#complex dynamics

The TLDR; question is: How do you deal with feeling like you don’t really fit in the selfship community? 

To elaborate: I often feel as if I don’t quite have a place in the selfship community. :( This is for a few reasons. One reason is some of that my F/Os are … unconventional, and do not fit a lot of the more fluffy imagine posts you see. There’s nothing wrong with these posts, ofc, but it is hard to find imagines and positivity posts that fit more complex selfship dynamics. 

Another reason is that the selfship space often feels quite focused on fandom purity culture. This makes me anxious and makes me feel like I’m walking on eggshells a bit, for fear of making someone mad. I grew up Mormon, and purity culture in that context was pretty harmful for me personally, so feeling like I’m thrown back into that kind of culture in a more secular space is uncomfortable and makes me feel unwanted. I do my best to block and curate, yet the general culture of the community makes me feel like an outsider.

@lupinedreaming / @eclipse-selfships

Hello, @eclipse-selfships! Tagged your self-ship blog in this answer since this is about selfshipping. Thank you so much for reaching out and trusting me with this.

I am doing well. Much better than I was a few days ago, but I want a break from 2026 and the drama it's seems to be bringing me. lol. I’m so glad you reached out. Honestly, I hear you so loudly on this. Feeling like an outsider in a space that is supposed to be your creative sanctuary is exhausting, especially when you’re carrying the weight of a past shaped by purity culture. It’s a lot to untangle, but I want you to know right off the bat that you aren’t doing anything wrong by having complex, unconventional bonds.

I’ve been in this world for a long time, even before self-shipping even had that name, and I’ve definitely felt that disconnect. My own list of partners is almost exclusively villains and complicated figures. My primary bond is with 🔥⚔, and I don't see him as the hero of the story. I see him as the post-Nibelheim Incident Sephiroth. He is a planetary destroyer. He is a force of nature that has done terrible things, and I don't try to fix that or soften him into something he isn't just to fit a certain aesthetic. He may have thrown off his 'chains' of canon, but he will still use that destructive energy to protect me. So, I need imagines that fit his intensity and his actual personality. And I think you feel the same for your F/Os.

When you grow up in a high-control environment like you did, or even just in a space where goodness is narrowly defined, it’s natural to feel like you’re walking on eggshells. That feeling of being watched or judged doesn’t just disappear because you’ve moved into a secular community. But here is how I handle it, and how I hope you can find some peace too.

War has and seem to continue to be a reality that we’re prone to experience in this life, on a microcosmic level and on a macrocosmic level. The cause of war, if one is to listen to the many spiritual teachers out there, is separation. Separation is by definition, a sense of being separate from something.

What I find difficult to accept about this claim that ”separation is the source of war” is that separation is actually the psychological process that enables a person to detangle the self from the bounds and ties that inhibits life. It’s the process of withdrawing energetic support, of detaching, of surviving. Separation is necessary for life to flourish. It would be more accurate to state that "separation is the cause of life... and death".

Most people would agree that the root of war is hate and fear - of wanting to establish dominance and power. The instinct of wanting to be in control of our own lives is present in all of us, there’s no individual that isn’t concerned with survival of something. When pushed enough, most people will pick up arms (metaphorically or literally) to protect themselves or "what they stand for". They will do what they can to destroy the threat to their own lives and their own ideals. This is only natural, yet it stems from a sense of separation or at least a feeling that it’s necessary to separate. In general, people dislike individuals who don’t react to threat or don’t perceive threat in the same way as they do. Pacifists become enemies to the people who feel the need to be protected. ”It’s everyone’s duty to fight evil”. Of course, it isn’t, and evil is subjective, but people can be pressured into conforming.

What a bunch of hypocrites we all are.

We’re blind to our own psyches.

We demonize our perpetrators because we want to feel separate from them. This is typically considered healthy. Everyone’s against war because of all the unnecessary suffering and pain that comes with it. We have to be because we don't want to live in a world of chaos. And if we're not for the good? We are, by definition, for evil. Being ”against” something is to separate from it, but so is being "for" something. People are encouraged to separate. To identity with the villain would be taboo and trigger antagonism in people who’ve been victimized. ”And how dare we trigger their fear and rage when they've been unjustly abused”.

There’s something else about the statement that ”separation is the cause of war” that's too simplistic. Identifying with someone doesn’t make it so that there’s automatic benevolence extended toward that person. Sometimes the opposite is true. People can destroy the things they love the most because they don’t perceive them as separate. Healthy symbiosis and toxic enmeshment are not easily distinguishable. ”I want what you want and you want what I want” is ideal, yet it's a rare scenario to find, even between two people, and oftentimes the reality of the situation is that one party is feeling powerful and the other is feeling powerless. Perhaps the roles switch occasionally. Regardless, there’s a war going on, if ever so subtle.

It's also often the case that people hate themselves so much as to want to undermine anything or anyone that resembles or seeks to identify with themselves. We've all encountered individuals who're appalled and terrified of people being optimistic and appreciative of them. Their identities are based on self-hate and self-rejection because they see evil in themselves. This is a quite complex psychological phenomenon that can stem from a lot of different things. It seems destructive, but the motivation is that of preserving goodness, of preserving life - if not of the the body, then of the spirit, if not of the ideal, then of the feelings.

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