I have a shipping problem.
Probably you're enough like me that I don't need to clarify that I'm not talking about postage rates, but just in case.
I don't read romance novels, but some of my very favorite books and television shows include pretty spectacular romances. I crave adventure and love, which I feel is pretty fair. I need my OTP making out in space, or castles, or castles in space, perhaps prior to an epic throw down with an interstellar vessel stuffed with dungeon trolls.
I'm also a notorious canon shipper, and have very little patience for pairings that go against what an author has written - unless it's written very poorly, in which case I don't care enough to feel invested anyway. But, to each their own. One of the few exceptions is probably Captain Janeway/Chakotay, after she's been a determined and frosty badass and gotten them home safely from the Delta Quadrant, of course. And Trip/T'Pol. What is it with Star Trek effing with my heart?
But really, I'm just a Hermione/Ron, Katniss/Peeta, Lizzie/Darcy sort of gal. I trust the writers whose stories that I love and enjoy re-reading and re-watching, picking up the sly sweetness at the start of a relationship that I missed the first time around. If it's a good ship, it's good whether I see it coming or not. And the best ones, at least for me, are always intended.
Which is why I am feeling like a bit of a pariah after a recent re-watching of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Because if I was shaken by the chemistry between Rey and Kylo Ren during my first two viewings in the theaters, the privacy of my own home - and replaying their scenes - has me reeling.
Reylo is on my mind, you guys, in a big way. I'm a fan of the Rey is a Kenobi theory, and at the very least, feel it would be far too easy for her to be a Skywalker. It just seems to me like it would be an absolute waste to ignore what's going on between these two every time they're on screen together, to the degree that their scenes seem intentionally charged. That we see his face first when she does. That she overpowers him, and his first response isn't to try and break her.
And the bridal carry. Come on.
I also feel like Reylo gives me, at least, what I need out of the series. In KOTOR, there's an interesting precedent for those who have fallen to the dark side to return to the light, and I need to see a Skywalker truly redeemed - Ren's slavish devotion to his grandfather's work renders Vader's last scene with Luke pretty hollow. Can Vader really be saved if his progeny continue to wreak havoc on the galaxy? Where's the balance we were promised?
And then there's this, which is honestly such a lovely parallel I can't even deal.
So I suppose I have my first trash ship. I am unlikely to let this go until 2017, at which point I hope I'm shouting, "Canon, bishes!"