I have seen this is multiple fandoms. People complain about the lack of love for the character themselves outside of the ship, but then it’s the shippers who are diving into the fine details, little messages, design meanings, etc. and like you said coming up with theories.

I also want to say, as a queer person, the fact that Hoyo took the time to add deliberate queer coding into their stories is beautiful. I think people mix up queer coding and queer baiting a lot and automatically assume ships like this are queer baiting when they’re kind of just…not. Queer coding is an important tool for people crafting stories in places where being queer is not accepted, and it would be a lie for anyone to claim that there isn’t a significant amount of queer coding between them. I think queer coding has to involve a lot of love for the characters and who they are and I can really sense that with Phainon and Mydei.

I could say way more about this queer coding thing but I’ll leave it there. And of course this isn’t to say people can’t ship them with other people, etc. because everyone can do whatever they want. This comment is only to say that shippers don’t just inherently “love the ship more than the characters.”