Okay, due to two conversations on this recently, I need to talk about this, because it’s really sticking in my craw right now, LOL! Permit me a moment to be really pendantic, and feel free to completely disagree -- this is just me pleading my case.
Shipper comes from “relationshipper”, a term that, to the best of my knowledge, seemed to have been coined by the X-Files fandom back in the late 90s (at least, that’s when I remember coming across it). It means, quite simply, a fan of a relationship. While shippers are frequently fans of non-canon pre-marriage romantic relationships, it does NOT exclude:
- or non-sexual relationships
It technically doesn’t even exclude non-romantic relationships, nor rivalries / relationships of enmity (although those are, as far as I've seen, pretty rare).
THESE ARE ALL STILL RELATIONSHIPS. If you are a fan of ANY of these, congratulations -- you’re a shipper!
It would be rather silly to say you can't ship a canon couple -- if not, it would mean if a couple does become canon, then people would have to stop calling themselves shippers of that couple. Or that fans of a couple that was always canon .. aren’t shippers.
They aren’t a fan of a relationship?
So, what, Mulder / Scully shippers stopped being shippers because Mulder/Scully became canon? Huh?
Similarly, It would be rather silly to say you can't ship a married couple -- if not, it would mean if a non-married couple gets married, then people would have to stop calling themselves shippers of that couple. Again, saying that they aren’t a fan of a relationship? Like, what?
Let me tell you why i’s a MONUMENTALLY bad idea to do that.
Over a decade ago, Marvel broke up Peter Parker and Mary Jane. At a panel I attended, Joe Quesada said that this was because “Marriage is boring.” And I have lost track of how many times men have said to me (and it’s ALWAYS men who have said this to me, in patronising / snide tones), “You only like the UST -- as soon as these characters get together, you're bored / you don't care anymore!” (And then they’re always pointing to the ratings drop for Moonlighting, as if that wasn't a actually matter of the writers of that show not being creative enough to figure out what to do next, or the problem of building their entire characterisation on a foundation of “Will they, or won’t they?”).
Way to tell fans (especially women) how we think or feel, and refuse to listen to or believe us when we try to tell you otherwise. I suspect that, at least in some cases, they don't WANT to write deeper relationships (or don't know how), so they place the blame of it not happening on us, rather than their own lack of interest or ability. (Like, dudes, it’s okay for you to just, you know, not like something. Don’t fucking gaslight us about our OWN tastes.)
And gee, how do their wives feel? Maybe their wives should divorce them, if married life is so unappealing!
Anyway, funny how so many fanfics feature couples AFTER they’ve had sex and / or gotten married -- the story we so seldom get from “official” media because they THINK we don't want it, despite the wealth of evidence saying otherwise. It behooves us (well, most of us) to stress to content-creators know that shippers often actually DO WANT to see relationships develop beyond “the hook-up”, so that they create better-crafted stories in generals (or at least understand why their audience left, and thus be able to make a better-informed decision of what to do about it).
But yesterday, I ran into the opposite. Someone posted a scenario in which a character said they shipped two other characters. A second character said that they did NOT ship the pair -- then explained that they SUPPORTED the pairing, because the pair were “fucking married!” Whether the OP intended it this way or not, it just came off to me like “shipping” was considered an inferior or incorrect act (as fandom in general and women’s interest in particular are far too often treated), and "support” of a couple that has made the leap to marriage is next-level / superior. I was told by the OP that marriage had a different chemistry. (Maybe I'm way off base, but I felt like the original post was saying that shipping / liking non-married ships is like being a teenager crushing over a guy in Tiger Beat, but supporting a married couple is a more sophisticated and mature sort of fandom, LOL!)
Anyway, chemistry of married couples is different from that of non-married couple? I guess It CAN be seen that way, but I’d say it’s more like individual couples can have very different chemistry from other couples in general, regardless of their respective marital statuses. But, for argument's sake, let’s say married and unmarried couples are different animals, so to speak; I’d argue that it’s still entirely appropriate to use the word ship in regards to a married couple -- that’s not actually the place to be making the distinction!
Let’s let “shipper” stay just meaning “someone who is a fan of a relationship.” Let it be an all-encompassing term for a person celebrating what they enjoy from the spectrum of human interaction. Let it include platonic* relationships -- there’s plenty of room for, say, BOTH the people who see Sherlock and John as lovers, AND the people who see them as deep friends with a non-sexual relationship (I personally love both notions!) -- really, the latter is what an ace relationship is, right? So let’s not exclude that!!
We can always add qualifiers explaining precisely what kind of relationship we mean when give our fanworks to the world -- that’s what tags are for.
*Plato believed that the epitome / holiest of love, actually beyond that of love between a man and a woman, was non-sexual love between men. So no, “platonic” does NOT actually mean "just friends”.
BUT, I would accept shippers who DO like characters being “just friends” too -- that’s STILL A RELATIONSHIP. (I just haven’t really come *across* people feeling passionately about a pair who are “just friends”, LOL!)
My personal ship list: https://wolfenm-shipper.tumblr.com/ships
dailybridgerton
yousharknotpass
titsay
ellievsbear
