Shipping (fandom): History and Key Facts

Shipping (derived from relationship) is the act of imagining, desiring, or expressing interest in a romantic involvement between two or more real or fictional people, usually by a fandom. It often takes the form of unofficial creative works, including fan fiction and fan art.

Shipping may depict pairings that are opposite-sex, same-sex, polyamorous, or love-hate relationships. Interspecies pairings and pairings with large age differences between characters can give rise to shipping discourse related to the ethics of such ships. Shipping can also create conflict within fandoms and between a work's creator(s) and its fans. Notable cases of shipping exist within the fandoms of Harry Potter, Xena: Warrior Princess, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and Star Wars.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Shipping (fandom) by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.