Finally Reading The Book And Mike Wheeler Is Clearly Inspired By Calvin From A Wrinkle In Time (which

Finally reading the book and Mike Wheeler is clearly inspired by Calvin from a Wrinkle in Time (which is a known major inspiration for the show as a whole and Season 5). Walk with me.

The "I hate myself" part makes me go a bit nuts here because. Wow! The alleged Scriptgate line.

Calvin is one of the three child protagonists from a Wrinkle in Time, and Meg's (somewhat) love interest. He is the inverse of Meg, a popular guy at school and star of the basketball team who achieves academically. But his home life is fraught and cold, and his needs are neglected by his parents. I have a bit more analysis on the Wheelers/Byers dynamics and a Wrinkle in Time here. He is 'different' like Meg and Charles; but he hides his true self in order to fit in at school. It's only through meeting the two throughout the novel that he embraces his 'different' status.

He is also gifted in communication, much like how Mike is known for delivering his rallying speeches Both Charles and Meg express disbelief at his assertions that he is odd at first because of how he appears to them, in a similar way to how El does in Episode Three. They face a lot of bullying at school because their differences are overt, and they don't attempt to hide them.

I really believe the Duffers' use of the word "different" is in direct reference to aWiT - it appears thirty times within the novel and Being Different is such an important motif that it got an OST (that I expect to return soon for Mike) in Season Four.

The framing for the two times Will and El mention their differences is almost exactly the same - both characters on the left, with Mike left obscured in the background, his expression hidden and left out of the conversation. It's such great foreshadowing that this will get brought up again; the context and meaning of the shots will change when we finally learn that Mike is different after all. He was just incredibly good at pretending not to be.

Bonus:

Hey uh..... why does Calvin's outfit in the 2003 Disney adaptation looks so familiar? I mean remove the green sweater and...

Mike is being ‘followed’ because he is a target. and the disappearance of his sister is the plot device to make him the target. the ‘normal’ veil will finally fall.

do people really believe that it is Mike who goes missing… do I really have to debunk this for good

I guess I should really bring the whole “Robin goes with Byler to Castle Byers in the UD” thing I’m pretty sure I figured out onto this platform as well this week…

why do you think bylers are by and large so hesitant and resistant to accepting will byers as GNC? I don’t think it’s just because of the buff byers idea, as it seems to go way beyond

I think that people just often dislike canon characterisations and instead prefer to project on characters their own ideas. I think buff byers plays a big role in everything but also the modern biases that make people incapable of understanding the coding. The things will does are not considered gnc or "girly" by modern standards and are therefore mistakenly overlooked constantly, in favor for example for the idea of a gnc mike, because having long hair is sth that's considered gnc now. But in reality will is a product of his time and his colourful clothes and sensitive soft demeanor etc are more than enough coding. However all this requires people to actually think about what canon is saying instead of doing a thousand mental hoops to avoid it and we all know that's not this fandoms forte

Some of you guys are just so unnecessarily mean it makes me wish there was a “touch grass” response to posts forcing people to be locked out of all social media for an hour. 🤨

Hot take: the main st cast knows all about endgame byler. It’s called NDAs and being an actor. Their occupation is pretending. And yet nobody’s perfect, so yes, they have cracked a few times along the way. Still, I can’t help but notice how happy they get whenever they talk about the overall story and its ending, it’s like praise and appreciation, with this hint of defensiveness about audience expectations. Hmm wonder why…