So, in short, Dameon's way to show his jealousy is to throw a fit, try to slander other guys and otherwise sulk around the corner of woe. Just proves what an immature brat he is behind that gentlemanly image he puts up front.

And his gripe on Danny's appearance doesn't makes sense either. If Rhen was someone to complain about people's appearances, she would certainly not fall in love with a balding man who looks 30 years older than he really is.

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Unless Rhen has a thing for older guys, which is a lame explanation

I forgot to mention that if Dameon's niceness is the reason why he should be with Rhen, then Danny is just as good an option. It's just that for the most part he gets forgotten in the pairing argument.

Before this turns into another Lars vs Dameon all over again, bottom line is this: Any pairing needs to have decent development in or out of attraction point scenes. See Av3. Eddie has a lot of banter and conversation scenes with MEL. He's always following her, talking to her, so on and so forth. With Eddie and Stella, there's little to no interaction between them outside quest stuff and the attraction point things. Hence the wave of Ed/Mel shippers. It's for the same reason why Lars/Rhen has more followers: more interaction between characters.

Audience in general do not like "implied interaction" or "because I said so" unless they have a certain bias on something. Like, I have an unexplainable hatred for the Ed/Mel pairing in general, so the only reason why I cheer over the canon pairing is because Eddie being with anyone BUT Mel makes me happy. The canon could be Ed/Belf and I'd still dance with joy. I mean, the default bride in TLO is MEL, for crying out loud. Unless the trip in TDP is where the Ed-Stella thing happens, something we don't really see on screen, the canon makes no sense. Even when I try to read "more than what's there", I can't pretend there's something when nothing is actually going on.

There's more subtext between Gyendal and Mel than there is actual context between Edward and Stella. And that's not just me being biased =____=

I'd say if there's an open pairing option, give all of the pairing options equal amount of MEANINGFUL interaction. Although I suspect that non-meaningful interaction (e.g quest stuff) still counts as something. Lars and Rhen only has at most three non-quest interaction.

His hair looked cool to me. *shrugs* At least it beats having booger color as a hair.

Kk enough with the Dameon x Lars debate again. Tests are coming and I'm getting lazy to reply with a wall of text. Geez someone shouldn't have brought them up. Aveyond isn't even a good example of romance in rpgs.

Hey! Only one or two paragraphs was about Lars VS Dameon. The rest was about pairings in games in general, with the kerfuffle over Aveyond pairings as example of how not to do romance in games. And I bring up Aveyond because I'm hoping that in the future, when pairings between characters are open option, the canon pairing will be something that makes sense, or at least makes the majority of the fans happy. So far whenever pairing options is open, the canon is something that only a handful of people like.

Also, a rehash of what many people have been saying for a while, just to drive the point home.

Oooh, I should've added a TL;DR summary:
*) Lots of interaction/dialogue between characters = Good
*) Narm/over-exaggerated dramatics =/= good interaction
*) Implied interaction/Word of God says so + no actual on-screen interaction = BAD

What's narm? Is it a tv trope thing again?

The Lars vs. Dameon thing has been done do death, but I'll comment on AV3. For the love of the goddess, do NOT spend FOUR GAMES making us think that the true couple is obvious and then switch it around at the last minute. (still sulking about that)

And as for drama, I MUCH prefer romances with humor to melodramatic romance. That's not to say there can't be dramatic MOMENTS (like Galahad rushing to save Te'ijal, for example), but an overdose of romantic drama just gets dull.

For me, the main thing that makes or breaks a romance is personality. Like, how well the characters' personalities mesh. Sometimes they can be complete opposites like Te'ijal and Galahad and sometimes they can have a lot of similarities like Mel and Edward, but if their personalities mesh well, that's when I'll get into them.

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Understatement forever I was ill for the better part of AV3 because EdMel is my Anti!Pairing to the max. Just because I'm happy EdMel ain't canon doesn't mean it made any more sense to me

I sort of wished AV3 had at least one extra chapter, so the canon pairing has time to develop, but... there's only so much you can add to the kerfuffle, unless chapter 4 ends with Mel still trapped in Demon Realm and the next chapter's quest is the rest of the gang running around Demon Realm trying to rescue her. Or something.

heh, I think it's safe with the AV series to assume this:

Any pairing the majority of fans adore, it's most likely going to be another pairing that's gonna be canon.

AP: Devin/Talia = Fan favorite.
Devin/Alicia = canon

AV1: Rhen/Lars = Fan Favorite
Rhen/Dameon = canon

AV2: Ean/Iya = canon and...well not really fan favorite but no one objected to it. But no one cared about them much either.

AV3: Mel/Eddy = Fan favorite
Stella/Eddy = canon

Three out of four games without fan favorite canon for main couples? Now that's a record lol.

Okay, then let's play the next Aveyond game assuming that the "obvious" pairing will NOT be canon

Lol, it'll save you the disappointment when the 'left field' pairing is canon....or you'll be pleasantly surprised if fanon turns into canon XD

I tend to approach new things with wariness lately, because we've all been trolled far too many times If something good comes out of it, I will be pleasantly surprised and like it. If it sucks, then I lose nothing.

I mean, that's my adventure with the AV sequels. I really had no desire to even try AV2, much less 3 and its multiple chapters. By the time I forced myself to play 2, I believe TLO was already out.

I ended up enjoying AV2 for what it's worth when I did play. It's bland, but I didn't dislike anything. My unreasonable prejudice against AV3 (Rogue complaining about how Mel is such a stuck up brat might have something to do with it ) made me a flailing and excited fan by the time I'm all ready and caught up Too bad the trollage Ed/Mel hints were too strong for me to have hopes for Ed/Stella that I ran off to crack path and cannot whole-heartedly ship canon. Or maybe I'm just truly a crack shipper at heart and would jump shark at any chance I get.

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Yup - ^^this^^

Complaining about Mel being a stuck-up brat? Me? Now when did I... wait, I think I did gripe about it several times, but didn't realize it was to that extreme where you even noticed. I was just mentioning that her prejudice and somewhat "snobbish" personality against nobles is annoying, though to be fair, I don't really like any of the main characters either.

I if there's going to be a thread on the characters themselves, as an individual; because of all the AV games I play, I never seem to have a liking to any of the main characters- not enough to even crackship them like D_A.

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I'm guessing that Amanda have a crack-shipping streak herself, and that's why the AV pairings we so far don't make sense.

@Rogue: Oh, fugly faceset played a part too. And the fact that I'm not really into in to begin with. It's "I'm too lazy to play, blaaah" + "oh noes! potentially unlikeable protagonist!" + "DUDE, WHAT IS THAT FACE!?!?!" = Do not want.

Re characters: You know, I was still in full-on Mel-hating mode when I started shipping her with Gyendal. And I don't even care about Gyendal at all. I started fooling around with Gyendal designs for the lulz. Then daevas got involved and I started tying things back to my AV1 whacky AU and things just ran off to lalaland.

Other than that, I agree. I like the characters because of all the fanon wahzoo I lumped on them. Canonically, everyone are blaaaaand. Any depth people seem to see are in their own heads.

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Amanda already admitted something along that lines a few pages back. Let me pull that up. Here we go.

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Specifically, I tend to ship a bad guy with a good person. My first ever such crackship was Princess Atta and Hopper from Disney-Pixar's A Bug's Life... WHEN I WAS EIGHT/NINE. Oh my, I'm scared of myself.

Same with Esme. I'd rather it be a humorous one than a dramatic romance. The only time I will shed tear is only for those animal movies. (Imma sucker for them. )

@KTC
Hahaha that's a nice way of summarizing the romance in the series. xD You know, I really, really had a tough time when playing AP. I was aiming for Talia but was 'forced' to change cuz Devin's granny only gave him a lame electric ring while if it's Alicia, you get rubies and diamonds.

And I've never finished the 3rd AV game so WOAH THE HECK STELLA AND EDWARD?! o__O I did NOT see that one coming! I agree with Adept about Mel being snobbish though. She is probably the only main character in the series that turned me off.

@D_A: I admit that ugly face-sets was a major turn off, and that's the exact reason why I never draw the main characters whenever I draw Aveyond fanarts.

Re characters: I don't hate them, actually. I'm just disgusted with them that I want as little involvement with them as possible. I'm not the type of person who'd dedicate so much time on characters I don't even like. Might gripe about them once in a while, but I won't write fanfictions or draw Anti!fanarts just to bash them.

Re crackship: Does it count as 'crack' if you write it in a serious context, though? I am under the impression that "crack ship" is a pairing that happens just because- and it's mostly played for laughs. Most of the time, this is fan shipping, but I guess canon crack pairings exist... And if fans support a couple which the characters involved barely shares a scene together in canon but the romance is written properly it's not counted.

To be fair, tvtropes DO say it's still crackshipping in a way. Though yeah, the pairing I support are mostly foe-yay fanship or "the Rumiko Takahashi couple" fanship rather than crack so...
Except for my AV1 stuff. That's still crack. I think.

I wasn't actually against Devin x Alicia, because they at least had a bit of banter (as little as it may be). Devin and Talia, despite being together all the time, barely spoke at all except for those recruitment scenes and all those quest things.

I haven't played AP all the way through so I have nothing for or against either couple. I care too little about the game to bother, LOL. I'm partially with Devin/Talia because of the bandwagon, but I actually don't really care for it.

Since I played AV1 before playing AP, I already knew that Devin and Alicia were the true couple and was kinda surprised that there was a Devin/Talia option. Still, I like how they're brought together through the union of their children (one of my rare moments as a hopeless romantic there).