Fandometrics In Depth: Shipping
Shipping is one of Tumblr’s favorite hobbies, drawing hundreds of millions of engagements each year. On Tumblr, shipping exists in many forms: fan art, fan fiction, manipulated GIFs and videos, and roleplay, just to name a few. It’s a common practice no matter what fandom you’re in—from television shows and movies to K-pop and video games. On Tumblr, the most popular type is slash—ships comprised of two male characters. Out of the top 150, 95 (63%) were guy/guy love.
We grabbed the top 30 ships from 2013—2016. 2013—2015 were ranked by reblogs alone. 2016 and 2017 are ranked by their Trending Score. This includes volume of searches, original posts, and likes in addition to reblogs. We’ve sorted the source content behind each year’s top ships below.
2013’s most reblogged ships were predominantly slash (76.67%). The remaining 23.33% were all heterosexual (het) ships—there were no femslash ships in the top 30 that year.
The most reblogged ship of the year was from an anime: MakoHaru (Nanase Haruka and Tachibana Makoto, Free! series).
Though slash (66.67%) and het ships (26.67%) comprised most of the list in 2014, femslash ships (6.67%) made their debut.
2014’s top ship was Destiel (Dean Winchester and Castiel, Supernatural). Though the ship is not canon (yet), the 200th episode “Fan Fiction” paid homage to it.
In 2015, femslash numbers also doubled, representing 13.33% of the ships. Slash accounted for 60%, het just 26.67%.
2015 was a big year for Larry shippers—Larry Stylinson (Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles, One Direction) reached No. 1.
Slash ships began to take a dip (56.67%) in 2016, while het ships grew (36.67%) and femslash decreased (6.67%).
Despite femslash’s waning popularity, 2016 marked the first year a f/f ship not only cracked the top five, but hit #1. Clexa (Clarke Griffin and Commander Lexa, The 100) was embroiled in controversy when Commander Lexa was shot by a stray bullet and killed immediately after her and Clarke’s relationship was consummated. Her death launched a critical look at the “Bury Your Gays” trope by journalists and fans alike, and the argument that LGBTQ+ fans deserved better than the storylines given to them.
In the first half of 2017, slash has continued to hold over half the conversation (56.67%). Het ships and f/f ships are starting to equal out at 26.67% and 16.67%, respectively.
This year’s top ship so far? Klance (Keith and Lance, Voltron: Legendary Defender). Since we launched the weekly ship list on May 1st, Klance has been No. 1 seven times.
Some great resources where you can learn even more about shipping and fandom:
Fansplaning (@fansplaining) is a biweekly podcast about fan culture that encourages thinking about fandom critically. We suggest “Shipping and Activism, Slash: The Movie”, and the two parter on race in fandom (part 1, part 2).
The Organization for Transformative Works (@transformativeworks) is a non-profit organization run by fans dedicated to the preservation of fan works. Their projects include the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own, the Fanlore wiki, and the peer-reviewed journal Transformative Works and Cultures.
Destination Toast (@destinationtoast) has spent the past few years working with fandom and fic data. You can find all of her research, along with reblogs of posts created by others in different fandoms, on her side blog, ToastyStats (@toastystats).
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