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onewomancitadel · 2 years ago

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Besides knightfall what are you're top three ships

I wrote an answer out to this and lost half of it to another BSOD, so I'm trying again from what I had managed to save.

'Besides Knightfall' lol. We know what we're dealing with here. Honestly I don't think there's any ship I am as dedicated to as I am Knightfall, so it's really in a league of its own.

I think I should preface this with the fact that I define shipping a little more narrowly than most. I should be looking for the following:

Fangirl tummy flutters

I want to write fic or read fic, or think about canon in a complex way

Listen to songs/read poetry/make playlists (basically any fannish behaviour, incl. watching fanvids and that sort of thing)

Want some sort of canon resolution for the relationship (not necessarily endgame but usually so)

and quite often I think the ship is a resolution of the story's themes. Part of what makes a ship like, say, Solavellan special, is that it hinges on the story medium and the actual story message. Whether you choose to empathise with Solas or not is a major decision.

I reject the idea that shipping/romance is ancilliary. I get that people are into it just for their own whims but the only thing I am interested in is something really substantial and especially something that demonstrates the narrative potential of romance. There is literally nothing like having an optional romance with the trickster god of legend.

With that being said, there are dynamics such as Elizabeth/Darcy, Martha/Jonas, Eve/Villanelle, Drummer/Naomi, and Julie/Miller that I really enjoy, but I wouldn't say I ship but instead directly respond to them as romantic material.

A lot of what I ship here is sort of ambiguously canon, or in Reylo's case, definitely canon but had a shit ending.

In Eve/Villanelle's case, you do get that element of 'seen and being seen' on both sides of the romance, so that's why I really enjoy it (as well as being enemies-to-lovers). The more passionate/melodramatic side is the bit I responded to.

For RWBY:

Emercury

My first ship (back in V2:E1 lol). Mean guy who is clearly hiding real feelings and mean girl who is actually not thaaaat mean causing trouble together. Very compelling dynamic from the first minute and I never stopped shipping them. I don't think I would traditionally think of myself as a villainshipper (i.e. villain/villain) and as I expected/hoped for we now have Emerald on the side of Good and Mercury promoted higher in Evil, so basically everything I desired. It's going to be angsty and I love it. Unwilling confidantes to enemies to lovers. It's all here.

If Mercury does potentially become a more villainous figure over the next volume, that may interest me even more (he looks so soft here for Emerald, good grief). Probably what distinguishes my interest from Cinder (as I've mentioned in the past) is that her villainy is just straight up more interesting and menacing and her motivations are complicated.

What makes the Emerald and Mercury dynamic unique is that Mercury demonstrates selflessness and unconditional regard for Emerald in encouraging her to face the truth and leave (as he sinks into deeper villainy). The way he does it is the only way he can, especially when he's in the middle of convincing himself to stay. Emerald and Mercury are definitely characters that represent an easing into the redemption arc for Cinder, and by virtue of Cinder's redemption arc being bigger, that's the sort of thing that interests me to write.

Emerald/Mercury is not a controversial pairing in and outside universe, and I think most characters would understand why Emerald would want to help Mercury. It's got the potential for an inverse Blake/Adam dynamic (which is already there, actually) which is really narratively interesting.

The forbidden love element isn't there, except really on Mercury's part (despite the fact I think he recognises his feelings), and I hope we get to see some of that development. That is the bit that would really interest me in the enemy-hero dynamic, particularly because he's putting a lot of effort to convince himself to Be Evil.

I like the secretive tenderness between a lot of their interactions and I really do like the potential of Emerald realising how she feels for Mercury with him gone. There's the potential there for them both 'coming to know each other honestly' through that structural enmity of being pitted against each other, which is thee enemy-hero dynamic I adore. It's kind of ironic that being on the same side before actually, in some way, prevented them coming to know/love each other openly/honestly, because I don't think it's possible for that sort of thing to be consummated in the salted earth of Salem's side.

I'm really pleased it's heading in the direction I hoped it would. I don't sense across the fandom as much romantic speculation? At least from everything I've seen over the years, it's never got the scrutiny/interest I assumed it should. The fact that it mirrors Ren/Nora straight up is so obvious (Ren/Nora is so obvious). I hope that the more obvious romantic framing recontextualises previous interactions.

Also, of course my hope and assumption is that Mercury joins Emerald, but it's a positive mirror of the way Emerald and Cinder first found him. I'm not set on how the Emerald-Mercury-Cinder dynamic develops in the show, but I would eventually like to see something there, especially because it's like Nora-Ren-Jaune. But who nose.

It's also the only other R/WBY ship I have actually written fic for but I haven't posted anything publically for it yet.

Ozlem

I mean, it's a canon romantic dynamic.

Lovers-to-enemies and painful. Salem literally only had one option, it's her fairytale, honour-bound quest of Search for the Lost Husband. I cannot stop being sympathetic towards her, especially as she's more evil and more reviled than even Cinder.

Hard-mode big baddie. I'm really spoilt for choice.

Ozma is a silly old man who's played by the wrong narrative rules. Both he and Salem are also Solas-types who remember the old world, but respond to the new world in different ways. She's militarised the Grimm and he's militarised humans. They're the only two who know their old home and who they were before everything, but they've both forgotten, and both of them have concealed their true selves from each other and their followers.

It's honestly a really unique dynamic because so rarely do you get the Solas/Ganondorf/Emet-Selch type in a pair like this who were also explicitly romantic.

I like literally lost my shit when I watched The Lost Fable. I'll tell the story quickly: after V5, I had had a tantrum and quit the r/RWBY subreddit (which I've mentioned a few times) because everybody celebrated Cinder's death, and I had felt really demoralised. I figured my storytelling interests were bad and I didn't tune into R/WBY until V6 was almost done. It was really late at night and the middle of summer and I was like, 'Fine, fuck it, I'll watch it and give it a go,' because I don't know what's good for me, and when I tell you I SHRIEKED when The Lost Fable came on, I am NOT EXAGGERATING. They were in LOVE!

It was catnip to me! Cinder was alive! The bad wizard and the bad witch were in love! The wound at the heart of the world was their affair and the condemnation of the gods but most of all THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was like overnight my hope had come back. I swore to never return to the subreddit fandom. Lol. I mean it when those sorts of echo chambers can genuinely affect your interpretation.

I am attached to Ozlem because it pretty much justifies everything narratively and thematically. But not only that, it was also the thing that made me feel like the story was something I was personally really invested in for the right reasons, and my trust came back.

So they're special for that reason.

I also love the idea that it's the long way around to Salem's happy ending (as much as it could be). That all that pain could matter. I can't see anything fundamentally cynical there. I love that Knightfall is the answer to Ozlem. I love stories like poetry, they rhyme. I love the idea of metaphorical reincarnation and the same stories playing out over and over. That's IT for me in romance.

I also love that there's hope in it. I love the idea that love was something which twisted Salem but also made her story what it was, and they don't really remember each other. Her redemption is also his redemption.

The thing I could never understand about 'Ozma is the evil one! Salem is the evil one! Ozma is stupid! Salem is stupid!' is that like literally u guise they're both naughty and silly in their own ways. That's the point.

Anyway, no one does it like them (carries the narrative, emotional, thematic core of the story and made it everybody else's business because you literally need conflict to make a story and a story). Maybe Knightfall does it like them. Maybe RG.

Song rec because I must.

The fact that Salem doesn't know the exact nature of Ozma's reincarnation sends me crazy. He's been reincarnating across lives fighting YOU. They've spent LIVES thinking about each other but not really KNOWING each other. *breathes into a paperbag*

For outside of RWBY:

Reylo

I mean there's pretty much no other answer. I think that Reylo and Knightfall are probably the most active and happy I've ever been in fandom. It awakened feelings in me. Very traditional and regular canonshipping here. From the word 'bridal carry' I was ready to go. 'We have what we need' just not entirely in the way he meant it lol. But also why is he being so sentimental

It's a perfect convergence.

'The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead' *immediately meets Kylo Ren*

It's a perfect convergence.

I really can't overstate how much TFA was really the moment I was moved by it, because the iteration of Reylo from that (before TLJ) is still pretty much my mental happy place for the ship - the dark one absconding with the bright maiden in the green forest - but what's really weird is that TLJ pretty much got the dynamic completely and totally tonally correct. Kylo wasn't a Dark Fuck Prince, he's a crying spacevirgin Knight Templar brooding Byronic Hero, and Rey wasn't some plucky upstart but someone deeply wounded just like him and hiding her hurts. I don't think there's ever been anything like Reylo - so divisive yet with such an overwhelmingly large fandom - but more importantly I don't think the experience of seeing TLJ will ever be matched.

I mean, I really cannot overstate how shocking it was that the Force Bond was canon, and that everything I had desired (and seemed so unlikely, and you know, was mocked and derrided) was onscreen before me. You can read Ohtze's Force Bond meta here. Note the date.

I really attribute the Reylo fandom for me beginning to make myself feel comfortable with asserting my own opinions and desires. No joke and no exaggeration. Fandom was stifling and boring before it by comparison. It is actually really great to be surrounded by encouraging people who understand you. It's so funny that Reylo embodies this microsmic representation of all that is bad with women, media, and fiction consumption. Lol

But yeah forever and ever will ship Reylo. I watch fanvids of it all the time and cry. TROS may have soured the ending, and online fandom may have been split in half (honestly I think Reylo was wrong time, wrong place), but it's just my silly ship with my silly spacewizards. I compare everything to Reylo.

Actually, I was talking to my bf about Knightfall and I was trying to convey the dynamic I was particularly interested in - that Jaune reaching out to Cinder is itself its own transgression against his side as much as it is hers - and I explained it to him through Reylo because the Reylo dynamic in TLJ (transgressing both their sides for each other) is the blueprint. This isn't actually a universal feature of enemies-to-lovers or hero/villain pairings - that they both each seek/find new understanding, not just the villain doing so - and it's actually incredibly exciting that a mainstream ETL dynamic portrayed that.

What's really frustrating is that critics are always hyperfocussed on the hero fixing the villain (and the problems with that therein) when the most interesting thing to me is that two-wayness. All throughout TLJ Rey's story is about her journey and how Kylo helps her and vice versa.

To be honest it is probably true in some way that some people are focussed on the villain. The usual assumption is that the hero doesn't change through the romance. This is especially true because we have a framework and language to describe a redemption arc and redemption arcs are usually conceived in isolation. Obviously I take issue with all of that, especially because just technically speaking they're more interesting when related to other characters.

But because my bf knows Reylo he immediately got what I was trying to explain with Knightfall. So I really like that people who get Reylo can then get exactly what I'm getting at with other enemies-to-lovers pairings.

Reylo is such a good ship. It's magical. It's enemies-to-lovers who come to know themselves through each other. It's against the odds. Were the third film good, we would've got the explicit follow-up of Padme and Anakin through them. It basically justified the Sequel Trilogy. It was beautiful. For some reason I always come back to this when I think about Reylo. It's just such a mysterious and special pairing. I love the fic, the meta - seriously some of the best stuff I've ever read - the fanvids, everything.

So much of what's in Reylo is what I'm searching for everywhere else. If someone reading this doesn't 'get' Reylo and thinks what I'm searching for is some Dark Fuck Prince with a self-insert female character, or some irredeemable villain, then you're wrong. It's so much more than that. So many people make so many assumptions about the spacewizards and it's so frustrating.

To me it's much more valuable to talk about what I enjoy than try to cater to those sorts of people, and Reylo taught me that. It's so important to create things and be constructive. I'm so glad I can apply those skills to Knightfall.

Honourable mentions for Solavellan and Zelgan

I sincerely doubt that we're ever going to get any resolution for Solavellan and Zelgan is something I only really ship because of WW!Ganondorf and a Queen Zelda in my head.

When it comes to Solavellan, DA4 is pretty much in development hell, and for that matter I doubt they'll be able to deliver upon the liminality of Solas' character. He's so dependent on whether you choose to engage with him or not and see his perspective and part of the interest of his character relies upon that. If they had made him concrete (universally sympathetic or universally reviled) I think they would've failed with his character.

Part of what annoys me about the online discourse surrounding him is that the entire point of a trickster god shrouded in either heroism or villainy (and decided as the latter by the sands of time) is that he's meant to be divisive. More important than that though, the people who are truly offended by him are not as offended by his concealment of the truth (not even real... lies about who he is and what he believes, he's quite open about it) but people who do care about him are potentially more sympathetic to what he's been concealing (and will try to look even deeper).

The Solavellan romance is special because it's much harder to achieve (you need to play as a female elf, so you're already limited gameplay-wise) and it requires a lot of work. It's also lovers-to-enemies and much more tragic than anything I tend to ship, but I really enjoy the ambiguity of it. It's also something entirely justified by the gameplay medium (as I mentioned earlier), unlike a lot of Bioware romances which can feel cursory. You only get the effect of Solavellan because it's a choice.

The Trespasser confrontation might go down as one of my favourite romantic confrontations, and I love that the 'real' final boss fight is really just a conversation. I also think 'Var lath vir suledin' was very formative for me in terms of my approach to romance.

So I don't read fic for it, but I still cry over this theme. Direct link to the MP3 here. (Hint: right click and save it).

Also, because I get asks sometimes that say Cinder is like a wolf and Jaune is like a golden retriever, it's like someone hits my Manchurian Candidate trigger. May the Dread Wolf take you indeed.

Actually, if we're doing Knightfall/Solavellan similarities, love interests who are actually reviled and cursed figures of myth which you're meant to run from/kill are it here. If you play as a mage Lavellan and are a Keeper, you're meant to protect your people from the Dread Wolf. Cinder's wolfiness comes from her Grimm curse, and Huntsmen are made to kill Grimm. That's lovely.

Zelgan is pretty much sustained for me by corseque's fanart of it, which funnily enough is how I found her blog before Reylo. I recommend browsing her Zelgan tag, seriously her art is so lovely and funny and beautiful. But I do have two fics I've plotted out in my head for it. The thing with WW!Ganondorf is that he's very much like a Solas figure, but it's not the sort of thing we'll ever see in Zelda again.

In conclusion:

You can see there's a pattern of melodrama, high-stakes romance that is often very metaphorical but about essential, transcendental connection. The thing I am searching for is the essence of love and who a character really is beyond their own station. I want to see transformation and I want to see them being affected by the other even when they're not around.

Some people are more casual about shipping or search for different things but these are what I search for. My Best Mate doesn't understand the high-stakes romance because to her it's too stuffy and she much prefers friends-to-lovers with low stakes. (I totally understand her perspective and we are both interested in romance for different reasons, and I like a different perspective even when we share similar fundamental values).

But despite our differences, it's kind of ironic because that's almost exactly what I'm looking for? I want to see both characters surprised by what they've discovered about each other. That they both thought they knew where they were going, what they were doing, who they are and what they want, and then they're tripped up by this - essential, simple thing.

That this other person has unsettled them, or changed them, and above all, is someone they've begun to fall in love with, even when they are enemies or against each other. Both for the hero and for the enemy. The idea that it's this extremely simple yet shocking thing is incredible to me.

I also love the idea of compassion and love as active decisions in a story, things that are really, really hard, and almost borderline a superpower, but things they commit to instead. My favourite thing about Knightfall is that Cinder rejects killing Jaune and hurts Weiss instead, and then Jaune's selfless Semblance awakens. The whole idea of that sequence is that compassion (and verbal confrontation with Cinder) is stronger than any violence. I want that to unsettle Cinder one day.

I really love the idea that everybody thinks Jaune is meant to kill Cinder but she's actually his soulmate. His soulmate is the Fall Maiden (like his supposed love interest was supposed to be). I love the idea that it's this foregone conclusion on an audience level. I love that right now, he still thinks he's meant to fight her and that's it. I love that Cinder thinks he's just getting in the way of her destiny. But her destiny is the Fall Maiden power, and he's been connected to helping a Fall Maiden since Volume 3.

The romance is ironic, but it's a positive subversion. I love that it's so playful. It's the thing people won't see coming. It'll unsettle Jaune and Cinder and it will unsettle everyone, but it's the only answer that makes sense. It's perfect.

That's what I'm always searching for. It's playful. It's a product of all of these narrative devices and set-ups and failures. The very fabric of a story of a hero and villain against one another is so so so soooo interesting to me, and enemies-to-lovers is acutely aware of it.

Add in a redemption arc and I'm there. It's really cool to me how redemption arcs and enemies-to-lovers are about the essentials of storytelling. Narrative irony, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, change and transformation, just realised in an extreme and conscious way.

Thank you for your ask and hope that was a sufficient answer. There may be some I missed, but these are the big ones.

It's really interesting to trace what I enjoy about Knightfall and what's like it in other ships! I recommend it!

#seraphina's asks #user: a2jay #once again on romance

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