how i sleep after pretending this fictional man doesn’t have a wife and kids because my delusional ass thinks he’s in love with another man he’s interacted with like three times [or his bff] but has better chemistry with.
The way popular media went from “here’s two male characters who have an incredible amount of chemistry and fans ship them but it’s not canon and one or both of them are with women” to “here’s two male characters who have an incredible amount of chemistry and fans ship them and it’s canon but only in the way that one of them has an unrequited love for the other and either pines miserably forever or dies.” Progress right?
I got something good for you… the main characters are these two dudes right? And they’d die for each other. I mean that literally. They’d do anything for each other. They hold one another and fight anybody who does the other wrong. You getting this? Yeah… Youre gonna get so attached. You wont be alone. Thousands will think like you. They will spend multiple episodes having extreme sexual tension and angst that sometimes feels straight out of fan fiction. You’re gonna get so high off this shit… Don’t you worry. Sorry what? What’d you say? Is it… is it what? Canon? Erm…
I think it's the ALMOST canon ships that get the best, most intricately woven, beautifully told fanfiction.
those nearly-kind-of-almost-maybe-could-be canon couples
the ones that make it almost painful to live with the knowledge that if just one or two things had happened differently, just one or two things: if one of them had said something differently here, done something differently there, or if certain events had shifted a little, just a fraction, they'd have been together - undoubtedly.
you can see it. everyone can see it. but it's not enough - they're still an almost-but-not-quite, maybe-but-it-was-never-confirmed, kind-of-but-annoyingly-ambiguous
fanfiction writers take their potential and they hold it close and they lovingly craft something amazing and beautiful with it - finally giving them the chance to be together like everyone knows they would be in-canon if the story wasn't against them
they spring out entire novels from canon-divergence in the places where just a little step in another direction could have led to them being together
they build whole intricate Alternate Universes where the characters are able to meet in an entirely different way and still fall for each other
what I'm saying is that the insanity of a ship where it was almost-canon drives writers to a specific kind of creative madness that produces the best fanfiction....
so if you check out my graph here you can see the line for the more almost it gets vs the more unhinged and motivated it makes the writers both rising in a wonderfully clear diagonal line and today I will be discussing the
I love the idea that the losers crossed paths, but didn't remember each other before reuniting in Derry. I especially love the idea that eddie went to a trashmouth performance in New York.
I will never be able to explain the sheer feeling of comfort I get when I indulge so deeply in this absolutely heart wrenching tragic couple that I become so sad for them to the point where I’m like: ‘fuck it, that’s enough angst for a while’. And then I create them the happily-ever-after they never got to have, in my silly little head.
Tfym ‘___’ died??? No they didn’t!! They’re STILL ALIVE!!
In fact, right now the two of them are sitting in a the comfiest armchair by the toastiest fire and in the cosiest little oak cottage ever, snogging and reminiscing their past with smiles and happy tears like it was nothing but an adventure, a rollercoaster of a dream they’d woken up from. And now they’re happily married with matching rings on their fingers and a hell of a story to tell their future kids.