By the time I started looking into f/f media that wasn’t Xena or mostly terrible movies, the Runaways comics was already well under way.
It was great to have an out character in Karolina but I was catching up on canon that already seemed to cement Nico as a one-sided straight girl crush and Xavin as the actual romance. But even then–or maybe, especially then–it was common to have subtext ships involving central characters and Karolina/Nico remained the popular fandom ship. They were both there from the start, with a great dynamic outside of romance, there seemed to always be something between them, and it would be such a fantasy for the straight girl crush to not be straight after all.
But it seemed too unlikely and almost…greedy? to have two original characters be into women and too much like wish fulfillment for Karolina’s enduring pining to be requited.
Fast forward to 2017. Like others, I watched the start of the TV series with some dismay as it somehow made Karolina’s story about Chase. By the time Karolina/Nico happened, it was nice butt felt temporary. I was projecting, perhaps, but given…everything, it wasn’t without cause.
But season 2! Their treatment has been so gratifying. I feared that on Nico’s side the feelings would be conflicted or hesitant, or that as a couple they would be oddly sidelined at times, the characters still there but the relationship simply not brought up. I was wrong and am happy about it! They’re both present as individual characters and as a couple. This is precisely why people love central character ships, they’re interwoven with the main plot and with those characters’ storylines. They touch so many more storylines and characters and they’re all affected by that relationship.
Knowing this is where they were heading, this even retroactively makes season 1 better for me, to know that it carried a weight for the writers even if I hadn’t yet realized it. And that season 2 is an actually good season of TV makes everything better. This is the dream, a good ship in a good show.
I was talking over this with a friend and I think I get why this is bringing me so much joy. It’s a great step forward for rep in itself, two main characters in a well-budgeted mainstream genre property. Like, applause, well done.
But aside from that? It’s the only one from the big subtext era ships, Jo/Blair, Buffy/Faith, J/7, A/O, Faberry, SQ, Rizzles, B&W, etc, to finally go canon. We’re all living vicariously through it.