I also wonder if we have a slight miscommunication.
Yes, we do! With regards to m+m being over-represented I'm talking about professional adaptations of material like the Lord of the Rings movies and the upcoming series, not non-professional fan creations. And I agree that m+m is becoming less common because of the fear it will be read as m/m. (In the case of f+f it's slightly less of a problem, but even so some f+f has to deliberately mock the idea of f/f in order to establish itself, such as Rizzoli and Isles.)
But while male/male friends are very common, male/male platonic life partners/"love of one's life" are very rare (in modern media).
Yes, and I think a good part of this is because of homophobia - if some of these relationships were allowed to be gay, some of them could be close friendships that are not gay. If they have to stick to "manly men" vs "gay" that harms the portrayal of close friendships for everyone. And there are almost no major character m/m relationships in large, popular canons - see what happened on Deep Space 9 with Garak and Bashir, for example. So I'm saying the devaluing of m+m or f+f platonic life partners (and the devaluing of m+f versions) is part and parcel of devaluing m/m and f/f relationships and prioritising m/f relationships.
ETA: An example of the old school m+m platonic life partner being remade and going very wrong is the Star Trek movies reboot. They were terrified of people thinking Spock/Kirk was happening, so they made their relationship vastly more antagonistic and made Spock/Uhura for straight points...immediately wrecking everything that was great about Spock+Uhura in the original shows and movies PLUS wrecking the Spock+Kirk bond. By the time of the third movie (where, incidentally, there's a main gay male character, Sulu) they've stopped having such dramatic misreadings to avoid m/m.
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Yes, we do! With regards to m+m being over-represented I'm talking about professional adaptations of material like the Lord of the Rings movies and the upcoming series, not non-professional fan creations. And I agree that m+m is becoming less common because of the fear it will be read as m/m. (In the case of f+f it's slightly less of a problem, but even so some f+f has to deliberately mock the idea of f/f in order to establish itself, such as Rizzoli and Isles.)
But while male/male friends are very common, male/male platonic life partners/"love of one's life" are very rare (in modern media).
Yes, and I think a good part of this is because of homophobia - if some of these relationships were allowed to be gay, some of them could be close friendships that are not gay. If they have to stick to "manly men" vs "gay" that harms the portrayal of close friendships for everyone. And there are almost no major character m/m relationships in large, popular canons - see what happened on Deep Space 9 with Garak and Bashir, for example. So I'm saying the devaluing of m+m or f+f platonic life partners (and the devaluing of m+f versions) is part and parcel of devaluing m/m and f/f relationships and prioritising m/f relationships.
ETA: An example of the old school m+m platonic life partner being remade and going very wrong is the Star Trek movies reboot. They were terrified of people thinking Spock/Kirk was happening, so they made their relationship vastly more antagonistic and made Spock/Uhura for straight points...immediately wrecking everything that was great about Spock+Uhura in the original shows and movies PLUS wrecking the Spock+Kirk bond. By the time of the third movie (where, incidentally, there's a main gay male character, Sulu) they've stopped having such dramatic misreadings to avoid m/m.