DetCo my divorctp
26 Mar, 2025
People who have been in fandom for a long time are surely familiar with the term OTP: the One True pairing, aka one's absolute favorite ship. The two characters you absolutely MUST see in a romantic relationship, and are willing to read 50 meet-cute about.
It's a sentiment I am familiar with, but I also need a word that needs the opposite of that. I don't mean a nOTP; a NOTP implies a pairing I have no emotional investment in and want to see less of. No, I'm talking about a category of ships where I am incredibly invested in seeing them fail to get together. A category of ship where I would be willing to read 50 fics of them getting together and them breaking up. A category of ship that is, essentially, a trainwreck about to happen- and not the "we are dysfunctional but nevertheless we are fit for each other" way.
I have decided to use the term "divorctp" for that specific dynamic from now on, unless someone else coins a better one.
Anyways. I have many such divorctp, and I will surely elaborate about them eventually, but right now I want to talk about Detective Conan and specifically Shinichi/Ran.
A quick debrief, if you somehow dodged everything about DetCo in the past twenty years: Detective Conan is a mystery manga about a guy (Shinichi) who got shrunk back into a preteen by a criminal organisation. While Shinichi wants to get his body back and drag the criminals to justice, he is also aware that he's like three feet tall and 20 pounds, so if it's revealed that he is in fact still alive (if severely nerfed) he's gonna get Got by that criminal org real quick. He solves that issue by changing his identity entirerely, going by the name Conan, and hiding out at the house of his childhood friend & love interest, Ran. Said love interest has no idea that's her crush btw, as far as she's aware this is some weird kid she took in and has to remind everyday to brush his teeth.
Now, the Shinichi/Ran romance, as written by canon, is a lot of "I can't tell you what's going on but please wait for me don't go date other guys I'm coming back as soon as possible"/ "I am stressed the FUCK out that my situationship is barely ever giving signs of life but I shall believe in him and wait for him forever." I ate that shit up as a kid. Now as an adult... I try not to be a massive hater on this blog, so I'll simply say that it is no longer my cup of tea. That is not to say that I hate the ship- every once in a while I run into someone that ships it real hard and for a second I hypnotize myself into thinking I live in an alternate dimension where these two get to have actual development- but if I am to strictly take what I see in canon, I have no personal emotional investment in seeing those two tie the knot.
You know what I am deeply invested in, though? Those two dating, and then coming to the harrowing realisation that this relationship is absolutely the fuck not what they wanted from it.
Think about it. Ran had a crush on Shinichi pre-canon, and then barely ever had a conversation of worth with him ever since- their meetings have always been very brief. And Shinichi has changed a LOT since the chapter 1 of DetCo; he's less arrogant, brags less, keeps more secrets, and that's not going into the whole "what are the psychological side-effects of hiding as a kid for like a year." The day Shinichi does come back and the two of them do date- their dynamics are going to be completely different. And yeah, he's generally changed for the better, but you can't tell me it wouldn't be extremely jarring on Ran's side to see a guy she's known all her life suddenly act radically different.
Shinichi meanwhile has the opposite problem- he knows a LOT about Ran, stuff he's learned as Conan he would have never seen as Shinichi. How well can he act natural, and pretend he doesn't know all these things? Would he even realize that "mmh I'm not supposed to know her exact morning routine" or shit like that? In general, I figure he's going to be constantly on his tiptoes with her- am I supposed to know this information? Is this information I can safely share with her? Fuck, she asked about my day and I lied by reflex, what is wrong with me??
And to be clear, knowing So Much about Ran does not make Shinichi immune to being blatantly wrong about her; he's just spent the better part of a year seeing her as "someone I must protect at all costs" rather than an equal. This isn't meant to be shinran bashing to be clear, but I do think it's gonna massively fuck up his ability to aknowledge when Ran shares her input on basically anything.
I don't even need to touch the whole "Shinichi lied to Ran for a whole year" thing, even with the situation as-is we've got two people with a set idea of how the other is & an idealised vision of what their relationship would be like in their head. I want that ideal to get challenged HARD. I want it to shatter. I want these two to date, and as they're doing their best to mimic what they think a romantic relationship should be like, they realize that they don't know jack shit about the other at all- that maybe there was a point, in the past, where this could have been as they imagined, but now they've both changed too much and had too high expectations for it to work.
They can work through it and get together for real if you REALLY want the romance, but I'm fine with them just breaking up. Divorce win.
