when mike and El leave the others (while they go see Cerebro I think) to go kiss helps the audience see that Mike specifically (because let’s be honest, eleven doesn’t understand relationships.) is trying to act adult and pushing aside his friends. Mike taught Eleven that a relationship meant kissing right away, by kissing her, in his naive “I want a girlfriend because I need one” way. And he is acting like his parents in s3 (costume design + blatantly showing Karen Wheelers discomfort in her family structure in case you forgot about Nancy mentioning it in s1). Like, s3 used tone SO WELL and now s4 is like “oh you liked the funny stuff? We’re going to exclusively use the trendy MCU-style humor.

Oh my god I could go on about s3 forever, I have not even said anything about how ALL of it can connect to Will or things being fake (I don’t like that they’re making the Russians blatantly “real” either since they, like Erica, were used in s3 as a device.) I’m not gonna talk about how so many characters represent certain things in the mind (Murray and Alexi in s3. Hopper, kali etc. s2) fucking not never, they’re mine and I will fight for them to exist. Billy and Heather, Eleven and Will, etc. I cannot talk about right now because I’d have to go from the beginning and I do not have time because it will send me to the hospital.

S4 loses the subtlety that made this show so great in the first season. I’m just resigned to the fact that the duffers took the easy way out since the world will watch whatever they put on screen.

Sorry that this is so long. I’m not doing very well and my ST timeline is there, but it’s hard to get it back in order. I’m gonna make a separate thing for the examples of retconning

I've had an strangled relationship with Eleven since season 1, so much so that when s3 came around i had to stop watching because i couldn't stand the M!leven in it and so, it took me about 2 years to actually watch s3.... now after s4, and having watched it a few times now, i kind of made peace with her, because i absolutely love the bond she has with Will. I still sort of cringe at the idea of her and Mike, but Will is such a peacemaker, even within the show. I'm really at peace now.

Sorry for this stupid ask, i just needed to share it with someone i guess.

Don't worry, it's not stupid. I think I get it and it's making me think about some things. Mike and El's relationship... it's hard to watch sometimes. A lot of the time. (small warning, I get really into analyzing some stuff after this- whoops?)

Without knowing the ending we can't really see the reason that they've written it that way. It's not the easiest thing to trust them to do it right either. El's a bit more complicated, to me at least, because she's written to have reactions to things that need explanations. But we don't really get an explanation for her and Mike's relationship. Not like we do when she hits Angela in the face with a roller skate- and we get a flashback of Brenner. Or when she's crying in Mike's closet in season one and we see her in the lab, locked in a room. Those things, I think, give us the ability to understand El and root for her. Because we understand how what she's been through affects her. But when she trips Max in season two? Or spies on Mike in season three? Or when her and Mike fight in season four? We don't get to know the reason for her actions yet.

I really don't think that her and Mike's relationship was ever intended to portray romantic feelings. I think it was meant to make us feel uncomfortable. I remember trying to avoid thinking about Mike and El's relationship in season three because it just... I didn't like it. But after I started thinking about how maybe there's supposed to be something wrong with how I feel about it, it got easier to watch.

When El's with Will she's easier to... figure out? If that makes any sense? But when El's with Mike, and Mike's with El, they're both hard to get a read on. Mike gets frustrated quicker and El doesn't really seem to like giving an explanation for what she's doing. But with Will we can see what's happening inside her head. He can read her like a book. And so then we know that, okay. She's getting bullied at school. She doesn't want Mike to know. She's grieving Hopper's death. It's all easy to see. But when she starts yelling at Mike the next day, we can't see exactly where she's coming from. She didn't talk to anyone about "from, Mike" this is the first we're hearing of it. Sure, there were visual clues like the card attached to the flowers Mike gave her, but that's it. No further explanation is given for why she feels like this, or why she's only bringing it up now, or why Mike hasn't said it in the first place. We get nothing.

There's information they aren't giving us about why Mike and El's relationship isn't working and hasn't been working since it began. It makes it really easy to hate Mike. Without thinking that maybe he's not in love with El and doesn't actually want this relationship- he's just a dick. And I can see how it might make it easy to fell weird about El too. Because somethings wrong on her end of things as well.

There's a vagueness about Mike and El's relationship that looks like a shitty teenage romance at first. A crush. Nerd boy gets the girl with superpowers. Somethings off about it but we haven't been given a solid reason to think that. It's awkward and uncomfortable and looks like terrible writing at points- because we don't get to know what's going on under the surface.

Sorry that this turned into five paragraphs of me running around with my red string, but. Yeah, Mike and El are weird. Here's to hoping that there's a reason for it

Will Byers! :)

I meant to answer this Ask an eternity ago, and you have been so incredibly patient with me! (Thank you!!!) 

I think because Will is my favorite character, I started to fuss over my answer too much, and before I knew it we were here: a few months later, and a long while after I offered to answer these specific questions for character Asks. Today, I want to finally answer your Ask for my favorite character: Will Byers.

Will Byers

Favorite thing about them:

Will loves and appreciates his friends so much, and you can tell that he would do absolutely anything for Joyce or Jonathan too. My favorite thing about Will is his love and devotion to others. I think that since Castle Byers symbolically represents a safe place for Will, it also reveals what Will deeply cares about and chooses to protect within that safe place, and one of those things is his friendships. “Castle Byers: All Friends Welcome.” Castle Byers represents Will’s desire to welcome all friends with open arms and unconditional acceptance. While I think that Will would be kindhearted regardless, I think that because Will knows how painful rejection is from facing the bullies at school and his father’s insults, Will puts forth an extra effort to make sure that everyone in his life feels appreciated and loved. Will shares his secret safe-place in the woods with anyone willing to be his friend. Castle Byers is like a secret shrine dedicated to everything Will is passionate about (comics, D&D, art) and is also dedicated to those he loves and to those who love and accept him in return. He has photographs of his friends, drawings on the walls that he made about their D&D campaigns together, and comics that they’ve probably all shared. In spite of his limited means, Will is very generous with what he offers to others: he gave the little girl that was crying in the sandbox his Tonka Truck (even though Joyce cautioned him that they couldn’t afford to get a new one), he’s given Mike dozens of drawings (if Mike’s decorated walls and his binder full of Will’s artworks are any small evidence of this) and Will has given his mom a good number of drawings too that she cherishes. Will wants everyone to feel loved and to be happy, and is grateful to those that are there for him. Undoubtedly some of this stems from his deep insecurities and his lack of self-worth and his desire to be loved and appreciated back, but I think most of it is still rooted in Will’s genuine desire to make sure that other people are happy because their happiness makes him happy too.

Least favorite thing about them:

I appreciate all of the characters for their strengths as well as their flaws because it’s what makes them so very human and relatable. But Will definitely has some traits that I hope, for his own sake, he’ll learn to manage in a healthier way. Will’s weakness is that he often places the wants and needs of others before his own, and he seeks to avoid conflict at all costs. These are arguably admirable traits that are directly related to Will’s love and affection for other people (which I said was my favorite thing about him!), but they can also be self-destructive and unhealthy habits and I think they are, at least in part, the result of Will growing up in a combative and abusive home environment. I admire Will for his selflessness and for his desire to avoid conflict, but I list his excessive selflessness and his excessive desire to keep the peace as two things that make me worry about him. I hope he will learn to balance these two impulses in a healthier way over the next few seasons. I think that learning to deal with these two bad habits in a healthier way will be part of Will’s personal growth over the next two seasons.

Favorite line(s):

“Yea. Crazy together.”

brOTP:

Jonathan and Will, of course! I was sad that we didn’t get more scenes with them together in season 3, but I appreciate every moment in the series that we’ve gotten so far. Jonathan’s effort to reassure Will that it’s ok to be “a freak,” and that being different is preferable to being just like everybody else, was really heartwarming and is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire series.

OTP:

As you have probably figured out if you have been following my blog for even a few days: I’m convinced that Will and Mike are meant to be together by the end of the series, and I am eager to talk about it some other time in another post.

nOTP:

I cannot bring myself to imagine Will and El ever dating. But I look forward to them hopefully becoming very close, and teaming up platonically!

random headcanon:

Hmmm. So this is actually the part of this post that had me delaying responding to your Ask for so long, because my head-canon for Will is incredibly specific, unconventional, frequently controversial (from what I've noticed when this topic is discussed), and a bit complicated to explain. But I do want to talk about it! And I want to clarify that I actually don’t think of this as a head-canon: I solidly consider it a theory that might account for what is happening to Will, and what also is happening to other characters based on specific evidence within the series so far.

I won’t get into all of the evidence and layers in this post (because there is a lot), but I strongly suspect that Will Byers is being written as a character with dissociative identity disorder and that much of Stranger Things is about alters learning to work together as a System while confronting and resolving trauma that is manifesting itself in internal worlds and dreams various symbolic and fantastical ways (as well as in some very humanly monstrous ways too, unfortunately.) Whether the entire story is taking place within an internal world or whether everything has sprung out of the mind and into the external world is definitely a question I think about a lot, but my current interpretation is that a good amount of the story takes place in a liminal space between our external world / reality and a mental space that the characters are sometimes exploring.

Stranger Things follows characters that are canonically dealing with PTSD, significant levels of memory loss (Will couldn’t remember who Hopper was in season 2 while at the Lab), suddenly shifting from being mentally present in the world to being in a different perceived place (is the Upside Down an internal world?), perceived changes in personality and identity, traumatic visions and experiences (flashbacks? memories?) that often parallel one another in an eerie way, and many other specific details. Add to that Doctor Owens’ preoccupation with Will’s brain scans and Mr. Clarke’s lesson in season 2 in which he discusses Phineas Gage’s changed personality following Gage’s brain injury (which is not an example of DID but is still thematically relevant, and an oddly specific topic to feature in the series) and the clues just continue to add up. Even if this theory isn’t correct I look forward to continuing to discover more about the established rules of the Stranger Things universe and what is going on with Will, El, Hopper, the Numbers, all of these horrible father-figures (notably Dr. Brenner, Lonnie, and Neil) and the mysterious Lab.

(One last important note regarding this theory: please do not base your knowledge of DID on any fictional representation of it in popular media. A lot of misrepresentations of DID exist in Hollywood and pop culture. If you'd like to learn more on this topic, please read about it in medical publications and resources with verifiable authority on the topic.)

unpopular opinion:

I think that the theory I mentioned above is probably my most unpopular opinion/thought regarding what I think Will is dealing with.

songs I associate with them:

The songs that they chose to feature on Will’s official Spotify Playlist are all songs that I associate with Will at this point. I’m so impressed by the attention the creators of Stranger Things devote to the music not only in the show but to the characters’ official playlists. One track that definitely jumps out at me from Will’s official playlist is Afraid by The Neighborhood. The lyrics of the chorus are eerily specific: “When I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will take my place / when I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will end up being me.”

favorite picture(s) of them:

Analysis of El if you'd like.

Always so humble with the requests. Of course I’d like, otherwise I wouldn’t ask. Ask away, people! Oh, and FYI to everyone, when I see a like less than a minute after I post one of these long posts, it makes me wonder if you people are really reading them. Don’t assume you’re going to like them. Read them, and then decide. El can be a touchy subject considering she has such a rabid fan base. She is an extremely complex character, and it is unlikely that the Duffers have a detailed understanding of child psychology. The character therefor likely wasn’t designed with such theories in mind, but in psychology there is decent amount of common sense that writers may have drawn on. In real life, El would be quite the interesting case study. She was born and raised in a controlled lab setting. Everything in her life was strictly controlled until she was 12/13 or so. For another year after that she was still very limited in her freedoms and opportunities as she was hidden away in Hopper’s cabin. For several months after that she was only allowed out to see her friends, but never in a public setting it would seem. All of this has strictly limited her socioemotional growth. 

El’s cognitive development seems to be the least impacted, not accounting for physical development which I wouldn’t even attempt to determine. Her cultural knowledge is almost nonexistent when we first meet her, which is to be expected given her upbringing. Nevertheless, she possesses problem solving skills, has shown impressive concentration and information processing speed (staying focused on her tasks and reacting to new stimuli, such as an attack), an ability to form basic arguments (as shown in her fights with various characters), and receptive language skills. She does seem to have deficits in productive language, which is likely a result of her extremely limited social exposure. The traits she is shown to do well with are likely the result of careful conditioning by Dr. Brenner and his colleagues. She was designed as a weapon, and would therefor need to work quickly, efficiently, and decisively based on orders given. She also, somewhat surprisingly given her catchphrase, has shown the ability to lie (when she intentionally led Mike, Dustin, and Lucas on a wild goose chase). This shows her ability to use planning and judgement to decide and execute a course of action (whether that was a good or bad idea is up for debate).

Her emotional and social development are seriously stunted. When we meet El she possesses little affect (the verbal and non-verbal cues that convey feeling when communicating). She speaks in a flat voice, stares blankly, and has limited usage of body language. She does get an edge to her voice when angry, but her speaking volume rarely changes unless in a high-stress situation. This shows a delay in emotional development. Emotional development goes through a series of stages. To some extent, emotions are instinctual and necessary to survival, but the expression of said emotions is usually learned and conditioned. We don’t know much about El’s early childhood, but it is unlikely that emotional expression was encouraged. El does possess basic emotions like happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. Her limited ability to express emotions early in the show is likely a result of Dr. Brenner wanting to limit her emotional responses. He wouldn’t want a weapon that was afraid or remorseful. He did seem to value having a bond with her, as she seemed to desire his approval and called him “Papa.” He is shown treating her very poorly in general, and even worse when she was a disappointment to him. Her lack of affect could also be modeled on him, as he generally speaks very evenly regardless of his mood.

El’s emotional development does gain some traction in seasons 2 and 3 as she is exposed to others. This is a good segue to her social development. Before escaping the lab, she seems to have little to no social experience. She seems to have had some early socialization with Kali at the lab, but she had no memory of this. Her first real social experiences occurred when she met Benny (who treated her kindly) and then Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. This is when she starts to show her trademark character quirk of repeating others. This is also when she starts to really build conversational skills, as before she was mostly expected to take in language rather than express it.

Much of our social learning, especially early on, is a result of observation and imitation. We see something, whether in person or through fictional material, we imitate it, and then we are reinforced, ignored, or punished. From what we can observe from El, after she escapes the lab through to when she moves, her learning came from a combination of the week she spent with the Party (during Season 1), her time hiding with Hopper (end of Season 1 to midway through Season 2), her time with Kali, and then the events of Season 3. Now, we have to keep in mind that all of this learning occurs in the span of about two years. Of that time, over half of it is the result of watching TV and speaking to Hopper. She lacks a lot of the cultural context for a lot of the social and emotional information she takes in. 

Her social relationships are difficult to examine, mostly because there is a lot we just don’t get to see. She bonded with Mike very quickly, as he was kind to her and tried to keep her safe from the “bad men.” In reality, he didn’t treat her terribly different from Dr. Brenner in the sense that he was still using her. Mike tried to explain relationships and social norms to her, but, given her lack of preexisting knowledge and his own limited understanding, she didn’t quite get it all. She doesn’t seem to know the difference between familial, platonic, and romantic love. Instead, she sort of imprints on him like a baby animal may to its carer. Dustin and Lucas are less eager to have her around, but they warm up to her when it’s clear that she does genuinely want to help.

Her time away from them, and her apparently great consumption of TV soap operas, has resulted in her sort of trying to live out a fantasy. She becomes obsessed with Mike, watching him and stalking him since she is disallowed from actually leaving the cabin. She becomes extremely possessive (like a soap opera character), developing a dislike of Max simply due to her trying to be Mike’s friend. This is quite unhealthy, and the hostility is again shown when Max attempts to befriend her. It is apparent that her time away resulted in a her creating an “ideal” version of her and Mike based on TV representations of relationships. She still is shown to have missed Dustin and Lucas, but none of the intensity is present in those relationships. 

Her relationship with Mike is very superficial. As far as viewers can tell, they spend most of their time making out. El is still shown to have possessive qualities, as it is stated that she and Mike are often at Hopper’s cabin together. We see them bailing early after Dustin comes home from camp, despite them making the trip to the hill to construct Cerebro. El does not seem to appreciate any of Mike’s personal interests or personality traits. In a callback to season 1, where El had no interest as Mike showed off his toys, El tells Mike to stop singing and does not laugh at his attempts at a joke (granted, she was angry with him at the time). The implication is that the realities of her relationship with Mike did not meet her expectations. This is actually a fairly normal part of social development, and it leads her to another stage: exploration.

Up until this point, El had not attempted to explore the possibilities of who she was. She had merely taken on the identities that others had crafted for her, starting with Brenner, then Mike, then Hopper, then Max. Max is the first one to actually encourage her to explore and experiment. What Max doesn’t seem to realize, however, is that El is also now emulating her. She’s making some strides to be her own person, but she’s still heavily influenced by Max, included repeating what Max says. Nevertheless, she is genuinely confused by the entire concept of her liking something for herself, and has no idea even how to determine what she likes. This isn’t surprising, as Hopper is shown being in way over his head, and the Party are simply young teens who don’t know better.

Unfortunately for El, a traumatic loss has set her back by the end of Season 3. She lost her first real father figure, and we see her sort of revert back to dressing as she did before Max’s influence. She also falls back into her infatuation with Mike, despite seeming to have moved on. The confusion on Mike’s face suggests that this is a surprise to him, so there is a lot unknown as to how she arrived back at that decision. It is also unknown why she kept it to herself before she moved. It is plausible to hypothesize that she is going back to her first real secure base. She needs to feel safe and secure after so much traumatic change (losing Hopper, her powers vanishing, and having to move away). She could be clinging to Mike as a way to keep some semblance of control. At the very least, Mike doesn’t seem to reciprocate, which could lead to some problems for her down the road.

In the end, El is a complicated character. Millie Bobby Brown has done a commendable job portraying a traumatized character with a limited understanding of emotion and social norms. It is upsetting to see some fans acting as if her relationship with Mike is healthy for her, at least as it has so far been portrayed. There is some hope for El, developmentally speaking, as Joyce has been shown to be a very loving mother. Time away from Mike could be beneficial, but, as we saw early in Season 2, she reacts very possessively if anyone moves in on her “territory,” for lack of a better word. This relationship indeed seems very limiting for her. With any luck, she will be able to explore the world and herself to a greater extent in Season 4. It is my hope, as someone who works with children, that she is able to learn more about herself as more than just someone else’s friend, daughter, girlfriend, sister, or weapon.

Yeah, so this season is massive (like the Ds said, every episode is over an hour long) and we have so many leaks! But those leaks probably only cover maybe 40-50% of the show. We have a pretty clear idea abt what’s going on in Hawkins with Vecna; there are a few missing things and wdk how it ends, but we pretty much have that figured out. We also know a lot abt the lab plot, the only thing wdk is why Brenner is making her relive the memories. The things we don’t know that much abt are the Cali plot and the Russia plot. Most of what we know abt Cali comes from us piecing together the various Abq filming locations and sightings, and a few details from some spoiler accs. We know the basic outline of the first few episodes (El + Will have school projects and get bullied, Mike shows up at airport, they go to roller rink, there’s a fight btwn El and Angela, El gets arrested, they unsuccessfully try to bail her out, El gets “kidnapped”, army breaks into the Byers house), but we really don’t know much what they do for the rest of the season. We know they stop at a SBP location, they go to a motel, they go to Suzie’s to hack into the lab or smth, and they reunite with the Hawkins group at Hopper’s cabin in the last episode. Who knows what happens in between. And literally the only Russia spoilers we’ve gotten have been from legit non-spoiler sources. Casting calls, the monopoly game, Yuri’s voicemail, and the trailer. There’s still sooo much we don’t know.

Spoilers including a Merch Spoiler in ask about halfway down^^^

Also spoilers in reply

But for the anon asking yesterday if there were more leaks, this above ask has some of them. Altho I think a few of these are more complicated, because of the trailer (like if Owens intercepts El from the police van for the diner scene or if she goes willingly as part of the plan), and there are some other things we know like Nina, some other random leaks, etc. I feel both like there’s more that we can put together and some of the recent quotes have made some things more confusing. We also know more about what happens towards the end (the things marked finale spoilers/theories), but some of that are also just theories and generally knowing it should end on a cliffhanger to set up s5. There’s still def a lot we don’t know and especially a lot we don’t know about how things come together. But there are def more direct leaks/spoilers than previous seasons.

U like kali? I felt like she was really manipulative? She wanted to use el. She made her hallucinate brenner to keep her from leaving & she tried to push her to murder someone. Kali was horribly abused but that doesn't make what she's doing right. She's a very interesting character tho & i'm curious to see where the writers take her next season either she continues down her destructive path or after her encounter w/ el she realizes that that's not who she wants to be ie what hawkins lab made her

I love Kali! She was manipulative to Eleven/Jane, but she is also herself a teen, or at most a young adult, who is totally consumed by a burning anger that she’s festered and nurtured so that she can carry on after the awful abuse she went through. I like her because she’s messy and she’s hurting and angry and doing very questionable things.

I also love Hopper so pieces even though he was a pretty shitty dad for most of season 2, isolating a child who has already been traumatised and isolated plenty enough, keeping her away from literally the only people she knows and cares about, and leaving her on her own all day (not to mention also losing his temper with her in really unhelpful ways). But I love him to bits. I like characters who are trying and failing. I find that interesting. I find it heartbreaking and endearing.

I didn’t like that she manipulated Eleven/Jane, and from the moment they met I knew that it would be an awful situation for her to stay in. Even though I really want her to be with her sister and I know she feels a connection there, it’s not a healthy environment for her to be in at all. But I still love Kali, because she’s both a very interesting character with a lot of potential, with lots of directions they could take her story in, and also a character I connect to emotionally. I just have a thing for women who are dealing with trauma and are angry and even manipulative or ‘cold’ and make bad choices apparently (see also: Kira Nerys, Kara Thrace, Susan Ivonova, Sarah Manning etc. etc.)

I also think the post I reblogged about Kali was totally right... if Kali was a white guy the fandom would be losing their shit over him. But she’s not, she’s a brown girl. I notice this even in myself; I don’t feel connected to Kali in the same way I am to a lot of white characters who share those kind of traits with her (like the above list). And I honeslty believe it’s really important to make a conscious effort to work against those ingrained prejudices we all have. I make a deliberate conscious effort to love female characters, and characters of colour, even if I don’t initially feel an inate connection to them.

And I find when I look at Kali, she has all the traits that I would be falling over myself to love her to death for if she was white. So I should love her to death. She’s complicated. She’s hurting. She’s angry. She’s broken. She’s volatile. She’s got a superpower that’s cool af. She’s got a lot of stuff to work out and that means her character has a lot of places to go potentially.

I definitely agree anon, that I’m excited to see where the writers take her story next season. She could come back to Jane, and she could change. She could continue doing what she does, but still see Jane sometimes. She could get caught up in some deep shit trying to get back at the people who hurt her, and drag Jane back into it.

I don’t know... I just hope that the writers don’t forget about her, and give her a well-thought out story that isn’t rushed. I hope she dosen’t get demonised by the narrative either, but treated like the multi-layered and complex character that she is.