Your Characters and Romantic Relationships

[bluesidra]

Hi, hello you guys!

I'm curious about your characters and how they handle their romantic relationships.

What is their orientation? Are they actively looking for a partner? How important is having a romantic relationship for them? What would they want in a partner and in a relationship? How comfortable are they with the physical side (holding hands included) side of a relationship? Did they already have relationships and why did those end?

Please go wild! We're talking about platonic friendships so often, but I'm kinda curious as to how your characters would handle romantic relationships, even if they are purely hypothetical.

 

[BossCar]

Alright, here's how Valen and Rosa got together. They've been together for five and a half years. (They geek out together over art. )

She first met Valen as his persona's name, because Hilda wouldn't let him give his real name at first. Rosa won a raffle to meet him. Her celebrity crush ended up being the person who had a crush on her, and vice versa.

Later, Hilda introduced them personally. Valen found her pretty, but it was her adorable personality that led to him crushing hard on her. For Rosa, it was Valen's charm.

Valen did make a move, but after learning about her past bad luck, he waited for her. This is when her romantic feelings became stronger for him. He waited over a year to make it official, developing a blurred platonic/unofficial romantic relationship with her in the meantime.

Hilda and Valen were officially involved very briefly, and Valen may or may not have had a fling with Skyla. Melanie and him did try to be friends with benefits at one point. However, Valen soon realized that sexual intimacy was at the very bottom for him. He valued the other forms of intimacy much more, and still does. He doesn't ignore looks at all. but he's not superficial and never was. He despises purely superficial attraction. He cried when he saw Melanie, Hilda, Rosa, and others be the target of that, because they've never showed him anything less than unconditional love. (When he wants to be friends with a woman, it’s because he likes her personality.)

As for Rosa, her first ghosted, her second cheated on her, and the third tried to "toughen her up." So her hesitation wasn't because of Valen, but her exes. What Valen did can still move her to tears. It's one reason why it's either him or bust.

EDIT: Making some tweaks to their backstory. They've known each other for longer, they played a prank on Hilda, and she developed her feelings overtime. He definitely developed a crush on her first, though.

 

[K_S]

Written on my phone pardon the typos.

As a rule of thumb I tend to avoid romance. Of my most recent tales I've three minor romance arches as background tales that hit three vest different notes... Nit all are pokemon based.

Unkindness seen by light of day:
tos fanfic.

Characters: Father Tylor Sancrest (OC) X Raine Sage

Start of fanfic status: hes pining and wrestling with the issues thier relationship will bring in thier lives... She is pretending to be oblivious because she's very aware of those issues and has her own as well.

Both are affectionate and watch each others back. Keeping an eye on the varried factions and shielding each other from the mechanism of those in power as they both prioritize putting the towns children first and thier own saftey second and have found an ally in the other for that goal and treasure that aspect between the two of them.

How it progresses
Incredibly slow burn.

Both play "team mom/dad" to a mainly underage cast and hide thier issues by wildly mother henning the rest of the kids under thier watch and focusing on the various disasters the group staggers from. Both state "saving the world more important if we are both alive at the end of this then we'll figure it out".

Thier own issues get resolved and they do start to explore thier feelings. Eventually. But it gets ugly.

Raine Sage is outted as a half elf (she'd been passing as a full blooded elf to avoid the worst of the persecution) and lost most of her rights and personhood as a result. She has to find her own way in the world and is flaberghasted to realize
1 tylor knew this already, didnt care, and had been falsifying reports to the church to cover for her.
2 tylor had been falsifying her baby brothers reports (saying they were step sibs.) so that if she got outted her preteen brother wouldnt automatically get taken from her and executed to prevent him from "spreading his taint".

Tylor winds up losing his status as a priest, his income, and basically his purpose in life about half way into the story. Hes excommunicated and nearly executed... Then his world view gets thrown into the blender when in "tales of " fashion he and the cast realize thier worldview was based off of a lie.

And everyone has to cope with the fall.out of the "big lie". The world possibly ending if they dont find a solution to the base problem that inspired that lie. As well as several millenia of racial tensions and being members of a mixed race group and a mixed faction group.

It gets tense to say the least.


Conclusion
They wind up together but lose so much.

Tylor loses his faith in his church and most of his fellow man. He gets defrocked, nearly publically executed and exiled from his hometown and a good chunk of civilization. He basically has to leave all of advanced civilization and ends up a tinkerer/healer/good will ambassador. And while with help he pulls himself together to find a new purpose (becoming mayor of the first renegade civilian town) it takes years and a lot of hardship to get to that point.

Raine attempts to combat against human half elf fascism and improve relations while giving her little brother a safe haven and when that falls through she winds up taking to the road and she makes a less steady living moving from the varried half elf ghettoes and improvong thier lot as best she can before moving on...

They keep in contact via letters. Friends. The occasional meeting but Tylor's a wanted man and hunted despite doing everything right.... and so wont join with them.

Eventually they both settle among the newly made town actually meeting at its gates. Raine critical and pointing out its flaws and Tylor wryly rolling with it until she finally asks "whose in charge?". And he avoids "will talk to the committy" sort of chatter and points out building something from nothing is "a long term sort of effort" he " might be a member... Or the mayor" and she loses it because hes hinted but never said out of fear of thier corispondance being decoded.

They do get a more nauscenced version of "happily ever after"... They get a "we can try to be together. No lies. a calling. And see how it works" sort of ending...

Out of the three they get the best ending but go through the worst to get there.

Roost a gift fic:
pokemon fanfic MANGA verse

Pairing: manga!giovanni x seviii's mayor (OC)

Start of fic status: aquaintinces at best. They meet and greet at a kanto/seviii conference to improve human/'mon and state relationships. Shes interested he is bored but not above a fling to pass the time.

Focus/purpose/ect:
Story wise the relationship is a means to an end to keep all the authority in one spot after Green makes a certian discovery and needs to report it to a higher power. By having them tentativly cohabiting she doesnt have to make more than one trip/ report though when she realized they were having "an adult sleep over" she's mildly traumatized to say the least.

It also keeps giovanni from being 100 percent villainous as him dating gives him the excuse not to do Rocket things 24/7 and workaholic he is he sorta needs an outside excuse not to. It also allows some humanization of giovanni and gives Green amd later Silver a springboard to ask after Silver's mom which cumlates to gio holding a conference between Silver Green and his "maybe" girlfriend. Hand over face groaning in rapid fire reply...

"No shes not Silvers Mom. No we arent getting married. I like red heads I will explain when you are older. No silvers /not/ getting a baby sib after this. You ask one more question and i will confistate all your badges Green..."

And the good mayor is losing it trying not to laugh her head off because this is the best comedy gold shes gotten in years.

Result:
Suffice to say its not long term.

Nearly every attempt at dating goes badly and giovannis facade of "suave forigner" falls flat the more seviiis mayor spends with him. She does find him funny and a bit charming but hes, to quote her, "a forest of red flags".

They do go on a handful of dates. Bond. And gio warms from seeing her as "physical entertainment" to "multi purpose useful" to "if youre interest in a long term friends with benefits I woudlnt mind" but goes no further.

She nopes out of the relationship after they have to do a semi ethical break in together. Affectionately refering him as the "nicest two faced" shes ever dated but kicks him out. Wishing him well with fixing jis "insane home life. Good luck de feralizing Silver and Green hes going I to need it". And not trusting him and cutting him off 100 percent as she worries that being with him would endanger seviiis state secrets.

Then the political quagmire really hits and both seviiis mayor and giovanni are up to thier ears in international politics, gang wars, and violence so tjere wouldnt have been more time for anything else after anyway...

(Shes 100 percent correct but hes already done his snoopong /damage before that point so cutting him out doesnt do much good at that point and just gives him more free time to weaponize what he stole.)

Two paths:

pokemon fanfic ANIME AU verse.

Characters/relationships: past giovanni sakaki x "Delia katchem" aka diamondshipping. current oak/Delia shipping.

Start of fic status: he thinks shes dead shes very happy to keep it that way. Delia and oaks relationship is also developing now that they get time alone.

Focus/purpose: Thier relationship is a background tension that doesnt come into focus over until the end of.the fanfic. Giovannis under state supervision per his parole and settles into pallet cohabiting with prof. Oak and grudgingly working with the police. He doesnt even know about his ex living in pallet until about the first third of this fanfic (and three prequel fanfics) until he links her to Ash by accident. Having thought her dead he's moved on... Until he realizes she left him per his criminal empire and boy does that bring issues up.

Its even worse when giovanni realizes that "Delia" ( her name is actually an alias) went missing and about about nine months after they splitamd she had a kid. She claims the kid (ash) was born of her relationship with "will" and he wants answers because he strongly suspects Ash is his... And Delia manages to wiggle out of confirming anything for over sixty chapters and giovanni's status of ex criminal overlord under government "supervision" curltails his rights enough he never gets concrete answers.

Eventually with enough soul searching and a trip through a lotus event where he uses the attempted torture to see his issues through multiple angles (and winds up killing her in multiple Aus where the stay together) he winds up overtly dropping all interest in Ash and Delia realizing any relationship with either or is a fantasy and hes really not interested and tries to move on...

Resolution:
A mix match of mistakes and disasters and fall out from the lotus machine incident messes up the rest of the cast so bad Giovannis left caretaker of all of its victims. He finds out Ash has learned Giovanni might be his father from this incident and when he tries to get answers/closure... Delia crosses a moral line hard. Taking Ash to get "psychic treatment" she authorizes a wipe of the traumatic episode that also is how Ash put the pieces together. Ash resisted the treatment and as such lost more memories as a result...

Ash is a royal mess. Giovanni "Delia" and oak now are the only ones that know what really happened. And the fall out is such that any hope of delia gio getting back together is zilch. Oak and delias relationship is strained to the point hes starting to pull out of every contact with Delia... So is crash amd burn a catagory? Because all the established romances crashed and burned....

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

I tend to write Jirarudan as being rather averse of other people, but let's be honest with ourselves. We've seen the movie. We saw how he reacted to something he loved. All of that obsessive zeal and determination to obtain Lugia...imagine that directed at a *person*. He would be *terrifying* if he was in love.

 

[K_S]

I tend to write Jirarudan as being rather averse of other people, but let's be honest with ourselves. We've seen the movie. We saw how he reacted to something he loved. All of that obsessive zeal and determination to obtain Lugia...imagine that directed at a *person*. He would be *terrifying* if he was in love.

I imagine he'd inspire things such as "restraining orders" and the like in the 'mon verse if he were to actually apply his attention to a person rather than his ambitions...

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Oh probably. Though he's a crafty one.
There's a reason I've never written a romance with him, because it would very quickly take a turn for the worse. Well...ok the first fic I wrote for him was a romance but it was very bad and he uh, ended up very badly off in it anyway because of his obsessive zeal.

 

[Persephone]

Pixie fell in love once, but then she tried to look behind her crush and learned they were just a mirror. She’s still heartbroken.

Shitpost aside, spoilers ahead:

Cuicatl is unsure of her orientation in-universe and hasn’t put a lot of thought into it. She fundamentally doesn’t believe she’s attractive / desirable enough for it to matter.

Kekoa does not have a crush on his boss. No sir. Nothing to see here.

Genesis is gay and currently trying to fix that. Which is unfortunate since if she could just accept her sexuality she’d probably be the only one of the main narrators capable of handling a relationship at this point in time.

It may or may not happen later. I have no firm shipping plans or anything. I myself am asexual and borderline aromantic so idk if I’d be up for writing it. I don’t see it as something that needs to happen in this story since so much of it is about deep insecurities that could inhibit a relationship. But I am curious of toying with the idea that you have to love yourself to be worthy of love, so we’ll see if I do anything with that.

 

[K_S]

It'll be interesting to see where those tales and thier dysfunctional dynamics and potential healings wind up.... Did you have links by any chance?


And so not to be utterly off topic...

You know most of my relationships end with the character either losing thier other half as background (ex Yuan Kratos) Chronically not interested. (Even, Raine... Honestly 90 percent of my adult cast). Or too young to be interested (most of my characters are kid heros so rule applies).

Basically my casts tend to avoid the big R as a rule of thumb... Possibly a tie in to my own persuasion which is... Well I am not 100 percent sure. I just say grey and leave it at that.

My only other exception is.oddly another giovanni

Story: transversal
Genre. Au manga from the soulsilver arch
Start of fic status: they have a happily married dynamic but she is killed a bit before Silvers abduction and things were starting to get strained as she was begining to realize he was involved in crime and making contact with the police.

Her death was by sabatoge of her car while she was out driving. Source a rival Team faction. Silver was with her and it was a miracle he survived and Giovanni was just adjusting to her death and solo fatherhood when the abduction happened.

As the story goes on: reincarnated a pale shade of herself by CelebI who peeked in Gios head, saw all that juicy trauma and pain potential, and talked Jir' for wishing her into existance with a "lets give him his beloved back" then proceeds to staple that reincarnation into the role of assistant protag for the Moon plot. Which guarantees Gio has to deal with her.

How it progesses.resolves:
he goes into blue screen of death when he sees her. Saving her and Nebby from his hungry Beedrill out of instinct. And at first seeing her is an agony. Bringing all the what ifs in his head that never got resolved. His head is a mess and he's stuck comparing who she was to the Legend version...

And as time wears on ... He starts seeing her as she is for who she is. Moving on from the guilt grief of his past relationship. Furthermore while the Legends try to fuel the flames. Making her get infatuated and whatnot Gio winds up emotionally and physically distancing and he is honest with her from the get go. Letting her down gently. Estsblishing that he is scalds older than he looks, he's got a kid, obligations, ect to disuade her.

The rather base realization that his wife would be in her thirties and this doppleganger might be sixteen at most is a massive turn off for him and he calls it the crime it is and won't cross that line. Tells her he won't.

And she in turn pulls back from him. Because outisde pressures aside he has said no and she respect that. And he keeps saying no and she doesnt force anything.

They do wind up as friends though and I can see this Gio at stories conclusion getting back into dating once Silvers settled and the Legend mess resolved.

 

[Nikita Dracovish]

My weird-ass take on Misty (and May, and Dawn, and Serena...) is basically just Ashsexual. Never had eyes for anyone else. Childhood friends and Ash making an impression on her several times and all that.

 

[Navar]

My main character is basically: gay gay homosexual gay.

 

[Venia Silente]

How comfortable are they with the physical side (holding hands included)

Reported for lewd

Yeah no, seriously, I don't write too much romance if any, but when I do, it's usually about two certain poisonous furballs:

Inka and Baluarkos, my main Nidorina/Nidoqueen OC and her silly beau. They are Nidoran, so their orientation is basically "make more furballs". That said, they had busy lives until they met (and busy after, but you get what I mean) so it wasn't a thing that, like, just happened.

Inka is an older Nidorina formerly trained for some 10+ years and now she craves something more. Without the boundaries of human settlements and rules. At her more advanced age, she looks for interesting potential mates that are clever, full of energy and young, so she's more or less a cougar. Baluarkos is just a random run of the mill wild Nidorino, an outcast or a homeless so not even a colony denizen proper. They met for the first time when the troop he was in went into a human town to look for trouble and he managed to get inside the Pokémart she was in. She was still trained back then. Wrote about the experience in my one-shot "Silly human, romance is for Nidoran~!" (yes, the ~ is part of the title~). Years after once she's back on the wild, some of their life as a mated couple shows up in "Tricks of the Love Fast" which is basically my Valentines multichapter.

So in general they are lovely to each other and it's obvious who wears the pants in the burrow (Inka *is* Champion level in at least one of my continuities) but the important thing is they both contribute to the burrow and they also give a lot of little Nidos (17~20 so far of which I've named 7 and 4 have had screentime, really need to figure out screentime for the others).

I can seriously recommend Nidos, they are p romantic.

Kekoa does not have a crush on his boss. No sir. Nothing to see here.

This kind of crush is always fun to see, kindly pretty please point me to where I can chuckle reading it?

My weird-ass take on Misty (and May, and Dawn, and Serena...) is basically just Ashsexual

Onepersonsexuality is highly relatable, but I have to admit I'm not sure if to shudder or to laugh at the idea of crushes centered on Ash of all things. Hopefully for them it ends well and they can choose better.

 

[Persephone]

@Venia Silente

Broken Things. On mobile so no link right now. And a, uh, small warning that it’s a darker story than my jokes make it out to be.