I Know A Romance Main Lead When I See One

i don't have the energy to write a fic rn, but i desperately need one where the painting lie comes to light and will ends up confessing his feelings to mike, and mike takes it well but still rejects him. as will has been expecting this reaction, he moves on, accepting that he'll never be more to mike than a friend. life goes on. they're cool.

mike, however, does not move on. on the contrary, he starts to think more and more about will's confession with every passing day. and hey, has will always been this beautiful?

Taking a break from my Mike analysis to write out how i envision the painting reveal going

Damn this is therapeutic i swear

Will and Mike shouldn’t say ily in s5 because when ST couples say it things never end well for them, for example look at Stancy! and look at Lumax who never say ily and only kissed once because actions speak louder than words and kissing isn’t one of those actions, and look at Mileven! IT’S BONES GUYS!! Plus we shall not forget the “I didn’t say it.” “You didn’t have to.” because THAT IS LITERALLY BYLER IN A NUTSHELL AND THAT’S WHY THEM SAYING ILY JUST DOESN’T SIT RIGHT WITH ME OK? SO HEAR ME OUT: lots and lots of “This is crazy”, “It feels like I’m going crazy”, “We’re crazy”, “You’re crazy”, “You make me feel like I’m going crazy” etc ETC BECAUSE “Well they say it makes you crazy” AND “Blank makes you crazy” AND “Only love makes you that crazy” AND “Wiwbgctwgctr?” “Yct.” THANKS FOR COMING TO MY SLEEP DEPRIVED TED TALK!

little doodle for their anniversary <3

byler take me to church edits will go so hard i just know it

“mike can’t say he loves el because of his parents” el was literally raised in a lab

Mike Wheeler and his Promise

"It means something that you can't break. Ever."

A huge part of Mike Wheeler's hidden character arc is set up in season 1, episode 2 with this scene right here. It's pretty much the motivation behind many of his actions towards El and Will, can be a partial explanation for his internalised homophobia and explains why he seems like to have a saviour complex.

Narratively, promises are made to be broken. When writers decide to make a promise 'important' and emphasise that this promise cannot be broken, ever, it will always come back to bite that character in the ass. Promises are either made to be broken in stories like these, or they are made to make a character feel trapped. Promises are rarely ever used in a romantic fashion unless the character cannot keep their promise or they feel like they are forced to.

What makes it really seem like Mike and El are a doomed couple to me is that the writers chose Mike to say: Ever.

No word is misplaced in writing a script. There is no such thing as an unintentional line in Stranger Things tbh, and this word in particular means two things:

Mike will always keep his promises throughout time.

Mike will keep his promises no matter if circumstances change, no matter if his feelings change.

There is no reason for this line to be in there other than to foreshadow the fact that Mike will eventually have to eat the words from his naive 12-year-old self. He will eventually regret promising something, but he'll feel like he can't go back. Ever.

The domino effect Promise begins:

*Smiling* "And we can go to the Snow Ball."

*Smiling* "Promise?"

*No longer smiling* "Promise."

This promise was made in order to foreshadow that it doesn't come true right? Because that is often what happens to promises narratively, and of course, it can't come to be because they get separated and Mike thinks she's died.

But.... the promise does come true.

So instead, this promise was made, narratively, to trap Mike. While this seems harsh of course, this young Mike has no idea that what he has just promised to himself is not only to go to the Snow Ball with El (which was a promise made to comfort her here, to make her feel like she will survive). He doesn't necessarily seem happy about making this promise. He seems more... indifferent. Knowing that this is something he just has to do.

Yeah, because this is definitely the actors' expressions and lighting and scenery you want for a first kiss, right?

So not only has Mike promised to go to the Snow Ball with her, he has also promised to save her, he has promised to be with her. And he can't break this promise, ever.

Even when his feelings change:

The writers separated Mike and El and put Mike with Will in season 2 for a reason. They used it to build up a good development of Mike and Will's dynamic of course, but it was also to change Mike's feelings.

It eventually becomes apparent to the viewer that Mike has resigned himself to not finding El. In season 2 episode 2, the last time we see Mike on the walkie, he walks away. Music swells and El looks onwards. Instead of looking happy, she seems disappointed that her bond with Mike is not as strong as she thought.

Mike, after his talk with Will in the same room, has begun to give up.

And over time, he figures out that maybe... maybe finding and choosing to Will's friend is the best thing he's ever done instead. Once he figures this out, he cries, he's not loud, he's not angry. But it's at least the thing to bring Will's message forward.

Then El comes back, and Mike feels like a liar.

I've never really figured out why Mike shouts 'LIAR!' many times towards Hopper when he's clearly projecting as he starts to cry. Until now. It's the guilt that he didn't keep his promise. The promise he had made back when El had almost died, back when El had clearly thought promises could never be broken. EVER. Even when feelings change.

Of course he'd felt pissed at Hopper. Hopper was the one to keep El safe, not Mike, which is not the thing he had promised.

When El returns, Mike says:

"I never stopped looking for you."

Woops, Michael, that's a bald-faced lie, and you know it. But he also knows what a promise is, something that can't ever be broken.

Mike is now committed into this relationship. He's ready to keep El as his girlfriend for many reasons, but the next commitments he makes (i.e. saying 'I love you') are not intentional.

In season 3:

Saying 'I love her' happens on accident, she's never meant to hear. The next time he's asked about it, he fumbles and wants to deny ever saying it. But when El says it back, he realises... oh shit. I really am in this now. I can't escape, even though I know my feelings are different.

In the famous words of Hopper. "I don't want things to change." "[I want] to go back to how [we] were."

Throughout summer, before the Mindflayer, his relationship with El was easy, it was fine. He could deal with this because he can still go to movie theatres with Will and his friends and El can't go out in public. His relationship isn't real, and the fights they have are just 'silly, stupid fights'.

But then she says she loves him too and now what? He realises this is real, he can't go back on what he's said again. Because no matter what, a promise can't be broken.

Now:

He has to reject childish things and pretend to be 'normal' (but only around El).

He has to keep away from Will, who has the potential to break his promise to El forever.

He still can't say 'I love you' because of this great big commitment, this potential for change, and El clocks him, despite his best efforts to keep up the same relationship he was trying to have in season 3.

When he no longer has the threat of this great big PROMISE looming over him, when he feels that El has no broken up with him through that note signed 'From, El', he now suddenly has the ability to act close to Will. When he's confident that El's safe and that they just need to get back to Hawkins, he's able to express how he really feels.

He can finally, finally work with Will without feeling guilty.

That is, until El's in danger again. Until Argyle reminds him of the ramifications of his girlfriend being missing, reminding him of the promise that he's always made.

That's when this intimacy with Will suddenly feels taboo again:

The next time he needs to make a commitment towards her, it's through pressure. The bottom line is, Mike likes being a hero, he wants to be a saviour, but he was never ready for it to feel like this.

When Will reminds him that he's the heart of the Party in Surfer Boy Pizza, he believes that it could never be Will that needs him, but that Will's telling him that it really is El that still needs him. And that she always will.

So he holds her hand, exactly like he did back in season one, and makes his Promise again, this time, knowing that he's trapping himself.

Now, instead of a naive kid, he's a teenager, he's changed, despite not wanting to. He's resigning himself to a life without truly being able to express his feelings. He's not just some kid going to the Snow Ball with a girl that he cares about, he's promising to love her, knowing he's trapped himself in this promise again.

After all, he's already promised to save her, and if he thinks saying 'I love you' will save her, he's gotta do it no matter his true feelings right?

In season 5, someone, someone needs to tell this poor boy that he does not need to keep his promise. El needs to tell him about her growth, what she has learned from her time at the lab---that is, that she does not need Mike to love her, which she seems to have understood. She has already accepted that her lover won't arrive at the train station.

And Mike should realise that saying 'I love you' did not in fact save El. It was the reminder to fight, that Max is in trouble, that there are more important things, bigger than their relationship, that allowed her to escape the vines.

So when Mike hears that he no needs to keep up this promise, that he no longer has to hate himself for being a 'liar' to someone he cares so much about, that he can open himself up to happiness and understanding again, he'll probably feel pretty complete.

What do you think?

There is a very interesting parallel in seasons 1 and 2 that I’ve just realized: Mike always knew that Will was alive. He always believed it when no one else did, and he did everything he could to find him (both before and after the discovery of the fake body), even when Will was trapped in another dimension—one Mike had no idea how to access. However, when he saw El outside his window at the beginning of season 2, he didn’t search the woods for her like he had for Will. Instead, he assumed he was “seeing things” and didn’t put much effort into looking for her.

Yes, he called her every day, hoping she’d answer, which shows he held onto some hope. But I think it was mostly a way for him to cope with his grief in the only way he could. The denial phase of grief can last a long time, and, more importantly, his survivor’s guilt was overwhelming. During the dinner scene with his parents, it’s revealed that throughout the year, he’d been acting out—becoming aggressive, vandalizing, and testing boundaries as a way to express his anger and depression stemming from the trauma of season 1. Yet, no one understood him or truly listened, until his conversation with Will on Halloween. That moment coincides exactly with the last night Mike called El. After opening up to Will and feeling understood, he was ready to move forward and start healing.

Similarly, when El made Max fall during her bounding with Mike in season 2, and Max later explained how she’d felt in that moment, Mike immediately recognized El’s powers. But when he went to the hallway to check and saw no one, he just moved on. He didn’t bother searching further, didn’t check outside or the other hallways, even though he knew what he’d seen and recognized it as El’s doing. He likely dismissed it as something he’d imagined, but this marks the second time Mike encountered a potential sign of life from El and didn’t pursue it further. By that point, he had already decided to let go and start moving on.

Mike could have poured the same energy into finding El, after seeing her outside his window and sensing her presence at times, as he had devoted to finding Will the season before. But the difference lies in the reason behind each search. Apart from believing El was dead, the motivation for looking for each of them wasn’t the same. Mike never stopped searching for Will, never stopped believing he was alive, and refused to accept losing him purely out of instinct—an unconscious instinct driven by his love for him.

reread this post and maybe this is an unpopular mclennon opinion? but i think they both didn't actually understand each other as well as they thought they did. i think both of them believed the other could read their mind and then filtered their subsequent actions as a conscious slight. like. john should know that paul is someone who keeps his feelings very closely guarded, who will always choose to keep the peace and to put on a good face when he's upset. but throughout the breakup, when paul seemingly stays as productive as ever, staying distantly polite to yoko while urging john to keep writing, keep beatling, everything's fine, time to put on a show, john takes it that paul doesn't care one way or another about their partnership dissolving, he's a perfectly capable one-man band hit machine anyway. this is seemingly confirmed by paul announcing the breakup to "sell a record," effectively ending all hope of quietly reconciling and supporting john's theory that paul was done with the beatles (john) anyway and had been on his way out once he learned he could write a #1 song without anyone's (john's) help. all he cares about is hits and money and his new perfect family and farm.

meanwhile. paul should know that john wasn't handling the pressures of the beatles well. he should know that he needed more support. but paul seems to be someone who gets stuck in his ways of thinking about people (see also: george), and doesn't seem to have ever shaken the image of john as the older, cooler teddy boy on the bus who he'd do anything to impress. he thinks the world of john and spends the 60s thinking they're in a friendly competition, not realizing john has started falling into the paranoia that he's losing. you can see it in get back. paul is waiting for john to write his next great song, to set a new bar for paul to push himself to reach. paul got john by impressing him with his music and when he's losing john he doubles down on it because he thinks that's the only valuable thing he has to offer. he might have offered the support john needed instead if he knew what that was, but he didn't. but mid-60s john, who still thinks paul understands him, thinks paul knows he needs him but chooses to spend his time flitting around swinging london instead, which deeply hurts him. john clings to yoko because she's a breath of fresh air from the constant race he's been running for a decade. a creative partner he doesn't have to chase down. someone who needs him as much as he needs her. a woman he can marry, can have a real commitment to. he can be everything to the person who is everything to him. but paul sees this as john finally outgrowing him and finding someone better.

paul also should know that john often speaks first and decides whether he believes what he said later. but it seems he only ever takes john at his word. when john leaves the beatles that's it, no negotiation, because if paul has lost john to someone more interesting, more artistic, then that's that. when john starts to talk publicly about paul's muzak and granny shit that must be true too, it's why john left after all. and granted john just wont stop shit talking him and it's not like he just fell on a keyboard and how do you sleep came out. but this is how you get a paul who starts to see himself as a villain and questions whether john did love him. he doesn't think too many people was that nasty compared to what john was saying about him in interviews because he doesn't realize that one of john's biggest fears is that he's incapable of being a great songwriter without paul. so to john, the lucky break line is paul admitting he agrees with that assessment and twisting the knife. but paul wouldn't see it that way because he's only ever had john on a pedestal.

so by the 70s, on their worst days, john thinks paul is cold marble statue who knows he's better than him and delights in it and paul thinks john is entirely out of love or use for him, if he ever had it in the first place. and of course, they could never talk about any of this openly because neither of them were willing to face the pain of confirming that their love really was one-sided.

above are a bunch of shots in mikes love confession where will is either not visible or out of focus

but when mike says i love you the first time, this is the shot. why is that?