And another anon:
Self sabotaging Maya. She just can’t help herself when people get too close. She did the 1 thing she knew would drive Carina away and boy was she harsh about telling her. Unless Carina has actually fallen in love with this idiot, i don’t see why they’d get back together. It’s interesting, cheating is often done by a person feeling insecure or falling for someone else, whereas Maya did it 100% on purpose to drive someone away (Jack was just a body). I wonder if that makes a difference to Carina?
If I’m entirely honest, it makes a difference to me. I hate cheating between my ships because–well, for obviously lots of reasons, but in terms of continuing shipping it usually signals the beginning of the end because if they’re into someone else enough to betray the first person, that’s kind of it, right. Basically, Maya can put in the work and try to resolve her issues, but she can’t exactly resolve falling for someone else, you know? That’s just a new romance, not an actual problem to address. But this makes it about something else, which is no defense, of course, of course, it’s still incredibly hurtful and dumb and tropey, everything I mentioned in previous asks. But it does help me see a light at the end of this, if they can make their way through.
And yeah, after the initial shock and disappointment of it, I did see people conclude the same thing, it’s pure self-sabotage from Maya, not about Jack, as evidenced by her telling Carina immediately. I think even without Danielle’s input that was coming through clearly. But I AM glad Danielle confirmed it, and by the way, how endearing was it when Barrett gave her that opening and voiced what the fans were surely thinking, “What was Maya thinking?” I think the actors being so supportive of this has honestly also sanded the edges of this a bit for me? Because the initial shock came from the reminder of how rep used to be and the fear that that’s how this would go, but things are different. Not NEARLY as much as they could be, but just seeing the better treatment from the actors is one thing, and of course for me at least, there are various ships with their positive rep over the last year that’ve left me in a much better place to deal with the negative cases.
It’s ironic but just as much as we were forced to stay with subpar rep before because there wasn’t much else, I’m more comfortable staying with this ship now because there’s more around. Each rare canon ship doesn’t have to be everything, it doesn’t have to stand for all f/f representation. In this case, the narrative sympathy is with Maya for the abuse, yes, but there’s a LOT of it reserved for Carina. Who, by the way, as much as it makes a difference for me that the cheating was a way to push her away and not about Jack, it shouldn’t really make a difference for Carina. Like, oh, you wanted to hurt me that badly? Pfft.
For the ship, so far, this seems just one step on a much longer journey, at some point Maya has to confront the fact that the abuse was real, that’s just TV, and the person who’s been with her on this journey is Carina. The person she’s hurt in an eerily reminiscent way of how her father hurt her family is…Carina. If Maya’s arc is that she was abused and pushes people away now because of that, I’d imagine a resolution would include the person she…has been pushing away. She has to make huge amends, and then we’ll see, I guess.