Daily Entertainment

[ceitfianna]

Since I stayed up all night rereading War for the Oaks, I'm going to snag today's DE. This one is inspired by a conversation in chat last night and its one I always find interesting.

How are your characters in relationships? Do they go for casual or long term or something in-between? I realized for mine that they fall into some pretty easy groupings.

Will, Sameth, William and Jane aren't made for casual due to their personalities and their eras. When you're with them, there's a promise and loyalty and it can be rather intense. And they have this habit of being rather impulsive and trusting their instincts, Jane does not believe in love at first sight but perhaps in love that lasts.

Demeter, Moist and the Pirate King are all about fun and easy with Demeter doing things her own way and if she cares for you, then you're one of hers. Somehow she makes it so that doesn't work like a normal relationship but she's a Greek goddess, she bends rules.

Tumnus is Tumnus and I've yet to find a way to make him work in any sort of romantic relationship. I blame reading Narnia far too young.

Comments

[sdelmonte]

Knox always thought he was a short-term, no-strings-attached kind of guy till he fell for Rapunzel. His ideal used to be something casual if committed. He's still not sure just what changed. Though the lack of pressure to get married from Raps really does help him. (Will add that he's more glad than ever she never pushes that question since he wants time to adjust to Raps not being bound and being in the Fables army.)

Kirk is a serial monogamist. Yes, he's had more than a few one night stands and Friends with Benefits deals, but deep down what he wants is that one forever relationship. It's why I think the writers of the later Trek films wanted to have him end up with Carol Marcus (in scenes that ending up on the cutting room floor). I think it's why sometimes he's a bit tentative in his romances in the Bar, knowing subconsciously that he won't find any sort of permanence.

Gibbs has never had anything deep or lasting, and is fine with that. If there was romance in his youth, he's not telling.

Charlie is sure that the dead really don't get anything like love or marriage. And that he will never find anyone else like his one true love, Myra Fermin. Never mind that he's a cynic about everything. (Yes, these are among the reasons his relationship with Sallie has been so difficult.) In his youth, he was very casual about things and sometimes misses that way to live, even if it also was from a time when he was a jerk all the time.

Cy's still at the "what is this thing called love?" stage. He's a bit shy with women, he's still a virgin, he was raised to believe commitment and sex go together, and he's not entirely sure that a physical relationship would be a good idea. (FWIW, I have decided he is capable of being physical.) But he wants to fall in love. His flirtations in canon and in the Bar are leading there, but he's not really ready to be there yet.

[ceitfianna]

Do you think anything will change Charlie's cynicism or that's just how he is?

[dynastessa]

Oooh. I like this question. :)

Most of my pups fall into the realm of 'you're who I choose, and that's that. No, really.' Or, at the very least, they don't fall in and out of love very easily; and when they do, you know they're dead serious about it.

I think it's just the sort of pup I tend to pick up because I'm a huge sucker for stories like those. In fact, I'm fairly predictable in this case because ... now that I'm doing an inventory of my current pups, uh. They're almost all like that.

Examples: Ned, Rory, Albus, Hermione, Gale, Annabeth.

(I could talk about them individually FOREVER so I won't start. Otherwise, this will take several comments.)

For the ones who aren't currently involved in any sort of romantic attachments (Nico, Nathaniel) ... well, I've played Nico when he's older and it turns out he's really like my Usual Pups.

And Nathaniel ... well, Nathaniel keeps everything very close to him; it's very difficult for him to show any sort of positive emotion on a good day, so I gather that the person he decides to show any sort of amorous feeling for is going to have to be very special. And he's going to cling to it for dear life. (We get a glimpse of this in canon.)

I have played pups who belong on the opposite end of the spectrum! And it's fun! But I guess I generally like to linger on the ~romantic~ side.

[ceitfianna]

And this is why our pups tend to work so well together as I love playing that type too. I mean I have some exceptions but romance is fun.

I adore the awkward around a good romance too, you need some bumps to appreciate when its right.

Though yes, once its right, its there and they just need to deal as things are meant to be. I think I'm going to try and sleep some, but we need to thread one of our pairings somewhere as I miss them all.

[theresnodoor]

I have no idea what Rachel's romantic relationships would have been like without the war, and with it everything concerning social interaction has been pretty seriously affected. While she was interested in boys and had crushes, she seemed to have very little respect for anyone who showed obvious interest in her. That only intensified as the war went on.

In any case, she and Tobias really "met" at age 13 and after what they've gone through together - in battle and in their own private interactions - Rachel considers their relationship to be permanent. Or as permanent as it can be when she's dead. Not'dead. Thing.

And that's due mostly to a firm belief that there is no one else who could ever fit or understand her the way Tobias does. She could tell the whole bar all the things she's done in war but Tobias' is the only one who's ever seen what she's done or what those actions have done to her.

[ceitfianna]

That makes sense, they know each other so well that they just are together.

[aisforamy]

Bobby usually tries too hard, or not hard enough. He has a friends with benefits thing with Jordan, and would totally get more serious with her if she didn't have the whole EVIL issue.

Rapunzel has had two loves in all of the centuries she's been alive, so I think that explains that.

KK is definitely a casual girl. She's promiscuous, and doesn't believe she is deserving of a happy relationship because of the things she's done in her past.

[ceitfianna]

Aww, Bobby, does he ever have anything in canon?

[saphyria.livejournal.com]

I ship Bobby/Cinnamon Rolls. >_>

:D

Sunshine is always flattered.

[yakalskovich]

Oh, fun question. Let's see:

Teja is inhibited to the point of prudishness, and for him, relationships ought to be deep, emotionally committed, and ideally forever. He'd rather not have one than do something casual.

Urquhart is the absolute opposite -- sex is a casual pleasure like food or drink, music, books, or disputation. He has the only sex scene in his canon, at the end of which he coolly kills the woman, as that was what he came for anyway; he just got distracted briefly. His PTSD means that he can't even feel gentle emotions like love, affection, sympathy etc. All that said, there has been that thing with Saffron and Moist (lately, especially Moist) that is definitely a Thing of some sort, but really defies definition.-

Margolotta may or may not be in a vaguely hinted at relationship with Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. As he is in a totally different place in Milliways from where she is in canon, I am taking a vague 'does not apply' sort of stance with her.

The two goddesses, and the Tarot card, are definitely 'does not apply' in this respect. They are about other things; relationships don't enter on their sphere of influence.

Donovan Reece, the 'were-swan', is all casual (and slightly bi); but he doesn't get much airtime as it is. Bridgette, finally, is a kid.

[ceitfianna]

I find it interesting how Teja and Urquhart really are two ends of a spectrum in terms of relationships.

[alsoagreengrass]

Scorpius is the long-term sort. His personality could make any relationship difficult and confusing, and he is only sixteen so settling down with anyone is still a super scary thought, but, underneath all the worry and the talking and the complaining about pressure from the family, that's who he is and what he wants. Love, marriage, commitment.

He even thinks he could "live with a few lies" so long as there's love. But that's easy for him to say as he hasn't done it. He's already starting to realize that, for him, a relationship needs an open and honest dialogue too. I think if he tried a casual thing, he'd only get hurt.

[ceitfianna]

I love watching Scorpius figure out what he wants in a relationship.

[spooky-lemur.livejournal.com]

Both my Ben's don't do casual though they may think they can being big strong boys and all. They are totally devoted to their lady and would do anything for them.

Val and Thalia haven't really had any experience with romance.

Jessica tends towards casual or nothing. She wants serious but her pheromone powers cast a dark shadow on anything long term, i.e. can she really trust another's feelings to be true when her powers allow her to influence them?

Jenks has only one love and that is Matalina. He may flirt and revel in his sexiness but no one can ever take her place. She is his life and they are to be together forever and ever.

Artemis is a pretty big player and flirt with a romantic heart from what I remember of Wild Wild West.

Barbie wants true love and she's been told she's found that with Ken. Unfortunately she beginning to doubt this.

Rincewind...well wizards don't get much exposure to woman and he's always running from something anyway so he doesn't know enough to decide if he's for casual or long term.

[ceitfianna]

I love that about the Bens, they're just good guys.

[minkhollow]

Carl is a total romantic. Cosmo used to be, but now I don't think he'd be capable of it even if he tried.

Moist would be, if he thought anyone would take even the slightest interest in him (the sweating may be gone, but some of the associated personal issues remain). Conflict Diamond is all about the casual. (And there is a tiny corner of my brain that ships them, except I'm playing them both, so that won't be happening in-bar.)

Sam is far more of a romantic than he ever thought possible. Cata... really isn't, as sex is mostly a thing she uses to get her work done. That said, I ship Cata/Medic hard; they're surprisingly adorable, for two such unpleasant people.

Claudia... ahahahahaha. We'll get to some of her romantic hijinks in S2 playthroughs (and I so hope we have a Fargo for the occasion). She has absolutely no idea what to do with a relationship, but she'd really, really like something lasting, if the oddities of her job allow it to happen.

[ceitfianna]

Yours all seem to have figured out what works for them and reading Claudia trying to figure it out will be fun.

[a1enzo]

Enzo is all about the serious long-term relationship. Family is one of the most important things for him, and this is another aspect of that. He's faithful to the point of codependence.

(He's also still sort of in love with AndrAIa, which you would think would be a problem, but he ships her and Matrix even more. Between that and his love for Dani, he wouldn't go there even if it were an option.)

[ceitfianna]

And thanks to Milliways and being aware of Matrix, he doesn't really have to. Its nice to know that thanks to odd continuities, you can be with both the people you care for.

[genarti]

Ha, I was thinking the other day about this as a DE!

Trowa in general commits rarely, quietly, and hard. Not just romantically, but that too. He doesn't talk about it, and to some extent I'm not sure he thinks about it consciously. But all the same, if you're one of the tiny handful of people he's loyal to, the relationship details may change, but you've got that loyalty for life unless you really shatter that trust. Only one person's managed that so far.

River is... hmm. Casual is a decent word, I guess? Certainly at this point in her life, she's casual as regards romance; Duo is a good friend, and that'll stay true, and he happens to also be a good friend who's fun to kiss and that's awesome. I think in general, River is fairly casual with most of her friendships; she loves people, in individual and specific, but she's okay with her friends being more or less in her life as schedules go. There are some individuals she misses fiercely, but even with them she accepts that most people will pass out of her life sooner or later, or she'll pass out of theirs, and with luck their paths will cross again.

She'd go through fire and flood for a friend, but... uh... she'd also go through fire and flood for a bystander, so that speaks as much to River's general personality as it does to the strength of the individual relationship.

Lan is another who commits rarely and hard, but not so dramatically as Trowa. (Although if we're talking romance, it's fairly dramatic; he's had a lot of casual lovers, but for long-term romance it's pretty much just Nynaeve. Edeyn as I read it was a lot of commitment to honor and the ways of his people, but his emotions about her personally were very, very mixed.) He also has more in the way of casual friends. (They're mostly other Borderlanders or Warders, so they all have a similar sort of intense commitment to a similar framework of honor and morality, which helps.)

More maybe later! Lunch break now.

[ceitfianna]

Lan's had casual lovers? I had no idea since I wouldn't have figured that.

[mogget_cat]

Yrael says casual all the way! With a side of actually being less casual than he admits. :D

Zelgadiss is... not casual, but also kept by his issues with his situation from making any moves to make the relationship in question overtly more than friendship. Whew. >_>

Sunshine is somewhere in the middle. She's currently in two canon relationships, both of which are completely different in many ways, and one complicated relationship in Milliways. None of the relationships are casual. At first glance, they may appear to be, simply because there are multiple relationships, but each one is very serious. Just in different ways. It's just... complicated. *siiigh*

[ceitfianna]

I'm always so confused and impressed by Sunshine's relationship and her journey to balance them all.

[camwyn]

Varric Tethras I haven't gotten a good grip on yet. I'll let you know once I've played him a few more times.

Mordin's species isn't really known for its ability to form long-lasting romantic relationships. Most salarians, Mordin included, don't. A few do, but he's not one of them.

Belar doesn't really have relationships, just really entertaining one-night flings. Given that of his brothers, Issa adored a human woman and said she should be his bride but forgot to give her immortality and Torak developed a massive power-related obsession with Polgara the Sorceress, it's probably best nothing go any further than that.

Gordon and Ray had both always put science out in front of everything else, with at best a handful of not-very-long-lasting dating relationships. With the right (appropriately nerdy) woman in sight, however, they've both wound up lifelong long-term monogamous and quite happy about it.

Medic... well, he got married because it was a respectable thing to do. He had a few affairs on the side because he had urges. He wound up getting a divorce because his wife caught him at it. He still doesn't see the problem. Cata, however, he appreciates, and if you properly appreciate somebody you behave yourself for their sake. That's how it works, to him.

Adrian Shephard's of the one-girl-at-a-time school of thought, and prefers having a steady girlfriend to the alternative. On the other hand, if he's between girlfriends and doesn't think the prospects are looming large just at the moment, he's perfectly happy with stupid-ass flings. As long as he's honest with the girl about what he's expecting and she doesn't try to make it something it's not. And he does intend to properly settle down and marry one day.

Arcade Gannon doesn't do relationships well. He comments in his canon that "there've been a few good men along the way, but lovers make lousy confidantes". I get the feeling that he's been really badly romantically burned and given up on it.

Fawkes has literally spent most of his existence in a single room surrounded by people who ignored him and/or found abusing him to be hilarious. He hasn't got clue number one about romantic relationships being in any way relevant to him. I don't think he's in any hurry to find out. (Side note: while he might be able to do romance, possibly, it'd be purely platonic, assuming it wasn't just one-sided and kept very quiet.)

Ellen has the romantic inclinations of a brick. A particularly unromantic brick. Any kind of relationship that might happen to her would either have to be the sort where you look up after being friends with someone for a dog's age and go "Oh wow I didn't notice that before", or else something she deliberately started pursuing in an attempt at reaching some practical goal like it being one's civic duty to get married and have at least two kids.

[ceitfianna]

I'll be curious to see how Varric plays out and I'd forgotten just how bad the gods relationships on Gara were. They're up there with the Greek gods for humans aren't your playthings, stop that.

[withherhands]

Throughout canon, I think Jack is reserved and closed-off enough that he won't really go for casual flings. Considering how long he's likely to deny that he feels anything of the type and how long it would take him to trust someone to the point of having a relationship with them, he'd have to feel fairly strongly about them before he'd even consider it a relationship.

He might have had a couple, mostly physical short-term relationships with people after he faked his death. With Diane I think there was maybe a little emotional attachment there, but more to what she represented if that makes sense.

Though that varies a lot depending on where Jack is in canon. Currently, in-bar-Jack's very determined to not let anyone that far in (though certain people are creeping past his defenses), and as part of his emotional issues, he doesn't really feel arousal or similar emotions. Either that or he shoves them deep down because he sees it as an invitation to get hurt again.

[ceitfianna]

Jack always seems to have a hard road for relationships, he's such a good but broken guy.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

She-Hulk is the Queen of Casual. She's perfectly comfortable in casual dating/sexual relationships and finds some difficulty in committing unless she's found the perfect mate. Once she finds someone she really likes, though, she's committed and monogamous. She thought she'd found The One when she dated John Jameson but he didn't like her She-Hulk identity and that hurt so she ended the relationship. Actually, she married him and then divorced him in rapid succession because he was a prick.

Hawkgirl: ...Carter. Carter. Carter. Not Roy. Not Roy. Not Roy.

Siryn is interesting because although she's a romantic, and comes from a passionate culture, she shies away from relationships. Terry is extremely practically minded and organizes her life in terms of priorities, and work is always first before romance. She was also hurt very badly by Jamie Madrox years ago (this was way before their hook up in recent X-Factor) and this further discourages her from entering into serious relationships. Throw into that the story of James Proudstar, who she had a very close intimate friendship with that always teetered towards romantic on Jimmy's side and it's a complicated picture. She's the most screwed up out of all my pups when it comes to relationships. She loved Jimmy back but would never tell him. Then there's Deadpool's obsession with Terry...

Black Mamba was linked with Sidewinder a number of times and I don't know why because he's not good enough for her although they worked together in the Serpent Society. Tanya's a former call girl so she kind of takes her time to get to know someone well before indicating passionate interest. She sometimes tends to see relationships as stepping stones for her career.

[ceitfianna]

Terry's approach sounds like it makes so much sense in Marvelverse where relationships just seem to breed trouble.

[the_gene_genie]

70s!Gene goes for both. Long-term, and casual. He's married, he loves his wife; he is the stereotypical 'family dinner at mam's, and mow the lawn on Sundays' type...it's just that he's probably been getting a quick bit of executive relief from some barmaid the night before as well. And he doesn't see it as cheating, exactly. He doesn't really sleep around, per say. They're just...perks. And he's a bit of a lad, and deeply uncomfortable with any notion whatsoever of love (see; his glorious insult thrown at Sam for merely mentioning the word), and anyway, it's just what 70s blokes do, right? But he'll never leave the missus.

80s!Gene - well, the wife left him. And that, coupled with what happened to Sam, changed him. He's far less likely to have a go at anyone for mentioning the word love, and even *gasp* admitted to Alex that sometimes he gets lonely. So basically, he's far more grown up and would actually be a lot better - and a lot happier - if he were back in a stable relationship. That isn't to say he becomes a monk or anything, far from it. He'll still have one night stands, but he recognises them for what they are. And he's had the stuffing knocked out of him by this stage - he's still himself, but far less happy. He's willing to admit that a woman, if she's the right one, can make things better.

As it happens, he quite likes classy birds. And his DI just happens to be one, and a bit of alright at that. So, y'know. Gene: *shifty eyes*

[ceitfianna]

This is why Gene is such a pleasure to read, he's so complex and of his time, whichever one that is.

[kd7sov]

Felix is... highly monogamous. Unless something changes pretty drastically, he's not likely to get into any relationships for quite a long time, after his first love died.

Kain, I believe, approaches relationships on two levels. For the most part, he pines after Rosa, who's in love with Cecil. That is where his emotional approach is. He also, I think, has various one-night stands, but doesn't think of them as any sort of relationship.

Karis, I'm not sure. In true Golden Sun form people started shipping her, and naming the ships, within hours of her name being revealed, but she doesn't have any canonical indications of interest the way that, for instance, Felix does. I think she'd approach a relationship with the intention of solid commitment, but where it would go from there depends on a great many factors.

[ceitfianna]

It seems like relationships are a constant part of the guys' relationship but Karis is still figuring things out.

[hey35andholding]

Clementine is such a mixed bag. She's very, very sexually open and friendly. She likes all kinds of men, and likely a few women, and is the queen of one-nighters (even one hour-ers). Hell, her wedding vows included the phrase "I promise to stay in this marriage until we agree we don't wanna do it anymore." But she gets attached easily, and deeply, and when she's REALLY in love she is a clingy, fawning, pawing, oversharing mess (see: everything involving her character arc with Garcia and Reno911!: Miami). In spite of her deep cynicism, she wants someone to love her, someone to come home to at night, and someone to stay with. She's not even opposed to the idea of becoming a mom and a housewife.

[ceitfianna]

Clem's just fascinating as she figures out what she wants and who she wants. I hope she gets it.