If there’s one thing to know about general fandom culture, it’s shipping. Shipping can be defined as the act of enjoying content (whether it be fanmade or canon) depicting two characters or people in a romantic relationship. Shipping has been a staple of fandom and fandom culture since the early ’90s, mainly due to the invention of the Internet. However, the idea of shipping had been a thing since the ’70s.
The first real “ship” that became popular in fandom spaces was K/S, Captain Kirk paired with First Officer Spock. K/S was the first ship that was truly popular in big fandom spaces. There had been fanfiction before this point, but it was mostly only shared between small groups of individuals. However, as the ’70s rolled round, K/S became much more popular, and fanzines (fan-made magazines) depicting the two in a relationship became widespread.
K/S was also the father of the term “slash,” which is meant to show the reader that the fan-work, whether it be a fanfiction or a zine, will depict a (usually sexual) relationship between two male characters. Usually, the actual word wasn’t being used, as it held a different meaning, but instead the virgule (/) was used instead. For example, instead of Kirk slash Spock, you’re probably going to see Kirk/Spock. There are also other terms pertaining to the other types of relationships, such as femslash (female/female relationships) and het (heterosexual relationships.)
Despite all this, the words “ship” and “shipping” were not created until the early ’90s by X-Files fans. These fans would usually use the word (or something akin to it) to refer to the ship between the two characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, better known as Mulder/Scully. The word itself originated from the term “relationshipper,” but was eventually shortened to “shipper,” which is still actively used today.
Now, with fandom becoming an entity that eventually was majorly online, there was bound to be conflicts. In terms of ships, this happened in the form of ship wars. Ship wars consisted of two different shippers (usually those whose ships contained one character in common with different people) fighting about who’s ship was better. These ship wars usually ended in mutual dislike on either side of the argument, and are usually viewed as childish, negative staples of fandom culture.
Currently, shipping is as popular as ever, with fanfiction websites and fandom hashtags on social media seeing a lot of new traffic everyday. However, there are many people who are new to fandom spaces that think shipping is unnecessary and weird, and that it should just be done away with altogether. Personally, I don’t think what these people say holds any merit and that they should just learn to live with it, as shipping isn’t going away anytime soon.
Fandom Fun Fact IV: An early version of fan-fiction were drawer-fics, which is “fan fiction that is never shown to other fans, or that is only shown to a few friends.”
If you have any questions or suggestions for things I should talk about, or want to share your own fandom-related stories, feel free to email me at [email protected] with any inquiries you may have!