i actually agree with this so much…it’s funny and even slightly endearing to see my fellow macdennis shippers behaving as if we’re scrounging for crumbs of our favourite non-canon queer ship (noticeably with this season, and i am guilty of this myself) when the reality is that this ship has been canon for longer than it hasn’t. like, pointing out macdennis-y moments in the show doesn’t really count as analysing subtext anymore because it’s quite literally just the text. i think a lot of shippers who’ve had a long history in fandom are just so accustomed to being queerbaited at this point that they’re now kind of afraid to just run around boldly claiming their favourite gay ship is 100% canon — especially considering the number of cases where writers have grown to resent their (usually queer-dominated) audience for harping on about a gay ship that makes the showrunners and general audiences uncomfortable. but we should all realise that there’s multiple reasons why macdennis will never become one of these cases. firstly, iasip isn’t afraid of potentially causing viewers discomfort. if they were, the whole show just wouldn’t work in general. but, specifically in regards to exploring queer themes, they committed to a storyline about mac accepting himself as gay and portrayed his journey in a serious light (still comedic but not mocking), despite knowing that a decent proportion of their straight male audience would probably dislike it (and they did). the coding of everyone in the gang was always very intentional, it was clear to viewers back then that the constant ripping on mac’s sexuality would segue into something bigger. otherwise, this long-running gag would’ve just felt unfulfilling, lacking a satisfying payoff — essentially a joke without a punchline. so, knowing this is the case, what does that suggest about dennis’s own coding? what would be the point of writing dennis to be so resistant to the very idea of this relationship, so insecure and afraid of how he and mac are perceived, so ready to defend his living situation and his sexuality, if there was no underlying self-denial there? like, this is rcg we’re talking about…of course they aren’t going to write a conventional sitcom romance that’s palatable and safe. but that doesn’t mean it isn’t canon, or that it’s mainly subtextual, or even that the romance is up to interpretation, because it isn’t. it’s just different to what the general fandom-wide idea of “explicitly canon” is. we don’t need an on-screen fairytale kiss to know that it’s real. and i think that’s part of what they were trying to portray with some of the scenes in these new episodes. it feels like they’re insistently hammering it home that they’re “platonic”, but it’s really just to emphasise how much the opposite (the reality) is being noticed and understood, both by the fandom and by the other characters in the show. this isn’t hinting at macdennis, this isn’t “crumbs”, it’s directly acknowledging and confirming that macdennis is canon, and not for the first time in the show’s history. of course it’s fun to celebrate this for what it is, but i fully agree with op here that it’s time to move on to more substantive analysis of their relationship beyond proving that it is indeed real and that it’s romantic, because we already know these things to be canonically true. with all of that said, i’m sorry that this is kind of unnecessarily long and that i may have accidentally ended up doing the exact thing op was complaining about, but i’m just gonna post it anyway. ok bye
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