#not.. of shipping

[flowering-darkness]

I never know what the proper date is, but around this point in May is when I first started actively selfshipping on Tumblr. I definitely knew of the concept via my friend Amaria by the 12th, and had made a selfship blog of my own before the 20th, which.. initially started as a secondary blog, but I quickly changed over to a primary blog once I started interacting with more people and realised that selfshipping had become the main thing I was actively using Tumblr for.

(The reason I always refer to it as starting to actively selfship on Tumblr is that I was sort of already selfshipping before first learning the term, and finding out it was a thing other people did online. I’ve always made self-inserts, or said I loved and/or wanted to marry some characters from a young age ‑ though only in one instance did I actively connect the two things, and give my self-insert dedicated lore that involved her getting into a relationship with a character beyond the game’s mechanics allowing such. This was Aria, my main Kingdom Hearts self-insert who I played as in KHUX ‑ which is why my selfship with Aqua is the only one where the start date I have for it is before May 2020.)

From that tentative starting point, in which I sort of came up with a new persona to act as online, it’s amazing to think that five years have now passed, and I’ve come into my own here so much more. Yet I still have close friends who I met very close to the start, whom I’ve been lucky enough to keep in touch with all throughout ‑ and I’ve made so many great friends along the way as well, and met people I still think of fondly even if we no longer share focused interests or spaces. There have been rough times, but I’ve managed to get through them, regardless of what went on. I’ve had to take many steps back from how much presence I used to hold here, and there are still many days when I wish I could maintain a busier, broader dashboard than I can now. I wish I could be more active here and answer asks more quickly, instead of leaving everything stuck in my drafts for half a year. But as a result, I’m always so grateful for those who still have an interest in what I say and do here, especially in cases where I can’t reciprocate in the way I would otherwise want to. It means a lot, and so do you.

When I first started selfshipping here, I was still at school (or, well, sixth form); I’m now about to submit my final piece of work as an undergraduate, and - if all goes well enough grades-wise - will graduate in the summer before starting a PhD program in September. Despite all that, though, I’m still here, and still selfshipping ‑ which is something I still very much enjoy doing.

I look forward to doing it more in the future, here alongside you all! ^-^

[hexjulia]

so hard not to become the most annoying person on earth if you're a little excitable and just learned a little about a topic literally no one around you has any interest in

[yuttikkele]

hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

[animentality]

[carnage-cathedral]

my partner said something that kinda rocked my world

[gophersdomain]

something something despite the all horrors and tragedies of the world, love was there and that's all that matters

[sabertoothwalrus]

good dynamic: character who’s too deeply rooted to a fault + character who’s never been able to form roots anywhere before

[theotherpacman]

not all ships are For wanting them to be in a happy healthy relationship together. sometimes shipping two characters means you want them to be erotically obsessed with each other and become entwined in a mutually toxic love affair for a few months and then horrifically break each other's hearts and never speak again. sometimes you want them to be codependent best friends with enough repression to explode a submarine who only make out/have sex when they're at their worst. sometimes you want them to pine after each other for years, never say anything, and then die. sometimes you want them to kill each other. this, too, is shipping

[mo-mode]

[tiredandoptimistic]

Nothing hits like "romantic couple and a third guy who's not dating either of them but is definitely a part of this dynamic"

[hijinxmayhem]

proud parent

[cubezart]

ship dynamic i really like

[inkskinned]

i love you vaccines i love you research i love you reading the book instead of having chatgpt summarize it i love you critically thinking rather than reacting to a headline i love you investigating the source material i love you science i love you math even though you are personally my enemy (math/yn slowburn) i love you writing even though you try to stab me a lot i love you Experts in Your Field i love you Using The Brain

[boasamishipper]

unpopular opinion but i think a ship that's not canon but both halves are canonically insane about each other is infinitely better than a ship that's canon and boring

[color-ns]

Sometimes tweeter people know their stuff- this is the right kind of toxic angst I want to read.