dreaming girl impostor

welcome!

a sweet anon (thank you!) suggested i write about "[my] relationship to fandom and mostly [my] blorbos and how [i] see that part of [my] inner life, how it affects [me] etc," which gave me an excuse to reflect on and corral some thoughts i've had floating around my head!

i will probably have a separate writeup for fandom if i have enough to say on the topic that is worth a page, but wanted to speak to the blorbo part of the prompt, which i take to be tied with my interest in "yume" or "self-shipping" and know for sure i have a lot to say about...!

this writeup assumes familiarity with selfship/yume culture and is specifically a commentary on my experience with selfship, and not meant as judgment towards others who have this hobby, or – worse – a guide to All Things Selfship. please. i am just one gal.

because i have so many thoughts, this is less of an essay and more a collection of loosely-connected reflections. the structure was inspired by suboptimalism's writeup on learning japanese. i also use sachiko's tl of pillarmentrash's yumejo guide as a basis for talking points.

the background photo is by matt palmer on unsplash.

about the title

the title of this writeup is DREAMING GIRL IMPOSTOR, which encapsulates how i feel about myself vis-a-vis this hobby. this also explains why those words up there are in quotation marks lol.

there are two reasons for this title. the first is that while i am OK with being referred to as a selfshipper or yumejo by others, i don't relate to those terms myself and don't find they capture how i engage with this hobby/my blorbos. i like to be real clear about those things, so i stay away from the umbrella labels. more on terminology in dreaming girl, defined.

the second reason is that i don't think i'm personally as serious about my boythings^{what's this?} as the average person who would call themselves a selfshipper or yumejo is. this might sound very silly, depending on how much you know about my oc/canon lore—and even if your awareness of it is limited, you're on this giant page i've devoted to discussing this part of my life, so i can't possibly be that Unserious about it.

in a way that is right! i'll expand on this somewhere later in the writeup but for now: i am quite serious about developing my oc/canon ideas, and genuinely find joy in doing so, but would not say that seriousness extends itself to the boything, although i may find them absurdly cute and learn everything i can about them. (hmm. i feel like my explanation is disproving my point, but i'm going to pray that it makes sense to someone other than me...) i know what dedication looks like because i've seen it on "true" yumejos – and i respect it, but also know enough about it to know it's not my experience.

it doesn't bother me at all to be like this, but DOES puts me in a weird place where i can't call myself a "dreaming girl" with my whole chest. it feels more fitting to call myself an impostor while i figure out a word.

another thing has to do with my mixed feelings about this part of my life, but we get to that way, way later...

dreaming girl, defined

(...in which i define the terms i use throughout this writeup)

i assume that those reading are yume/selfship/adjacent, so i'm not going to be defining anything in depth, but for reference, here is how i see the different terms being used:

click the image to view it on its own.

my definition might be different from yours, because there are no universally agreed upon definitions. but this is fine bc we are not discoursing on general community terminology here. this is about............ me.... lol

so from this point forward on this page:

• oc/canon or oc/c will be used for the way i "yume" or "selfship." i dislike the clunkiness of oc/c, but the other terms don't quite capture my praxis...!
• HOWEVER! i will not be using the words "oc" or "canon chara" because they look ugly...
• instead i will use heroine for any oc/character i've made with the express purpose of kissing a canon character. all my ocs are girls so.
• and the canon character is a boything. she's a heroine, he's just boything
• i will use selfship as an umbrella term for both a) the practice of using non-canon (read: oc/sona/self-insert/you) to kiss canon, and b) the people who engage in that practice.
• so oc/c (my style of selfship) would fall under this.
• dev will refer to me, the guy making the oc and coming up with the oc/canon ship. short for developer. it seemed the most fitting over other terms like creator or shipper or writer.
• the term self-insert will refer to the actual me that i imagine in a fictional world (so, not the heroine). this will look like irl me, though i will refer to her as a different person so as not to get mixed up with the first-person dev.
• the self-insert usually does not get shipped with anyone and is just there to vibe :)
• yume will be used whenever it makes for a pun or a cuter title.

so... the girl calling herself a fake "dreaming girl" won't even use the term that "dreaming girl" comes from properly huh... truly imposterous behavior

my credentials

i think the earliest memory i can recall of any selfship-type activity is playing pretend by myself, imagining tending to an injured wile e. coyote, who was my favorite looney tunes character because his whole schtick was getting hurt LMFAO. freak origins for a freak girl...

while i do a lot of oc/canon these days, i guess my way of thinking about it was more first-person as a kid. over the years i went through many of the ways you can selfship, actually. some stuff i did, amongst other things:

• made inserts that suited the universe (me age 9 writing fanfiction where i go to chibi maruko-chan's school and date hanawa)
• imagined worlds where the characters somehow integrated into my regular life (my favorite k-pop idol visits my school?!)
• used an amalgamation of my boythings to make up an "original" character i could designate as the love interest for my sona (back when i wanted to be a Youtube Animator)
• paired up characters with my friends and came up with stories for them too??

... the list goes on. the bottom line is that i was not as staunchly committed to the oc/canon agenda until recently.

most were passive, fleeting fantasies made to entertain myself or friends before i would get distracted and move onto the next thing. i think the ones that i had lots of fun deepdiving were from college onwards, when i felt a noticeable shift from "how can i kiss this guy" to "how can i make up a story that makes sense and is good (that is about kissing this guy)."

kpop as a pivotal phase

i owe that shift to a) two friends who were as into the selfship thing as i was; and b) kpop boy group seventeen. most of my close friends growing up were not as invested in the selfship thing as i was, if at all (though they were cool about it), but getting into kpop again – as a grown person who could sit with something she liked for a long time, and not an 11-year-old wanting to do everything – helped me find my people.

i don't really care for RPF or celebrity/reader these days, but also can't judge, because i was that for a good while. i also think kpop boy groups are designed specifically so you can get into a selfship fantasy, complete with the idea of a "bias" who is essentially the primary boyfriend in a fan's mind, so it's quite easy to find others who are keen on the idea of selfship.

i had a friend who i would exchange huge essays on fic ideas with, using the idols' public personas as characters for our indulgent stories. we eventually ran a reader-insert blog together for a good while too. we had fun coming up with reader-chans who by most means were not even universal readers anymore but nameless ocs with their own ambitions and personalities. (i actually think this is the best kind of reader-insert fic when done well, and prefer to read this kind myself.)

privately, a friend from college and i made notes on notes on notes imagining seventeen as ordinary students at our school, spurred by the initial idea that california native joshua jisoo hong could have just Not become an idol and gone to a LAC instead lmfao. we would take note of fun events happening to us or around campus, and schedule nights to discuss which of the boys would attend, who would not, et cetera. when we started drafting romances, we made timelines, breakup stories, future arcs, ocs to act as partners for the members we did not end up with lmfaoooo, and even kid ocs – which seems a little wild now, looking back, but it was also all terribly fun.

like... the seriousness of this homemade notes app table (why didn't we just use an actual table?). we even marked when they'd spend their semester abroad...

retrospection

i think working on selfship concepts with friends gave me the same excitement as it did before college, but was infinitely more satisfying because i knew that what i was making felt right (the friend could see my vision) and it was entertaining to someone other than me (which is just validating!). it was fun to make something that was good. and looking back, the fact that kid!mei was playing dev already by coming up with oc/canon relationships for her only-mildly-interested friends showed that i was always drawn to the creative aspect of it.

not to say that it was no longer about being delusional and enjoying personal fantasies, but it was creatively fulfilling in addition to being personally fulfilling, and that changed how i worked on my own selfships when i eventually returned to my roots of, uh, pokemon and anthropomorphic animals in kids' media. more on this in yumethodology.

i don't think my selfshipping was done in an unhealthily escapist way, or to substitute for love/acceptance i did not feel in real life – for all my social anxiety, i'm lucky to never have been deprived of good people around me. if i were to point to a developmental reason why the hobby developed, i would attribute it to a combination of an overactive imagination, an interest in romance, everyone else indulging me, and (maybe most significantly) a lack of exposure to boys. it was my way of trying to know something i did not know, and then later, trying to make sense of something i did know but found frustrating. but i'm getting ahead of myself. more of that in yume and the real girl.

but first: more history

although i indulged in xreader and whatever the hell i was doing with my college friend, i didn't really think about selfship in clear terms / "seriously" until a while into the pandemic.

this is probably because i avoided making polished, indulgent art about it, so i could still pretend it was just an excuse to bond with friends and not something i personally invested time and effort into (even though it clearly was!!!!). i guess i was afraid that if people knew, they would think it a waste that i was drawing stuff only two people could enjoy rather than stuff that could go into my portfolio, or simply find it loserish to have such an escapist(/vain?) hobby, so i tried to keep it plausibly deniable that i had so much fun with it.

it was only in 2021 that i reopened my heart to the joy of oc/canon... <3 there were a number of things that contributed to this:

1. it was the pandemic and everyone was going back to all their cringe/weird indulgences while stuck at home.
2. between animal crossing, fe3h, and pokemon, i was getting back into 2D after a long break. (kpop was fun, but even i had my limits re: what works to make about a real human person with thoughts and feelings.)
3. big one: i got surprisingly positive reactions to my me-catered acnh posting...!? lmfao. rarepairs between villagers, extremely specific personality headcanons based on their behavior on my island, pretty much selfshipping with kidd the goat... i felt encouraged to make and share a lot of purely indulgent, highly rendered work, and nobody died.
4. i designed a gym leader sona who ended up being way different from me, and i decided to turn her into an oc (milly). i was also obsessed with piers from pokemon sword and shield at this time, so things just lined up.
5. i saw a few selfshippers on twitter who not only made good, effortful work that i admired, but also were well-received – or at least did not seem to be fending off tomatoes and booes.
• if you're curious: one of them shipped with gordie (also from swsh) and the other shipped with childe (from genshin impact)
• not that i was fully intending to start posting oc/canon on main, but it was nice to know it wasn't as vilified as i thought it was.

ac art from 2021. the fact that they were gijinkas too and no one batted an eye was crazy to me.

it felt like rediscovering an old room whose door i'd wallpapered over years ago, especially after spending most of my teens into canon/canon... like yes... return to your roots... you are an oc/canon girl at heart!!!!!

i slowly (re)warmed to the idea, and let myself continue to come up with ocs for blorbos in the coming years whenever i felt like it. now that i've accrued a few, i've noticed some patterns in my behavior/processes, which is what this part of the writeup is meant to document.

on playing with dolls

(...in which i overuse a metaphor)

i like seeing my favorite characters (blorbos – an umbrella term for boythings) in interesting situations or relationship dynamics. very often, this urge will be satisfied by a) the source media itself; and/or b) art/fic by other fans, usually shipping said blorbo with a canon character.

for most of my blorbos, i'm satisfied just beholding them or seeing them paired with another canon chara who completes the dynamic i want to see them in. sometimes i'll draw something for them, or get deep into a canon/canon ship with them, but usually i just happily eat up existing work about them and don't feel the need to make/ideate any of my own.

HOWEVER!

if i feel strongly enough about the blorbo and think they would be fun to explore beyond the limitations of their medium^[1] in a way i've yet to see, AND/OR i can't find any other canon characters who would fulfill the specific dynamic i want for them, i am compelled to hit them with the oc/canon beam! and when this happens, they graduate from blorbo (tender collectible or friend's doll, observed and beheld) to boything (favorite toy, played with and microwaved).

it's not like i'm precious with my general blorbos – i still like to see them in a variety of situations – but i'm (usually) not the one putting them there. on the other hand, when i pinpoint a character i want to pair with a character of my making, they start to feel more like my dolls by association (hence the term "boything") and i feel more inspired to fuck around with them. this means i tend to be more invested in boythings than general blorbos, because they're part of something i'm spending time thinking about/"developing" (rather than something i'm consuming).

all of this is to say i don't really think of my boythings as people i want to be with, but rather fun toys i get to throw at the wall. though don't get me wrong: the act of pairing them with an oc is still supremely indulgent, and as the dev i'm still very much a pervert about them. just in a more distanced way!

[1]: Children's media, usually. A lot of it is enjoyable and well-written, but understandably mostly free of too-adult topics and complicated relationships (or romantic relationships at all, except for between, like, parents).

distance from the dev

most of my protags these days are OCs, despite the fact that a) they very obviously are tethered (however loosely) to my own experiences/background, and b) i like to project onto them to kiss blorbo. this might make them seem like sonas, but it's hard to explain the distinction.

ok, how about this: when i imagine a direct version of myself in those worlds, the self-insert more often than not looks and behaves totally different from the OC/heroine i make.

an example comparison.

and even with characters who aren't as different from me as milly is, they're still quite different!

i guess i see my heroines more as characters i would identify with & project onto if they were canon? the most important thing when designing them is to make them fit into the story and be compatible with the boything, rather than make them feel like me. i know that for some, the fun of self-inserting into a world/ship is the freedom to imagine a version of yourself that is different (improved? more exciting?) in some way, but still you. but to me, straying too far from my ordinariness turns an insert into a whole different guy anyway, so i might as well lean into the difference.

having a heroine that's detached from me also fulfills my need to see a character with a set personality that i am able to perceive as an outsider/viewer – someone i can find endearing or cute or stupid or funny-because-it's-annoying. the distance keeps me from performing Wish Fulfillment (shielding her from bad things, or making everyone like her, you know, stuff you wish you could do for yourself) and thus makes it easier to develop a story that isn't so precious with its characters, which is the kind of story i like.

most importantly, it's just... more fun, i think. i imagine that if i shipped a direct insert with my boything, i'd get caught up pondering stuff like "would i actually do that," which makes for a boring thought exercise, or possibly an identity crisis. i'd much rather play with the rules of the source media (character design, plot, timelines, etc) versus the rules of myself. it's a nice little challenge to take what i know about the blorbo, what i find interesting, and what makes sense for the world, and pull them together to design a heroine!

designing heroines

it would be remiss to say that i am totally detached from my heroines – even characters created for non-selfship purposes have a little bit of ourselves, i think – but i like picking and choosing what parts of myself to give them.

the ones i've designed since picking up the oc/canon hobby again have the same-ish general look, all sharing a similar body type + hair length + hair parting. this is probably where i am most obviously self-indulgent/self-inserty with my heroines but it's important to me that those parts resemble me since it's partly an exercise in...... self-love...? (cringing loudly at this show of vulnerability...) like... i'm endeavoring to (visibly tense) see my real life core character design as something cute or attractive... (shoulders up to my ears... let's stop this...)

anyway. i play around in other areas of their design like colors, hair texture, eyes, etc. but i obviously like to give them aesthetics that i (the dev) would wear or at least find pretty/cute, which is kind of a consistent list, so they end up looking similar lol. here is a list of aesthetic choices i find myself defaulting to:

• they're usually in skirts.
• key colors are pinks, purples, blues, or reds.
• glasses!
• scallop trim...
• cinched waists.
• cardigans. my god, always with the cardigans
• earrings.
• like, a flower somewhere? a little clip in their hair? something like that.

i like age gap, but lack confidence in my ability to write older characters, so my heroines are usually an age i still have a frame of reference for (my age, my siblings' ages, any age i've already been before lol). however, this does not mean they are immune to timeskip arcs.

on personality and background: i like to take a personal experience or personality trait i have, intensify it/season it differently, and then explore what kind of person that would be or what kind of background they would have had to become like that.

i'd like to think my cast of heroines are fairly different, but when you base your ocs on yourself no matter how loosely, you can't avoid similarities. i'm learning not to be mad about it. some things i've given multiple of my heroines that i've taken from my life include:

• a family makeup that is similar to mine + a close relationship with them
• interests that lie in the arts, humanities, or social sciences (i don't have a single heroine whose primary interests are sports or STEM lmfao)
• a history of travel or living in different places
• some form of anxiety or high expectations for themselves
• some flavor of socially off-putting: intense, reserved, only interested in specific people/things
• i promise i have positive traits i give them too..... it's just important to me that they not appeal to everyone
• city girlsssssss
• when applicable: asian or asian-coded lol

i tend to avoid designing heroines who are naïve, overly positive / sweet, outcasts, easy to fluster, rough and tumble, "quirky", "cinnamon rolls" / "sinnamon rolls" / other equivalents, too infallible / smart / masterful / witty, seen as precious / someone that needs taking care of, or far more patient than i am. of course, there are always exceptions.

name-wise, i am extremely unadventurous. there is always an "M" in there somewhere, or some other reference to myself that is an easter egg for literally only me.

character relationships

because i design an heroine for a boything, there is always a romantic or sexual/psychosexual aspect. i don't think i'm ever motivated by the need to develop a platonic/familial relationship with a canon character – the canon platonic/familial relationships and the fanworks made about them usually satisfy.

i guess sometimes i'll make up an OC for exploratory/"i-just-wanted-to-fill-a-niche-in-this-world" purposes and they'll naturally have platonic relationships with some of the characters. but in those cases, they are not a heroine – just some guy.

my "just some guy" for fe3h, ansel.

anyway. given the sort of media i select boythings from, you don't usually see them in romantic contexts (let alone sexual! perish the thought), and my desire to see my blorbo/boything in all situations urges me to fill in the gaps i see!!! that's what the heroine is for!!!

i select my boythings because i spot a potential for vulnerability in them that i, the dev, want to exploit, and then design a heroine or relationship dynamic around maximizing opportunities to do so. but by "exploit" i usually mean "give them someone who will bring out that vulnerability or love them through it," so my heroines tend to be nicer and more tender than one would anticipate given my intentions. i mostly just want to see the boything be flustered and cute, or super down bad, or crying, or something of the sort rather than battered and broken down.

(that's a nice flavor too – but it has to be someone other than my heroine abusing him! i want the boything to like her!) (i guess he could, still, if he were a super weirdo...)

it can get complicated/more morally ambiguous depending on the vulnerability i'm looking to explore, but my methodology returns sweet dynamics most of the time even within said complicated plots. it would be so fun to have a freaky, manipulative heroine and a fucked up relationship dynamic, but i've yet to find a boything who would be a great use case for that sort of girl.

i tend to design for endgame (aka together forever), because i am a sap, but don't mind when it doesn't happen if it naturally and satisfyingly progresses that way! i err on the side of romantic, but i also like realistic elements, so if things don't seem like they would work out (they grow into different people, etc) then i would rather things not work out.

related: i generally dislike stories where characters are never able to date other people or be single/their own people, but i struggle to reconcile this with 1) my love for high school romance + first love + seeing boything at peak inexperience and 2) the above point about designing for endgame. aaargggghhh... i guess some people do marry their childhood/high school sweetheart, have a healthy relationship with them, and aren't stunted freaks so i can allow myself this every now and then...

i like designing a heroine who is some kind of complement/opposite to the boything. there will usually be a theme point to their arc that makes use of that difference – causes conflict, brings them closer together, is revealed to be a similarity from another angle... of course, this is not always the case! but i love a Themes And Motifs in my oc/canon plots. sometimes i'll pinpoint themes to design around very early in the conceptualization process, and sometimes they'll show up without my intending. either way, it's fun.

some other arbitrary unwritten rules i have when designing are:

• boything is fond of/interested in heroine from the beginning, even platonically, and respects her as an equal.
• this is the true fantasy element of f/m fiction... (i'm joking)
• heroine's main connection to a canon cast will almost always be the boything, or at most 1-2 other characters. very rarely will she be close with everyone else or designed as "part of the gang/family" from the beginning.
• my current exception: ema, who is a family friend of the madrigals – but even she isn't close with everyone.
• heroine is never a sibling or child of a canon character.
• heroine must have a life, friends/family, and aspirations outside of the boything. (and vice versa, but that's a given, since heroine does not exist in the source media.)
• relationship timeline should make sense in the canon timeline. ideally, you could imagine the relationship as something the boything is involved in when offscreen.
• related: heroine should be written like she could be added to canon – at least to the best of your ability. (i just think it's fun.)
• if in a game where you play as a customizable character, the heroine's story should not be modeled after the player character. she should be a separate conceptualized entity.
• for example: milly is not the trainer you play as, but a separate gym leader who a trainer character could possibly meet.
• i've broken this rule twice, though: once for mei, my ac rep (although she's still part sona so it makes sense), and the second time for lina, my heroine for kieran (pokemon sv dlc). nothing matters!

i try not to make my oc/canon plots and dynamics too similar to one another. thankfully, they don't seem to be – although that's because i know all their details. i'm sure a viewer from the outside would be able to pick out more commonalities.

my sampler plate. (not pictured: kiddmei, albemia, dozy, more)

a note: this part is just for my personal opinions/stances on various yume-related things, because i thought it would be fun to reflect. don't take it too seriously or as an indictment of anything i describe as not for me. once again, i'm just one gal thinking thoughts!!!

serious love / gachi koi

i'll admit i don't really know much about this kind of selfshipping, because most of my friends seem to be about the same level of serious as me re: their selfships. i feel the gachi koi squad are the most noticeable representatives of this culture though, which i have mixed feelings about. i personally don't experience serious love for my boythings, and i find it troublesome to explain this to people who assume all selfship is at the "gachi koi" level. that's not necessarily the fault of selfshippers who experience serious love though, and ultimately i don't spend that much time thinking about it.

sharing / doutankyohi

i know i've said a lot about not being personally devoted to my boythings, about oc/canon being primarily a creative indulgence, etc.

but DESPITE ALL THAT!!!!!!!!!!!...

i do not like to share with people who also selfship with the same boything.

according to josie's guide, i would be categorized as conditional refusal / jouken hatsudou-gata doutankyohi.

to elaborate: it's fine when people just like the character – i love when my friends also like my blorbo! but i can't perceive fans who have their own selfship with the blorbo or strongly ship blorbo in canon/canon. there are no hard feelings involved – i just prefer to quietly steer clear of contradicting ships and assume the other party will want the same.

a caveat for canon/canon ships: sometimes i'll consume works of a ship if the portrayal of the boything aligns with my idea, and i'll just pretend i do not see the other person in the ship (or mentally substitute them with my heroine). i have my horse blinders on.

my sharing limits are almost always applicable to boythings, but can apply to general blorbos too, especially if i have a strong headcanon for them or a canon/canon ship i like them in. (this makes it hard for me to befriend people from the same fandoms as me, but very easy for me to befriend people from different ones.)

the above is mostly an advisory for strangers and new potential friends, because i naturally emotionally invest less in characters i know my existing friends are insane about. the character is labeled in my head as "[friend]'s doll" automatically, without me really trying lol.

selfship media

(referring to media targeted at people who enjoy selfship/yume, media that allows for easy selfship/yume, etc.)

otome games: i don't actually play these. it is rare that i vibe with the actions an otome game supplies the player character with, from a self-insert standpoint OR a heroine standpoint. i also don't find it interesting when they already present what a character is like in a romantic context (that's stuff i want to figure out myself!!!), so i don't get invested in otome guys!

• my one exception so far: swooning over stans. what a great game.

joseimuke games: i haven't gotten into any (i tried twst, but i'm just bad at getting into mobile games). i think i'm more likely to get into these than otome games, but the prevalence of selfship among fans of these games is intimidating... i already worry about how i will navigate the community as a non-sharer... so if i can help it, i'd rather stay away.

non-otome story games with nameable player characters: i like these more, but don't see the player character as a heroine. when i play pokemon, i almost always see the player character as the factory setting protagonist (legends arceus player character as akari, swsh as gloria) rather than someone i can customize to ship with my faves.

• the only exception so far, as noted at the end of character relationships, has been pokemon sv. that might be because i did not care for juliana's design.
• i guess animal crossing is another exception, but there's no detailed storyline besides "you live in this place now," and no specific lore to their designated protag, so it really feels like your character.
• i've never played genshin impact, but feel like i'd see lumine as lumine? i see byleth as byleth, so.

reader insert fic: i'll usually read reader insert for blorbos i don't particularly feel the need to make up a heroine for (boy smooched/situationed = yearning quenched!). i'm more particular about my boythings' characterization, and many of them don't even get good smut by virtue of being children's media characters, so i don't read boything/reader often. it's very rare that i find boything/reader that captures my blorbo well + has a reader i can get behind + includes stuff i like...

in general, i read fic more for personal enjoyment (read: the porn) and less for specific characters or the oc/canon agenda. i usually read canon/canon (often about characters from fandoms i don't even know!) and occasionally unknownchara/reader and just mentally substitute names. it's another horse blinders moment.

however, i have a shortlist of authors who have reliably made me insane over the years. some of them have written excellent stuff about my blorbos, but some of them just write good smut that aligns with my preferences!

POV art: very cute. i love this.

POV vids by kpop idols: they freak me out a little. do not like.

online communities

i think that because selfship is such a personal thing, it's nerve-wracking to share, and as such is something one naturally wants support for/validation about. a community surrounding selfship, where everyone understands this feeling and will uplift each other's selfships, sounds like a good idea in theory.

but in practice, ack... i think the expectations of selfship communities are beyond my social capabilities, so i tend to avoid engaging with others solely on the basis of us both selfshipping!

the only spaces i've been able to comfortably talk selfship and make friends are aethy, dreamwidth, and this site, which have much smaller communities, less fandom segregation (again, i make more friends from different fandoms!), and fewer performative social niceties. the latter two platforms mostly feel like shouting into the void and being pleasantly surprised if anyone shouts back, which i actually quite enjoy.

this didn't fit anywhere else, but also: engaging with kids' media fandoms as a Fucked Up Concepts Enjoyer is a death wish, so i could probably not even participate in larger yume communities if i wanted to, LOL

in the physical world

i am mostly a normie cosplayer so i don't wear a lot of obvious merch outside. i will have a charm on my bag/phone/wallet at the most. i guess i have a duck triplets shirt, but it's also sold by a popular brand, and disney prints are super normal...? it's the kind of thing where you'd have to know about my insanity to get that it was a blorbo reference.

i also don't see a lot of merch of my faves out in the wild, and i'm picky when i do come across it. in general, i'm not much of a merch collector. to me, the thrill of boything ownership is all mental, baby....... (deranged)

• i own the mutant mayhem and ducktales artbooks, because those bolster the mental ownership / help me know everything i can about the boything...!

despite my saying all that, i do have a small collection of less subtle things. i have a little crocheted camilo, a donnie plushie, and a kidd felted by my sister. they are very cute to behold. occasionally i will print screenshots/art of my boythings to put on my wall or in my diary. i've made my own boything charms before too!

i realize my physical spaces + self don't betray how much i like the characters i do because i (naturally?) corral my derangement to digital spaces. i keep a lot of screenshots, archive my livetweets, make shrines on my site and notes on my 300 note taking apps... i think having that separation is nice.

musings on the impact of selfshipping on relevant real life aspects.

real life romance

i think questions about real vs. imagined lives come up whenever someone has a rich fantasy life, but especially feel targeted at people who engage in self-inserting / selfship / yume that is romantic, which is a category i fall under. this is kind of annoying, but what can ya do.

have i been in real life romantic relationships? yes. do i still care for real life romance? yes! do i expect them to be like my oc/canons? some of my oc/c ships are things i would be against in real life, so no lol, but even the totally appropriate ones i'm aware are a level of unrealistic. i'd be lying if i said it wouldn't be kind of nice, but there's a hard line between reality and fantasy!

is this interfering with my ability to get into real life romantic relationships/feel attracted to real people? i don't think so. i figured i was acespec some time during my Return To OC/Canon, but i don't believe those two are related, and don't think anything else has deteriorated specifically for selfship reasons. i'm sure that'll be an easy assumption to make for as long as i'm single though, even if anyone else involved in the dating scene this days can tell you it's in shambles. find me someone my type who lives in my area and is interested in me, then we can talk.

this part of my life hasn't stopped me from going on dates or seeing the value of a romantic relationship with another person – which i think was helped by the fact that i perceive my blorbos as hobby items/playthings. i can see how a different way of looking at one's blorbo could make real life romance less appealing. sometimes i think it would be much easier if i did see them as full entities (i wouldn't feel the need to hassle myself with navigating modern dating!) but alas, they just read as two different things in my head.

still, i have to admit that imagining a down-bad in-love guy is a slight reprieve from the annoyance of playing the dating game, lol.

i will say though that while it hasn't impacted my internal stance on irl romance... i worry it will impact my chances at participating in it. in other words: this hobby may be too weird for the average person. i can't predict what someone even just slightly more normal than me^[2] will think about my history of not just making up a guy to kiss toon shotas, but also having detailed lore about it. no one in my life who knows this about me has given me shit thus far, but i feel it's something that is different when you're being considered romantically, know what i mean? but we'll see.

[2]: Unfortunately, "slightly more normal than me" is a quality I find very appealing in a partner, only topped by "same level of weird, but same ability to cosplay as normal."

secret garden (everlasting?)

or: how do i see this part of my inner life?

the million dollar question, and the whole reason for this writeup. ack... let's see if i find an answer by the time i finish typing this section.

i see this part of my life as a secret. it's not a secret to everyone in my life – i am a chronic oversharer with my loved ones – but i'm also not throwing it out as one of my fun facts whenever i'm getting to know someone new lol. i've mentioned a couple of times that i think selfship is very personal: the content of the selfship, and the fact that i have this hobby at all, is vulnerable in a way i don't need to be with everyone who knows me. (which is why my ass is posting it on the internet to strangers, lmao.)

most days i don't have a problem with the fact that i tend to what is essentially a mental secret garden, because i'm hypervigilant about this part of my inner life not interfering with my regular one (read: no veering into maladaptive daydreaming territory). so far i think i have that down. i'm also lucky that most of my interests over the course of my life (including this one) have pushed me to learn new things or try to improve the skills i already have, which is nice – at least my obsessive tendencies are somewhat enriching.

i do think i will have to give it up eventually, though – or at least turn it into something else. even if it's fun and a net positive to my life, i still wrangle with the time and effort i put into something so self-indulgent over other potential endeavors (something i mentioned in but first: more history). like, why do i take this as seriously as i do? if i'm so proud of it, what's holding me back from sharing it? couldn't i be putting my (i'm talking myself up a bit here) art and organization skills and creative energy to better use – make something that benefits the world, or at least something original that i can share with more people?

i don't really have any answers to the above questions, but they bring to light an overarching concern. i guess i worry that i'm using "having fun with a hobby" as an excuse to Not do the hard but perhaps even more rewarding thing of working on totally original projects – which i have done but still feel the need to do more of, ideally with as much shameless dedication as i put into my oc/canon. and until i can say for sure that i am doing that, i'll always feel like i should be redirecting my energy or else die an unfulfilled artist. (← way too extreme....)

of course, if at some point i'm able to do both without consequence, then all the better, but i assume that's impossible. a part of me always thought she would grow up into a Normal Adult (despite the everything about me) who would naturally outgrow her oc/canons in the pursuit of something bigger.

i feel like that could still be true, which is scary in a different way: the idea that i'll never be able to tap into what made me so excited about this one specific thing again... forgetting the way to the garden, if we want to use the metaphor. i go back and forth between wanting to stay in it and wanting to see what's beyond it, thinking it's part of the person i've become and thinking it's holding me back. i like it here, but i know i'd like what's out there too, and i don't know if they're mutually exclusive.

but. eh! whether i grow out of it naturally, turn it into something else, keep up my current methods as they are, find some totally different way to swing it – i'll probably make peace with whatever the outcome is, and just be happy i did any of it. in the end, i don't think i could ever regret anything i did with my life for love, out of passion, simply because i could.

(an outro, in which i zoom out more than i want to)

(...)

(P.S. this is kind of a Lot of introspection for "making up a guy to kiss toons.")

"selfship" is the aspect of my fannish behavior i am most precious / particular / defensive about – as you can tell from the length of and care put into this writeup, or the lock and key i have on anything about my oc/canons.

amidst many possible reasons, i've come to the conclusion that the main reason is that what i make in the name of selfship is just so so revealing. i see it this way: over all other forms (canon/canon, original fiction, autobiography, etc), selfship has a pretty consistent target audience of Mostly Just You. most of the time, no one else can enjoy the output to the same extent you do. and when you are making something knowing that is the case, it feels silly to dress up your truths in any other way than how you like it, so (if you're endeavoring to take full advantage of the form) you simply don't.

part of the fun of selfship is getting to know yourself through what you make, since it is an exercise in honesty, and something i've found is that a lot of what you learn comes to you without you seeking it out. i learn more about myself through selfship than through my original work or even my autobio comics, spotting themes and motifs in my oc/canons that i seem to have added unconsciously. they answer questions like what am i going through right now? what kind of person do i want to be? what sort of things do i find interesting? how do i feel about this part of me and why? where am i lacking? what am i ashamed of, and what are ways i deal with that?

some of them are things i avoid exploring about my psyche on my own time, but they find their way to me anyway by means of my silly Make Up A Guy To Kiss Blorbo hobby. the distance between myself and the heroine does not exempt me from targeted attacks – in fact, i'd say the distance makes it even easier to clock.

is it always distressing? no! unexpectedly learning weird things about myself through my oc/canons is mostly fine; sometimes even fun.

HOWEVER, knowing that this happens makes sharing them SCARY AS HELL...

i struggle enough with admitting hard truths to myself, so i obviously flinch at the idea of having someone read me for filth via what i feel is my least guarded work. i would of course like people to know me, but i don't want them to see the stuff i find embarrassing or bad or pathetic, and i feel like it's impossible to filter for that when selfship will ambush you with new information about yourself when you least expect it. what more could it reveal about me to the people i share it with?

of course, most revelations are not as straightforward as this, but this is the sort of surprise attack i am talking about.

i feel like a lot of this is rooted in the debilitating insecurity that comes with (checks notes)......... being a twentysomething, lmfao. it's the embarrassment of wanting things, and the fear of being perceived in a way you cannot control. i am at a point where i know myself, but perhaps don't accept all of it just yet, or haven't unlearned the instinct to look to other people for verification that the way i am is an OK way to be. sharing something revealing like a selfship feels DOUBLY scary when your opinion of yourself is still all jumbled, which i am told is normal for this age (ARGH!!!!!! get me out of here!!!!!!!).

i will say that i'm unsure if it's realistic to aim for the total opposite: "100% accepting of and unapologetic about everything about me" seems difficult to achieve, and even undesireable. i think it makes sense to be cagey sometimes – not everyone is kind or willing to see even the positive in good faith, in which case being private is self-preservation. i think it's fine that there are things i wish weren't true about myself – it shows a capacity to recognize faults, a desire to be better. i don't want to lose those things.

but i would like to be a bit more trusting of people and of my ability to be perceived fully and still valued. i want to be able to hold my raw, disgusting, breakable heart in my hands for people to see, without embellishment. i want to know how to protect it in the face of rejection or dislike or misinterpretation, and not let that poison my willingness to show it to others. i want to think it valuable myself, despite all the off-putting things about it – i think that will make the rest of these tasks easier.

slowly, i'm coming to learn that trying to hide the cringiest, most pathetic parts of myself is a futile task, or at least not worth the stress, and that loosening my grip will lead to more happiness in the long run. i hope that caring less will come with age. i think that's partly what this extremely revealing hobby is teaching me to do. no matter how much i struggle, i'm grateful for it :)

anyway, i talked about a lot of way too serious things... if you made it all the way here, oh my god. i'm impressed by your attention span + grateful for your time. (i checked the read time on reader mode and it's like 45min ~ 1 hour... jesus christ...)

despite all my ruminating, i hope that the joy i get from being this insane about oc/canon (or selfship, or yume, or whatever you call it) also shines through!!! yes it can be a learning experience (if you're as deranged as i am), but it is also just great fun!!! if you engage in selfship yourself, i hope that it is fun for you too, and that this writeup gave you stuff to reflect on (but nothing too existential-crisis-inducing, i hope).

happy yume-ing and thanks so much for reading!

love,
the impostor