El/Jane is a super complex character so I’m gonna dissect her real quick for fun
She’s been conditioned to believe that performance and violence = success and love and happiness because in the lab, kids were rewarded for performing. This is shown by the multiple instances in which she persists to be of any help despite the harm that comes to her. She’s been taught that the pain will amount to something and that something is approval and praise. Both of these, she gets in and out of the lab. This is also why when she loses her powers she’s incredibly distraught and angry all the time. Her one way of solving problems is gone. She’s not that great at communicating with words so she does things she regrets and for the first time, she sees the damage she can do without her powers and suddenly she doesn’t get approval for it. Everyone is scared of her. Her worldview is shattered. Now she feels like a monster and she’s miserable because she has no way of expressing herself because if not violence or her powers, then how does she make people understand how she’s feeling? Obviously, everyone around her is used to normal communication (the Byers are pretty good at this) so there’s no one to help her figure this out. Not only is she now isolated and overwhelmed because of her emotions and dealing with a ton of shit at once, the one thing she thought was stable for the last eight months or so, has turned out to be an illusion. Mike doesn’t understand her at all. (This is not hate on Mike) He gaslights her which only makes her more confused because now she doesn’t understand what exactly she should be angry about. She feels a ton of emotions and there’s no outlet. Everything is crumbling. She tries to cling to normalcy but her emotions keep getting in the way of that.
She really just wants to live. I feel like a lot of El/Jane’s emotions stem from jealousy and fear because fear is a survival instinct and jealousy is something she’s developed because in the lab, there was always competition for Brenner’s love and attention. She is by nature, unfortunately, a jealous person which leads to her holding grudges. She simply solves the problem the way one of the kids at the lab would’ve: elimination (not killing, just in general).
She doesn’t just choose fight or flight—it depends on the situation. In most emotionally taxing fights with people, she runs. Season 1 is a great example of this. She has a huge fight with Mike and Lucas and runs away. However, in the face of adversity, she never runs. She stays put and fights because that’s all she’s ever been trained to do. Again, the whole approval thing factors in here and I’m not gonna elaborate because it would go in circles.
She hangs onto fantasy versions of romance because she hasn’t seen real world examples of true love. Familial love she learns, platonic love, she also figures out herself and with the help of friends but romantic love… she’s provided with a rose-tinted vision of what love and intimacy looks like and she imitates. El is like a sponge which most kids are earlier in development. Because of her age though and how late she’s learning all of this, it sticks. She doesn’t want to change her view of romantic love anymore. It’s ingrained in her mind as the kind of stuff in films and movies. Therefore, she uses this very narrow scope of the topic to view her real love life in: as something big and dramatic. While she slowly waters down those views in following years, she clings onto one thing and that is approval. However, even after she has reduced her standards, she still never gets what she wants to hear and I think that’s tragic and for me, why I dislike Mileven as a ship so much. They’re incompatible because El needs something more and Mike needs a lot less. This isn’t slander on either character, it’s just the truth.
Not gonna focus much on this one but she loves learning about social things. How to dress cool, how to act around boys, what boyfriends/friends should act like, etc. She actually does care what people think of her which is a fatal flaw that only keeps hurting herself (approval again).
She hates being stripped of her autonomy and people deciding for her because for the first time in 12 years, she’s gotten a taste of freedom and now she never wants to go back. Whenever someone makes a decision for her (which is why I hate the way her and Hopper’s relationship and Mileven were) she feels personally attacked and everything she’s worked for feels threatened. So she hates that and I love that Max picks up on the fact in S3 and advocates for her.
She’s stubborn as hell. S1 is enough proof of this and I love her for that.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk <3
*This is specifically for writers who are in need of any kind of character analysis or character study because I’ve noticed that El is really hard to characterize due to the lack of personality in her speech (because it’s very broken and broken speech doesn’t reflect nearly as much personality) also because her speaking tends to be plot or relationship centered (also her actions). I also partially made this as a reference for myself as I really wanna write a fic from her perspective at some point! Hope this helped!
This isn’t a pro-mileven post. It’s strictly about El and El only.