Ship Sinking is weird

Hmm. As I think back, there are less overt teases of Zutara than I thought. Their hug at the end of "The Southern Raiders" is one of friendship, not romance. A lot of fans are projecting a Slap-Slap-Kiss relationship based on their encounters and how they are given a very direct rivalry.

I suppose most of the "evidence" would come from "The Ember Island Players", which is explicitly meant as a satire of those shippers, but a lot of people must have gotten their hopes up when they were assigned to the same team for the final battle and Katara saves Zuko's life.

Still, the Big Damn Kiss utterly sunk that ship, no matter how much textual evidence there may have been for it.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 15th 2021 at 2:17:36 PM

But how do you sink a ship that was never floating? I could say that the kiss at the end also sank Aang x Toph, and Katara x Azula.

Also, more nitpicky, but didn't Zuko and Mai getting together already sink Zutara?

Speaking as someone who did like them back in the day, I've always thought their dynamic had storytelling conventions that some other work might use to build on a romance, eg. Bonding over Missing Parents and face-touching in "The Crossroads of Destiny", the aforementioned team-up leading to bonding and character growth in "The Southern Raiders", Taking the Bullet in the finale. At the very least, those tropes are more often than not used to imply a significant amount of care both in and out of ATLA, and their dynamic is hardly comparable to Katara/Azula.

So the question is, does "involving tropes that imply a great amount of care" make it eligible for Ship Tease, and thus, Ship Sinking?

Or for another example, Link and Zelda from The Legend of Zelda, the poster kids on Implied Love Interest, are souls reincarnated across spacetime, and are based on the fairytale hero saving the princess, both reasonably romantic tropes. And yet in all the games excepting the two most recent, they never get anywhere near romantic. Can that reasonably be called Ship Tease?

This is why I brought up How I Met Your Mother earlier. As far as I'm concerned nothing is final until you see The End flash up.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 15th 2021 at 1:31:57 PM

So would it just be "the show ends and their not together"? Because technically that's the only way to be sure they won't get together eventually.

I also want to be clear I don't think there's anything wrong with shipping Zutara, I just want to avoid fan interpretations being confused with the actual content of the show. In the actual text of the show, Zuko and Katara do not have romantic feelings for each other, and the possibility of them getting together is only brought up as a joke. It's not a relationship that actually exists in the show. If you want to make pages that can discuss fan reading and reactions to certain moments and story beats, taht's fine, but they can't be main page tropes.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Oct 15th 2021 at 2:34:22 PM

I'm not claiming they were romantic, I'm pointing out that they were often given emotionally intimate tropes and scenes that, say, Aang and Suki did not get, and asking if you consider that as eligible for Ship Tease irrespective of creator intent.

The show ends and ships are in place, I'd prefer. We also have pages like Hooked Up Afterwards for last-minute confirmations. If no ships are finalized by the end then none of them were sunk.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 15th 2021 at 1:42:51 PM

There's other ways too. Characters being married is usually endgame, especially if they have kids. That's not true for all works, but for a lot of them it is. Death ships most sinks, as does betrayal (especially of the MEH kind), a failed attempt at romance for the pairing, finding out the characters are related (won't necessarily stop the shippers, but eh), and even one of them being Put on a Bus or Chuck Cunningham-ed.

If a relationship is rendered impossible without a lot of rewriting or sinking other, more established ships, it's usually safe to say it was sunk.

As of the end of the third season of ATLA, which is most definitely an ending unless you count the tie-in comics, the following pairings are confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt: Aang and Katara, Zuko and Mai, Sokka and Suki. (If we want to be extra pedantic, we could add Gran-Gran and Master Pakku.)

All contrary ships are incontrovertibly sunk, but which actually count as Ship Sinking is the problem we face. For example, is Sokka and Toph (Tokka?) sunk? She is seen to have a crush on him in several scenes, although it's clearly not requited. Ty Lee also seems to crush on Sokka... okay, fine, everyone crushes on Sokka. He's the man. (I'm sure someone was shipping Pakku with Jeong Jeong.) Do we list all of those as sunk?

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 15th 2021 at 3:19:01 PM

I think the bigger issue is, what counts as a legitimate/plausible ship? The thing is, every fan will argue that their ship should be Canon and will probably read more than was intended into a scene.

To me personally, Ship Tease is anything that pretty blatantly suggests two characters have romantic feelings for each other. It's not enough for them to just be close friends or the like. They have to be given romantic moments or portrayed as a potential couple, or even just have other characters ship them together. Anything that explicitly suggests the characters might wind up together.

Well, Zuko and Katara are "portrayed as a couple" by "The Ember Island Players", even if satirically. Katara also has significant moments with Jet and Haru. Toph and Ty Lee both express romantic interest in Sokka (and let's not forget poor Yue). I think that is everything that could reasonably be considered a sinking target. The rest of the potential ships are all in the fans' minds alone.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 17th 2021 at 5:56:09 AM

Well there are obvious canon examples of Ship Teases. I'm talking about examples that are more of a grey area.

the stuff in "The Ember Island Players" is kind of anti-ship tease, in that it exists to explicit make fun of Zuko x Katara shipper sand portray the idea as ridiculous. Sokka x Toph is another weird example. The moments hinting at Toph's crush on Sokka are way more blatant indicators of actual textual attraction than anything between Katara and Zuko, but then they just sort of stop happening in season three and never go anywhere. So, what was the moment when it sunk? When Sokka and Suki got together in season three? When the show ended with Sokka and Toph not together?

I just don't think we can apply the lens of shipping, an inherently fandom phenomenon to an objective trope.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Oct 15th 2021 at 8:03:13 AM

My thoughts:

• Zuko and Katara do not have Ship Tease (not sure about Ship Sinking)
• Prior Ship Tease is not required for Ship Sinking
  • For example, two characters have narrative positions or certain tropes associated with them such that in many, many stories, you could expect them to be love interests, but later that possibility is shot down.
• Romantic interest is not required for Ship Tease
  • For example, as WarJay said above, they can be "portrayed as a potential couple, or even just have other characters ship them together" — neither of which require that they have romantic interest at the moment.
  • Characters starting off not liking each other and ending up liking each other is a well-established trope. And there are many ways to hint at a pairing before they get to the "liking each other" stage.

I think "a scene blatantly set-up to demonstrate that a ship is ridiculous" is a textbook definition of Ship Sinking, since it's basically acknowledging that the ship exists in the fandom and the showrunners are deliberately shooting it down through canon events as something that will never happen in Canon.

Another example I can think of is from Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun between Sakura and Mikoshiba. The two are frequently shipped together (AFAIK, it's the most popular non-Canon ship in the fandom), even though in Canon they never really have any moments together that can be considered romantic or intimate. Then there's a scene where Mikoshiba tells Sakura that he needs a fake girlfriend to drive off a persistent suitor and they both briefly entertain the idea that Sakura should take the role, but neither makes the offer because Mikoshiba explicitly declares that he only sees Sakura as a little sister, while Sakura re-asserts that she only has eyes for Nozaki. I would say this would count as a Ship Sinking moment despite the lack of previous Ship Tease between the characters.

Edited by Adept on Oct 15th 2021 at 10:32:33 PM

So then would situations like Supernatural with Dean and Sam making comments about people shipping them and saying "They know we're brothers, right?" count? I don't think anyone genuinely thought ever those two would end up together canonically (see again: brothers), and while they're very close, they're not exactly in a romantic situation. Ever.

If we're considering using it as "show pokes fun at a fandom ship" then I think we would also need a rename; it's basically a different trope.

Edited by Eiryu on Oct 17th 2021 at 7:56:21 AM

I agree that this would work much better, because the work making meta jokes about it’s own fanbase is one of the few instances when fan options are relevant to main page tropes. It would be a very sharp change from what the trope is now, however.

We do have Fandom Nod.

I don't think this conversation resolved, so I'll lay out a few points I don't think we’re answered:

1. What sort of "moments" count for this trope? One person suggested that the "moment" is always the same one: the end of the series, but others suggested that it is if one of the characters does or starts dating someone else. The page itself currently uses at least one out-of-universe Word of God statement as an example.

2. What makes a ship count as "floating" enough to be sunk? Do the characters have to date, or express romantic feelings for each other? What makes a pairing go from a fandom ship to an actual part of the work?

x6

agree with that, actually- it clarifies much better. I would say, a moment which specifically exists to make it clear that two particular characters will are not, or will not become, a couple.

How about

• the Ship Sinking scene has to be, in some way, specifically about the characters it's sinking,
• and the work contain some in-universe acknowledgement about the possibility of those two as a couple— even if it's just to say "eww! no way!"

so- for example,

Ship Sinking examples

• Harry tells Hermione he sees her as a sister and she agrees with him, although some people in universe think theyre a couple
• Leia and Luke previously kissed, then find out they are long lost siblings
• someone thinks Katara and Zuko are a couple, and they're both horrified and grossed out
• Steve is about to confess a crush on Robin when she tells him she's gay
• the story acknowledges that Sherlock and John might appear to be a couple, but they confirm their relationship is platonic

Not examples

• Katara kisses Aang, Zuko finds out offscreen and doesn't react anymore than the rest of the cast
• Elan and Nale find out they are long lost siblings, but never flirted before or nor does the work suggest they could have been a couple
• Raven dies and everyone in the cast mourns, including her popular shipmate Garfield
• Lots of fans ship Steve and Bucky, but the story never acknowledges this and steve gets married to Peggy

Edited by Tremmor19 on Nov 8th 2021 at 7:14:38 AM

We also have to consider false flags, such as Aang trying to kiss Katara and her rejecting him. The most important requirement is that by the end of the work, the sunk pairing does not come to be and/or is made impossible by the characters pairing in other ways.

Yeah, the idea that the two characters as a couple must at least be entertained/acknowledged in-universe (whether or not they actually give a Fandom Nod to the shippers) for any example to count, otherwise a list of "X did not get together with Y" is completely meaningless.

Not to mention we already have The Not-Love Interest, where two characters fit a dynamic that are common between Love Interest but never actually get together.

that seems like a good solution.

So would the "moment" then just be the end of the work? Or would these moments only be identified in hindsight?

Another question, would two characters breaking up count? The characters were together, they just didn't work out long term. Does that "sink" the ship?

Yes, Ship Sinking may only be declared retroactively once the final pairings are known. This means that the arc(s) in question must reach a conclusion.

I'm not sure how we typically handle cases where characters are in a textual relationship but break up within the continuity of the work. I don't really see how shipping can be involved here since there's no ambiguity. It makes no sense to say that Sokka and Yue's ship was sunk because (a) they do flirt with each other on-screen, (b) Yue is removed from any possibility of engaging in a relationship, (c) Sokka is shown dealing very realistically with the pain of losing her.

There are situations where a work may conclude with characters paired but break them up off-screen in a tie-in work or by Word of God. That doesn't count as Ship Sinking either because, again, they were together.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 8th 2021 at 12:32:21 PM

"Shipping" as such really can't be involved in this trope at all because shipping is something that happens in the fandom, not the work, and this is an objective trope. Also, about final pairing, what if there aren't any, and both characters are single but not together. Or what if they are with other people, do we then look back for the "moment" we knew they wouldn't get together?

I asked about characters breaking up because there are currently examples that list that as Ship Sinking, but I agree with you that it isn't.

I guess my question is how meaningful are these moments that show two characters won't get together if we can only recognize them in hindsight?

Edited by TheMountainKing on Nov 8th 2021 at 12:50:15 PM

i mean, it is a thing, which is being done on purpose. When sherlock and john point out that they're not a couple, or when katara reacts to the idea of her being with zuko, or when gwen tells jack shes engaged and he congratulates her and promises to respect that, those things are a pattern, a deliberate choice by the creators, and being done with a similar goal- to inform the audience of the status of the characters as "not a couple"

however it does just so happen that almost that exact same stuff is regularly done and then subverted, by getting them together anyway. so it can be hard to tell which ones are real and which are a tease

Edited by Tremmor19 on Nov 8th 2021 at 1:15:35 PM