Giraffe's EAH Ship Tier List: Daring/Hopper
Requested by @thelilylav and one of the anons in my inbox!
Ah, the elusive Ever After High yaoi. As an unapologetically girly piece of media, EAH is marketed to the girls, has a much larger selection of girls than boys, and focuses WAY more on ALL the girls. I actually did an experiment one time, and even if you include the books, I don't think EAH passes a reverse Bechdel Test.
And there's nothing wrong with a show being for the girls! But EAH's approach does make all the guy characters pretty underdeveloped, especially outside the context of their relationships with their girlfriends, sisters, etc. This means a lot of interesting plotlines kind of go ignored like the internal tension of the Charming siblings, and it also means most m/m ships are pretty weak. This one is no exception.
As far as their canon interactions, Daring and Hopper don't really have a lot. They're roommates, but you could be forgiven for not knowing that because I don't think they ever directly speak to each other in the show. They have "This Is A Scene With All The Boys" like the bookball game, but nothing where they actually talk. As far as I can tell, they've had a full conversation exactly once: in The Princely Present, Hopper and Drake's chapter of Once Upon A Pet by Suzanne Selfors. Not coincidentally, this is also the only time in the books that we get a POV for Hopper or Daring.
What we learn from this conversation is as follows: Daring and Hopper don't relate to each other at all, but are reasonably friendly. Daring maintains his vanity and self-absorbedness in his relationship with Hopper (notable because that ISN'T present in his relationships with Lizzie or Rosabella), and Hopper is passively envious of Daring but also thinks he's a little annoying because he just lives on a completely different wavelength than everybody else. Hopper gets on with Daring well enough to ask him for advice about Briar, and Daring gets on with Hopper well enough to give him the best advice he has (which isn't great, but it's the thought that counts). This general dynamic is corroborated when they interact in Kiss and Spell.
This is completely expected and ordinary for both of them. Everybody is passively envious of Daring because he's extremely confident and handsome and life just seems to come super easy to him. Hopper is extra jealous of Daring because he is jealous of pretty much all the other guys because he is a walking disaster. A lifetime of praise and working to uphold his appearance has made Daring a self-absorbed person, but he's not malicious, he just struggles to connect with others sometimes. They are utterly lukewarm towards each other.
So, okay, what about headcanon? I do like Daring and Hopper on paper because there is a bit of really silly rescue romance going on. There's a blink and you'll miss it line in The Storybook of Legends by Shannon Hale where the princesses have to rescue themselves from towers during a Damsel-In-Distressing lesson. This is because the heroes who were supposed to rescue them got preoccupied saving Hopper, who transformed from nerves and got kidnapped by a swamp witch to be used as a magical reagent.
The nonchalance with which this is mentioned and also the fact that it is never brought up again makes me think this kind of thing happens a lot. We can also guess that Daring would be aggressively and enthusiastically leading the charge because that boy LOVES a quest. I can definitely see Hopper getting a little flustered by having THE knight in shining armor come to heroically save him from whatever peril he's fallen into this week. And of course, Daring is dense as a brick, so you get all sorts of shenanigans where he has no idea why Hopper keeps turning into a frog around him, but he's a good guy who doesn't want Hopper to get hurt so he makes it his mission to watch over him. This isn't even mentioning the Shakespearean boasting/roasting/flirting that Daring and Hopper's frog form could get into.
That's cute! I can see how it's ship-worthy material! Do I think they have a popscicle's chance in hell of doing anything about it? Absolutely not unless someone else pushes them into it (definitely Cupid, possibly Briar, maybe Dex and Darling, Faybelle or Kitty if they think it would be funny). But do I think both of them get a lot more flavor if you give them kind of this passive crush on each other where Hopper is too nervous to do anything about it and Daring is too oblivious? Hell yeah! There's even some potential for Hopper to be an "in" to getting Daring and Dexter to understand each other better, since he's friends with both.
I think the label I have for this ship is "inoffensive." It may be entirely reliant on headcanon, and might not do much for the big plot points and the themes. But it's fun, it's sweet, it's really silly, and I honestly salute all you Daring/Hopper fans out there.
Verdict: I Can See It (B-Tier)