#/AND/ HIS RELATJONSHIPS WITH WILL AND EL ARE VERY COMPLEX ANYWAY

[wibble-wobbegong]

okay i never check the tag or confessionals so im only experiencing via mutual posting but i cannot believe there are people who don’t think mike is a dynamic and complex character. MIKE WHEELER.

i’d say he’s literally the most complex character in the show. i know i say this all the time but mike isn’t the embodiment of any singular experience because he’s written so human. he’s got a strong will and he’s hard pressed to give up hope. he’s bad at talking to other people and expressing himself and people will follow him anyway because they see his determination and love and it inspires them too. like that’s LITERALLY what happened in season 1. mike’s moral compass leads him to think violence is wrong unless it’s in self defense against violence which is why he reacted so harshly at rink-o-mania. mike admires when violence is used to protect but he’s afraid when violence is used to harm first and that’s absolutely a result of troy and probably lonnie.

mike has an incredibly complicated relationship with el that cannot be divided into whether or not he loves her. he cares about her so deeply that it’s practically love but it isn’t familial or platonic or romantic but something else that came as a result of the things they went through together, good and bad. he wants to be her friend because he isn’t. he doesn’t have a relationship with her but he knows that at her core she’s very similar to him; protective and loving and strong willed. he admires her! but they don’t have a relationship. he wants a friendship, but he has to unpack a lot of his current perception about el and detach himself from her.

mike’s relationship with lucas and will and eddie and dustin and max are all like this too. he has complicated and different relationships with everybody. he’s angry with lucas for joining the basketball team, part of him understands why and part of him wants to be like lucas too. he’s angry with himself about it. he’s constantly being pulled apart in his relationship with will, having built a completely different perception of what he thinks will is saying versus what will thinks he’s saying and it’s caused massive communication issues and neither mike nor will are at fault for it. mike absolutely had a crush on eddie and wanted to accept himself the way eddie did, and i’d say a lot of his admiration had to do with the way eddie pulled him out of his isolation problem after the byers moved. eddie’s death is gonna crush him. mike and dustin haven’t gotten much time together over the course of most of the show but right now dustin is probably the only person who has any idea what’s actually going on in mike’s head because dustin has become a safe place. dustin still wants to play dnd, so mike has someone to lean on without being terrified of exposing himself while he regains confidence in his freak status. dustin and him don’t have deep, hard conversations but mike does tell things to dustin and wants him to do the same. mike’s relationship with max in s2 and s3 literally deserve their own post. like that dynamic is deeply rooted in mike’s insecurities and grief

mike himself has intense struggles with his mental health because of how aware he is. he understands his own feelings and what they mean, he has known he’s had feelings for will for a long time and has struggled with it constantly. he’s struggled with his sexuality because he’s aware he’s gay and can’t love el the way he’s supposed to no matter how hard he tries. he’s aware that he can’t stop loving will no matter how hard he tries. he’s aware of the fact that he looks at boys and never looks at girls because he’s been aware of who he is since at least post s2 and he’s tried to fix it and can’t. he started accepting himself and then the entire thing with s4 was him thinking will was returning his feelings and he was ready to break up with el at sbp and pursue that friendship but then he felt like he had to give el what ‘she’ needed and erased so much of that progress

mike was way too willing to walk off a cliff for dustin. you’re gonna look me in the eye and tell me the boy who set up that sauna plan in under five minutes, who managed to understand a hivemind he’s never directly interacted with, who managed to discover an alternate dimension just to save the people he loves couldn’t find a better way to diffuse that situation??? that he couldn’t even try? the mike we know would never have given into something like that so easily if he didn’t want to. part of him was doing it to save dustin, but he could’ve saved dustin another way. mike had just lost will, el, and lucas. he puts pressure on himself to save everybody and he ended up losing everyone and now dustin is in danger too. he needs to save dustin or else he’ll feel like a complete failure of a person. it’s about saving dustin, but it’s also about the fact that he doesn’t see value in himself outside of other people

i can’t even list everything here but mike is SO complicated. he’s hope and he’s tragic and he’s human. people just don’t want to admit that they refuse to try and understand difficult storylines and make you look outside of the norm you’re forced to look through. it’s about defying norms until you have to defy your own norms.