what’s the evidence el might be a lesbian you were referring to in the milevill post? i’m genuinely curious, since i haven’t really seen anyone talking about it. sorry if i’m being annoying!

(Referring to this post)

The flannel.

…

That’s it, that’s the post.

Kidding.

I’ve seen a couple posts before that detail it in a much more comprehensive and thorough way, but to sum up:

I wouldn’t say there’s any “hard evidence,” but there are several coding things that might support El being a lesbian. (That being said, El’s orientation is vague enough that I pretty much see all HCs as valid, whether you see her as a lesbian or bi or ace or nonbinary or what-have-you - plus, she knows little enough about the world and about herself that El herself probably has no clue how she’d identify, either, but that’s a slightly different tangent.) 

The basic reasoning: as said above, El is in a place where she knows very little about herself, and even less about the world. Her only real source of information about anything to do with love or romance comes from a) TV and soap operas (yikes ™), and b) what she’s observed of the world around her in her brief time out in public / with the Party. So, heteronormativity would be fairly inescapable. Not only that, but imitation is kind of what El does right at the moment, as she’s getting a feel for the world and her own personality. We’ve seen her imitate Dustin and Lucas (in S1 when they’re in the school), Hop (in the cabin, kicking mud off their shoes), Kali (like… that whole episode), the TV (repeating lines from soap operas - again, Yikes ™), Max (most of that-one-season-that-never-happened), etc. She’s like a small child, basically, imitating what she sees around her as a way to test out her own personality and learn about the world. So if all she’s seeing is heteronormativity all around her, it makes perfect sense to me that she would look at her friendship with Mike (as established in S1) and say, “Oh, well, I’m a girl and Mike is a boy, and everything around me has taught me that girls and boys are supposed to fall in love and kiss and date each other, so that’s what we’re “supposed” to do then.” 

Anyway, that got off on a slight tangent - now to explain the actual reasons I think it’s possible El could be a lesbian.

Some examples of coding or “soft evidence” off the top of my head, in a fairly random order:

(Also, a note: I included some stuff from S3 even though S3 isn’t canon, but still.)

1) El didn’t show any particular interest in being romantic with Mike until S2, after she had been exposed to the TV for a year (as discussed above) - their friendship was strong, but Mike was the one who initiated the kiss, and I don’t think El really understood what it meant (she didn’t know what “friend” was a few days ago; how was she supposed to understand all the meanings and implications and nuances of what a kiss meant?).

2) When Mike is showing El around the Wheeler house in S1, she goes straight to a picture of Nancy and whispers, “Pretty.”

3) El also wanders around Nancy’s room later, admiring pictures of Nancy and Barb

4) El repeatedly admires girls and women, calling them “pretty” - Nancy being a main example, but to use another example from the non-canonical season, Billy’s mother. We never see her do this with boys (at least, not that I can remember). To me, that seems important - because even if El just kind of assumes that she’s supposed to like boys, and doesn’t realize there’s any alternative, she still is only shown admiring girls (at least, as far as I can remember - again, if there’s an instance of her doing this to a boy, I don’t remember it). We never see El look at a picture of a boy and say, “Pretty” (or “handsome” or “cute” or whatever - but El’s vocabulary for “this person is attractive” seems mainly limited to “pretty” atm); we never see her commenting that a boy is attractive (even Mike).

This ^ is especially telling to me, because as someone who fell for the heteronormativity trap myself for liiiiike most of my life (I assumed I was bi for like my whole life because I knew I liked girls but it never occurred to me to question whether or not I was actually attracted to guys at all - spoiler alert, I never was, I just assumed I must be because Society Is That Way), this looks very familiar. Because like El, growing up I would always admire girls and women, and I never really seemed to do that with guys - and yet it never occurred to me that I might not like guys, because that was never really an option I knew about, so I ended up getting into a relationship with a guy because it was what I was “supposed” to do, etc., etc. - I’m not here to tell my life’s story, I’m just saying: if El was a lesbian who didn’t realize it because being straight is the only “option” she’s aware of, that would make perfect sense to me because a very very similar thing happened to me. (You could also make the argument that my own experiences make me biased towards this HC, which is totally valid   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.)

5) After El breaks up with Mike, she immediately flops down on the bus with Max and laughs. I’ve seen some people suggesting that it sounds like a relieved laugh, which is open to interpretation, but still - she breaks up with her boyfriend and laughs, and does not seem broken up about it at all afterwards. 

6) This is slightly more elmax than lesbian!el (and it’s from S3 again), but El and Max are both coded with rainbows multiple times - especially the scene at the sleepover, after the breakup, where Max shows El the Wonder Woman comic book as they’re literally curled up on Max’s bed cuddling on rainbow sheets.

7) The flannel. (That’s literally it; that’s the evidence.)

There’s more, but that’s what I can think of just at the moment! Again, none of this is really “hard evidence,” a lot of it is just coding and HCs, but those are my thoughts!