Shipping and Canon (Not cannons. That would be cooler.) · 10:10pm Apr 5th, 2014
So, we finally got a TwiDash episode! (If you acknowledge the fact that Read it and Weep barely had Twilight in it at all.)
...what, you missed the part where Twilight confessed that she loved Rainbow Dash and they made out?
...you actually thought they spent most of the episode disagreeing, fighting, or at least not understanding each other?
...you don’t buy the idea that now that Twilight understands that Rainbow Dash learns things differently from her they could easily start dating and live happily ever after with all disagreements worked out?
You obviously need better shipping goggles.
This right here, the question of shipping and canon, is one of the main things that makes non-shippers think shippers are crazy, and makes people from one ship think people from another ship are crazy. So let’s get this out of the way upfront:
No ship between any two of the mane six is canon, or even closer to canon than any other. The fact is that any two people can fall in love, no matter how well or poorly suited they are to each other, and that none of the mane six are in love with each other on the show. They are all good friends in different ways, they all get on each others nerves sometimes, and they all try to work out their problems. None of the ways that they're friends makes them more or less likely to start a relationship.
...But episodes like Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 are still important to shippers, especially if they want to avoid confusing non-shippers and people from different ships with their insanity. And I’m going to tell you why.
On the show, some of the best episodes come from throwing two of the mane six together in some situation where they come into conflict and seeing how they work it out. This is what’s sometimes called “friendshipping”: taking two characters and exploring their relationship without romantic feelings involved. But friendshipping is important to shipping, and a good shipper should be able to write an awesome friendshipping fic about the characters in their ship if they want to. A bad shipper can’t. Try it sometime, if you’re not sure which one you are.
This is because obviously understanding how a relationship works and doesn’t work when the characters aren’t in love is kind of important to understanding how it works when they are in love. Being in love does not magically make anyone more patient, more empathetic, smarter, or nicer. It can lead you to try to be those things, but so can many other life changes, and making the change takes lots of work that has to be done while still dealing with slip-ups and times when you slide backwards into old habits.
So, for shippers, looking for episodes and clips where their favorite pairing interacts is a way to examine the pieces of this relationship they have to start with. Episodes like Testing, Applebuck Season, Fall Weather Friends, or Hurricane Fluttershy show us how these pairings of characters act when they disagree, how they fight, and how they can work through that. Scenes like Pinkie begging Dash for a flugelhorn in The Crystal Empire, or Rarity strong arming Fluttershy and Fluttershy’s passive aggressive responses in Castle-Mania show us minor conflicts that are still likely to come up if the characters are in love. And things like AJ cheering up Rarity in The Crystal Empire, or AJ and Twilight’s interactions in Princess Twilight Sparkle show us the ways the relationship is likely to be strong, if the characters can make it work.
Now, where shippers often go very, very wrong is refusing to be honest about their pairings and how canon paints their interactions. Not in the sense of “this pairing could obviously never work,” that’s just the same mistake from the opposite direction, but in the sense of “what are real problems that have to be overcome?” FlutterDash has plenty of canon that could point towards shipping, but Rainbow Dash is frequently not very sensitive of Fluttershy’s feelings on a matter, and gets frustrated with her outlook on things. AJ and Twi are often on the same page, but it’s easy for Twilight or AJ to put too much trust in the other and be unhappy with the resulting mess. Someone looking at canon honestly will have to say “yes, this is not going to go smoothly at first.” That doesn’t mean the ship can’t work, it means that you need to acknowledge this and how the characters deal with it if you want readers outside of your ship to recognize these as characters from the show.
Let’s review so far:
No two of the mane six are in love with each other on the show.
No two of the mane six are incapable of falling in love with each other in a fanfic.
There is no moment or collection of moments in the show you can point to to prove that a ship would or wouldn’t work. Saying there is makes you look crazy.
There are moments or collections of moments you can point to in the show to indicate the problems with a ship or ways the ship might be strong. Ignore these at your peril.
So, what about ships without these pairing centered episodes? That’s where TwiDash was before today, and where RariDash, RariPie, and TwiShy still are, more or less. It also applies to almost any shipping with background ponies or side characters, with a few notable exceptions (we’ve got a good idea of CheesePie, for example.)
Not having an episode doesn’t mean “this pairing never has conflicts” and it also doesn’t mean “this pairing makes no sense because they never spend time together.” What it means is that authors have some more freedom when it comes to finding the conflicts or connections. Freedom frequently leads to people being stupid, of course, and ignoring obvious conflicts or straining for any possible reason for a couple to be in the same place. But it can also lead to some of the most creative fics, if you find a way to show a relationship that feels in character, but the show writers haven’t even thought of.
This is a high risk, high reward situation; some of fandom’s biggest shipping fics are between characters who have never been on screen together, hated each others guts, or just don’t seem to have much in common. On the other hand, you can end up with something that sure as hell looks to most people like a troll fic, and will be received as such. There’s very little middle ground with these ships because you lack the safety net of what people know about the pairing in canon to fall back on.
Finally, on a personal note: just because I’ve acknowledged here that there’s nothing in canon that means a ship will or won’t work doesn’t mean that I think every ship would work without major character changes, or that I won’t use canon to argue that. The key here is that it’s perfectly valid to have an idea about what types of problems are easily overcome and which are darn near impossible. If you explain that first, as I have many, many, many times, then it’s fair to use canon to show how the problems in different pairings fit into that opinion. But you have to start with the opinion. Saying “Hurricane Fluttershy shows how FlutterDash would help to draw Fluttershy out of her shell” is starting from the position that you think Fluttershy would be happy with a partner who wanted to draw her out of her shell. That’s not an assumption you can make about the way other people see relationships; you have to explain why that’s a good thing in a relationship first.
So, Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 was a good episode for TwiDash, and could make the ship even better, but only if they have smart shippers who can look at it honestly. If they don't, they'll look crazy to the rest of the fanfic community, and TwiDash and shipping will be even more poorly regarded. TwiDashers, this is up to you this week. Good luck.
Bravo! Excellent advice for shippers - and for non-shippers as well.
Valid points.
I think Testing will be good for more than just TwiDash though. A little sprinkle of AppleDash was thrown in, FlutterDash had a cute moment, and of course, for the poly-lovers out there, it shows how the group can come together as a team to, ahem, "stimulate" their lover.
Lets take this statement add a bit of CMC, a dash of Cadance, and mix it all together in a base of changling.
After having my fun I will agree with your blog wholeheartedly. Unfortunately well reasoned arguments are the last thing that group dedicated to X will listen to.
1984261 Just imagine it: the scene opens at the library, the birds are tweeting, the squirrels squeaking, the sun is shining, Twilight and Fluttershy are singing together in the wee hours of the morning, their wings brushing, their flanks nudging...
... then the bedroom door flies open with a loud "BAM", and Rainbow Dash trudges out, the blanket stuck to her hindquarters trailing old magazines and food crumbs behind her.
"Good morning Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy greets as Twilight desperately chases Dash and cleans up behind her.
Dash lifts her head, stares at Fluttershy, and suddenly lets out a huge, raunchy fart, sending Twilight gagging for the nearest waste bin. "'sup 'Shy. Breakfast?" She asks.
"Not just yet, we were going to-" With Dash grumbling as she stomps into the kitchen, Twilight and Fluttershy can only listen with terror as cooking ware clatters around and Rainbow Dash leaves the fridge open.
1984275 Now replace every instance of Twilight and Fluttershy with Rarity, keep the rest the same, and you'll get a similar result.
1984283 Sexed away by a scruffy mare with breakfast breath?
Yeah, good luck with that.
1984229
I can't find a good video of a section of the movie, Battlefield Earth to link that shows the bit with the rats.
I'm just gonna keep ignoring that all other pairings exist. It's worked pretty well so far. Nobody's had their feelings hurt at my hands yet.
[youtube=juFZh92MUOY]
I think I found another candidate for my "Most True Things Ever Said" list.
As for arguments between shippers and non-shippers of varying colors, it very often feels like this:
[youtube=o5xkbMsOW3U]
1984275
1984320
Disregard RariDash/RainbowJack War, write OC romance and receive all the hatred.
1984567
One day, I will do an all-OC story. For now, I have my goggles set fully to the AppleDash spectrum.
...I honestly can not say what's on my mind right now about any of that.
1984283 Stop being my clone in this manner.
"Hey, Rares, wanna find a creative use for maple syrup?"
"W-w-what I-"
*insert maple syrup kiss here*
No, BP, what they need is Shipping Cannons.
my personal strategy is to just happily ship everypony with everypony else in my head, and to not talk to the people who try to convince me that one pairing or another is actually true in canon
i mean, in a serious way
i'll try my hardest to make anyone see the light for any of my pairings, but it's on a more sane level of abstraction
like, i simultaneously understand that of course they aren't actually in a relationship but also that of course they're dating i mean look they're standing in the same room how are they not dating come on
basically: i don't get people who actually take shipping seriously because to me it is a lighthearted pastime meant for fun and really fun only
yeah i'm way too tired for thisSince when does any relationship have all its issues worked out? This kind of pissed me off, in spite of the rest of the post.
1984273
"raunchy fart"
1984229
Wait, you're the one who has been sending me all those dead rats?
I think you've got the wrong address, man.
As for the actual post:
This was described by Mark Rosewater as "restrictions breed creativity", which has been found to be true, empirically; people are generally more able to be creative when they are not just faced with a "do something awesome".
1985134
I never said it did. I was implying that if you believe that the ship somehow did have all of its issues worked out after today's episode (or if you think that RariJack has all of its issues worked out after Look Before You Sleep, or AppleDash after Fall Weather Friends) then most sane people will have no idea what you're seeing.
1985158
I never said you said it did. I'm aware that the three rhetorical questions beginning your post were satirical. The sentence itself makes me angry.
As for the issue you mention, well, good fics tend to be more popular, and bad fics tend to be less. Failing that, bad fics tend towards notoriety.
1985164
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were mad at me for it.
Isn't Sonic Rainboom sorta a RariDash episode? The main issue there would be them both loving being in the spotlight, but if they find something that they both enjoy, then they risk stealing the spotlight from each other.
1985380
The problem is that they barely interact. We don't see them upset with each other, or disagreeing. Rarity is the antagonist to Dash, but it's not about their relationship with each other-- Rarity is oblivious and Dash is distracted the whole time. You don't walk away from it when a better understanding of how they work or don't work together. It's actually more along the lines of what Read it and Weep was for TwiDash.
Along the same lines, A Bird in the Hoof has some good TwiShy moments, and Putting Your Hoof Down has good RariPie moments, but they don't really have a conflict between the two characters.
The point with those is that we know a lot about the characters, but we still have an sketchy view of how they feel about the other and interact in different situations. Compare that to Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3, where we see Twilight and Dash fighting, making up, Twilight being supportive, the two talking about unrelated stuff... there's a lot of ideas for how they interact in that episode, just like in Applebuck Season or Fall Weather Friends or Hurricane Fluttershy.
So that's an important difference between RariDash and TwiDash right now.
Well, this makes the episode better for me!!
Excellent insight.
My one nitpick?
This really should never be the motivation for treating characters with respect.
When it comes down to it, the fanfic community carries lowest priority for me -- if they're happy, that's nice, wonderful even -- but I'd rather write a story that Twilight and Rainbow Dash would be proud to be a part of, and that I would enjoy reading back to myself. The rest are icing, if there is any.
Mind, you, my mindset comes about partially because I'm a huge friendshipper anyway, and partially because I've quite given up on caring about people wasting their energy hating on romance writers.
1986479
I can totally understand that. I've just seen some character interpretations that are very popular within a specific ship, and other shippers comment and love the fics, but they're absolutely mind boggling to people outside the ship. I'm sure the author thinks it's in character, and the people who ship it seem to think it's in character, but it does more to convince people who read it that all of those people are out of touch with reality than 20 dumb arguments on the Shipping forum would.
Maybe that's not important to some people, but it tends to make good writers wary of writing fics for that ship, and gives people who were iffy about the idea of romance fics a good reason to think all of them are more likely to be OOC messes. Especially when these interpretations are some of the most popular. (I know this from experience, talking to people about some of these fics.)
I pretty much agree with everything that's going on in this thread.