#it's been really frustrating because i love this franchise and want to actively seek content for it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

violethowler · 5 years

Text

Top 14 Favorite Pairings

I don't personally like romance as a genre, but I'm a sucker for a well written romance arc in another genre like sci-fi or fantasy. So in honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd post my top 14 favorite relationships. Not all of them are canon, but these are the big ones that I actively ship and seek out content for. These are in no particular order and I'm laying down a blanket spoiler warning for Young Justice, Kingdom Hearts, Red Rising, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Gargoyles, The Great Library, Star Wars: Rebels, Green Lantern: the Animated Series, Check Please, The Song of Achilles, DuckTales, TRON: Uprising, and Voltron: Legendary Defender.

1. SoRiKai (Sora/Riku/Kairi; Kingdom Hearts): Tehcnically not a pairing per se, but Kingdom Hearts was my first fandom and SoKai my first OTP. In recent years I’ve started to see the appeal of SoRiku, but at the same time didn’t want to see SoKai broken up for that to happen. Eventually, I discovered the third option taken by other fandoms of just shipping all three of them together in a polyamorous relationship.

2. Spitfire (Wally West/Artemis Crock; Young Justice): I’ve been obsessed with these two ever since I started watching Young Justice and I refuse to believe that Wally’s not going to come back from the dead at some point during Outsiders. Greg Weisman wouldn’t have been so cagey about explaining what happened to him if they weren’t going to go somewhere with this.

3. Razaya (Razer/Aya; Green Lantern: The Animated Series): Razer and Aya were a pairing that snuck up on me. The kind where you're not actively shipping the characters, but by the time the final episode ends, you're sobbing over them. I really hope that with the successful return of Young Justice, that Green Lantern: The Animated Series can return as well and give us closure on Aya's fate.

4. Rustang (Darrow of Lykos/Virginia au Augustus; Red Rising): The Red Rising saga is one of the best book series of all time and if you haven’t read it yet then you need to because this is amazing. In any case, Darrow and Mustang’s relationship is so beautiful that I can’t imagine him with anyone else. Their dynamic is so beautiful and I desperately hope that they patch things up in Dark Age and that Darrow survives the Iron Gold trilogy because I cannot bear the thought of Darrow dying.

5. Golisa (Goliath/Elisa Maza; Gargoyles): Most romantic couples in fiction I don't actively get invested in. I tend to just quietly watch and see how things go, and then not really think about it much afterwards. But after finishing the second season of Gargoyles, I reached a point where I couldn't talk about the show as a whole without talking about the love story between an manhattan police detective and a Gargoyle from 10th century Scotland. Their first kiss in the last episode and the post-series comics' dealing with the realities of an inter-species romance cemented these two as one of my favorite fictional romances.

6. Chrisanti (Christopher Wolfe/Niccolo Santi; The Great Library): Wolfe and Santi was a relationship I didn’t see coming, both because of the fact that they kept their relationship a secret from the narrator character for most of the book, and because it was the first time I’d ever seen a character’s sexuality being treated so casually. And with each succcessive book in the series, I became more invested in these two. Since the end of the third book, I’ve been holding out hope for them to tie the knot at the end of the series.

7. FitzSimmons (Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons; Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.): Most of the pairings I ship in a given franchise I only become invested in over several seasons, books, or movies. With FitzSimmons, I was rooting for them from Day one. I have been sailing this ship through every single season and I cried my eyes out when they finally got married in Season 5.

8. Kanera (Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla; Star Wars: Rebels): I started shipping Kanan and Hera around the end of Rebels' first season. I've been quietly rooting for them ever since, and I was absolutely thrilled when they officially got together in Season 4, only to be crushed when Kanan died in the middle of the season.

9. Patrochilles (Patroclus/Achilles; The Song of Achilles): I read The Song of Achilles last December and it was the first time since that summer that a book made me cry. The relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is so beautiful and so tragic that I still cry when I re-read the book.

10. Zimbits (Jack Zimmermann/Eric Bittle Jr.; Check, Please!): I got into Check Please a few months after I realized I was Bisexual. I'd been seeing fan art and meta about it all over my Tumblr feed, so I decided to give it a shot. Aside from Chrisanti, Jack and Bitty were one of the first canon mlm pairings in a comic that I'd read, and there was just so much to love about their relationship and the story in general that I've been a fan ever since.

11. Tuna (Tidus/Yuna; Final Fantasy X): I’d seen clips of Tidus and Yuna long before I actually played Final Fantasy X for myself, so when I finally got the chance to play, my heart melted at how adorable they were together, and I spoiled myself on the ending of X-2 just for the satisfaction of knowing that he came back and they got to have their happy ending together (I refuse to acknowledge the Will audio drama as canon).

12. Scroldie (Scrooge McDuck/Goldie O'Gilt; DuckTales): I was in love with this pairing from the moment Scrooge and Goldie started dancing together in “The Golden Lagoon of White Agony Plains”, and I keep watching all of their scenes together whenever I can.

13. Beige (Beck/Paige; TRON: Uprising): Beck and Paige were a pairing that quietly grew on me over the course of the show’s one season, and even though they broke things off after one date (and before the show could get to a point where she learns Beck’s secret identity as The Renegade), I loved the chemistry they have together and I firmly believe that if the show had continued they would have become a couple.

14. Sheith (Takashi Shirogane/Keith; Voltron: Legendary Defender): I wasn’t really concerned with shipping in the Voltron fandom for most of the series. I thought Hunk and Shay looked cute together, but I didn’t really think much of any of the other pairings. As all the nastiness in the fandom started escalating, I kept myself out of it. I could see things in canon that were vaguely shippy between Keith and Shiro and between Keith and Lance, but I didn’t personally care one way or the other who ended up together romantically. After Season 7, I started to ship Shiro and Keith primarily to spite the antis who had spent the last two years harassing anyone who didn’t ship their OTP, and as Season 8 drew near, I actually started to like the pairing on its own. Season 8 was a low blow because even though the odds of Shiro and Keith actually being an on-screen couple were slim considering how long the crew had to fight to be allowed to acknowledge that Shiro, who was technically an original character, was gay, his and Keith’s dynamic was still the most emotionally impactful part of the story even if you read it as platonic. So when Dreamworks’ cut of Season 8 completely removed any reference to their friendship and then paired Shiro off with a random extra whose name you’ll only know if you watch with subtitles, it stunk of a blatant effort by the higher ups to no homo their relationship because Keith can’t possibly be anything but straight. [/sarcasm] My salt over Season 8 aside, I at least have fanfic to soothe the frustration, and their relationship in the first 7 seasons is still one of my favorite parts of the show.

#long post #shipping #valentines day #favorite ships #my otps #my ot3

7 notes · View notes

thedragonsteaparty · 5 years

Text

Bit of a personal post today. I’ve had a bit of a weird couple of months, lots of big stuff has happened all at once and unfortunately my blog has taken a back seat, with only a few random, sporadic posts being done. What with all the things that have been going on I’ve been struggling to think of content, but I’m finally getting some more ideas coming through. I’ll give you a quick summary of all that’s happened, just for context, and then we can get to the knitty gritty of my post.

What’s happened then? Well, to kick it all off my boyfriend and I broke up, there was some inevitable drama with that but I moved to a new flat and that’s all sorted now. After that I got made redundant (but that’s a good thing because I was already looking for jobs anyway!), after a few weeks I found a job and started last week. Finally, a couple of weeks ago my gorgeous pet rat Hanzo passed away, and so did my dog Taz who was with me all through my teenage years. Both were quite old and they lived happy lives! So yeah, quite a bit of drama but I’m over the worst of it now!

On with the main part of the post… I wanted to share my experience of dating another gamer because I felt like it was an interesting situation which some may be able to relate to, or it may potentially help someone going through anything similar. After having some time to think about everything I realised that on paper we went together really well but it just wasn’t enough. I used to actively seek out people that were on the geeky side because I thought that that was what I went well with but now I’m not so sure.

When we first started seeing each other gaming was our big “thing”; we played games together, chatted about them, went to related events… it was great. However, after two and a half years it just got a little stale for me. It turned out he was way more invested in gaming than I was, which was fine but I just like a little variety in my routine sometimes is all. It’s very strange to suddenly have the connection with my go-to gaming friend cut off, but to be honest it’s also quite refreshing in a weird way. A lot of my blog posts were inspired by my ex which is probably why I’ve been having massive writers’ block lately. He introduced me to a lot of games that I’d never played before and that influenced a huge amount of my blog content. Once I was moved into my new place and my PS4 was set up I had no idea what to play. I did eventually settle on pettily killing him off in the Sims and making myself a new, super hot boyfriend (OK… Yes, that’s a bit sad but it made me feel better). Once I had done that though I decided to finish a lot of the games I had bought over the past couple of years but not finished, starting with Doom. I used to have a rule where I would always finish my current game before buying a new one, but it was so easy to get drawn into new ones when we were both really excited about a new game release. Now though, rather than leap-frogging from game to game, I’ve stuck with just two for the past month: Breath of the Wild and Doom. More so Breath of the Wild to be honest, but Doom is a nice break from the open world format occasionally. In fact, I haven’t actually finished the vast majority of games that I have bought in the past couple of years, I was always getting distracted by shiny, new games.

After thinking about it for a while I realised that I had been playing loads of games that he liked from his past, but he had rarely played any of mine, and if he did it was extremely short-lived. When I was playing his games, though, he would be bugging me, desperate to see my reaction even if I wasn’t that keen on it. Once I was finished (or tired of) the current recommendation there’d be an instantaneous recommendation for something else. I totally get that, I have been there myself whether it’s for a game, a TV show, music, a book… Lots of different things. It’s awesome when you get to introduce something you love to someone, and it’s especially wonderful if they end up loving it just as much as you do, but to some extent it does need to be a two-way street.

Final Fantasy was a big franchise he was keen on getting me hooked on. Sometimes that worked out… Other times not so much.

Another thing we started doing, which I was never 100% keen on, was playing different games side by side at the same time. Our two TVs were placed next to each other in our living room and we would sit there side by side playing either the same game or different games. I am not sure why I didn’t like doing this much, I think it was the silence that grated on me and I just didn’t see the point. He said it was because we were spending time together but I didn’t see it as that. I would rather have my own, private gaming time and do something else to spend time together, but he enjoyed it so I did it. Not to say that if you do this it’s weird or wrong, personally I just like my space but this made it seem like I saw him all the time. On top of that I have quite a few hobbies, most days I have aerial fitness classes (some of which I now teach as well), I like to sew occasionally, I have my blog, I like going out with my friends, and of course I have my video games. I like doing a lot of things, but gaming was his sole extra-curricular activity, so if he wasn’t at work he would be at home gaming. I didn’t mind at first but after a while it began to bother me. I actually started to catch myself thinking “could you get off that bloody game and do something else?” I would then have to mentally check myself and tell myself to not be an idiot; I felt like I was being judgmental and felt bad because as a gamer myself I have had a fair few people not just think that when they’ve seen me engrossed in a game but said it out loud as well. I should understand. I put it down to me taking it out on him because I was having a bit of a stressful time and hoped it would go away, but instead it got worse. He seemed to spend even more time gaming than before and eventually it grew to a point where I’d come home from work and see him slumped on the sofa playing something and my immediate reaction would be to roll my eyes and get in a bit of a strop. Again, I can’t believe I did that! I always prided myself on being a “gamer girlfriend” but there I was tutting away…

What was probably the expectation from both of us when we first got together… Very quickly dispelled. You can’t focus properly on the game, what’s the point? Get off me I need to focus.

That’s more like it

For me I see gaming as more of a solo activity (excluding party games like Worms, Mario Kart, etc) that I like to do to relax and chill out for a bit in my spare time. Other people simply may not see it that way. I came to realise it wasn’t a simple case of our initial “we’re both gamers, yay!” but a case of actually being two very different people that had a couple of massive things in common which we enjoyed in different ways.

I never thought that gaming would be a factor in me breaking up with someone, ever. If you had told me before that I would be one of those girlfriends that complained their other half was gaming too much I wouldn’t have believed you but… I was. What started out as our core, shared interest became one of the things that destroyed us. It was by no means the main reason, at all, but it slowly became a habit that contributed to the mountain of built up frustration. You learn something new about yourself every time you go through a relationship and this time I learned that just because you have so many shared interests, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a good match. Next time my main pick-up line won’t be “I have a Playstation”… I wish I was joking but it was genuinely that.

I am happy to say that since we broke up I feel a lot more relaxed. I didn’t realise how stressed I was but I’m taking some time for myself now and it feels great.

Is your other half a gamer? Have you ever broken up with someone because of gaming? How does gaming fit into your relationship?

Being One Half of a Gamer Couple… And Why it Doesn’t Always Work Bit of a personal post today. I've had a bit of a weird couple of months, lots of big stuff has happened all at once and unfortunately my blog has taken a back seat, with only a few random, sporadic posts being done.

#Gamer couple #Gaming #Relationships #Video Games

0 notes