wankgate | 251: back in my day wank meant something

ayrt and yeah, that's exactly the sort of thing i mean. there wouldn't be anything contradicting canon for two players to come in with erwin and levi and treat them as though they're an existing ship as long as they played it in a way that would fit into canon because them being a ship could plausibly work within the confines of what we're shown in canon. saying "yeah these characters have been quietly dating for a while" doesn't necessarily go against canon as long as the characters are being played ic and the ship itself doesn't contradict anything in canon.

could use more punctuation cos what

anon is arguing that people playing characters as having an established relationship is by default an au. another anon countered with a example where the characters being in an established relationship fits easily into canon even if it isn't explicit canon. people agreed that it's not the ship that makes something an au as long as they're adhering to ic behavior and the ship doesn't directly contradict canon in any way.

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

op here, i mentioned that tdm because it seemed jarring even to me with my limited knowledge of ff14 to see the wol and npc players write as if the ship was a confirmed totally happening thing, the characters were the love of each other's lives, super passionate etc etc etc - so yeah, doing it for an audience, as you say.

meanwhile the rest of the ff14s just threaded around them so there's one big part of the audience that wasn't touching that nonsense ig. can't recall whether the game allowed app challenges because if they did and a challenge wol appeared wanting to ship with the npc it's another mess waiting to happen.

didn't the devs say that the wol's relationships with the npcs could be whatever you wanted them to be though? i swear i remember them saying that in a live letter once and that they had written the npc relationships as ambiguous specifically for that reason.

they purposely keep things ambiguous to please both the shippers and the non-shippers, while throwing bones to each popular NPC's simps from time to time. it may seem like a lot of characters are flirting with the wol on first read, but you're basically supposed to imagine their intent however makes sense for your character's story.

the only NPC they really couldn't write their way out of it was Haurchefant, and even then, some wols have him friendzoned in favor of other NPCs. first and last instance of "character that is definitely in love with you" in this game.

yeah, that's what i thought. i felt like i remembered them saying that they weren't going to do any overt romance (haurchefant aside) but that people should feel free to imagine what they want in terms of relationships, so basically any and all wol/npc ships have the devs' blessing.

"feel free to imagine whatever you want" still doesn't make something definitively canon, though. in a psl it's fine, but suppose you, a mod, let in Protag and Love Interest, obviously friends, who've decided that their headcanon is their characters got married at some point - something not supported by canon, though they could say it's not denied, either. you figure it only affects them and allow it. later, Love Interest gets swept in activity check, but Protag sticks around. a new player of the other character apps in.

i don't even need to explain how this is awkward at best and potentially godmoding at worst. if they'd developed that relationship more and gotten married after joining, that'd just be something the new player could ignore; but it's weirder if someone else's unsupported headcanon now contradicts their own characterization.

this is something that the mods of one large game asked a wol to change in their history, and for good reason.

eh, i don't really see how that's any different from a case of a canon that has multiple routes/paths. like if someone apps the mc from persona 5 from a route where they maxed ann's social link and decided to date her, that doesn't mean they can just go straight for a new ann if the previous player they had been shipping with dropped.

that's something that can actually happen in p5 though, and it can't in ff14.

this reason is honestly kind of baffling to me because this is something that can happen in game and not just because of apping in with headcanon

i kind of remember this. wasn't the main problem that the wol tried to say they were married to haurchefant without the haurchefant player's permission?

I don't think there was a Haurchefant player at the time but yes.

I'm kinda surprised by this, because I feel like G'raha's overtures are really clear in SHB

I don't disagree with what you're saying, you probably know more than I do, but like. that catboy came on real strong is all

arguably Haurchefant isn't 100% canonically in love with the wol in the first place, but most of the fandom is pretty convinced he is based on the various language texts and the general vibe of his story. it's entirely possible to spin his relationship with the wol as just admiration or lust.

same with G'raha. he did come on pretty strong in later ShB, yes, but it's feasible to write the overtures of admiration off as hero worship or unchecked idolization of the wol in a very unhealthy or non-romantic way. there are players out there who detest G'raha for that reason and have their character detest him too, and even if I disagree with their takes, they've just as much right to be haters as the shippers do to ship with him.

of course they're going to say that shit. it's typical malleable protagonist pr from companies who don't want to give definitive answers that could make the neckbeards who wanna fuck the npcs angry.

it's the same reason people will ride-or-die insist the girl mc in genshin is just as canon as the male mc, despite her never appearing in any official game or character trailers as the protag, because someone asked the devs and was given a vague non-answer to make everyone happy.

i'm gonna say that, as someone who plays genshin but is not completely up the fandom's ass, the femc being "not canon" is not obvious at all and i wonder if any app mod has rejected one on those grounds

it's definitely not obvious when she gets just as much merch as the male mc

The issue with Genshin specifically is that the twin you don't pick as your MC still exists in canon as a character. Whatever twin isn't the Traveler is the Abyss Prince/Princess. IIRC the canon timeline has a male Traveler and a female Abyss Princess.

Compare that to, say, Honkai Star Rail, where whichever Trailblazer you didn't pick just doesn't exist in the game.

that said in HSR they switch up which protagonists is in the new trailers so both get plenty of airtime.

but the option to play as her is still a part of the game, so i think that’s canon enough for rp purposes. it’s like any other game with branching paths, just because route A is treated as the correct path by official material doesn’t mean you can’t app from route B.

251: back in my day wank meant something

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