Did someone say MTG?

Subject: Did someone say MTG?
Author: Phobos
Posted on: 2017-10-12 22:35:00 UTC

There's a lot of potential relationships going around in the current Magic story. Some of them are more likely than others. Sometimes by a lot. Let's take a look. (This is going to be a long one, folks.)

Chandra/Liliana: The card that was brought up to support this ship is Diabolic Tutor from the set "Kaladesh":

That's some great art right there, and it definitely says something. I could see that being fuel for a ship. If you read the story, you actually find that Liliana is like Chandra's cool older cousin or maybe her shoulder!Devil; pushing her to play by her own rules and be the most free version of herself. That picture is followed immediately by them going out dancing, drinking, and punching city guards in the face. It was a good time.

However, their good times were short lived. By the time "Aether Revolt" rolled around (three months later) they were barely interacting at all. "Amonkhet", again, saw little to no interaction between these two. I'm really not sure what story you are talking about, but I think you might have mistaken Liliana for Nissa, who does interact with Chandra quite a bit.

Phobos's Rating: Fun but unlikely

Chandra/Nissa: During the events of "Oath Of The Gatewatch" Chandra and Nissa became close. Not in any traditional shipping sense, though. Their minds touched while they poured all of their magic into killing what amounted to two Elder Gods. For one brief moment, Chandra felt the calm of Nissa's mind. This was new and different for Chandra who, being the exemplar of Red magic, is basically ADHD-made-flesh. It had a profound effect on her.

Fast forward to the beginning of "Kaladesh"; Chandra is screwing up everything. She can't seem to do anything right because she is so hasty. What is she supposed to do? Then she thinks back on that moment and it occurs to her that Nissa could help her find that inner calm, again. So she seeks her out in the garden (Nissa is the Green mage, so that is where she basically lives). There is a brief conversation that...well...it goes poorly. See, Chandra is stuck in her own head thinking about how she must be screwing this up, too. At the same time, Nissa doesn't understand how to people. She's a hermit who talks to plants, animals, and anthropomorphic personifications of whole planets. So, Chandra starts trying to explain what she wants in a wild, meandering way that ends with her running out and Nissa, who hasn't really said a word at this point, wondering what she did wrong.

When Chandra eventually runs off to Kaladesh with Liliana (for the aforementioned drinking and guard punching) Nissa volunteers to go after them and bring them back. It is her hope that she can atone for whatever mistake she made in that earlier conversation. When she does catch up to them, she joins Chandra in a quest to find her mom, while Liliana goes off on her own.

Through the end of "Kaladesh" and "Aether Revolt", Nissa is the one who has Chandra's back when things get bad. When Chandra's power is running out of control and she is on the fast track to going supernova, it is Nissa that steps in to help her focus and regain control. And in the end, there is this scene:

Nissa swallowed past the desert in her throat. "I don't speak often. I lived alone for...decades. Zendikar was my companion. We understood each other at a level deeper than words. I...I don't know how to talk to you. I'm trying to learn."

Chandra looked up, eyes wide and startled. "You don't know how to talk to me?"

"I will make mistakes," Nissa said. "Pick the wrong words. Misunderstand yours. I'll act strange and won't know that I am. But if you can be patient with me, I would like to be..." Waves of sky-song memory welled upward, symphonies of color and warmth, resonant movement and shared breath. She stilled them, reduced them, and forced out angular words shaped in a pallid shadow of acceptable truth. "...your friend."

Which is followed shortly by this:

Carefully, Nissa lifted Chandra's radiant featherweight, and maneuvered so she could rest her head across her lap. Chandra stirred in her sleep, turning on to her side and curling up, pulling her knees to her chest and her hands to her face. Then her lips parted, and industrial snores pealed across the platform.

[...]

Nissa guarded Chandra's sleep.

It felt right.

Their relationship continues to deepen during "Amonkhet" with this exchange:

"Thank you for accompanying me this morning, Chandra."

"Nowhere else I'd rather be." Chandra fiddled with the straps on her vambrace, her eyes darting in Nissa's direction. An involuntary smile flitted across her face—a blush, an inescapable dash of sentiment.

Nissa scoffed. "I can think of at least twenty places I would rather be than Amonkhet."

Chandra's smile turned plain and she looked down.

The two sat in semi-silence, comfortable for one and fraught with unspoken words for the other. Nissa took a breath, allowing the churn of the fountain and the cool shade above to her soothe her nerves. Chandra kept her eyes focused on her buckle.

"I've never spent so long in cities before," Nissa said. "Between Kaladesh and here, I've had more than my share of people."

"You seem to be getting along fine," Chandra replied.

Nissa shook her head. "I have gotten better at hiding my discomfort. Being around others so often is draining."

"But not with us, right?"

The question caught Nissa's attention. She watched Chandra intently unbuckle and rebuckle the same strap of her vambrace.

Nissa frowned. Thought over her words. "Yes and no."

Fiddling hands paused, while a meandering mind searched for the words to lend shape to unfamiliar feelings.

"Friendship with all of the Gatewatch is still quite new. I'm still trying to understand what it means to have friends in the first place," Nissa said.

Chandra made a small noise and looked out on the plaza, her posture heavy and leaden, her fingers suddenly quite still.

Nissa continued. "On Zendikar, I was without the company of people for most of my life. The plane was the closest thing to a friend I had. Learning to trust has been . . . slow—and there is still much for me to learn. Understanding and sustaining friendships is daunting when one has never really done it before."

Chandra shifted awkwardly. "So . . . friendship?"

Chandra seems disappointed in how that exchange went, doesn't she? But that's the thing, isn't it? Nissa would have no idea that Chandra is disappointed, and Chandra is too nervous to just come out and say anything about it. There's an awkward "will they; won't they" kind of dynamic. Chandra is definitely crushing, but I don't think Nissa understands enough to acknowledge it, let alone reciprocate.

Phobos's Rating: I ship it.

Now, I could go on, believe me. There's at least three other relationships to cover beyond these ones. However, I've already spent two days researching and getting my references together and I should have been working on a blog post instead. If anyone is interested in my analysis of the rest, I can get back to it after this weekend.

-Phobos

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Let's talk shipping by Tomash on 2017-10-09 21:32:00 UTC Reply

Containerization — best idea ever or best idea ever?

Wait, no, wrong type of shipping.

So, do you ship?

In what circumstances? (Only certain fandoms, for example.)

Who?

and so on and so on.

I personally don't ship much, in the sense that I almost never look at characters who aren't in a romantic/sexual/... relationship and go "Hey, these guys should be a relationship!"

I will certainly root for characters who are/were in a relationship to have that keep going/start back up again, though. (For example, the nicely developing interspecies romance that was Hilfy/Tully before the author cut that off.)

- Tomash

I'm not too active in the shipping community... by twistedwindowpane on 2017-10-16 01:08:00 UTC Reply

I mean, I create OCs who are in relationships with each other (I have nothing against canon-x-OCs that are done right, and indeed there are some fandoms such as Frozen where there are only one or two actually good ships that are canon-x-canon, but I don't really create OCs to ship with canons myself), but as for canon-x-canons, I don't really do much shipping. I do endorse canon ships, but you'll more likely find me tearing apart bad ships than creating good ones. (Again, most Frozen ships.) So yeah, that's my take on shipping.

-Twistey
Power differentials by Miah on 2017-10-14 09:02:00 UTC Reply

I ship some characters, and others I will read at least sometimes. There does need to be a canon chemistry and for slash not an explicit abhorrence of same sex relationships. A lot of the potential ships in canons I follow are problematic because of inherent power differentials. If one character has the power to fire the other or reprimand the other in their work, then that is problematic.

For an old example: Stargate SG-1. Jack and Sam are the most obvious and popular pairing. They have intense chemistry and clearly have feelings for each other. The problem is that they are both military and he outranks her with her as his direct subordinate. In canon, Jack 100% respects that, and why wouldn't he? He's lifetime military. Sam seems more frustrated by it than Jack does, but she's younger and she does still clearly accept the reality. Getting them together, for me, has to involve getting one or both out of the military.

Then you have the other main ship of the fandom, Jack and Daniel Jackson. Daniel is not military. Jack is the leader of the team, but never really had full power over Daniel. The two of them wanting to be together, power wise, is only really hampered by DADT.

My personal favorite ship is Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos in Haven, with Duke/Nathan/Audrey as a close back up, depending on when during canon the story is set. That's a canon I love, but despise the way the last two seasons went, so often pretend they didn't happen with AU fics.

As for why those two? Duke and Nathan have a vaguely detailed past relationship that had ended incredibly badly in their late teens or early twenties and then been apart for at least a decade then were back in proximity again a couple years before the show started. I always believed you couldn't possibly be that angry at another person, but still willing to drop everything and be kind when that person is hurt if there wasn't love behind it. They behaved exactly like a couple that had had a messy break up, but still had feelings for each other. The actors were also constantly fanning those flames. One of them was even known to retweet slashy fanart with positive remarks.
I can take it or leave it. by Neshomeh on 2017-10-12 19:06:00 UTC Reply

Mostly I'm content to accept the canon ships or lack thereof. There are some that I've cheered on more than others (Roslin/Adama springs to mind), and some I haven't cared for (the whole love triangle in The Hunger Games, Buffy/pretty much any of her LIs), but it's not something I get really worked up about. Probably because it's not something I've ever been really worked up about in real life, either. Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I had a total of three boyfriends and was only really interested in kissing (let alone doing anything else with) the last one, whom I went on to marry. So yeah. I'm hanging out somewhere on the lower lefthand side of that bell curve. {= )

I've never had strong enough feelings about a canon/canon ship that I wanted to write about it myself. I used to have some negative feelings about shipping in other people's fanfic, mostly to the tune of either "ew, they wouldn't do that!" or "ugh, can we please focus on something more interesting?", but nowadays I'll read other people's ships with characters I like, and as long as it's well-written and has a reasonable basis on the characters' personalities, I can get into it. Canon/canon, canon/OC, straight, gay, whatever.

As for shipping my own characters, I've typically had a bit of an aversion to it unless in an RP scenario, with someone else playing the other character in the relationship. Firstly I wasn't interested, secondly it felt like cheating, and thirdly it's just really satisfying to get someone else to like your character enough to imagine that their character would want to be with them. I still prefer hooking up my characters with other people's characters, but if you've been watching my writing lately, you may have noticed I'm sometimes willing to ship my characters with each other, too. {= ) Also, I'm writing an OC in a relationship with a canon character in my Skyrim fic, which I think works for me because it's something you can do as part of the game, so it feels legitimized in sort of the same way an RP ship does in that it came about organically during gameplay, not just because I up and decided it. Everything is better with consent!

~Neshomeh

A brief question of semantics: by Thoth on 2017-10-12 22:29:00 UTC Reply

Is it shipping if you're doing it entirely with OCs, or even entirely in an original universe? Because it seemed to me that shipping was about characters you didn't actually write. Was I wrong?

Seriously, it would be really nice to know, so that I can finally that sorted out.

I never thought about it. by Neshomeh on 2017-10-12 23:50:00 UTC Reply

"Ship" simply stems from "relationship," though, so I don't see why it can't apply to all sorts. "[Canon character]/OC" is definitely a pairing you see on fanfiction sites. And if somebody else ships characters you wrote, that's a ship, so why wouldn't it be if you do it yourself?

Has anyone come across any definitions or traditions that don't support shipping for OCs?

~Neshomeh

Let's take that to its logical extreme. by Huinesoron on 2017-10-13 12:02:00 UTC Reply

Michaelis walked into a bar and sat down on a stool. Slumped over, he looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

Or so Isabel thought, at any rate. "You okay there?" she asked.

"Not really," Michaelis said, his voice muffled by his arms. "But you wouldn't care about that."

Isabel blinked. "Of course I would," she protested. "That's why I asked!"

"Sure." Michaelis snorted. "That's why you're here, in the Raggedy Hound, drinking alone."

"Waiting alone," Isabel clarified. She tapped her glass, setting it ringing. "First one of the night."

"Waiting." Michaelis frowned at her. "For what?"

"You, obviously." With a smooth motion, Isabel downed the rest of her drink and waved the barman over. "So - how about a glass or two, and then back to mine?"

Michaelis blinked at her, then shrugged. "It's a bad idea, probably, but... sure."

Michaelis, Isabel, and the Raggedy Hound are entirely new. I've probably used those names before, but not for these people. There's clearly some kind of relationship there (y'know, she just propositioned him), but is that 'shipping?

What about if we'd opened on them an hour and a half later, and it had just been pure PWP? Would that be 'shipping?

I don't have an answer, but if there's a semantic argument to be had, I'm all up for jumping in feet first. ^_^

hS

I think that's a different question. by Neshomeh on 2017-10-13 22:22:00 UTC Reply

A "ship" is the concept of a pairing.

To "ship" ("shipping") is to be in favor of a pairing.

"Shipfic" is a fanfiction that emphasizes a ship.

What you wrote might be a shipfic. If you're in favor of the pairing Michaelis/Isabel, then you ship it. That's shipping. At least, I think so.

~Neshomeh
My thoughts by [EvilAI]UBEROverlord on 2017-10-13 13:36:00 UTC Reply

I have always seen shipping, as it relates to writing, as a construct of fandom. Outside of the realm of fandom, I see it as not really existing. In an original work, it is more or less just romance or plot development, or what have you.

So to answer your question, I do not think that qualifies as shipping, because as far as I can tell it is an original work. As far as PWP, if it is tied to an existing work, i.e., fanfiction or a response to someone else's work, I think under the most generous (and common) definition it would be shipping. If it is not tied to an exiting fandom, then I do not think it counts as shipping.

________________________________________________________

Alternatively, shipping refers to the transportation of goods, usually via sea-faring vessel.

That's certainly the definition I am familiar with... (nm) by Thoth on 2017-10-13 13:56:00 UTC Reply

I tend to go with canon shippings (I'm boring that way). by Hardric on 2017-10-12 16:36:00 UTC Reply

Or failing that, ships where the subtext is heavy enough you can't help but consider them as canon, even when no confirmation is given by WoG or anything (Subaru and Teana in Nanoha, Sayaka and Kyoko in Madoka, Sunset Shimmer and Sci-Twi in Equestria Girls, Lyra and Bon Bon in Friendship is Magic... You get the idea).

In fanfic, I don't mind shipping making sense relatively to the characters' personnality and development and their orientation when it's stated by the canon authors (no suddenly gay/straight/bi character when we already know their orientation).
Weirdly enough... by KittyEden on 2017-10-12 14:22:00 UTC Reply

...I don't actively ship anything usually, with the exception of canon ships. I'll read basically any ship in fics and stuff (with the exceptions of incest/pedophilia/abuse/etc) but I don't think I've ever written any shippy stuff apart from for friends and things like that.
AU shipfic is a magical thing! by Scapegrace on 2017-10-11 10:37:00 UTC Reply

I devour it because I'm way more interested in how the characters interact than in the fic's inherent minutiae-friendliness. Fanfic of any kind asks questions about the media from which it derives, and shipfic in particular can ask some really fascinating ones about the characters they're shipping, and also about the ones they're not. Not all of them do, obviously - we wouldn't have DBS agents if they did - but it's still not something that should be discarded out of hand. At least, that's my view. =]

So what you're saying is... by Tomash on 2017-10-11 22:28:00 UTC Reply

... that shipfic is a good way to explore characters?

Yeah, that makes sense, and I'm inclined to agree that that's an important thing to do. (Since fanfiction is basically generally about extending/exploring a universe, IMO)

- Tomash

P much, yeah. by Scapegrace on 2017-10-11 23:08:00 UTC Reply

Though I'd also say that it can be a springboard for interrogating the broader themes of the original work. For instance, if anyone can point me in the direction of Ender's Game slash or a slow-burn romantic flower shop AU of anything by Heinlein, those'd be interesting to read. I just think there's so much potential for fanfiction to be used as criticism in the manner of old musical criticism - rather than a Baroque criticism of Monteverdi or whatever, we can have a slashfic or AUfic critique of modern popular media. It's the democratization of literary theory, of really thinking about what we consume rather than unquestioning canon-minutia memorization.

But the better you know the minutiae... by Huinesoron on 2017-10-12 12:17:00 UTC Reply

... the better you can think about the material.

To use your own example: you can write an Ender/Alai slashfic ("salaam"), but unless you read the Shadow books and realise that Alai will end up as Caliph [/spoiler for 15-year-old book], you can't use that story as proper criticism - which it would be ideal for, since the moral assumptions in the Ender books come from OSC's Mormonism. You get to use a religious character to cast light on the implicit assumptions of a religious author - or you just read the first book and use Alai because he comes across as the most "feminine" of the Battle School boys.

I'm writing one story as a direct response to Tolkien's 'sex=marriage among the elves' idea. If I don't have a secure understanding of that idea, the whole concept is completely useless.

hS

That's an excellent point. by Scapegrace on 2017-10-12 12:26:00 UTC Reply

~~Also, sidenote: why are so many garbage SF&F writers Mormons? OSC, SMeyer, the list, it goeth on...~~

However, I also think that there's such a thing as going too deep in ways that are unproductive. To use your own example, a fic concerning and questioning the idea of IF elfbang GOTO elfnuptials absolutely needs a secure understanding of the various elfish cultures in Arda... but it might not need, say, a prolonged look at the architectural vagaries of Gondorian city-builders. It's a question of staying on topic and not getting bogged down in ever-more obscure detail, which can just descend into he-said-she-said. =]

Although, I reckon there's probably a story in just why Gondorians build such grand cities when nobody else does, exploring the social and political pressures inherent in the commissioning and construction of monumental architecture (see Follett, K., The Pillars Of The Earth). =]

Immortality envy. by Huinesoron on 2017-10-12 13:25:00 UTC Reply

Gondorian monumental architecture grew directly out of Numenorean funerary architecture. The early Numenoreans were at peace with the fact that they were going to die (Elros Tar-Minyatur laid down his life willingly, rather than dying of natural causes, though whether that's suicide or an act of will is unmentioned); their descendents were not, and they began to build grand tombs - Houses of the Dead, in later Gondorian parlance - to pretend that the dead were coming back.

And of course, if the dead deserve fancy houses, so do the living, right...? Annuminas in Arnor was probably built in the same grand style, so it's not just Gondor.

The other drivers in (above-ground) city-building in Middle-earth are 1) fortresses (Minas Ithil to an extent, Ost-in-Edhil, Barad Eithel), and 2) the very specific 'looks like Tirion-on-Tuna' (Gondolin, and honestly most of what you think of when you imagine an Elven city). Other than that, people were happy to live in smaller communities and/or underground.

None of which you can get by reading A Scholarly Guide to Gondorian Architecture, because it doesn't exist. You have to pick it up by reading the books, and unless you read them in detail you can't know for sure that you've got everything. It's not like being a chemist, where you can plug 'organometallic silver' into a journal and get only what's related to your field; you have to study everything, or you might miss what matters.

I suppose if you intended to make a career our of elf-sex criticism stories, then you could focus what you reread... but who does that? Most people write a broad range of stories, and for that, you need to know as much as you can.

~

As to your struck-out sidenote: there is an inherent bias to storytelling in Mormonism, simply because the Book of Mormon has a far more coherent narrative and better worldbuilding than the Bible (^~). But I think it's more of an observer effect: you don't flag up how many SF/F writers are Catholic, or Baptist, or Pentecostal, because it doesn't come up in discussion of them. The cultural perception of the LDS Church is closer to how people think about Islam, or the Amish - a distinctly other religion. So they stand out.

Glancing through <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDSfiction">LDS fiction, which is apparently a real Wikipedia article, the only names that pop out of the Notable section for me are Steph, Orson, Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn), Chris Heimerdinger (Mormon YA books), and Glenn Beck (who... is a fiction author apparently?). I've read the first three, and while Brother Orson has recently(?) shown himself to be a pretty bad person, the only one whose work I would describe as unambiguously bad is Stephanie Meyer. Which is essentially because she's trying to write romance novels but without the titillation.

(I always feel bad for calling Steph's writing bad, because she clearly cares so much. But she's also one of those people who drives her characters through to her predetermined ending regardless of whether they would actually act that way - and she has frankly dangerous ideas of what's romantic.)

hS, words words words

On OSC and Mormons by Thoth on 2017-10-12 14:52:00 UTC Reply

OSC isn't the greatest writer in the world, but I agree with hS here - he may be a bad person, but he's not a bad writer. Well, he's not an awful writer, anyways. Ender's Game is the only novel of his that I'd really recommend with no provisions. And I've read quite a bit of him.

~~OTOH, Sanderson's work is absolutely fantastic, and I'd recommend just about anything I've read by him with no reservations.~~

On the subject of shipping by Maxewell on 2017-10-11 05:29:00 UTC Reply

I got OTPS, NOTPS, crackships and some very curious ones.

If they aren't canonically interested in that gender or lack thereof, I don't ship it.

If it isn't canonically stated outright their sexuality, well... Who doesn't swing even just a little bi?

If they are canonically in a relationship then I do not ship them with anyone else. If they already have a love interest I SHIP IT
Oh boy, shipping... by Blackwing on 2017-10-10 22:46:00 UTC Reply

So I am basically the opposite of Thoth. I ship largely based on hypotheticals (which I guess could be called crackshipping?) and unless explicitly stated otherwise, I generally assume every character to be at the very least open to exploration, if not outright bi/pan.

My current favorite ships are CD-RW, Ultra Magnus/Megatron and Nautica/Brainstorm from IDW's Transformers comics, and Liliana/Chandra from Magic the Gathering (which is entirely based on the art of a single card from Kaladesh block)

Regarding: MtG by Thoth on 2017-10-11 00:47:00 UTC Reply

>Liliana/Chandra from Magic the Gathering (which is entirely based on the art of a single card from Kaladesh block)

I don't totally remember, but IIRC, there was a short story Wizards published for the Amonkhet block that substantiated that.

Did someone say MTG? by Phobos on 2017-10-12 22:35:00 UTC Reply

There's a lot of potential relationships going around in the current Magic story. Some of them are more likely than others. Sometimes by a lot. Let's take a look. (This is going to be a long one, folks.)

Chandra/Liliana: The card that was brought up to support this ship is Diabolic Tutor from the set "Kaladesh":

That's some great art right there, and it definitely says something. I could see that being fuel for a ship. If you read the story, you actually find that Liliana is like Chandra's cool older cousin or maybe her shoulder!Devil; pushing her to play by her own rules and be the most free version of herself. That picture is followed immediately by them going out dancing, drinking, and punching city guards in the face. It was a good time.

However, their good times were short lived. By the time "Aether Revolt" rolled around (three months later) they were barely interacting at all. "Amonkhet", again, saw little to no interaction between these two. I'm really not sure what story you are talking about, but I think you might have mistaken Liliana for Nissa, who does interact with Chandra quite a bit.

Phobos's Rating: Fun but unlikely

Chandra/Nissa: During the events of "Oath Of The Gatewatch" Chandra and Nissa became close. Not in any traditional shipping sense, though. Their minds touched while they poured all of their magic into killing what amounted to two Elder Gods. For one brief moment, Chandra felt the calm of Nissa's mind. This was new and different for Chandra who, being the exemplar of Red magic, is basically ADHD-made-flesh. It had a profound effect on her.

Fast forward to the beginning of "Kaladesh"; Chandra is screwing up everything. She can't seem to do anything right because she is so hasty. What is she supposed to do? Then she thinks back on that moment and it occurs to her that Nissa could help her find that inner calm, again. So she seeks her out in the garden (Nissa is the Green mage, so that is where she basically lives). There is a brief conversation that...well...it goes poorly. See, Chandra is stuck in her own head thinking about how she must be screwing this up, too. At the same time, Nissa doesn't understand how to people. She's a hermit who talks to plants, animals, and anthropomorphic personifications of whole planets. So, Chandra starts trying to explain what she wants in a wild, meandering way that ends with her running out and Nissa, who hasn't really said a word at this point, wondering what she did wrong.

When Chandra eventually runs off to Kaladesh with Liliana (for the aforementioned drinking and guard punching) Nissa volunteers to go after them and bring them back. It is her hope that she can atone for whatever mistake she made in that earlier conversation. When she does catch up to them, she joins Chandra in a quest to find her mom, while Liliana goes off on her own.

Through the end of "Kaladesh" and "Aether Revolt", Nissa is the one who has Chandra's back when things get bad. When Chandra's power is running out of control and she is on the fast track to going supernova, it is Nissa that steps in to help her focus and regain control. And in the end, there is this scene:

Nissa swallowed past the desert in her throat. "I don't speak often. I lived alone for...decades. Zendikar was my companion. We understood each other at a level deeper than words. I...I don't know how to talk to you. I'm trying to learn."

Chandra looked up, eyes wide and startled. "You don't know how to talk to me?"

"I will make mistakes," Nissa said. "Pick the wrong words. Misunderstand yours. I'll act strange and won't know that I am. But if you can be patient with me, I would like to be..." Waves of sky-song memory welled upward, symphonies of color and warmth, resonant movement and shared breath. She stilled them, reduced them, and forced out angular words shaped in a pallid shadow of acceptable truth. "...your friend."

Which is followed shortly by this:

Carefully, Nissa lifted Chandra's radiant featherweight, and maneuvered so she could rest her head across her lap. Chandra stirred in her sleep, turning on to her side and curling up, pulling her knees to her chest and her hands to her face. Then her lips parted, and industrial snores pealed across the platform.

[...]

Nissa guarded Chandra's sleep.

It felt right.

Their relationship continues to deepen during "Amonkhet" with this exchange:

"Thank you for accompanying me this morning, Chandra."

"Nowhere else I'd rather be." Chandra fiddled with the straps on her vambrace, her eyes darting in Nissa's direction. An involuntary smile flitted across her face—a blush, an inescapable dash of sentiment.

Nissa scoffed. "I can think of at least twenty places I would rather be than Amonkhet."

Chandra's smile turned plain and she looked down.

The two sat in semi-silence, comfortable for one and fraught with unspoken words for the other. Nissa took a breath, allowing the churn of the fountain and the cool shade above to her soothe her nerves. Chandra kept her eyes focused on her buckle.

"I've never spent so long in cities before," Nissa said. "Between Kaladesh and here, I've had more than my share of people."

"You seem to be getting along fine," Chandra replied.

Nissa shook her head. "I have gotten better at hiding my discomfort. Being around others so often is draining."

"But not with us, right?"

The question caught Nissa's attention. She watched Chandra intently unbuckle and rebuckle the same strap of her vambrace.

Nissa frowned. Thought over her words. "Yes and no."

Fiddling hands paused, while a meandering mind searched for the words to lend shape to unfamiliar feelings.

"Friendship with all of the Gatewatch is still quite new. I'm still trying to understand what it means to have friends in the first place," Nissa said.

Chandra made a small noise and looked out on the plaza, her posture heavy and leaden, her fingers suddenly quite still.

Nissa continued. "On Zendikar, I was without the company of people for most of my life. The plane was the closest thing to a friend I had. Learning to trust has been . . . slow—and there is still much for me to learn. Understanding and sustaining friendships is daunting when one has never really done it before."

Chandra shifted awkwardly. "So . . . friendship?"

Chandra seems disappointed in how that exchange went, doesn't she? But that's the thing, isn't it? Nissa would have no idea that Chandra is disappointed, and Chandra is too nervous to just come out and say anything about it. There's an awkward "will they; won't they" kind of dynamic. Chandra is definitely crushing, but I don't think Nissa understands enough to acknowledge it, let alone reciprocate.

Phobos's Rating: I ship it.

Now, I could go on, believe me. There's at least three other relationships to cover beyond these ones. However, I've already spent two days researching and getting my references together and I should have been working on a blog post instead. If anyone is interested in my analysis of the rest, I can get back to it after this weekend.

-Phobos

Yeah, I confused her with Nissa. Sorry about that... (nm) by Thoth on 2017-10-13 13:57:00 UTC Reply

Sounds like an excuse for pluggage! by Huinesoron on 2017-10-10 10:35:00 UTC Reply

Rockall, Malin, Hebrides. Southwest gale 8 to storm 10, veering west. ~The Shipping Forecast

I am not, by and large, much of a shipper (except in my PPC characters, who I ship so much with each other that I ended up with family trees), but I do on occasion. I go for things that are compatible with canon, even if they're not canon themselves - I have a Susan Pevensie/Maglor story out there, which exemplifies this.

More recently, I've had my eye on femslash, for philosophical reasons: there isn't much out there, and that lack of representation bugs me. Turns out the reason is that it's hard to find two women who can be shipped in a canon-friendly manner - there's nothing viable in the Star Wars films, for instance (Leia/Mothma? But Leia is pretty straight, and this would just smack of 'they don't actively hate each other, so they must be in luuurve'). (Jyn/Rey could work if you could get around them being 30 years apart. But th'ain't no time travel in Star Wars.)

I have an in-process Luthien/Galadriel story, which does justify its existence alongside their canonical romances, but in general Tolkien's lack of women - especially unmarried women - and their lack of character development when they do exist throws things off. I could write steamy Diamond of Long Cleeve/Estella Bolger erotica, but I'd have to make their personalities up from whole cloth, so it wouldn't really count.

(Dropping back to the other kinds of ships, I tend to stick with canon in Middle-earth, and I've never seen a slash pairing that convinced me, though I have written both a gay elf and a lesbian dwarf.)

Other canons are more viable, mostly because when you have a large enough cast you can write anything. Sticking with the big-name canons, I can't pass up this opportunity to unveil my new fic: a femslash (as mentioned) tale from the USS Voyager, starring one of those minor characters who nevertheless is developed enough to write:

The Ill-Fated Love Life of Tal Celes, a romance in 11 chapters (rolling out over the next couple of weeks).

In summary? I will generally respect the canon (except when the canon is WRONG [/Team Jacob]), am not particularly attached to any specific ships, and will mostly write femslash if anything for philosophical reasons.

hS

Chapters 2&3 are now up. (nm) by Huinesoron on 2017-10-12 12:08:00 UTC Reply

Well... by Thoth on 2017-10-09 22:24:00 UTC Reply

I really go against canon. And I will *only* ship if there is canon support. Period.

That also means no arbitrary orientation-changing: If canon says the characters are straight, then they are straight, unless you can give me a VERY compelling reason for them not to be. Which means I will very rarely write slash... at least for common pairings.

Well, okay, I never write slash (shut up, that doesn't count), but if I DID...

OTOH, if you write a really good slashfic or shipfic that DOESN'T follow these rules, it doesn't necessarily mean I'll hate it. It just has to be very well written. I think The Shoebox Project might be an example of that, but I haven't gotten to the slash part yet, so I dunno.

There is at least one exception, which is that I might ship something - in an AU, obviously. Shipfics are kind of implied AU to an extent - if it is A) adorable, and B) fits canon reasonably well. Namely, I am a strong proponent of shipping Primarch Vulkan and A relatively (emphasis on relatively) normal Nocturnian girl who has, somehow, caught his attention. I dunno. Maybe she's really good at blacksmithing. Not as good as he is, obviously, but... good for a mortal.

I don't trust myself to write this, so I haven't worked out the details, but... trust me, it would be adorable!

Tangential point re: orientation by Tomash on 2017-10-09 22:38:00 UTC Reply

Now, to give various slash authors some justification, most characters aren't explicitly specified to be straight, and bi people are a thing.

(Now, I don't think I'd use this because I'm not super-interested in writing that sort of thing, but it could be used to support a slashfic without adding another extra point of divergence to the implied AU or maybe without breaking canon at all.)

Fair Enough by Thoth on 2017-10-10 13:27:00 UTC Reply

As usual, I've stated my position poorly. I'll see if I can do better the second time around.

Many popular ships are for characters with pre-existing canon relationships. Which can imply orientation, or at least something about that character. People are bi, and people experiment, so it's often not so much orientation that's the problem as it is personality in many cases. There are many fics that just outright ignore canon relations, which... breaks things. James would not be getting it on with Sirius as an adult, because James is absolutely in love with Lilly, and would never do that to her.

Oh yeah by Tomash on 2017-10-10 13:45:00 UTC Reply

Existing relationships and the personality that makes them start and continue are things you can't quite just toss out the window because it breaks characters. Unless you're taking the position that the author is Wrong about who some character would/wouldn't get into a relationship with, which I seem to remember being a fairly common claim among Harry/Hermione shippers back in the day.

Your example of James/Sirius as adults would need a good deal of explaining before I'd buy it.

- Tomash

And that's my biggest concern: by Thoth on 2017-10-10 13:58:00 UTC Reply

Characters

I really don't care what you do in terms of a lot of things. But if you mess with the characters that I know and love...

Well, THAT is what gets me angry.