the first thing that always pops into my head when someone mentions ships, are soulmates. whether romantic or platonic. i absolutely adore exploring everything about them. for platonic, i've always been a sucker for the childhood friends who somehow always get stuck together. or the type of friends that started out in some sort of romantic relationship, and ended up just being better friends.

as for romantic soulmates, well, i love the corny stuff. literally falling over each other, or crashing into the other. weird circumstances that bring them together. i'm also a sucker for soulmate aus where the the only to find your other half, is to find that person with a certain word etched into their skin, or seeing color once you laid eyes upon the other half.

though, if i'm going to be honest, any sort of... hate in a relationship turns me away. i can get behind some mild dislike for one another, but full out hateships are something that turn me completely away from them.

Jul 4, 2018 20:08:05 GMT murk said:

i've recently come across a ship where two characters were together but due to one of them being dodgy on a moral-level, they've since split up on really bad terms. chemistry keeps pulling them together but they're a bit of a mess to put it mildly, although with recent developments i've found that the dodgy character wants to try to be better for the sake of them both?? it's a messy one for sure but idk it's a top 3 favorite and i'm going to have a lot of fun officially exploring it.

is this a call out post thonk

coughs

anyways, i really like cliched, if not subverted in some way, tropes. friends to lovers, especially childhood friends to lovers, ESPECIALLY childhood friends to lovers in a soulmate setting that's like "what if u never realize this person is ur soulmate bc neither of u remember whatever u first said to the other, u've known each other that long!".

i like ships with realistic development. maybe they were together before you first threaded, but don't make them be together. friends with benefits with feelings or fake dating are some of my favorite tropes. i don't necessarily like giving my characters a fully fleshed out ship right when making them because then what's the point? there's no conflict, no place to grow. even my ships that are already established before the character being made has room to grow and that's what i want the most in any of my character's romantic relationships.

as for platonic, i'm honestly a sucker for twins being each other's best friends, no matter how different they are. or just siblings being really close in general. or friends becoming a new family. it's just really heartwarming and tends to not get boring for me at all.

this ended up a lot longer than i expected it to be but i hope i properly conveyed what i like in my characters relationships.

tldr; i prefer romantic and platonic ships to always have room to develop further, especially at the beginning of the character being on a site! i don't mind having predestined things for either, though i'd prefer established romantic ships with people i know well and can easily talk to about it.

Jul 11, 2018 22:45:57 GMT magick said:

...figuring out how to make a relationship work with a partner whose profession you don't approve of is better.

I did this once, where the lady, like, raised orphans, and the dude murdered people for a living, and can guarantee, it was a messed up blast.

My favorite romance is - hypothetically - the kind that actually goes somewhere. Wouldn't know, never had it happen to me, sdkjlfhdskjfhdksjhfd.

I dunno, though, I've had a lot of fun plotting different types of romance ships in the past. I got to do the traditional tsun paired with a dude who was Determined, and that was actually really adorable and fun, even if it was trope-y as heck. And you know? If you're having fun, that's what matters, who cares if it's trope-y as heck. I've plotted fake-dating-to-real-dating (which was amplified by the fact that the dude was going to leave her because he had lingering feelings... for her and didn't realize the her of now and the her of the past were the same person, oops). Married couples who gush about how much they love each other/their kids. Heck, I had a dude with short-term memory loss, so it was gonna be a 50 First Dates Kinda deal, only Adam Sandler is also a God and had, at one point in time, tried to destroy the whole planet. You know. Just like in real life.

As was mentioned already in about 85% seriousness, though, I don't usually get to do a lot of... actual romance. Just a lot of plotting. As a result of this - or maybe in spite of it - my favorite ships usually aren't romantic at all! Take, for instance, my boy Nikki, who can never ship with anyone because he's too busy making heart eyes at a gravestone and gets triggered into a manic state if you so much as try to hold his ha- *cough* I mean!

I like father-child (daughter or son) relationships, particularly when it's not their actual dad so much as a dad figure, and particularly when it's an unconventional dad figure. This is probably to compensate for my, as you may call them, "Daddy Issues". Honestly, I adore platonic ships a lot, but this one's probably my favorite. The idea that you can love someone so much (non-romantically) that you could compare it to the bond of parent and child is just... MMPH. Mom figures work, too, I guess, but lack the right amount... how should I put it... chest hair. Okay,killmenow. On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, I like really manipulative dynamics, where one character is clearly taking advantage of another in some way, shape, and or form, and the person being manipulated is either too deluded to see it, does their best to convince themselves that's not the case even when it very clearly is, or frankly doesn't care because they're Stockholm'd so badly they think it doesn't matter. This can be romantic, friendship, a twisted take on the aforementioned parent-child situation... Whatever it is, it's terrible, and I love it.

More than anything, though. Anything at all. Conflict of ideals. Especially when both sides are at least partly justified in their rationality. I want two characters who aren't necessarily "wrong" - maybe they're doing objectively bad things, but because they see it as the only ends to an objectively good thing - to just go at it, either in a verbal match or through trading actual blows. I want fights where, even if you win, you don't feel good about it because the person you took out really meant well, just didn't mean the same way you did. I want people who otherwise love each other to be ripped apart my moral standings and decisions that pull them painfully further and further apart. Give! Me! Suffering!