Guys, I think I’ve figured out shipping.
Now, whenever you’re watching a movie or a show or reading a book or something, if the story is SPECIFICALLY a romance, or something where the romantic outcome is a given from the beginning, it’s not really shipping. It’s just reader (or viewer) expectations.
I mean, nobody doubts that Philip and Aurora will be together by the end of ‘Sleeping Beauty’. That’s just how fairy-tales work. We EXPECT it to happen. What makes it most interesting is how they manage to get there—through curses, orc-hordes, thorn-forests, and a witch-fairy dragon and, quote, ‘all the powers of Hell’. We know what’s coming, but we want to see the journey it takes.
But ‘shipping’, in my mind, is taking the reader/viewer expectations for a romance, and applying it to EVERY story and EVERY relationship. It’s assuming that every genre of story is just a subgenre of the romance.
It’s looking at every relationship—be it a band of companions on an epic mission or quest, a bitter rivalry, a mentor and learner, a pair of bickering best friends, or even a FAMILY (just think about THAT for a minute)—as a relationship that invariably leads to romance.
It’s ignoring the storytellers and the intentions they have for their own movies, shows, and books. And I don’t think that’s the way we should look at stories. It’s downright disrespectful. I mean, who’s telling the story here?
Sure, sometimes there’ll be a romantic relationship that’s seriously just cardboard, and anybody can see that there are better people for either of them. That’s just bad storytelling. There, I totally sympathize. (Example, even though I haven’t watched it in a while: Harry and Ginny)
Sometimes there’s a romantic relationship that people have come up with that I think seems sweet, but unlikely. And I kind of enjoy those, if only to imagine it in an alternate timeline or something. (Example: Jason and Connie in Adventures in Odyssey)
Heck, sometimes people come up with crossover ones, where characters from totally separate stories meet and fall in love. Those, of course, are usually INCREDIBLY implausible, but they are sometimes fun to imagine. (Example: uhh… I know Jack Frost and Elsa are one that goes around on the web)
And yes, occasionally I do just go all in and see two characters as a couple. It’s rare, and really only when there’s not another existing relationship it breaks up, but it happens. Example: Reuben and Shirley from The Partridge Family.
(Hey, he’s the only one that can really handle them! Besides, it’s better to go with someone you actually know than a guy that showed up a week ago (like all the guest stars that pop up so they can have a romance episode.) Plus… well, okay, I just really like it and feel like it fits. See, I can do it too.)
But aside from those rare instances and the fun-to-imagine ones, there aren’t a lot of exceptions for the rule of canon for me.
(And don’t even get me started on slash. It’s the worst. It basically slashes the ties of friendship (or even hatred, oddly enough) between two male characters and shoves their faces together. So stupid.
Oh, and if you decide that you see the two characters as friends, as brothers, as father and son even—literally as ANYTHING besides romantic partners—you get endless flak for it. @julientel knows about this firsthand. It’s tough being a non-shipper. Why doesn’t anybody appreciate FRIENDSHIP anymore?
Now, I love a good romance as much as the next person. Honestly, I do. Heck, I’m posting a theory about one of the sweetest ones in all creation tomorrow.
But unless the story is a romance, I just wait to see what the story does, where AND IF they bring in that sort of thing. And unless the story itself comes right out and says ‘these two are a couple,’ I don’t generally assume otherwise (or ‘ship’). Friends until proven lovers, amirite?
In short, enjoy character relationships for what they are. Enjoy the romantic relationships, yes, but enjoy the friendships too. There’s more to love than the ‘kissy-and-touchy’ kind.
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