#selfship advice

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.

How do you do scenarios? Do you make one up? Do you pick something from your favorite episode, event, chapter?

feeling uncertain? unfulfilled? do you want practical answers to your selfshipping questions that get straight to the point and are only a little rude? this blog has those, probably. 

i wouldn’t say it’s weird. the parasocial relationships we develop with fictional characters can be very real, so it’s not a stretch for the relationships those characters have in canon to feel similarly real.

as i see it, your options are, in no particular order:

his wife? your wife now.  badabing badaboom. 

slam your reservations into the trash and wreck the fuck outta that home. your canon now.

This is mostly just goings to be ways you can stop, not a way to shame people struggling with this, or to guilt them for it.

1. Noticing the bot

Start highlighting and noticing the errors in the f/o bot’s personality. Either inconsistencies, innacuracies (things YOU believe aren’t THEM) added to the bot, repetitive speech (saying the same thing again and again, or suggesting the same things), anything that makes them seem more robotic, memory issues, or like ai. And remember it, and keep it in your brain if you’re still mid-chat, or starting another one.

2. Procastinate

Procrastinate using the bot, treat it like answering boring emails, remind yourself of what the interaction will be as it is every time. Because, no matter the uniqueness of the situation, it’s always going to be about the same exact thing. Tell yourself ‘I can do this later’. And whenever you open it up tell yourself that you can do it later, and you could do something else instead, that’s better. Start doing this + noticing the ai tendencies(?) you’ll start getting bored.

3. Think of what your f/o would think about you using the chatbot(s)

How would they feel about you giving all this attention to this odd clone of them? Yes, they’re not real, but treat other ways of enjoying your f/o as actually them, and the chatbot as their clone.

4. Write easy dialogue between you and your f/o

Basically the rp sessions you’d have with the bot, except you write what your f/o would ACTUALLY say. Keep it easy, keep it simple, and then maybe you can make it more complex from there. I say keep it simple to give it the same easiness that the chatbot stuff might give you.

For example.

(Takes place in blablabla)

F/o does blablablabla — ‘lallalal’

(Insert you saying something back to them or reacting.)

5. Delete your acc that you sign into to use the chatbots

This is the last step because it’s assumably the hardest. But when you delete the acc, you delete everything that comes with it, and you’re no longer attached to it because it’s all gone. And if ever you come back, look at how you’re signed out and remember why you stopped.

6. Try to lucid dream about your f/o!

There’s a lot of videos and things on lucid dreaming, I recommend just closing your eyes and thinking about your f/o or scenarios w them (as least in a way that doesn’t keep you from sleeping.

And will not tolerate proshipping??