hmmm!! generally my taste in ships is pretty normie so here are the “weirdest” (not really.. i’m too vanilla..) ones that i can think of that i think are cute
jaderose and grimdorks because i just love the beta kids! was a big grimdorks fan early on in my hs career because i just think they’re cute together and their characteristics balance out really well (rose constant emotional analysis vs john.. whatever the opposite of that is). jaderose because the two don’t TALK ENOUGH!! and jade parallels kanaya in a lot of ways, while also being sunny in a way that would be super cute when paired with rose.
davepeta!! pretty much just stems from me liking davepetasprite but i think there’s something to be said about the fact that the formation of davepetasprite made both halves SO happy. i think dave’s constant pressure of irony was mollified by nepeta’s open roleplaying and shipping and made someone who is just. content with themselves finally. i think they’d be good to each other
dirkjohn… i made a whole post about this but basically even though they interact about ONCE in canon, they have a shit ton of parallels. ult dirk takes control of the narrative but john embodies it. they are the storybook hero and villain but simultaneously much more complex than that. dirkjohn could be the culmination of failed dirkjake and failed johndave, not as rebounds but as an eventual slotting into place? john’s bluntness perfectly counteracts dirk’s cerebralness, dirk’s knack for introspection is helpful for john’s cluelessness about his mind palace. they are complimentary colors! they can face each other as they are, without living as their past selves, given that they’ve never really been close before. dirk deals with fear by controlling everything and john by losing control of everything. you know??
pepsifanta (johndavesprite) isn’t that rare but i think it’s cute to imagine davesprite searching for doomed john in dream bubbles, because it’s HIS john and he did everything to save him and alpha john doesn’t give a fuck. also along the same vein of pepsicola derivatives, alpha dave x alpha john is sad because john’s dead by the time dave’s an adult but dave still collects old movie stuff.. wahh.. does he remember..?
john x caliborn??? this solely comes from the mspfa john ruins a wedding and i have no idea how to explain it without that context. but they’re probably both pretty lonely in beyond canon
sollux with literally any other troll except equius, tavros, and kanaya. i don’t know why i just think sollux could date any of them and it would be interesting which is not a sentiment i share for most of the other trolls
dave x dave because it’s funny
john/june and meat roxy. i don’t know how this would happen but maybe they would actually have a healthy relationship.
starting to like the idea of TC x lylac and CT x dagger. for the former because TC seems to admire lylac more than ANYONE, and a one-sided crush would be adorable on him. blame his strider genes i guess. and the latter because gay or possibly straight roleplayer drama is hilarious
to be frank though, the biggest ship i engage with is plain old pepsicola. i am stereotypical and lame.
hopefully at least one of those is interesting to you!!! NOT EXPECTING YOU TO RESPOND TO ALL THAT i just wanted to list some examples for freedom of choice. and hope i didn’t yap too much!! it was just a very fun ask game :)
my favourite thing is to respond you're doing me a huge solid
i LOVE rose's dynamic with john i feel like they're closer friends than john and dave at the beginning. acts 1-3 are genuinely my favourite part of the comic. i can't really see them as a romantic couple but there was probably some sort of feelings between them as they're 13 and have a limited amount of friends. 6/10
jade and rose 100% should have talked more i'm sad they didn't. i don't exactly know what sort of dynamic they'd have since it's just not explored in the base comic, but i can absolutely see rose getting her first lesbian crush on jade just because she's the only friend who's a girl she has loll. 5/10
DAVE AND NEPETA OMGGG this is a fantastic ship don't even get me started (gets started). dave's whole irony shtick to cover up his genuine interests is so fun to dismantle, and when you look at his close friendship with jade you can see more of that mask slip off (the furry art and roleplay). with nepeta i feel like he would either be more or less afraid to be himself, we never get to see their pesterlogs but we know that he did roleplay with her as his tigersona akwete purrmusk (the fact that this is a character he mentions more than once in the comic makes me think hes more genuine about it than he makes it out to be) and nepeta found it really enjoyable. nepeta also already has the type of "emotionally repressed boy with a complex" (she needs to get better taste) so you know she would be all up on that. we then have the added context of how well they mesh together as davepetasprite^2 and how it made both of them more fulfilled than either had ever been and its so wonderful and beautiful. i love these two. 8/10
i am going to be completely honest i have never seen the appeal of dirkjohn not even a little, i haven't read the epilogues (don't want to) but i have read some of hs2 and hs:bc, and i just cant see it. the times they have interacted are some interesting character study for them both and i get their parallel theming but its just not interesting to me. 2/10
however, on the mention of the culmination of failed dirkjake and johndave, i am going to use this moment to gush about MY rarepair that is held so close to my heart; *DAVEJAKE* :D. originally i thought of this pair because i thought they could bond over their shared interest of preserving Weird Dead Things but the longer i thought about them the more and more they melded so well together. now i do not think they would actually be a healthy couple because of their immense piles of issues and how both of them are so avoidant it hurts, but i FULLY believe they'd have a messy "unlabelled relationship" that neither would ever be able to bring up. jake, rebounding off of the dirk disaster and desperate to find a purpose in the only thing he knows is a "correct" way to be a person finds the one person who has no pre-existing expectations of him and coincidentally also has a shared experience of getting beat the hell up by a dirk for years in order to get "stronger and braver". he finds a respite in dave that he can't get with his friends because he refuses to bring up any of his real thoughts for fear of them changing how they see him. it doesn't matter if he's /actually/ romantically or sexually interested in dave i mean he doesn't even know what that truly means! all that matters is that he is in a relationship like he is supposed to be! (closet aroace coping). meanwhile dave, after spending 3 years stuck on a meteor with no one but his sister, 4 aliens and a lifetime of unprocessed trauma, finds a guy who is way too similar to his two biggest childhood crushes both physically and personality-wise. the unresolved feelings and repressed queerness puts him in a state of awkward limbo for a while but hey, they're around each other and both talk so much that the conversations never really end. he is absolutely projecting his actual feelings from his unrequited crushes but man it just feels good to be wanted around. they both also grew up with so many expectations to be fearless and so much violence forced upon them on every corner that they've become adverse to it, but they can't admit it to anyone because it's what they were born to be. anyway this is supposed to be about other people's ships i got carried away. 10/10
john x davesprite. ouugh my god one i am always thinking about. the angst the yearning. what must have happened on that ship. the fact that john will probably never see davesprite as actually dave, the way davesprite probably doesn't feel like he deserves to be. how he fought tooth and claw to get to the point where he could escape the timeline to save john and jade, how he didn't know what would happen to him or his rose but he still did it. we was ready to die, he basically DID die, and now even though he shares all the same memories as the other dave he won't be recognized as himself ever again from the guy he lost his life for just because that guy is dense as hell. i don't blame davesprite for getting so cruel over the course of the ship ride, he's like if dave never grew out of what bro taught him because he was proven right. he literally HAD to rely on himself and be braver than himself and he was barely rewarded for it. i love davesprite and his infinite problems. john will never understand them and they should kiss about it (and call each other homophobic slurs). 9/10
john x caliborn, literally no opinion sorry 3/10
sollux with any other troll is true and real he is the most desirable troll. sollux already has 2 girlfriends and 2 boyfriends he can collect them all. i headcanon sollux to be very queer with quadrants, constantly vacillating indiscriminately but he tries not to hate himself for it. i actually am fond of sollux and equius i think they could work. with kanaya they are bestfriends but yeah i don't think they'd go into quadrants. sollux and tavros only hang out if aradia is there. tl:dr sollux can get it. 6/10
dave x dave is peak in so many different flavours some i cannot discuss here. being around with that many time clones of yourself must do something to a repressed bisexual disasters mind. dave and davesprite have definitely made out a couple times. 9/10
june x roxy (meat), i don't know much about the meat timeline but if june transitioned i think they could have a healthy relationship. i don't think she would be emotionally mature enough pre-transition. i think their relationship in candy would have been saved if she transitioned as well. 7/10
i am hesitant to ship satyr TC with anyone yet before getting more information about them, but i think they and ly'lac could be a great friend-pair. i forget who dagger is. who is that. ??/10
JOHN x DAVE !?!?!?! can't get more classic unless you dip into incest, i really like them and their no-homo vibe. 8/10