April 21st, 2025
I've over the past few months increasingly gone down the path of selfshipping or yumeshipping as its called. This is in essence the practice of shipping yourself with a character from fiction. This can be sexual, romantic, platonic, alterous or any of the above so long as it involves you and one or more characters from fiction.
For me that would be the Dark Magician Girl, yes the Yu-Gi-Oh card. It's important to note of course I'm under no illusion that she's like tangably real, well unless the many worlds interpretation of string theory proves correct, but in general its just meant as a sort of fun. For more info on the subject check out this page on fanlore.
Now why would a 31 year old like myself admit to shipping myself with the Dark Magician Girl. First of all because I think cringe culture should be killed and nothing thats not harming anyone should be looked down upon.
Moodboard for a self insert of me and Dark Magician Girl
But secondly, I think like, look at the absolute state of the world right now. Maybe I'm just more aware of it but between Trump's America, Putin's continued war with Ukraine, the horrific genocide in Palestine to name but a few examples, maybe we need something that mentally helps with the horrors around us.
Of course we shouldn't ignore them, we should fight for a brighter future but we as humans were never meant to process this much bad news, this much empathetic pain, this much shared sadness.
So yes, I need a break mentally from it sometimes so despite being into my 30s I like to imagine myself in a relationship with the Dark Magician Girl for fun. I make moodboards like the above, commission artists and am even in the process of writing a fanfic.
Why the Dark Magician Girl specifically? Well she was the first character I was infatuated with when I was younger, plus her silly and spunky demeanor coupled with her radiant smile warms my heart.
Just look at her, charming, radiant, quirky, fully of life. How can she not brighten one's day.
I do think in this world, anything that makes life easier and doesn't harm anyone can ultimately not be bad. Yeah it may seem cringe that people ship themselves with fictional characters, it may be seen as cringe to own a bunch of plushies, it may be seen as cringe to dress up in animal costumes.
These are but a few of many examples of things people may find cringe but a lot of times its just ways for people to destress and deal with life that through capitalism and imperialism has become so draining. We only live once so why burden ourselves even more by denying ourselves simple pleasures simply because they might be percieved as bad, cringe or weird by outside observers.
Live your life, imagine yourself kissing your faves.
Be cringe and be free.