"Monoshipping / Monoship" and "Fixed ships" in fandoms: What does it mean?
Explained by me, who is a huge fixed monoshipper for some ships lol. I decided to make this post because I ran into a toxic monoshipper™️ from a fandom I visit sometimes the other day and apparently as it turns out, they don't have the label "monoshipper" anywhere on their bio (internally the entire time I was going 'they're just like me fr 💀pleaseee get acquainted with this term please...') Hence why I am making this informative post in hopes for more possible shippers that come across this post and ends up connecting strongly to the word's meaning and adopting/familiarize themselves with this fandom's wording
To understand monoship, we must first understand the definition of Monogamy
Monogamy (another word being monogamous) is a relationship of two individuals in which they form a mutual and exclusive intimate partnership. Having only one partner at any one time, whether for life or serial monogamy, contrasts with various forms of non-monogamy.
A more simpler definition, Monogamous:
The word "Mono" derives from Monogamy/Monogamous. So for monoshipping, a fandom term, means you exclusively and strictly only ship characters A x B and only AxB, no one else. It's basically the opposite of multiship / polyshipping
As for it's history for how the word was coined and born, this term existed way back as early as 2010
Similarly to monoship, the word OTP (One true pairing) has existed for a very long time (It's first usages dating back to 1984 and 2002 in fandoms) and I've seen a lot of fandom old say this was their to go word for identifying themselves as "monoshippers".
Based from what I have researched, Monoship / Monoshipping was born from Twitter 2010 and it was a very uncommon word at the time. From 2010 to 2017, the usage of this word was used on a niche scale while as for Tumblr, it's first usage dates way back to 2014 and 2014 was the only time the word was ever mentioned (however if I am wrong, please kindly correct me)
It wasn't until 2018 where this term started to slowly get adopted by more bigger and popular fandoms (voltron) on Twitter. On April 13 2019, a user named yukipri made a shipping meme and shared the meme on both of their Tumblr and Twitter
After they posted this on their socials, the word "Monoship" began to make huge waves of usage on Twitter thanks to the shipping meme and a lot of people from different fandoms during this year joined the bandwagon. A lot of particular shippers strongly connected with the word "Monoship" and it's meaning and thus, began adopting this term frequently ever than before. Nowadays, "Monoship" / "Monoshipping" is now a very common word you would find everywhere, especially on western Twitter fandoms today in 2026
When it comes to Asian fandoms (Japan, China, Korea) that identify themselves as a Monoshipper, usually to find this out easily is to see if they use this particular wording on their bio: CP固定 / 左右固定 🔄❌
CP固定 - Fixed Character pairing
定左右固定 / 左右相手固定 / 左右固定 - Fixed Left and Right
🔄❌ - No Switch / No reverses
CP固定 = Fixed Character Pairing. Another term to refer as a shipper for this category is "Fixed Shipper", meaning if you love a ship so much but is absolutely very strict when it comes to enjoying their dynamic in a very particular way and only want their dynamic to be portrayed according to your preferences, then you are a fixed shipper.
Example: I am a fixed AxB shipper. I prefer character A to always be the top/dom while I prefer for character B to always be the bottom/sub in the AxB shipping
定左右固定 / 左右相手固定 / 左右固定 = Fixed Left and right. Same definition as Fixed Character pairing above, meaning you strictly only enjoy a very particular dynamic within the ship and only in that respective order (For shippers that falls in this category the ship name for AxB must always be referred to AxB and only strictly AxB.)
Left = Character A at all times must always be the one in charge (Top/Dom). Right = Character B at all times must always be the one being submissive to character A (Bottom/sub)
🔄❌ = No Switch / No reverses. If you have stumbled across these emojis while browsing in Asian fandoms folks bios before, it usually means that they are a fixed monoshipper and absolutely under no circumstances do NOT want to see AxB's dynamic being switched around the other way (Example: They are already a AxB fixed shipper but would get absolutely disgusted to see if B was in charge of A)
JPN / CN / KR fixed monoshippers in general are very strict and sensitive when it comes to their OTP's ship name order. They take this very seriously and often times, may resort to blocking other certain shippers in order to curate their internet experience if they come across the ship name being BxA instead of AxB which is their usual to go to butter and bread. It's why a lot of shippers uses labels to identify themselves in order to either: throw that out there to establish their boundaries directly and to attract other fixed AxB monoshippers in hopes to find their own respective friend groups to connect with or to serve as a basic warning to BxA shippers or other multishippers that this account is strictly a fixed AxB monoshipping account only and only fixed AxB monoshipping. This helps prevents a lot of awkward encounters in the long run as well as avoiding potential conflict.
And for the record: I am not fluent in Japanese / Korean or Chinese neither I am a native (However, I am mixed Vietnamese-American) I've learnt a lot about this other side of shipping by reading a lot of threads on Twitter that covered how Asian fandoms operated so if you do happen to be fluent and/or if you are by chance a native, please kindly correct me so I can edit this post to make things more accurate, thank you!
Last edited: 2/10/2026