𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒚𝒂

Will and el are Jonathan’s

They share custody of Mike, Steve has him on the weekends

Mike Wheeler is inherently alternative, whenever I see someone say that he’s a basic white boy I gnash and claw at the bars of my enclosure

In another life he’s a 2000s emo kid

He doesn’t have a Robin, he’s still scared and filled with self hatred and ALONE

He’s come into his own as a leader but he’s repressing quite literally all of his emotions

He was a child leading children through a warzone

His whole family is either on deaths door or missing

And he’s still cool calm and collected, being the rock while others panic

The girls who get it get it

Mike IS Willoughby and Will IS Ethel and I’m never going to stop talking about it because it IS my niche

Not to mention the fact that Dustin thinks that Steve should get with Robin 😭

My point ig is that the boys are living in an extremely heteronormative time, and it’s an important part of both Will and Mike’s characters

The knowledge that you cannot completely be your true authentic self, that there is a part of you that you have to hide for fear that it might make the people closest to you hate you, is a driving force behind a lot of the decisions made by our queer characters, even subconsciously

I mean i heard somewhere that Lucas calls milkvan “lovebirds” in s5, so if Byler is happening my man is CLUELESS

Like the shovel is cool and all but I think he needs an axe 🪓

Like, how sweet and accommodating he was to El when they first found her, and the other boys were being judgemental and that (not blaming them, they were kids)

Dustin and Lucas were behaving how really any normal kid would in that situation, but Mike was being so genuinely good