OP turned off reblogs so here have a screenshot.
as someone who has been deeply invested in both newtmas and byler since i was a child, comparing the two is genuinely insulting.
will is a queer character who has been called slurs by his own father and bullies in school for as long as he can remember. he was kidnapped and sexually assaulted at the age of 12. he has been in love with his best friend since he was 13 years old and he feels deeply ashamed of this fact. this is CANON.
he finally built up the courage to tell mike about his feelings after moving away, poured his feelings out on the canvas to give mike a painting because he knows he loves his art. then the time comes and mike is having problems with his girlfriend, and will sets aside his own feelings to try and fix it. he’s made to suffer in order to save a failing straight relationship.
(this also sets up the cyrano trope, except it doesn’t go anywhere or pay off in any way, so it’s just narrative queerbait)
a year and a half after this he is STILL deeply in love with mike and witnesses queer love for the first time. it gives him HOPE. he asks his new lesbian friend many questions about how to know if someone likes you back, and immediately tests out her tips to see if mike reciprocates, to which mike has a very ambiguous non-reaction.
cue a heartfelt scene between our two queer characters where she helps him come to terms with the fact his queerness is not wrong and he should accept himself regardless of if the person he’s in love with reciprocates or not. with newfound hope and courage from this scene, he unlocks his powers and we see a flashback to the first time he met the person he is in love with.
EVERYTHING points to him finally building up the courage to be honest about the painting, no ?
except that does not happen. will is put in a supernatural trance and tortured, shown images of his assault and his fear and shame over his own queerness is used against him. he is forced to come out to a room full of people he barely knows, because he’s terrified the villain will use his fear against him. and then he downplays his own love for his best friend as “a crush” and insists he’s gotten over it. (mind you, it has been maybe 24 hours)
do these situations sound REMOTELY the same ??
newt had some queer coding going on, sure, but was he canonically pining for thomas for years on end ? did he get assaulted and then have that same person use his queerness against him ? hell, newt wasn’t even intended to be queer. james dashner agrees with the reading of him as queer now after listening to fans, but it was never intended to be in the text. and newtmas was NOT. QUEERBAIT.