Thank you for the update, @Old-Spice, this looks like progress — I don’t see MySQL errors in your logs now.
the process gets further than before but appears to hang (I watched it for more than 10 mins) on the screen shown below [screenshot showing Local frozen at “Downloading WordPress”]
You can try removing Local’s cached version of WordPress in case it was corrupted due to previous aborted or incomplete attempts. The steps are described here:
https://community.localwp.com/t/stuck-on-adding-wordpress-site/42243/3
If that does not help, double check that nothing is restricting Local from reaching out to public servers (e.g. antivirus, network filters). As well as the wordpress.org server, Local requires access to these servers: https://localwp.com/help-docs/getting-started/installing-local/#allowing-local
I suspected special characters in my WP.com password caused issues… twice
Local doesn’t require a wp.com password, so your wp.com password characters would have no impact on how Local runs. It downloads WordPress from the publicly available link if a new version is available.