The Ship Yard

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Every fandom ships, known fact. Often there is Ship-to-Ship Combat, and sometimes there are a few Ship Sinkings, causing fans to Abandon Shipping.

The tropers saw this, and decided that there were not enough puns. So they gathered their collective insanity, and built The Ship Yard!

The Ship Yard contains Just for Pun entries that probably wouldn't fit the Three Rules of Three, and thus aren't exactly tropes.

Just in case it's not perfectly clear: This has nothing to do with a facility for producing sailing vessels.

The products of the All The Tropes Official Ship Yard include
  • Aircraft Carrier: Ship that serves as a launch pad for Cloudcuckoolanders. Official Aircraft Carriers may also have a sizable complement of Torpedo Bombers.
    • Nimitz: An Aircraft Carrier with more Torpedo Bombers than you can shake a stick at.
  • Alang: The name of the place where old, once big and proud, but now outdated ships end.
  • Anti-Ship Missile (also called Air-to-Sea Missile): when Word of God simply states that a particular ship isn't going to happen (Compare Ship Sinking), but can come from other shippers and anti-shippers.
  • Air Ship:
    1. A particularly fanciful ship.
    2. Shipping between characters that are pilots, or work on a plane or flying base.
    3. Shipping Cloudcuckoolanders.
  • Allied Ship: A ship that supports another (perhaps by removing a person from an official ship to justify a Fanon one).
  • Anti-Shipping Aircraft: Someone or something that fires a lot of Anti-Ship Missiles.
    • Alternatively, a Torpedo Bomber, when dealing with older companies that are less up to date.
  • Apprentice Ship: A ship that interprets a mentor/pupil relationship as romantic.
    • May be called an Intern Ship if it sprouts from a boss/employee relationship.
  • The Argo: A ship of mythological heroes, especially Greek ones.
    • Alternatively, a ship that takes place in the background story, before the main action of the film/series.
  • Aviation Cruiser: A ship with heavy armament of its own, supplemented by a complement of on-board helicopters for anti-submarine work and aircraft for air defence.
  • Backfire Raid: A massed assault by Anti-Ship Aircraft, capable of sinking entire convoys. Even the most vigilant, Aegis System-equipped fleets can expect to suffer losses from a well-executed raid.
  • Battlecruiser: A ship based on a Dating Catwoman-style dynamic.
  • Battle of Jutland: An epic battle between multiple ships that ends with a Pyrrhic Victory for one ship.
  • Battle off Samar: Horribly mismatched Ship-to-Ship Combat that the underdog nonetheless somehow manages to win.
  • Battle Ship:
    1. Alternative name for Foe Yay.
    2. Particularly aggressive Shipping fandom, eager to engage in Ship-to-Ship Combat.
      • Yamato-class Battleship: Biggest, most popular, and most well-armed ship in the fandom.
      • Iowa-class Battleship: Economy version of the Yamato, not as impressive as its bigger cousin, but faster and more practical to support. Even when all other battleships are moored or sunk, the Iowa will still be at sea, though often for reasons its builders envisioned only as a secondary mission, if at all.
      • Hindenburg-class Battleship: A ship that both needs to be highly aggressive to survive and requires far more support than can ever be gathered. Hence, it never came into existence.
    3. Shipping two warriors.
    • Pocket Battleship: Like the above, but with more wank involved.
  • Becalmed Ship: A relationship so stable some people find it boring.
  • Bismarck: People put every effort necessary into sinking this ship.
  • Brinkman Ship: A ship that always causes trouble and where shippers try to gain support of their ship by any means neccessery.
  • Bull Ship: Not going to happen.
    • Or a ship where one or both of the shipped is a bull/are bulls.
      • Or vaguely bull-like creatures, such as minotaurs, Ichigo's recent Hollow transformation in Bleach, and random people wearing horns on their head.
  • Canoe: A ship that is perfectly functional, yet tiny, largely ignored, and whose fans must work with little help from the official canon.
    • Kayak: A canoe that receives sudden Word of God confirmation
      • Creeker: A kayak going through some very rough waters.
      • Freestyle Kayak: A kayak where one or both characters are very acrobatic.
  • Canon Fire:
    1. When a ship is Jossed by canon events. See Ship Sinking.
    2. In-series jokes at the expense of a particular ship.
  • Canon Ship: Another term for the Official Couple.
    • Kanon Ship: Anything involving Ayu from Kanon. Uguu~
    • Loose Canon Ship: A ship where one of the parties is an obvious Ax Crazy or Yandere.
  • Canoneer: A fan who supports only pairings present within Canon, often to the point of attacking anyone who writes or draws any other ship.
    • Shark: A fan who attacks fans of recently sunk ships.
  • The Catamaran: A pair that is shipped because they end up captive together a lot.
    • Alternatively, a ship where one or both involved are cats or part-cat.
    • The Katamaran: A ship that rolls over and absorbs all other ships. See for example Mike and Gillian in Stranger in a Strange Land.
  • Censor Ship: Shipping in a way that gets rid of the Squick-inducing elements.
  • Champion Ship: Pairing two top-ranked and decorated athletes/martial artists/soldiers/gamers, possibly from rivaling schools/dojos/armies.
  • Classification Society: A group of fans dedicated to creating the Registry (which see) and ensuring that all ships are built to code (i.e. opponents of Crack Pairing and Jossed ships in all their forms).
  • Coastal Defence Ship: A ship that protects the fandom from coming under attack from other fandoms.
    • Ilmarinen And Vainamoinen: "That fandom must be quite the naval power: even their Lightships are armed with big guns!"
  • Containerized Shipping (a.k.a. Isotainer Ship): Shipping communities that break up the fandom into non-overlapping compartments. Example: School Rumble, with the Tenma shippers vs. the Eri shippers.
  • Contraband Shipping: Alternative name for Crack Pairing.
    • Or a ship where no one's in a band?
  • Convoy: A number of Ships whose fans mutually support one another in order to ensure that their particular Ship survives.
  • Cool Ship: Alternate name for The Yacht. Sadly, already in use for something else.
  • Corvette: A ship of two characters who spend a lot of time in fast cars together.
    1. Alternately, a ship that springs up very fast.
    2. Shipping a character and the car.
  • Cougar Ace: A ship that ALMOST sinks, to the point where nearly all of its fans Abandon Shipping, but is somehow rescued. Does not have to involve an attractive older woman and/or a handsome young cyborg.
  • Cruise Ship:
    1. An Official Couple.
    2. A Ship with more than two participants, anything from a threesome to a whole-cast-hell-throw-in-a-crossover-or-twenty orgy.
    3. One with Tom Cruise involved.
  • Damn the Torpedoes: The cry of shippers who ignore Torpedoes and Anti-Ship Missiles.
  • Danger To Shipping: A fandom that is averse to the practice in general, and will kick you out for bringing it up.
  • Davy Jones Locker: A forum/LJ community/message board/what-have-you for shippers of sunk ships.
  • Destroyer: In collaborative works, a ship that fires Torpedoes at other ships.
    • Alternatively, a ship skilled at defending itself from Submarine attacks.
    • Or a ship so radical that it carelessly wrecks the whole setting.
    • Or a ship (seemingly) designed to sink lots of smaller ships, for instance between the two most shipped characters (or their parents).
  • Dictator Ship: A ship jam-packed with master/servant relationships and the like.
  • Dinghy: The pairing of two Ensemble Darkhorses.
  • Distress Call: A sequence of events that show that a ship is sinking and that the fans should prepare to Abandon Shipping.
    • Distress Beacon, a.k.a. EPIRB: What is usually sent out if a ship sinks so quickly that there's very little time to Abandon Shipping.
  • Dreadnought: The most powerful ship. Slow, but capable of destroying huge ships with a single volley, and capable as well of resisting many Air-to-Sea Missiles. Or alternately, a very bold shipping effort (i.e., dreads nought).
  • Dredging The Ship: When a ship that has previously been sunk is suddenly resurrected by the author after having a change of heart.
  • Drydock: When a Ship is sunk but later reappears, sans author approval, it's been hiding here.
  • DUKW pron. "duck": a ship that's been Put on a Bus.
  • EA Bryan: A ship that may have been put together okay, but complete and total incompetency in handling it results in a spectacular self-destruction.
  • Ehime Maru: A Ship that is sunk by a Submarine, but not in the usual way and not on purpose.
  • Ekranoplan: The ship of all ships, even more than the Dreadnought. Hard, tough, powerful and with all the speed and sneakiness of the Hydrofoil. Using conventional naval warfare, this ship will not go down, no matter how much Canon fire you throw at it, and it's pretty much vulnerable only to Flak Artilleries pointed at the ship.
    • Or: Seems a pretty silly ship at first, but then takes off.
  • Enemy Ship:
    1. Another alternative name for Foe Yay.
    2. A ship that rivals the shipper's OTP.
  • Escape Raft: A back-up ship to support in case the shipper's OTP is destroyed, e.g., "If Bob/Lucy doesn't work out, Bob/Jessica is my Escape Raft."
  • Express Shipping: Pairs thrown together in a big hurry in response to canon developments or the introduction of new characters.
    • Or a pairing that fall in love very quickly.
  • The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships:
    1. A character that's been shipped with every member of the cast, gender, orientation, age and views notwithstanding. And don't think they'll stop with the show's character cast. Often overlaps with The Smurfette Principle in that the lone female member of an ensemble will inevitably be shipped with all members of her Five-Man Band (and then some).
    2. A conspicuously attractive actor or actress whose appearance in a role makes their character skyrocket in popularity in the shipping world and/or instantly turns an unsympathetic character into a Draco in Leather Pants (e.g. Tom Felton was arguably The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships for Draco Malfoy; Alan Rickman definitely was for Snape.) See also Self Fanservice.
  • First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal: Wild, chaotic, every-ship-for-itself Ship-to-Ship Combat at point-blank range in the middle of the night.
  • Fishing Boat: A ship that actively goes looking for evidence to support it.
  • Flag Ship: An Official Couple that the series revolves around, or is otherwise heavily promoted by official sources.
    • Or any pairing between characters from Axis Powers: Hetalia.
    • Or a romance between two patriots.
  • Flak Artillery: A segment of the fandom that insists in the possibility of a ship regardless of the Word of God; i.e., something that fires against Torpedo Bombers. Also known as SAM Battery or AA Battery.
    • Aegis System: A particularly influential and well-coordinated segment of fans who possess this.
  • Fleet: A series where fans are known to have groups of ships, not just one. Best example is Naruto, where one is likely to be something along the lines of a Naruto×Hinata, Sakura×Sasuke, Shikamaru×Temari, and Neji×Tenten shipper.
  • Freak Wave: Immense amount of supporters of one particular and particularly wacky ship appearing within a short timespan. Powerful enough to get even a Canon Ship to struggle.
  • Free Shipping:
    1. Shipping possibilities provided by the characters in the story.
    2. Shipping possibilities provided by the creators themselves.
  • Friend Ship: Shipping two characters who claim to be Just Friends or Like Brother and Sister.
  • Freudian Ship:
    1. An A×B ship where Character A mistakes Character B for a third Character C. (Example: Aerith×Cloud×Zack.)
    2. A not-quite-official ship that's very heavy in Subtext.
    3. A ship where the character really just wants to kill his father and sleep with his mother.
  • Full of Ship: A fan whose Shipping Goggles are welded on, and can literally think of nothing else when viewing works.
  • Garbage Scow: An unpopular ship that is constantly dumped on by most of the fandom.
  • Generation Ship:
    1. A May–December Romance ship.
    2. A ship based on the principle of Generation Xerox (his dad and her mum should have got together, but didn't, so...).
    3. Kirk×Picard.
    4. A teen couple whose divorced parents are also dating each other.
  • Ghost Ship:
    1. A pairing with the minor obstacle of one side being dead (or "just hiding") at the time.
    2. The Crack Pairing that wouldn't go away, or the Draco in Leather Pants ship that refuses to die despite the best efforts of the author and other fans.
    3. A ship involving undead characters. Most ships in Bleach qualify for this definition of Ghost Ship by the very nature of the show.
    • Flying Dutchman: A Ghost Ship that actually outlives the run of the series.
  • The Good Ship Lollipop:
    1. A ship that happens to Tastes Like Diabetes.
    2. An alternate name for Toy Ship.
  • Going Down With The Ship: An extreme reaction to seeing one's favourite ship sunk. In other words, taking Die for Our Ship rather too literally.
    • Or, slightly more reasonably, to stop watching the show when one's ship is sunk.
  • The Good Shipherd: A member of an online community who is skilled at maintaining peace between differing shippers. Alternately, a character within a work who keeps the peace when The Matchmaker and the Shipper on Deck disagree.
  • Grand Admiral: A BNF who reached that status through frequent shipping of a particular pairing.
  • Gunship:
    1. Shipping two Gunslingers.
    2. Shipping two members of the military.
    3. Shipping a Badass and his gun.
    4. Anything that requires a shotgun wedding to work.
  • Hard Ship:
    1. A not-quite-Crack Pairing that nevertheless requires a lot of effort to justify.
    2. A pairing involving one or more rock-based, metallic, or crystalline character.
    3. A particularly explicit slashfic involving... Does the obvious really need to be stated?
  • The Harbour: A point in canon where both members of the ship are no longer seen together a lot.
  • Heaven Ship: A pairing confirmed by putting two characters Together in Death.
  • Hringhorni: A ship between Mary Sue and Marty Stu.
  • Home Port: The work/fandom to which a particular ship belongs. Should the ship involve any kind of Crossover, it is the fandom where the ship has more support.
  • Hurricane: A storm or other weather-based event that manages to destroy at least one ship.
  • Hydrofoil: Very evasive ship with a low radar profile known for being extremely difficult to sink with Torpedoes, but seldom lasts long in Ship-to-Ship Combat. Basically, a weaker Ekranoplane.
    • Alternatively, a ship where one of the characters is the Foil of the other.
  • Iceberg: A plot event that causes a Ship Wreck. The damage is often mistaken for that of a Torpedo.
  • Ice Breaker: A ship between two Yanderes, breaking through everything that get in their way.
  • I'm On a Boat
  • Intelligence Ship: Shipping secret agents.
    • Also an alternative name for Pair the Smart Ones.
    • "Okean" class trawler—a ship involving Soviet agents.
  • Ironclad: An unpopular ship, constantly under attack from rivals, that manages to remain afloat because despite not being official canon; it has a massive body of supporting evidence to act as armor.
  • I Saw These Ships Come Sailing In
    • What you can say when you knew that somebody was going to ship a certain pair, and it happens.
    • A Christmas themed ship.
  • Jetsam: Events in canon ignored by certain shippers to keep sailing.
  • The Junk: A ship that results from all the other characters being shipped already so the fans decide they should just Pair the Spares.
  • Kin Ship: Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
  • Lake Boat: An obvious ship between minor characters that has a small fandom but no competition.
  • Landing Craft: A ship whose fans invade Internet forums in order to promote it.
    • Landing Craft, Tank: Armored support that fans bring with them in the form of evidence in favor of the ship(s) that they support.
    • D-Day: What happens when a large number of fans of a particular ship (or ships) invade an Internet forum.
  • Liberty Ship: A ship that, once formed, quickly gains a large amount of evidence in favor of it.
  • Life Boat: Alternative name for Last-Minute Hookup.
  • Life Jacket: Whatever arguments or reasoning shippers need to get to their Escape Raft.
  • Life Ship: When real-life actors who play the characters involved in a popular ship get together, such as the romance that briefly appeared to be brewing between Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) in early 2008.
    • Another example would be the confirmed relationship between Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli) and Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet). Somewhat creepy, because they play uncle and niece on the show.
  • Lighthouse: A character used as a matchmaker, especially if they say "I Want My Beloved to Be Happy" when the usual alternative is making that character Die for Our Ship.
  • Lloyd's of London: A character created to be paired up with the "out" partner of a sunk ship.
  • Long Distance Shipping: Shipping two characters who never even met in canon. There is a very high chance that it will be sunk when they do meet officially.
  • Lost in Shipping: Character Derailment by the fans in favor of their personal ship. A whole shipping crate full of leather pants for the Ensemble Darkhorse and/or White-Haired Pretty Boy.
    1. Random inclusion of Lost characters in a relationship.
  • Love Craft: A ship involving two Eldritch Abominations.
  • Love Boat:
    1. A show that encourages shipping. A lot. The greater the gender ratio of the core characters in a show in either direction, the more likely the show will become a Love Boat (but not The Love Boat, mind).
    2. A ship whose fans always include sex in their discussions of it.
    3. An extremely popular ship.
    4. A pair that, in canon, is as together as together can be. Impossible for other shippers to ignore, but if you know shippers, you know that won't stop them (see Lost in Shipping).
  • Lusitania: A Sunken Ship leads to a whole lot of Ship-to-Ship Combat.
  • Man-o-War: A ship that, if present, automatically sinks another one. If it doesn't happen in canon, those who support it will try to make it work in fandom.
  • Man Overboard: Alternative name for Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends.
  • Mary Celeste: All characters involved in the ship disappear without warning.
  • Merchant Ship: A ship promoted metatextually in order to sell more licensed merchandise; e.g., because it appeals to a Periphery Demographic with more money than the core audience.
  • Micro Ship: When one of the partners is small. Examples: Taiga, Shana, Klan Klein, Ohtani Atsushi, and the protagonist of Yotsunoha. Compare Tall Ship.
  • Missing the Boat: A ship that has been teased, but never resolved one way or the other due to stall tactics, leaving the Unresolved Sexual Tension unresolved because, for example, one or both parties was Twice Shy and Could Not Spit It Out. Yumi×Ulrich, for example.
  • Mother Ship: The Mother of All Ships in the respective franchise, such that sinking the Mother Ship simultaneously destroys the stability of the shipping fandom (generally by ruining delicate Pair the Spares and Ship Mates permutations).
  • Mutiny: Supporters of the same ship have different ideas on how the ship should be handled and portrayed, leading to infighting within the ship's fan base.
  • My Ship Sails In The Morning: A ship supported by King Harkinian.
  • Naglfar: A particularly Squicky ship. Named for a ship made out of dead people's toenails from Norse Mythology.
  • Naval Arms Race: When rival shippers repeatedly come up with new ships and examples to support their ships to outdo each other.
  • Navigators: The people who play the characters in any given ship.
  • Nice Boat: A ship that ends in a Murder the Hypotenuse situation.
  • Nuclear-Powered Ship: A ship involving Keet and Genki Girl. Energies are trememdous.
  • Paddle Boat:
    1. A ship with a strong S&M vibe, either because of the power dynamics involved, the sheer violence of the Foe Yay, the fact that one of the parties involved just happens to wear fetishy stuff, or, well, anything, really.
    2. Any ship based on Mark Twain's works.
  • Patrol Boat: A pairing supported by an extreme minority of the fandom which an author writes to see whether or not other people like it. If done successfully, it could be promoted to a Cool Ship.
  • Pearl Harbor: When a neutral ship joins in a shipping war due to a massive unprecedented attack by one of the sides.
  • Perfect Storm: A nasty combination of events, usually occurring at a particularly important point in the plot, that threaten at least one ship (if not more).
  • Phalanx:
    1. The last defensive measure a shipper has against attempts at Ship Sinking by Anti-Ship Missiles.
    2. A furious barrage of counter-arguments that support/defend one's ship - only effective against one or two attacks not multiple (See Backfire Raid).
  • Pirate Ship:
    1. A ship in which one participant sweeps in and steals the other from their current S.O.
    2. A ship involving characters who are pirates.
    3. Where fans dub their own dialogue onto clips and post them on YouTube to support their Ship. (No, I don't know if it really happens. I'd be more surprised if it doesn't, though.)
  • Plague Ship:
    1. The least popular ship in a fandom, or just one that will cause an Internet Backdraft.
    2. A ship that finally gets together in an otherwise drama/action-centric series, and then triggers an outbreak of other pairings, gradually pushing the whole thing towards the romance genre (if it's not all part of wrapping up the series).
    3. A ship that, when brought together or even hinted at, causes the show to Jump the Shark.
  • Premiership: Pairing heads of state (Truth in Television: Bush/Blair).
  • Prepaid Shipping: Supporting a pairing when one or both of the characters haven't actually made an appearance yet (including characters from a series that hasn't started). Makes shipping more convenient when the time comes, since people don't think to question a pairing that's already well-established.
  • Sailing Ship: When old people get shipped.
    • Alternatively: A ship that's been around too long already.
    • Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope: Preliminary materials that provide support for such a ship.
  • Q-Ship: A ship dismissed as unlikely and therefore harmless by the rest of a fandom busy with Ship-to-Ship Combat that suddenly deploys the massive firepower of Authorial approval from seemingly nowhere.
  • The Queen Mary:
    1. In Fanfic, when the author matches a canon character with Mary Sue.
    2. Alternatively, when the fanfic author treats Mary Sue as the Launcher of a Thousand Ships.
  • Railway Ferry: Shipping in The Railway Series.
  • Ramming Always Works: When one ship's fanbase decides on one last suicidal attack on their perceived opponents. Large Ham Klingon captain optional.
  • Reconnaissance Ship: Shipping two Stalkers With A Crush.
  • Reefer Ship: Cooler than a Cool Ship.
  • Relation Ship: See Kin Ship.
  • The Registry: A comprehensive list of all significant ships in a fandom.
  • Reporting Name: What you call a ship when you don't know what the fandom calls it.
    • Or, if you're like me and just refuse to memorize all those stupid names that the shippers think up for these things. I mean, it's one thing if it's just the names jammed together, but the "(insert-something-here)shipping" ones get annoying fast...
      • Pokémon shipping community refugee, I assume?
      • Either that or Yu-Gi-Oh. Have you seen their list Registry?
  • Rocket Ship: Er, a ship involving rockets...
    • Or Team Rocket!
    • Or involving astronauts. Most of the Real Life ones end up well (although only one is widely considered to have ever actually ended up in the logical conclusion), and then there was that incident with the diaper...
    • Maybe a ship that is so Canon and mammothly obvious that nobody bothers to touch it. It's out of their league. Then both characters are put on bus out and we can only assume they are living out their happily married days on the moon.
  • Rogue Wave: A plot twist that comes out of nowhere and sinks at least one ship.
  • Royal Caribbean: Pairing up at least one non-pirate character from Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • Run the Ship Aground: Where a Ship Tease is stretched beyond believability.
  • Scholar Ship: A ship involving very intelligent people.
  • Scuttling the Ship: When a character sinks a ship by killing the person they're shipped with.
  • Shanghaied: When fans are forced into supporting a ship against their will.
  • Shantyman: A fan whose pairing of choice inspires fellow fans to accompany him or her with their own fanwork based on said pairing.
  • Ship Ahoy!: The first suggestions of a potential shipping.
  • Shipboard: Forum where nothing but pairings in fiction is discussed.
  • Ship of Fools:
    1. Plucky Comic Relief×Cloudcuckoolander, a match made in heaven. Like Hanazawa and Kanzaki.
    2. A ship you would have to be crazy to back.
    3. A ship involving two jesters.
    4. Minato Arisato×Seta Souji
  • Ship Keeper: A fan who persists in their minority ship, or becomes its main supporter.
  • Shipping and Handling:
    1. The delicate logical contortions fans often go through in order to make a favorite ship "work."
    • Panel Beating: Hammering the raw materials (conversations, looks, curiously appropriate poses, casual meetings) into "proof" for a Ship. Most often used in an AMV.
    1. Shipping motivated mainly by the fans being alone in bed with the door locked.
  • Shipping Crate: The container in which you ship your cargo.
    • Or Locked in a Freezer with romantic overtones. Like the time Tony and Ziva got locked in a shipping container in NCIS.
  • Ship of the Line: Heterosexual pairing in a fandom overrun by Slash Fic.
  • Shipping Company:
    1. Merch manufacturer supporting one particular ship.
    2. Matchmaking friends.
  • Shipping Costs: The inevitable increase in angst after a pairing becomes official in order to maintain dramatic tension.
  • Shipping Department: A forum/LJ Community/chat room set up for fanfic authors writing a ship, so they can collaborate.
  • The Shipping Forecast: Predicting either the most popular ships or the canonical pairing of a new character.
  • Shipping News: New developments that affect the state of a ship, whether positively or negatively.
  • Ship Shape: the current state of a ship, both in canon and among the fandom.
    • Alternatively, a work where every character is dating exactly who you think they should.
  • Ship-to-Shore Calls: When fans send messages to the Word of God supporting a non-canon ship to try to convince him he's doing it wrong.
  • Ship Wreck: Ship Sinking that isn't a direct effort from the creators. Could be a Selective Squick moment, or just the actions of the fandom that causes others to Abandon Shipping.
  • Ship of the Damned: A ship long thought wrecked but comes back with vengeance anyway, despite one of the characters being dead or foretold to die.
    1. Alternatively, a ship between dead bad guys.
  • Ships of the Desert:
    1. Shipping anyone on Tatooine.
    2. Shipping the Sandsiblings, sometimes with each other.
    3. Paul×Chani.
  • Ships That Pass in the Night: A ship with the minor obstacle that those involved have generally not interacted much, if at all, and might not even know about each other's existence.
  • The Shipyard:
    1. The original series, where a ship originates from.
    2. Fanfic sites, where ships are built and carefully manufactured.
    3. This page.
  • Smuggling Ship: Carries a whole lot of illegal drugs.
  • Sonar Operator
    1. A member of a ship who monitors the activities of other ships and submarines.
    2. A character who ships fellow cast members.
    • Going Active: Actively asking the submarine what it is doing, sometimes to the point of annoyance.
  • Space Hulk: An old ship, long since sunk, which nonetheless retains a surprising number of rabid fans. Don't go near it, or they'll come crawling out of the ventilation system to shred you!
  • Space Ship
    1. Sci-fi shipping.
    2. Shipping between characters arguably in the same continuity, even if on different planets.
  • The S.S. Minnow: A ship which seems cute and fun at first, but eventually runs aground and becomes tiresome. See also "Old Shame".
  • Star Ship: Shipping real-life celebrities, especially if one also ships their characters with each other. (For example, if a Harmony shipper wants Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson to hook up.) Related to Life Ship.
  • Stealth Ship: A ship you don't see coming until it becomes canon. More a concept than a reality at this present time, owing to to the fact that any canon ship is inevitably already being shipped by someone, somewhere.
    • Meagan and Prof. Fleinhardt in Numb3rs probably count as an example. Seriously, who saw that coming?
  • Steamboat: A ship whose primary audience appeal lies in the fact that both (or all) participants are extremely sexy. Similar but not identical to The Yacht.
  • The Submarine:
    1. An Author or
    2. A company that is particularly aggressive towards ships in general, or ships that don't fit canon. J.K. Rowling and Rumiko Takahashi are good examples of the Author Version.
    • Akula/"Typhoon" Class: The world's largest Submarines, capable of firing Nuclear Torpedoes.
      • Red October: The one that tops them all. You'll never know before it hits you.
    • Seawolf class: The world's quietest submarine, which you don't hear at all unless it's attacking ships. It also charges a lot for its work.
    • "Alfa" class: Very fast and very noisy submarine—tends to be very obvious when present, but has a tougher hull than one would think.
    • U-Boat: A particularly nasty Submarine.
      • That or a German one.
      • Das Boot: Will fight any non-canonical ships the best they can, but ultimately lose against the fans, and can be lucky if they make it out of the war without going under altogether.
    • K-Boat: An ostensibly dangerous submarine that spends most of its time malfunctioning and blowing up of its own accord rather than threatening ships.
    • Boomer: Stealthy submarine that only reveals its existence when it launches its battery of Nuclear Torpedoes.
    • Soviet Submarine Exercises: Moving ships involving characters from Dollhouse, who are "submerged" so to speak.
  • Suez Canal: An often handwaved plot device that allows for otherwise highly unlikely shippings to work.
  • Sunk by Chiron: A ship that sank because one of the shipped characters dies before they could get together.
  • Sunken Ship: A ship that has been hit by a Torpedo.
  • Supertanker:
    1. A ship that carries a whole lot of emotional cargo.
    2. A ship that required lots of booze to happen.
  • Tall Ship: Both partners are at least 5'10".
  • Time Ship: When two characters, one of which lived earlier than the other, are shipped. E.G.: Hermione×Young!Remus
  • The Titanic: Alternative name for a ship that's a Fan-Preferred Couple. Appropriately, it gets sunk by an Iceberg.
  • A Torpedo: What a story launches when it takes a turn for no other purpose than to sink a ship.
    • Nuclear Torpedo: Something that not only sinks a ship, but takes out a lot of the fandom with it.
    • Supercavitating Torpedo: An impossibly fast torpedo that some ships may not even be aware of before it strikes. More attentive ships can usually only cry "Oh......[Expletive]!" before it detonates.
  • Torpedo boat: A fandom member that really enjoys sinking other peoples ships (may be attached to a ship, fleet or convoy themselves).
  • Township: Shipping the Anthropomorphic Personifications of population centres. Dickens liked LondonxParis, but nowadays NY-Lon is a popular one.
  • Tramp Steamer: Ships involving a loose woman (or a pretty one).
  • Das Traumschiff: A ship too kitschy to be even halfway believable.
  • Trimaran: Being crazy enough to support a Love Triangle.
  • Trireme: A ship that works on several levels.
  • Tugboat: A small, powerful ship that helps the main ship.
  • Uncharted Waters: A ship that's initially strange and unheard of in the fandom. Almost always a Crack Pairing, but can become The Yacht.
  • USS Indianapolis: A ship that's just been hit with a massive Torpedo and has sunk, but devoted shippers still crowd around the wreckage despite repeated attacks from sharks in the form of Word of God and the fandom itself trying to make the rest of the shippers Abandon Shipping.
  • Warship: Dramatic romance at wartime. Rhett×Scarlett and the like.
  • When The Ship Comes In: The long-awaited moment when one's favorite pairing gets a Relationship Upgrade.
  • When the Ship Hits the Fan:
    1. A popular ship becomes canon but dramatically changes the tone of the series, and/or angers a lot of fans, including fans of the ship. A good example would be the Gwen/Kevin pairing of Ben 10 Alien Force.
    2. A couple gets together in canon, then breaks up.
    3. Something happens that causes a large proportion of fans to Abandon Shipping.
    4. A single development that impacts a large number of ships at once.
  • Wor Ship: When the fandom abides by one specific set of ships and any other pairings are considered heresy.
    • Alternately, shipping two gods/divine beings.
  • Vasa: A Ship whose builder goes to great lengths to decorate and advertise it-but structurally, it's so poorly thought out that it promptly sinks itself, no iceberg or torpedo needed.
  • Viking Funeral: A deathbed confession of love. Named for the tradition of cremating a dead warrior on a burning ship.
  • The Yacht: The Cool Ship of shipping. A ship running on the Rule of Cool, like the hypothetical Wolverine×Shego pairing suggested elsewhere on this wiki.
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