for all the effort of morally purifying and chastising “writing” you deem problematic (eleven as a character, mileven as a ship), does it ever cross bylers minds that they dont extend this morality on their ship fanon dynamic?
I back and defend eleven because I love her as a character, but continually trying to prove shes well written, not to be written off as a “female love interest” that “revolves around mike” and “needs to be independent” etc, is genuinely exhausting, when fandom is supposed to be fun, Im instead assaulted by “thinkpieces” around “Janes” character, basically condemning her, belittling her and bastardising her characteristics. But I know about the double standards which just makes these posts even more frustrating - Bylers enjoy the toxicity, you can’t enjoy “canon” Byler (when people thought it was made to be canon) without co-signing that Mike is lying and therefore using Eleven, and they explore themes of obsession, co-dependency to the point of genuine abusive dynamics (the popularised “attic wife” trope).
So my question is, even if Eleven is as you say - reduced to Mike, unhealthily dependent on Mike, has nothing to offer outside of that, why now is it a bad thing(in ways it isn’t with Will/Mike)? It just feels like female characters aren’t allowed to be flawed and breathe and be treated as characters in their own right rather than representatives of what “women” as a group is - I once saw a byler say el “set feminism back by 200 years”.
It just feels massively controlling which is ironic for a character trying so hard to escape control and authority, and to make choices for herself. It just feels like female characters are treated with much more scorn and aren’t considered as fully fledged and complex as other male characters, which is based on real life social bias of “boys will be boys”, that men are considered the “default human”, a mouthpiece for the human experience, whilst women already having set expectations and shamed/humiliated for the way they act and behave, and defined by their gender. I guess whats also interesting about that is, Eleven is “othered” in the show, and also “othered” by the audience and both has to do with her humanity.
I just think the way morally chastised bylers approach El is very vacant, safe… and not her at all. Ive seen multiple admit that they just feel they can “do what they want with her” or forget her completely because they inherently believe all of els writing is “misogynistic”, so shes branded as full of whimsy and childish, immature or whatever is complimentary to the other characters. I don’t know, I just think we should all stop being weird about El if we aren’t going to extend or condemn other characters for their problematic writing, it feels targeted and born out of hatred, it cannot be genuine because of these double standards.
