#pretty much any fandom where shipping discourse is nutty.

[dynared]

Moonlighting, Thundercats, Korra, and why you never want to resolve romantic tension halfway through a series

In the mid 80′s, Bruce Willis starred in a loopy, fourth wall breaking series called Moonlighting, the premise of which…was pretty much a knockoff of a similar show called Remington Steele, about a quirky detective and a failing actress running a detective agency, trying to keeping it profitable, and the sexual tension that emerged throughout the series.  The driving force behind the series was the insane amount of sexual tension between co-stars Cybil Shepard and Bruce Willis.  The problem with the show was that said tension was resolved…in the third season.

When there were two more seasons to go.

It gets even worse for the show because due to various commitments including Shepard being pregnant and Willis shooting Die Hard, the relationship never did anything.  And thus, the term “Moonlighting Syndrome” was born.

Moonlighting Syndrome, referred to over at TV Tropes as “Shipping Bed Death” is what happens when writers make a couple canon, and then do nothing with them.  It’s often said that the journey means more than the destination, but if you arrive at the destination and then there’s nothing there, you as a writer well…you’re stuck.

In the rather nutty shipping world, where everyone demands that their pairings be made canon immediately and we focus on said pairings in the show, I’m going to argue that this is idea is ultimately faulty and more often than not, having your character hook up in the middle of the show, when their entire relationship (or the fandom equivalent of such) runs on unresolved sexual tension, will inevitably doom said relationship.

The funny thing about all the anger and shipping rage/accusations of homophobia/biphobia/whatever phobia/just admit you want to see two characters kiss and them kissing two other people makes you mad for some unexplained reason wars in certain fandoms (coughVoltroncough) is that there was a much smaller scale example of this with another 80′s cartoon remake, Thundercats.

80′s Thundercats was what happens when Japanese animators and American writers all get high on hallucinogenic substances and try to write a series.

Wait.

80′s Thundercats was a series about the last survivors of the Planet Thundera, who found themselves stranded on a far future Earth where they met new friends and protected their new home from the mechanisation of Mumm-Ra.  It made no sense, much like Voltron made no sense given all its edits, but it was still a beloved children's franchise.  So when it got remade in 2011, the idea, much like Voltron was to take all that childhood nostalgia and wrap it up in a coherent plot, updating the aesthetics and visuals.  Gone was the “survivors of a destroyed planet” plot replaced with “survivors of a destroyed kingdom”.

One of those plots involved a love triangle between the naive young king of a destroyed kingdom Lion-O, his adopted brother Tygra, and the mysterious Cheetara, who in this new version was a sage that was implied to be the only one who actually knew what the party had to do.

And at first, it’s implied that she could like either of them, or neither of them, far more preoccupied with stopping the armies that decimated her kingdom and their mysterious benefactor Mumm-Ra than relationship drama.

Until one episode - “New Alliances.”  Here it was retconned that Tygra had been crushing on Cheetara since before the series began, as opposed to the pilot establishing she had never met the group before.  She apparently returned this affection and everyone was happy.

And the series wasn’t even a quarter of the way done.

Yeah, in eliminating the tension with a retcon and establishing that the matter was over, and Lion-O was fairly OK with it eliminated a ton of tension from the group dynamic, particularly the brotherly rivalry.  It also had the unfortunate side effect of making Cheetara something of a damsel, her ability to guide the group now gone in favor of the romantic attachment of a co-lead.  They had nothing for them, and as a result, they became boring.

Then the series got canceled halfway into its planned run, and writers went on record saying if they would have been allowed to continue, they would have re-introduced the romantic tension, and possibly broken up Tyra and Cheetara.  So even if you were on board with that couple, the series might have split them up anyway, because being together they were far less interesting.

Okay, you’re thinking, that’s one example and the show got canceled!  That won’t happen to the show I like!

Not pictured is my Chesire cat grin.

The Legend of Korra gets a lot of flack, most of it deserved, some not.  However, one of the biggest points of criticism is how awfully the romance was handled in the first two seasons and how heavily it focused on said romance to the point Season 3′s abandonment of romantic tension was seen as a welcome relief.

In particuarly, in the first and what was supposed to be the only season, Korra falls in love with an aloof boy named Mako because he’s thinner than his brother Bolin.  They save the city and make out.  THE END.

Except wait!  That wasn’t the end!  The show got renewed and the pair had to have a functional relationship, something head writers Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko had no freaking clue how to do.  So the entire season had the characters engaging in an endless roulette of argument/makeout session/argument with no chemistry (as in they had no common ground and only showed up on screen together to argue or kiss) until they broke up at the end of the season admitting things were never going to work out.

It’s almost kind of sad that Korra and Asami’s relationship is going to be the central focus of a comic book series because if it’s as poorly written as Mako and Korra were, no amount of points for diversity will save it from being painful to read.

So the next time you think about yelling at creators to make your ship canon RIGHT NOW, be careful what you ask for.  You might end up getting a house built on sand, and those don’t stand for very long.