2 WISHes
..and this week's WISH is...
Describe two romantic relationships involving a PC you've seen in a game. One should be a romance that worked for the participants and the other should be one that failed, died, or came to an end.
My characters have never been good for romances. I was thinking about this last night, and I think it's because my particular "kink" (consensual corruption) is difficult to come by...so when I am in a game where a romance is possible, I tend to craft things for my own amusement. (Maybe that’s why I play the Fiona I do… hmm.)
For a successful romance, let me tell you about Baran and Aster.
Aster was developed at first as "the painfully typical daughter-of-Benedict," with one note: this was a Benedict who laughed. He laughed loudly, he laughed long, and he laughed because he enjoyed life. That does not mean, for a moment, however, he was anything less than the best at any of his chosen pursuits.
Warfare was her life.
Baran was the crown-Prince of the Lessi, the house of Shapeshifters. His father was growing senile, his mother and one of his sisters were failing from a power that worked on the pleasure centers of the brain, and despite their bodies' ability to cannibalize things for fuel, they were slowly wasting away.
Many years beforehand, his sister had prophesized that in order to protect Lessima from the scourge of Chaos, Baran would have to find the Star, and with her have a son, who would be the Hound who would find the castle "out of place, out of time."
Baran was smooth, polished, everything a prince should be. A master of metaphor, riddling, language, and manners, as well as decent with a sword, and a recognized genius even amongst other phenomena of shapeshifting.
They didn’t have a common language.
Baran had faith in the prophecy. He was risking the entire future of his people on it. He knew he would have to fall in love, and he gave it his all. Aster, on the other hand, may have known how to fillet him, but not how to flirt. She could kill with a flower, but not receive them graciously.
Insert helpful girlfriends, and of course, the bikini.
"Well, it could distract the enemy."
Aster and Baran had one major fight, a question of infidelity of emotions with Baran and an old fling of Baran's. Aster's opinion was pretty much, "I'll either still love him or kill him," when she decided to confront him.
(Baran's prophecy came true. They have lovely children.)
Failed relationships...egads. I wrote to the LintKing with a list of about ten good contenders, but was still hard pressed to choose any one. Most of the failed relationships are due to disparities in the four "P"s of relationships.
The four "P"s are "passion," "personality," "passibility," and "past times." I use them as a rule-of-thumb for character relationships. Passion relates to the pure emotional/spiritual sparks between the characters. The chemistry, if you would. Personality relates to all the aspects of the characters' psyche. Passibility is, in a great part, the sensitivity to the scale, the amount of lenience a character has for a great emphasis on another, potentially conflicting trait. Past Times relate to the activities of the character, including leisure as well as employment positions. I have one character who was an assassin for many years: she conflicted quite strongly with her mate on the 'Past Times' label as he was a pacifist.
(And please note, as a "rule of thumb" measure, there's no hard and fast methodology being used to rate things with this: it's just a quick system I've intuited in my "character matchmaking.")
Most of the character relationships I have spike high in Passion, but then have either little lenience in Passibility or wildly different Personalities or Past Times. Aster and Baran match nicely along all the axes, with a note that part of it is that both of their Passibility is top-notch.
Perhaps the one I'm most concerned about failing is Damascus and Ananke's in B?te Noire. From discussions with Ananke's Player I kind of see them moderately matched in Passion, divergent in Past Times, neutral-compatible in Personalities, but spiking extremely high in Passibility.
For those of you not reading the game, Damascus and Ananke entered into what was intended (by Damascus) as a marriage of convenience, to allow Ananke some measure of safety from an otherwise disturbing arrangement. It was never officially dissolved, and Damascus and Ana took the opportunity to make the best of the relationship, sharing strengths...
...then, "I know who I am. I know what I am. I am fae," Ana wrote, and Damascus wrote her mother, "I'm not a man, and I don't know if she wants someone who isn't exactly always a woman, either." Ana knows what she is, but Damascus doesn't know what she wants. That works with all the various pronouns.
They're separated by tasks, but the connection remains. Damascus is blunt, and she wants to give Ana all the flowers and the poetry that isn't Little D's way. The problem she's really facing (and it's not been underlined in her letters, but it's beginning to surface) is that for the first time, she really has someone to come home to, and that means she can't take the risks she feels she has to take.
We'll see how it develops. It was a happy note in dark times, but the times just get darker, and the shadow develops across relationships as well.