sincere | Surprisingly prevalent! Zelos/Sheena?!

I'm not into these "Dressing" communities, they're just not my thing, but

libekory has been stalking them, and she lets me know what is amusing and worth looking at.

But her experiences watching

talesofdressing have taught me that every, single, person in the Tales of Symphonia fandom thinks Zelos ♥ Sheena. They are OTP 4eva.

Okay, I played this game. I know why people might ship them. It's pretty traditional. Boy flirts with girl, girl bitches at boy, girl teaches boy the error of his whoring ways. The pairing makes sense, even if it's not my cup of tea. (Her crush on Lloyd is just too. cute. and his epic issues with women could fill a book, but not a real relationship.)

But man. How depressing is that? Everyone is doing it. There are two different married-to-Sheena-with-children!Zeloses. AU!High School!Zelos is hot for Sheena. Female!Zelos is heterosexual -- except for Sheena. (Not Colette? Man. Even Sheena is gay for Colette.)

So, tell me -- is Zelos/Sheena more canon in the manga or the anime or something? Because in the game, I never thought these two would become a fandom OTP.

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I knew something like this was going to pop up.

We're not stopping anyone from shipping anything else in

talesofdressing. That's just how people are rolling thus far. If you want to find a Shelloyd shipper and do that on the comm, that's perfectly okay and no one's going to lynch you for it.

I... wasn't criticizing

talesofdressing. I genuinely don't care one way or another, as I don't follow or participate in Dressing communities.

I'm only observing that there is a really obvious and pronounced trend towards the pairing, and I'm just bewildered by it. It's one thing when I know intellectually that it has a good following of shippers, but another thing entirely when there is a free environment like

talesofdressing and everyone there is doing that same thing, like no one in the fandom has come up with an alternative explanation for Zelos's behavior, which doesn't strike me as especially pairingy. From looking at the comm, I get a much better impression of the cross-section of fandom represented at least by RP, and that cross-section... seems to have universally come to this conclusion that they're an item and meant to be.

This is not about my burning desire to see anyone RP Lloyd/Sheena or my crying over fandom. I'm not going to start reading

talesofdressing no matter how many Zeloses and Sheenas join who aren't in wub. It's just confusion on my half. Learning about the prevalence of this pairing in the comm made me feel like I'm the only person in this fandom who genuinely doesn't see anything like this in the canon.

Sorry, I just got up in arms because I, you know, run the place and the whole thing is that people can post what they want as long as it's marked appropriately, and I figured because there is a bigger population of Zelos/Sheena stuff that someone's gonna cry moar about it even though there's nothing I can do about it, so, yeah. Sorry.

It's not your fault and I don't blame the comm. ♥ In a free forum, people can do what they want, and I do know someone thinking of joining as a Zelos married to someone else. It just provided me with a new way to look at the fandom and go, "Wow. No one else likes the things I like. Sigh."

When I was in the fandom, I recall there being a trading card for Sheena being passed around that stated they used to be an item.

Of course, the key part of that is "used to be." It's further proof that Sheena really *really* doesn't appreciate Zelos's immature and obnoxious crap. I hate the way fandom lauds him for it, as if he's not the one who doesn't need to grow up if he indeed has a legitimate interest in Sheena.

Anyway, Z/S for some reason is a lot more popular on LJ than L/S is. Seems that's where they all the shippers for it hang out. L/S gets more love on fanfiction.net, last I checked.

That's a good thing to know, although hardly conclusive as just that.

But yeah-- I just can't do it. Sheena is so incredibly disinterested in him from a relationship standpoint. Yes, she gets upset when he's acting like a manwhore, but that doesn't mean she has a crush on him. We know how she acts when she's interested, and it isn't "becomes Tendo Akane". She is not just being tsundere, she genuinely thinks he is a jackass. Whenever Lloyd or one of the others worries about him, Sheena is always the one who goes, "Who. Fucking. Cares." Sheena doesn't care about his emotional depth or want to know about his emotional depth. As far as she's concerned, Zelos is about as emotionally deep as a cardboard box, and good for her, but bad for Zelos/Sheena.

And even if I'm so sure the last thing Zelos needs is a woman who would ignore and snap at him, he doesn't seem interested either. Maybe he'll leer or grope, but he seems to think she's an idiot. ("I totally know Regal." "?" "Exsphere mines? Toize Valley? Which he knows so much about? Who owns them? Sounds familiar? "??" "...Man, is your chest the only thing that's well-endowed?" I think that comment says a lot more about his opinion of her than a thousand ♥_♥ expressions that he makes for every female in the party, from the professor to the tiny girlchild.)

It's just depressing that the entire fandom seems to think they're total OTP. XD

Why is it depressing? Can't people ship what they want?

Sure, people can ship what they want. But people can also feel depressed when THEIR ships don't agree with the majority. Both are totally okay things.

What

chibimazoku said. Of course people can ship what they want. If people ship Zelos/Noishe, whatever, as far as I'm concerned. (Just keep it away from me!) Just because I ship a bunch of Zelos and Sheena pairings that aren't Zelos/Sheena doesn't mean it offends me when people ship it. (When they insist it's canon, that might bother me... XD )

But it is depressing when there's a lot of fandom activity for pairings you don't like, and comparatively little for the pairings you do; then I have the awesome knowledge that I can't find good fic for my pairing if I go looking, everyone prefers to pair X with Z instead of Y. Since I ship weird things (Zelos/Princess Hilda! Luke/Natalia!), this is a frequent sorrow for me. XD But I don't tell people what to ship. I just wish more people liked my ships so I could read their fic and fangirl with them. :3

That icon makes me happy and sad at the same time.

Why the lack of Luke/Natalia, fandom? D:

Yes, she gets upset when he's acting like a manwhore, but that doesn't mean she has a crush on him. We know how she acts when she's interested, and it isn't "becomes Tendo Akane".

That's always been my argument. Her crush on Lloyd shows how she acts when having an actual interest in someone. How she reacts in response to Zelos is about as far removed from that as you can get.

Well, Tales of Dressing seems to attract a bunch of pretty crazy players in the first place (FAT ANISE?! TOE FETISH LARGO?! PLAYED BY THE SAME PERSON?!), so-- I dunno. I steer clear of the English-language Tales fandom in general. J!Fandom seems to be more convinced that Zelos has the biggest crush ever on Lloyd, which. While not my favorite ship, I at least agree with. I think that yes, there is sexual tension between Sheena and Zelos! ... but I don't think it's ever going to end up with omgbabiesandloev, no.

lol yeeeeah, I was linked to Fat Anise. XD (Although Tales of Dressing is still better than what I saw of Kingdom Dressing.) I'm definitely not taking it too seriously.

I've never been deep in TOS fandom, but I'm obviously up to my eyeballs in TOA and I am the only person in the fandom who does not ship, er, certain things. X3 I was just stunned to see that 100% of Zeloses there were deeply in love with Sheena. That's an impressive number, for something quite not canon! (Although apparently someone told

libekory that they were canon. In the actual game. Obviously some differing opinions of canon here.)

I enjoyed that game

I do not want to get into the fandom because there is too much incest D:
ew

Surprisingly prevalent! Zelos/Sheena?!

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