To All the Ships I've Loved Before

One’s coming of age is marked by both big and small revelations. At ten, this was my big small revelation: I could wish to see two fi ctional characters kiss.

This was the year I was homeschooled. This was the year of pining for 1) friends and 2) for my bright pink bedroom to not be bright pink anymore.

The internet became my best friend, allowing me to discover anime music videos (AMVs) on YouTube. I was obsessed with “Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl” at the time, and was hungry for content outside of the show.

Then: the Revelation.

I stumbled across AMVs of Ash Ketchum and his female companion for that particular series, Dawn, who was my favorite character back then. There was one to “Kissin’ U” by Miranda Cosgrove, another one to “Good Time” by Owl City featuring Carly Rae Jepsen. And of course: “Everytime We Touch” by Cascada.

This was a fi eld day for the year I didn’t have a fi eld day.

I’d always thought they could be cute. Their signature thing in the show was a high-fi ve. So theoretically there were many times they could’ve been holding hands if one of them just made a move. Except “Pokemon” wasn’t focused on romance at all, so nothing happened. I fi gured there was no point in entertaining such a silly fantasy. I was shocked that this was a Thing, and that this Thing had a name, and that it involved content. Edits. Art. Fanfiction (!!).

What compelled me most was the act of shipping in itself, how it was pining for romantic possibility. I learned quickly that some ships had no chance of becoming canon. And yet, isn’t everything so much lovelier when you can fi nd love everywhere?

It’ll never happen, I read detractors on forum sites say.

Years later I would see this pessimism refl ected in the modern state of dating. I would have many conversations about how dating apps feel dystopian and how it makes me feel like everyone, including me, is a commodity on a shelf. I would see many comments mocking heartbroken people and scoffi ng at their vulnerability. I would cry many times because I just want to be cared for by someone else, and then cry even more (angrily) because I am supposed to be a Strong Independent Woman who doesn’t need anyone.

Eventually, a decade later, I will be able to admit it, if only to myself. It’ll never happen, the voice in my head says. But isn’t there something so pure about wanting, full stop? ten-year-old me says.

ash and dawn, since 2010 i have moved states. i’ve lost all my baby teeth and outgrown the clothes i wore when i was watching you. all of my stuffed animals are gone. sometimes i miss them. but you’ve never left me. when i got my heart broken, i came back to you. i cried in your lap while you stroked my hair and said it was going to be okay. it feels good to love you. even better to know that it’ll never change. how many things in life can we say will never change? we’ve got something special.

The fact that Blue and Green from the manga “Pokemon Adventures” interacted maybe three times didn’t stop my 15-year-old self. Half a decade into this shipping journey, I caught onto the fact that what was actually there didn’t matter as much as what could be there. Stoic and broody boy and fl irtatious and irritatingly clever girl? Sign me up.

It was more fun that there wasn’t much material to work with. Nothing made me happier than observing a detail in their individual backstories or reactions and thinking, “This is an area where they’d relate to each other if the author was smart enough to make them talk!” blue and green, nobody gets you like i do. no, really. i don’t have a lot of competition (there are only 100 fics on archiveofourown) but even if i had to fight a million people, i guarantee i would win. they say love is understanding. and i love you the most. as long as i’m alive you’ll always have someone on your side.

And maybe it was a little self-indulgent because I had crushes on both of them and I liked the idea of seeing two hot people being hot together.

I had never dated anyone. No one had ever even liked me; I spent many nights with my growing pile of unrequited crushes and wondered if I was just unlovable. Some of my friends had already experienced romantic love and I was here, making up scenarios in my head about two fi ctional characters. Even as I thought about them, I still found myself sad because it was all just speculation. What was the real thing, and would I ever know it? I was grasping at straws both in real life and for this ship. But looking back, I can’t help but love the younger me for this, for magicking love out of thin air.

Akira Kurusu and Goro Akechi from the video game “Persona 5” carried me through the pandemic. I made an entire playlist of Taylor Swift songs retelling their storyline in chronological order, along with a fi ve-page document detailing why I chose each song. My private stories consisted of posts of me just rambling. This is the most unapologetic I had ever been.

I have a complicated relationship with their source material. Despite providing many female dating options for the teenage Akira, including his teacher, there are no options to date the male characters. Yet his relationship with Goro is central to the game; Goro plays the detective who is investigating The Phantom Thieves, the protagonists. Eventually, he joins. Even later, it turns out Goro is the person who has been committing murders to frame The Phantom Thieves. And to get even more nail-biting, it’s revealed that the god Yaldabaoth pit Akira and Goro against each other to see which side of humanity would win. Towards the end, Akira convinces Goro that there is a chance for redemption, and then Goro… dies. Killing him off instead of seeing his atonement through always felt like a cop-out to me.

I was hooked.

Some might think it’s depressing to love a ship that ends tragically. I disagree. To love them even knowing how it ended, and to still dream of a better ending, made me feel strong. “It’s better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all” was a lesson everyone learned. I learned it from them.

People wrote fanfi ction where they do end up together, people wrote stories where Goro survived, healed, and became objectively a more complex and nuanced character than in the source material. Fans get disappointed because they often see the way things could be, whether that’s in terms of representation or something like a character arc. They reimagine the worlds of these pieces of media, and through things like fanfi ction, they make it happen. goro and akira, please stop breaking my heart. but there is no one else i’d rather have break my heart than you. something no one ever told me is that the only thing more devastating than a doomed romance is a romance that works out. i get weak in the knees thinking about it. i’ve always wanted you to be okay, and then more than okay. i swear i will love you into a happy ending. you can trust me. promise.

People tend to denigrate fanfi ction, and fandoms as a whole — these spaces are often queer and female-dominated.

“Fangirl” has always meant someone who was too obsessive, too loud, too annoying.

But me? I’m in awe. I want to be that full of hope. I want to never lose sight of the way things could be.

I was nineteen when my fi rst love and I broke up after 3.5 years. All the self-help websites talked about healing your inner child.

So I got back into “My Hero Academia.” izuku and shouto, this year marks seven years since the first time we met. my friend makes fun of me for calling you izuku and shouto. “you’re on a first-name basis with them,” she said. but the funny thing is that she’s started calling you that too. she says i’m infectious. i just wanted to tell you that lately i’ve been walking with a bounce in my step. every song’s about you. i would like to write you a bad poem. when i look at you i feel tender in the heart. i like you more than i like anyone else. i do. i really really do. to whoever comes next, we haven’t met yet. but i’ve loved you all my life.

I was obsessed with the series from 2017-2019. Certain events in the manga I heard about on Twitter brought me back out of curiosity.

And well.

Hard launch: I am presently eight months deep into what is most defi nitely the most intense media obsession of my lifetime.

My love for “My Hero Academia” was deeply intertwined with my affection for the ship of Izuku Midoriya/Shouto Todoroki. They still feel like home to me. It’s strange — though they were the show’s most popular ship back then, the consensus nowadays is that they’re too “boring.” It’s a friends-tolovers ship, and to put it simply, there’s no drama. Nothing like the juicy and cosmically devastating angst my last ship obsession provided.

I should think they’re boring too. My breakup made me skeptical of the rose-colored idealism of fi rst loves, high school relationships, and so on. It felt too easy.

I’d describe their love as easy.

And yet this is the most I’ve ever been active in fandom. I’ve bonded with so many strangers on the internet by crying over them. There’s nothing else I’ve talked about more this year, probably. Like when you have a crush and all you wanna do is talk about it.

Nowadays when I feel like I’m losing faith I reread chapter 249 of the series.

“You’re an incredibly kind person,” is all Izuku says to him. But Shouto just looks at him like oh Oh, I think, softening, unfurling.

(Deep down, I want things to be easy.)

The thing about love is that I don’t think anyone can put it into words. Not really. I could write a neat little thesis statement about how shipping is an inherently hopeful endeavor that has taught me to stay optimistic in all things, in the face of a world that gives us so many reasons to harden our hearts. I could tie it all up by saying that shipping has healed me in so many ways by allowing me to stop being “strong” for once so I can just yearn so hard for tenderness that I feel it in my chest. But I don’t think anything I can write would do it justice.

After all, how can you defi ne forever? The love I have for my favorite ships has been the most enduring and steadfast love in my life. People come and go. That’s life. People may hurt me. That’s life too. But I’ll always have this love, and what I fi nd so powerful about it is that no one can take it away from me because it comes from me. If shipping is an act of hope, then I have so much hope in me that I think I might be blissfully crushed by it.

I still have trouble being honest about the “wanting love” thing. Even as I write this I wonder if this is lame or corny.

So I’m not there yet. But I have hope that one day, I will.

I have an overly active imagination, so I can picture it now. I hope it’s the combined euphoria of myself, at every stage of life, witnessing every single one of my favorite ships’ moments. I hope it’s even better.

I think it will be.

Design by Katherine Mara