hi! so i just started watching always sunny because of one of your posts about it, but i was wondering if you could link me to your posts explaining the charlie and mac ship, or if you could just explain it? i really like their friendship but i haven't seen any tension between them yet (granted, i'm only on season 2). anyway, i was just hoping you could link me to more info about them because i know you really like them together. thank you!
hi! so first of all it’s rad that you started watching sunny ‘cause of something i posted and i’m glad that you like it (being on season 2, i’m assuming you do in fact like it). welcome.
secondly, it’s important to clarify my own definition of “ship”, ‘cause it’s a recent realization of mine that a lot of people have a really rigid concept of a “ship” being exclusively relationships that are at once romantic and sexual. but that’s not how i view it. shipping to me is more of an exploration into the dynamic between two people who have or could have a significant connection to one another. this definition doesn’t necessitate a romantic or sexual aspect to the relationship.
mac and charlie have been best friends since they were little kids. they’re the only members of the gang that have been impoverished their entire lives. they both come from unsafe homes with at least one parent that’s an ~inexcusable~ kind of criminal. dee and dennis’ “dad” frank is also a criminal, but a white collar criminal. the kind of criminal society can excuse because he kept up appearances and kept the right people happy. but mac’s father is a low class thief (maybe murderer, can’t remember) and charlie’s mother is a sex worker. they don’t get a pass.
mac and charlie, short of being white and cisgender, are personifications of american scum. they are the squalidly poor non-heterosexual offspring of criminals and drug addicts who in turn became criminals and drug addicts. their existence is inconvenient. they were monumental losers in high school. charlie’s been using since he was a small child but in the reunion episode it’s made clear that he often specifically used drugs in high school in order to cope with classmates tormenting him. mac was only tolerated because he sold the cool kids drugs.
basically mac and charlie both have had a very specific set of life experiences that ostensibly no one else they meet has had. not in their exact, severe combination. they’re best fucking friends. they are best fucking friends.
you say you haven’t noticed any “tension” between them yet, and i assume you mean sexual tension. to be honest, i ship mac/charlie, but sexual tension rarely factors into the ship for me. charlie is arguably asexual. mac is either a deeply repressed homosexual or bisexual (either way, his main psychosexual problem is not being able to cope with digging anyone who isn’t a cisgender woman).
and i like that dynamic. i like the idea of a non-sex repulsed ace kid and a kid who doesn’t know what the hell is going on with his sexuality being best friends and sort of mutually not coping with their respective issues together. i like headcanons where mac asks charlie if he can kiss him because mac’s terrified of wanting to kiss boys and charlie is the only person in the world he can conceive of talking to about it, and charlie saying “yes” because while he isn’t sexually excited by it he doesn’t have a problem helping out his best friend and maybe just kissing would be nice. i like the idea of charlie growing up surviving sexual abuse and coping with his mother bringing johns into their home and going over to mac’s house ‘cause while mac is kind of screwed up mac is never going to be another predator charlie has to deal with. i like that charlie has probably spent hundreds of nights at mac’s house listening to mac talk for hours about god and hell and not really minded ‘cause he knows no one’s going to walk into mac’s room at 2:00 a.m.
and i like all the little moments on the show that tip us off to the fact that mac and charlie have known each other longer than anyone else on the show has. always sunny is a very versatile show shipping-wise. i’m personally very into of dee/charlie. but at the end of the day, to me, the endgame ships are mac/charlie and dee/dennis because both of those ships involve two people who have known each other their whole lives and will always know shit about one another that no one else can.
mac and charlie have bared witness to each other’s lives and regardless of sex that’s enough to ship them until the sun burns out.