Look I am one of the first persons to complain when a character in Genshin Impact have their writting restricted and negatively affected because the devs wanted to tease a ship with another character, that's one of my least favourite recurring writting choices in the game, a lot of my favourite characters had been a victim of this and I had even grown to dislike most of these ships after I notice.
That being said, I don't understand why people are claiming that this is happening with Pantalone and his relationship with Dottore, cause I don't see it and while I think it's a valid worry I also think y'all are crazy or iliterate to claim its happening now lmao.
Like I am not going to pretend that they aren't baiting us with ship content, because they are, these two are absolutely obsessed with each other, dare even to say it is already canon and pretty explicit that these two do love each other, the only thing its that it may be vage enough for people to intrepet as either romantic or platonic.
However I think people exagerate when they speak about how "they're reduced to a ship" because even with all the bait I don't think we can make that judgement just yet, and most of its criticism seems pretty misguided:
First there are the criticism about how almost every appearance or mention about him "had Dottore involved somehow" wich... no shit? It made sense it does??
He is a character that is just starting to appear in the main story after years of being just a figure teased in texts, dialogues and merchandising, we don't have so much direct things about him and with the few we have, they're made in a context that it makes sense to include the guy thats his only real friend in the world and who he depends on to keep being alive.
His only direct participation in the game to this point was a quest where he didn't have time to do much, I believe there was like a few scenes where he appears to do something on screen, maybe like 6. And also, the whole point was that he was there to assist Dottore, like why would he be seen doing something unrelated to him if he is the whole reason he was there lmao?? (Also, even with that I would say they still managed to give him a nice personal characterization without it being centered on Dottore? I'm thinking about his conversation with the Traveler where he was claiming to "admire" them, but still sounding so condescending as if he didn't fully repect them, almost as if he was already treating them as potential tools of his use, I found that to show off how much of an interesting character he is).
And then, what I find funny is now people saying that about the leaked artifact descriptions, cause first these artifacts are about the Harbingers and their relationship with each other, guess what Dottore is, and who he has a close relationship with. Second, I'd like you to see write a summary of Pantalone's life without including the man that is the whole reason he is even alive after so many years, like I don't think thats possible lol.
But talking seriously, I believe the narrative that he is "being reduced to his relationship with Dottore" is simply too forced, It's too soon to decide that, and of course the character that would be centered would be the antagonist that had been tormeting us in the game, and even it took him longer to have some development in his lore and conflicts, I think y'all might be unreasonably impatient here.
But there is something else that makes me disagree with the criticism on their relationship, and its the fact that, yeah this specific way of writting character's relationship had been used so much, but this is like the one time where they pull this right? As in, the one time where this exclusive closeness between two characters ***adds*** to the character instead of ***taking*** from them.
Because the problem with this writting trope its that it forces a character stay stuck in a position where they're restraint from developing or learning new things about them, they also have relationships with other characters that we won't see them interact with again because every time they're on screen the narrative forces the situation to only give ship bait to that one character, when these characters gets introduced with interesting conflicts that never gets adressed again cause this gets ignored to keep this character appear to only have a quirky gimmick with the character they're shipped with, and so much potential about their character as an individual gets never explored because in the little participation they do get it gets used to not much more than "but look how cute they look with this other character in particular!"
And with Dottore and Pantalone it may seem like they're doing something similar, but once you read deeper into them you'll notice that they're so fundamentally different from the other cases that it feels silly to compare them.
First of all, the whole point of their relationship its that, yes, they are so close and stuck to each other because they don't have anyone else. Like in the other cases the characters do have other important connections that just gets ignored for the sake of the one they had with that one character, but you can't apply the same criticism to these two who lives in an entirely diferent context from most normal people.
Their whole thing its that both of them just feel rejected and abandoned by this world, everyone either loathes or fear them, if not both, and even their colleagues don't really speak to them if it isn't for work. The only place where they found the comfort of a community is in each other, the only person that doesn't make them feel rejected, thats why they're so fond of each other and keeps appearing side to side as if they come in a duo everywhere.
And it isn't just that they like each other to be together so much, but they quite literally depend on each other to exist in the most literal sense. Like they quite have a symbiotic relationship where they support each other's livehood, Pantalone is the direct funder of Dottore's life work that nobody else would have considered funding, and Dottore is quite literally Pantalone's main caretaker and personal Doctor who managed to keep his heart pumping for hundreds of years. If it wasn't because of each other, both of them wouldn't reached as far as they did, in fact I think at least Feofan would be dead in a ditch long ago by this point.
And the reason I say that this adds instead of taking from Pantalone's character (both of them but I'm discussing him in particular here), its because instead of restraining his characterization all I see it's that it explores interesting traits in him when met with the only person in the world that treated him as an equal.
He had been mistreated and used by the world, so of course he would be enternally loyal to the one man that not only didn't turn his back on him, but also to give him the opportunity to work by his side to rise in an unfair system that set him up to stay at the bottom. And even with a genuine friendship, they both developed that relationship of mutual benefit, and as the important person he is he even keeps his profesionality in all that.
It shows what kind of person he is, and you do feel that they're actually taking advantage of it to explore his person, instead of restricting it all to "Oh look this character's short appearance happened only to have them repeat the same quirky dynamics with this other character in particular for the 27368126th time aren't they so cute!?!"
Of course that we can't say much about this dynamic because we just met them and we still need to see how they will develope it now that they're finally in the game. And of course that there is still the possibility that they could fuck up their writting and "reduce them to the ship" damaging their characterizations, because like I said they had already done that many times. And I sure hope they won't, because I'm really invested in their relationship and would be bummed if they ruined all their potential for lame ship content (because at very least they desrve GOOD and well developed ship content!), but again I think people are freaking out about this too soon, at this point I'm still even positive they will lead this way better because the writting for the development of character's relationships had been done more tastefully in later nations (with some exceptions of course).
I'll buy that they're "reducing him to ship" only when I see that potential relationships with other people gets restrained to favour this one, or his personality gets reduced to an unfunny gimmick with the other dude, or his character gets introduced with lots of interesting conflicts that never gets adressed but we do get 1000 repetitive interactions between these two, or if there is always an excuse to somehow have them together everywhere even if it would make sense they didn't, or if he gets "his quests" that are actually about them both, or if- God you can see my hatred for this trope, let's pray they don't apply this to them... or that they don't do it ever agin! that would make me happy.
