So February is coming, and with it, the revival of the Shipping episode of the Letters Page! Woo!
On that note, I wondered: what feelings do people actually have about relationships in the Sentinels-verse? Any that you particularly ship? (I personally am big on Setback/Expat and Fanatic/Ra, which I know are very mundane of me but whatever) Any canon couples you want to break up so that they can get together with someone more fun?
I think if people want romance to be a major factor, they should construct a game that revolves around it, rather than forcing it into a game whose rules do not support it.
Been around fandom for any work of fiction long? 
Iāve been thinking a lot about Soothsayer/Scholar ever since the episode about Soothsayer Carmichael and NightMist teaming up. Thereās just something about the fussy one and the soother as a dynamic
Ooh, thatās actually very interesting! You know I hadnāt really thought about shipping Scholar with anyone - heās got that kind of āwalking the earthā vibe that I guess doesnāt usually jibe with settling down - but him and Carmichael is a VERY fun dynamic!
Actually I was thinking about it more, and I realised that I donāt have any real ships for Captain Cosmic - which feels weird given how eminently shippable he is! I guess maybe Galactra, but thatās more of a āthey would be entertainingly terrible togetherā kind of ship haha!
If you guys are going to insist on shipping men with other men, then as a matter of principle I shall concoct a Sapphic ship for myself, despite my general disdain for the whole shipping topic.
Hmā¦
Okay, letās say Commodora and Arataki. Each one of them probably thinks of the other as a young whippersnapper, since one was has lived in more distinct time periods, but the other has more consecutive years of life experience. Could be fun.
Or, if this is just about eye candy for myself, Iāll go the lipstick lesbian route and say that I find Harpy x barely-legal Idealist the most pleasing mental picture.
As a (soon to be) 64 year old and British, would anyone here be so kind as to explain what you mean by āshippingā please? I assumed that this was something to do with sending out the new DE Kickstarter, but I was obviously wrong!
What I am asking is, does it refer to āpairing upā because the characters work well together and compliment each othersā abilitiesā which is interesting, or about some fantasy romantic affair, which is not so interesting.
Itās the fandom exercise of coming up with any romantic relationship between fictional characters you find interesting, for any reasoning you find interesting.
Fueled by it being the month of loooooove on the Letters Page next month, which has gifted us with a second official Shipping episode to talk about canon and fandom ships, and a couple romantic episodes (Tachyon/Dana and Wager Master/Madame Mittermeier).
Iām pretty basic in my tastes, Iām fine with the canon relationships. Mostly, I canāt come up with a good story to tell about anything that isnāt one of those.
Though there is always Chrono-Ranger and Guiseā¦ >.>
Thanks for the clarification guys. I am more interested in the āpairing upā side for the sake of the game mechanics. It comes from being a boring mathematician, Iām afraid. 
Several of the flavor texts in the Enhanced Edition had me thinking that something was going on between The Wraith and Absolute Zero. It would have been nice to cut him a break. (I was not too excited about her and Bunker, probably because, letās face it, he was not a very interesting character in the quotes we had available.)
Otherwise I was just happy to follow the canon stories.
Iām not personally interested in theorizing ships, myself, but am entertained by others doing so. 
I feel like a lot of this is due to his military background being such a large part of who he is. The folks writing him in the game donāt have the knowledge/experience to understand that. 
Just my theory, thoughā¦ 
I didnāt mention them earlier, but my real Sentinel Comics OTP will always be KNYFE/Skyscraper I just think they have a great dynamic, and when I heard Christopher say that would be one sided early post OblivAeon it broke my heart for Portia but also I do love that type of content. As Iāve been starting to learn about Alpha Iāve also been getting very into Harpy/Alpha
Most of my shipping nonsense will be in my eventual letter regardless, but I will pause to say about the card text specifically that, you know. I used to ship Cosmic/Argent way back in the day. Then we had Argentās character episode and after that I was like well, OK, that doesnāt work any more.
But then we saw the previews of DE and I saw Alacritous Subdominant and I was like āChristopher. Really with that flavor text? XDā
(In non-shipping thoughts, I appreciate that in DE the flavor text gives Bunker much more of a personality.)
Scholar is to Soothsayer as The Dude is to Walter. Iām not sure whoās Donny in this instance (AA doesnāt feel right to me), and Iām not really into shipping them. Iād read that book, though. The Scholar abidesā¦
Seriously, though, maybe you should be interested in this because this is a pretty great pair-up. Especially with the romantic drama if Arataki finds out that La Commodora is the reason that sheās (a) a cool immortal hero and (b) was exiled.
My two big thoughts right now:
Greazer and Captain Cosmic. It starts with a hunt, but then it getsā¦ groovy.
It would be interesting to see Fashion and Visionary bond over being two folks who are in a world that is tantalizingly close to what theyāve been used to, but is throwing them curveballs regularly.
The exception that proves the rule, Friv. One card hardly makes a game mechanic. If you wanted the game to actually be ABOUT relationships, youād need to do something along the lines of the Disciplines mechanic in āVampire: the Eternal Struggleā, where a relationship requires you to pick a character who has an icon representing some kind of interest or personality trait, and then play an āincidentā or āexperienceā card or something where you meet another character who has that same icon.
I didnāt even think of the Rudder in the Timestream thing when I picked those two, by the way. I just brainstormed female characters off the top of my head, and the first one I picked was Commodora, since sheās one of my favorite characters to play (not the top ten, just above the median). And then instead of just automatically sticking her with some chick who I think is hot, I tried to think of someone who wasnāt so immediately obvious, and picked Arataki as the first such obscurity that occurred to me. Considering their personalities came later, and yes they do make an interesting match even apart from the lore connection, but that isnāt WHY I put them together.
Iām just gonna take your two choices and switch them into hetero couples, kthx. Greazer lives in the 50s and Visionary lives in the 90s, so putting them together is fun. Meanwhile, Fashion is a very latter-day trendy character whose superhero career is entirely secondary to her personal interests; that nicely mirrors Captain Cosmic, who is significantly one of the older characters in the setting, and whose secret identity as a barrister barely comes up (at least in EE).
(PS these are all space characters, and two of them have the Lazer Ryders connection; I wonder if anybody has ever homebrewed components for that game representing Greazer and Fashion, who are later additions to the same universe. They donāt fit into the extreme 80s-ness of the other game, so probably not, Iām just bringing the idea up here for the sake of doing so.)
ā¦you do realize this is about relationships in the fictional comics upon which these are based? Nothing about this episode has anything to do with game mechanics, this is simply filling in lore details.
I donāt like having the lore off by itself and unrelated to the game mechanics. I want the two to reflect each other as closely as humanly possible. Sentinels is actually really good about this most of the time, just not in this particular instance.
As an example of the kind of thing that I get hung up on, in the year 2000 Magic the Gathering published a set of cards called āInvasionā, where the game world of Dominaria was invaded wholesale by a massive army of evil mechanical demons called Phyrexians. There were novels published to tell the story of this invasion, and one of my favorite incidents from that novel trilogy was a battle in which the Phyrexians tried to attack an enchanted forest, and the nature-goddess defended against them by transforming an entire legion of Phyrexian monstrosities into bodies of living wood, converting them into nature elementals who would fight on her behalf against the un-transformed Phyrexians. As amazingly cool as this scene was, nothing within the card game could simulate it, nor can it even today. It wasnāt until 2018 that they printed a card that REFERENCED this incident, just in the flavor text, and I got an immense kick out of them finally acknowledging that novel chapter, but it still isnāt actually integrated into the game, just given a cosmetic easter egg.
I want the player to actually be able to re-enact that battle exactly the way it happened in the book, to the point that could tell exactly which cards represented the spells being cast in the battle. Itās not impossible, given how many thousands upon thousands of cards exist in the game, and how incredibly specific their game effects can be; the reason they didnāt do it is because not enough people cared to bother, but it is absolutely possible in theory. And since I live entirely in the realm of the āin theoryā, I would like them to do it. Iām not going to hold my breath waiting, I just say it would be nice.
To be perfectly honest, that was just meant as a lighthearted joke, which I would not have made if you hadnāt already engaged with the thread on its terms after your initial comment. It wasnāt meant as anything else, and Iām sorry that you seem to have taken it as a slight.
If you want a serious answer: Sentinel Comics is not just the card game any more, and arguably it was never just the card game. What made it succeed, and made it sing, was that it was portrayed as a snapshot of a much larger and more expansive world, a world that is now reflected in Sentinels of the Multiverse, Sentinel Tactics, the Sentinel Comics RPG, the Sentinels of Freedom video game, and the Letters Page podcast.
With so many outputs, many of which directly involve narrative, the notion of whether romance is part of the game mechanics is going to be pretty heavily involved in what output youāre looking at. Recovery scenes in the RPG are going to be based on romance, the Letters Page stories will often involve romance, plot lines in the video game will touch on romance and romantic partners will appear and have appeared in the Definitive Edition. So yes, romance is a part of things.
And the follow-up is: itās fine not to like an aspect of a thing, but if thatās the case, you shouldnāt take part. I had assumed that since you got involved with a couple of pairings you were taking part, but it now feels rather like youāre trying to define how other people are allowed to have fun. I wasnāt being sarcastic - La Commodora and Arataki are a good pairing, for the reasons you mentioned. I added an extra wrinkle with the goal of spurring discussion. I donāt know why youāre so insistent on not taking the compliment, but honestly this has happened just about every time that weāve interacted, so Iām just going to apologize and stop engaging with you from now on.
Nope, I had no such perception.
Oh. Well NOW Iām slighted.