#and Mike and his storylines

[chewwytwee]

Better call Saul is da best show evarrrrr xD

[pinkeoni]

There's such a double standard irt Mike and Will showing interest in other people

[byclairs]

Lucas's arc seemed like he deserved to be put in his place and recognize that he was wrong for believing he could hope for better? And they did not even focus in his character that much. Most people say Mike has a spectacular forced conformity storyline waiting for s5 when we had a forced conformity storyline for Lucas but it was so sloppily written. I thought the forced conformity narrative is suppposed to be written good in any case for poc too, not just for your white character that you send a message with.

it feels like the duffers just don’t care enough to convey a cohesive message for lucas’ arc and/or don’t know how because on the one hand they’ve acknowledged several times the racism he faces both on and outside the show so they can’t even play dumb and yet they then constantly downplay what he goes through and so you end up with scenes like the end of s4 where he basically learns to know his place or whatever like..lucas is not in same boat as someone like mike who’s mainly bullied for being a nerd. he’s ostracized in a way that mike and dustin will literally never understand but the show almost never makes any attempt to show how he deals with that yet it’s explicitly talked about in an official book from his perspective (and i know lucas on the line is not technically canon but it’s still tied to netflix/st and if they had someone in the writer’s room who could’ve incorporated even part of the type of material from the book into the show i think it would’ve done wonders to flesh out his story) like i’m sorry if you’re gonna acknowledge that his situation is different than the rest of the party’s then you need to put more care into following through with that because the whole “i thought i wanted to be like you—popular, normal” scene was just..it felt like they were insinuating his main reason for joining basketball was just to be cool when we know it’s a lot more complex than that; he was trying to protect not only himself but his friends too even though they don’t face the same shit he does. and possibly even enjoy something new in the process god forbid. and you would think that he was ditching his friends and other interests for the basketball team when that’s not what happened at all? like he never started acting aloof with them or ignoring them, he was still very much in hellfire and he never turned his back on them he even used his status on the team to lure them away from where eddie was hiding even though everyone was saying he killed chrissy and lucas didn’t know what was going on yet. he never let his desire to fit in turn him into someone unrecognizable who needed to be taught a lesson and that’s why it pisses me off so bad that he was made to feel this deep regret in the end as if he made some huge mistake that he learned from because in reality he’s never been anything short of a loyal friend or strayed from his morals. and to top it all off mike and dustin get off the hook without having reflect on how they hurt lucas because apparently you should never support your friends unless you fully understand and agree with the things they want 👍🏼 idk.

i also think his conflicting feelings about helping his (ex) girlfriend deal with her grief for her canonically racist brother who traumatized and literally almost killed him would’ve been really interesting and important to explore especially since that most likely relates to the reasons he started feeling like it was urgent to fit in more in the first place but. none of that because this boy’s feelings are never taken into account

i also think everyone should read all of this

[cherry-treelane]

everytime i feel bad and stressed about my life i remember that i might be in a troubling situation and having a bad time but im not season 4 fiona gallagher in the clink after leaving crack on the counter which my 3 year old baby brother happened to ingest resulting in a fatal near-death experience thats wracked me with never-ending guilt and forever altered my life

[chirpsythismorning]

Wait a damn minute…

They’ve got Finn (Mike) listed first before everyone else in the cast on the Tudum site aka the most official, up to date site for the show besides Netflix.com?…

This got me thinking… I wonder if they—

!! MIKE MAIN CHARACTER ERA IS MAKING A COMEBACK IN THE FINAL SEASON OF STRANGER THINGS !! MARK YOUR CALENDARS 2024 !!

[tender-emotional-music]

it’s funny how byler doubt *evaporates* when you think for more than 5 seconds about the basics of story structure, pacing and direction

[jaegerisim]

The Eddie Munson-ification of Mike Wheeler, my mortal enemy.

[puhpandas]

i cant stop thinking abt mike trying to mess w evan on his birthday while gregory consistently stops him. mostly bc flashlight duo hating michael is the best thing thats come out of fnaf

SERIOUSLY. like after a while of being friends (maybe a year or more) Gregory would have fully convinced Evan that hes fine to actually hate Mike, because at that point Gregory's gotten it into Evan's head at least a little bit about how he isnt what mike and his father say about him, and hes not stupid or worthless and doesnt deserve to be hated

mike on the other hand? oh yeah. Gregory's finally made it so Evan realizes that Mike is a shit brother (at least in this au, where he never gets a wake up call and nobody ever tells him to stop), and when mike tries to pull some crap on Evan's thirteenth when Evan stopped reacting as badly to his attempts of tormenting him, Gregory isnt having it and just keeps sabotaging Mike behind Evan's back, because man does Evan deserve to have a good birthday without the knowledge that somebody doesnt like that hes having fun enough to try to stop it.

[brionysea]

will people ANSWER his QUESTIONS. this is why he's not allowed to breathe the same air as joyce anymore. they'd actually figure out what's going on with him if they had the chance to brainstorm together

[heavencasteel420]

I think sometimes fans who are almost exclusively invested in the younger-teen characters are only interested in seeing the older characters (especially the older teens) in a support role to their faves. Which is a totally neutral preference, but then they confuse that preference with (a) what is good/interesting writing more generally and (b) what is healthy for or desired by the characters in-universe.

[purpleshadow-star]

"Lack of personality" I blame the Duffers' choice to largely reduce Mike's character to "El's boyfriend" in S3 for all of Mike's insecurities.

[maddy-ferguson]

the thing is i loved stranger things before i thought byler was a possibility but i loved it in a non-fandom way i thought it was good but now i know it's great and if byler somehow wasn't endgame then it just wouldn't be Great anymore...it would still be good. i guess.

[bisexualmultifandommess]

Alison and Mike’s future children being born with the sight would be funny.

[paintingformike]

watching byler and mleven scenes back to back actually puts things more in perspective and it’s making me laugh because...most byler scenes have always been treated way more seriously and with more emotional depth than mleven scenes. theres just so much more tension and intimacy evident between them and it gets 10x doubled in their heart to hearts in season 4 while mleven remains either being played for laughs or having pretty surface level conversations until they actually have a realer fight? like...byler really isnt that much of a secret at all, its being developed right in front of our eyes 😭

no cause imagine mike and el talking to each other with the same level of tension in the desert heart to heart or even just having a single conversation that is as deep and serious as that, or even mike opening up to el the way he does with will...you can’t, can you? because mleven scenes are never handled or treated with as much care as byler scenes 😴

[chirpsythismorning]

Didn’t think the first stranger things surprise would actually involve byler crumbs… and blue meets yellow in the west crumbs at that ???

[wheelercurse]

I actually see why this sounds so anti-byler