Shipping thoughts

[schneefink]

snickfic asked a question to answer on one's own journal - What's one of your favorite shippy moments for your ship? Why do you love it? - and I struggled to answer it so I'm asking in return, does "ship" exclusively/mostly refer to romantic relationships for you and if so what's a non-romantic equivalent? I like the expression "rotating them in my mind" I found iirc on Tumblr but it's long. There's so many characters especially in MCYT fandoms that I don't ship in a romantic sense but either as friends and/or in a "I really enjoy the ways in which they are deeply weird about each other" kind of way. (Which often means that I can also enjoy fanworks about them in a romantic relationship but that's not a main aspect for me.) (I hope this makes sense I am tired rn and procrastinating on several things including going to bed.)

Second reason why it's a hard question is that currently my favorite relationships change every week or so and of the last couple that come to mind picking favorite moments is hard, but if I had to, Grian building multiple Mumbo shrines during an escape room challenge with Impulse and Joel, each creepier than the last, is up there. Also the summoning circles and the cinematic reunion on Hermitcraft. And that's just the recent stuff, not including things like the time they had a robot son together. One and a half times, technically.

Comments

[out_there]

does "ship" exclusively/mostly refer to romantic relationships for you and if so what's a non-romantic equivalent?

Ship does mean romantic relationship to me. I mean, I'd happily read about Natasha and Clint being BFFs, but I wouldn't consider it shipping Natasha&Clint (I'm oldschool enough to still feel the ampersand is there for a reason, versus the slash of romantic and/or sexual pairing.)

I don't know if I have a non-romantic equivalent to be honest. But I never read a great deal of gen or non-romance focused fic in the first place, so it's not what I'm in fandom to read.

[schneefink]

Yeah, same about the terminology, I just wish there was a similar convenient term for &-pairings. (And I sometimes get frustrated by ambivalent uses of "relationship" but well language is imperfect.)

[genarti]

Same. I know sometimes people do use it to mean friendship or non-romantic ship or whatever, but to me that's still really an oxymoron, even though I'll roll with it if it's someone else's usage.

"Relationship" doesn't have that same obligatory connotation to me, though, so I think I'd word it just as, like... "one of your favorite moments for this relationship" if I wanted to make it clear that I was talking about canon moments for an IC relationship that wasn't necessarily shippy.

[schneefink]

Thinking about it more, it depends on where I read it too. On DW when I read ship I always assume it's romantic, on Tumblr it's still my first assumption but not as certain.
For "relationship," I think it might also be an ESL thing? The German word I usually translate it as has much more of a romantic connotation than I think the English word has, and sometimes wires get crossed.

[vicki_rae]

does "ship" exclusively/mostly refer to romantic relationships

Fandom convention has been that "ship", "shipper", and "/" are always either sexual or romantic relationships.

"&" is always friends. I don't think there's a fandom word for that?

General consensus seems to be that ship and shipper originated in the mid 1990s in X-Files fandom. Fans (probably in the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade) came up with relationshipper about Mulder/Scully and then almost immediately it got shortened to shipper which spread like wildfire.

[schneefink]

I know the history, but meanings can change over time. I asked because I've seen "ship" used for non-romantic relationships on Tumblr a handful of times recently (e.g. in the context of queerplatonic relationships) and assumed that was an outlier (possibly used by the same people who don't know the /-&-distinction) but wondered if there had been a wider shift. DW is maybe not the best place to ask that though ^^