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I remembered my first ever Stranger Things fanart of El from 2017 (swipe to see) and thought it would be really cool to draw her from s5 and compare the two. We both grew<3

I am deeply obsessed with this show and it feels incredibly nostalgic and sad that it ends soon, but I'm cherishing every second of it<3 I fell in love with ST right away back in 2017 and I think I wasn't fully appreciating it over the years. So I'm glad to experience this huge wave of excitement that comes with the last season!

Good thing my characters now have chins lmao. Also my lineart was soooo shaky, I cannot fully tell if it was purposeful or not

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El's story has always meant a lot to me, she's one of the most well writen characters.

She carries so much pain with her. The way she was treated is so sad, growing up in a lab, where she was given a childhood full of manipulation, isolation, and control. She had her childhood stolen from her, by this people who treated her as an experiment, a weapon. She never learned what meant to be a child, to belong, to be loved.

Because of this, she grew up not understanding the world around her, the meaning of relationships, or a sense of identity. All that she knew was pain.

When she meets Mike, for the first time, she is treated with kindness, care, and compassion, things she never had before. To her, Mike becomes someone she associates with safety, protection, and belonging. He was the first person who made her feel human. She begins to associate how Mike takes care of her with love. It becomes something associated with care and protection.

Despite everything she went through, she still shows compassion for those who have shown her kindness. She was ready to sacrifice herself to save Mike, Lucas, and Dustin from the Demogorgon. At that moment, she was ready to die for those who showed her what love truly means.

This shows us that despite everything she went through, she is still an amazing person, ready to protect those she cares about.

We see in Season 2 that her relationship with Hopper had a lot of issues. They both were shaped by something traumatic in their past.

Eleven was lost. She didn't know who she was. She was haunted by the things that happened to her. She felt traped, not being able to understand what she was. Not being allowed to be free. Be happy.

In Season 2, her arc evolves around self-discovery. She starts questioning who she is and what she truly wants. She remembers the story Hopper read to her about a mother. And that stayed with her, she realized how important that figure is to someone's life. They make her realize how much she wanted that kind of connection.

So, when she finds out she has a mother, she goes look for her, hoping to find more about herself and a sense of belonging. When she loses the connection with Terry in the void, it breaks her. Because she finally found someone she had a past with beeing torn away from her now, and so it did her entire life.

When in her visions Eleven sees Kali she wants to go to her, someone who may also share a past with her, her pain. I find "the Lost Sister" episode so emotional because Eleven finally finds someone who understands her trauma, and both of them did. In the end, Eleven decides to leave because she sees that the people she cares about are in danger, and her and Kali get separated again. This scene always breaks me because they both did feel good with each other, connected to a childhood that was full of pain.

Eleven is haunted by her past, of Brenner. The man who turned her into something she doesnt understand. That is why she is so obsessed with Mike. That's how she copes. I dont believe Eleven loves Mike romantically, but instead, she loves what he makes her feel. Safe, connected, a feeling that she belongs. But because of how, in the first season, Mike encouraged a romantic relationship between them, Eleven began to associate romance with this kind of love.

In season 3, the relationship between her and Max is really important for Eleven’s arc. Max shows her what independecy looks like. She shows her that she is not defined by Mike, not Hopper, but herself. She can discover alone who she is, what she wants, and what she likes. This is a really big step on her journey of starting to find her voice and herself. Of understanding more about the world.

In Season 4, we see that Eleven feels lost again. She lost her powers, she doesn't fit in, she feels incomplete, and she is really insecure. One of the reasons evolves around Mike not saying “I love you" to her, and she starts to realize that something is not okay between them.

At this point, she understands relationships better, and she realizes that Mikes love for her doenst feel right. She is scared that if he doesn't love her romantically that it means that he doesn't love her at all. That's her fear. (We know this isn't true. Mike loves Eleven, just not in a romantic way, and that is the reason he doesn't say it to her.)

She's haunted by her memories, the grief and by the trauma she carries. She feels like she doenst belong anywhere. Not in a society, not even with the people that she loves. Everything reminds her of her past she can't escape. She is still terrified of it.

She avoids looking for Brenner because she is terrified of confirming that the man who caused so much pain is still out there. The thoughts of facing him, the reason for her suffering, weights on her a lot.

And when she finally faces him, she doesn't only face him. She faces herself. She seeks the truth. She wants to understand if she is indeed the monster.

When Brenner dies, some weight she caries is lifted. She feels free from him, this shadow that has been haunting and following her entire life. She is finally sure that he is dead after all those years of fear to look for him because of the doubt that we know she gets that he would still be alive, from "the Lost Sister" episode.

And despise everything she doesn't shut down the people she loves. She keeps fighting for them through her pain. But we do see a really big change in her after Season 4. She becomes more of her own person, no longer treating Mike as her whole entire world. She is starting to realize she is not defined by others expectations or a need for validation.

For Season 5, I think her arc needs to be even more focused on self-discovery, on finding her voice, her truth, and her independence. She has spent her life being shaped by others, Brenner, Hopper, and Mike. Now, she needs to define herself for herself. But she will still love. She will never change that. She will always fight for the people who showed her kindness when she only knew pain. She is choosing to protect without losing who she is. And that is what will make her free. That is what will finally make her find happiness.

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