Iss. 10
|| October 17th, 2023
A Few Analytical Thoughts on Self-Ship
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Assorted recent thoughts on self-ship. I would like to do a much more
eloquent write up on lots of topics but the ability to organize all of my
many, many thoughts eludes me at the moment...
- I was in the car the other day feeling a little bit caught up in despair.
Out of nowhere, a brief but overwhelmingly genuine thought crossed through
my mind. There's something I can look forward to in life, presumably forever
- finding new media and, in turn, finding new characters to fall in love
with. I forget exactly how the thought was phrased, but it made a really big
impact on me and I felt really calmed and happy. There's an endless amount
of chances to fall in love, and each time I do, I'll get to learn something
new about myself. That was a very pleasant and peaceful thought that
surprised me a lot.
- Was linked
this fascinating article about denpa by a friend, and of course the line
about falling in love with fictional characters was the one I took the most
note of.
> Rather than spending his time on real love, Honda embraces moe, his
intense emotions for fictional characters in his favorite anime and visual
novels. Honda proudly proclaims, “Moe is the saving grace of the otaku. It
never flirts; it never calculates—it offers perfect uncalculated love. Moe
is, above all else, self-sacrificing; it asks nothing in return.”
I found this quote really fascinating. Is that one of the biggest draws of
moe and otaku culture? Unconditional, self-sacrificing love? That makes
sense in a way, especially thinking about how pervasive and popular genki
cheerful girls are. Something about the quote also felt very uncomfortable
to me, too, however. Is a fictional relationship doomed by its very nature
to be one-sided - 'self-sacrificing', as this quote put it, in favor of the
real person? Or is this just the remnants of one man's view of real-life
women subconsciously affecting how he chooses to engage with a fictional
relationship?
The concept of endless, boundless love is not bad on its own - of course
that would be a draw of a fictional relationship! They have an endless
supply of energy and can always be there for you! It's a deeply comforting
feeling. However, the framing of such a concept can perhaps, to a
frightening degree, reveal things about the person in this relationship. The
difference between the portrayal of 'anime girl who gets super excited to
see you because she loves you' and 'anime girl who only exists when she is
happy and in love with you' appears surface level but, at least to me,
massive at the same time. I think about this sort of thing a lot, especially
as someone who tends to focus more on making sure that both sides are happy
and attended to the longer I'm in love with a character.
Sometimes it's an active thought - thinking to myself, 'What would they need
in this situation? Is there anything they need from me? Are they also having
fun?' Other times it comes up naturally, via dialogue in something I'm
writing or a sudden thought out of the blue. And sometimes it's more meta
than that, when I realize I've been spending a great deal of time and
attention on myself, and the discomfort of indulging myself leads me to make
sure that I'm being kind and attentive to the other party before I'm allowed
to start pandering to myself again. After all, a real relationship can't be
focused 100% on one person. These thoughts tend to evolve naturally the
longer that I've cared for a character, though in some cases this can also
be what makes me get attached to them or fall in love with them in the first
place! Though, as I said, this tends to happen more with longer
relationships. Characters that I still am more in the 'crush' stage with
rather than a dedicated relationship tend to fall more into the square of
unconditional love and playful, happy interactions all the time.
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