How To Make Your Favorite Ship Last · 5:10pm Jun 12th, 2016
Ship fics are an important part of the mix on Fimfiction. As of this date, 36% of all Featured Stories include the Romance tag (1998 of 5480). Readers and writers want to think that the ships in their stories will be dramatic and will work over the long haul. But will they? What makes a relationship last?
Eric Barker writes the Barking Up The Wrong Tree blog, focused on “...science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life.” Here’s a summary from his post How To Make A Relationship Last: 5 Secrets Backed By Research:
Similarity doesn’t matter: Matching music playlists don’t predict happy marriages. Sorry. Focus on emotions.
Arguing is good: Negative communication beats no communication every time.
Know it’s going to take work: The healthy way to get to “Romeo and Juliet” is to think “arranged marriage.”
Have grit: Devotion. Loyalty. That’s grit. And it predicts success at the office and at home.
“Glorify the struggle”: It’s all about the story you tell. Did the conflict lead to a happy ending? Hint: it better.
These insights actually support dramatic storytelling. Our ships need not be forever happy with each other. They can argue and struggle. In fact, they must in order to make a relationship work.
And the characters need not be clones to pair up. Emphasizing the differences and struggles in a relationship does not diminish its chance of success. Your favorite crackship can work out, if both sides are willing to put in the effort. And when they persevere, they can triumph! As Barker continues:
And what helps you cope with the problems of life better than anything? And makes you successful and happy?
“Our closest relationships determine how we respond to the toughest times in life.” Here’s Jonah:
"There is no easy life. Then, the question becomes, how do we cope with it? That’s really what George Vaillant and the Grant Study have looked at. How we adapt to life, how we cope. Vaillant has found that what determines how well you adapt is who you love and how you love them. Our closest relationships determine how we respond to the toughest times in life. What you find is that people who have close relationships live longer. They’re far more successful. They make more money. They’re much, much happier. If you go down the list of everything we think we want in life it’s all tied up with the ability to love and be loved."
And when Jonah asked George Valliant, who led the Grant Study at Harvard, about these results, what did Valliant say?
“I wrote once that when we are old our lives become the sum of everyone we have loved. That’s still true. I believe it more than ever.”
Apply this to our favorite characters. Who have they loved, and how has the sum of those loves defined them?
- How does an immortal lifetime of loves sum up differently than a mortal lifetime of loves? Who have been Celestia and Luna’s loves, and how does the sum of those loves define them?
- If Discord has found love with Fluttershy, and he had never loved before, how is he changed?
- Does platonic love count (hint: I think it does); if so, how does the in-canon platonic love among the Mane 6 help define them? This might just be the driving narrative of the entire show.
So many great story ideas!
Those guidelines are fun to see because they are the exact opposite of what I see a lot of the prominent shippers on this site argue (mostly the big time Appledashers, they'll rant and rave about how important similarities are and such and how ships were the characters are dissimilar like Rarijack, FlutterDash and a whole bunch of others could NEVER believably work).
Characters need a balance of similarity and difference to be a credible ship, in my opinion. Two characters who are too similar might not work well because there won't be enough conflict (unless, as with AppleDash, they're both fiercely competitive.) But some ships don't seem to be plausible because there is literally not one single thing the characters have in common.
A lot of fans seem to feel that once a ship gets together, everything's fluffy and A-OK. This may be because TV and comic writers have the same misconception. Once the UST is done and the couple's together, there is no conflict. Nothing could be further from the truth. I much prefer stories about couples trying to resolve a problem in their relationship to stories about will they or won't they get together.
4049337 Few stories focus on the issues after a couple gets together. Fewer still deal with the special issues that come out of the participants being immortal. An interesting story that touches upon this is Fermentation.