Those "the fact that Mike is more gay than Will..." / "Mike highkey the gayest one between the two lmao" / "if I watched the full show without any knowledge I'd think Mike was the gay one" type of posts are starting to actually piss me off, lol.
No, Mike is not more gay than Will. Will is canonically gay and has been written that way outwardly since at the very least season 2. The only reason y'all say Mike acts more gay is because Will's gayness is already a given, so you don't feel the need to analyze his actions.
If you watched the whole show - WHOLE show - without any previous knowledge, you would come away with the knowledge that Will is gay, not Mike. Why? Because that's quite literally the canon of the show.
This is not me being like "hurhurhur Mike isnt gay" btw. Headcanon and ship whatever you want. But to act like a canon gay character is less gay than a canonically intended to be read as straight character, or at least a character presented as such...
Just rubs me the wrong way. Especially because a lot of Will's canon struggles with his identity and sexuality get ignored within the Byler subfandom, and instead planted onto Mike. Suddenly Mike is the one with ""canon"" internalized homophobia, even though that is canonically what Will has. Suddenly Mike is the one unsure of his identity and with trauma of it, even though canonically that is what Will has.
You can ship Byler and have headcanons that Mike is also a gay man without downplaying Will's gayness in canon, you know? For some reason, because it is text in the show, not just subtext, people take it in and then forget about it. Because it isn't subtext, people don't feel the need to delve into it, because "we already know all that". But that's precisely why it shouldn't be ignored: because this is one of the few things within the Byler ship that's ACTUALLY canon.
WARNING: this is not directed at silly headcanons, or fanfics, or fanart, or whatever. This is meant at people who make analysis posts and supposedly "canon story" embedded analysis, which for some reason use headcanons as a basis for said analysis, while ignoring the actual canon text, and give plot points from character A to B and vice versa.
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