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and y’know maybe if film student ST fans spent more time working on their degrees and less time being performatively enraged about one subsection of plot analysis on the internet, they’d actually understand stranger things beyond the party’s fave ice cream flavors 🤔🤨 like hmmmm why does it feel like I’m putting your film degree to use?
Do you think a lot of bylers dismiss el too much, largely because of the shipping war?
I think a lot of byIers are overly annoyed with EI not only because of the ship war but also because she "sidelines" Will. That's how you get "deus 'el' machina" and "EI has too much screen time" arguments.
When it comes to the former...They don't like that Will hasn't been incredibly super central to the supernatural plot since ST2. I get that. But that frustration leads them to ignore the fact that deus 'el' machina has never been portrayed as a good thing. It's not something that works, and it's actually part of her growth arc as a character. El as the superhero is unsustainable, and we see that in ST4...but it's an arc we could see coming since ST1. El can't fix everything by putting her hand up and screaming. It never works. Deus 'el' machina, as a concept...doesn't exist.
For the latter...arguably, EI is at least one of the big 5 mains, the others being Nancy, Will, Mike, and Henry (ooh I know people won't like to hear that, but Henry's the crux of the HNL plot and the starting point for filmed canon...you literally wouldn't have El or HNL or the Vanishing without him. Pony up the cash). Will's supernatural arc was put on-hold in ST4, but that doesn't mean the supernatural plot doesn't continue. Will is not The supernatural plot.
Actually, I'd argue that EI, Brenner, and Henry are the big three question marks when it comes to the HNL/supernatural plot, and that's all a core part of the story. Hell...it's the central plot of the show, and it exists separate from Will atm. You can't get around that. Obviously, the girl who came from HNL, the product of Brenner and Henry, is going to have a lot of screen time to explore that whole part of the story and show us how we got to Will's story in the first place.
This ^^ all is borne of a behavioral pattern/mindset I like to call "will-stan-itis". Bylers and Will stans love Will, and they think he deserves more attention. I understand that, but it also means they feel they have to find someone to blame for Will's reduced relevance in ST3/4. It can't be Mike, he's half of byIer. Can't be Nancy or Joyce, they're the exposé girlbosses (same for Hopper, but only in the exposé sense). Can't be any of the other supporting cast, because it's just not true at that point. So EI gets blamed for "taking" Will's supernatural importance and screen time. They've done the same thing to Henry and his backstory irt "copying" Will's trauma (even though Henry came first chronologically. Try to figure the math on that one).