what’s the deal with the birthmark?
as i would say most people on byler tumblr know, the montauk pitch deck described the party differently from how they ended up in stranger things. dustin was overweight with “oversized” glasses; lucas had the last name conley and parents in the midst of a “vitriolic” divorce; mike had a large birthmark on his cheek. as in canon, will had “sexual identity issues.” all four of them — the Black* kid, the fat kid, the gay kid, the disfigured kid — have easily identifiable marginalized and therefore bulliable identities.
in-show, we see that the main kids are still bullied, even if not for exactly the same reasons as described in the montauk bible. will is poor and (perceived as) gay; dustin is physically disabled; lucas is Black; in later seasons max is poor and doesn’t fit gender norms; and el is perceived as having an intellectual disability. that only leaves mike, who is bullied because he… looks like a frog?
of course, kids can be and are bullied for having nerdy interests, or for not being conventionally attractive. but the more common form of bullying — the one we see in stranger things — is the specific targeting of minorities; of those who are different. (“midnight? toothless?” “there are certain types of people in this world…” “i always took you for a queer, but…” “will’s in fairyland now…” etc.)
a nerd is also someone who is different, but lucas, dustin and will (and el and max) all hold marginalized identities in addition to their interest in science and dungeons and dragons, while mike doesn’t.
this places him in a really interesting situation in his relationships with the other characters. he is friends with all of these people who are both bullied and systemically oppressed by society and is basically powerless to help them. we see him comfort dustin, will, and el when they are bullied, but ultimately he is unable to really change anything about the situation. sometimes, he is even lumped in as a target explicitly because of an attempted defense of a friend (see: 1x04).
this role — who helps when his friends are bullied but doesn’t understand what they’re experiencing — extends even to the supernatural plotlines. in every season, he has a close relationship with the character most dangerously affected by the supernatural plot (will in seasons 1 and 2, el in season 3, will in season 5. mike is arguably replaced here by lucas in season 4, but his relationship with el still relates heavily to the supernatural.) but in the same way as with the more mundane dangers, he remains separate from their experiences and unable to really help. he’s there to catch will and el when they fall, but he can’t fight the mind flayer any more than he can fight angela. (this both ties the supernatural arc into preexisting interpersonal conflicts and expands on the reading of the supernatural as a metaphor for real-world bigotry, but that’s another post and one that’s been made before by better analysts than me.)
among people who don’t like stranger things, mike’s separation from bigotry is often characterized as a misstep on the writers’ part. mike — the leader, a writer, and the dungeon master — is often held up as an example of the failings of the show. “this show purports to be about losers and outcasts,” they say, “even those whose stories weren’t told in the real 1980s, but the leader of the child characters is a straight white kid. yeah, right.”**
obviously, stranger things is not exempt from criticism. (see: handling of lucas and billy in s3; or lucas, erica, and jason in s4) but i think this element of mike’s character is something other than that. he was originally written to have a large birthmark that caused crippling insecurity, but both the birthmark and (in s1) the insecurity are markedly absent. this points to not the creation of a self-insert character,*** but to the intentional creation of an “outcast” among the outcasts. the show is posing the question: does mike understand or not?
we see this most explicitly in seasons 1 and 4. in season 1, the scene of mike and el on the railroad tracks: mike admits to el that he’s a victim of bullying, that everyone at school sees him as a “total wastoid,” but that he was embarrassed to tell her. she solemnly assures him that she understands. she’s seen what happened between him, troy, and james in the school gym and is able to put the pieces together. even though she hasn’t been out of the lab for very long, she understands bullies.
conversely, in season 4, both el and will presume that mike does not understand what it’s like to be different and to be bullied because of it.
mike doesn’t understand why el has been lying to him about california, because he’s been “bullied his entire life” and he “knows what it’s like.” she tells him, however, that he cannot understand her experiences because she, unlike him, is actually different [from other people] and does not belong anywhere.
will does not say as explicitly as el that mike does not understand his experiences, but the 4x08 van scene (“[i’m] so different from other people… and when you’re different, sometimes, you feel like a mistake”) strongly implies that he does not think or even suspect that mike understands what it’s like to be different. mike, in will’s mind, needs an explanation of how both will and el are different from him and do not fit in to normal society.
and i think all of this is intentional! by the end of season 4, the absence of any visible oppression for mike is forcing the question: is he the token straight, white, abled guy of the friend group, or not? why remove his physical marker of difference? why is he so insistent that he understands el and will’s struggles when neither of them believe that he does? does mike understand what it’s like to be different, or not?
*the montauk pitch deck does not mention lucas’ race. in the case that it was not originally intended, lucas would have been “the kid with divorced parents.” this might not seem like a big deal now, and certainly doesn’t compare with the struggles he canonically faces because of his race, but in 1980s conservative small-town new york (or indiana), having divorced parents (especially if they were loudly and publicly divorcing in-show) came with a certain stigma.
**i know there are posts that express this sentiment and i know that i even have some on my blog, but i have been unable to find them. if anyone knows of one, please let me know so that i can link it in this post. if you’re looking, i would recommend starting in an archive from july 2022. lol.
***in a recent interview and several older ones, the duffers have alluded to mike being a self-insert character, though not in those terms. but i don’t think that this negates my point. it’s common (at least fanon) knowledge that they drew inspiration for will and el’s twinnish relationship from their own lives, but that doesn’t necessitate a one-to-one parallel between the two relationships, and same with mike. (or maybe ross is gay.)
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