Re: Doric and Simon. I absolutely loved this dynamic, though it plays against the typical cinematic shorthand.
Simon likes Doric, but she’s not interested because his lack of confidence makes her sad. So he suggests recruiting her, but then he leaves her alone. He isn’t constantly trying to woo her, or making moony eyes at her. At most, he’s just a little self-conscious around her, which works. But the reason she’s not into Simon is that he needs to work on himself. There’s no moment where he does something to make her love him. Especially not some point where he saves her and suddenly she sees him in a new light. In fact, he does save her during the Themberchaud chase, but it’s not played any different from when, say, Doric saves Holga from the mimic.
Then, at the end, when Simon’s learned to have more confidence in himself, he asks her out again, and she tentatively says yes. Nothing more, and nothing less. That’s a relationship I can believe in. Frankly, much more than, say, Peter and Gamora in the GotG movies, who AFAICT fall in love simply because they are the male and female leads.