#mike in s2 especially is so clearly playing chess against vecna and he's being a HUGE pain

[brionysea]

possessiongate is so perfect. it explains so much. mike being grabbed by that vine right after the mind flayer leaves will and as el is closing the gate... how do people not see it? it's such an in your face sequence. there is no reason for them to have included mike being grabbed by the leg, and especially in that order, if he was fine and okay right after. s2 did not get the happy ending. something had to happened

when has a sudden and dramatic shift in one's behavior and personality ever meant something not related to the supernatural? it is every single time in this show!! mike shouldn't be an exception. like.. there's a reason why his pov is gone for TWO whole seasons!! it isn't just to suddenly reveal he's gay and that's it - that's why he was weird. it's a supernatural horror coming of age at the end of day, as you said perfectly in your summary of the theory. it has to be tied into the actual horror. it has to be. that's just how an allegory works.

i wish more people talked about this theory still! :(

thank you!!! yeah honestly that whole sequence in the tunnels is so suspicious, especially because it followed dustin thinking something happened to HIM in the tunnels and then it was just... nothing. there's another one after as well where mike and lucas think the demodogs are about to jump on steve and dustin, but nothing happened, they just ran past to get to el and hopper

so they keep pushing the idea that it's dangerous to go into the tunnels, and JOYCE said that it was dangerous for the boys (mike and will) to go into the tunnels so it obviously IS dangerous because joyce byers is literally NEVER WRONG, and yet... nothing happens when mike ignores joyce's warning and eventually goes down there? no consequences? hopper almost died, will was in a lot of pain from the hive mind connection when the hawkins lab people burned the tunnels, but the rest of the kids get off scot free and nothing of importance happened and it wasn't a trap? one dustin fakeout, one mike fakeout, another dustin and steve fakeout? and NONE OF THEM had lasting consequences??????? no external or internal change occurred????

the rule of 3s is pretty important in writing. once is incident, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern. stranger things likes its 3s, there are so many trios, and there was the whole 'it's a three-man job, not two' thing in written dialogue. so we know the pattern of 3s is important, it's too deliberate and repetitive not to be; SOMETHING happened, SOME sort of internal change must have occurred after that suspicious sequence (since no one died so it can't be an external change) - and who's the character who changed during the s2 epilogue (pushing will to dance with a girl, pouting about it, then dancing with/kissing el while a stalker song masquerading as romance played) and was acting different as soon as s3 started? who was the character who clearly underwent some sort of internal change in between the two seasons about people being flayed/possessed, even if we don't get to intimately SEE the cause of that change, as if the problem wasn't actually solved when they got will back?

there's also the fact that even if someone, FOR SOME REASON, wanted to reduce mike to his sexuality, queerness is often depicted as not a simple thing in horror. a lot of things aren't, but with the history of queer censorship... stranger things wouldn't be the first to use their imagination to make a seemingly mundane topic like 'thinking you need to act straight until it makes your queerness go away and you can finally be normal' fit better into the genre. and that's ON TOP OF the show-specific patterns that you pointed out!