#certaintrumpets

SO ACTUALLY Stabship was born because of a Celedil/Wenselyr AU! One where Celedil wasn't a Commander of the Thalmor and Wenselyr never found/adopted his son (thus taking away a source of stability for him) and instead became a sort of bandit. The point is, Celedil is Elegia's godfather, and she sometimes visited them with her son. And, well. She and Wenselyr fought a lot, in a sparring type of way, and became the kind of friends who seem mean to each other on the outside, but actually are good friends. That became Stabfriends.

Then Trump and I started talking about Wen and Elegia, and they evolved into a kind of.. darker sort of ship? Stabship was born. Most of our aus revolve around them having a relationship that's both right and wrong at the same time. They're cruel to each other at times, but they also love each other a lot. It's almost never a healthy relationship, but it's a strong one, you know?

One of our aus is what we call ConAu, where in the West, about the time of the Wild West, Wen and Elegia run into each other and become a sort of Bonnie and Clyde. They're both not really right in the head, and develop a very codependent relationship while they co around committing crimes. Another au deals with the idea of Superheroes naturalized into a police force, and they're still not really... healthy. But they have in jokes and tease each other outside of the cruelty, and lash out when they're hurt but always come back together. Another au is when they're both crooners in the 50s, and it's still pretty toxic and competitive. I think one of the biggest reasons why they really work as a couple is because neither one of them back down from the other. They keep going at each other, and they're really the only ones that don't give up in the face of the other's anger, or snideness. They're a match for each other, essentially.

I don't think the Wen that takes part of Stabship is inherently different from the Wen that falls in love with Celedil. Both are calm, reserved, don't really express emotion that well, and take for frickin ever to realize or admit that they have feelings. And though Wen is capable of a lot of generosity and good feelings, he's not, at his core, very kind. He's as mellow as he is with Celedil because he had his son Bielrin to focus on when he was drifting through life in a fog, something to be stable for. And because he was a father, he was a lot more ready and willing to give people a chance. In the au where he's a bandit, and didn't have Bielrin, he became cold and calculating and actually took over and lead a bandit group. He doesn't have problems with killing.

What's different about the ship with Elegia is that while Celedil calms him and balances him, gives him peace, Elegia challenges him and keeps him on his toes. She doesn't stop being aggressive, so he lets himself be aggressive right back- he has to, to survive her. He does have a sort of peace with her, but it's not very much like the one he has with Celedil. It's more of a connection than a peacefulness, a knowledge that while she won't let him relax, she'll have his back if he needs her. And vice versa.

And like the Celedil ship, Wen's ship with Elegia still ends up focusing on family a lot, how Wen and Elegia deal with each other's sons. (you see a pattern here? good, because family gives me the strongest feelings about my characters and their ships, good lord)

It started out mostly on accident, how things do, saying how cool a relationship between my character Wenselyr (cold, emotionally reserved, logical) and Syster's Celedil (also emotionally reserved, more physical and not so logical, both of them having difficulty recognizing and acting on emotions, also) (and because it would be a twilight romance- Wenselyr is the equivalent of 40, and Celedil more like 50 or 60). This was... almost a year ago? In Tumblr TES RP land.

But Celedil was in another ship at the time, Froopoo's Dante, so it mostly stayed as a joke we occasionally talked about. Sometimes we'd even talk about an OT3 with Wenselyr, Celedil, and Dante. But then Froo left TESRP after a particularly heartwrenching plot (i'm still not over that if you're reading this Froo I'M STILL NOT) and by that time Syster and I were talking regularly every day.

So we began talking about this ship in earnest. And making posts about it in the rp to the point that other people began shipping it too, even when it wasn't 'official' for the characters and wouldn't be for, god, forever. We started having aus to work out the relationship... bandit ones and ones where Wenselyr DIDN"T leave Summerset Isle for Cyrodiil when he was young, aus where they knew each other as youths and when they fought together in the Oblivion Crisis. And the thing is

The thing is they work together so well. Wenselyr isn't a very sexual character, no matter if he's male or female, and he has real trouble developing friendships and romantic relationships. He's capable of it, but it just... comes really slowly for him. But once he's realized it, he gets very decided and assertive about it, in a quiet way. And Celedil is sexual, and responds to emotion more and shows it more, and he has an even harder time recognizing romance even if it bit him in his face, and even then he goes on trying to get over it or deny it. And when they do get together, after the trials Sys and I put them through, and the fighting and bickering, it's just so

so

They have such strong feelings of love and family, both Wen and Celedil are fathers, and they just love their children so much, and they become such dads and ugh I swear the family feelings they give us just kills me. Don't even get me started on the aus where they're grandparents, or god help me, parents together. Even in aus where they start out young, it always ends up being about family.

They work in their original forms as middle aged or elderly Altmer, they work as young men, as young women, as demons and humans and as mythological beasts, as ... as anything and they can hit me right in the heart every time.

And it's never boring. Trust me, I know boring ships. Ships that were brilliant and moving and beautiful the first go round, but every other au they're put in just feels like regurgitating past events and it just gets so tired. I've had plenty of those ships. But not Wenselyr and Celedil! They change a little bit to suit every au we put them in and no matter what changes, the things that stay the same are always incredibly sweet and sad and moving, and the things that change are also painfully sweet and sad and moving.

EVEN THE SUPPORTING CAST. Their histories stay roughly the same, the supporting cast stays and changes a little bit to suit the au, and even they are perfect, they just help to complete Wen and Celedil so much, and they've evolved over the months to become characters in their own rights that we care about and agonize over. Don't even get me started on them, I could go on for days.

HELP ME. Just. I want to yell about them a lot

And that's the mega otp, I haven't even touched on stabship, which is Wenselyr and certaintrumpets' Elegia (a fiery, explosive woman), and all their aus that are just a bit dark and twisted. They fight a lot and snipe at each other a lot and there is a frickle frackin reason we call them Stabship, and ugh. Okay. Okay. I won't take up more space with this particular OTP, but they are just as bad as Wen and Celedil, in a darker side of the coin kind of way. 

I can't even list the aus I have for these two OTPS- Okay I can but it would take more fingers than I currently possess, I'll save you the pain.

A for regular ships, I just

I have too many

like twenty it seems like sometimes