#but tbh sometimes i enjoy getting queerbaited because it's a really fun way for fandoms to bond

[deliberatemisspelling]

Okay. Remember yesterday when I was like wow a fandom with an active canon is SO Much?

I forgot something.

It's not going canon.

It's not.

A long-running show where the queerness of a character is not explicitly made clear early on?

It's not going canon.

We can debate all day about whether or not it's queerbaiting (sometimes. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's fandom doing what it does and reading Too Much into things. Sometimes, it's just an echo chamber where people get convinced of things that Have Not Occured and Will Not Happen).

But this is something younger fans and people new to the Fandom Experience need to understand, because when it's not understood a lot of Disk Horse and hurt feelings and anger happen: it's not going canon.

Enjoy the show. Wear your shipping goggles. Stop watching the show if it starts making you sad or, quite frankly, unhinged, but please know a thing so you can be the Fannish version of Normal About Stuff and take what you want from what is canon, and have fun with it: it won't happen.

If the only reason you're watching a show is for a fanon romantic relationship and that romance is not so much more than nodded at (and the lack of a nod makes you, personally, viscerally angry?) You're hurting your own feelings.

Wanting and believing it will be canon and being fine when it isn't (it won't), because you have your sandbox, is the Fandom Experience. Wanting and believing that it will be canon to the point that you are so emotionally invested in a thing that will never happen in a television show that you are Real World Actually Damaged by it (and sometimes Actually Real World Damaging other people who are involved in the making of the fictional thing you are overly invested in)? You're not having fun anymore, you are hurting your own feelings, and you are taking it out on other people.

Fandom is supposed to be fun. Canon or not canon does not matter. That is THE POINT of Ship Fandom. Canon exists as a premise, over which you do not have creative control. Canon builds the sandbox. Fandom builds the castle.

And besides, even if Canon did build the castle, the fandom would simply devolve into Disk Horse about how They Did It Wrong.

Fandom exists to satisfy itself. Canon exists for... advertising dollars, mostly, at the end of the day.

It's not going canon. Reconcile yourself to that reality and have fun, or stop punishing yourself (and, tbh, everyone else).

Plus, if it ever does go canon (again, I really cannot stress this enough, it Will Not), you'll be pleasantly surprised rather than irate that it didn't get there the way you wanted it to.