Shipping Nightmares

Since I briefly mentioned my personal struggles with shipping in Star vs. the Forces of Evil Season 1 Review, I though it would be fun to go ahead and mention my personal worst shipping nightmares. Again for those that don’t know, shipping is the act of a fan base romantically linking two characters from a fictional media. Shipping nightmares are failed shippings that are personally the most frustrating to you. And yes I did just make up the term “shipping nightmares” for this list but it fits. Spoilers ahead.

Beast Boy and Raven (Teen Titans)

There are shipping nightmares and then there is BBRae from the original Teen Titans. Ten years since Teen Titans went off the air and this is still my most frustrating ship fail ever. And I’m sorry I don’t accept their attempt to fix it in Teen Titans Go!. They needed to get together in the original series. Their personalities while vastly different just seemed to mesh perfectly together. He’s the happy-go-lucky goofball and she’s the all-to-serious mysterious girl. Beast Boy’s goofball attitude is basically a mask of his actual self. Underneath he is actually very strong, but fears that he is slowly becoming a monster. He rarely shows his truly serious side and when he does it’s usually in defense of Raven. In fact, the only times he gives in to being the monster inside him is to save her life. They both have the commonality of being considered a monster, as her entire life has been for developing her as a conduit for the second coming of her father, Trigon. This is why she feels she can’t be close to anyone because she is just the bringer of their inevitable destruction. I personally believe that none of the other Titans fully understood the depth and pain associated with being a monster other than these two, and that brought them closer. Personally, I always liked this pairing better than RobStar because the connection always felt deeper to me. Also, I will admit to some bias as both of these characters were my favorites on Teen Titans. The weird thing is that my third favorite character is Terra and I never shipped her with Beast Boy. Note: Terra’s arc was complete prior to both Spellbound and The Beast Within which are the best episodes for BBRae.

Terry McGinnis and Melanie Walker aka Ten (Batman Beyond)

This is the one shipping that I knew was never going to happen but was still frustrating for me. I’m going to be honest and admit this shipping had less to do with this pair as a couple and more to do with Terry’s other options. I might be lambasted for saying this, but I did not like Dana Tan. Dana’s personality to me was just mezzo-blah. In Melanie’s 3 episodes she shows more personality than Dana does in 24. Dana never really brought much to the table as a character. Batman Beyond, or really Terry McGinnis, is DC’s response to Spider-man with a lot references to Spider-man in the series. Blight is a crazy power-hungry billionaire like the Green Goblin. Inque is basically Venom with a hint of Sandman. Stalker is a pretty blatant rip-off of Kraven. And that was just a taste of the similarities. Dana is Terry’s equivalent to Mary Jane. She’s there as a constant reminder that the superhero to normal life balance is extremely difficult and hard choice to make. The problem with Dana is she is almost does too well as the life balance reminder because she is constantly berating Terry for missing a date because he’s working. Honestly at points it feels like she’s only dating him because she’s trying to piss off her dad. Which brings me to the positive points of Melanie. She is the only girl Terry interacts with that can even remotely understand his situation. She, like him, lives a second life that no one can know about. While she is a crook, she’s not really a bad person and in her later episodes she’s trying to go straight and make something of herself. That parallels very well with of Terry’s life. He was gang member who spent time in Juvie, and now he’s on the path to redemption by being the new Batman. Personally, I wish we had more interaction between these two because of the parallels of their lives. Also, honestly they had great on-screen chemistry much better than Terry and Dana ever had. And for anyone wondering, Max and Terry’s relationship never really felt outside of the friend zone for me so that’s why I’m not talking about her.

Takuya Kanbara and Zoe Orimoto (Digimon Frontier)

Ok, this one is a stick in my side to this day. In Digimon you have kind of free reign as far as shipping goes because each season features 3 to 8 main human characters most of which are in close proximity to the puberty stage. So even though it’s not usually too bad, flirting occasionally goes on. I, however, didn’t really ship much in the first 3 seasons. Everything pretty much felt platonic to me in those seasons or maybe I just wasn’t worried about it, either way I didn’t ship anything. Then season 4 comes around and you have Zoe who is really flirtatious. Being the only girl, she basically flirts with everyone to get her way. That said towards the end, all the flirting between her and the other guys basically ceased. The relationship between Takuya and her then became much more serious. It felt like they had a legitimate connection. There’s even an episode very late in the series that he basically confesses to her and she was about to do the same until she finds him passed out. Then what do we get after that? Absolutely nothing. This was the one chance Digimon had to show the development of a legitimate relationship throughout the course of the series and they gave us nothing. I would have been content with a hand holding scene to end the series, but no, nothing. As a note, Frontier was already a very weak season of Digimon and this could have potentially save it a little bit, but they didn’t go this direction. I have watched this season a couple of times as an adult and it still frustrates me.

Ash Ketchum and Misty (Pokémon)

I briefly alluded to this shipping in my Pokémon vs Digimon commentary. Of the previous 3 shipping nightmares the only one that had less than 50 episodes to develop was Terry and Melanie. That means basically other than Terry and Melanie they all had a significant chance to develop over the long haul. Of course none of them did, but that brings me to my first point on this shipping. Ash and Misty have almost as many episodes together as the previous 3’s shows total combined episodes times 2. Now I know, total time together means nothing but still she was Ash’s only constant human companion for 5 years. Just for context, it’s over 13 years since her last episode as a main travel companion and she still has the most number of episodes for a female traveling companion, by a wide margin. The connection they show over the course of the series is just so deep and developed that it’s a travesty this shipping failed. This shipping failing comes directly from Pokémon not wanting to age Ash. If they had aged them in pseudo-real time like over the course of their 3 main journeys together 3 years elapsed, then this pairing would have made perfect sense. At that point they would both be 13, kind of an awkward age but reasonable for dating. They would have been on 3 big journeys together and developed a lasting trust in one another. They would still have minor personality clashes but so does every couple. The pairing just makes too much sense. But no, Ash cannot age we have to have him as our main protagonist forever. This really goes back to my personal belief that Ash’s journey should’ve ended with Johto. They could’ve ended it with Ash as the League Champion and him and Misty together. I would even accept them going on a journey elsewhere and popping up every now and again helping your new protagonist. But no, almost 20 years later Misty has moved on and Ash is still 10.

Final Thoughts

These are obviously not the only shipping failures I have had over the course of my career. These however are the ones that have stuck out the most and thus are my shipping nightmares. Are some of mine your personal shipping nightmares as well? Do you disagree with my shippings? I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts and their personal shipping failures.