I’ll be honest, I wanted to read it all but the skim seemed enough and moving my trans friend 3hrs away today is taking it outta me.

I can counter with one simple argument: Straight characters often suck rocks, are subject to the same lazy writing, and there are so many dude “girlbosses” in fiction it would tiring if we weren’t desenstized to it.

And that’s what’s really happening. We aren’t used to seeing a female lead all that often, especially one who is just a person and not ultimately relying on male characters. If we want to talk about pandering writing we can look no further than all the incredibly forced straight romances in media and we’ll have enough shitty material to last a lifetime. They’ll force anyone together so long as their genitals match up just so a movie can have a romance aspect when it never needed one. If their private bits don’t match it’s suddenly “pandering” and people clamber to demand some kind of justification as if there needs to be a special reason why someone is gay in the first place.