Shipping Wall

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I like all sorts of things, and I'm almost always a multi-shipper. Mostly I just think shipping is a fun lens to use to explore things rather than true investment, but most of the stuff I list on this page leans to the "true investment" end of things. I'm not generally a true "fixed" shipper, but I often have preferences, and those are reflected in the way I've written out the ship names below.

There will be untagged spoilers on this page. Please keep this in mind and tread carefully if you see any of the canons you're avoiding spoilers for featured here.

Sometimes not even I know what I mean when I say I "ship" something.

General Tastes

Inspired by a couple other pages I've seen (Most recently Scumsuck's). Also inspired by the fact that most of the other text on this page is incoherent wailing that tells you very little about me unless you know the original canons for my ships. ...Most importantly I like reading these from other people, so I hope you do too.

Gender Composition

I like the same things pretty much regardless of the genders of the characters involved, but I tend to be pickier with het. I'm also a bit pickier with m/m than f/f and tend to seek out original media with f/f above all other options lol. However, when it comes to media that isn't romance-focused, I end up mainly shipping m/m because it's more common to see the sorts of dynamics I like between two men than two women... Maybe I just need to make OCs :(. (I do also ship a decent amount of f/f but a lot of it is just absent-minded "oh those two are cute..." with only light investment.)

Tropes/Dynamics I Like

• Any sort of idea of 'us vs the world', but especially: A is considered an enemy of humanity/the world, but B doesn't really think that's important because they love and trust A.
• Formalized power dynamics (lord/retainer, master/servant, etc.)
• Codependency
• Incest
• Life debts
• Titles being misused as a fond nickname or an affectionate insult

Tropes/Dynamics I Dislike

• Anything where one or both characters just seems miserable
• Replacement goldfish
• (For m/f:) Emphasis on gender and gender roles, especially conventional ones
• Large height gaps. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop me from shipping pairs with 20cm+ height gaps and pouting that one of them is too tall.

That being said, I don't actually have any hard nos. These are mostly just things I usually don't go for.

Topping Order

When it comes to r-18 stuff, I don't really tend to have strong opinions. However, outside of r-18 topics, I've spent a lot of time around people and communities with strong opinions, and I find being able to quickly notate your opinion on how you like a dynamic to be is very useful, even if using the same terms as you'd use for r-18 activities has unfortunate connotations and can cause confusion. For SFW purposes, I primarily interpret dynamic order as which character takes the most initiative, but it's generally vibes-based and if there's an established community I'll try to align to how other fans talk (i.e. if I think of myself as an A/B shipper, but B/A shippers are the ones whose interpretation match mine, I'll switch to saying I'm a B/A shipper).

Usually my preferences are very weak, and even when I have strong preferences I'm nearly always still okay with 'reversed' or otherwise different dynamics. But in general a lot of the way I am with shipping is fairly fickle and dependent on the original canon. I have ships I have a completely fixed topping preference for, ships where I act like the idea of them switching IS a fixed preference, and ships where I truly can't bring myself to care. I usually don't have a particular character I always want to see bottom/top... but also sometimes I do.

Power Dynamics

It's not exactly a hard rule, but I like my power dynamics to be in some way subverted most of the time. I like things like, say, two people trying to treat each other as equals even with a huge status gap looming over them, a powerful being deciding they want to be a random person's servant, extreme age gap where the younger half can and will enforce their boundaries with physical force... things like that. I also like the sort of inverse where one or both of the characters are invested in playing up a power gap that doesn't or only technically exists.

Despite that not being a hard rule, I do dislike when one half of the ship leverages their power to abuse or otherwise take advantage of the other half though... I like a lot of unhealthy/immoral/etc. dynamics, but it just bums me out too much lol. (In general I prefer when everyone involved is on some level happy even if it's objectively a bad situation though... It's rare that I like anything where that isn't the case.)

OTPs

All of these are things I have proper investment in. I'm generally not a monoshipper even here, but even in contexts where I'm not shipping them romantically I'll chase after the platonic versions of these. Since the most canon anything on this page gets is "intentional subtext", you can assume every time I use the word "love" I mean it in a more generalized, platonic sense.

Please also note that not only are these shipping delusions, but that my JP is very poor; anything I reference from untranslated materials should be taken with an extra large grain of salt. Please take text in quotation marks to be me holding up a poorly made puppet of one half of the ship and saying it in a funny voice unless you know for a fact it's a real quote.

Shrines

Tales of Destiny - Pierre de Chaltier/Leon Magnus

I think the first and most obvious point of appeal for these guys is how Chal is one of the few people Leon lets himself get close to. I tend to fall down on the side of Leon being primarily prickly and unwilling to bond with others not because he's incapable of trust (though he does seem to struggle with that with anyone who could be connected to Hugo; a lot of the Oberon executives seem to be genuinely open to being kind to him and he rejects it) but because Hugo has hurt people he cared about in the past (Namely, Finley). However, Chal is a sword. Not only would it be very, very hard to hurt him, breaking Chal or separating him and Leon renders Leon worthless as a tool. Thus, Chal is the absolute safest person to get close to.

(Er, it's here that I admit I mix versions of canon fairly freely in fannish contexts when it comes to Destiny. That, and it's been a while since I saw anything other than, not just DC, but solely Stahn's side of DC, ahah.)

Chaltier is incredibly anxious and insecure. As far as we can tell, he always has been. I think it's safe to say that, perhaps a direct result, he didn't exactly form any close bonds as a human. But with Leon, he sort of... between feeling like he has a duty to support Leon and being proud of how Leon has grown and survived, Chal is much happier & even comes off as having some sense of confidence..

What I suppose I'm saying is that they're co-dependent in a way that is simultaneously wildly unhealthy and yet probably better than any alternatives available to them. I love them clinging to each other in the horrible circumstances of Leon's life...

For all of DC's flaws, there's a couple scenes with these two on Leon's side I actually really like. Namely though, I like their conversation in Calvalcase where Chal says he'll stick by Leon to the very end & take part of the blame for his mistakes. And I especially like bit at the end, where they manage to talk each other out of asking anyone else for help, :).

Morbidly I also like that I get to double dip on "just one of them is dead" LMAO. There's something delightfully depressing about Chal being buried with Leon forever... And the conversation they have in D2 at the eye of Atamoni... and Judas talking to him afterwards even though he's no longer there...

They were my OTP for like 10+ years & I still love them <3.

Tales of Berseria - Velvet Crowe/Laphicet

TBA

Other Brain rot

This list is non-exhaustive. I am a shipping fiend. These are the ones I felt like writing about.