I would agree with sweetvalleyslut and pouncer that, until we actually get a canon episode where, like, John is dosed with truth serum and says he's 100% straight, then that's not canon in the same way that "Bates is not a lieutenant" is canon. You can look at John (or Rodney) in canon and interpret his behavior as the behavior of a guy who's 100% straight, or you can interpret it as the behavior of a guy who's gay (and resigned to being totally closeted) or gay (and having as much clandestine gay sex as possible) or happily bisexual and totally into both cute girls and guys, or totally repressed and confused-- human beings are so complicated, just about any interpretation works.
On the other hand, "Bates is not a Lieutenant" is based on factual knowledge of how the Air Force works; there's no way to "interpret" that to mean anything different. So I don't think you can say that, for instance, slashing John is the same as changing Bates' rank.
But what I *do* think is interesting is that often people will alter canon in their stories to *support* their slashy (or shippy) interpretation, and nobody ever seems to point these things out as un-canonical-- maybe because that would be seen as attacking the pairing, as opposed to just picking at the details?
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I would agree with sweetvalleyslut and pouncer that, until we actually get a canon episode where, like, John is dosed with truth serum and says he's 100% straight, then that's not canon in the same way that "Bates is not a lieutenant" is canon. You can look at John (or Rodney) in canon and interpret his behavior as the behavior of a guy who's 100% straight, or you can interpret it as the behavior of a guy who's gay (and resigned to being totally closeted) or gay (and having as much clandestine gay sex as possible) or happily bisexual and totally into both cute girls and guys, or totally repressed and confused-- human beings are so complicated, just about any interpretation works.
On the other hand, "Bates is not a Lieutenant" is based on factual knowledge of how the Air Force works; there's no way to "interpret" that to mean anything different. So I don't think you can say that, for instance, slashing John is the same as changing Bates' rank.
But what I *do* think is interesting is that often people will alter canon in their stories to *support* their slashy (or shippy) interpretation, and nobody ever seems to point these things out as un-canonical-- maybe because that would be seen as attacking the pairing, as opposed to just picking at the details?