Jo's Workbench

I'm a nonbinary, disabled artist and selfshipper! My main blog is @berrycontrary, you can also find me on Bluesky, toyhouse, artfight and youtube under the same username. My main F/O and soulmate is Jiminy Cricket, he means the world to me! Other F/O's you'll see me talk about here are: Isaac Clarke, Mike Schmidt, Knuckles, Metal Knuckles and more!I'm nonsharing with a good chunk of these characters, so please be respectful of that!

I sometimes open up commissions, though currently they are closed.

My blog is 18+ interaction only, so please only follow if you are an adult!

Yumeship is NOT a recent term, just recently introduced to western audiences.

Yumeshipping comes from a type of fiction in japan known as "Dream Journals" (yume shōsetsu) a type of fiction where the reader IS the protagonist. From what I've been able to find this style of fiction was introduced from 1990s to the 2000s (It's unclear which is true)

With the covid pandemic, it's no secret a flood of people were introduced to the internet and were forced to interact over the interwebs. While the term's roots are in the 1990s, it wasn't until the pandemic that it really became known to western audiences.

(Source 1: What Is Yumeshipping?)

(Source 2: Yumemi Otome)

Yumeshipping and Selfshipping aren't EXACTLY the same.

While yes, both at their core are "shipping ones self with a fictional character" the terms have different contexts behind them.

Selfshipping seems to be, from my research, a term that's a bit more lighthearted and broad. Typically it's connected to romantic shipping.

Yumeshipping is a term that's often linked to coping mechanisms. Yumeshipping isn't JUST romantic either, however it's more well known it's not just romantic due to it's link to coping mechanisms.

Basically it's like Marmalade and Grape Jam, both are jelly but have different tastes and use different ingredients. This is honestly why I may start only tagging SPECIFIC characters with the tag "yumeship" instead of all of them.

I think this inherit label difference is probably why people started using the term yumeship because it's a more well known coping mechanism.

(Source : Yumeship Term Guide)

(Source 2: Mae's Guide To Self Inserts)

Closing thoughts.

I primarily made this because I genuinely find the origins of the term interesting. I also wanted to share these findings because of the idea that people ONLY use the term because it's Japanese when it does have different context to it.

To me it's like the term kigurumi. The term referring to a style of cosplay. It's a Japanese because the style COMES FROM japan. While yes there are ABSOLUTELY people who use it in bad faith and just because it's from Japan, the term itself is not something that comes from modern day tiktoks. I'm just sick of so many readings that it's some new fangled term to make selfshipping look "cool" and only came out when the pandemic hit. When in reality it's a term that goes back to the 90s-early 2000s.

You don't HAVE to use the term if you don't want to, genuinely. I'm a huge believer in using terms YOU are comfortable in using.

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