Tuesday, March 25, 2014

I Only Sail on Fictional Ships

Perhaps you are aware of shipping. (If you are not, you may enlighten yourself here). I personally became aware of shipping sometime c. 2009 when I started getting into The Big Bang Theory and accidentally stumbled across the hordes of rabid Shenny (Sheldon+Penny) shippers.

I was further enlightened when I made my maiden voyage on the Vampire Diaries Delena (Damon+Elena) ship. One google search for "I+ship+Damon+and+Elena" later, and I had been initiated into the tidal wave of feels that is the #Delena tumblr tag (SO MANY SEXY GIFS). (Perhaps this would be a good moment to pause and say that, "Yes, I understand that admitting my membership in this fandom will open me up to ridicule," and "No, I don't care... But I'm certainly not going to spill ALL of my fandoms...").

But as I went further down the rabbit hole, I began to notice a disturbing trend within shipper culture. Perhaps I first became aware of it because as I swam gleefully through the ocean of Damon and Elena love I saw almost as many references to Ian+Nina, the names of the two actors who played these characters in the CW television show. I found this odd. After all, the books and TV show made it clear that there was some sort of attraction between the two characters and gave us tantalizing glimpses into the development of their romance. The two actors, on the other hand, were two people who had been hired to pretend to be these characters for a few hours every week and then presumably went back to living their regular lives. And never the twain shall meet...

Or so I thought, until I discovered that Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev actually were dating IRL. That made me feel minimally more comfortable with the existence of Nian ship, but only minimally. This was because I knew from my overconsumption of pop culture news that actors who worked together often ended up dating...and just as often broke up.

The entertainment media make this out to be some sort of great tragedy of the fast-paced and glamorous Hollywood lifestyle -- relationships simply can't hold up under the scrutiny of all those cameras. Yet if we step back and examine the situation a little more realistically, it is obvious that this is an exaggeration.

Follow: If you consider the romantic life of an average person in the U.S., the majority of romantic relationships that they have will end. After all, untimely death and polyamory aside, you will probably only end up making a lifelong commitment to ONE person in your entire life. On the other hand, you will probably have relationships of varying seriousness with more than one person. Do you see the issue here? Most of us experience more break-ups than we will lifelong loves. This holds true for the famous people as well.

And this is why I only sail on fictional ships. Fictional relationships are created within the fantasy realm of idealized romantic love. In that realm, people meet and go through drama and come out the other side with forever love. Then the story ends, and we get to imagine our OTP together for eternity, or at least as much of eternity as we are capable of conceiving of. Real people, on the other hand, don't have happily ever afters. They have lives that go on and on until they die. They have reality, and in reality most romantic relationships end. Just like Ian and Nina's did.

Knowing this, when I see two public figures I admire dating one another, I wish them well, but I don't expect them to be together forever. The ship is probably going to sink, or at least glide uneventfully back to harbor to let us all down at the dock before it's put into dry dock and decommissioned. For me, at least, that's not the kind of cruise I fantasize about. I prefer to sail off into the sunset on my fictional ships.

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