#but YES love seeing all the different dynamics that came about during the timeskip | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

veliseraptor · 4 years ago

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Separate thought in a separate separate ask! In the danmei world, do you have any thoughts to share about your favorite rarepairs/crackships, and what makes them compelling to you?

oh man! this sounds like fun. see the thing here is mostly that I feel like I have a lot of pairings in the danmei world that are more “wouldn’t it be fun if” rather than actively shipping them, where - okay, I think of my levels of “shipping” something in sort of tiers.

I’ve idly thought about it and found it interesting in passing

if I was recced a fic or a friend wrote one I’d read it, but I wouldn’t go tag crawling on AO3 for it

thought of it and went tag crawling on AO3 because I was curious if anyone else had (subset of “got frustrated when discovered other people had but they weren’t doing it the way I wanted”)

thought of it, went tag crawling on AO3, and came out of it shipping it more

would read fic for it

checks the tag on AO3 every day in case someone has written something new

would write fic for it.

so then it’s like. which level are we talking about, here? but I guess I just go to “things where I have feelings about them” and run with that, eh?

wei wuxian/xue yang. look, we all know at this point how I feel about this one, right? that it would just be - okay, there’s that post, right, that says the good version of this is where they have really fun sex where sometimes one of them comes up with a really cool new necromancy idea in the middle and the bad version is where wei wuxian finds out xue yang has been creating bodies for their experiments himself. :D I’m bastardizing, but you get the point. look!!! they’re foils for each other and everyone knows that narrative foils make for fun pairings. dark mirror parallels make for even more fun pairings. both??? yes, thanks

xue yang/jiang yanli & xue yang/qin su. these are two different ships with different textures but they fit in sort of the same boat for me, part of the appeal of which is “xue yang being around people who are genuinely nice to him is a really fun dynamic” and also “two women who really deserve to have a semi-feral murderer looking out for them, and the opportunity to go a little apeshit.”

nie huaisang/jin guangyao/lan xichen. look, I like 3zun as much as the next person (though I mostly live in xiyao, obviously), but I think if I had to pick a nie to put in the a-yao/xichen dynamic it would be nie huaisang because it makes everything terrible, and I just love terrible dynamics involving emotional manipulation, and relationships that are functioning on different levels depending on the pov of the character you’re looking at. every character in this triad is having a slightly different experience of the relationship. I’m into that.

jin guangyao/xiao xingchen/xue yang. look I thought of it once and I have no idea how or if it would work but I’m into the concept and it does smash together two (three hahaha) things that I like. so you know. there’s that.

jin guangyao/jiang cheng. didn’t see this coming and I’m still not sure I ship it so much in the classical sense as that I want to see the weird wine aunt coparenting energy that they have together, but I’m exploring my options and I like what I see in a general sense.

hua cheng/mu qing. okay, look. again, I’m talking narrative foils (mu qing and xie lian but also I think mu qing and hua cheng). I’m talking proxyfucking. I’m talking hatesex. I’m talking really ill-advised decisions made out of grief (unacknowledged) and anger (acknowledged). I’m talking very lonely very angry ghost kings (kinks) during an 800 year time skip. do you hear me here

jiang cheng/wen ning. unexpected?? and I’m still sort of circling around it like a vulture waiting for the big predators to leave so I can stick my head in its carcass (that metaphor got away from me). but here I am. two traumatized younger brothers whose trauma is very tied together in a lot of ways, with some things in common but a lot of things not? yes, I would like to see where this goes, thank you

hua cheng/he xuan. I feel like I’m cheating because honestly this is another one where I’m not so much like I want a ship as I want them to be weird friends, but I really want them to be weird friends, all their existing interactions in the novel are so hilarious and I just. want more of that.

I was like “drunken hookup during 800 year time skip?” but I feel like even if hua cheng got drunk he might just end up crying and then falling asleep on he xuan, and also can ghost kings (kinks) get drunk anyway. so, you know.

lan wangji/jiang cheng. this feels a little more...expected than some of the other ones here but there’s not nearly enough fic about mutual grieving proxyfucking hatesex and I want there to be more of it, so. give me that messy timeskip content don’t I deserve it. I just like people hurting each other while also hurting themselves, is all

I feel like I’m forgetting some here. possibly part of my problem is I don’t know what counts as a rarepair! like technically I think songxue is but it feels more mainstream I guess than a lot of the other ones on this list. songxuexiao is also like. smaller in the scheme of things? but has a solid community built around it.

this is also leaving off all the very thoroughly gen relationships I want explored, of which there are so many and this post would get truly out of hand if I tried to get into that.

#spockandawe #conversating #dysfunctional gods and ghost kinks #the sad queer cultivators show

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scarlettlawyer · 5 years ago

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Next attempt: Shelly de Killer and Pearl Fey!

Shelly de Killer:

- I hate them / I don’t like them / I’m neutral / I’m ok with them / I like them / I love them / I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

- favorite thing about them: THE PERFECT COMBINATION OF ELEGANCE AND MURDER. HE’S JUST SO GREAT!!! I love the aura of absolute calm and aesthetic interlaced with imminent threat. Well, not absolute calm. He can certainly lose his patience. But he's not really one to raise his voice. It’s a quiet and terrifying anger if invoked. The veneer of calm is part of the gentleman aesthetic; the hint of anger is the imminent threat. Outside of his being angry, however, it’s still the same: even if he’s not angry at you, his mere job makes him intimidating. That’s inescapable. But his polite demeanour is still there. The combination of those things is fantastic. He will kill you if he must but damn if he isn’t going to do it in style.

- least favorite thing about them: I actually did have a reply to this come to mind, possibly connected to AAI2, and yet it slipped away shortly thereafter and now I cannot recall it, and after losing the actual reply I had I’ve honestly sat here struggling to come up with something. Like there were moments when I enjoyed his character a bit less, but... Hard to just list off a least favourite thing from that.

- ship(s): ...Oldbag. You have done this; you have planted this idea in the mind of my friend and I. Like okay I don’t actually ship it in canon OR in your fic, but the thought of it is so out there, and therefore amusing. And then my friend came up with this amazing JFA au running with the idea so, I do “ship” it specifically in the context of her au ahahaha. I love my friend’s idea of... him liking her and her not really being aware of it? Because it’s a reversal of what’s usually the case in canon. Let a guy be interested in her for once and have her be unaware of it. XD

Also just gonna tack this fic-related message(s) on randomly too but FOR CONTEXT TO BE FAIR THIS WAS before I read the ending which actually does address the death of Wendy’s husband and before the actual dynamic between Oldbag, Shelly and Benny had been elaborated on by the story:

(I ACTUALLY MEANT IN THE SENSE OF HAVING BEEN HIRED BY SOMEONE TO KILL MR OLDBAG BUT THEN MY FRIEND WAS LIKE “HOW DO I MAKE THIS ABOUT THE SHIP” LOL). Okay but maybe Mr Oldbag could have been an important figure in an au that someone would have reason to assassinate 🤔 :P

- BROTP(s): I guess Sirhan Dogen is the main candidate for this, although I haven’t thought about their interactions too much!

- NOTP(s): I don’t think I’ve really seen any Shelly shipping haha...

- Game/case where I like them more: Gonna go with standard JFA case for this one, but AAI2 case 1 is also just really awesome. Particularly the whole hostage thing to help Edgeworth’s investigation out.

- Random headcanon: Not headcanons about the character himself but rather in relation to him; I like to imagine how scandalised Phoenix would be if he heard that yes, Shelly de Killer, that guy Edgeworth and law enforcement at large are so intent on apprehending? The guy who kidnapped Maya? Edgeworth totally spoke kinda casually with the guy a bunch of times, and was even assisted by Shelly (you could even stretch this to perhaps argue that he COOPERATED with Shelly). Even saw Shelly face to face during AAI2 and had a chat with him. Well, yes, context, but... :P Especially without context, Phoenix would not be pleased. Not that Edgeworth would readily offer up this information to him. I think Edgeworth is in a slightly awkward position with regards to Shelly post-AAI2, at least slightly more than before, given how much help Shelly was and now having actually interacted with him in person.

Another thing I was thinking of recently is that... I think that there could be a very secretive and select group of individuals working for law enforcement SPECIFICALLY dedicated to trying to arrest Shelly and gathering as much info as possible. A highly skilled and dedicated team of say 5-10 people, and all of the information they deal with, and about them, is absolutely top secret. The group itself is secret, even, because this is dangerous work. They’re all about trying to track him down, analysing all the data they’ve gathered, you name it. Not that they have much success. But they would also over time probably veer more towards less conventional methods. Delving deeper into the criminal underworld for information, going undercover... Honestly? The closest they might come to actually getting a hold of the guy in person... is to go undercover as a client. Finding out how to hire him. It’s an awfully dangerous game they would be playing and their covers would have to be airtight.

- Unpopular opinion: I wasn’t sure how I felt about him sparing Simon. I really gotta replay AAI2, get my thoughts in order. This ties in with the “least favourite” question but I wasn’t too sure about the whole thing where Simon was considered to have broken the bond of trust for not saying it was a double and yeah I just gotta, replay the game haha. But... if a client normally recounts the ENTIRETY of the circumstances to him, expected not to leave anything out, as opposed to a simple “I want this person dead”, then I suppose that makes sense....Actually, wrong question for this but I’ll add it as a headcanon anyway: when Shelly meets with a client, part of establishing that bond of trust is kind of like the client “confiding” everything thoroughly to him, like telling a story of everything connected to, and culminating in the assassination request. He wants to know not only the who, but the why. What’s the client’s connection to and history with the target? Was there a time when they got along, were they always enemies? Is it just a political or corporate matter? It’s not about justification - Shelly doesn’t care how “justified” a client is and he certainly doesn’t judge. He just listens. None of the added information is necessary to complete the job, but divulging so much information is a demonstration of trust and helps make it clear this person is real with motivations and not an undercover person trying to arrest him or something like that. It’s also kind of an added bonus to get to hear some of the tales of intrigue that result from such meetings with clients. In the context of something like this, omitting the fact that the “president” was a double is a very serious offense.

I was gonna go on another tangent but this is already long enough lol.

----

Pearl Fey

- I hate them / I don’t like them / I’m neutral / I’m ok with them / I like them / I love them / I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

(I do love her! Just not with as much intensity as some of the other characters this series has).

- favorite thing about them: She is adorable incarnate, she is strong, and very cute

- least favorite thing about them: The fact that she was not allowed to grow as a character at all post-timeskip. I have so many complaints about older!Pearl. They took a ~17 year old character and forced her into the exact same role and characterisation as a ~nine year old! She is restricted and kept the same, and it feels deeply unnatural and kind of uncomfortable to me. The whole thing around her height too, like... why did they go out of their way to make her so short and tiny? To reinforce that we are still supposed to see her as a 9 year old? I love trilogy Pearl, I love her so much, but I find older Pearl so boring and so uninspired on top of that undercurrent of discomfort. They did nothing new with her, but in a uniquely and unnaturally limiting way in the sense that she is trapped as her trilogy self. After the timeskip the games appear to have a weird preoccupation with infantilising her because I guess they think connecting back to the trilogy (instead of doing something new) is the only way to keep us caring about her??

And like... Yes, Pearl embodies and encapsulates the cuteness and innocence of children. That’s a big part of her character and I love her for it, and I would therefore be reluctant to let that go. There’s nothing wrong with preserving stuff like that when she’s older. All I’m asking is for the games to actually put at least one new spin on her; SOMETHING that can distinguish her from her younger self so I’m not left feeling like she did not change at all in nearly ten years. A slightly different design, one (1) distinct new and different thing that sets her apart from (and potentially at odds with) her younger self, and I’d probably be happy. I don’t like what they did with her hair either. It sucks. Should’ve gone with the gorgeous inverted pretzel style.

Anyway I want to be given a reason to care about and be invested in older Pearl, an older Pearl trait that I can love older Pearl for...

- ship(s): Trupearl can be cute, but I don’t think about shipping much at all seeing as I vastly prefer her younger self, haha.

- BROTP(s): General “Pearl getting along with the gang” type dynamics haha.

- NOTP(s): Well, I do not like any implication that she has a crush on Marlon or vice versa. I really don’t like that.

- Game/case where I like them more: I’m not sure ahah. Good thing I’m trying to work through the games in Chinese on youtube so maybe I can brush up on my AA knowledge a bit.

- Random headcanon: Ok made this one up just now: When she’s slightly older she adopts the term “Narumayo” for her shipping of Phoenix and Maya. At least, the Japanese version of her where the characters have their Japanese names... lol. I guess her English-speaking self tried but failed to come up with a good name as the counterpart headcanon. Mayanix?

Actually, I guess another headcanon would be her being a hardcore shipper for any media she’s invested in. She moves away from shipping real people and onto characters, channelling all that energy elsewhere.

Or honestly, she could stick with real people and either become an Ace Matchmaker or overall consistently terrible matchmaker. Either’s good. If you combine the two, she could try to matchmake what seems to be an absolutely horrendous pair/combination of people, only for it to actually work.

- Unpopular opinion: Well, I think I already got quite opinionated above, and nothing really comes to mind to reply to this with. I might have been too harsh on older Pearl, but everything I wrote is what I genuinely felt and the impression that I was left with. That impression may be false, I’m not sure, but yeah.

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