!!Rant incoming!! Because I truly think Iāve never seen something quite like this thing some people in the tag have with Mike Wheeler!
Mike expresses his insecurities about being worthless and not good at anything and Will builds him back up by telling him that heās an inspiration to the party, that heās their leader and therefore essential and important to every mission, that heās the heart that holds the whole team together. Which is all true! Mike has an extremely distorted perception of himself and Will helps him too see who he actually is!
And what do the people in the fandom do? Make posts left and right about how āOmg Mike is only the heart for Will but Will is actually the heart of the partyā, āWill sees Mike as a knight in shining armor while Mike actually holds a candle stickā, āMike is not a knight, heās the damsel in distressā, āMike canāt fight for himself but thatās okay because Will is gonna save himā, āMike needs to use his brain for onceā, āMike is incompetentā, āMike wouldnāt be able to use a swordā āMike wouldnāt be able to use a gunā āMike canāt win a fightā etc. totally flipping it all around and creating this false narrative were Will is the one with the distorted perception of who Mike actually is!! YOU COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT!!
In all of those polls that get created Mike always ends up being the butt of the joke because āMike isnāt as muscular as Will so of course Will is better than him at absolutely everythingā, āMike is too dumb to be good at thatā, āMike is super clumsy so he canāt do thatā. Or fanfictions where āMike doesnāt know his way around Hawkinsā, āMike has no common knowledgeā, āWill has to do everything for Mike because he canāt do anything on his ownā. Which of course goes hand in hand with depicting Will as perfect as well as assigning all the āpositiveā attributes to Will while assigning the ānegativeā ones to Mike. And back to the polls, literally the only polls in which Mike wins are the ones where the question is who of the party members is most likely to be, like or do something and itās either related to falling down or itās a gay stereotype!! [which is a whole other problem!]
This general perception of the characters that has somehow formed, in which Mike is this total ācringe fail loserā whoās clumsy and stupid and needs everything to be told, who canāt do anything right and gets villainized for his oh so many mistakes, while Will is super over confident and cool, above average at every single thing he does and is always chill and doesnāt do anything wrong, is incredibly bizarre to me. THIS IS NOT AT ALL WHO THESE TWO ARE!!!! And the thing is, one of the many great things about byler is that Mike and Will are equals and treat each other as such!! Turning around and making Will stand above Mike totally ruins a big part of what makes this ship so good!!
And itās just especially frustrating with Mike, not only because people totally undermine who he is and what heās capable of, but also because we have this scene of him opening up about feeling useless, worthless and overall like he canāt do anything right! We have this in the show!!! And Will gives him a truly wonderful, emotional, heartbreaking love confession in response to build him back up! The point Will made is: āThis is who you are, Mike, and thatās why I love you so much!ā, and not: āI love you so much and thatās why I see you this wayā!!!! As I said, if you honestly believe that Will is the one with a distorted perception of Mike, and not Mike, then you completely missed the point! And quite literally, you too have a distorted perception of Mike Wheeler as a character!
Again, Iāve truly never seen something quite like this!! Mike expressing that he feels like heās worthless, Will proving to him that heās not, and the fandom turning around and going: āWell actually, Mike is worthless and everything Will said about him is only how he sees him.ā
And all this while Mike Wheeler is canonically super intelligent and capable, solving problems left and right, coming up with the best plans every season and always ready to fight!!! Everything Will said about Mike is objectively true! He is a an exceptional leader! He is inspiring to everyone in the party! He is getting and holding the whole team together! This is all canon!!!
But I guess some of yāall are watching a different showā¦.
Of course Iām well aware of the fact that everyone interprets and sees characters differently and has their own headcanons. But in this case people are completely disregarding what is explicitly and obviously shown about the character in canon to push a worse fanon version!! People are making the most bizarre and out of character statements about Mike Wheeler and the whole tag will applause them that the takes are so in character, even though theyāre clearly not! They quite literally mostly directly contradict with what we know about the character in canon!! And somehow there are still people who think the show is gonna pick up on the made up version!! This widely accepted misinterpretation of Mikeās character is insane to me because people actually think that itās canon even though it pretty obviously is not! Itās incredibly bizarre, especially because the fanon version is clearly so so so much worse than the real, canon Mike Wheeler!!
And itās so ironic seeing this happen so much in the byler tag specifically because we are supposed to be the ones on Mikeās team! Weāre the ones criticizing melvins and the ga for undermining Mikeās character, all while there are some of you who do the exact same thing.
