character shipping

Effraeti has provided a very appropriate subject for this week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic:

With the in-game World Event “Love is in the Air” and its correlation with IRL Valentine’s Day next week, I have been thinking about character love interests (and also because I am a hopeless romantic). 🙂

Who is your main character’s love interest? Are they involved with someone, do they pine for someone?

Many bloggers lately have been discussing playing with IRL couples who raid together. How would this transfer to the characters they play? Why would their characters slay dragons together?

BTH and I have leveled our mains together and raided together. At the moment, we’re not raiding together, but I anticipate that we will level to 90 together in Mists. Because Ronada and Kamalia are both female toons, however, I have always described them as being favorite cousins — although I respect the people I know who are LGBT, it is not something my own characters will ever be. Kamalia did have a secret crush on Karthip, the male Tauren Warrior who was the main tank of the guild with whom she ran Kara, Naxx2.0, and Ulduar, but by and large I’ve tended to think of her as being single, and not too fussed about it. Interacting with the orphans during Children’s Week does make her hear the ticking of her biological clock more loudly for awhile, though.

Kerisa leveled to 80 with BTH’s Warrior, Watha, who happened to be BTH’s only male Tauren character.

I imagined them as being a betrothed couple, but I never brought up the idea with BTH because I thought he’d laugh at it. By the time we reached 80, BTH had decided that he wasn’t really excited about playing a Warrior. He stopped playing the character not long after we reached 80, while Kerisa continued on to gear up for and raid Trial and ICC. Kerisa eventually leveled up to 85, but Watha is still level 80. I still imagine them as a couple, and they are probably married by now, though I’m not sure when exactly it would have happened.

Kymberlea is married with four children, and the tension between her RP story and the adventuring, questing lifestyle means that she’ll probably be lucky to make it as far as level 40. Kenosha is married, and Keshona is her grown daughter. Kimorene, Kandrista, and Keriluna are all widows. Kimorene‘s husband died in the Plague and she now lives with her son and his family in Stormwind, Kandrista‘s was killed fighting Arthas’s forces during the Battle of Silvermoon, and Keriluna‘s was one of the Druids slumbering in the Dor’Danil Barrow Den. Kelilla has hinted to me that she had a love interest whom she believes to have perished during the initial irradiation of Gnomeregan, but I’m uncertain how close the relationship actually was. Kazuliza once had an unrequited crush on Ace, and since her sham affair with Chip, she has been a little bitter and sworn off getting involved in new relationships for awhile.

Until they tell me otherwise, I assume that all of my other characters are single and happily so.

As for NPCs, well, my favorite craxy relationship idea of Cataclysm is this Orc pairing:

“Ahh, there she is. The battle-maiden of the Dragonmaw. Let me see your face.” — Garrosh Hellscream
“I don’t know how Garrosh Hellscream does it. He must possess great strength to hold together a force as diverse as the Horde… I should like to know him more.” — Warlord Zaela

Zaela’s statement could certainly be taken in a pragmatic, all-business sort of way, but I can’t resist the temptation to read it in a shippy sort of way and imagine that she has a crush on Garrosh. 😛