My thing is, if Will hadn't had a love interest, this queer rep is GOOD. Like they not only mentioned internalized shame and fear of homophobia, but also fear of your loved ones being allies but just being overly worried about you, feelings of lack of connection with your peers as they relate to each other on straightness. Those are SPECIFIC things.
What I mean is that at all other points, this seems well intended. Like they did their research, they seem to have had their consultants and shit. Done the work. Shawn Levy is on this for Christ's sake, he puts queer plots in everything he does and does them WELL. He is well intended in desire to represent romances between queer people specifically.
At every turn, they seem like they genuinely want this self acceptance and coming out arc to make queer people feel GOOD. To HELP them.
But holding off for the finale is also a very queer-baity thing to do. Keep the viewership until that very last episode. And well-intended to help queer people and queerbait that prioritizes money over queer suffering do not coexist.
This might sound weird but good intentions + queerbait vibes = canon queer rep.
I said recently, sometimes all slow burns look like queerbait simply because we haven't seen them ever follow through before.
The confusing thing to me is they commented on how trauma bonds shouldn't be romanticized as a romantic basis and outgrowing them until they hold you back, they talked about very specific queer experiences in a way that other shows do not represent, they depicted queer joy as empowering, they depicted queerness as innocent when relating to childhood - spitting in the face of the idea that it is "dirty" for children.
And then they held off on Byler. In a way that if they do not do, cannot have been well-intentioned based on their pacing and marketing choices.
Idk. The well-intentioned is outweighing those signs to me, and like I said, of the two, those signs are the only ones with an alternate explanation.
Call me crazy but I'm still leaning for that they're just going for a reveal.
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