Yume Shrines

Welcome to my selfshipping/yumeshipping space, where I refuse to be normal about various fictional women! Explore the navigation links to see my shrines for my fictional others.

In case you didn't know the lingo, this basically means that I ship myself with fictional characters. Or, more specifically in my case, I create self-inserts and write AUs in which those stand-ins for myself are paired with canon characters from existing works of fiction. That's where the "self" comes in, and yume, meaning "dream" in Japanese, refers to the selfshipping community in the English-speaking world's connections and roots to yumejoshi in Japanese fandom.

Why do I do it? Well, there are a lot of reasons. Part of it is just that daydreaming comes second nature to me. I've always retreated into worlds in my head, both to tell myself stories about my favorite characters that didn't even involve me a lot of the time and as a source of companionship whenever I was lonely or bored, but also… just because that's how my brain works. I don't think I could stop if I tried, and it doesn't harm me or anyone else, so why would I want to? This is also the driving force behind all the original stories and non-selfship fanworks I want to make one day.

I also want to reclaim the ability to shamelessly insert myself into those fantasy worlds after growing up in the midst of the Mary Sue witchhunts and cringe culture bullshit that plagued fandoms in the '00s and '10s. It makes the whole experience so much more personal, teaching me new things about myself and the life and relationships I'll want in the future. Wholeheartedly embracing this part of myself has already led to some of my closest friendships I've ever had, and I'm always down to talk to more people who are as passionate about their ship lore as I am!

But of course, I overthink like it's my job, so for a lot of people it isn't that deep. And it doesn't have to be. One of my favorite papers on the topic (and, admittedly, one of the only papers, since this is such a new topic to study) talks a lot about what selfshipping means to all kinds of people and why a lot of concerns over it being harmful are misguided, so I highly recommend giving it a read!