#just that he's 600 years older than her? 🙃

[herefortheships]

I had a similar reaction. I was like “seriously? Come on”. Because, listen, at that point, watching the movie for the first time in the theater, I was convinced just moments earlier that she was going to marry him. (And let me add also that I didn't even know this was a ship at the time; I was the kind of casual fan who'd watch Beetlejuice every year during the Halloween season and didn't watch the cartoon when I was younger, so I didn't even have the context of the ship or anything from the fandom. I've never watched the musical either [and had totally forgotten it even existed until I started posting about Beetlejuice on Tumblr lol]).

I feel that the story I was shown was leading to Lydia and Betelgeuse ending up together, especially when Rory ended up being Delores's new "soulmate" and both of them met the same fate. I mean, both Betelgeuse and Lydia had toxic, soul sucking partners; it seemed too perfect a parallel. It felt like something that would be in a romcom, even! With the toxic exes ending up together while the leading characters end up together as well. That is so a romcom trope.

But then that didn't happen and the movie felt weirdly incomplete (to me).

Now that I've had some distance from the movie, I understand it would have been too soon for Lydia to marry Betelgeuse now, but trust me, while watching for the first time it totally made sense to me as a romcom lover if she did marry him.

Then Astrid mentioned the code violation nulling the marriage, and I still held some hope, until Lydia came up with that line and went on to banish him despite everything he did for her and her family. I felt sooo disappointed. He didn't deserve that.

I mean, I’m used to shipping supernatural-human couples, like Spike and Buffy, who have over 100 years between them as a vampire-human couple (and I should mention, he met her when she was 16, too, though they got together when she was an adult). With Betelgeuse being a ghost it's a similar scenario. He’s stuck at whatever age he died at. Of course his spirit can go on years and years, but his spirit being over 600 years old doesn't mean his body continues to age. He technically should have no body, even! Just a ghost body. Putting aside the reality that Michael Keaton has aged, in-universe Betelgeuse should still look the same age he was when he was killed (unless he decides to make himself look older, which he totally would to match Lydia, imo 💚).

So, technically, physically speaking, Lydia should look/be older than Betelgeuse right now, in-universe. Michael Keaton was in his 30s when the first Beetlejuice movie was shot, so we can assume so was Betelgeuse when he died, unless they decide to age him up and say he died at some other age. So, yep, if Betelgeuse was in a living human body, he would be physically at least 20 years younger than Lydia right now, even though his spirit has gone on for hundreds of years.

This is what I mean when I say that we simply cannot apply real world logic to these human-immortal/undead romances. Because our logic doesn't apply. At some point she will be older-looking than him. When the character is immortal or undead, age stops being a concern that should be brought up at all.

I think in Betelegeuse's case it's only brought up because of two reasons: he's not a hot, young guy like Edward in Twilight or Spike and Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a matter of fact, Angel, who arguably died when he was in his mid-20s, dated 16 year old Buffy while being a vampire in his 240s, and nobody bats an eye. Why? Because Angel is hot. That's literally it. (Edit to add: Angel even had sex with Buffy the night she turned 17). The second reason is that Betelgeuse tried to force teenage Lydia to marry him. I could write an entire post about why this one shouldn't even be brought up anymore as an argument, but these ramblings are already too long, so I'll summarize it by saying: look at the point above. Other undead fictional characters have dated (and had sex!) with teenage female characters before and it was never an issue for people to openly and broadly ship them.

It comes back to the point one: Betelgeuse is not conventionally attractive. 🤷🏻‍♀️ He's balding, dirty, vulgar, has a protruding belly, a raspy voice, and he has mold and bugs all over him. If he looked like Spike, or Angel, or Edward, or any of the other immortal/undead characters that have fallen in love with teenage characters before, would there be an argument? I don't think so.

Or maybe there would, who knows. Audiences have become a LOT more inclined to ignore fantasy and look at fiction through mundane lenses.

Characters who are introduced as children are also stuck as children in the minds of these members of the audience. Lydia is in her 50s now (or maybe in her late 40s in the Beetlejuice universe, if only 30 years have passed in there), and she is still being looked at and treated by a portion of the fandom as a child.

The 600 year age gap is a nonissue. It's only brought up now because the audience might have a puritanical, too mundane mentality now, and would expect a fictional woman in an impossible, fantasy setting to behave the same way a real woman would behave in our regular, boring reality.

Am I the only one that rolled my eyes and sighed in the theater during the Beetlejuice sequel when Lydia said the thing about the 600-year-old age gap between her and Beetlejuice? There were so many other things she could have brought up, like him being gross, or crazy, or… I dunno, dead? That’s the one she came up with? It felt so unnecessary.