It's giving chocolate to your significant other and/or someone you'd like to be your significant other day and as is our wont, it's mostly nonexistent here but internationalism has inserted it into our system anyway so sometimes we take punts about it and use it as an excuse to do something.
I'm using this as an excuse to say hey, I actually like writing and reading romance. Give me that sweet sweet a pair of people holding hands. Or three or four of them. I like polyam.
But also like, I think I only click with some specific kinds of romance. I like to say that my favourite ships are those that are m/f but queer. Am I queer? I dunno, which I think is just another answer for yes, for this particular question.
Writing romance, well shipfic for existing characters, really, is kind of a way for me to figure out my sexuality and how I might do as a partner, or how I might get around to finding the right partner (which I never had, less for the lack of trying, and more that I never really find anyone I'd put any amount of effort into to do this, you know. Never had a crush except for that one guy in high school and he was not worth the effort at the time, not when I was still figuring out how to be a normal human being who can talk to other human being). Reading too, but writing romance is the way I try to untangle all this, because as I said, I'm queer? (question mark?) And typical romance (or even typical queer romance) that are out there don't usually fit the bill.
Anyway, I'm woolgathering, but my point is I just want to look through the shipfics I've written and drop them here and then see if anything can come out of it. Maybe a little self-promotion? I think I write good.
Aight lemme go to AO3 and see what I've posted. Ooh this was the first one?
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20949227
And hey, here's another one with that pairing.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25274680
This was Felix/Bernadetta from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Not a very popular ship; Felix being mostly shipped with Annette (if straight) or Sylvain and/or Dimitri (if gay). What's kind of interesting is that a lot of people who ship Felix/Bernadetta tend to also headcanon both of them as trans. They just kinda have that vibe, I guess? They're both emotionally constipated, in different ways, but can find solace in each other. Porcupine and cat. Saw someone drew them as that and I love that image.
Next there's Claude/Ingrid from the same series. The fic I wrote for them is unfinished and kinda suck? Even though it does have some neat ideas? BuI I won't link it. Ingrid is the tomboy who isn't allowed to be a tomboy because of her birth circumstances. Claude's position allow her to circumvent that. Also I imagine she thinks he's pretty cool, I think they have good power couple dynamics (they definitely were a power couple in my game), and bickering in an old married couple kind of way. Also Claude can take her away from the messy childhood friend circle called the Faerghus Four, which also features Felix above and Sylvain a little further below (note that my favourite pairings with all of them feature them pointedly not dating each other. Get a life beyond your messy childhood friend circle, I am begging).
I wrote a short, cute piece about Caspar/Hilda:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/22046449
They're my sister's OTP, so I wrote it for her. Cute pair. If a himbo is big, dumb, and kind, Caspar got at least the dumb and kind part checked out, so he's a decent man. Hilda is a cute girl who knows it and can be a bit manipulative in a way, but she always comes out as so sincere with Caspar especially since he's nothing but sincere, and I just think that's cute.
Lemme square off the Fire Emblem: Three Houses fics with what ended up being the ship that takes up the most space in my brain (turning them around and around like a rotisserie chicken): Sylvain/Byleth.
Oh hell, specifically, Michel/Byleth. I wrote an AU where Sylvain ran away from being a margrave's son to become a mercenary when he was 14, years before the start of the game. It changes him it, it makes him less broken, though some wounds remain the same:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/30332514
You'd notice that fic isn't a shipfic at all. I didn't mean for it to be. Byleth was introduced in the sequel, where she apparently had met mercenary Sylvain (who'd changed his name to Michel) a year before. Her relationship to him as a fellow mercenary is pointedly different from how it would be if they were instructor and student.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/36260329
I haven't reread that in ages, but I can say I'm quite proud of it, if only because it's pretty much novel-length, which would make it the longest story I've written and finished. God yeah, I'm actually very proud of that.
Anyway, as I was saying, I didn't mean for them to be a pair. The story just kinda developed that way. I don't know. I did self-project to Byleth a lot when I was playing (though this is a different Byleth from the version that I play) and I, uhh, did marry Sylvain in my playthroughs, so that probably factored in while I was writing all the flashback scenes and not meaning it to be a ship, but of course it ends up being one.
This version of Byleth is stoic, efficient, emotionless. Until she met Sylvain-as-Michel, who was nice and friendly and didn't treat her like a cryptid or a wargod, even though he was treating figuring out how to get through her shell as a game. Oh, I do adore this ship! Ah, to be calculating in your flirting, but to mean it in the best possible way. That's me. I am that pragmatic. Talking can be like dancing, can be like fencing, can be beautiful even when it's all like pieces on a board.
Anyway, I do like Sylvain/Byleth with Byleth being the more powerful one, war cryptid will pull out her sword, with Sylvain the diplomatic one who wields his smile like a weapon instead and know how to handle politics. A power couple. I miss them already.
Which, I think, is why my favored OTP in Genshin Impact ends up having similar dynamic without me realising it at the time. Tartaglia/Kujou Sara.
https://archiveofourown.org/series/2644159
My interpretation of 公子 Tartaglia Childe Ajax tend to run direct counter to most fan interpretation of him. I think he's very precisely asexual. Man does not fuck, does not even think of it. And he's mostly aromantic too. He never flirts intentionally even though he is naturally charming. It's just not in his brain. All he thinks about is fighting, getting stronger, and eventually crushing the thrones of gods beneath his heel. But he's also a family man with many siblings and he would do anything for them, no matter how stupid or debased or violent. His obedience to the queen-god of his realm is only reliant on these two points.
Sara has almost the same single-minded devotion to being a warrior herself, but for a different reason. She was saved and adopted by a father who keep reminding her of that fact. She worships her shogun-god-leader for no reason than devotion itself.
Anyway, they were from different, warring nations. Put them in a position where they can get closer and learn about each other, and then pit them against each other at the last minute and see who will defect for whom, or if they will destroy each other. I love me my drama.
Tartaglia is the war cryptid in this dynamic, Sara is the one understands intrigue and self-control. She's also, pointedly, the only one in this couple with sexual attraction, a point which I examined in the third story in the series. Ajax would hold her hand and keep her close because he knows it'll make her happy---and god does it make him happy to see her happy, she's family---but not because he has any sort of feeling at all toward holding someone's hand. (Though it doesn't hurt that Sara's Electro power let her give him a taste of further power, electricity crackling through his veins, because that's what he values second-most: power).
My second-favorite ship in Genshin (and I'm only saying second-favorite because I sure did wrote a fic that made me/my reader cry reading it, so that's a good benchmark), is Zhongli/Ningguang, but specifically in the relationship where Ningguang is also dating Beidou and some centuries ago Zhongli had a relationship with both Guizhong and Azhdaha, so what I mean is poly wins.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/38553816
I am actually very fond of polyamorous relationship, for personal reason I'm not gonna divulge here, so it's a bit of a surprise to know that this is probably the first one with that kind of relationship I've written? The focus is still Zhongli/Ningguang, and I did maybe lay it a bit too thick that they all consent to this being polyam, but yeah, I'm glad I got to write this down. It feels important. I love they.
(Is it queer to say I don't get jealous? Not at the same level that some people, I think, do. If my partner confess to being infatuated with someone else, I think that's lovely. I think falling in love, or just having a crush, is a blessing. If my partner wants to have another partner, all I ask is that I get to know this other partner because now there's three of us and not two and two, so this new guy better fit in with me too)
My latest shipfic *wheeze* uhh umm. I've liked a great deal of fictional men, I've been able to extrapolate my tastes between all of them, but my god, I don't think I've ever fallen in love as much as I had with this man. And he's a fish.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/43527082
This is a self-insert fic. My Arknights doctorsona is just me, well, with some differences considering our different life experience. Lee is just my husband, straight up, thank you for asking, I love him so much. I wish he's real.
But as a writer who wants to write about him I also have to get into his head the way I probably won't be able to do with a real life partner, so some character interpretation abounds. He has crush on an old friend, a man, he's been nursing for decades. He loves him more than me, and he more-or-less settled for me because he can tell I love him and his crush do not. I don't mind being loved that way. Love can come in all forms.
I have a sequel I'm turning around in my brain (a rotisserie chicken) exploring a bit more of that, how they're both slightly ace too, and how this might be a poly ship too after all because I just learned Lee is still being possessed by a fragment of a god and oh that's fun, that's so fun.
My takeaway from all this is that wow, relationship is complicated. Is relationship always so complicated? I hope I can find someone anyway. I'd really rather not live the rest of my life alone.
