As Canadian as possible under the circumstances

The basic lesson is: Let Your Friends Change.

Because you want your friends to change. They, being cheeses in their own right, still have maturing to do, and when they do, this should be acknowledged and celebrated. Or maybe they didn't change - you just found out new things about them, or about yourself, things that put your relationship in a different light. Or maybe you just stopped being such a dick in general.

So the actual lesson is: Let The Way You Treat Your Friends Change.

When we interact with people we are all to some degree interacting with the tulpa of the person in question that lives inside our heads. Sometimes the tulpa needs adjusting to fit the person, and too often we are lazy about installing updates.

Updates can be things like:

-This person who I didn't know well enough to trust is now a person I can trust. (or vice versa.)

-This person who I was acting as a mentor to has graduated from being a mentee and should now be treated as a peer.

Relatedly: -This person who I was acting as a parent to is now an adult and should be treated like an adult.

Obviously: -This person has gone through an important transition and I should behave accordingly.

Unfortunately: -This person who I have been treating as a rival and/or a threat to my position is just a person and it turns out all of that was in my head.

So the practical lesson is: Stop Being Such A Paranoid, Condescending Asshole.

And I don't mean that in a self-hating way! Self-hatred is a dead end, and we are all assholes sometimes. It's more a friendly reminder to examine why I'm treating people in certain ways, and to make an adjustment if I don't like what I see. It's an exercise worth doing.

* New student, very small. Grace said it was pebble. Pebble is small Earth rock. Pebble likes name.

* He found out Eridians have no gender rules.

* Students brought him mineral sample. After he stopped crying he said he loves show-and-tell game. Human naming conventions oddly literal.

* I told him Earthsun grew bright.

* I took him up atop atmosphere bypass elevator to look at stars.

* He woke up from nap and found me still with him. I did not wait on his chest; he says I am heavy like “elephant” and he “couldn’t breathe.” I laid my arm over him instead, kept him close, feeling safe. He said “cuddle” was warm.

* Before class he heard younglings singing.

* He has plants in house from sprouts on ship. Plant grew “bud.”

* Engineers got seawater temperature right. He took off shoes and stood in water, sighing. He didn’t care about pants getting damp. Cried until shirt was also damp. Humans very endlessly wet.

* He missed “Doritos.”

* Adrian helped food scientists make taumoeba dried paste. Made it crunchy after heating. We fused it into triangle form. Told him it was Tauritos. That made him laugh-cry. Laugh-cry is rare and precious.

* He remembered Eridians have no gender rules.

* We made him celebration outfit. Used metals he calls pretty. He can see frequencies named “colorful” and “shiny.” These make humans happiest.

* I gave him hug when he wasn’t expecting it. Easier to hug close now with exosuit. Hug when Grace sitting down so he does not fall over.

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.