Self-Shippers of tumblr, today is a very special day…

Today, January 17th, marks the one-year anniversary of me being with Clairen, my main romantic F/O. ❤️

It was on this day last year that I first downloaded Lovers of Aether to try out, and at the time, I had next to no idea that not only would I come out of the experience with a whole host of F/Os (That take up roughly 70% of my entire F/O list, in fact), but that I would also meet perhaps my most doted over romantic F/O.

I’ve spoken to great lengths about how my affection toward Clairen came to be a few times before, which you can read all about in these two posts hereandhere, so there isn’t a whole lot more I can detail in terms of how I felt when I first saw her…

… but what I can talk about was the impact she had on my life. I don’t think I’ve ever fallen for a romantic F/O harder than I did for Clairen. Immediately after meeting her in Lovers of Aether, she became my top fictional crush, bar none.

I pulled off theperfectplaythough of her route in Lovers of Aether, ultimately ending in her agreeing to go to the homecoming dance with me. I began using her as my go-to character in pretty much every Rivals of Aether match I played onward. I woke up at six in the morning to order her plush. I snagged every single issue of Tales of Aether once they released just to see her beautiful face.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that the biggest reason that I chose to make a self-shipping side blog in the first place was because of the immense love I had for Clairen, in addition to the other F/Os I picked up from the Aether franchise. Granted, what I’m about to say applies to all of my F/Os, but I’m sure you can imagine that there is something particularly special to me about her…

Clairen genuinely makes me happy.

Even the thought of her is enough to get me smiling like a complete dork. I have held my Clairen plush in my arms far more times than you might imagine, seeing as it’s the closest thing I have to being in her embrace… it’s a good thing her plush is the biggest of the lot. There have been days in this past year where life has been hard… so hard, that some days it was an impossibility to even keep my eyes open. But every time I felt that nothing was going right…

I would think of Clairen. I would think about the way she would hold her hand in mine. I would think about the way she would gush about me to other people. I would think about the way her face lights up whenever she laughs. I would think about those serene moments where it’s just the two of us, gazing endlessly into one another’s eyes…

Clairen makes me feel loved.

And for our one year anniversary together… I just had to draw her.

I am tremendously proud of this drawing of her, in part because of how much of an improvement it is over the drawing I made of her last year, but also keep in mind that I drew this all in one afternoon, and managed to finally perfect drawing Clairen in my artstyle.

I had also initially planned on writing Clairen a letter in this post in a similar fashion to how I wrote one for my big sis Ayala here, but… I feel as though this entire post is one big love letter in itself. My love for Clairen has been made more than apparent with how long this post is and the drawing of her that I made, I find.

Lovers of Aether might credit itself to be ‘a friendship game’, but to me, it’s more than that. It’s a game about friendship, family, and true to its name, love…

… which I managed to find therein.❤️