#anti lander

[weird-cryptic-stray]

My main issue with Lander is that it evokes the same feeelings in me as Henriam, which is that they're Best Friends seemingly closer to each other than to the rest of their respective friend groups.

The problems arise when you look at the narrative roles each ship plus individual character occupies.

Henry and Liam are two recurring-at-best characters who mainly serve as comedic relief and as a way to pad out Drew's friend group, which means that they don't need that much depth.

Lander is the main romantic relationship of TMF proper, assuming you don't count Jaisy, with a two-episode arc dedicated to them and their relationship. This is a ship we should care about, and yet.

I don't think either ship is bad, but when the Main Reciprocated Romance is arguably less interesting than Mark Jackson and Jackson Marks, you might want to take a closer look.

[weird-cryptic-stray]

You know, a lot of media doesn't seem to understand the middle ground between "This character's entire personality is being queer", "This character pretends that their entire personality is being queer as a defense mechanism" and "This character's queer relationship was obviously viewed by the creator as a box to check rather than a relationship to develop"

For example, Damien from Mean Girls is introduced as Janis' Gay Best Friend, and stays that for the rest of the movie with no character development or even a romance subplot of his own.

Rae Taylor from I'm In Love With The Villainess plays into the predatory lesbian stereotype because that's all society tells her she can be as an out lesbian, while Jack Parker from Heartbreak Boys plays into the camp gay stereotype because he figures that his peers are going to hate him anyway, especially after he doesn't have Dylan's Status By Proxy anymore.

Luke and Zander from The Music freaks are the main romantic subplot of season one, and the only canon one aside from Droey. Their romantic subplot lasts all of two episodes, having been brought up once prior, and we don't get any insight into how their dynamic shifted due to transitioning from best friends to boyfriends, with us having zero idea about the backstory, likes, or dislikes of one of them.