2, 27, and 30 for the ships ask? Aedan and/or any OCs of your choosing?
2. How important is your OCs relationship(s) to their story? Would it still make sense without it? Or is their connection to this other character integral to their development?
oh good one. honestly, as much as i enjoyed playing Aedan as a character, there wouldn't be stories for me to write without her romantic relationship with Kaidan because fills for that, little things to make it personal, was where i started with her. the first time she shared something "not military related" but personal, the reaction to sort of meeeting his folks, the places where her exterior mask cracked to let him in that just weren't in the game. Now, she very much developed a life of her own and i have stories to tell that *aren't* the romance but the romance is integral to the stories i share.
27. Is there a particular "trope" for relationships that you especially enjoy - e.g. enemies to lovers etc - and is this something that you set out intending to explore?
not...really. i do tend, one way or another, end up writing "this one person is special" sort of romances, "no one understands me like you do" and some of it has to do with the fact that i write characters sort of on the aro spectrum and, more or less, who see people as *duties.* Aeryn Hawke deeply loves her family and her friends, but romantically? Only Sebastian manages to make it work in that he refuses to let her categorize him as a protection job. Lust is easy, love is *hard.* Aedan, like Aeryn, has things like her career to care about but she got no early lessons in love- duty, sure but not *love* and she has so much healing to do that she's in her twenties before it even occurs to her that it's a thing she's *capable* of. And, again, it's because Kaidan won't let her see him only as "someone under my protection."
30. What advice do you have for someone considering creating a ship for their character? Or for someone unsure about writing relationships and/or sexual scenarios?
porn without plot is a thing, relationships don't have to be healthy/unhealthy to be interesting but ask yourself, "what does this reveal, what does this gift the character, what does this burden the character with" Love is a weakness as much as a strength and you need to be willing to reveal both. in the au devilverse, you can see a couple of moments when Aedan's body is clearly making different trust choices from her head and it reveals a lot about how uncertain she is in *this* when she's wholly confident on any other field.
if you're unsure about it, fade to black is an option. you can set up a scene that is absolutely sexy and have no sex at all. what is compelling in sex scenes you've seen/read. would your character do that? would they have a different reaction? write that
