Wednesday DE: Hurriedly putting breadsticks into my bag

[angry_friendship_wolf]

What is your character's romantic life like? Do they have a different date every week, one singular special person, no romantic interest in anyone, or anywhere between any of the above? Is it something they think about a lot, or are they happy to just go with the flow?

Comments

[cottoncandypink]

Wilford: A dumpster fire

Celine: A nuclear dumpster fire

Nichola: What romantic life?

[i_am_your_host]

Emcee is all about hookups, booty calls, and one-night-stands. He has no interest in romance and romantic relationships, and is frankly uncomfortable with them because they are almost always one-sided, as he can't/won't reciprocate the way the other person would like.

Cassidy, however, is a hopeless romantic at heart. Sure, he'll have random sex with random people, but he's not against any one of them expressing further interest. But of course anything long term will never work out because he'll either outlive them, or they'll leave him/he'll leave them because he's just a complete disaster. And then there's the case of Tulip, who he's in love with, except she's his best friend's girlfriend, so he's destined to forever pine for her. Later in the series he does get into a romantic relationship with another vampire, but that's...complicated.

[wayward_sun]

Lucifer has been called the biggest slut in the universe by his brother.
"And he said it like it was a bad thing?"

He does fall in love but human beings are enigmas and he can be really dense for a relatively smart guy.

He really just wants to be loved.

Elrond loves Celebrian, hus Sølvet Queen. He misses her all the time.

Eric would rather not talk about concepts he doesn't understand.

[i_am_your_host]

I have often referred to Lucifer as an emotionally stunted walnut. Like he just cannot get some things through his hard head.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato is apparently really bad at even recognising romance. Supplemental materials for both 02 and Tri make it clear that he's not lacking for suitors, and apparently there is fierce competition to get his attention on Valentine's Day -- but Yamato himself is uncharacteristically dense when it comes to recognising or responding to romantic overtures.

There's an argument to be made that his self-esteem is so poor that he can barely wrap his head around the idea of genuine romantic interest in him even when presented with irrefutable evidence, but equally there's an argument to be made that he's just, like. The densest. The densest person of all.

[for_everyone]

Between going on the run and meeting Hera, Kanan had few flings with locals of wherever he happened to be in the moment. More than once his decision to leave a given place was fueled by something like 'okay now the cantina owner's daughter is getting too familiar.'

But when he met Hera, it only took hearing her voice to know he'd follow her anywhere. Really I think that might just be a straight up quote from A New Dawn. But it was years before Hera both acknowledged her own feelings, and decided she was comfortable acting on them.


Hera, by contrast, I don't imagine having any kind of romantic life before Kanan. I sort of headcanon her as demi/gray-ace, and aside from that, in her life her mission - whatever it was in the moment - had come first. She hadn't been interested in romance, and just hadn't looked at others that way. It also definitely wasn't love at first sight for her with Kanan - she admired his willingness to stand up for those in need, and eventually agreed to let him ship out with her in part because she knew she could use his help and skills, and also had formed a bond with him during their time on Gorse and felt a connection in their common needs for companionship and belonging. But romantic attraction was something that came gradually, and even once Hera recognized it, she spent years ignoring, believing that such a relationship would jeopardize her work.

In our version of events, Hera changed her mind after nearly losing Kanan, feeling that having had the experience of accepting that she'd lost him, she could handle a relationship while also doing her work.

Which, so far, appears to be working out.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

It's not as if I don't write characters who Do A Romance, but I don't generally pick up the ones for whom it's a major focus. It's more like... an optional, though potentially rewarding, sidequest.

There might be omnics who aren't ace, but Bastion sure isn't one of them, which is typical for a combat model. I'm not as certain that they're aromantic, but they've never been in romantic love before at least, and aren't looking to be; it's more a question of whether they would reciprocate it from anyone else. I think they'd try it out at least if someone they liked made the offer, but it wouldn't necessarily go anywhere and they don't have much in the way of suitors.

Wilson is also ace and I swing between writing him as aromantic and bi-romantic depending on my whims. He's also introverted and socially awkward, so that doesn't help his chances. Either way, though, if he's not in a romantic relationship he's not really pining after one and he doesn't fall for people easily; he's got other stuff taking up more of his attention.

Cirava's viable romantic prospects tanked along with their social life after The Incident. They're not taking any of their fans up on offers of quadrants because most of those people are creepy, and they're already having difficulty reaching out to new people as friends, much less romantic partners. They'll work their way up to it eventually.

Thurlow's aromantic but not ace and the combination of general Victorian mores and the Echo Bazaar's appetite for love stories leaching into the culture of Fallen London has given them some neuroses about the fact that they don't seem to ever get romantic feelings for anybody. They're not comfortable sleeping around with strangers or seducing them for material/political gain (you can do that in-game, it's just not Thurlow's thing) and they feel like it would be unfair to hook up with their friends when they know that's not going to go anywhere romantically.

Aradia's been in a quadrant! She was one of the first of her friends to accomplish that! (Though Equius and Nepeta and Feferi and Eridan were also in moirallegiances pre-Sgrub, and Eridan and Vriska had already had a kismesissitude and a breakup.) She was in one of the red quadrants with Sollux before her death, but nobody else is terribly clear on whether they were moirails or matesprits, even in-universe. After she came back as a numb, apathetic ghost I don't know if she and Sollux ever formally broke up but it definitely made the relationship hard to maintain. On the other hand, they got close again when Aradia came back to life, to the point where he decided he'd rather stay in the dreambubbles with her (and like a zillion ghosts) than go with his living friends and frienemies on the meteor. I personally think they were moirails, although that's partly because I'd rather not put the relationship in conflict with Sollux and Feferi's Sgrub-era matespritship. In any case, he's definitely very important to her.

By contrast there's her relationship with Equius, which was made to look like a bigger deal in Hivebent than it ended up being in the long run. He obsessed over her in a creepy and condescending way before they met in person and built the robot body she used during Sgrub. Which he tried to use to make her love him through a component in the robot's heart, and probably the first major expression of emotion she'd had since she died was her ripping the entire thing out and smashing it to pieces on the alchemiter console, then slapping Equius silly. In the heat of the moment she followed that up by hatesnogging him full on the lips, which many people assumed was the start of a kismesissitude or quadrant-vacillating romance but seems to have been more of a short-lived fling if anything since she later says kissing him "that one time" was a mistake.