unsinkable ships

I’ve been thinking a lot about Betty and Veronica lately. With Archie ‘n’ pals riding high in pop culture again thanks to Riverdale, it’s hard not to. Even with a faux-lesbian kiss that went nowhere, Riverdale reaffirms my belief that Betty and Veronica are totally in love. Hear me out.

When I first jumped into the Batbooks early into the New 52, I was disappointed to learn that Barbara Gordon, my favorite superheroine, hadn’t had many love interests, and even less showing up in the new canon. How did a character so awesome, who had been around for so long, have so few romances over the years? I had started brainstorming who I would pair her with, and around that time I checked out the event comic Death of the Family. In the last issue, the Batfam had stopped the Joker, but they were all still coming down from the Joker toxin. While they were all sitting in a pool of water, grinning painfully against their wills, there was this one detail towards the back of the panel...

I don't spend a lot of time seeking out fan-generated content or non-canon ships, possibly to my own detriment, but the pairing of Spider-Man and The Human Torch is one that I've become very invested in over the past year. Spideytorch not only helped me put a lot of important personal things in perspective; it gave me a way to appreciate how fan-art can have an impact on how different individuals approach canon stories.

Illyana Rasputin was Kitty Pryde's first true love, and you'll never convince me otherwise. Sure, Kitty had already expressed an interest in Illyana's brother Piotr (the gentle giant known as Colossus), but at the time that was more of a childhood crush. It was only later, after Kitty had become an adult without Piotr getting much older, that later writers decided that Kitty and Colossus had been "true love." Kitty's relationship with Illyana, meanwhile, was a close connection between two equals.

Friends, how many times have you seen this story play out? Boy meets girl who ushers him into a hidden world beyond our own where he gets special powers. Girl mentors boy in use of said powers. Girl and boy, despite a solid bond formed in battle, argue constantly. But then, after enduring innumerable trials and hardships only to come out the other side stronger, girl and boy realize they can't live without each other and finally admit their feelings. Cue Big Dramatic Kiss and Sappy Montage of Happiness, right? Well, in the case of Tite Kubo's Bleach, which concluded last August after 15 years, the answer turned out to be a firm "no." And that still kinda bugs me.

There are many ships in fandom, but Transformers is all but unique in that Transformers ships can feature people who turn into ships. A ship-based ship is therefore provably superior, and what is also provable is this: Nautica and Velocity, from Lost Light (formerly known as More Than Meets the Eye) are 100% in love. Many ships are based on unfounded speculation, but not this one: this is based on hard, provable facts, with every assertion true because it’s backed up by the weight of cold, steely logic.