Why Are People Shipping Regina George & Rodrick Heffley? A Breakdown of the Viral ‘Crackship’
What To Know
- The “Rodgina” ship, pairing Rodrick Heffley from Diary of a Wimpy Kid with Regina George from Mean Girls, has gone viral.
- Rachel McAdams and Devon Bostwick played the characters in early 2000s movies.
- Cross-shipping characters from separate universes has become a popular online trend.
He was a loser rocker boy. She was a popular mean girl. Rodrick Heffley and Regina George are decidedly not obvious, but the internet has decided that the characters would make the perfect couple, despite hailing from different fictional universes. After falling down a rabbit hole of fan edits, we totally see the vision.
Editors have been taking clips from the characters’ — Devon Bostick‘s Rodrick in 2010’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Rachel McAdams‘ Regina in 2004’s Mean Girls — respective movies and putting them together, sometimes even creating a sensical narrative. Rodgina’s origin traces back to October 10, when TikTok user @monialynn suggested the cross-ship to end all cross-ships. We likely have them to thank for inspiring the dozens of fan-fictions that have been written since.
It all begs the question: Why have we, along with what seems like the majority of the internet, latched onto Rodgina?
@monialynn They would be SO enemies to lovers #art #digitalart #animation #rodrickheffley #reginageorge ♬ original sound – Monialynn
Anyone who’s been in the fandom trenches could tell you that Rodgina is far from the first — nor will it be the last — cross-ship. The phenomenon occurs when fans ignore fictional boundaries and put two characters together through fan fiction or fan art. Usually, it’ll also be an opposites-attract situation, as it is in this case, which also makes it somewhat of a “crackship” in fandom terms. Cross-shipping might also happen when a beloved character doesn’t get a solid love interest in their own story, so fans take it upon to give them one from another fictional universe.
Rodgina is the first crackship one we’ve seen truly blow up online and enter the mainstream. It’s probably no coincidence that Rodgina’s popularity coincides with the rise of fan edits, which have become more and more common over the past couple of years. On the other hand, maybe Rodgina has taken off because the people crave those endlessly re-watchable teen rom-coms from the late 1990s and 2000s. Both of those factors likely have something to do with it, but mostly, we think it’s the severe decline of the loser boy/popular girl trope in the media.
Punk rocker Rodrick may not be nerdy — he’s also plenty confident in himself, which makes the ship even better — but he’s definitely an misfit next to queen bee Regina. We can’t help but compare them to The O.C.‘s Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts. Seth isn’t nearly as prickly as Rodrick, and Summer Roberts is far nicer than Regina, but Seth and Summer are inarguably the blueprint for loser boy/popular girl. And is it a stretch to say that they haven’t been rivaled since The O.C. came to an end in 2004? (Maybe we’ll give you Ruby and Otis from Sex Education, but they didn’t get nearly enough time to be fleshed out before they broke up.)
We’ve seen the gender-swapped version of the trope far more often — She’s All That, The Duff, Glee, and so on — but it’s time for the reverse to get more time to shine. There’s a reason fans still talk about Seth and Summer and that people are putting together characters from totally different universes to get their loser boy/popular girl fix. Now that Rodgina has gained traction, maybe writers and studio execs will take note. We sure hope so. In the meantime: Keep the Rodgina videos coming, editors!
