#and more explicitly queer relationships to counterbalance this bullshit

[airagorncharda]

The thing about Carol and Maria being “best friends” is...

Have I had friendships like that? Absolutely. Can and do women love and support each other in the ways these two women did without there being a romantic or sexual element to it? Absolutely.

But if one of them had been a man, the same writers who wrote this movie would have treated the exact same depiction of a relationship (living together, raising a kid together, Maria still being fucked up by Carol’s disappearance six years later) as a romantic plot-line. There’s no way the MCU would write that story between a man and a woman and NOT intend for it to be received as romantic. 

Which means two things. 

That the choice to make them "best friends” is homophobic, and--

That, via a death of the author approach to movie viewing, this is (or at least can be) a movie about two women who were romantically involved, but aren’t saying it out loud. Perhaps Maria doesn’t know if Carol remembers that part of their relationship and isn’t comfortable being the one to bring it up.

The facts are: That all of Carol’s photographs were of herself, Maria, and Monica as a family, and virtually none of them involved other “friends” or Monica’s father. That Monica Rambeau in the comics had two supportive parents, and this movie took that away from her and replaced her father with Carol (which has it’s own racist issues btw). That the movie could have easily added one more character to have Monica’s father be Maria and Carol’s other roommate/friend, but they chose not to (more racist issues here). That Carol, in the comics, had a romantic relationship with James Rhodes (you know, Rhodey? Rhodey? The guy who’s already in the MCU and will be in the next movie Carol is in?) and they seem to have somewhat replaced his role in her life and story with Maria, possibly with the intention of taking the romantic element out of the relationship (again, racist issues with this choice).

The facts are that this was a fun movie with some unfortunate executive decisions in the making-of process, and as a result we have two female characters being paired together in what seems like an attempt to de-romanticize/de-sexualize them. Except, like, wlw exist, so??? They just read to me (and many others) as lesbians who are in the closet in both their own universe and ours.