2023 Ship Promo Post!

[rarepairmod]

We know most of you have been looking forward to this post, so without further ado, here's your chance to share what you love about the rare ships you've nominated and will either request and/or offer! Some of the rare ships in the tagset belong to rare canons. If you're someone who loves trying new canons or is currently on the hunt to become obsessive about something else, this is a great post for you!

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Canon:

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A summary of the canon:

What do you love about this ship/these ships?:

What sort of things are you likely to request for it?:

Content warnings:

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<B>Canon:</B> <B>Ships:</B> <B>Media:</B> <B>A summary of the canon:</B> <B>What do you love about this ship/these ships?:</B> <B>What sort of things are you likely to request for it?:</B> <B>Content warnings:</B>

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Thanks to yuletide for the inspiration for the form.

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Mathieu of Neuchâtel/Rüdeger of Bad Tölz (Pentiment)

[smiles_edgeworth]

Canon: Pentiment

Ships: Mathieu of Neuchâtel/Rüdeger of Bad Tölz (Pentiment)

Media: Video Game

Pentiment is a 2D role-playing adventure, so you don’t need specific gamer skills to play it! You move the main character to visit places and read dialogues. It's also not very long (14½ hours for the main story according to How Long To Beat, and that's enough to see the content about my ship). The gameplay is similar to Disco Elysium, if you’re familiar with it.

Pentiment is available for PC (Windows) on Steam, for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S platforms. There are also multiple Let's Play videos on YouTube, in case you prefer to watch it.


A summary of the canon: The story takes place in a mountain town in 16th century Bavaria. You play as Andreas Maler, an artist with personalized background and skills who ends up involved in murder cases and a mystery to solve.

Some details that you might like:

• You talk to a lot of different characters with interesting personalities, and their fate often depends on your answers and choices. Some people will get better because of you and some of them will die, but you can replay the game to see what happens if you do something different.

• You can pet the cats and the dogs you meet! :D

• The art is great! If you’re interested in history, literature and paleography, this game is definitely for you. The writing changes based on the characters’ education and there are accurate manuscripts and printed books from different eras and countries.

• Even if most of the culture you see is European, there’s an Ethiopian priest that can show you his Ethiopian Bible (all you have to do is accepting to have dinner with him). Among European characters, you can also interact multiple times with a Romani man and (later in the game) you’ll meet several Jewish characters.

• There are a lot of good female characters!

• The ship I love is a canon m/m pairing. There is also a heavily implied f/f ship between two women in the town, where it looks like their husbands know and are fine with it. This game has a lot of ship potential in general, and all the ships are eligible for this exchange. :)


What do you love about this ship?

Brother Mathieu and Brother Rüdeger are Benedictine monks who live in the monastery with the other brothers. First of all, I’ll be honest and say that they are not main characters, so if you play the game just for them, you might be disappointed; however, you can meet them multiple times in different moments of the story, and they are a canon m/m ship with great potential, so if you pay attention to their interactions, you’ll remember them for sure!

I absolutely love the way you find out about their secret affair. While you’re investigating the first murder case with the MC Andreas, you can choose to sneak inside the library of the abbey during the night (of course, you must do it! :D); after Andreas finds what he’s looking for and tries to leave, he accidentally sees Mathieu and Rüdeger having a tryst in the library. The two monks hold hands, kiss and are very obviously going to do more. While Andreas is hiding, you can choose between 3 options: 1. wait for them to finish, 2. talk to them, 3. run away. To see more about this ship, my personal recommendation is to run away (and talk to Mathieu the following day) or talk to them immediately. Waiting is good if you want to make out with a nun the following day, but it’s not an option related to this ship.

Unless you are very mean to them on purpose, I love that Mathieu and Rüdeger will be happy! In a world where a lot of characters can die or have a sad life even if you’re trying to help them, this is definitely a lot! And even if you threaten them and Rüdeger runs away, there is still fic potential for good fix-its!

I also love that Rüdeger is a cantor and you can actually listen to his beautiful voice singing. I always ended up spending too much time inside the church just to listen to him – and Mathieu is probably also enjoying that part of the day while he’s standing close to the sacristy. I also like that Mathieu is doing his best at his job, he takes care of the shrine and is a guard inside the church (which is interesting because his eyesight is not good, but he was still chosen to do that).

Other reasons to like this ship:

• The height gap! I usually feel neutral about height gaps, but it is very cute to see it between them.

• The opposite personalities. Rüdeger is a big guy everyone likes, a kind and gentle soul who wouldn’t hurt anyone; Mathieu is a small mean guy who judges everyone (but he’s still willing to help people in need).

• The conflict between their celibacy vows and their homosexual desires. In the 16th century becoming a monk wasn’t always a choice, but Rüdeger and Mathieu’s Catholic faith looks genuine. They are afraid of getting caught, but that doesn’t stop them from doing something forbidden. It’s interesting to explore their feelings on the matter and the way they might feel guilty about what they’re doing, at least at the start.

• If you like couples growing old together, there’s a lot of potential for them! <3

• Their relationship is obviously sexual, so there’s a lot to explore in that sense too. What do they *actually* do alone in the library? :D

• There's great hurt/comfort potential. I especially recommend visiting the monks in the library in Act II, there's a great scene with Rüdeger.

• I don’t know if it’s true because I haven’t finished Disco Elysium yet, but Pentiment writers admitted that they accidentally made Mathieu “a Kimlike”.


What sort of things are you likely to request for it?

Romantic missing scenes! Any rating, any era, any route as long as it has an eventual happy ending. Even if this ship is canon, we only see short moments about their relationship. We don’t know anything about their first meeting, their first kiss, how their secret relationship started, what they did between Act I and Act II, between Act II and Act III, post-canon, etc.

Also, the rare fan-content with them is all G or T rated, but we know that their relationship is sexual, so I’m definitely into Mature/Explicit missing scenes too! :D

I would also love to see romantic art with them together!


Content warnings:

From the developers:
Pentiment contains public executions, stylized gore, suicide, references to abortion, frequent strong language, references to sexual assault, and references to sexual activities. Small parts of the game also reference notable alcohol consumption and incidental ergot-induced hallucinations.

Based on common DNWs I see in exchanges, I’ll also add that this game has a lot of off-screen child death, because it’s pretty realistic about the mortality rate of the period, and both on-screen and off-screen hunting/fishing scenes with animal harm and death.


If you have questions about this game and this ship, feel free to ask here! ^_^