#do patty and allison still count as subtext...

[booasaur]

“It’s just not gonna happen…;I can’t betray my SOUL” lol I felt that! There’s a lot more ‘official’ representation these days but in the past, so many f/f ships were entirely based on subtext or the show was actively queerbaiting, so most of my ships weren’t canon. And there’s always the thing of shipping two women who click just for whatever reason that I’ve kept up even now, when one character ends up being gay or bi and gets a partner. That’s me now with New Amsterdam, I always loved the idea of Bloom and Sharpe together and even seeing all the setup for Sharowin from day 1, I was in denial ha. I love Lauren and Leyla but BloomSharpe will always own a piece of my heart, ‘real’ or not :,)

(Note: I actually did start answering this in April and then left it till now so this’ll be somewhat disjointed as I finish off my older thoughts.)

The subtext vs canon discussion is always super interesting, right! Sometimes it’s a question of which dueling ship from the various current fandoms is the one that wins the most attention from a smallish community but it’s really interesting when there’s friction between subtext and canon ships in the same show, though that happens less and less so now. I feel like the mid '10s will remain the peak of that, as media began to include canon f/f more regularly and a large part of fandom followed, while others stayed with subtext. Glee was a great example, since both ships were so huge, but you see that behavior in SC vs Alex's canon ships too, or, less so because Red Kansas or whatever could hardly compare, but SQ as well. I do remember when New Amsterdam started and idly noted the two female characters who actually interacted and had a friendship and wouldn’t have minded shipping them but Helen/Max seemed set up from the start and I wasn’t in the mood to battle that. [Me adding months later: It’s ironic now, whichever one was more popular, both Sharpe and Leyla are gone. :x]

But it was super interesting to see who was drawn to Faberry and who to Brittana, then the two combined for Clexa, and then split again into Sanvers and SC, for example. It seems to me that it really depends on people's individual engagement with ships, what is it they get invested in specifically. The subtext group essentially goes for the “ideal” pairing, usually main characters with rich backgrounds and histories and well-defined, multilayered relationships, deciding that romance makes the dynamic even better, or clearer. Even now you have KCFH and HotD offering scope for that. The canon group will usually, just as a matter of statistics, not get the main characters, but to them the romance is already the source of the richness, and they can add the rest of the character and relationship work. 

Neither way is better or worse and there’s no hard rule, there’s lots of overlap, most people will switch back and forth, or like both. I myself am a character-first person and so you’d expect me to be more subtext but I’ve pivoted more into canon lately for sure. I was just telling my friend the other day about how on Peacock’s Vampire Academy, the two leads are SO ready-made to subtext ship, but so much time and energy was spent on their respective m/f relationships, as with Helen/Bloom above, I just didn’t have the time or energy for that fight. Or interest, to be fair, I suppose, if I was really into it, I’d make it work. 

Whichhhh, I do have the time and energy and interest to make J/7 work. No other pairing for either of them can compare for me. You had four full 26-ep seasons developing this extremely pivotal mutually transformative relationship that changed both of them and the constantly influenced Voyager plots, I cannot move on from that.