This thread has its origins over in the Thor: Ragnarok thread where, (no spoilers don’t worry) I’ve read articles and those "here is what the internet thinks about blank type of stories about the character of Valkyrie.
The details of what caused my statement aren’t REALLY a spoiler, but I’ll box it just in case and go from there
In the movie, Valkyrie and her clan are shown fighting Hela. Part of the scene shows Valkyrie being saved from an arrow by one of her female warrior friends. It’s obvious that the girl died while Valkyrie lived. Because of this super short scene and even shorter segment of the scene I’ve read articles where people say “she’s gay and that was her lover who saved her!”
So, regardless of if you read the spoiler or not, the crux of the argument is this: Because of the scene in question, there are people out there in internet land who claim the character is gay, or at least bisexual. However, there is absolutely nothing implied in the scene to merit that. Taking the movie and scene as it is, saying “she’s gay!” is simply a person wanting that to be true.
This annoys me.
A non-spoiler version of this would be the relationship of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes in the MCU. Steve and Bucky are clearly very good friends who have gone to hell and back together. Steve spends most of his second and third movie trying to get his friend back. And yet, I’ve read articles written by, and about, people who insist that the two are gay, or were gay, or did gay things. Why? Because they’re the same gender and are extremely close? Can’t they just be, you know, extremely good friends and love each other because of that?
I understand that there is a massive under representation of gay characters in pop culture, which needs to change, but claiming that a character is something that they aren’t just because you have an imagination isn’t the answer.
A counter example would be a character in How to Train Your Dragon 2 named Gobber. Gobber was just a dude in Dragons 1, but in Dragons 2 he had a throwaway line of (paraphrasing) “You see, that’s why I never got married. Well, that and one other thing”. That is an ambiguous phrase, but it clearly had intentions. My first thought on that was “They made Gobber gay? Cool”. Despite the fact they never said it, they at least implied it. Compare that to the Steve and Bucky relationship, or the Valkyrie scene: There’s nothing that overt. Just two people of the same gender being close, so, oooomg! They have to be gay!
This is getting a bit ranty, so I’ll let you all yell at me for being wrong and we’ll go from there