#el is not jane ives

[ijustreallywantagrilledcheese]

ELEVEN FROM STRANGER THINGS IS NOT JANE IVES AND I CAN PROVE IT.

I've been rewatching Stranger Things before we cancel our Netflix subscription, and while I've always believed El is not Jane Ives, I can prove it now after this rewatch.

So, let's start with Season 2, where El finds out that her mama is still alive.

She finds Terry Ives' files that Hopper stupidly kept in his cabin (literally, Hop, you have an ENTIRE office to put that stuff in, why did you put it in your CABIN?)

And like Jim and Joyce, come to the conclusion that SHE IS Terry's lost daughter.

So she sets out to find Terry. Once she does, she talks with Becky, tells her who she is, and then talks with Terry in a special sorta way that only they can do.

El goes up to the woman she believes is her mother, and says "Mama, it's me, Jane. I'm home."

AND TERRY'S FIRST WORDS TO HER LONG LOST DAUGHTER, THE CHILD SHE LITERALLY ENDURED YEARS OF TORTURE, RIDICULE, AND MOCKERY FOR, LOOKS AT THIS GIRL CLAIMING TO BE HER DAUGHTER, AND SAYS NO.

And THEN she shows her what happened to her.

When she shows El that she had a dangerous and traumatic labor, she shows that she had an emergency C-section.

KEEP THIS IN MIND, IT'S IMPORTANT.

Also, she shows a different lab, a different rainbow room, and two little girls who, specifically, were wearing normal clothing and who did not have buzz cuts.

El understands that Terry wants her to find someone, but she thinks it's the other girl, Kali?

If Terry wants her daughter to come home, why send that same daughter who has been gone for over a decade out to find another child that isn't hers?

And Kali doesn't know who El is when they meet? She has to show her tattoo? She literally doesn't recognize her.

Furthermore, when picking out one of the Bad Men to kill, El only remembers the one that she saw in the memories Terry showed her? She doesn't recognize ANYONE else out of all those people except for one person she doesn't know personally?

Then, Season 3 goes by with few references to El's past.

Then we get to Season 4.

El has lost her powers from her fight with the Mindflayer at the end of Season 3. She is starting to remember her past, and she remembers something completely different from what Terry showed her.

Children with buzz-cut hair and hospital gowns, just like her.

A different-looking rainbow room from the one Terry saw and was in.

Then time goes by.

Brenner magically shows up to help El get her powers back, proving that he has connections outside of Hawkins and the Bad Man that El picked for Kali and the others to kill was NOT lying.

And El slowly gets her memories back. At least enough to remember what happened with 001 and the Upside Down and how things started. Conveniently, the memories of where she was before the lab are ALMOST COMPLETELY in Terry's POV.

Except one very awkward and out of place memory that didn't fit the others.

She remembers her birth. And she remembers going through a tunnel--like a child passing through the birth canal.

Which can only be done via a vaginal delivery.

El remembers being born vaginally.

Why is this detail important?

Because TERRY DIDN'T HAVE A VAGINAL DELIVERY, SHE HAD A C-SECTION.

THEREFORE,

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE for El to be Jane Ives.

[livsmessydoodles]

the tinie

[sapphicslut777]

i want to see lucas and el have a plot together in season 5!! i want more about the inner-workings of their relationship. i think that those two have had tension since season 1.

after all, lucas was the first one to suggest that “maybe el is the monster”. i truly believe that moment (and her subsequently throwing lucas across the junkyard) is what causes her spiral with *someone* or *something* having to be the monster in the story.

plenty of people point out el’s [someone has to be the monster] complex. brenner, henry, mike… i wonder what kind of closure that part of the narrative will receive (will the answer be someone? no one? nothing?).

i want to see el and lucas having a friendship, and bonding over max (and potentially the loss of the rest of the friend group)… i have a feeling this season is going to be pretty bleak/harrowing all of the way through, from the beginning. i’m scared i’m going to have to mourn the gang splitting up.

but i hope that we ultimately get to see some new dynamics with existing characters, rather than them introducing anymore new characters for season 5

[kittyvolvox]

i think one of my favorite things about jane/el that i've seen very few people talk about fully is how she loves, how she echoes and collects these part of the people around her even people who aren't in her life anymore, who she loved for just a little while. like her use of "bitchin" she got from kali, her love of eggos from mike making it for her once, her constantly wearing clothes that belong to other people. i don't know i just find it cute that she collects these little trinkets of everyone she loves like a little turtle or something

[fairyrona]

here i am the bringer of elumax being happy!!

[gayofthefae]

El to me is so very much a representation of female rage in an empowering way who also deserves rest. I love her gentle moments. Because she is ANGRY and she is allowed to express it. But it is also so sweet to see her in those soft moments. Where she doesn't have to. The quiet, calm moments when she doesn't have any to express.

She is strong and she is allowed to be strong. But at the end of the day, it's about how she shouldn't have to be.

Thinking about El keeping her powers but laying down her load.

Honestly, thinking about "To you I can admit that I'm just too soft for all of it".

[ectonurites]

this post made me think of her <3

[pinkeoni]

El's Superhero/Monster Dichotomy

El's monster conflict starts in season one, when she blames herself for the gate opening and for Will's disappearance.

This conflict seems to be "resolved" when she kills the actual monster, the demogorgon, making herself a hero and not a monster. This is even suggested earlier by Mike, who innocently tells El that she isn't the monster because she saved him.

Although this "resolve" is actually quite tragic. She proves herself to be a hero which does offer a conclusion to this conflict within this season, but she sacrifices everything for this.

This conflict comes back in full for El in season four. She no longer has her powers, and she's in a new environment where she's alienated and bullied. On top of everything, her boyfriend can't even say "I love you" to her. It's not a stretch to say that she feels monstrous.

This is only reaffirmed for El after her incident with Angela. Now, obviously this wasn't a good thing for her to do, but El also completely disregards all of the pain that Angela made her feel, perceiving herself as this violent monster who attacks innocent girls unprovoked. We know this is what she's thinking when she says as much to the cops.

I don’t think El wanted to kill Angela, which is why she says “I don’t know,” but she’s unsure because she’s unable to trust her own judgement. At this point she sees herself as a killing machine, so she must have wanted to kill Angela, even if that goes against her true reasoning.

Now, of course we the audience know that El isn't the monster, and everyone close to her knows this as well. But what matters isn't how others perceive her, it matters how El perceives herself.

Her argument with Mike doesn't absolve any of her feelings either, which is of no fault to either Mike nor El. El was too in her head and it wasn't something anyone could talk her out of, and she also wasn't aware of Mike's own internal conflict which was informing all of his responses. Mike can't say "I love you" to El because of his own issues, but to El, he can't say "I love you" because she is an unlovable monster.

Mike really means well when he says "You're a superhero," but it makes things much worse in El's mind. Instead, it creates an unreasonable expectation—

El believes that if she can't save the world, then she must be a monster. She doesn't allow herself to be neither— a human being.

NINA doesn't do much to alleviate El's dichotomous thinking, if anything it only encourages it. She only shifts the monster label on to someone else, that being Papa, and since she wasn't responsible for the massacre like she, and even the audience was led to initially believe, she's able to cleanly reclaim her superhero status. She was the one who defeated the perpetrator, in a moment that visually echoes the end of season one. She's the hero again!

She marches into her battle with Henry with a new sense of high confidence. And she loses.

This isn't El's fault, but she blames herself for Max's condition anyway. Will points out that Max wouldn't even be alive if not for El, but it doesn't matter for her.

To El, getting her powers back doesn't make her a superhero. And if she's not a superhero, well, then she must be the one who destroyed the world.

The resolve of El's conflict wasn't to get her powers back, she just believed that it would fix her problems. But the core conflict is still there— her black and white way of thinking.

So what does this mean moving forward?

Ironically, I think that El can actually learn something from Henry:

I don't think that El's arc in the coming season is going to be about becoming the hero again, but rather unlearning this train of thought. The world isn't made of monsters and superheroes, the world is made up of human beings who all make choices, her being one of them. She isn't responsible for the decisions of others, and it isn't her responsibility to take care of the mess that others create. She's a brave girl who decided to use her powers to try and save her friends, and her failure doesn't make her guilty for the fallout.

I wouldn't be surprised if El pushes herself to be the superhero who saves the world once again, although, the show has already revealed to us what happens when she does— it destroys her.

[claywheelr]

Shes my daughter and I love her

[will80sbyers]

Is El a good person is not a question people should be asking, seeing what she went through you should be asking yourself how the hell is she still this good even with all that abuse and trauma being fourteen years old, she went through terrible things in her formative years she should be so much worse. She had to kill people to defend herself and to not be punished, she was isolated for a long period of time, bullied by her peers, kidnapped from her mother... She was forced to live in isolation again even after she gained some happiness with Hopper and then her new dad didn't know how to manage his own trauma so he didn't know how to manage hers obviously, then she had to fight monsters and there is a serial killer that wants to kill her and her friends and then she couldn't save her best friend completely... She didn't know about the outside world until she was 11/12 and didn't even have a name... She was a number... How is she still good and kind most of the time, how does she still have the strength to fight for good and help her friends, how does she still try to trust people with what she experienced? That's the question for me... Of course she's not perfect, of course she gets jealous of her only friend, of course she makes mistakes with other characters and doesn't know the appropriate way to examine her own feelings and have conversations about her relationship, that should be expected and normal even if she was just a 14 years old without the trauma... The answer is yeah she is a good person because she still tries to be even with all the trauma she experienced without any mental health knowledge and even being re traumatized every year since she escaped the lab

[henrysglock]

Is el in tfs blonde?? I missed that

Sure is!

She and Henry have the same hair color at the end:

She’s also got the same hair color as Jane:

Which is not the same as in-show El:

[livsmessydoodles]

mistery twins!!

[friendsdontlieokay]

Well hey Milevens, it's almost confirmed that Byler is gonna become canon in s5, how do you feel about it?

Just to be clear though, I don't wanna sound passive aggressive, just asking out of sheer curiosity cause I don't ship either Byler or Mileven romantically, though the platonic ones are the loml

[kittyvolvox]

1x02

el/jane walking into the wheelers living room and her first reaction is to go up to nancy's picture to say "pretty"?? that girl is gay and i truly do believe that.

also super relatable natalia dyer is gorgeous

[devondespresso]

the most unrealistic thing in stranger things is that El didn't have like 10 different lesbian secret-admirers. She's the quirky but sweet new girl, felt the need to share the name of the squirrel from her cabin, has a brother who did his project on alan turing and a 'long distance boyfriend' who for a while no one had seen and angela probably said was made up to everybody. how did she not have like 3 different queer girls making heart eyes at her in the background of every shot???? unrealistic.

[chirpsythismorning]

Lonnie's last appearance in The First Shadow [source]:

"It wasn't me. I didn't do it!"

Lonnie's first mention in the series (1x01)

Which reminded me...

Kate Trefry talking about The First Shadow [source]:

We always try to go back to the original pilot and say, what more is there to learn about this moment?

Based on the leaks out there, there seems to be very few Lonnie scenes in the play, and yet it also sounds like he's gotta be the most consistently portrayed when compared to his character on the show, more than anyone else, even down to this very line, this concept of him having nothing to do with it. This tells me that with what little they were willing to give, there is a major significance to it and what it means for his character and for his role in the story overall.

So what is it? What does Lonnie have nothing to do with?

In s1, it's about Will and his disappearance. But clearly it's more than that because they made a point to have Joyce say it twice, to trust her on this.

If Lonnie has nothing to do with this, and that's a theme they want to carry out in this play in a way that quite literally juxtaposes his first mention on the show, taking us back to the very beginning, what does that mean?

Idk. Maybe it just means he has nothing to do with this. Maybe it means he has nothing to do with Will more than we realize...

It's giving