you've been around all night, and that's a little long
I have, however, started to figure out what I like in a ship, which does seem to be more of a detailed set of preferences. Mostly BSG and Buffyverse examples:
Basically, my support for a ship is inversely proportional to the amount of will they/won’t they garment-rending. I like the idea of people having and building a history together. That can be something as sweetly quotidian as Zoe/Wash (or Kara/Sam, SORRY, LEE), or huge and dark and epic as Angel/Darla, or going through phases of both like Willow/Tara. I adore ships involving characters with intertwined histories and complimentary personalities whose interactions are not at all about moving them toward a romantic relationship (ie, Wes/Faith, otherwise known as THE PERFECT SHIP THAT NEVER HAPPENED; also, Roslin/Zarek,* EXCEPT THAT TOTALLY DID HAPPEN, SHUT UP). Or shameless, relentless subtext, ie Dom/DeWitt.
I do need for it to be a legitimate history, though, and not DESTINY! SOULMATES! 4EVA! It's limiting and necessarily stunting, for sure, but also, saying two people have to get together for whatever reason always scans to me as saying they don't love each other, even if they have acted like they could or even do. Angel/Cordelia, I am looking at you.
Mostly, that’s my storytelling preference overall. Whether or not a pairing will happen is such an easy way for writers to manipulate the audience, it’s actually rare for them to use this trope and without being manipulative, even if that’s not the intent and there are other organic issues impeding the pairing. Bones/Booth, Josh/Donna - those pairings had me until they went on TOO LONG. There's just no way the payoff can live up to the buildup. But it’s also a no thanks for me because I do think it lays into the treads of more traditional concepts of virginity, and sex as immediate toxin. The first time is still all that counts in this view of romance. It’s pretty stark objectification, this suggestion that engagement with another person is only interesting when you don’t know them.
So this idea of being together - usually by way of boning - as an end rather than a beginning is a great way to make me an anti-shipper. A lot of things retroactively ruined what was my massive love for Laura/Bill, but a big part of what yanked me off the love train was the implication in ADFMS that they had in fact avoided building a romantic relationship together all that time, because, um, because! Because, I suppose, the show had given up the ghost on reasons we could have cared about them all that time. Well, that, and Admiral Douchebag and his insistence on opening his mouth.
Conversely, this is why I am as wild as I am about BtVS S2, and why Buffy/Angel is amazing as a subversive pairing. It’s one of those simple but brilliant questions BtVS does so well; in this case, what happens after They Get Together, in a relationship which is all about the WTWT - not just in terms of the audience perceiving them, but actually in how the characters related to each other?
I love couples that are allowed to have histories, to know exactly where to land a blow, rather than flailing in the dark and JUST HAPPENING to hit on sore spots at plot-convenient moments. I am totally on board when the characters and their relationship have become part of each other, whether they like it or not. God doesn’t want you! But I still do. (The k-word is probably appropriate for my love of pseudo-Oedipal pairings, a la Angel/Darla and Laura/Lee* and YES I HAVE STARTED TVD SO.** Totally wrong, destructive and borderline exploitative, but, whoomp, there it is.)
Shipping is another place where I do badly with suspense. Sometimes, two characters are good for each other - the Bartlets. Sometimes, they keep each other in stasis with their love - Spike’n’Dru. Angel and Darla are already doomed, so I can enjoy the ride.
Sometimes, though. Sometimes it’s all of those things, and one or both characters on a ledge at the mercy of the wind. Wesley/Lilah. An achingly beautiful, smoking hot pairing that I find compelling but emphatically do not enjoy. Lilah as a symbol of Wesley’s fall would have grated for other reasons, but his love for Lilah (along with hers for him) is a tool they both use toward Wesley’s purposeful self-annihilation. We’re then kicked back the suspense idea, the idea of will it work? And that is effective for many people, I see why you all love it, and I do find it compelling, but as a purely emotional reaction, I don’t like wondering that, and I don’t like seeing my boy destroy himself, and it’s a relief when it’s over. I do like that it goes on for, eh, about exactly long enough but stays important to them even when it's over, I just don't seem to want to explore it more. Its popularity gets overwhelming for me sometimes, I think, because Wes does engage me emotionally A BIT, and idk. The way SO MUCH conversation about him revolves around this fantastic portrayal of despair, more so than incorporation of his existential crisis into the character growth overall, and then the way the ship is even more prevalent in the conversation than it is during the arc - I am always glad when people enjoy my favorites, but it can bum me out to participate in analytical or creative conversation about it, and I think that moves me from positive to kanyeshrug on the ship. So, people failing to agree with me and my priorities is ALSO A NEGATIVE.
Sometimes it’s a perfect storm of things I love and things I don’t. Kara/Lee. I am conflicted, you guys. I have conflict. Because, see above re: Wes/Faith. (I mean. I MEAN. RIGHT?) I should be a huge Pilots shipper. And…again, it’s very compelling and I love the love, but I’m not sure I feel it. Because their story is eaten by the contrived WTWT, even overshadowing the still uncomfortable if slightly more interesting question of whether or not they should be together. Their dance keeps them in something looking like stability. And sometimes that’s good, when they’re together dealing with some kind of external crisis, but they ended up being incapable of helping or even letting each other grow. Dude, she had to be DEAD before he could learn to tell his father no. Not dead to him. DEAD. And if I could or wanted to give up on both of them, that’d be one thing, but I wasn’t quite there. They bring out the most interesting parts of each other, but they just make me by turns irritated and sad.
And crack pairings. I love you, Blondie-Bear.
*In my head, S2.0 mostly consists of a half a dozen episodes of the MOST AWKWARD SLUMBER PARTIES EVER.
**Katherine is fierce, Stefan can suck it, and bless Damon and his black, scenery-chomping little heart. Basically what you all knew I would think.
Basically, my support for a ship is inversely proportional to the amount of will they/won’t they garment-rending. I like the idea of people having and building a history together. That can be something as sweetly quotidian as Zoe/Wash (or Kara/Sam, SORRY, LEE), or huge and dark and epic as Angel/Darla, or going through phases of both like Willow/Tara. I adore ships involving characters with intertwined histories and complimentary personalities whose interactions are not at all about moving them toward a romantic relationship (ie, Wes/Faith, otherwise known as THE PERFECT SHIP THAT NEVER HAPPENED; also, Roslin/Zarek,* EXCEPT THAT TOTALLY DID HAPPEN, SHUT UP). Or shameless, relentless subtext, ie Dom/DeWitt.
I do need for it to be a legitimate history, though, and not DESTINY! SOULMATES! 4EVA! It's limiting and necessarily stunting, for sure, but also, saying two people have to get together for whatever reason always scans to me as saying they don't love each other, even if they have acted like they could or even do. Angel/Cordelia, I am looking at you.
Mostly, that’s my storytelling preference overall. Whether or not a pairing will happen is such an easy way for writers to manipulate the audience, it’s actually rare for them to use this trope and without being manipulative, even if that’s not the intent and there are other organic issues impeding the pairing. Bones/Booth, Josh/Donna - those pairings had me until they went on TOO LONG. There's just no way the payoff can live up to the buildup. But it’s also a no thanks for me because I do think it lays into the treads of more traditional concepts of virginity, and sex as immediate toxin. The first time is still all that counts in this view of romance. It’s pretty stark objectification, this suggestion that engagement with another person is only interesting when you don’t know them.
So this idea of being together - usually by way of boning - as an end rather than a beginning is a great way to make me an anti-shipper. A lot of things retroactively ruined what was my massive love for Laura/Bill, but a big part of what yanked me off the love train was the implication in ADFMS that they had in fact avoided building a romantic relationship together all that time, because, um, because! Because, I suppose, the show had given up the ghost on reasons we could have cared about them all that time. Well, that, and Admiral Douchebag and his insistence on opening his mouth.
Conversely, this is why I am as wild as I am about BtVS S2, and why Buffy/Angel is amazing as a subversive pairing. It’s one of those simple but brilliant questions BtVS does so well; in this case, what happens after They Get Together, in a relationship which is all about the WTWT - not just in terms of the audience perceiving them, but actually in how the characters related to each other?
I love couples that are allowed to have histories, to know exactly where to land a blow, rather than flailing in the dark and JUST HAPPENING to hit on sore spots at plot-convenient moments. I am totally on board when the characters and their relationship have become part of each other, whether they like it or not. God doesn’t want you! But I still do. (The k-word is probably appropriate for my love of pseudo-Oedipal pairings, a la Angel/Darla and Laura/Lee* and YES I HAVE STARTED TVD SO.** Totally wrong, destructive and borderline exploitative, but, whoomp, there it is.)
Shipping is another place where I do badly with suspense. Sometimes, two characters are good for each other - the Bartlets. Sometimes, they keep each other in stasis with their love - Spike’n’Dru. Angel and Darla are already doomed, so I can enjoy the ride.
Sometimes, though. Sometimes it’s all of those things, and one or both characters on a ledge at the mercy of the wind. Wesley/Lilah. An achingly beautiful, smoking hot pairing that I find compelling but emphatically do not enjoy. Lilah as a symbol of Wesley’s fall would have grated for other reasons, but his love for Lilah (along with hers for him) is a tool they both use toward Wesley’s purposeful self-annihilation. We’re then kicked back the suspense idea, the idea of will it work? And that is effective for many people, I see why you all love it, and I do find it compelling, but as a purely emotional reaction, I don’t like wondering that, and I don’t like seeing my boy destroy himself, and it’s a relief when it’s over. I do like that it goes on for, eh, about exactly long enough but stays important to them even when it's over, I just don't seem to want to explore it more. Its popularity gets overwhelming for me sometimes, I think, because Wes does engage me emotionally A BIT, and idk. The way SO MUCH conversation about him revolves around this fantastic portrayal of despair, more so than incorporation of his existential crisis into the character growth overall, and then the way the ship is even more prevalent in the conversation than it is during the arc - I am always glad when people enjoy my favorites, but it can bum me out to participate in analytical or creative conversation about it, and I think that moves me from positive to kanyeshrug on the ship. So, people failing to agree with me and my priorities is ALSO A NEGATIVE.
Sometimes it’s a perfect storm of things I love and things I don’t. Kara/Lee. I am conflicted, you guys. I have conflict. Because, see above re: Wes/Faith. (I mean. I MEAN. RIGHT?) I should be a huge Pilots shipper. And…again, it’s very compelling and I love the love, but I’m not sure I feel it. Because their story is eaten by the contrived WTWT, even overshadowing the still uncomfortable if slightly more interesting question of whether or not they should be together. Their dance keeps them in something looking like stability. And sometimes that’s good, when they’re together dealing with some kind of external crisis, but they ended up being incapable of helping or even letting each other grow. Dude, she had to be DEAD before he could learn to tell his father no. Not dead to him. DEAD. And if I could or wanted to give up on both of them, that’d be one thing, but I wasn’t quite there. They bring out the most interesting parts of each other, but they just make me by turns irritated and sad.
And crack pairings. I love you, Blondie-Bear.
*In my head, S2.0 mostly consists of a half a dozen episodes of the MOST AWKWARD SLUMBER PARTIES EVER.
**Katherine is fierce, Stefan can suck it, and bless Damon and his black, scenery-chomping little heart. Basically what you all knew I would think.