#bc the problem is that societally girls are told dolls are your thing so this is a great way to use that to engage with the idea of

[lazaruspithottub]

Barbie thoughts.

[themikewheelers]

Go wild tori please tell us your thoughts on the wheelers we wanna hear what you have to say

Anyways I wasn’t exaggerating when I said there’s so much I could say about the Wheeler family, below the cut is a 2.5k word/4 page essay about them and there’s STILL so much more I could say lmaoooo. If you’d rather read on google docs I’m putting a link here 

Karen Wheeler only got married out of obligation. That may have never been explicitly stated in canon, but I know it’s true. She got married when she was very young. In the original script for the show it described her as being in her early 30s, which means she would have gotten married and had Nancy VERY shortly after graduating high school. I truly believe that Karen never really wanted to marry Ted, but she was young and fresh out of high school. She’s living in a conservative town from a traditional family, and she never feels like there’s much of a choice for her. She wants stability, she wants a good reputation, she wants to do what’s expected of her. So she’s young, she probably didn’t even go to college (why would she? She was expected to grow up to be a wife and mother, not to have a career) and she meets Ted. He’s older, but he’s from a good family, he’s a formal athletic star of Hawkins, he’s got a stable income, and he’s everything she’s ever been told she should want. She doesn’t love him, but she’s living in a society and family that expects her to settle down and become a mother, and at that point in her life, she doesn’t let herself dream of anything more. She just wants to settle down with that stable life that’s expected of her.

She had Nancy very quickly after getting married. Right from the start, Karen realized how absent Ted was. He was never really a loving, attentive husband. He didn’t love her either, and he married her out of obligation too. He came from a traditional family that was encouraging him to finally settle down and start a family, that’s what was expected. Karen was pretty and popular and they didn’t have much of a romance, but they both viewed marriage as what they were expected to do. Ted’s glory days were in high school, and he doesn’t have many ambitions left. So even after they’re married, they don’t care much for each other, but they paint the picture of this happy newlywed couple. Karen is lonely, but she doesn’t let herself feel any regret over marrying him yet. Instead she starts trying for a baby, because being a mother will give her life some more meaning (and a part of her hopes Ted will become more involved once he’s a father).

Ted wanted a son. He was disappointed when he found out their first baby was going to be a girl, but hey, she was only their first, they could have another kid. So Nancy was born, and he wasn’t a great father, but to some extent he was there. Karen did most of the work but he helped out some and took care of Nancy, but he quick to push Karen into having another kid. Then comes along Mike, and at first Ted is thrilled. Finally he has a son, who Ted can push all his expectations onto. He’ll be a star football player, he’ll bring glory to the Wheeler name, he’ll have this adventurous wonderful life Ted can live vicariously through. Because there was a point in Ted’s life when he was this star of Hawkins and he was living in his glory days, but now he’s in a boring marriage working a boring salesman job, and he wants a son he can project onto.

Only that isn’t Mike. At all. Mike is a good kid, of course, most parents would be thrilled to have a son as sweet and smart and gentle as him, but he’s not what Ted wanted his son to be. He’s only a little kid, but it’s already clear he’s not into sports or most other typically masculine things, he’s much gentler than other kids his age, and he’s nothing like this clear view of macho masculinity Ted envisioned for his son. But Ted keeps pushing him, forcing him to join Little League and similar stuff, but over time begins to give up. His son isn’t who he wanted him to be. He’s racing to see Star Wars in theaters, he’s building a volcano in their kitchen for his school science fair, he’s playing Dungeons and Dragons in their basement instead of taking Ted up on his offer to toss a ball around outside. Mike is a good kid, but he wasn’t what Ted wanted, and Ted never let him forget it. He becomes more and more distant from his family. He’s unhappy with his life and his family. He never really loved his wife, he has a daughter he’s never had much interest in, and a son he views as a disappointment. He turns into the Ted Wheeler we know, absent and uncaring and uninvolved, only ever interacting with his family to give judgement and criticism. Karen becomes more and more unsatisfied with him herself, and the fact that Nancy and Mike are growing up and she’s not spending so much time taking care of them anymore contributes. She’s growing more resentful towards Ted, and the fact that her kids don’t need her as much and she’s not as active as a mother is only making that worse. Then comes the 3rd Wheeler child, Holly Wheeler, a true save-the-marriage baby born into a family with an already crumbling dynamic.

As I mentioned before, Karen never loved Ted. She married him out of societal (and likely family) expectations as a way to gain some sense of stability in her life. She was never really satisfied with Ted, but for a long time she was able to ignore it, because she was a full-time mother and she had her kids to take care of and beyond her general frustration with Ted’s lack of parenting, she was content just being a mom. But then Nancy and Mike are growing up, and they don’t need her as much anymore, and we see her start to crack because of it. It starts in season 1, and she’s just getting so frustrated and upset because she can tell her kids don’t need her as much anymore, her role as a mother isn’t as big anymore and she’s starting to feel useless. She signed herself up for this life that was expected of women in this time period where she’s just meant to be a mother and a wife and nothing else. She’s married to Ted, but her relationship with him as never rlly been great, so she doesn’t feel like much of a wife, and with her kids growing up she starts to feel like less of a mother as well. She’s growing less content with her life and with the decisions she’s made leading her up to this point. 

And then Nancy and Mike shutting her out only get worse after the events of season 1, and obviously Karen can’t understand why, and that alongside her deepening frustration with Ted is what leads to her spiral we start to see in season 2. Karen’s starting to give up. For the longest time she was the only tape and glue holding the family together, and as she gives up, the family crumbles even more. She stops trying to get her children to open up to her, she’s come to terms with the fact that they never will, and after 16+ years of marriage, she’s starting to realize Ted is never going to come around either. Their save-the-marriage baby is now 4 years old, and she hasn’t saved the marriage at all. Karen Wheeler is just so deeply unsatisfied with her life. She’s unsatisfied with the choices she’s made leading up to this point. This life as the suburban stay-at-home mom and housewife is what she was told she would be her whole life, and it was a decision she settled into when she was barely out of high school, and now as an adult she has so many regrets. She loves her family, but she’s unhappy with her life, and wishes she could have something more. And we see her spiral in s2 because of it. She’s checked out and given up on trying to fix her family, she’s throwing herself headfirst into romance novels and wishing she could have lived a romance like that herself at some point, she’s constantly gossipping with the other suburban moms around town to get drama, she’s flirting with Billy, and she’s got a serious but subtle drinking problem that Cara Buono hinted is going to be touched upon more in future seasons. I really do think Karen Wheeler is one of the most interesting characters on this show. Her story is all about these societal expectations for women to be mothers and wives, and in her case, you can see how unsatisfied with that being all she is, especially when she’s got an absent husband and her children closing her off.

Then, onto Mike and Nancy. I think they were close when they were little. In fact, I think Nancy was Mike’s only real friend for the first few years of his life. We know Will was the first friend he ever met, he didn’t know anybody at school going in, and that’s when he was 5 years old. I think Karen kept him very socially isolated when he was young, he didn’t even know Lucas who lived next door. But him and Nancy were very close. When he was a baby, Nancy would play with him like a doll. He spent his toddler years playing with Nancy and her friends when they came over. Even when Mike got a little bit older and met the boys, Nancy would dress up for his campaigns for them. The two of them were very close when they were young, but then they started growing up and growing apart. By s1, Nancy was in high school and talking to boys and going to parties while her nerdy baby brother was in their basement playing a fantasy game with his equally nerdy friends. Mike and Nancy really do love each other and they’re so protective of each other in the show, but as they grew up they started having less in common and stopped being as close as they once were.

And then the events of s1 happened, and I really do think during the whole “No more secrets” scene they meant it and really did want to become closer again, but it was everything that happened after that brought them down. Nancy found out Barb was dead, and Eleven went missing. In some respects, it seems like that should have brought them together bc they were both dealing with a similar grief, but they both dealt with their grief in such different ways, plus the scenarios were just different enough to pull them apart. I’m sure Mike was jealous because Nancy knew Barb was dead and she could at least get some closure, whereas he was stuck with no clue if El was alive or not and it was eating him alive. But from Nancy’s perspective, she was jealous because she was sure Barb was gone, but Mike at least had a chance of Eleven coming back. 

And then they just dealt with it in such different ways. One of the biggest contributors to why Mike was such a wreck in season 2 isn’t solely because of what happened, but because he had no way to process it and deal with it. He couldn’t talk about it at all, and that’s what he needed personally to cope. For legal reasons he couldn’t tell anybody obviously (not that he even had any people he could tell) but even with his friends he had trouble talking. Dustin and Lucas were both coping by trying to pretend everything was normal so hopefully it would feel that way again, plus they didn’t want to risk upsetting Mike and Will more by bringing things up. But then to Mike, he thought the two of them were just moving on fine and it wasn’t hurting them the same way it was hurting him, and their whole way of coping by pretending things were normal was the opposite of what Mike needed because he wanted to talk about it all. And he could talk to Will, and we saw he did a bit, but I think even with Will he held himself back a bit because he didn’t want to upset Will more by talking about it too much, or potentially make him feel bad (bc Eleven did “die” trying to save him, and I’m sure Will harbored some guilt for it upon seeing how much his friends missed her). So then Mike had all this going on himself, but then he couldn’t even go to Nancy either, because she was doing the same as Dustin and Lucas. She was trying to pretend everything was normal as her way to cope, and we saw how by the time it was a year later in s2 that really ate away at her and she felt so guilty for trying to cope that way, but that’s what she did. So even though Mike and Nancy went through these similar traumas, it ultimately only pushed them apart more as opposed to having them deal with it together. They still love each other and are still so protective of each other, but they’ve just had so much trouble getting close and opening up to one another.

And just in general, Mike and Nancy are VERY similar people, personality-wise. They’re emotionally driven. They’re both super smart, but the epitome of following your heart over your head. They wear their hearts of their sleeves and the people they love are always the motivations for their actions. Every single one of their actions on the show has all been motivated by someone they care about. They both have these intense and passionate personalities and it’s something I didn’t notice for a long time, but when you start to analyze both their characters separately, you can start seeing all these similarities pop up that’s always been so interesting to me.

In general, the Wheeler family dynamic is this struggling sense of stability and normalcy. Ted and Karen are people who care a lot about reputations, so they’ve built up this image of the happy Wheeler family for the people of Hawkins. They’re a perfect little nuclear family at the end of the Maple Street cul-de-sac. But beyond this reputation there’s so many problems and none of them are truly happy or satisfied. Ted and Karen’s marriage is on the rocks, both Mike and Nancy are canonically never home anymore, and all the members of the family have really drifted and become more uninterested in each other. Ted had an idealized of the family he wanted, and this was never it, and as a result he’s given up on them. Karen settled for a life she was pressured into by society’s expectations, and over time her dissatisfaction has grown worse. Mike and Nancy are growing up in the aftermath, and have both displayed their frustrations with it. Nancy especially, we’ve seen how she’s really rejected this image of the perfect suburban girl, she hates this fake normalcy and stability her family is built off of. The whole family has such a complicated and messy dynamic, all the characters have different layers going on to them, and I’ve always found the family so interesting