fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4596 ]

[ SECRET POST #4596 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4596 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Megumi from Martian Successor Nadesico + Tessa from Full Metal Panic]

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03.

[Vikings]

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04.

[The Witcher]

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05.

[Crazyhead, Racquel/Harry]

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06.

[Captain Marvel]

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07.

(my hero academia)

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #658.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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06. https://i.imgur.com/c59voah.png
[Captain Marvel]

Fair

/sigh Yeah. I think some people are so hungry for seeing amazing gay romances in mainstream media that they seize upon every little thing that supports that hunger. Which is fine! That's what headcanons and fanfic are for! But I don't think that's quite the same thing as an actual canon gay romance that isn't "coded".

In MCU, it's almost a moot point because hardly anyone gets enough onscreen character development to portray meaningful relationships anyway, unless you're Cap or Tony. Everyone's satisfying themselves with crumbs and calling it a meal.

Damn, I see gay everywhere and this couple never even occurred to me. I'm all for fans filling in the in-betweens however they like, of course. I do it, too. But I didn't notice anything suggestive about them at all.

I could have shipped it harder but the friends-since-childhood thing threw cold water all over that.

You're not into childhood friends relationships?

Not when it makes the potential attraction feel less likely. I’ve had friends for that long and it’s weird to contemplate, even if it’s not a complete detriment to being able to ship them.

Friends who became that close through military service would be a lot more refreshing between two women, not that they gave Carol much of a history in the force either.

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tabaqui - 2019-08-07 01:22 (UTC) - Expand

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ninety6tears - 2019-08-07 01:30 (UTC) - Expand

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tabaqui - 2019-08-07 01:42 (UTC) - Expand

I can completely see them as having been in a relationship before, but as much time as Carol spends off-planet it seems they aren’t anymore.

I came out of the movie shipping it, and it's one of those relationships that to me at least could easily slide into being romantic, but that doesn't mean I think it was coded as gay.

They were a great f+f friendship and I love friends-to-lovers, so it was an easy sell for me. I also didn't see any pre-hype for this ship so I had no expectations going in, I liked it because it's my kind of ship dynamic.

Yeah, I found everything but the cat disappointing. Like there was barely any Maria and the way people talked, she was almost as important a character as Carol. Sigh.

Same. I kept waiting for her to have more to do and... nothon'. Tbh I thought the much vaunted friendship was very superficially portrayed, never mind romance.

Yeah, same. I mean...I'm asexual and I tend to notice romantic pairings from ten miles off because almost ALL of them feel weird and totally unnecessary to me, but I literally got zero romantic partner vibes from these two. They totally read to me as really close friends, and personally I appreciated seeing that sort of non-romantic friends-as-family relationship being portrayed on-screen.

That being said, I can see how other people could read a different relationship into these two, per their own experiences and preferences. Which says to me that they WEREN'T portrayed with a specific relationship type in mind, so people could relate to them in whatever way they wanted.

I don't disagree. But I also think that it is important to remember that whatever friendship was in the past, Carol doesn't remember it. Even once she has some (or all, it is a bit unclear to me) of her memories back, it still reads to me like it feels to her like it is another person's memories to a certain extent. And like she's changed so much. So we never really get to experience the closeness she might have once felt because the Carol through whose eyes we see never feels it.

I hear it's different in comics continuity, where Carol (a) has all her memories and (b) is actually living with Maria and helping raise her daughter. But it's still just subtext, because she has explicitly romantic arcs with male characters along the way.

In the movie, yeah, definitely not gay-coded almost-canon. Totally shippable, but that's not the same thing.

"Gay-coded" has become one of the most frustrating phrases in fandom, because 99% of the time it literally isn't, it's just shipping goggles. Like, fuck, call it for what it is, it's fine.

this is the exact issue. instead of saying 'shippable' ppl are now using 'gay-coded' because they're trying to give legitimacy to the thing the ship rather than admitting that it's nowhere near canon, they just like it.

which is fine! what you ship doesn't have to be canon, but for the love of god can ppl stop pretending that it is just because they want brownie points for shipping it.

and another point: i kinda hate this attitude i see where those shippy but not gay at all r-ships are lauded massively online because it gives off the idea that media creators don't actually need to try. just put two dudes in the same room and fans will imagine them as gay, job done! and that's not what i want, if it's meant to be gay then make it textually gay, it's 2019, i'm done with 'subtext'.

Hear hear!

Yet another example of Marvel including a 'squint and you may see it' gay coded couple.
No, Marvel won't go there.
I was really pissed off when they talked about their 'openly gay character' in End Game and it ended up being a very minor character in Steve's therapy group with about two lines. Really, Marvel?? That's it?
Meanwhile, they made sure to screw up Steve's character by making him go back in time to be with Peggy even though it made no sense and also meant he was abandoning his bff Bucky (because we wouldn't want anyone thinking he wasn't totes straight). Pretty much every other character is heterosexually paired off (plus the fact they killed off Natasha who canonically can't have children, so Clint can have back his wife and three kids).
Sorry for the rant but it really pisses me off how heteronormative Marvel is. I'm surprised they didn't hook Captain Marvel up with a guy.

Yuuuup

Not to say Marvel doesn't have an obvious problem with heteronormativity, but Valkyrie was confirmed queer and looking for a wife in the next Thor movie.

okay but marvel can, as evidenced, say a lot of things. don't celebrate people saying they'll be inclusive, wait until they prove it.

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-07 21:33 (UTC) - Expand

I had this exact same thing happen with She-Ra: The Princesses of Power. I should know better than to believe any hype of this sort, but I still went into the show expecting an epic romance between She-Ra and Catra. I waited and waited, episode after episode, for the subtext to appear. It never did. The show didn't convince me to ship it and I don't even see the hints that I usually pick up on very easily in the "main couples" in any given series. I can see several reasons why some people would ship it (Foe yay! Childhood friends! Rivals!), but the show wasn't telling me that I should absolutely be shipping it because it's the obvious endgame ship. The only vibes I got was "toxic friendship", "toxic siblings" and "yeah, there will totally be a redemption arc later, but guess what, we might actually be able to pull it of decently so there's that".

In short, I feel you. I'm sorry.

But the subtext is there on purpose. It's fine if you didn't catch it, but it's there. The writers put it there. On purpose. Toxicity and UST aren't mutually exclusive, in fact they quite commonly go together in shows and She-Ra, being a kids show, uses all the most basic, by-the-numbers, cliche versions of showing it.

The sexual tension is almost entirely on Catara's side, who's taking the Nice Guy(tm) Stalker thing to extremes.

Catara seriously needs to borrow Shadow Mom's car that's been sitting in Hordak's garage for the last month, drive off to the coast with a mix tape of lesbian break-up songs, hook up with a cute goat girl for a weekend fling, get stoned on catnip and spend a night crying it out while gazing at the moons, and just realize she can just walk away from mom's abusive bullshit.

Oh, and there may be some body mod involved in that.

I suppose it might be there, but I seriously can't see it despite wanting to very badly and usually having a good eye for it. The fact that the other romances are super easy to see makes it even more difficult to believe in Adora and Catra's future romance.

-Scorpia's crush on Catra (despite the show trying to cover it up by aggressively calling it friendship, even when Scorpia is blatantly trying to ask Catra for a date) is super obvious in a way that childrens' cartoons typically portray romance. She's constantly all flustered and trying to impress Catra, other characters around her are basically rolling their eyes at her obviousness, but Catra is simply being oblivious for the sake of funny.
This ship has 50/50 chances of actually happening in the end: these cases tend to either be for comic relief but eventually (in the last episode, usually) the broken hearted character who finally got the hint will run into another neglected character and they randomly fall in love for the sake of a happy ending (example, Le Fou and Stanley from Beauty and the Beast live-action). OR this character's perseverance is rewarded in the end when the character they have a crush on finally lets go of their obsession of choice and looks around them and finally sees what's been in there all along (examples: Hinata and Naruto from Naruto, Ginny and Harry from Harry Potter). My suspicions are actually leaning towards the latter here, which makes the chances of Catadora even slimmer.

-Glimmer's crush on Bow is super obvious in a way that is typically used to portray pining and slow burn romance. They're best friends, and one half (Bow) is perfectly satisfied with it and doesn't really notice the other one (Glimmer) as a potential romantic option. The other half (Glimmer) initially thinks they're just besties, too, but then gets instantly jealous when their friend starts dating other people. They typically don't grasp what is going on for a while, but simply start getting on each others nerves because of the sudden jealousy, until eventually plot happens and the previously ignorant half realizes that they, too, loved the other one all along. Then they get together (examples, Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter, Kim and Ron from Kim Possible). The dating and jealousy is actively going on in the series, so it's only a matter of time before it escalates.

-Mermista and Sea Hawk's on and off romance was very blatant from the get-go, and them being together later came as a no surprise. They had the typical "we dated once, it was a disaster, never again, eww" on one end, and "but we actually still have feelings for each other and just need to get over ourselves and try again" on the other. Usually the disaster date happened a while ago off-screen, but not always (examples, Claire and Owen from Jurassic World, Clover and Sage from All Hail King Julien). They will keep on obviously being a couple but denying it until something happens and they finally admit it. They might still break up and make up a lot after, but everyone is used to it.

What Adora and Catra have reminds me more of frenemy-rivalry stuff with a pinch of shiptease thrown in. Like Naruto and Sasuke from Naruto, Aang and Zuko from Avatar: the Last Airbender, L and Light from Death Note, Harry and Draco from Harry Potter, Kyo and Yuki from Fruits Basket, and countless other examples of varying ratio of friendship vs rivalry (and shiptease). They used to be friends (or could be friend under different circumstances), but they're on the opposites sides of a huge conflict. They still feel friendship or sympathy towards the other and wish that person would change sides to join them, but it isn't that simple because they both think they're right and the other is wrong. Usually only one of them is on the right according to canon, but sometimes they're both sorta right (although one is more right than the other); they just need to talk it out and have the "bad" one join the good guys in the end (...or one of them dies, problem solved). Then they can be friends again (or finally), and the show usually ends here. I can't think of a single case where this trope ended with a ship between the two characters in question.

I'll give you that Catra might have a crush on Adora, but it really doesn't seem to go both ways. Adora just... doesn't seem interested. They could have had what Catwoman and Batman have with mutual flirting, but Adora is simply not playing along at all, which slides their relationship firmly into the Naruto and Sasuke department; in which fans will ship it like crazy, but canon marries them off to other people in the end. Heck, they might even compare to Batman and the Joker, with the Joker blatantly flirting with Batman all the time while Batman is completely disinterested. The fact that Scorpia exists (as explained above) makes it even more likely that Adora will not become interested in Catra.

The show could still change its course easily enough. Catra is obviously getting a redemption arc sooner or later (unless the show gets canceled before that happens), and when she and Adora are on the same side they could start a romance plot. But based on what we have so far, I don't see the romance. Like said, I haven't seen this particular plot lead to romance before. Not saying it can't be done, but I'm saying that I'll be surprised if it happens.

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-07 15:05 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-07 16:36 (UTC) - Expand

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