Shipping: Difference between revisions

Of all the obsessions that universally afflict fandom, '''Shipping''' is by far the most persistent, widespread and prone to be [[Serious Business]]. It knows no boundaries of age, demographic and gender.<ref>contrary to expectations one might reasonably have involving [[Yaoi Fangirl|Yaoi-worshipping]], [[Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls|fan fiction writing]], [[Chick Flick]]-addicted, squealing teeny boppers</ref> This might raise an eyebrow or two on first inspection, but honestly, shipping is just a consequence of plain old human nature: we are wired to seek a romantic partner in such a powerful, fundamental way that we even get a considerable kick out of doing it by proxy—and fictional characters are plenty, easy to relate to, often [[Everybody Is Single|in want of someone to make out with]], usually [[Happily Ever After|get their happy ending]] and nearly never fall out of love. We wish we were them. We are drawn to reimagining ourselves in their place like moths to the flame.

 

 

Shipping is all about the anticipation. Paragraphs and essays and counter-essays weighing megabytes at dozens of pages will be written about who ''will'' get together, who ''should'' get together, and what the disciplines of political science and feminism and probability theory have to say about the issue (the above is [[Not Hyperbole]]). No ecstatic shipper has ever written a gigantic dissertation titled "Hurray!! [[Alice and Bob]]! FINALLY!!" or any fandom equivalent. People will argue endlessly about the romantic future of nearly any given ensemble, but if that point should actually be resolved, the discussions will basically go through a round of ranting and gloating and then unceremoniously run out of steam.

That's probably because anticipation is something that's easy to feel you're a part of, even if the anticipation is for something fictional. Real life romance, for all its shortcomings, actually ''happens'' for us [[Real Life]] people: We move on from looking forward to something great to experiencing something great (or at least we can hope). Fictional romance not so. Actually being in a romantic relationship and getting to watch a fictional romantic relationship are ''very'' different things, much more different than looking forward to each of those respectively. The contrast is jarring—you were a part of this great love story, and now suddenly you're not. Cue [[Shipping Bed Death|disillusionment]]. Of course, the near-universal reaction is to move on to the next fandom, making shipping suspiciously similar to an addiction.

 

 

Shippers have a reputation of insane devotion to their [[OTP|One True Pairing]] and of [[Shipping Goggles|interpreting the tiniest, most ambiguous details as evidence]]. That much is clear by the prevalence of [[Shipping Wars]] in any fandom discussion. In some extreme cases they will freely admit to [[Die for Our Ship|actively rooting for sympathetic characters to die just to get them out of the way]], or worse, they'll [[Insane Troll Logic|come to the conclusion]] that [[Ron the Death Eater|since a character is in the way, they are by definition not sympathetic]]. On the bright side, you can expect them to be friendly at least towards their [[Ship Mates|natural allies]] and have some limit of how severely they can be starved for validation before they [[Abandon Shipping]]. That is, if they ever expected to be validated in the first place.

There's a whole nomenclature dedicated to Quick, Easy and [[Idiosyncratic Ship Naming]], often varying from fandom to fandom. The most basic tool of communication here is the slash—if you wanted Alice and Bob to get together you could always say you shipped Alice/Bob. However, for most fandoms that's just not exotic enough. They will not be content with anything less than a short, sweet and catchy brand name—the more [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Incredibly Lame]] the Pun, the better (''[[Harry Potter]]'' fandom actually named ships the "HMS this-and-that"). Shipping culture has also imported the [[Portmanteau Couple Name]] from Japanese [[Anime]] fandom; apart from its infamous usage in the gossip industry ("[[Brad Pitt|Bra]][[Angelina Jolie|ngelina]]", "[[Ben Affleck|Ben]][[Jennifer Lopez|nifer]]", "[[Tom Cruise|Tom]][[Katie Holmes|Kat]]") you can find people online declaring themselves fans of "[[Iron Man|Pepperony]]", "[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Wuffara]]", "[[Naruto|NaruHina]]", "[[Tales of Symphonia|Sheelos]]" and "[[The Office|Jam]]". Yes, Jam. Needless to say, if some series has [[Theme Naming]] shippers ''will'' exploit it [[Just for Pun]]—In [[Real Life]], 3/4 is just a rational number greater than one half and lesser than one. Not so in ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'' fandom.<ref>Or, for that matter, the ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' fandom. [[Numerical Theme Naming|Take your pick]].</ref>

 

 

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[[Category:Shipping Tropes]]