Want to know how to make a WLW ship a real WLW love story?
Have them risk their lives for each other as heroes to each other and do not hold back on how hard, honest and heartbreaking that can be.
This is why battle couples are so sought after as WLW ships.
The mission or the love?
Or alternatively... If you don't want them to be heroes...
The crime or the love?
Nobody said battle couples have to be healthy in terms of what they do and how they do it. Just healthy in terms of them being a couple.
Bonnie and Clyde-style for WLW would be Thelma and Louise.
The love story itself is always so much more compelling that way.
Why do many WLW ships suck or are boring in TV art/entertainment?
It's simple: they're ride or die only when it suits them. Or when the writing can be bothered to depict why they should even be a ship.
But battle couples tend to have this written into the very fabric of their dynamic. Therefore, it doesn't feel contrived or staged or cliche.
It doesn't feel like something the narrative is only acknowledging because it MUST. But because this is how it always IS for them in the sense that just because you don't always see it happen doesn't mean it's not always happening. Non-battle couple WLW ships don't have that. So that's it. That's the key to good WLW representation and storytelling. Battle couples. They do not specifically need to be physical ones. But they do need to have the inclination to protect, defend and save each other from whatever their danger or threat is.
Whether they be heroes or villains, it can still convey a real love story way better than couples that aren't shown to express their devotion through actions over words because battle couples always do this.
It's fundamental to why I love Xena and Gabrielle so much as a ship. I'm not saying they're the only example. But they are the best one. Especially because their need to stand by each other in action is a mutual one and neither character is ever really a damsel in distress. Back to back, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand. They're a real representation of love because they're always fighting for their love.
It's always a struggle. It may even be a sacrifice. But it is real love.
I gotta wonder what, if anything, some of the canon concepts and elements in the Frozen Barrow might mean in the plot of TDP itself, because, well, connecting things is basically what I do - or try to do.
A few ideas jumped out at me right away, and holygod:
1. Viren's Trauma
I think the way Corrupted Trauma works in ToX is answering my concerns on this post about dark mages and why Viren appears in shades of gray instead of in black and white like all the other dark mages we know: Claudia, Kpp'ar, Ziard, and Tressal from ToX.
Viren has Corrupted Trauma, and he's not doing anything to get rid of it because he figured out that it grants him extra magical abilities.
The ToX game mechanic of Stress/Trauma is really interesting. Basically, when your ToX character tries to do something and fails, or when they succeed but have a hitch along the way, they can take some stress over it. As one does. That stress is reflected by giving an extra die to whoever you're rolling against, to make their dice rolls against you potentially stronger, and therefore your character's job just a smidge harder due to their stress.
Except in cases of dark magic, which exclusively uses Corrupted Stress. If a dark mage character takes stress from spellcasting, that gets reflected with an extra die they get to use in their own dice pool. And if they push their stress so far that they take actual Trauma from it, that level of corruption allows them to see dark magic spell effects in the air around them (remember what Viren's looking at in that screencap? He's watching Claudia's dark magic tracker spell zoom across the sky toward the Moon Nexus, and I bet no one else can see it at that distance except Claudia), and to identify other trauma-powered dark mages on sight. It's a delightfully insidious mechanic, encouraging dark mages to remain unhealthy and stressed in order to gain more power. can you say capitalism
It's exactly the vibe I've pictured Viren working under for years - decades - as he tries to help Harrow build and maintain a strong kingdom with peace and allies and prosperity.
2. The Nightmare Wards
In Frozen Barrow, there is a mysterious ancient frostwyrm who has been trapped in an ice cave, and also trapped behind dark magic wards, in an effort to protect the family of the brothers who trapped him. He's been trapped this way for over a thousand years. A dark mage is trying to free him, but the way he's doing that is to turn the wards inside out, basically.
See, the dragon in the cave is very powerful. He could smash through the ice easily. But the wards fill his mind with nightmares and terror, keeping him too afraid to do that. The dark mage's solution is to draw on the wards' magic to create nightmarish specters in his own village and across the countryside, using up their power by terrifying innocent people, until the wards fail and the dragon can break free.
It's as if dark magic created a feedback loop in ward form where it's powered by fear, and that enables it to create more fear, making a stable prison that will last forever unless someone messes with the formula hard enough.
Ready for the angst? Hold on tight.
Behold, a dark magic feedback loop in ward form:
How horrible is THIS headcanon?? Ohmygod. Viren straight up says that everyone he puts into one of these things becomes terrified. If the coins are deliberately created to generate terror - and then they are also powered by that terror - then there is no escape from within, not unless you have a giant mental break and fear itself becomes meaningless. Which... is worse. You can see how that's worse, right?
Oh, it gets worserer: if someone were to try to weaken the coin's warding in similar fashion, they'd have to unleash Runaan's nightmares on themselves - or on others - constantly, to try to burn through his fears faster than they could be regenerated.
Which might imply that, if there were no fear trapping an elf inside a coin prison, they might indeed find a way out...? Hmm, that would be wild. I do have a fun headcanon about Moonshadow elves slipping between dimensions...
Basically, the issue I'm seeing here is: can you even break such wards or do you have to let them exhaust themselves by forcing them to spin out their effects somewhere? Hopefully the relic staff could break the coins' enchantment, since it created it. But anything less...? I really don't know. Do you have to have Corrupted Trauma to interact with the hellcoins and such wards, or is that just a bonus? Maybe if you used deep magic, or a collaboration of all the primals or something. Dark magic is looking very persistent these days! And the visual in my head of Ethari bravely trying to endure one of Runaan's nightmares to save him... and then another... and another... god. God, no.
3. The Dark Magic Battle Couple Formula, (aka Virrow)
In the tale, one of the Narrator characters (NCs) says that his family has always had a dark mage and a warrior teaming up together. In his case, he's the warrior and his grown son is the dark mage. The first pairing in their family history was the brothers who defeated the frostwyrm. The mage brother buffed his warrior brother's skills in order to aid him in battle, and that's amazing. But the bond that the current-day pair had was less healthy: the son also buffed his father, but when an attempt at a task failed (remember Corrupted Stress?), the father was the one who took the hit for it, not the mage son.
It's a very close bond, giving the mage control over the health and strength of the warrior, and that can be good and bad, depending. It's not a bond you want with someone you don't trust your life to. But it would get you through just about anything together, when normal measures might get you both killed. hhhhhh battle couples, I'm so weak, help
I can 100% see Viren buffing Harrow in battle, especially after Sarai died and wasn't there to fight at his side anymore. Viren could make Harrow fight as well as him and Sarai put together, and he'd want to, for their kingdom, from guilt he'll never admit to, to secure the future, from ambition, and for all the complex feels he has toward his king and friend. I don't think Sarai would enjoy knowing/seeing Harrow get buffed by dark magic, so I'm not sure they'd have done it when she was alive, or told her they were doing it. But when it was just the two of them... You see what I'm saying.
And since dark magic rips all its ideas from primal magic, I gotta assume that there's some kind of primal buffing spell out there, too. Probably one in each primal magic, really, in its own way. Since the dark mage in the Frozen Barrow was drawing on power from an ice dragon, I'm gonna guess he was using the Ocean-based version. But we've seen imagery for Sunfire and Moonshadow pairs defending Xadia's border, so I bet they've got some partner-buffing spells locked and loaded.
4. Winter is Here
When I was writing up my canon-deets post yesterday, I saw all my notes on how it was sleeting and everything was frozen because Frozen Barrow is a winter holidays tale, and I realized something for the first time because I am slow as molasses in winter:
Maybe the timing of this tale is one of the things that's canon. Maybe the time skip between S3 and S4 will last at least six months, and this winter will have happened with no progression in TDP's main plot.
One of the streams we got to see this year (was it NYCC? I can't remember) did tell us that the rest of the show will be darker and more mature in content. That's what the OG "winter is coming" was all about. And it's very TDP to mean something literally and metaphorically at the same time.
I've been thinking about this one a lot. Agura with a fierce warrior princess/prince s/o whose a bit stoic and hardcore and scary sometimes but an awkward sweetheart at their core. I live for battle couples
Agura and the team met the warrior princess/prince at a battle zone. She hated her/him when they first met because she/he was rude to them.
But as time went on, the BF5 started to see her/him all the time, and they slowly became friends.
Agura started to notice that scary, hardcore princess/prince staring at her.
She started to freak out because the warrior princess/prince is so stoic and scary. Who knows if she/he is planning to attack her.
One day, Agura confronted her/him and finally the warrior expressed her/his feelings. Agura became speechless.
It's so weird to see the warrior so shy and awkward. Agura gladly eccepted her/his feelings.
When they started to date, Agura has never seen someone so adorable. That scary, hardcore princess/prince is no longer visible.
Agura teases her/him all the time.
The warrior taught Agura how to fight like a pro.
They both are so made for each other!
They could be seen training, cuddling while watching a movie, making out or eating a large pepperoni pizza by themselves.
The warrior blushes too hard when Agura flirts with her/him.
Always trusting your partner, standing back to back.
Shouting back and forth about random things.
Then the battle ends and somewhere you lost your partner and you’re partner and you’re running around until eventually you give up and are sitting there,crying, when they tap you on the shoulder and
