unpopular opinion but mike hanlon and lucas sinclair deserved better
okay i wanna be more serious with this because honestly it’s a discussion that keeps being avoided or people don’t want to talk about it and i’ve been vocal about it in the past
it is very clear that in both fandoms the two main black characters are pushed to the side, are not usually the favorite character, and that the white characters are favorited almost always
mike gets left out of fan art and fics a lot ( or is barely used in the fics )
i even once has someone say under a old post about racism in these fandoms that they left mike out of their art a lot because “ they forget about him “ and “ characters of color are not interesting “
in the beginning of stranger things many people demonized lucas for being skeptical of el ( with very good reason ) and was cold to her until the ladder episodes of season 1 BUT when mike does almost the same thing the following season to max ( which was called for and down right mean ) everyone praised him like “aw he just doesn’t want someone to take el’s spot uwu” which FUCK you that isn’t cool not matter how you try to spin in, max was in a time where she was unrooted and thrown into a random town and just wanted friends and mike was mean to her
the idea of hating lucas because of how he was in season 1 carried into the way that caleb was treated by the fandom i remember instances of being at greets or cons where caleb was pretty much ignored.... and y’all don’t understand the impact that can have especially to caleb who was very young at time that this had happened
yes of course it has changed for the most part since the show has progressed there’s many people who love lucas it is kinda hard to gloss over these intenses and even if it is generally older news it still doesn’t matter when you think about all the times someone speaking out on these things in the fandom where shot down
i know it’s fiction and that people don’t think these points matter but they do it is the racism that is heavy within fandoms, looking for reasons to hate the black character without having any real reason too, and this isn’t saying that you have to like the black character either BUT with the things i pointed out it is obvious that there is a problem.
there was even more but i can’t recall everything at the moment... it’s just terrible to see and to say things like “if you wanna see content of ( black character ) make it yourself” completely misses the point of the issue that is being talked about and is an easy way to deflect the problem
AS coming for the creators of the shows and movies, to have mikes character lose most of what made his personality in the book and just have him basically be the towns “crazy man” for the movies is just disrespectful and rude and the fact that they had considered him making him have a drug addiction ( i remember seeing stuff about that but i don’t know how true it was ) was stereotypical
lucas has had injustice for his character within almost all the seasons but the duffers and the rest of the creators are just starting to get bad at what their job is ( season 3 is evident of that ) so i’m not going to waste my breath
THAT IS ALL I GOT sorry for making this long wodjksnd
I mean where is the freaking lie. It definitely reads off as creators including these characters to be the “token POC” because they don’t even bother to give them proper storylines or a complex narrative. Then these fandoms EXCLUDE them from their narratives as well, as if these two characters arent important to their respective groups. Both Mike Hanlon and Lucas Sinclair deserve better.
