Right, right, you sent this when we were discussing what was it that went into Juliantina to make it this good. And while this doesn’t address that, it definitely adds to what a marvel it’s turned out to be.
I don’t necessarily agree that there is deliberate intent in most shows hyping up f/f and then discarding them, like, wouldn’t they simply want to continue the praise with very little effort if they could (excluding The 100, whose behavior was egregious by any standards)? But I do think there is at least the awareness among most shows made in the UK/US/Canada, however the individual execution, that including these relationships will get them attention. And I don’t know if AAM was aware of that? I don’t think there’s been any precedent that they could look at for a fandom explosion of this sort.
So then effectively anticipating, if anything, a negative response, they went ahead and did so well by this story! I don’t know how or why, but you’re right, it does make it better to know how…relatively well-intentioned they were. They wanted to tell this story, they didn’t just include a token pair off to the side, they took crucial characters and gave them crucial roles that the romance wove right through, all without really thinking of the response. It is pretty mindboggling.