Shipping Glossary

The Shipping Glossary is a list of terms and the definitions in shipping and fandom. It is common in fandom to find a large use of slang terms about shipping and the various different fandoms.

A

• Animanga - is an umbrella term used by fans to refer to anime and manga at the same time, particularly in the context of a single, large, combined fandom.
• Alternate Universe - Often shortened to AU, Alternate Universe is a concept, typically in fanfictions where characters are imagined to be in different scenarios. For instance, the characters in a mediveal fantasy might be put in a modern universe (Modern AU).
• Angst - A genre of fanfiction typically dedicated to being sad, angry, or just accociated with negative feelings.

B

• Biromantic - The romantic attraction to both genders.
• Bisexuality - The sexual attraction to male and female genders.
• Buddyslash - is the term for slash between characters who are friends, or more often, partners in canon.
• Brotp - is the term used when describing you ship a pairing platonically, or as friends.

C

• Canon - Another word for official. Used to refer to a pairing or another aspect of the series that is considered to be true to the storyline.
• Cargo Ship - Crack!Ships between a fictional character, or real-life person and an inanimate object.
• Character - A character is a fictional invention who does not exist in real life.
• Crack ship - A pairing that is considered to be way out there or impossible. Usually between characters who have never met each other or barely interacted.

E

• Endgame - refers to ships that are canon at the end of the series.
• Enemyslash - is the term for slash between characters who are canonically enemies, antagonists, or rivals, sometimes to the point of obsession.

F

• Fandom - The community that surrounds a TV show/movie/book etc. Fanfiction writers, artists, poets, and cosplayers are all members of that fandom. Fandoms often consist of message boards, livejournal communities, roleplaying, people and much more.
• Fanfic - Short/slang form of fanfiction.
• Fanfiction - Fanfiction is when someone takes either the story or characters (or both) of a certain piece of work, whether it be a novel, TV show, movie, etc., and create their own story based on it. Sometimes people will take characters from one movie and put them in another, which is called a cross-over.
• Fanon - The opposite of canon. It is the collection of concepts and ideas that is normally used in fanfictions, but doesn't exist in the offical (canon) work.
• Femslash - Femslash, derived from 'female slash' refers to relationships between two female characters. Also occasionally called F/F, Femmeslash, Girlslash, Ladyslash or Saffic.
• Fluff - A type of fanfiction with a happy ending, or a joyful plot.
• Frankenword - See Portmanteau.

G

• Gay - See Homosexuality.
• Genre - A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.
• Gender - Gender is the range of physical, mental, and behavioral characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity.
• Ghost Ship - A ship that you once supported and perhaps still do that went down in the ocean, drowning all on board (basically, a hopeless relationship)

H

• Het - A pairing of characters or real-life people, where one side is male and the other female. The word "Het" is derived from the word, "Heterosexual".
• Heteroromantic - Romantically attracted to people of the opposite gender.
• Heterosexual - Sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex.
• Homo - A word that is short for homosexual.
• Homoromantic - Romantically attracted to the same gender.
• Homosexuality - When two people of the same sex love each other.

I

• Incest - a relationship with someone who are classed as being closely related to each other. Typically, this involved sexual relations or marriage.

L

• Lesbian - A homosexual woman.
• LGBT - Abbreviation term of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. Also a community.
• Love - Feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone.
• Lemon - A fanfic, or One Shot including sexual intercourse or sexual interactions

O

• OBHWF - is an acronym used in the Harry Potter fandom which stands for One Big Happy Weasley Family. It refers to the combined Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione ships.
• OTP - One True Pairing. Meaning the your favorite combination of characters in a fandom.
  • OT3 - is a play on OTP, and means "one true threesome".
  • OT4 - means "one true foursome"

P

• Pairing - the characters who make up the central focus of a fanwork.
• Pansexual - A person who is sexually interested in other people regardless of gender including males, females, transexuals, tansvestites, gender benders, hermaphrodites, intersexuals, androgenous people, and those with sex-chromosome anomaly such as klinefelter syndrome or turner syndrome.
• Poly - is a relationship between three or more characters which is deeper and more long-lasting than a one-time threesome/moresome sex scene.
• Portmanteau - The combination of two or more words to create a new word.
• Potterhead - An extreme version of a fan of the Harry Potter books.

R

• Roleplay - Typically taken part on message boards, email or on tumblr. In group roleplays, users make their own character and play them in a set of rules laid down by forum moderators/admins. In fandoms, these are typically set within a specific fandom. Occasionally, these roleplays are in a ship-based scenario.
• Romance - A feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love.

S

• Sailed Ship - A ship that became canon.
• Shippers - Someone who takes part in shipping. A fan is called a 'shipper' when they support a relationship, whenever its canon or not. It is a common joke to say that you "sail" on a certain ship.
• Shipper Goggles - when a viewer interprets the smallest, most ambiguous canonical evidence in favor of their ship of choice,
• Shipperpression - A depression caused by the end of one's favored ship. For instance, when a fan becomes upset when a fictional relationship breaks up.
• Shipping - Derived from the word relationship, is the belief that two characters, fictional or non-fictional, would be interesting or believable (or are, or will be, or should be) in a romantic relationship. It is considered a general term for fans' emotional involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction.
• Ship War - A heated disagreement between two or more groups of shippers. Ship wars span a long time and involve many people in their fandom.
• Side Pairing - is a pairing that is described in the story, but is not the main focus. Side pairings can vary in "screen time" and importance; a "secondary" pairing might have almost as much plot relevance as the "main" pairing, or it might be better described as a "background" or "minor" pairing that is only mentioned incidentally.
• Slash - Slash refers to relationships between two male characters. Occasionally, two female characters can be categorized under slash. However, femslash has become a more popular term for this. Slash ships are recognizable by the slash, '/' between the characters.
• Slasher - is a fan of slash ships, usually those who write male/male fanfiction. Some fans of slash who also read or write in other genres prefer not to identify as slashers, seeing the term as meaning fans who are only interested in slash pairings.
• Slashy - is commonly used to describe relationships between characters of the same gender that can easily be read as sexual or romantic, or texts that contain homoerotic subtext supporting slash pairings.
• Straight - See Heterosexual.
• Subtext - is content in canon (or, sometimes, fanworks) that is inferred by the audience without being explicitly stated. In fan discussions, subtext most commonly refers to canon that is felt to imply a romantic relationship or UST between two characters, or to hint at a character's sexual orientation.
• Superwholock - is a crossover between the three fandoms Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, which has formed a fandom of its own on Tumblr.
• Superwholockian - is an individual who is an avid fan of supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock.
• Smut - Typically describing fan written works that include sexual intercourse or sexual interactions.

T

• Threesome - A label often used for fanworks involving three characters in a romantic or sexual situation.
• Transsexual - A person born with the physical characteristics of one sex who emotionally and psychologically feels that they belong to the opposite sex.

W

• Weasleycest - is a term used in the Harry Potter fandom to describe fanworks that contain incest pairings involving members of the Weasley Family—most often twins Fred and George Weasley.
• Wrongshipping - When a fan ships two characters who really shouldn't be together.

Y

• Yaoi - Yaoi is a slang meaning 'boys love' or homosexuality that is used in the Japanese language.
• Yuri - Explicit lesbian relationships in anime or manga.