#gethos

… you fool

OH GOD ALL-TIME FAVORITE SHIP YOU SAY. YOU KNOW DAMN WELL I CAN’T CHOOSE ONE.

(it’d probably be Stevidot anyway; objectively I’ve done more for it than anything else I ever shipped in my life and it’s absolutely precious both in platonic and romantic forms)

BUT IN THE INTEREST OF FAIRNESS… and attempt to tone down redundancy, let’s see what other ships earned the “OTP” label from me!

I mean, I pretty much had to lowkey ship Mamoru Chiba x Ami Mizuno because Usagi/Mamoru is basically what Connverse wishes it could be as far as the Ultimate Ship goes. So at the height of my involvement in the fandom (you know, late 90s era), I was never brave enough to make anything for this ship. But the few times they get to interact in the classic anime is legit adorable stuff and I wish we could’ve had more of it. 

Before Gem Ascension, before Travels of the Trifecta, my greatest multichaptered epic was a Digimon Tamers fic called By My Decision. I was a hardcore Digimon fan in my early teen years well before I ever got into Pokemon, in fact. And I shipped shitloads of pairings in Adventure and 02 - I can only imagine how many of those would be demonized by the new age fandom puritans of Tumblr nowadays. You can actually see literally everything I ever shipped on my FFN profile here.

But I didn’t really make anything for the first two seasons. Tamers was what really sparked my inspiration, because Takato and Jenrya… honestly, they’re just adorable together. They get to bond a lot, they’re really in touch with their feelings (contrasting to token girl Ruki who was a stiff hardass most of the time), and I often got the impression that Jenrya, unlike Takato, really doesn’t have any other friends. 

So of course, I tormented these two on the regular in my story. I of course didn’t forget Juri (for I love her dearly); I was kinda trying a love triangle subversion with Takato angsting over loving both Jenrya and Juri… while Juri’s still got so much PTSD (story is 2 years post-series), shipping is hardly on her mind, and Jenrya’s outright in denial of his feelings for Takato to the point where it very literally screws him up and awakens some inner darkness of his own. I even had Jenrya and Juri bond, but it was pretty platonic stuff. 

Still, this ship was way down on the totem pole at the height of Tamers’ fandom. Very frustrating. Takato/Ruki and Jenrya/Ruki were way more popular and I hated both of those ships something fierce. I love Ruki, but I just cringe at the idea of shipping her with either of her fellow leads. Then Jenrya/Ryo got something of a cult following that I couldn’t stand; admittedly I was jealous it was getting the representation that I felt Takato/Jenrya desperately needed more, and I also didn’t like Jenryo in its own right, anyway. 

But yeah. Jenkato is a very underappreciated ship that I loved dearly and invested many of my teenage years into.

So, here’s a fun fact: While I played the classic games (my cousins had a Sega Genesis), the way I was mostly raised on Sonic was via the first two cartoon series and the Archie Comics version of the franchise. Archieverse was largely based on the SatAM cartoon; Amy Rose also didn’t exist in the show and it took about 25 issues for her to show up in the comic. 

So I was big on Tails x Amy. For a long-ass time. And really, the ship was really only feasible in the Archie continuity. There, Tails is actually older than his usual depicted canon age and Amy is introduced to be around his age before she artificially aged herself with a magic ring so that she could later take on her Sonic Adventure design. 

Before that… in these years, Sally was the most well-known love interest of Sonic in the west. So Sonic/Sally seemed like a lock (none of us knowing how Sega felt about that at the time) - and in retrospect I honestly believe it’s a far better Sonic ship than his more well-known modern alternatives. 

So, because of Sally’s prominence, Amy was relegated to Sonic’s fangirl and her crush wasn’t really that big a deal. Honestly, that was for the best, as I by far found Amy way more tolerable in Archie’s incarnation than the majority of her other canon contemporaries (Sonic the Comic Amy Rose is more of a competent badass, though).

Tails and Amy had some good banter in Archieverse and the few times they were allowed time to do stuff together as a duo, they were very cute and endearing and I loved them. 

Tails also had a lot more going on in terms of character development and backstory in Archieverse. Like, a lot more going on. He even had a “Chosen One” deal that sadly didn’t have a very good payoff, but. It’s more than what they really do with Tails in any other continuity.

Bear in mind, I started on these comics when I was eight or nine years old. Yet I followed this comic well into my late teens and even part of my early twenties, so you can tell Archieverse Sonic has shitloads of lore to it to have that long of an ongoing narrative. 

After Sonic Adventure was released, then the Sonamy shipping started to explode. Amy was front-and-center in the spotlight, Sally became the obscure figure in the fandom, and it’s more-or-less stayed that way ever since. 

But I was like “It’s okay! Tails and Amy are still tight in Archieverse! Sucks they have to adjust to Sega’s many changes but they’re still best buddies who’ll hopefully get married one day….” 

Then 25 Years Later happened and for some goddamned stupid-ass reason, Tails was paired with Mina the Mongoose and I believe Amy was suspiciously never ever mentioned in the future timeline stories (as Sonic and Sally did become endgame in this little series). 

Tails and Mina had little to no interaction, and Mina was largely there to be a potential Sonic love interest, and even after she moved on, she got together with another character and still didn’t interact with Tails. 

I was sooooooo pissed off. Archieverse was my one hope for Tails/Amy becoming a thing and they ruined it for me. :(

I did get a consolation prize in Geoffrey St. John x Hershey becoming so canon they actually did marry. That’s another one I shipped ever since they first interacted years and years ago.

Of course, Hershey was then “killed off” - and was set for a major comeback, but Ken Penders put a stop to that and had them both erased from reality because fuck Ken Penders, I actually got a nice thing and you yanked it right out of my hands.

Genis Sage x Mithos Yggdrasill from Tales of Symphonia, a ship I hardcore loved enough to write about. Also a ship I think Tumblr would burn me at the stake for shipping at all, but you know what? Fuck Genis x Presea. It’s a boring-ass puppy love ship that in its own right should be lambasted similarly according to anti logic. 

…. did I get sidetracked? I did? Pfff. Okay, let’s try and get to another question.

How I started shipping Stevidot?

Pretty simple story, really. I binged SU all the way up to Escapism (Change Your Mind hadn’t aired yet) last December/January. Also watched a looooot of Youtube clips. Most involving Peridot.

And inevitably, most involving Steven as well. 

When I started getting into Peridot and SU as a whole enough to seek out fanfiction and whatnot, I didn’t really have any set shipping preferences at first. But when I made myself think about it… honestly, Stevidot just felt the most natural to me. I wanted to see stories about antics with those two specifically - I never liked Lapidot and Amedot did nothing for me ever. So Stevidot was like, pretty much the only thing I really focused on after a while.

Then I found A Gem Like You. And suddenly, INSPIRATION! I developed headcanons for Watcher’s fic, I started reading as much Stevidot as I could, and I was convinced it was the best pairing in the world and fucking hell I need to give it some representation after I noticed how relatively niche it was in the fandom. 

And so, Stevidot consumed my soul for all time. I hope those clods are happy.

Rant about a ship, you say…