not that it really matters, but i'm the anon who brought up the counterexample as well as the anon who said I'd reject the wol/npc established relationship; but yeah my point was that it's not always an AU situation and it depends on the characters and canon

but in the wol's case, an established relationship is an AU because it's a POV game that expressly follows your relationships and dynamics with the npcs. shipping is fine and not the issue, it's contradicting canon, as it would be for non-shipping stuff

that said though it wouldn't really matter either way, because if the vibe of two potential players is that they're playing out their ship for an audience as op made it sound like, the easiest thing to do would just be to not extend invites because we've all seen how that plays out a thousand times and nothing of value would be lost without it