Why I Dislike Special Shipping

Hate is a strong word I would rather not use.  But yes, that’s how I feel about this pairing.  And here are my reasons…  Also, SPOILER WARNING for story arcs.  This is your only warning.  If you don’t want certain plot points spoiled, leave now!


Yellow: … *looks around, back and forward* … *stares and sighs* I don’t like the character Yellow.


“What?!”  “How dare you not like Yellow?!”  “Yellow is the best character ever in this series!”  “If you dislike this character, you are the scum of the earth and don’t understand anything.”  “You just don’t like her because you’re a hater and you prefer that stupid pairing of yours over Special Shipping!”  “You know what?!  I’m never going to do a drawing for you!”  “At least I have a good reason for disliking Platinum!”


And that’s most of the comments I’ve gotten over the years that I can remember from the top of my head…


Look, guys.  I don’t like Yellow.  And I’m not sorry.  I find her a really boring character.  Hell, I find her to be a true Mary-Sue.  There!  I said it!


“What?!”  “Not this nonsense again!”  “I’m going to make a drawing in response to your stupid opinion!”  “You should take this journal down.  It’s going to attract a lot of angry comments.  I’m saying this for your own safety.”


No offense, Kusaka.  But my point is that I find Yellow an unneeded original character that’s shoehorned into the plot whenever it seems convenient.  And removing her from the plot entirely would give other characters their chance to shine and find more creative, alternate means to defeat the final boss.


I hate that Yellow’s Viridian powers are never explained.  And I hate that everyone is okay with that.  How did she get these powers?  If the forest was cut down, would she lose her powers?  (This is a reference to the GSC version games.)


Lance was also granted the same Viridian Forest powers.  However, you forget that fact because the plot also forgets he has them.


Apparently Giovanni has them too, but he never uses his.  Do you lose these powers at a certain point in your life?


The legend goes that every decade a child of Viridian Forest is granted powers… and that’s it.  There’s no further explanation beyond this phenomenon.  And any relevance to plot expired by in Gen 3.


Yellow’s powers include healing Pokémon.  Okay.  She has telekinesis and she can read a Pokémon’s mind.  That’s a bit redundant since we already have Psychic trainers like Sabrina.  And she has the ability to temporarily raise the levels of her Pokémon to OP levels.  “But she doesn’t use that power that often.”  The problem is that she has such a power in the first place.


“But when she uses her powers too much, she falls asleep.”  The problem is still there. 


Just imagine if Green actually trained her to hone in her abilities.


The Yellow arc was pretty cringing to get through… when it focused on Yellow.  How cringing?  Like Ash’s Pikachu pushed back to Level 1 in Best Wishes cringing.


Look, its fine that she’s not really a fighter.  And it’s fine that she wants to end things as peacefully as possible.  But I came to read about the continuation of Red’s (and the other members of the Kanto trio) journey and see epic Pokémon battles, not read the Pokémon equivalent of the “Mario Is Missing” video game.  But really, the Yellow arc is a whole different topic that I can cover some other time…


Then there was that ass-pull of Yellow using her OP levels powers once more, in the climax of the Emerald arc.  The enemy was too strong, but luckily the group had a Deux Ex Machina who had no story build up to pull off this Final Smash that you’d expect from the Ash & Pikachu anime.  This Viridian Forest powered, Family Volt Tackle attack effectively stole Emerald’s (the character the arc is named after) moment of defeating the final boss.  This loophole is as bad as Ruby having a Celebii the entire time in the RS arc, and without a GS Ball to contain it.


Yes, there is something or multiple things I dislike from every arc.  Maybe I’ll cover that one day…


And finally, the HGSS arc… Petrel was gloating to Silver about how he easily defeated Lance, the dragon master and League Champion.  How did he pull it off?  Was he really that strong?  Was he using a legendary Pokémon?


No.  He disguised himself as Yellow and that threw Lance off.  …I was devastated to learn this truth.  However, I wasn’t the only person taking this news hard.


This revelation was so bad that fans (mostly GrantedShippers) were trying to rationalize the situation by theorizing that Lance has romantic feelings for Yellow. *covers head in shame*


…A lot of us see Lance as a badass character.  And to learn that he was taken out so disgracefully left me distraught.


Moments: Any moment Yellow is with Red feels forced.


In the Yellow arc, Red makes a comment about traveling together when he thinks Yellow is a boy at that time.  Both Pika and Yellow freak out.  Okay.  Also, Blue loves messing with Red, so she never tells him the truth about Yellow’s gender.


In the GSC arc, Yellow eavesdrops on Red’s Pokégear call with Misty.  (Why?  Why is everyone listening in on this guy’s phone call?!  Give the guy some privacy!)  So, Blue steals Red’s line about all four of them traveling together.  Red and the other two girls freak out.  Why would Red freak out since that’s his line that he made back when he thought Yellow was a boy back in the Yellow arc?


In the FRLG arc, Yellow casts a fishing line onto Red’s hand/pinky as he walks away.  I have to question the logic behind this action.  That’s not how fishing works.  I know from experience.


It’s really hard for me to find any defense in this scene.  The reasoning being that if Red had left with Yellow and Mewtwo, there would have been a lot of innocent causalities in Vermillion City.  He needed to navigate the crashing airship to safety.  Besides, he had Deoxys’ support.


Nonetheless, with Yellow now unconscious, she goes on about how Red always keeps his promises, even though he really doesn’t.  (He turned down becoming the Viridian Gym Leader.)  Yellow sleeps in Blue’s arms until Red arrives.  And when Sird arrives, Red takes Yellow out of Blue’s arms and places her arms-first into danger.


Yellow could’ve been left where she was, placed down on the ground, or taken away to safety by a Pokémon like Giovanni was.  But instead, she is turned to stone like everyone else present.  She could’ve been sparred from the petrifaction… and she wasn’t even conscious.


Special Shippers: Or to be accurate, rabid Special Shippers.  You know those people… if you don’t ship their shippings, then you are trash and so is your OTP.  “We have development!  See, they’ve talked to each other!”  “Our word is law!”


For this community, Special always goes hand in hand with Old Rival.  And only then can the other heroes date their heroine counterparts.


"I don't like this pairing, but the artwork is nice."  Am I the only one that find these comments rude?  Someone clicks onto a drawing of a pairing they know they don't support and their reasoning it that they follow the artist's work.


"Yeah, well, I drew this for the client."  Oh, well, thanks for that.  It's nice to know that the artist won't stick their neck out for their clients and their client's pairings.

Update 8/30/17: Here's are a couple of examples of people who show little to no respect to the artist.  Commision: LuckyShipping


Old Rival Shipping: As stated above, this pairing goes hand in hand with Special.  How did this shipping start?  When Blue first met Green, she called him cute and he ignored her.  And Blue never showed any interest in Green ever again.


How does Green feel about Blue?  He calls her obnoxious out of annoyance, something Silver resents him for.  Reading Green’s behavior around Blue, he sees Blue as a capable, yet annoying trainer that he tolerates because she can keep up with him and Red.


In the RGB arc, he’s turned away when she made a Silph Scope joke.  And at the end of the arc, he calls her obnoxious when she hurries him and Red to join her in the Hall of Famers ceremony.


In the Yellow arc, Green calls Blue obnoxious when she finds enjoyment in Red being clueless to Yellow’s true gender.


In the GSC arc, Blue falls off of Moltres, worrying Red.  Luckily, Green flies Zapdos under her and she lands on the electric bird’s back.  She thanks Green, but he just ignores her, not even checking to make sure if she was alright.  However, Red asked if she was alright, which she confirmed she was.


Near the end of this arc, Green calls Blue obnoxious when she jokingly offers to travel alongside Red, Misty, and Yellow.  Green’s comment angers Silver as he doesn’t like people mistreating his sister.  I’m looking at you, Gold.


In the FRLG arc, Blue presents Green with his new National Dex and brags about her importance to the team.  This annoys the fatigued Green and he tells her that she talks too much.


And finally in the Emerald arc, Blue is looking forward to showing off in front of her parents in the tournament.  Green calls Blue obnoxious and this upsets Silver again.


Feeding False Information: Rather it’s blowing things way out of portion, making stuff up, or outright lying about something that no one else saw.  The PokéSpe community has fed false information to their friends and even naïve new comers.


Look, guys.  If you’re going to get overexcited about something that you’ve blown way out of portion or have no proof to back something up, don’t get upset and accuse someone of starting trouble because they were doing research and your evidence turned up false.  When something sounds really suspicious, someone is bound to go search for the answers.


“A poll queries if Yellow is Red’s sweetheart?  They must be canon!”  Yo, chill.  The images used here is when the characters were 11.  Neither this poll nor its text is ever brought up again.


“Kusaka declared this pairing is canon years ago!  But he took his post off of his Twitter page to avoid controversy.”  Why would such information suddenly surface out of the blue?  So, you’re telling me no one took a screenshot of this and no one spammed the shit out of it?  Bullshit.  Not only is this a terrible thing to thing from both marketing and storytelling standpoints, but would you seriously be satisfied with something so cheap?  Take the ending to the Battle Network series for example.


Serebii is a prime example of blowing things out of portion or straight out lying.


The Details Bios of the Dex Holders sections claim that Red and Yellow having a strong bond.  However, the two characters barely interact with each other.


They also claim that Blue has been crushing on Green ever since they met outside of Saffron City.  You’re telling me Blue was blushing when her face was obscured by the Silph Scope?  “If you read the manga, you would see it.”  Don’t tell me to read the manga!  I READ the manga!  And I do the research!  This is no version of this manga that backs up this claim.


The person who made these posts was confronted about this false information.  He apologized and promised to edit them.  And to this very day he has yet to keep his promise.


Treatment of Misty: “Misty gave up on Red.”  Where was this stated?  Do you have any proof of this?


Misty has yet to appear again after the GSC arc.  She’s currently not relevant enough to appear in the series outside of official artwork.


In the GSC arc, Misty wanted to confess her feelings to Red.  She was encouraged by Erika to go through with this and even offered her a flower as further encouragement.  However, (as far as we know) she never got the chance…


Head Canon: Every story I’ve read is the same copy and paste story over and over.  (No, I’m not interested in reading any Special Shipping stories.  Please do not recommend any to me, thank you.)


Red is turned into every single Shonen dumbass main character cliché; the idiot hero who is oblivious to women and love.  Or you know, Ash Ketchum.  (Someone even claimed to me that they’re exactly the same…)  This is not true to his character as he been attracted to or embarrassed by older women.  The most notable women include Misty, Blue, Erika, and Sabrina.


Yellow is a naïve trainer and a protector of others type of heroine.  But the PokéSpe community draws her out to be a loli, moe, “notice me, senpai”, weak, and dependent on others type of character.


Blue’s only role in these stories is to help Yellow get together with Red… and to conveniently get together with Green because she apparently she likes him because… he has a face.


And Green is just… there.  He serves no real purpose to the plot other than to be a passive aggressive pawn that promotes Old Rival Shipping.


The PokéSpe Community: From what I’ve seen, I’ve become quite infamous among this fan base.  Rather it’s for not liking the character Yellow.  "Hater!"  Or being known as ‘That guys who commissions LuckyShipping a lot’.  “Oh look!  That guy is commissioning LuckyShipping again.”  “Why does he commission everybody?”


Why?  I do it because I love this couple to death.  And I outsource to different artists because of people like you who like to talk about me behind my back!  I tell you, it’s a real treat to stumble upon conversations about me on different sites.  Rather it’s on deviantART, the comments sections on my commissions I’ve purchased, old conversations on JB’s Gallery, etc.


Betrayal: I use to have Pokémon artist buddies who I would regularly chat with.  I considered these people my good friends and I would even share secrets about myself and what’s going on in my life.


I would regularly chat with them about my love for the LuckyShipping pairing… maybe a little too much.  However, over time, these people changed.  And Special Shipping would appear more in their gallery… that’s fine, whatever… but what really felt like a stab in the back was when they later made drawings that contradict LuckyShipping.


Look, you may think very little of your actions.  But I feel deceived after I kept you guys in my prayers.  You pulled a practical joke that all your buddies laughed at and they used it as official proof.


But did you ever stop to think you may have hurt someone in the process?  Someone who believed you were their friend and he could console with?  Did you think it was odd that this person suddenly stopped chatting with you?  Or did you just figure “He’s just a butthurt LuckyShipper.  Who needs him?”  That hurts, man.  That really freaking hurts.


--


“Oh yeah?!  What makes your shipping so special?”  “What romantic moments do your shipping have?!”  If you really want to know, I could make a separate journal about why I love LuckyShipping.


Well, that’s about it.  That’s me finally revealing my true feelings about Yellow and Special Shipping.  Also, I spaced out the words between the shipping names so this journal won’t pop up when you’re searching for your OTP in the search box.  (You’re welcome…)  Now I need to emotionally prepare myself for the swarm of angry comments that will inevitably arrive.


“That is not so!”  “You’re the one who’s wrong!”  “Are you trying to pick a fight with your blind hate against Yellow?!”  “Look at this loser’s journal.  It’s so pathetic how delusional he is.”  “Oh look, he ironically typed exactly what I was thinking about him.  You deserve these angry comments.”


People wanted me to make a journal about this topic for a long time.  However, I’ve been too hesitate to go through with it.


Think I’ll shoot myself now…