#does wanting someone to love you back fundamentally taint the character of your devotion or support for them

[vegaseatsass]

Reading/thinking about Sol some more, and I do think there's a need from some viewers for him to be either the pure selfless "healthy romance" choice OR purely selfish and unworthy of Joe, and imo he's neither, and that's what makes him interesting and human.

He hurt Joe by assuming the worst of him (in like, a very specifically, viscerally hurtful-to-queers way) and running away; he expects to be able to pick up where they left off as soon as he comes back, and really struggles to calibrate to the fact that Joe neither held a grudge against him nor pined for him this whole time. He just... moved on.

A lot of the ways Sol tries to support Joe or intervene in his toxic relationship with Ming are blatantly compromised by how much Sol wants Joe to choose him instead, but he's also right about Ming. I find him compelling because he goes harder than anyone before Ing in consistently, materially trying to be there for Joe, but there's always that level of selfish motivation to Sol's actions where he doesn't just want to protect Joe from violence or danger, he wants to redirect Joe's feelings from Ming back to himself. (And sometimes he fails to protect Joe not because Joe won't let him intervene but because he's too busy fighting Ming to pay attention to the guy they both just knocked to the ground!!)

If Sol really let go of the idea that Joe could ever want him again, would he still be as ride-or-die for Joe? Is the sincerity Joe showed him something he's repaying in kind, or is there always something he still wants from Joe lingering in the background? Is it possible to sincerely support someone you haven't stopped hoping will one day choose you? And when Joe refuses to let Sol help him, is it because he can't let himself burden a junior, or because he is intuiting and avoiding those strings that come attached to Sol's help, or both?

To me all of those questions are a lot more interesting than like "does Sol deserve Joe" or anything along those lines.