#his survival tactic is to stay quiet and hope assholes won't bother him

[uselessnbee]

everyone understands that Will had a hard time helping El and standing up for her because he himself has trauma from being bullied his whole life and doesn't know how to fight them back, his reaction to bullying is to freeze. but suddenly no one understands it when it comes to Mike and he's just called an asshole for not being able to stand up and fight El's bullies

i'm not saying he is innocent and did nothing wrong. he could have done more and just handle the situation better but he was just too focused on Will and was in his head and being the otherthinking oblivious dumbass that he is

but just imagine your girlfriend tells you she is having a good time and has friends, she does not mention anything bad and then suddenly she's getting bullied in front of you. when you've been bullied your whole life your first reaction is to freeze, to panic and just wait and hope it passes quickly and they'll leave you alone. Mike did not have any knowledge about her bullying or having any kind of problems, as long as he was aware those people were her friends. he himself has trauma from being bullied (he literally mentions it later on why yall keep forgetting??) and being suddenly thrown into a situation involving bullying can be really distressing.

when you have experience with being bullied even just seeing someone else getting bullied can make you freeze up and panic. and we know that Mike does not stand up for himself when he's the victim. even when you're not on the receiving end of the bullying but you just see it happening and suddenly you're a scared little kid again holding back tears desperately hoping for them to leave you alone.

and i know everyone wants to yell at me "you forgot about Mike standing up to Troy when they were saying shit about Will! so he can obviously stand up for his friends so why can't he for El??" and no i did not forget and yes you may be right but the situations are different. Mike was very well aware of Troy's bullying. he was involved in it. he was the victim there. he's had to deal with his bullying for years it was not a shocking revelation. however he did not know about El's situation at all and your reaction can be very different when you know about something and when you have no knowledge and it suddenly happens

again i'm not saying that he did nothing wrong. i'm just saying that we need to consider his trauma and his point of view and it could make him think less rationally and therefore not being able to help properly. maybe if he knew beforehand that something could go wrong he could be prepared and he would handle the situation better (even if it would be just them seeing Angela and her friends come and they would turn to Mike and say quickly that those people are mean to El he would still have at least some time and could prepare himself). but he did not know that and he was not prepared for this situation to suddenly escalate like this. he was unprepared and probably panicking and didn't know what to do so no he wasn't much of a help.

and maybe we should stop acting like this traumatised 14 years old kid needs to solve every problem and act rationally in every situation and not to make any mistakes (especially when he has no knowledge to prepare him for something distressing) and overall just putting everything on his shoulders and then insult and hate him when it does not end up perfectly well

and maybe i'm just being my overprotective extremely defensive self who's looking too much into this who knows

and i can't even properly put into words what i'm trying to say but if it makes sense to someone then great!

#mike wheeler #byler #Will is not a bad guy for not being able to stand up for El #that boy has so much ptsd from everything he's been through in his life he never stands up to his bullies #his survival tactic is to stay quiet and hope assholes won't bother him #and Mike isn't a bad guy either #no it is not an excuse for him being a bitch to El especially after she hit Angela #but again he was not prepared for anything like this to happen and it all escalated so quickly and ended up in violence #and he didn't even properly know and process what just happened #and i'm also sick of seeing everyone hating him and calling him a hypocrite for this whole thing #because 'he was okay with El using violence against his bullies' when those situations are so so different #El hurt the bullies because they literally made Mike jump off a cliff and threatend Dustin with a knife #El used violence against Mike's bullies because Mike almost lost his life he was not being humiliated #and i'm not saying that being humiliated like El was isn't bad because i know how painful and traumatising it can be #but in Mike's situation she used violence against violence and that is still different #also that happened in s1 and they were still kids and since then Mike saw so much violence and death #that it would be understandable for him to have a different view on it now #if El would humiliate Angela back like she did with Troy at first #i'm pretty sure Mike would understand that better so maybe calm down with that hate yea? #but then again it is just a speculation and my opinion so you do you #blue's 'Mike's extreme defender' ramblings