List of some things the fandom blames Mike for that aren't actually his fault, with lengthy explanations if you choose to read
- Will having a crush on him and him not realising it (like when a script mentioned his love for Mike hurtā like no shit itās queer love in the 80s and it was made very apparent that heād been hurting from his love, itās literally a major plot point in s4, for one why were people acting like this was a grand shocking revealš and secondly how tf is that Mikes fault when he didnāt even know, itās societyās fault for creating shame around those feelings for Will since he was very young. Mike canonically makes Will feel like heās not a mistake, and was the one who never treated him like he was broken from his trauma when his other friends did)
- The "my life started the day I met you in the woods" (to explain because this has been irritating me since 2022, no it wasn't the day Will went missing it was the day after, and he obviously wasnāt saying that Will being missing made him happy heās saying meeting El did, at most it was a weird dialogue option for him to say his life started when a bunch of traumatic stuff for everyone including him was starting to go down but you can have happy positive moments in traumatic times, and thatād still just be odd writing not a moral failing of Mike. And also people use that one shot of Will looking sad in this scene, and say he was sad bc of Mike, when he literally made that expression BEFORE Mike said this btw, watch the scene and see šš it was a reaction to El being in danger, not anything Mike said. The entire thing of Will apparently being hurt by Mike saying this is completely fanon not an actual plot point in the show.)
- The writers forgetting Wills birthday (blaming him for sloppy continuity and writing. They literally made mistakes with Wills birthday between season 1-2 as well, his funeral said it was in August. In-universe, it was not his birthday that day, Mike or any other character forgetting is not an actual plot point. Itās simply a writing mistake. Blaming Mike for this is the same is saying that in-universe Holly just woke up one day like 5 years older out of nowhere and wondering why no characters were confused by this, when her sudden age up is just poor continuity. Itās a fictional universe that has mistakes, blaming fictional characters for writing errors makes no sense)
- Him not saying āI love you to El in her sacrifice scene (donāt get me wrong this was a bad writing decision but people mistake why it was bad. It wasnāt bad because it was a moral failing of Mike - it was not. The actual reasoning for him not saying it was because he was distressed, and from the perspective of him being a human with emotions and a 16 year old moreover, it makes sense a teenager in that situation, one of his worst fears and something he has past trauma linked to coming true, would feel too upset or overwhelmed to respond. The reason it was bad was because narratively, from a story perspective, itās dogshit to make it a big storyline that a character canāt say he loves his partner, and then not properly resolve that storyline at the end, and sometimes writers should set aside realism to make way for narratively sound moments. Thatās why that part sucks and is frustrating. Not bc Mike is an awful evil malicious selfish person)
- āHe didnāt touch Will after he came outā (the reason being is that this is a made up idea and not true. The implication people make with this statement is that because of the AIDs crisis Mike felt Will was too ādirtyā to touch, which is the most batshit thing Iāve ever heard, it sounds like something a toxic homophobic Mileven stan would make up for their ass fanfiction. Itās blatantly not true as Mike is never shown to be uncomfortable with his sexuality he is fully supportive and they put in a scene emphasising he is supportive and apologising for not realising sooner, literally shares a water bottle with him which was a huge no no for anyone actually scared of AIDs since people believed it could be transmitted that way back then, and also there are scenes of him putting his hand on Wills shoulder, theyāre just awkwardly cropped. They simply didnāt have many scenes together in the finale bc they decided to pair Will with Joyce, which was a poor writing choice, not a moral failure of Mike. Plus the weird direction where he wasnāt putting his hands on Will started before he came out, itās just bad directing and almost certainly them trying to minimise these twos usual bond, not to make it a plot point that Mike is disgusted by Will, but to try and downplay the queerbait since by now they wouldāve knowing they werenāt doing Byler. Again, blaming bad writing choices, and this time bad directing, on Mike the fictional character who has no control over this. And yet again, also just lying because he DOES touch and make contact with Will after he comes out, they literally share saliva with each other omg if I knock on these peopleās heads it would echo.)
- People believing heās queer, and then being angry he didnāt come out in the 80s with a conservative family, and acting like that makes him a horrible person (Iām not even gonna put a long explanation here, just what, I hope you have no closeted friends)
Thereās probably more but only these come to mind rn. Also crazy that everything listed here are some of the major reasons for him getting so much hate and they are straight up not his fault, and or people making up plot points in their head to get angry at him for š
This is a big part of why Mike hate and the arguments that heās a bad person, are so dumb to me. 99% of it falls under the category of either āblaming a traumatised teenager for acting like a traumatised teenagerā or āman invents fictional scenario and then gets angry over itā
