I'm gonna be honest as someone who is VERY obvious ab the fact that Baxter is my favourite olba love interest, the way Derek is held to such a higher standard than him makes me like so upset 💀
Because this guy is genuinely such a nice person with a really bittersweet story and he's overlooked so constantly for just like.... BAXTER IDK LIKE-
This standard goes beyond just him, it applies to his family. Sure it's fair to say that Derek was parentified, but the idea that his parents are straight up bad people is just ignoring a huge part of Derek's character. Could they have maybe made MORE of an effort to take pressure off Derek's shoulders? Sure, definitely. But Derek put a lot of that on himself, it's insane to hold his parents to the crazy standard and then in the same breath go thirst over Cliff who literally bribes his kid to not be mad at him when he genuinely fucks up.
The inherent biasis against the poc characters in this franchise (conscious/intentional or not) are so strong. I think there's obviously some nuance with Cliff in this case since his ethnicity is 'unspecified', but that's also its own issue because of the fact that a large majority of people view white people as the default, so they end up making Cliff and Cove white for 'simplicities sake'.
That part btw has been posted about before by actual poc creators in the fandom (I'm not totally sure how they feel ab tags so I won't specify) so like they are def more qualified to speak on it than me, it's just a good point I think ab.
And again this isn't even to hate on Bax, that's my boy. I literally never shut up about his stupid ass. But the way Derek and his family are portrayed in fan content is just such an ick and I feel like a lot of you need to unpack why you think the way you do and fix your shit idk
