Hi friends c: what are the things you consider when shipping characters? It can be your own ocs or canon characters from games/shows ect :o basically, what gets you invested in developing the dynamic between two characters?
when shipping characters i tend to look into the characters themselves and see if there's any sort of thematic parallels or any other interesting literary sort of "vehicles" of development that could either develop each and both characters or illustrate a side of them that could reasonably exist but isn't shown otherwise.
unless i'm making a OC with my girlfriend, then it's just shameless bias for my S/O sorry not sorry fellas
Mostly the possibility of good back and forth between said characters. If you feel more can be squeezed out of their dynamic that's the kind of stuff that motivates me to ship.
When it comes to OCs, another factor is what new possibilities or paths do said shipping open to my OC. IT's why I tend to like when I get to ship characters with friend's OCs cause it opens the doors for brainstorming and back-and-forth of ideas.
Honestly I'm not big on shipping haha. It's usually just a lower priority for me whether it be my chars x my chars or my chars x someone else's chars, or especially canon chars x canon chars.
When my chars are involved it usually has to happen naturally. Engaging dynamics ought to be established, with interesting situations at play. The characters have to feel genuine with each other. It sort of has to jump out at me through this depth because, again, its not really a priority of mine. I prefer exploring characters as individuals than as couples.
At least for deeper romantic stuff. For more...shallow stuff they just need to look good together and have basic chemistry.
First off I think about whether the characters/OCs look good together. Then I consider how their personalities compliment or contrast one another. If I think they could realistically work out then I become invested! I really like when characters actually feel like they’d canonically work out. I think it’s nice when characters look good with each other, but it’s more important to me that they actually make sense.
It has to be with someone who is equally invested with their character as I am IF it’s single ship. I usually prefer single ship pairings as it’s easier for me to manage and I feel like I’m able to develop them more.
I’ve shipped characters where my shipping partner either completely skips on the character or forgets about them entirely and it’s not as fun that way.
I’m also not the biggest fan when a ship is… purely NSFW, I don’t mind NSFW at all because I’m an adult but if that’s the entire foundation of the ship I’m not interested.
When it comes to multiship I'm usually selective ! But I lessen up on rules quite a bit ♡
I mostly only ship w one person (bc i'm too much of a wuss to talk to anyone else abt oc dynamics at all even friendships sfsdgd) but generally if i see a character i like i ask nicely and make my own oc, or he'll do the same, and if we happen to make 2 characters that happen to match up well? cool ship. But for the most part i think its me seeing and going "hey marriage??". I get invested just from talking abt them, bc its hard to make a character who i really dislike, and we just kinda vibe and i get lowkey obsessed for like a week to a month in which the ocs develop rapidly and then i get attatched and u kno,,,
I think the most important think for a ship is that all members involved feel like their own distinct character. That they could very well stand on their own outside the ship, but the ship just elevates them even more. The ship can compensate for their bad traits and or amplify their good ones, but it's crucial the character has those traits to begin with.
For me, I like picturing characters I'm shipping learning more about each other.
Be it big pieces of backstory or tiny little quirks, I get super into imagining the dynamic shifting and growing more outward and multi-faceted as these people paint a more complete picture of the other: learning what makes the other tick and how that in turn can become part of how they themselves tick
Retrospring uses Markdown for formatting
*italic text* for italic text
**bold text** for bold text
[link](https://example.com) for link
