Shipping Glossary

A glossary for shipping terminology for greater ease of use searching or blacklisting certain types of ships and ship tropes online, on sites like tumblr and other social media.

Types of Shippers

These terms refer to the person doing the shipping, not to the ship or type of ship itself.

Proshipper (or proship): A person who is "pro" (for) shipping in general. Typically refers to someone who follows the philosophy "ship and let ship" and ignore or blocks ships or shippers they are uncomfortable with. An anti-censorship stance that promotes currating your own experience online, and avoiding any content you don't want to interact with, while supporting the rights of others to create and consume any type of fiction they enjoy.Does not mean "problematic ship" and does not mean that a proshipper supports or endorses the type of dark or toxic elements they may enjoy in fiction in real life.

Antishipper (or antiship): Also styled "Anti". Perjorative: fanpol, fancop. A person who is "anti" (against) shipping. Typically refers to someone who does not follow the philosophy "ship and let ship" and instead attempts to harass people who create content for ships they don't approve of or that they consider immoral. A pro-censorship stance that takes the view that fan creators have a moral responsibility not to create content that would upset or disturb any other fans. This view typically only relates to sexual and romantic content, rather that to violent content.

Neutral shipper: Typically refers to someone who does not want to participate in proship versus antiship discourse. Can be considered 'proship' by default to some.

Comshipper (or comship): A person who enjoys "complicated" ships specifically, generally of a taboo or toxic nature.Does not mean someone who endorses toxic or abusive relationships in real life.

Self shipper (or self ship): A person who ships themselves or a self insert OC with one or many canon characters from media.

Fujoshi (or yaoi shipper, or slash shipper): A person who enjoys ships between male characters.

Multi shipper: A person who enjoys multiple different ships and pairings for the same character, rather than having an OTP for each character.

General Ship terms

het ship: A ship between a male character and a female character.OTP: One true pairing. Refers to the shippers prefered ship for the characters involved.self ship: A ship between a canon character and the shipper themselves, or their self insert OC.rarepair: A ship considered rare in the fandom, rather than one of the popular ships.crack ship: A ship considered to be so unusual or out there the shipper would have to be on drugs to have come up with it.slash ship: A ship between two male characters. Sometimes called yaoi.femslash ship: A ship between two female characters, sometimes called yuri.poly ship: A ship between more than two characters at the same time.canon ship: A ship that is considered to be canon within the source material.

Specific Ship Terms

toy ship: A ship between two child charactersteen ship: A ship between two teen characterstag ship: A a ship between a teen character and a child charactercradle ship: A ship between an a child character and an adult characterxgen ship: A ship between a teen character and an adult charactermay ship: A ship between two adult characters who have an age gapshipcest: A ship between two related characters. Also styled kin ship.twincest: A ship between twin siblings. Also styled twin ship.selfcest: A ship between two different versions of the same character. Not to be confused with a self ship.lock ship: A ship involving noncon elements.pick ship: a ship involving dubcon elementsscale ship: A ship involving a significant power imbalance other than the age of the characterscompanion ship: A ship between a human character and a nonhuman (generally feral furry) character.dimmer ship: A ship written in some way to be darker than fandom generally perceives the ship to be.blackrom ship: A romantic ship between rivals or enemies. Also called foe yay or rival ship. A ship where the characters remain opposed, despite being romantically involved.E2 ship: Enemies to lovers. A ship that starts off between enemies, and progressively softens until the characters are no longer enemies.ghost ship: A ship where one character is alive, and the other is dead.cargo ship: A ship between a character and an inanimate object.mentor ship: A ship between a character and their mentor figure.robo ship: A ship between a robot character and a non robot character.yandere ship: A ship in which at least one character is a yandere.rpf ship: Ship about real life people in a fictional context.starboard ship: A one-sided relationship, or a ship where one character's affection isn't returned.