listen. i feel like part of media illiteracy and shipping drama and purity culture comes from this need people have to define things, and then defend their definition. to look at a story and define every character's sexuality and gender, define every possible relationship, define what is canon and what isn't canon, when all of these things are very amorphous.
gender and sexuality are fluid, they can change over time, they can overlap. relationships have infinite variation. two people who love each other intimately could be romantic, or platonic, or queerplatonic, or family, and love each other just as intimately in any of those cases. people don't have to kiss or fuck to prove they're attracted to each other; people don't have to leave a foot of space between their bodies at all times to prove they're "just" friends or "just" family.
canon is what we see on screen or read in the text, but what we see and what we read is open to individual interpretation. what reads to a married allo person as clearly romantic might read to a single aroace person as deeply queerplatonic, and unless the text is explicit, then both can be true. and here's the key part—a story has no obligation to be explicit about any of these things. a good story can be read multiple ways, from multiple perspectives. it's not taking away from gay representation if an aroace person relates to two men as queerplatonic partners, it's adding to aroace representation. it's not promoting grooming or normalizing incest to interpret a physically affectionate relationship as familial. it's not disrespecting canon to interpret a character as trans, or intersex. media, and media fandoms, benefit from variation and imagination and resistance to being boxed and labeled. it means nothing about your personal morality to enjoy complex, imperfect, mistake-making and harm-doing characters and relationships and storylines for what they are.
and also, interpretations that are explicitly excluded by canon don't need to be canon. you don't have to bend over backwards to prove the thing you like is the most correct, or morally superior, or supported by the text at all, you can just imagine it. draw it. write about it. find other people who like it and chat about it.
YOUR FANNISH PRACTICE DOES NOT HAVE TO UPHOLD CANON. YOUR FANNISH PRACTICE DOES NOT HAVE TO UPHOLD ANY PARTICULAR MORALS. YOUR FANNISH PRACTICE ONLY HAS TO PLEASE AND SATISFY YOU.
YOUR FANNISH PRACTICE DOES NOT NEED TO INVALIDATE OR ATTACK OR DENIGRATE OTHER PEOPLE'S FANNISH PRACTICE.
like what you like, open your mind to infinite interpretations, and mind your own business about the interpretations you aren't into. even if you think someone else's thing is stupid, or gross, or wrong. don't waste your time and energy and breath on what you don't like, or on giving oxygen to "discourse." fandom would be so much better if we could just let go of the boxes we put everything in, and consider other perspectives expansively instead of shutting each other down.
