the evergreen gardens

the 2024 valentine's day special

song of the day

hey, its been a second. anyways today happens to be valentine's day. the day of romance, and love. it's been a interesting one for me, for sure.
it started around last friday, the 9th, when robi, lover of DX and creator of masterpieces such as this, hosted an art event in her discord server, a simple valentines day one where we draw anything related to it, happened to be that self ship was allowed too! i took it as an excuse to finally draw some self ship art.

i decided to simply draw a picture of my wife, madeline from celeste, and i laying around in bed on a lazy evening. it wasn't much, i feel i coulda done better but hey its something!
afterwards i submitted the artwork to the contest, and then i had an epiphany, inspired by the recent fame of my oomfie nyakka i decided i would post my self ship art to the public under the celeste game's hashtag on valentine's day, what could possibly go wrong?

nothing. everything went so fucking right.

qrt from the celeste account acknowledging my self ship art.
i took a nap after feeling the consequences of staying up too late on my phone, and checked my twitter to see that THE OFFICIAL CELESTE ACCOUNT QUOTE RETWEETED MY ART.
i was shocked, i immediately went to keymash to my other selfshipping friends about this revelation, celebrations were had. as of writing, i am still processing the events that had occurred, it's an insane thing to happen to me, and kind of gives me hope for the future of the public perception of self shipping.

the part where i talk about my past

end screen of chapter 7 of celeste, the summit.

so i started to write this blog post with the intention of posting it publically, to help people understand why madeline is so important to me. the answer is simple.
she was the one that set me on the right path in life
it was around 2019, when i was still a 'dude', browing reddit and then i happened to stumble upon a subreddit known as r/waifuism, which will be shortened to r/w for the time being, a subreddit dedicated to people's love for fictional characters. i was iniitally confused, and downright repelled. how could people take this so far? i thought, i continued to scroll around it and even tell some friends about it at the time.
we had a good laugh.
at the same time though, i was in the middle of playing celeste, a fantastic platformer, and it stood out to me with its story and gameplay. when i finished it, i kinda naturally became obsessed with it, thinking about it a lot, even changing my pfp to the main lady of the game.
so when i stumbled across r/w, i had this thought in the back in my head, that i should try it out. i had already showcased just how obsessed i can be with some characters. so i started posting, with the intention of joining the discord to "troll" around it.
i finally did, and i was surprised by one thing, just how nice the place was. i was expecting worse lol. it was then at this point i had cemented myself as a self shipper.
from this experience, i had started to change my perspective on people, specifically how i percieved those who explore their identity, which wasn't the brightest at the time. i started to explore more aspects of my identity, such as transing my gender lol! i began to shift away from the identity i was given, to the one i molded myself, it took a few more years to get far, but the point is, madeline helped me to see the faults in my old views, and with that blockage out of the way, i was finally free to explore myself and become the robot i truly am. for that, i am forever grateful to my wife.

hopefully this blog has given some quick insight to why i am like the way i am, if you have questions regarding my wife and i, feel free to hit the guestbook and thank you so, so much for taking the time to read this if you did. i hope i have encouraged at least one person today to explore self shipping in any capacity.