#darkships

craig and karen i tried drawing in a more anime style. **this is ship art** craig takes care of both kenny and karen whenever he comes over and makes sure they are safe And brings stripe over because it makes karen happy and stripe has play dates with the rats at kenny's house. And craig lets karen do his hair and decorate his hat and doesny complain because karens just a litle girl and craig is very protective over her. Because he knows how much she means to kenny

Proshipping 🌈🍖: Believing that people shouldn't get harassed for their ships. (Ship and let ship)

Not problematic ↑↑

Darkshipping 🎱🎀: Can include shipping dubcon/noncon, abuse, manipulation, or anything that's morally incorrect. (Most do not condone these in real life and understand that it's bad)

Can be problematic, but can also be unproblematic ↑↑

Comshipping 🕊⚠: A complicated or complex ship such as a legal age gap, mortal x immortal, villain x hero, monster x human, etc

Thank you very much for your kind words. This is an excellent and very interesting question. (For those wondering anon is referencing this post).

Personally I actually think that Tom probably would not go for that except possibly as a very last resort in a situation of great need. Tom appears to be averse to any type of physical touch in the series. As far as I recall, we only see three instances where he makes physical contact with another person - when Dumbledore solicits a handshake from him when they first meet, when Hepzibah Smith pinches his cheek, and when he touches Harry for a moment in the graveyard to show that he can. Of these instances, only one was initiated by him, and that was out of necessity. The other two were tolerated but clearly made him uncomfortable, especially in the second case.

Other than that he doesn't touch anyone. His followers kiss his robe hem, not his hand or foot. He uses magic to hurt them but never touches them. He also was likely never touched much in the orphanage, except possibly as a punishment, so it probably became something he was neither accustomed to or enjoyed. (He does seem to actively enjoy petting and holding Nagini, which is lowkey weirdly adorable.)

In the case of Hepzibah Smith he does bring flowers to keep her happy (possibly at the behest of his superiors) but otherwise does not act flirtatious at all and in fact seems desperately determined to ignore her advances and keep the conversation focused on work. If he wanted to he could've batted his eyelashes at her and flirted back to try to get information or money/gifts out of her but he actively chooses not to despite being quite poor and having much to gain. Incidentally, this is part of why I think coming across the locket was a coincidence and not a plan, since he doesn't seem to be actively trying to learn anything about what objects she has. (As an aside, given the way she feels entitled to touch him without his consent or any indication that he welcomes such behavior, I think his decision to kill her may have been over more than just the locket.)

There's also Bellatrix. She clearly would like to have a romantic relationship with him and marrying her would have materially benefited him. It would have gotten him more acceptance into the Pureblood circles he was moving in and gotten him access to her tremendous personal assets including her vaults. Note that in book 7, he stores the cup in her vault because he probably doesn't have one of his own and is presumably still #broke. However, he goes out of his way not to marry her. Because he doesn't want to. Because he would rather use up-front means to get what he wants - through compulsion or fear or force or loyalty - than by offering himself in that manner. (Given that he was extremely attractive and that he grew up in a vulnerable position in abject poverty he was probably already familiar with this as an option and actively sought to avoid it, which may have played into his avoidance in later life as well.)

So yeah, I personally think he'd avoid trying to seduce someone into something if he could. That said, I think there's probably fodder for an interesting fic if someone tweaked the circumstances or the characters just right.

As to whether it would have worked, maybe? But it probably would've made everything 1000 times worse. I don't think Dumbledore is someone who would become besotted and easy to manipulate as a result. I think if anything it would make him more dangerous. I could definitely see him doing some mental gymnastics to justify to himself why indulging would be actually very noble and selfless and all for the "greater good." But that mental gymnastics would also come with even more justifications for why this proved Tom was inherently evil and the spawn of Satan. So I don't think it would make him likely to look on Tom more favorably.

If anything, it would make him more likely to want to control and degrade and humiliate him even more than we see in canon. It would also probably make him even more fixated (if that's possible lol) on him than we see in canon. I could also see a scenario where Dumbledore potentially did some mental gymnastics to justify why pursuing Tom would be for 'his own good' / 'the greater good of society' etc. So yeah, all this could again be good fic fodder, but I don't think it would end up working out that great for Tom in the majority of circumstances.

Except perhaps in a scenario where Dumbledore ends up putting off certain plans to destroy him so he could play a more prolonged and personal game to destroy him which also would involve some type of romantic/sexual element as well (definitely purely due to necessity of course) and Tom using this to 1) take advantage of the delay and Dumbledore's own belief in his superiority to put plans of his own into motion and 2) create situations where Dumbledore ends up sacrificing his own people to keep said elaborate game going. But again I don't think Tom would prefer to use that approach, especially with someone like Dumbledore given their history. I think he'd much rather just have a clean and fair fight.

Tbh I’m having trouble coming up with examples. despite the reputation I’ve been building, I’m not much of a shipper. I usually prefer *dark content* to specific *dark ships*.