Thoughts on Shipping
I never liked shipping. Now I hate it, thanks to my experiences in the Winx fandom for the last few years. Shipping clouds people’s judgement and twists their views of each character as an individual.
Clearly, it’s worse when a main character like Aisha has more than one love interest. No matter which one we root for, we only focus on the traits that make them the “best” choice. Never mind if the love interest is poorly written and adds nothing to the story by himself or herself. It’s okay because compatibility and love!
I know I sound like a hypocrite. After all, this blog is about a couple — a ship, if you want. I’m just as guilty. In fact, I’ve even said I like Aisha and Nex individually, but I love them as a couple.
But I hate what stereotypical shippers focus on when choosing their ships. A love interest might get chosen because they’re “interesting”, cool, handsome, and other things that have nothing to do with their significant other. Someone might ship two characters just because “they’re cute together” (whatever that means). Others might apply real-life social standards to a fictional story, support a love interest who follows them, and reject a love interest who breaks them. Never mind that not all standards are universal, and not all situations are the same.
The shippers’ reasons are usually based on the past and present. What about the future? Are you sure you won’t get tired of that “interesting” love interest in a few years? Will the standards you’re holding your rejected love interest to ever change?
More importantly, what about the couple’s future? If your ship gets together, how will the writers develop their love story? What does each character contribute to it? How will each character grow because of it?
Most shippers don’t care about the principles of story writing. They just care about their ship being together (and the ship they hate not being together). Heck, let’s just skip to the wedding! How did the couple get to that phase? Who cares! All couples get married, right?
Here’s another question shippers don’t ask: what’s the point of this love story? Not every story needs a message, but some have one. What are you trying to say through this couple? What makes them the best medium for spreading your message?
When I look at Aisha and Nex, I don’t see a ship. I see a story with a universal message that’s more important than couples and relationships. (It’s not the obvious one you might think it is.) But because of the Aisha/Nabu, Aisha/Roy, Aisha/Nex, or whatever else battle, Aisha and Nex’s message is being distorted, drowned out, and ignored.
Will this couple ever be heard, and will the audience understand and appreciate them? I hope so.
well trust me when i say that i’ve seen the worst side of shippers in the rwby fandom
Shipping is notoriously the worst part of every fandom. That’s why I’ve always hated it.
i can totally understand why you hate shipping given all the trouble it caused you
yeah the whole ship war between bumblebee and black sun is but sometimes shipping can be fun
well you bring up the exact mistake i made with a pairing i devised
May I ask what?
i basically rushed the pairing i was doing
Ah. Well, that’s a common one.
yeah i’m thinking of doing the pairing in the future but may i ask how it is a common one
Rushing the pairing? Because people don’t wanna see the messy and boring parts of a relationship. Relationship-building is often reduced to cute moments or small fights that don’t have much effect on the plot. Then they fast-forward to the wedding and the kids, which is shorthand for “happily ever after”. Never mind that a couple can (read: will) have problems even when they’re married. (Of course, people like to assume that if two people are “made for each other”, they’ll never have any problems.)
right well what are those messy parts?
Disagreements, finding out things you don’t like about the person, finding out where you differ on issues, questioning the relationship even if it’s working out, merging your lives together — anything that’s not romantic.
hmm all interesting points that i definitely forgot but i bet Tecna and Timmy would probably disagree over the creation of a wmd
Maybe they would, but under what circumstance would they ever talk about WMDs?
well if they were trying to deal with something that were technomagic proof cause i was trying to remove the easy solution
I completely understand what you mean with this in regards to story writing (in the actual show or fanfics), and how no ever wants to show the “messy” parts of a relationship like you mentioned. If you’re going to demand that something become canon or write a gigantic fanfic about it, think through if you would actually want to watch it for sevedal seasons or write about it for so many chapters. However, I think more casual shipping, though it doesn’t happen as often, doesn’t require reasoning as strong. I’ll use Harry Potter as an example.
In those books, Harry and Ginny are a great couple together (I’m excluding the movies here because they stripped away everything that made Ginny interesting as a character, but that’s not relevant). Ginny helps him work through all of his guilt and rein in his mild hero complex, and Harry is one of the first people to actually listen to her in a while (Ginny grew up as the youngest daughter of seven children and the only girl, so her family would often accidentally ignore her and not let her play Quidditch because it was “too dangerous” for her). Later in the Cursed Child play, we see how they function as a thirty-something married couple. They’re still the same characters, just significantly more mature. They work pretty well as a unit together, even though Ginny kind of gets the shaft in the play, but, well, that play had a lot of problems, and she does eventually tell Harry that he was wrong, so whatever. They still both have to reign each other in sometimes, but have both learned from each other over time. Though we don’t get to see this development, it’s clear that someone was at least thinking about it. Because of all this, Harry and Ginny is one of my favorite canon ships, and I will fight anyone who judges them just based on their movie portrayal.
However, there are plenty of ships I’m okay with, but don’t have as many good reasons for existing. Example: Hermione and Draco. It’s basically just the “good girl changes the bad boy” trope, and though that trope can be done well (like with Nex and Aisha), most of the time I find it extremely tiring, and Dramione is no exception. While there are diehard Dramione shippers out there, most people just see it as a passing curiosity. The most mileage it’s ever gotten is that time some college students asked themselves “What if Draco had a crush on Hermione?” and then accidentally created A Very Potter Musical. I wouldn’t ever want that ship to be canon (there was a line in Cursed Child that was retroactively implying that Draco had a crush on her, and I literally said “Oh no” aloud when I read it), but I can deal with its existence.
That’s my feeling on a lot of Winx Club ships – they’re okay, but there isn’t a lot going on with it. I understand that a lot of people are more avid about these ships, but I just feel like not all shipping is a categorically bad thing, and I wanted to explain that.
I understand what you mean. My experience with shipping hasn’t been pleasant, so I know I’m biased. Casual shipping is fine, like you said, and people don’t necessarily need a good reason to defend a ship. It’s when they insist the ship is canon when it’s obviously not — or that it should be canon, instead of a ship they hate — that things get annoying. Especially when they don’t have an explanation other than, “I ship it.”
For the most part, people don’t think about why a ship should exist and what the couple’s story would be, except for a few common tropes. It’s frustrating.
I like shipping and I think I could write all characters I ship with eachhother convincingly. But I’m also someone looking at the story first, whereas most people just care about sex, drugs, profanity, horror, gore…the story is irrelevant to them. Those are the same people buying videogames just for the action part; the bloodier a game, the better it is in their opinion.
I see where you’re coming from but it depends on the writer of the ships. Some ships make sense (Mirta with Flora or with Lucy in season 1, Jim and Bloom in World of Winx, Icy and Valtor, The Wizards of the Black Circle with eachother, Andy and Bloom), some don’t (Frodo and Sam in LOTR or Ace shipped with Bloom).