#'this is a poll about mistreated women in fandom so I will in submitting this character talk about

[musical-chick-13]

LMAOOOOOO not someone getting bent out of shape for people complaining that their submission for a character had vitriolic hate in it.

[twilightoftheapprentice]

Okay, where did this idea that noncanon pairings are worth less than canon pairings within queer fandom come from? Thinking that canon was the be-all-end-all only thing that mattered is something we used to make fun of het fandoms for. Like honestly, do you guys think the Xena fandom would still exist after twenty years if it was in any way reliant on canon?

Here are the attitudes I’ve been seeing from some of you:

supporting a noncanon pairing is a waste of time

supporting a noncanon pairing on a show with homophobic writers/actors is especially pathetic

fans of noncanon pairings don’t deserve support, especially if the alternative is fans of canon pairings getting more support

if you don’t support canon pairings, you’re hurting the community

if you don’t support a canon pairing because of something racist/ableist/ homophobic/transphobic/etc. about it, you’re still hurting the community

if you’re supporting a noncanon pairing and something homophobic happens with the writers/actors, you were asking for it because you could have just supported canon pairings

As someone who has spent a great deal of time in noncanon fandoms, literally all of those are things that have been hurled at us from homophobic fans trying to antagonize us, so it’s alarming to see it thrown back on us now by other queer fans. 

Here are some things to consider:

For better or worse, shipping noncanon pairings is deeply ingrained in queer fandom. A lot of our culture (the strong sense of community, the heavy emphasis on transformative works, the focus on the characters as individuals, the solidarity between fandoms) stems from the fact that our pairings were always noncanon.

Queer people are allowed to have preferences

The current canon f/f pairings actually represent a very small portion of queer women overall 

Noncanon fandoms skew older. A lot of the people shipping the noncanon pairings that are “bad for rep” have been fighting for rep longer than you’ve been in fandom (some of them, longer than you’ve been alive) and probably don’t appreciate being talked down to by the people who have benefited from their efforts

This is all coming to a head now because of the bitterness surrounding the finalists in the zimbio poll being two noncanon pairings that have never had any support from the writers, but it’s been brewing for a while. It was brewing when all the new fans showed up in the Supergirl fandom a year and a half ago and started insisting that anyone who still shipped Alex with whomever they shipped her with in season 1 was hurting the community. It was brewing two years ago when all the new fans showed up in the POI fandom, only to mock the existing fans who had been enjoying the subtext up to that point. It was brewing after the comic con debacle last summer, when fans of a certain popular canon pairing responded by telling supercorp shippers that this never would have happened to them if they’d shipped that pairing instead. It comes out every time something bad happens in a queer fandom and fans seeking solace in the tag have to scroll past 39857324 posts about “why aren’t you just watching this other show.”

Frankly, it needs to stop. This isn’t who we are.

A lot of newer fans don’t seem to realize that this prioritization of getting more canon pairings is pretty new. It wasn’t really a thing at all until maybe 2015. A lot of older fans still don’t prioritize it because, while they realize the rep is important, queer fandom has thrived since long before it existed (and a lot of them still aren’t represented in what we do have). For a lot of us, whether a pairing is canon plays absolutely no role in whether we’re going to ship it. A lot of us, if offered a choice between “this pairing is canon” or “this character gets treated better”/”the show doesn’t devolve into a disaster,” would easily choose the latter. I personally have no interest in advocating for my ships to be canon. Do I want them to be? Yes, of course, some of them at least, but that’s not why I’m here, and it’s not a priority. This being a controversial statement and not the majority opinion is extremely new. 

Here are some reasons people are supporting the noncanon pairings over the canon pairings:

Those fandoms are older and people have been in them longer

The people voting for the noncanon pairings don’t watch the shows that the canon pairings are on

Fandoms who can’t rely on canon for validation have to rely on things like polls, so winning the poll means more to them

People are trying to put pressure on/send a message to homophobic writers/actors (”we’re here and there are a lot of us, and we’re not going anywhere”/”fuck you”)

People are trying to send the same message to homophobic fans

People relate more to the noncanon pairings and not everyone's priority is encouraging writers to write more pairings they don’t relate to

People still remember what Swan Queen went through in the 2015 AE poll

People are voting for the pairings they like the most 

This is what causes the animosity between older and younger fans. That’s new too. That didn’t exist when I came into fandom, and I’m only 25. It’s not even really the fact that newer fans are so preoccupied with canon that’s the issue. It’s the fact that you expect us to be. It’s the fact that you:

come into fandoms when an f/f couple is made canon and completely dominate them with no regard for those of us who have already been there for years (I was forced out of two fandoms this way and I am Bitter) 

say our preferred pairings don’t deserve to win polls or don’t deserve so much fanfiction or whatever else because they’re not canon

accuse anyone who’s utmost priority isn’t revering writers on shows with rep for queer cis, thin, femme, mostly white teens and twentysomethings who get together in episode 4 of not caring about the community

tag all of the above with the ship you’re bashing

If you prioritize canon over the culture I referred to way up there (the strong sense of community, the heavy emphasis on transformative works, the focus on the characters as individuals, the solidarity between fandoms), that’s your choice, but it's not mine. It’s not a lot of people’s, and you won’t let us coexist, or at least not unless we’re willing to submit to a clear statement that you're the ones doing it right, which is a huge slap in the face to the people (older than me) who spent years or decades fighting to not be actively mistreated by the creators of the media they were consuming.

In conclusion, please take a chill pill.