MIKE & ELEVEN+ Love Languages

MIKE & ELEVEN + love languages

“S1/S2 Mike Wheeler would hate s3/s4 Mike Wheeler!”

Oh, would he?

Mhmmm let’s see the facts shall we!!

Season one Mike Wheeler, the one that lashed out at El everytime something went bad with the Will case??

«What’s wrong with you? What is wrong with you?!»

«You made me think Will was okay, that he was still out there, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t! Maybe you thought you were helping, but you weren’t. You hurt me. Do you understand? What you did sucks. Lucas was right about you. All along.»

Without even giving her the time to explain. He never apologized.

S2 Mike Wheeler? Your saint? Oh so we’re just gonna forget how he treated Max?

«You agreed to invite her? She’s ruining the best night of the year.»

«You don’t want me in your party!» «correct!» «why not?» «because you’re annoying!»

«we need to talk, party members only.» «mike c’mon!» «no, this is not negotiable!»

«I get why El was your mage now.» «what?» «Lucas told me about her» «he shouldn’t have, and just because you know the truth, that doesn’t mean you’re in our party. You know that right?»

And he NEVER apologized.

“Oh but he was just worried about Will 🥺 that’s a natural response to finding out your friend is dead 🥺”

“Oh but he was mourning Eleven 🥺 he felt like everyone was moving on from her 🥺”

SO YOU AGREE? His lashing outs are totally understandable if you put them in the right context? It’s almost like he prioritizes whoever of his loved ones is in danger/hurt.

Now, I know that y’all care about everyone else’s trauma but Mike’s but I think, I THINK, that there is a reason why a model student, classic nerdy kid starts cheating in his tests, misbehaving and vandalizing the school. It’s not like he saw the girl that he loved fucking disintegrate in front of his eyes at the age of twelve. Because it’s totally healthy for a kid to call a presumed dead girl for 353 days and no one comforts him about it.

Now, by some freaking miracle, he gets her back. But she’s not just a normal girl, she’s like Superman, she’s the one that always gets put in danger. So Mike has to live with the constant fear of losing her. It’s almost like y’all keep ignoring the broken record of:

«I can’t lose you again» - season 2!

«Because I love her, and I can’t lose her again!» - season 3 !

«El, I don’t know how to live without you. I can’t lose you.» -season 4!

This kid is traumatized by losing El. So of course he’s concerned about it when Hopper threatens him saying that he could ban him from seeing her. When the freaking government comes in and tells him that he may never see her again. On top of that, I don’t know if you guys actually heard what he was talking about with Will in the car, but his self confidence is in hell. He feels that he is undeserving of El’s love and that’s another reason of worrying over how he may lose her.

Y’all mad. Mad because these last 2 seasons it was Will receiving the short end of the stick because for once in his life Mike prioritizes someone that was not him. He tried to apologize to Will after their fight in s3, he apologized to Will after their argument in s4. That’s more than what he actually did in s1/2 to El/Max. He still asked him if everything was okay in the theater in s3, he still put a hand on his shoulder and reassured him that they’d kill Vecna without a doubt.

“But he didn’t realize Will was crying in the car.” Okay cut him some slack for once, FOR ONCE. The military wants to kill his gf and he was thinking about what Will said to him. And even if he confronted him, then Will would’ve had to lie to him, because I don’t know if you have noticed; Will was not ready to explicitly come out to his brother, you think he would’ve come out to his unrequited crush? He lied about the painting saying it was El who commissioned it for a reason.

Mike loves his friends, he loves his girlfriend. He’s a fourteen year old boy that can’t express his feelings because the last time he interacted with his family was 49292 years go, he has anger issues, abandonment trauma, and y’all act as if he’s Jason or Billy.

People love traumatized characters until they display symptoms of trauma.

i understand why we're all focusing on a specific part of mike's love confession but can we please talk about how brenner said if el wanted to beat vecna she'd "need to fly" and mike wheeler said "you can do anything. you can fly. you can move mountains. i believe that. i really do."??

why are some b*lers like: mhmmm how do I make Mike’s love confession to El about Will 🤔

Brenner’s death makes me emotional. But not for him.

When we see El for the first time she’s in a lab gown, barefoot, starving after she spent a night in the forest where she saw the outside world with her own eyes for the first time in 12 years.

we discover that growing up she was praised for doing morally wrong things, punished for doing morally right things.

when she was punished though, it was never Brenner. He always ordered other guards to hurt her. When it was time to praise her, there he was. He built this sick relationship where she sought approval of the only person that didn’t physically hurt her.

It’s twisted that Brenner actually believed that he was doing it for her. That he actually saw her as his daughter.

El wonders in the woods and there she finds Mike, that brings her home with him. At his house she is shown love in a way that she never thought it was possible. With kindness. With tenderness. She sees Nancy room, sees her baby pictures and El slowly realizes how much she missed. The childhood that was stolen away from her.

When Brenner and El reunite at the end of s1, he’s “worried” about her; but it’s too late, she already saw a world completely different from the lab, a way of treating her completely different from how she was treated there.

«I’m going to take you back home, where I can make you well again. Where we can make all of this better, so no one else gets hurt.»

«Bad. Bad. Mike. Mike.» she says when he picks her up.

Brenner is devastated, things will never go back to the way that they were. She knows that he’s the bad guy just like everyone else at the lab.

///

Everything stays like this in El’s mind until she feels the weight of who she is. Yes, she hits Angela without her powers, but that reminds her that she did use them to kill people. That she could’ve used them for bad things. That she could be the monster. That papa could have been right in taking her away and keeping her locked up. She barely resist the police and doesn’t try to defend herself in the interrogation room because maybe she deserves to be locked up.

Then everything changes again. Papa is alive, she runs, he’s still bad in her mind so she hits him. She tries to run away one more time, but he’s the only one that knows how to help her discover if she’s really the monster, so she takes his extended hand, and they’re together once again.

He explains a lot to her, talking about her real self. But something isn’t right, and when she discovers what really happened to One, it’s too much to take.

He let her down once again, and this time there is no doubt in her mind. He’s not her papa, her dad, and all the bad things that happened in her life are because of him. Her mom, Benny, Barb, Bob, the gate, the mind flayer, 001. All the things that she felt guilt over, were never her fault.

She’s not the monster. He is.

When she tells him that, he cries. The tears are not manipulation. He really is sad. He really believes he’s doing the right thing. He doesn’t understand why she won’t understand.

The military comes to kill her so he picks her up in his arms and runs like he did many years before. He tries to protect her when the helicopter shoots them.

He’s dying on the ground when he tells her “I want you to know, I’m proud of you.”

Something that every kid wants to hear their parents say to them.

“You’re my family. My daughter.” He says. He bops her nose, like he always did. El cries and takes his hands.

With his dying breath he begs her to understand, just that. He doesn’t beg for forgiveness, just understanding.

Eleven turns her head away. In the direction of Will, Jonathan and Mike.

The little girl that was tortured throughout her childhood, never turned bad. The little girl that could have had every excuse to choose herself, always put the others first. Her moral compass never wavered. The little girl that jumped at every touch, at every sound, learned how to love and how to be loved. She saved Will and she saved the world. Because there was one thing that he never taught her.

“A friend is someone you do anything for.”

One good lesson that she valued infinite times more than the thousands bad things he taught her.

All of her pain originated from him, he doesn’t deserve her giving him peace in death.

She drops his hands.

«goodbye papa.»

JUST REALIZED THEY’RE WEARING THE SAME COLOR PALETTE ????!?

Someone please sedate me rn