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theoriginalsapphic · 1 year

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disproving the mlvn bingo

“I want El to grow on her own”

This is a bad thing because…? El is a child that grew up the first twelve years of her life locked up in a lab and used for her powers. Then she got out and spent a week helping a group of kids to find their missing friend, almost died, survived in the wilderness by herself for approximately a month, and was forced in isolation in a cabin in the woods for another year.

The first time she got to actually go to the outside world to have fun like a girl her age should was at the snowball dance, in December of 1984 / January of 1985, and even she would still spend most of her time hiding from the world in the cabin. The only other time she got to live like a normal girl was when she went out shopping with Max. After that, she got involved again with the Upside Down, lost her father-figure, and moved to the other side of the country with people she barely knew.

As of canon, she has only been living in the real world for, and I’m being extremely generous with this estimate, fifteen months. Most people her age need time to grow on their own and focus on themselves, and they lived in relatively normal circumstances and in a society their whole lives. Saying that El may need some time to get to know herself first isn’t misogynistic, or ableist, it’s just common sense.

Ableist to El, Mocks El’s speech

Connected to the previous point. El is a fourteen year girl that spent twelve of those years locked away and being dehumanized and never getting the chance to properly socialize. It’s a reasonable thing to say that it will take her time to catch up to people her age who have lived in society their whole lives. It’s not ableist to point out this. In fact, completely ignoring this aspect of her character means ignoring the influence that it has on her character, which brings a whole layer of complexity to her.

Also, anyone who is ableist to El (or to anyone for that matter) sucks! I’m glad we can agree on that! But I’m not okay with mlvns crying out ableism any time someone criticizes the ship only to turn around and be ableist to Max or Dustin (and Gaten by default).

“El doesn’t understand being in a relationship”

Maybe she has an understanding of what being in a relationship means at the end of season four, but she should have never been put in a relationship so early on. Fresh-out-of-the-lab twelve-year-old El shouldn’t have been kissed and later put on a relationship with the first age-appropriate boy who showed her kindness and who had to explain her basic concepts like friendship and privacy. Those are concepts that are supposed to be taught by your parents— not your boyfriend.

May I need to remind people that this is a canon scene from season 3?

Mind you; she has been dating Mike for around six months already at this point.

Part of El learning to understand what being in a relationship means is also learning what kind of things she wants and can accept in a relationship, which, she spends most of season 3 doing.

Mike lied in the monologue

Well, sorry to tell you this, but… he did!

and El knows it.

MiIeven cheating trope!!

As someone who hates cheating and has been personally harmed by the actions of a cheater… let people write whatever they want in their fics. If someone wants to explore that in fiction then they should be able to do it. (Also, I doubt the Duffers would ever write Mike cheating on El, so you can relax about that).

Blames Millie for miIeven

I don’t associate myself often with her fandom because although she seems like a lovely person her fandom is absolutely rancid, but she seems someone who likes to play the audience and have fun. She had said she ships miIeven and wants a wedding for them. She had said she ships byler and wants a love triangle with them. Whether Millie actually means it, is pandering to the fandom, or it’s just straight up trolling and having fun… it doesn’t matter, and I doubt she actually cares as much as people want her to care.

Neither Millie nor any of the actors have any power over whatever decisions the Duffers end up choosing in their writing. If anyone blames any of the actors for whatever happens to their characters, they are fucking idiots; simple as that.

Sexist to El

And yet, mlvn shippers are the ones I often see saying how much El needs Mike, of how she would kill Will if Mike left her, of how she was capable of fighting Vecna only because Mike told her he loves her, of how the only person that actually cares about her is Mike, completely disregarding her family and friends that love her deeply.

I don’t know about you, but I think that reducing El to be this needy girl who is dependent on her boyfriend and makes her to seem that her boyfriend is the only thing she cares about and should care about is… really sexist.

El is a character who consists of two main parts: of trying to create her own identity and of wanting a family, which are both interconnected with how she was stripped of her autonomy since birth and how she wants to belong somewhere.

El grew for the first twelve years of her life with the understanding that love is transactional and conditional on what she can do for others. This is seen mostly in season 1, with El being used for Brenner’s experiments, and when she exerts herself to the point she almost dies for a group of kids that wanted to find their missing friend.

With every season, there is something new that she leans about herself that helps her become a person. Because that is an aspect that people rarely talk about El; she wasn’t even treated like a human being for 85% of her life, but rather just a lab rat.

In season 2, she embarks on a journey all by herself to find out about her mother, and later, her sister Kali. This remarks what El has been wanting her whole life— a family.

In season 3, she explores her identity and her likes and dislikes through fashion and hobbies for the first in her life with Max (I have a whole post about how El’s development of regaining her autonomy is shown through her clothes).

In season 4, she outright says that she doesn’t belong anywhere, and is struggling with the dichotomy that her powers bring: is she a monster or a superhero? At the end of the season, she has come to terms with the complexity of who she is, determining that she is both and neither, and she has finally found a family. She doesn’t belong to a specific place, but to people. Hawkins isn’t her home; her friends and family are. She belongs with them.

So, tell me: who is being sexist to El? You, who reduces her to her romantic relationship… or me? And yes, female characters can be in romantic relationships and still be their own characters, but El isn’t like most of female characters in the sense that she never got the chance to figure out her identity and what she wants before getting in a relationship.

Ships El with a random party member so Mike will be free

miIeven wishes they had what elmax has

“MiIeven is unhealthily and codepent”, “Mike pays too much attention to El, he doesn’t make time for his friends!”

I mean… I’m not the one saying it, blame the Duffers for that one.

Mike looks he is about to sneeze but he’s looking in Will’s directions so it’s heart eyes

If Mike looked at El the way he looks Will you wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it.

cr: @/mvltibyers

Taking the monologue and replacing El with Will and suddenly it’s peak romance

Why would I want byler to have that poorly lighted and directed, and badly written monologue when I already have this one?

youtube

Calls El bald and think they did something

I agree! It’s wrong to make fun of El being bald when that fact is tightly connected with how she was stripped off of her femininity as a form of dehumanization and it’s one of the most visible signs of the abuse that was inflicted on her.

However, may I need to remind you that those ‘jokes’ are usually in response with you calling Will literally homophobic slurs or are you going to play coy and innocent?

Compares Mike to Brenner

Blame the Duffers for this one, not us for noticing it.

Hates on Mike but wants him with their fave

You're so right! I don't see the point of shipping a couple if you hate half of it, especially because it would mean to reduce his character to be only a love interest and nothing else. Anyway, what character arc do you think Mike is going to go through in season 5?

Bring ups miIeven break up

They really couldn’t have made it more obvious that’s where they headed so, yes; I want them to break up and I think it will benefit both of their characters. Sorry for following the story, ig.

Says miIeven wasn’t together for s4

Don’t forget to mention how they also weren’t together for season 2 and most of season 3! In fact, it almost seems like after they shared the first kiss, they were never allowed to share a significant amount of screen time together again.

Also, Mike and El aren’t real people; if the Duffers don’t write them to share screen time together it’s because they don’t want to.

The Duffers wrote it so El spent most of season 2 searching for her mom and her sister and longing for freedom. The Duffers wrote it so El spent most of season 3 with Max learning about what she likes and trying to create her own identity away from male influence. The Duffers wrote it so El spent most of season 4 in NINA, which was probably the most important part of her character arc in the show so far.

The Duffers also wrote it so Mike spent most of season 2 with Will. The Duffers wrote it so the fight between Mike and Will was more emotionally charged than his breakup with El, and they wrote it so Mike and Will have a one-on-one goodbye scene just like miIeven and jvncy.

The Duffers wrote it in season 4 so Will is revealed as gay and in love with Mike in the same season that Mike can’t say ‘I love you’ to El, has a fight that, in his words, “can’t come back from”, for Mike to nod when Wills says: “what if they don’t like the truth?”, and needs to get backrubs and compliments from his bff so he can finally say that ‘I love you’ to his girlfriend while she in on the brink of dying. Oh, and also they spend the whole season together.

Go figure.

Calls El “Jane” or “Eleven”

Like everyone in the show does?

I think the only person that has never called her ‘Eleven’ is Hopper.

“You don’t understand Mike/El like I do!”

And I’m so glad I don’t.

#byler #elmike #mike wheeler #el hopper #i need to step out of the fandom most often #because when i was taking screenshots from the show for this post it reminded me i actually love these characters #and it's being in the fandom that ruins them for me

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maddy-ferguson · 11 months

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controversial opinion but i dont think the duffers set up byler well, lets be real most of the fandom outside of our echo chamber doesn't think byler is going to become canon. and like idk but i agree that they should have at least broken up mlvn and resolved the monologue issue (preferably not include it even) if they were going for the byler route. same for will's importance or even mike's importance for the plot. removing them from the show's main narrative doesn't make a good case for their importance in the story in the penultimate, esp when they received minimum screentime in this season. it's not the audience's fault to think mlvn is endgame or will or mike are unimportant when the way they've been handled were lackluster and when cali plot.... Was Like That. plus they gave it all to el's character lol. ofc ppl gonna think she's the protagonist when she was the one who opened the gate and created vecna and when mike spends the entire season talking about her. redpill but it's not making much sense here when the narrative is criticized in the byler fandom, acting like the writers did a perfect job in terms of setup is just being wilfully blind atp.

i think people not expecting it is the point though. like yeah it's obvious because when they did the same thing on a smaller scale with nancy's love triangle at the end of season 1 (her spending most of the season with jonathan them bonding and her and steve fighting but then still being together in the epilogue) most people could see that jonathan and nancy were gonna be together and not one person was called delusional for thinking that. but i really think the juxtaposition is the point, it's a queer couple so even with a similar storyline people don't expect it because of heteronormativity etc which is kind of depressing but it's also what's gonna make it happening even better...#imho

for the monologue, obviously i don't ENJOY IT but i don't hate it because i think it's interesting for el? whether you think she believed him or not, whether or not you think she was gonna break up with him at sbp, i think having him tell her he loves her makes it so no one can be like "but if mike had said he loved her everything would've been fine!" i like them going all the way in that sense. i think it's good for us as an audience to have that, this way there's no what ifs. it makes it apparent that their relationship couldn't be fixed by mike saying i love you and also that their fight in lenora wasn't only about mike and about their relationship, like mike never thought she was a monster that was all el, and him telling her that she's not a monster won't fix that internal struggle for her. and it also won't help her grow beyond the monster/superhero dichotomy.

i don't like will and mike being away from the supernatural plot either but yk i do think it's because they're important for the resolution of that storyline and that that's also supposed to come as a surprise. for mike well i don't actually know that he is, but i certainly know will is and i think they did set that up pretty well. he's not in episode 7 but they reveal that the upside down is frozen on the day he disappeared, he's in hawkins for five minutes but the season ends with him talking about his connection to vecna and everyone and their mother is reminded of the fact that will is a vital part of the supernatural plot. people don't necessarily think he's gonna be the key to resolving the upside down and vecna thing for good (no matter what that looks like, i'm expecting it to be both el and will because it kind of is the el show + we'll fix it together + lucas and erica (siblings) being the mvps of the basketball game and the dnd game that has a lot of foreshadowing in episode 1 etc) because el's the one who's always done it pretty much by herself...but it's also never worked. not for long anyway. i would say that like byler (but not as shocking because it's not someone assumed to be straight turning out to be gay) it's supposed to make people go oh why have i never thought of that of course will would be an integral part of the ud resolution this makes so much sense!!! when it happens. and characters also always expect el to be the one to fix it just like they don't expect byler to happen. meta.

and again i don't LOVE mike and will's thing being the conversational roadtrip only in season 4, but i get why they did it like i see the vision. i see where you're coming from and i agree that most people not seeing byler coming isn't necessarily their fault (even though i said it's similar to nancy's s1 triangle and everyone expected it then. nancy never gave steve an i love you i've loved you forever i'll love you forever speech, major difference), i really think it's NOT supposed to be that obvious. even though it is kind of. i get wishing they had broken up mlvn in volume 2 and i certainly would've liked not having to see bylers be called delusional 24/7 but i think mlvn breaking up would've made byler endgame wayy too obvious and if they wanted it to be obvious to the girls that get it only i think they've accomplished that. same with will and the supernatural plot. and everyone is free to not like it still, i just don't think that means the set up isn't good.

very last paragraph. i don't think everything they've ever written is perfect. i don't even think every decision that's been made by the st team regarding WILL's queerness is perfect like (this is another conversation) having noah deny the gay allegations on will's behalf a month before having him say oh yeah he is gay it's obvious is crazy to me it's no surprise that people feel like it's an afterthought and like byler is never gonna happen. even though i obviously disagree with them. fin.

#parenthesis inception #obviously i think the monologue is also interesting for mike and for byler and for will depending on how they deal with it in s5 (can you #imagine hearing your bff that you happen to be in love with tell your new sister who saved your life a bunch of times that he's in love #with her that's bad enough but also that his life started the day he met her which also happens to be about 24 hours after your life change #4ever in the worst possible way like you were fighting for your life in the ud and he makes it sound like #he was having a great time and falling in love and yeah he was #looking for you but also finding himself a girlfriend and that's the thing he'll remember for the rest of his life. you're being mean stop #it wouldn't even be enough in this situation like i would have a very hard time believing that my bff i'm in love with loves me back or #even cares about me at all. but yk i'm not the duffer brothers' oc who knows what they'll do)#el fixing it and it not lasting long is also true of everyone trying to fight the ud with guns btw like yeah nancy is very badass and it's #great that she...likes firearms? idk. idk how to say it but i get that it's a positive thing for her character but at the end of the day #vecna literally walked away lmao like that was not a win #ask

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demadogs · 2 years

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Honestly I would have no byler doubt at all if it wasn’t for the damn monologue. I know it’s been analyzed to death on why it wasn’t completely genuine and it does make sense but then I start to think why the duffers would even do the monologue in the first place if they were going to breakup marijuana next season. I keep thinking of when they hyped it up before vol 2 came out and said it’s Finn’s best performance. It’s driving me crazy because the way it was set up with using Will’s feelings for Mike to even be able to tell El he loves her means they really fucked up if it isn’t actually a setup for byler to happen next season. If they really just used Will’s love for Mike as something to get McNugget back together I’ll be so upset. :(

i understand your thought process and i did completely agree with you at one point but i think ive grown to actually appreciate the purpose of this monologue. i do however still think el should have broken up with him this season for sure.

to answer what the point of it was if theyre just gonna break up anyway, i think it was entirely for el’s arc. for her to realize that she’s finally heard those words she needed to hear but it didnt change anything. she still wasnt happy. we see that based on the fact that they share zero dialogue and barely acknowledge each other after that scene. youd expect her to hug and kiss him and say she loves him too but she didnt. i dont think she believed it because the only other time he said he loved her was also a tense life or death situation. he cant say it just casually.

also just the ratio of byler to mlvn evidence just points so aggressively towards byler that even on july 1st i wasnt even thinking “we got queerbaited :(“ i was just astronomically confused because the way they set up volume 1 it completely looked like mlvn was bones ESPECIALLY considering it wasnt just “look!! byler!!” it was also “look at all of mlvns problems!!”. and that couldnt have been queerbait because THEY DIDNT KNOW ITD BE IN TWO PARTS!!!!!!!!! so its not like they were like “ok lets build up byler and gain an audience for a month and then redeem mlvn”. they didnt know they would be doing that when they were still in production.

in just volume one we got (and these are just the biggies not everything) a very shitty “im not gay” bro tap instead of a hug after not seeing his best friend for months, el lying to him about being so happy and having so many friends in lenora because shes insecure about their relationship, mike being so fake too by avoiding eye contact with her and not seeming that engaged in whats going on the way she is, ignoring will but then listing off all these things he noticed, INSISTING that theyre just friends even tho will didnt even imply that he meant anything romantic, a track called IN THE CLOSET playing when MIKE SPEAKS, mike and els fight and el crying because he never says he loves her and he kinda gaslights her and turns it back around to the bullies and mouth breathers, “its hawkins its not the same without you”, the tripple take. theres literally so much.

ALLLLL that doesnt get erased just from one scene. and again, it wasnt initially intended to be in two parts so no, their thought process could not have been queerbaiting for why there was so much byler in volume one and not two.

i understand why the duffers said this was finns best performance. this would probably be an incredibly difficult thing to act out. its not just a love confession, its a love confession that he doesnt mean. but the audience doesnt know that. it couldnt be so obvious that EVERYONE immediately picks up on it being fake buts its still gotta be a little suspicious. he needed to put just the right amount of emotion so people may like it but also start to question it.

also his micro expressions are really good. this is not the face of someone about to tell the love of his life his feelings. its someone whos about to do something he doesnt want to do.

i honestly really hope next week we get the script for this scene. even if it doesnt give insight to mikes feelings, seeing el’s pov would also be really interesting. plz vote for it if its an option.

#bro i was just looking through my drafts and found this entire thing already written and i just never posted it for some reason #this was asked like a week ago #byler #eden answers

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watchmenanon · 1 year

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This was a small part of your last answer to the Anon ask, but I agree completely with you that there's nothing really cute about throwing a traumatized girl who lived her life in a lab into the arms of the first normal boy she meets. I think that if the audience was meant to root for Mleven, the Duffers went about it in completely the wrong way.

There was no build up. They met, and Mike kissed her at the end of the first season. They spent most of season two apart, but then kissed at the end of it. Seasons 3 and 4 were just them lying, fighting, and having never ending relationship problems.

Had the Duffers wanted us to root for them, they should have:

Had Mike hug El instead of kiss her at the end of season 1. That way, the audience would know a relationship might happen, and there would be a tension there. Instead of being able to automatically assume "Yep, they're going to be together now," there would be a "Hmm, let's see where this goes."

They should have allowed El to discover who she is, and given her the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Max and all of the boys. They would've included some cute scenes of Mike and El (maybe some flirting, a handhold, hug, etc.) but nothing outright. This would have kept the audience invested in their friendship, and kept people interested to see if they were going to get together or not.

Then, they should've finally gotten together either at the end of season 4 or during season 5. It was all done too quickly. There was so little build up, and no opportunity to doubt for even one second whether they would "get together." Frankly, if it was meant to be a likable ship, it was written in a very boring and lazy way.

Hi Anon!!!💚

You're absolutely right about what you're saying and I completely agree with you. It would've been a more understandable ship for people to root for if they were written like that.

Personally, I wouldn't have liked mlvn in these circumstances either and that's because Mike is still the first normal boy that she has ever met and the first one who showed her kindness.

I don't know if you're a familiar with the "Nice Guy Syndrome", but I have the opinion that a mlvn slow burn would've contributed to perpetuate it.

The Audiences (and even the characters) would've expected mlvn to get together because El owes him that for everything he has done for her, there would be a sense of entitlement for her to reciprocate his feelings and they wouldn't have stopped talking about "Mike being stuck in the friendzone".

I'll leave you with a couple of articles that explains my feelings about this topic.

Thank you so much for the ask!!! Have a great day!!!!💙💛

#answered asks #anon the wise #anti mileven #byler

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maddy-ferguson · 1 year

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the way the script/shows prove that nancy likes steve to an extent and is attracted to him again but people deny stncy has no chance of happening and nancy has never loved steve or never has been attracted to him at all...... like girlie i understand stncy does suck but being delusional wont erase canon lol. also the falling relationship of jncy. like i dont even think stncy is going to be canon again but lets not act like they do not like each other when they blatantly do... and that they feel attraction toward one another. this is a serious case of denial.

not you sending this to me, someone who thinks there was and is no feelings from nancy to steve💔 kidding. that's just what i said when i answered a similar ask two months ago. i think there's no point in denying that there's attraction there and that that's what we're seeing in season 4, she thinks he's hot, big deal, they were together and having sex for a year of course she would still find him attractive 18 months later lol. he looks the same. but yeah like i was saying in march i do think she liked him but i don't think she was ever IN LOVE with him. which, semantics i guess? but also not really. and i don't see her leaving jonathan because of the five days she spent hanging out with her ex who was the only person who knew anything of what she'd been through with the upside down and barb you know? but that doesn't necessarily translate to jncy endgame. agreed # not in denial tbh

the only reason i’m confident stncy isn’t gonna happen isn’t because i’m sure jncy is endgame because as i just said i’m not, it’s because it makes no sense thematically. and i know that doesn’t sound like much when you get scenes of nancy staring at a shirtless steve, but i really just still don’t see her checking him out as a deep (meaningful) attraction. if they’d shown us steve and nancy having deep personal talks maybe but what do we get all season really? sexual tension? nancy checking him out? an act of “unambiguous true love” that’s just nancy trying not to let someone close to her die on her watch again?

the thing with jncy though is it's not exactly like byler and mlvn where you can go "mlvn isn't endgame for these reasons therefore byler is" because jncy have Been in a relationship. mike not ending up with either wouldn't make sense because we've only seen one relationship play out, with nancy though...she's been with both. stncy is dead in the water and makes no sense with the rejecting comformity theme of the show. but jncy are no longer in that s1-2 love triangle territory that ensures they're gonna be together, they're in an actual relationship now and are having trouble, that's just the objective truth. maybe they'll fix everything and go to emerson or nyu or lenora community together. but i also think saying they're fine just because stncy isn't happening again is a little presumptuous.

#they're definitely not going to emerson nyu or lenora community together ijbol. if they don't break up i will genuinely be shocked #ngl i have not read that script. i mean i think i've seen the stncy bit you're talking about? and yeah i've thought this for a while so #my second paragraph is a copy paste of a longer ask i answered in march that was my anti jncy month #kidding. i just don't know if i would bring up every point i brought up then. but anon if you want it it's under #single nancy truther 4 life #and you agree with me you said you don't think stncy's gonna happen again you didn't ask for that second paragraph but i like it #my last paragraph is my tags from march 20th in real sentences. inspiration: me #me admitting that nancy is attracted to steve without a gun to my head. brave of me in march brave of me today #but yeah it's like. these two love triangles are DIFFERENT just because i think mike is gay and thus was never really into el like that #doesn't mean that nancy wasn't attracted to steve. i just think she was not in love with him and his vision of the future and him being the #local jock would still make ending up with him her version of comforming. and you know what she said. screw that #i do think she stayed with him between season 1 and season 2 in part bc of barb guilt though ive said that but yeah. still attracted to him #ask

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