Shipping (fandom)

Shipping or Shippers initially derived from the word relationship, is the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters (in film, literature, television etc.) to be in a romantic relationship. It is considered a general term for fans' emotional involvement with the ongoing development of a relationship in a work of fiction. Shipping often takes the form of creative works, including fanfiction and fan art, most often published on the internet.

Etymology

The activity of fans creating relationships for fictional characters far predates the term. The first "ship" that became widely popular and accepted was the characters Kirk and Spock from the television show Star Trek. This began in the mid-1970s,[1] and was often referred to as Kirk/Spock, and later "K/S". This is why relationships between two men are now often referred to as "slash".

The actual term "shipping" saw its origin around 1995 by internet fans of the TV show The X-Files, who believed the two main characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, should be or were engaged in a romantic relationship.[2] They called themselves "relationshippers," at first;[3][4] then R'shipper,[5] 'shipper, and finally just shipper.[6]

The oldest uses of the noun ship (according to this definition of the word) and the noun shipper, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary, date back to 1996 postings on the Usenet group alt.tv.x-files; shipping is first attested slightly later, in 1997[7][8][9] and the verb to ship in 1998. [10]

Notation and terminology

"Ship" and its derivatives in this context have since come to be in wide and versatile use. "Shipping" refers to the phenomenon; a "ship" is the concept of a fictional couple; to "ship" a couple means to have an affinity for it in one way or another; a "shipper" or a "fangirl/boy" is somebody significantly involved with such an affinity; a "Shipping war" is when two ships contradict each other, causing fans of each ship to argue. A ship that a particular fan prefers over all others is called OTP for one true pairing.

When discussing shipping, a ship that has been confirmed by its series is called a canon ship or sailed ship, whereas a sunk ship is a ship that has been proven unable to exist in canon.

Naming conventions

Various naming conventions have developed in different online communities to refer to prospective couples, likely due to the ambiguity and cumbersomeness of the "Character 1 and Character 2" format. The first method deployed was using a slash, first used for Kirk/Spock. This is today mainly used for same-sex ships, fanfiction with these pairings is known as Slash fiction, due to fame of slash, the standard for hetero ships in fan fiction became a plus sign (Harry+Draco), but ! or x can also used be as separators in place of +. Other methods of identifying relationships between characters often create hybrid terms such as portmanteaus and clipped compounds to abbreviate character pairings. For example, Drarry forms a clipped compound, abbreviated from the complete names Draco and Harry. These combinations often follow systematic phonological principles.[11]

Many fandom-specific variants exist and often use fandom-specific terminology. These often employ words that describe the relationship between characters in the context of the fictional universe and simply add the word "Shipping" to the end. Other terminology can be more vague, using codes and nicknames as a ship name.

Non-conventional ships

Shipping may defy classical social standards and be taboo.

Same-sex

Within shipping, same-sex pairings are popular; they are sometimes known as "slash and femslash". Within the anime/manga fandom, borrowed Japanese terms such as yaoi and yuri may be used. A person who supports same-sex pairings and reads or writes slash fiction may be referred to as a "slasher".

The term "slash" predates the use of "shipping" by at least some 20 years. It was originally coined as a term to describe a pairing of Kirk and Spock of Star Trek, Kirk/Spock (or "K/S"; sometimes spoken "Kirk-slash-Spock", whence "slash") homosexual fan fiction.[12] For a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, "K/S" was used to describe such fan fiction, regardless of whether or not they were related to Star Trek, and eventually "slash" became a universal term to describe all homosexual themed fan works.

Parallel to this development, the term "slash" was also being used in some fandoms to denote fan fiction or other fan works depicting sexual acts with an implied rating of NC-17, whether homosexual or heterosexual. It is likely that this is the same "slash" term born of the Star Trek fandom, but adapted to the pornographic focus that commonly dominates fanfiction and fan works in the Kirk/Spock ship, as well as the various ships of other same-sex couples. This caused the term to spread to heterosexual ships.

Polyamory

Love triangles are commonly used as a plot device to cause conflict in the story. The easy way around this is to pair all three together, or one member with both potential romantic partners. This is not to be confused with a harem, which is usually just a single character being sought out by many others. Situations such as that may be the one to cause a polyamory relationship. Polyamory is not always caused by love triangles, but those that don't tend to be less accepted by the fandom.

Interspecies

Interspecies, which is usually displayed in fandoms of media consisting of animals of various species, is usually not controversial until a human is paired with a non-humanoid, sapient character. It is especially controversial when between a human and an animal or furry. Some consider such pairings bestiality.

Age difference

Controversial age differences have a wide range. An elderly adult with a young adult, anyone with an immortal or slowly-ageing being, teenagers with young adults, or pedophiliacs are all part of this category. However, in anime or manga like Hetalia in which the characters are personified countries, there are large age gaps, sometimes of hundreds of years, then shipping between characters of many different ages is widely accepted in the fandom. Some shippers, of course, may be referring to the given "human" ages of the countries. Using these human ages gives way to a smaller age gap.

Love-hate

Romances between two characters who canonically hate each other also occur. It is often interpreted that the characters share sexual tension between each other. This is one of the most popular types of shipping, however many people find it repulsive, and in the case of real people, offensive and dishonoring.

Another example of non-conventional shipping is in the Homestuck fandom, which introduced three new shipping categories: Kismesissitude or hate-love (a deep-rooted rivalry), Moirallegiance (a deep, very powerful platonic friendship), and Auspisticism (a three-person relationship created between two would-be rivals and a peer mediator). Those in the Homestuck fandom refer to the usual romantic relationship as matespritship.[13]

Notable fandoms

Daria fandom

Daria fandom was marked through its entire run by shipper debate. From the series' first season, the main conflict was over whether the title character, Daria Morgendorffer, should have a relationship with Trent Lane, a slacker rock-band frontman, whom Daria met through his sister, Jane. A common argument against this possible outcome was that such a development would signal a turn away from the more subversive aspects of Daria's character, such as bitter criticism of romantic relationships, and thus the show.

The show's writers responded by having Daria develop a crush on Trent. Trent, however, remained involved with his off-and-on girlfriend Monique, who immediately became a target of shipper ire. The crush ended in the third season's finale, "Jane's Addition", when Daria realized that Trent could never satisfy her in the long run.

That same episode introduced Tom Sloane, a charming and intellectual son of privilege. Although Tom became Jane's boyfriend, threatening Daria and Jane's friendship in the process, Daria and Tom warmed up to each other throughout the fourth season, leading up to its finale, "Dye! Dye! My Darling," broadcast August 2, 2000.[14] With Jane and Tom's relationship in crisis, a heated argument between Daria and Tom led up to a kiss in Tom's car. In the TV movie Is it Fall Yet?, Daria decided to begin a relationship with Tom, and Daria and Jane patched up their friendship.

This caused an instant uproar, and conversation now turned to whether Tom was more appropriate than Trent had been. The debate was satirized by the show's writers in a piece on MTV's website.[15]

In interviews done after the series' run, series co-creator Glenn Eichler revealed that "any viewer who really thought that Daria and Trent could (have) a relationship was just not watching the show we were making,"[16] Tom came about because "going into our fourth year... I thought it was really pushing credibility for Daria to have only had one or two dates during her whole high school career," and "teaser" episodes like "Pierce Me" were "intended to provide some fun for that portion of the audience that was so invested in the romance angle. The fact that those moments were few and far between should have given some indication that the series was not about Daria's love life."[17]

Harry Potter fandom

The Harry Potter series' most contentious ship debates came from supporters of the prospective relationship between Harry Potter and his close female friend Hermione Granger, supporters of Hermione having a romantic relationship with Draco Malfoy, a primary antagonist, and supporters of Hermione ending up instead with Ron Weasley, close friend of both Harry and Hermione. Author J.K. Rowling appeared to try to tamp down the possibility, stating at one point that Harry and Hermione "are very platonic friends".[18]

Another alternative was of Harry ending up with Ginny Weasley, Ron's younger sister, whose obvious crush on him served as a plot-line starting in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hermione informs Harry that Ginny has "given up" on him. In the subsequent Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, however, Harry develops a crush on Ginny, convinced that he has missed his opportunity with her. In the end Ginny turns out to never have given up on Harry after all, but merely taken Hermione's advice to try to date other boys to boost her self-confidence. Though their romantic relationship becomes one of the few sources of comfort in Harry's difficult life, he makes a decision to end it for fear that Voldemort would learn of it and target Ginny. Rowling later commented that she had planned Ginny as Harry's "ideal girl" from the very beginning.

An interview with J.K. Rowling conducted by fansite webmasters Emerson Spartz (MuggleNet) and Melissa Anelli (The Leaky Cauldron) shortly after the release of Half-Blood Prince caused significant controversy within the fandom. In the interview, Spartz stated that Harry/Hermione fans were delusional, to which Rowling responded that they were "still valued members of her readership", but that there had been "anvil-sized hints" for future Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny relationships, and that Harry/Hermione shippers needed to re-read the books. This incident resulted in an uproar among Harry/Hermione shippers, some of whom announced that they would return their copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and boycott future Harry Potter books, leveling criticism at Spartz, Anelli, and Rowling herself. The uproar was the subject of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.[19]

Rowling's attitude towards the shipping phenomenon has varied between amused and bewildered to frustrated. In that same interview, she stated:[20]

The release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in July 2007 saw an epilogue, nineteen years after the events at the focus of the series, where Harry and Ginny are married and have three children, Lily, James, and Albus, and Ron and Hermione are also married and have two, Rose and Hugo.

Rowling stated in an interview in February 2014 in Wonderland Magazine that she thought that realistically Hermione and Ron had "too much fundamental incompatibility". She stated that Hermione and Ron were written together "as a form of wish fulfillment" as way to reconcile a relationship she herself was once in. She went on to say that perhaps with marriage counseling Ron and Hermione would have been all right.[21] She also went on to say in a talk at Exeter University that Harry's love for Ginny is true,[22] thereby denying any potential canon relationship between Harry and Hermione.

Xena: Warrior Princess fandom

The 1995–2001 action/fantasy TV series Xena: Warrior Princess often saw "shipping wars" that turned especially intense due to spillover from real-life debates about homosexuality and gay rights.

Shortly after the series' debut, fans started discussing the possibility of a relationship between Xena and her sidekick and best friend Gabrielle. Toward the end of the first season, the show's producers began to play to this perception by deliberately inserting usually humorous lesbian innuendo into some episodes. The show acquired a cult following in the lesbian community. However, Xena had a number of male love interests as well, and from the first season she had an adversarial but sexually charged dynamic with Ares, the God of War, who frequently tried to win her over as his "Warrior Queen". Gabrielle herself had once had a male husband, and his death deeply affected her.

According to journalist Cathy Young, the quarrel between online fans of the show about whether there should be a relationship between Xena and Gabrielle had a sociopolitical angle, in which some on the anti-relationship side were "undoubtedly driven by bona fide bigotry", while some on the pro-relationship side were lesbians who "approached the argument as a real-life gay rights struggle" in which "denying a sexual relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was tantamount to denying the reality of their own lives".[23] She added:

In 2000, during the airing of the fifth season, the intensity and sometimes nastiness of the "shipping wars" in the Xena fandom was chronicled (from a non-subtexter's point of view) by Australian artist Nancy Lorenz in an article titled "The Discrimination in the Xenaverse" in the online Xena fan magazine Whoosh!,[24] and also in numerous letters in response.[25]

The wars did not abate after the series came to an end in 2001. With no new material from the show itself, the debates were further fueled by various statements from the cast and crew. In January 2003, Lucy Lawless, the show's star, told Lesbian News magazine that after watching the series finale (in which Gabrielle revived Xena with a mouth-to-mouth water transfer filmed to look like a full kiss) she had come to believe that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was "definitely gay".[26] However, in the interviews and commentaries on the DVD sets released in 2003–2005, the actors, writers and producers continued to stress the ambiguity of the relationship, and in several interviews both Lawless and Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, spoke of Ares as a principal love interest for Xena. In the interview for the Season 6 episode "Coming Home", O'Connor commented, "If there was ever going to be one man in Xena's life, it would be Ares."

In March 2005, one-time Xena screenwriter Katherine Fugate, an outspoken supporter of the Xena/Gabrielle pairing, posted a statement on her website appealing for tolerance in the fandom:

References

  1. ↑ Verba, Joan Marie (2003). Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967-1987, 2nd edition (PDF). pp. 18–19.
  2. ↑ ""shipper". Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc". February 14, 2018 [1995].
  3. ↑ "alt.tv.x-files Her *name* is *Bambi*? (use of 'relationshipper')". January 7, 1996. Retrieved September 29, 2011.
  4. ↑ "alt.tv.homicide Expunge cleverness (use of 'relationshipping')". January 6, 1996. Retrieved September 29, 2011.
  5. ↑ "alt.tv.x-files.creative NEW: TITLE 17 [1/1] (use of "R'shipper")". April 20, 1996. Retrieved September 29, 2011.
  6. ↑ "alt.tv.x-files My problem with 'anti-relationshippers'.... (use of 'shipper' in post 85)". May 19, 1996. Retrieved September 29, 2011.
  7. ↑ "ship, n.3". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. ↑ "shipper, n.2". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. ↑ "shipping, n.2". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  10. ↑ "ship, v.2". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.  (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  11. ↑ DiGirolamo, Cara M. (2012). "The Fandom Pairing Name: Blends and the Phonology Orthography Interface". Names: A Journal of Onomastics. American Name Society: 231–243.
  12. ↑ "Fanfic: is it right to write?" from The Age Archived November 20, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
  13. ↑ "MS Paint Adventures". www.mspaintadventures.com. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  14. ↑ "Episode #413: "Dye! Dye! My Darling"". Outpost Daria. August 2, 2000. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
  15. ↑ "DARIA Definitive Chapter 3". MTV.com. March 9, 2006. Archived from the original on November 2, 2012. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
  16. ↑ "DVDaria Petition – Buy Daria DVDs!". The-wildone.com. March 16, 2005. Archived from the original on August 22, 2015. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
  17. ↑ "DVDaria Petition – Buy Daria DVDs!". The-wildone.com. January 2, 2006. Archived from the original on February 25, 2012. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
  18. ↑ "1999: Accio Quote!, the largest archive of J.K. Rowling interviews on the web". Accio-quote.org. October 20, 1999. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
  19. ↑ "If you're an obsessed Harry Potter fan, Voldemort isn't the problem. It's Hermione versus Ginny". San Francisco Chronicle. August 3, 2005. Retrieved December 19, 2010.
  20. ↑ "2005: Accio Quote!, the largest archive of J.K. Rowling interviews on the web". Accio-quote.org. July 16, 2005. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
  21. ↑ West, Kelly. "What J.K. Rowling Actually Said About Hermione's Relationships With Ron And Harry", Cinema Blend, February 7, 2014. Retrieved on October 2, 2014.
  22. ↑ "I've just got back from the JK Rowling lecture and..." study like hermione. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  23. 1 2 Young, Cathy (September 1, 2005). "What we owe Xena". Salon. Archived from the original on December 6, 2008.
  24. ↑ "The Discrimination in the XenaVerse: News and Views from the Great Divide". www.whoosh.org. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  25. ↑ "Whoosh! Letters to the Editor: Issue 44 Part 1/4". whoosh.org. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  26. ↑ "AUSXIP Lucy Lawless - Lesbian News 2003". lucylawless.info. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
  27. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on December 30, 2007. Retrieved March 6, 2009.
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