I was bored on the bus so have some teen!millerbros!! I hope it’s clear which is which…?
mike miller
Mike x Lewis~ A Moodboard
I had a long, fairly coherent reasoning behind this tbh, but I lost it. Basically, I’m trash for queer characters, I’m trash for ignoring obvious deaths, and I firmly believe that these two losers would be the mlm to gailca’s wlw.
But just. They’re so similar?? Nerds?? Flying nerds?? Scruffy nerds with hints of tasteful grey?? Smart nerds??Close to Erica nerds?? I need them to date, I’m sorry. But I’m not. Because just imagine; Mike (not dead bc no writer is actually that CRUEL omg) and Lewis bonding over crazy Pat stories. Lewis meeting Mike for the first time and his first impression is all ‘oh so this is where all of Tandy’s common sense went’ bc mike’s looking all normal and adult-y, drinking tea and wearing those dork ass reading glasses, but half an hour later and Mike is chasing Tandy trying to give him a wet Willie or dumping salt into Tandy’s coffee or Smth and poor Lewis is just ‘dear god no.’ Thought he was getting a reasonable adult to bond with, ended up with another immature dweeb of a Miller to keep alive. It’d def be like the slowest burn to ever slow burn bc Lewis is still hurting for Mark and Mike’s got that whole internalized homophobia deal to work out (big sideplot in this fic I will never write is just a shit ton of Mike and Tandy fixing their relationship and working out all their issues) but they can take as long as they want bc the world is over #yolo. Honestly just humor me for a second. Picture them in bed, coordinating but not matching pajamas, wearing reading glasses, and reading in complete silence. Occasionally one will look up and smile at the other. Both are warm and happy and not dead, unconfirmed or otherwise. Double wedding with gailca bc they besties.
THIS
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
I was gonna make a meme once that went
*small brain* Mike is alive
*bigger brain* Lewis is alive
*expanding brain* Mike AND Lewis are alive and DATING
but I thought that was pointless because there was no way in hell anyone else shipped it! BUT THEY DO!
on bisexual tandy, brent junkins the football player, and mike
So I’ve been going over previous TLMOE episodes with a fine tooth comb, and it turns out that there was quite a huge thing that I completely missed when it came to Tandy and the football player he had a crush on:
Mike: So then, once I
got to Tucson, I went straight to Phil’s apartment and it actually
smelled pretty good, so I knew this guy hadn’t been there in a while.
But I knew that if Phil was going to stay in Tucson, he probably would
have moved to Bonita Estates.See, he had a real boner for this Arena Football League player.
You remember that? What was his name?
He used to live there…?
Tandy: Brent Junkins.
Mike: Brent Junkins, that’s right.
Yeah, oh man, he was obsessed.
He used to spy on him from across the canyon using those fancy binoculars and wearing that crazy outfit.
Tandy liked this guy so much that, on finding himself all alone in the world, he moved into his estate. Is the house we see him claim in the pilot episode actually Brent Junkins’s house?! I have no idea. I’m not sure if that’s a touching thing, exactly, since we have no evidence this crush wasn’t completely one-sided. (And, you know, the stalking.) But it is interesting. And then there’s this bit:
TANDY: Hey, this first one goes out to all the survivors out there. It’s a little homage to my favorite BJ of all time.
MIKE: Brent Junkins?
TANDY: Oh, Mike, very funny. No, an even better BJ than that, Billy Joel.
Tandy thinks of Brent Junkins fondly, it seems, even after all this time. And – as much as I don’t like to think of Mike aiming that low, considering that “BJ” is slang for something else, uh – this little exchange could very much be read as Mike heavily implying that Brent Junkins and Tandy did actually do the do, or at least that Tandy himself wishes they had done.
Honestly? I never bought that Mike and Tandy fell out over a girl. The girl in question is mentioned like twice and never again. Oh, I think that Tandy told himself that was the reason – but the real reason was because Tandy liked a guy, and his brother wrote it off as something funny rather than something important. And that continues right into their post-apocalypse interactions, and makes things so much worse. Tandy’s bisexual, but he never really got a chance to explore it, hence why he’s so confused now.
irony; noun
- a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character’s words or actions is clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character.
a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.
I really love the TLMOE costume department for so many reasons, but one of them is this: Tandy’s t-shirts occasionally hint at the plot/resolution of the episode! (this is something I’ve completely failed so far to successfully gif, so you get this long post instead.)
Tandy’s shirt in The Open-Ended Nature of Unwitnessed Death is a messenger pigeon, and the episode’s all about trying to leave a message to someone.
Tandy’s shirt in The Spirit of St Lewis (the episode where Lewis dies) is birds flying out of a cage. Doves are sometimes released at funerals to symbolize the soul of the deceased being released. (I hate TSOSL, but I love that detail)
Then at the end of that episode Tandy’s wearing a sunset, because (what with Lewis being dead, Gail presumed dead and Melissa locked up) it’s arguably the group’s darkest hour. Except that you could also see it as a sunrise, meaning the opposite, and of course right before the credits Gail turns out to be Not Quite Dead.
Back to the sun again! In the series 3 finale, where everyone pours over maps to find a place to go and eventually decide to try Mexico, Tandy’s wearing a map marker with the sun inside it.
And finally, in the ending scene of Double Cheeseburger, where Tandy’s holding baby Mike, he’s wearing a t-shirt with planets on it. You can’t see it properly in the show, but it’s this one, the aptly named “You Are My Universe” tee –
An astronaut giving a gift to a girl.