#valyap

(focusing rly hard) how many heart shapes both overt and hidden can I fit in his design

bonus goob bc I had to figure his design out for this heehee. oh he's so cute

I tend to like a "one consistent whole" approach to how I create and manage character interactions — no conflicting narratives or pairings because I like everything to fit together nicely in one big story! Which means I pick the ones I enjoy the most and let 'er rip, creating what I guess I'll refer to as a "world bubble" but I think others have taken to calling them AUs as well — I pick dynamics that I think maintain the parts I find the most interesting about each character. For example, I will never hc somebody as having (or make an OC that has) an existing familial relationship with Dyle because to me the strongest and saddest part of his narrative is just how utterly isolated he is despite yearning for closeness, that he was always meant to be alone, so any familial relationships would be forged after the fact and not actually biological in nature (found family, or otherwise sort of adopted).

Similarly, the only age stratification we know for certain in DW is basically just this:

OCs added for giggles + to illustrate point

With the vast majority of toons fitting in the "adult" category without much further ado. And this is fine! Literally nothing wrong with it, but when it comes to more detailed and diverse interactions, it can be a bit boring for me. Especially if all the potential dynamics are generally considered to be either romantic or equal-terms friendship in nature due to how flat the age stratification is — I love varied platonic dynamics arguably even more !! There's a whole world out there of potential interfacing between characters at different stages in life, messy and ugly and embarrassing and sweet and beautiful, not to mention the unique torment of being past your prime since the day of your creation or doomed to never grow up, so I choose to stratify further:

OCs added for giggles + to illustrate point — any unsorted toons I just haven't picked their brains enough to decide what my favored age range is for them yet, and even a few of the Adults/Young Adults could swap spots with time; the distinction between adult and young adult doesn't exclude pairings or anything it's just bc that's a big-ass age range otherwise

And this is where my "world bubble" comes back in. See I rly like seeing, for example, Glisten x Rodger, but I'm more interested in (for MY OWN work) exploring the idea that Glisten is an idol who now exists without a manager or anybody to support him — he's in a profession that prizes the young and inexperienced to feed them to the wolves and is notoriously unstable and worsens mental health terribly, plus he's utterly alone in it post-closure. So the idea of Rodger being an impromptu mentor and supportive older figure that, due to his deductive skills, could see through his flimsy act and become somebody Glisten could trust and open up to for support, is rly interesting to me! Plus the idea that they were all sort of accidentally invalidated and infantilized and made to feel on the same level as each other by human caretakers, making their evolving relationships post-closure something very new and confusing, is bittersweet to me. So bc of that I choose to stratify Glisten as younger and Rodger as older, and their relationship as purely platonic and even beginning to verge on familial in nature due to the level of trust involved. Like mentor and mentee — not distinctly family, but older/younger and in a position of platonic trust.

Plus, given how I choose to interpret Rodger's inner world, it opens up the potential of a painful dynamic between an older siblinglike figure feeling responsible for a young child they don't actually have any relation to but are still united with in their affection towards, and worry for, an older paternal figure.

"we are a little concerned about how willing you are to hurt yourself in the pursuit of knowledge peepaw PLEASE don't die"

It's the same as TADC discourse about Kinger x Caine — I prefer creator/creation as being familial bc baby I got mommy and daddy issues it's just the way the cookie crumbles, but the people that portray it as romantic got a GOOD POINT and they're REAL COMPELLING — both are great, just as long as they don't coexist because that's gross. I feel that way about the vast majority of DW pairings as well because they're only canonically stratified into three age groups at *most* and very few of them are confirmed to be related, so any further stratification is purely up to headcanon. Glisten/Rodger family is epic, Glisten x Rodger is epic, as long as they're not implied to be at the same time bc that's nasty

TLDR DW pairings between consenting adults didn't kill my grandma and I have no beef with any romantic pairing as long as it has soul (Jack Frost and Elsa shippers you are everything to me you were so committed) I just pick pairings I like the best for my own personal interpretation and fill out the rest of the cast with platonic dynamics of all kinds to keep things cohesive and interesting for me :))