AnnoyingIntentionally

–As usual

Something that frustrates me and kinda makes me curious about why people care about this ship is the way people approach assigning hobbies/mannerisms/behaviors to Byler. Specifically this tendency to make mike terrible at everything or have “worse” behaviors and Will to be perfect at everything he does or touches. You could mention the smallest thing and people will come out of the woodwork to say that Mike cant do it or can’t handle it but that Will’s is always immaculate.

Singing? Mike’s completely tone deaf but Will has the voice of an angel. Cooking? Mike somehow burns water but Will makes delicious elaborate meals. Cleaning/organizing? Mike’s stuff is always haphazardly strewn about and Will’s stuff is organized by color and he never loses anything. Them being on a boat? Mike gets seasick and throws up three times and Will has to hold his hair back. Spicy food? Mike can barely handle pepper but Will loves spicy food. Hiking? Mike has to take a break every 10 minutes and Will could do the hike in record time. Etc etc

I think individually these headcanons are fine it just bothers me when every third post is about how Mike is bad at everything he does and Will has to stand there and gently coddle him. Whereas realistically there’s things that Mike is good at and is better than Will at or is equal to Will at! And I guess I think it would be cool for people to also be making posts about Mike excelling at something mundane and Will finding it attractive instead of the other way around alllll the time. It does make me wonder what people actually think of Will - other than this immaculate perfect person. Or Mike - other than a pathetic loser who everyone is surprised managed to pull Will bc Mike has no skills or game.

I totally understand this anon and omg I relate to this opinion! At first I was wary because I thought you'd go into the whole pitting byler against each other thing, but I agree with the fact that its almost like people don't understand that the thing Will loves about Mike is that he's a leader and initiates the Party's planning etc. So he'd definitely love a man who would do things for him, but that doesn't take away from Will's own skill. And he DOES. so.

I think this is a phenomenon that I've witnessed in a lot of mlm ship fandoms -- one of the characters is the "bad" one, and one is the "good" one. One of the boys gets all the suffering tropes in fics, one of the boys gets made fun of by the fans and the other characters, one of the boys gets bullied a little because he's a jerk or because he's annoying in canon. For the other one, its almost blasphemous to say that they're bad at anything, or make mistakes in the future, or suffer. He's given the more subjectively "good" traits in headcanons, and these traits differ between people. For example, if someone thought Will being buff was a good traits, they'd give it to him, while they give Mike the whole "haha hes just a pathetic scrawny boy" treatment. I'm not saying this is all terrible and awful, but its just something I've noticed.

I've also noticed that it's often the one who has gone the most against the fan's wishes.

For example, i've seen this dynamic in how the phandom treats dan and phil. Phil is the funny, whimsical one to be protected, while Dan is the annoying one the fandom prefers to make fun of for inside jokes such as furry stuff - top dan memes - he was more harassed for suspections of being gay etc. Dan has pointed this out on many occasions, saying he feels like the phandom would prefer Phil over him because he shut the ship down and that the phannies resented him for not being the happy, soft and cute guy that they saw in fanfics. In their hard launch video, he said that fans treated him like a writer who didn't write in the gay ship they wanted. Even though he was literally part of it. Subconsciously -- all the shutting down what the fans want has made the fans treat him as the "bad" guy in the ship, even if they're massive fans of dan.

Not trying to start a whole ethical debate over how we treat characters and real people in ships, because I do it too babe, but I think this is interesting. Mike is the character that didn't do what we wanted. Mike is the one that we often said should be the one to confess to Will and initiate everything. Which I still believe. But he didn't -- thus exacerbating this sort of resentment. Plus he did a whole bunch of weird shit during the show that went unexplained.

mwtfdyd

This sketches has been around for six months now, I'm finally posting it 💀

Was drawn based on this post!!

:))

I really don’t see how Dustin getting shoved into some lockers could call more attention to the party than the WSQK van or better yet Robin BROADCASTING THEIR ENTIRE CRAWL PLANS OVER THE TOWN RADIO STATION FOR NO CONCEIVABLE REASON

mike kissing will so hard he falls over >>>