#Promileven

[milevenstancyendgame]

Mike Feeling Insecure About How Eleven Sees Him

Warning: This analysis accepts Mileven as canon and is pro-Mileven.

I think it's great that Mike's insecurity regarding Eleven's opinion of him was shown to us early on in s1, but it never really stood in their way, until it was brought back up in s4.

In s1, Mike tells El: "I don’t know why I just didn’t tell you. Everyone at school knows. I just didn’t want you to think I was such a wasteoid, you know?"

He's giving us a glimpse of having a low opinion of himself and projecting that onto El. He feels ashamed for being bullied and assumes that others will think him weak for it.

Then later on, when Lucas and Mike fight, Lucas accuses Mike of being blind with regards to El because she's the first girl to not be disgusted by him. I consider this a low blow (I love Lucas) and we can see that this hits Mike deeply (just rewatch it and look at his face). He starts punching Lucas after this.

So this further elaborates the context of Mike falling in love for us. It's not clear whether he has been in love before and got rejected, but either specific girls have been mean to him or it's just something that the boys assume, because they never had an explicitly positive relationship with a girl.

In s2, we see a group of girls in school giving the four boys weird looks, as they scramble for Max's note in the trash bin. All in all, it just seems like they aren't popular with their peers in general.

Plus, in s1 Ted Wheeler also said sarcastically "My son with a girl?" Which gives us a good idea of where Mike's low self esteem originates.

So Mike having the basic belief that girls don't like him, makes it inevitable that this will become an issue within his relationship with El, if left unaddressed.

Which is exactly what happened, as his basic negative beliefs about himself combined with his fear of losing El - we hear this in his talk to Will in the pizza van, sharing his fear that El might not need him any more, because she realised that he's "just a random nerd."

Mike doesn't believe himself to be special or worthy in any way, which is exactly what his parents treat him like (emotional neglect).

He further shares the belief that El only became attached to him because she needed someone when they first met, and he took her in. This further shows that he believes being loved is conditional and bound to performing a service to the other person/being of use to them.

In a more indirect, but nevertheless meaningful and realistic way, we see Mike giving El unconditional love - like so many unloved, lonely people, he gives her the love that he desperately craves himself, but doesn't feel worthy of.

There are many instances of this, but I'll just point out here the beautiful arc from him reassuring El about her appearance in s1 ("You don't need it." & "Yeah, pretty. Really pretty.") to "I love you on your good days, I love you on your bad days, I love you with your powers, I love you without your powers. I love you for exactly who you are." in his s4 monologue. And we have his actions to back up these reassurances.

Now that Eleven overcame her own insecurities and self-doubt in s4, and Mike has finally told her "I love you" and has made himself completely vulnerable to her, admitting his fear of losing her, of her not needing him anymore; I think a powerful/beautiful monologue from El in s5, reassuring Mike of her feelings for him, would sort of have them come full circle and close their low self-esteem/insecurity in the relationship arcs.

[m1leven-is-r3al]

They're so in love 😭

You’re my superhero and I can’t lose you. Okay? Do you hear me? I can’t lose you. You can do anything. You can fly. You can move mountains. I believe that. I really do. But right now, you just have to fight. Okay? El. Do you hear me? You need to fight. You have to fight. FIGHT! FINN WOLFHARD & MILLIE BOBBY BROWN AS MIKE AND EL STRANGER THINGS (2016-)

[flaringgoosebumps]

Mileven's plot in s4 was a new kind of sad and I will try to leave other ships out of this as much as possible but hear me out.

When El hits Angela with the skate after publicly humiliating her, Mike doesn't do anything to comfort her. Not immediately. Doesn't check on her. Doesn't try to make her feel better about the situation.

Meanwhile Johnathon and Argyle try to comfort her in the way brothers do,

"that future prom queen is gonna be fine"

"least it wasn't an ice skate"

Mike instead deflects their comfort with "she didn't look fine"

Mike's shock that he claims to have doesn't make sense to me because he's literally watched her kill people with her powers in front of them, and on a smaller scale she made his bully piss his pants and broke his arm. He never had any problems with any violence towards abusers before. He knows what it feels like to be bullied and want to fight back. He literally watched her get publicly humiliated and Will informed him that she was being bullied.

Was the shock from him staying in contact for 8 months and somehow not having a clue she was being bullied like this enough to skate schmack a bitch?

In season 1, he knew exactly how to comfort her when she said she was a monster. He hugged her and reassured her. But here, when she was crying in front of him, he got defensive at everything she said. Even his attempts at reassuring her had defensive tones. Nothing about it felt comforting, especially when he said,

"you're the most incredible person in the world and you can't let these mouth breeders ruin that, ruin us. I mean they're nobodys, they're nobodys, and you're superhero"

That didn't bring her any comfort.

This in combination with how much she tried to hide what she was going through from him feels like he's holding her up on a pedestal that she feels like she can't measure up to and feels like her worth to him is tied who she used to be, how powerful she used to be and not who she is now.

"From Mike" in general is weird because he was practically stumbling over himself last season to say he loved her. Not a 'miss you' or xoxo or anything affectionate?? Boi wtf

"gone to be a superhero again, from El"

reads as her being upset, and even though she's going to try to live up to his expectations of her. That she is done. It's a goodbye.

Then, she relives two lifetimes worth of trauma while he pines about her trying to find her. You can see the build up of his confession, he does love her. He feels inadequate, that's valid.

But all of the beauty of Mike's love confession to El was cheapened by his mention of her being a superhero, among other things. The mention of the day they met, felt gross. Your life started when she watched the only person who tried to help her without an ulterior motive get murdered for knowing she exists? Scared, alone in the pouring rain? Barely knowing how to speak? When you only kept her around because of what she could do for you? I know he gradually fell in love with her, there is no doubting that but the moment they met?maybe, I just don't see it. Then, the superhero thing again being highlighted to point out her worth. Yeah he said, "I love you with your powers, I love you without your powers." But the mention of her abilities, just feels like he's still holding her up on a pedestal and doesn't know who she really is. They've had a year where she didn't have them at all, and he couldn't come up with anything in that time spent?

"I don't know how to live without you"

It's about needing her, he needs her to need him, and they need her in general, instead of wanting her. That's the sad part. Her worth is continuously measured by being needed, what she is capable of, having a certain purpose, instead of being loved for who she is. It's a love confession yet it doesn't even feel like it.

I wish they would've thrown in "I can't imagine my life without you, I don't want too." And something about her that wasn't about an insecurity, that was about who she was instead of what she could or couldn't do. Any aspect of her personality that wasn't about her abilities or how they made anyone feel about her.

I'm sure he meant it all to be reassuring and romantic. I'm sure he thought it was and hey, this could just be a pet peeve because to me, it feels like they just put a bandaid on the rift in their relationship to keep going. It came off as he was really telling her what he thought she wanted to hear, instead of something that is undeniably heartfelt and loving.

I hope that s5 treats Eleven better.