Talk:Shipper

With regards to the following paragraph, added in the most recent update by '141.150.33.6'.

"Digimon fandom, both Japanese and American, originated the trend of not using the slash, but keeping name order and combining the two names, usually eliminating the syllables in between. The fad became was less widespread due to the limited nature of Japanese phoentics, which sometimes made deciphering names difficult."

Do you have any dates for this? I can trace this trend in the Pokémon fandom back to SatoKasu in 2000, which I would've thought would trump Digimon starting to use that method by at least a year.

--Mukashi 16:29, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)

I can't say when it started, but digimon certainly stuck with and popularized it... That said, looking at FFN the earliest fic I could find labeled by a coupling name to May 13th of 2000.

Could you please put a signature or something at the end of your messages so we can track who is who?

Anyway, I know for a fact that the english speaking Pokémon fandom was using SatoKasu (satosho x Kasumi) and ShiShi (Shigeru x Satoshi) in 2000, which they imported from the Japanese, who had been using them for far longer. I'd suspect we'd find the best evidence of these kinds of couple names before those amongst either the Ranma 1/2 or Evangelion fanfiction communities. Tracking the Japanese origin of the name would be rather difficult I expect though, however I'm confident it very much pre-dated Digimon, even if they may have been the first english anime fandom to use the terms to a great deal. --Mukashi 17:32, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure when the digimon fandom began using such terms, just because I've been active since the beginning doesn't mean I recognize the dates ^_^ That said, SatoKasu is not standard digimon-style coupling names(Unless the characters in question are both digimon, in which case there isn't another practical way to say them) it would be something like Sasumi, Satosumi, Satomi, etc... I know for a fact yaoi fandom's done it like that for ages, but I still haven't seen digimon-style reckoning used for hetero couplings before that. The digimon fandom still uses such terms, though I'm not sure how far it's spread. birdboy2000 14:43, 2004 Nov 22 (EST)

Wait, so you mean that instead of the standard "first two characters from the name of each character if written all in hiragana/katakana" system that most anime use, Digimon uses the beginning of the first characters name and the end of the second? Man, that's got to get confusing. Never heard this before. Thanks for the tip-off. --Mukashi 19:48, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Some research

This article needs some work. The term "shipper" and the "shipping" phenomenon did not, in fact, originate with the Pokémon fan community. It was being used by X-Files fans (where, I think, it originated) at least two years before the release of the English translation of the games and television show. I posted some links under Talk:Harry Potter fandom. The origin of the term (as an abbreviation for "relationshippers") is mentioned in the article about The X-Files.

I haven't got any more time to work on this at the moment, but I thought that it would be good to bring this to the attention of some more folks might be able to contribute to the revamping and expanding of this article. (Should it be here or at Shipping (fandom)?) [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 00:20, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you'd like, I can gladly get some of the people who were there when the term was actually invented to post their comments up here. Actually finding "Rocket Jesse" (The originator of the term) may be impossible, but ChaosRocket was there I believe, and while she disassociates herself from much of the fan community on the major Pokémon forums now, she's not impossible to contact.

I know the X-Files fans love to think it originated with them, but it is a fact that the original Shippers (Well, at least the first people to call themselves that) were the RocketShippers (At the web forum Team Rocket HQ or TRHQ, IIRC). An X-Files Shipping name was second, and was soon followed by NeoShipping and TwerpShipping (these being Butch and Cassidy & Ash and Misty from Pokémon) --Mukashi 12:58, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Having now seen your messages on the Harry Potter page, I'll withdraw that comment. If we were talking 1998 or 1999, then Pokémon would likely have been the one which came first, however I can't confirm a date of 1996 for the Pokémon fandom at this point, something which you seem to be able to do. I'll need to see if I can get in contact with ChaosRocket or someone related to TRHQ from the original RocketShipping group to confirm dates. In the meanwhile though, perhaps we could change the article to reflect instead that X-Files originated the term, and Pokémon was responsible for its popularization amongst anime fandoms, and the establishment of the term into its current meaning? --Mukashi 13:29, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Temp article created

I've copied the material that isn't suspected of copyvio to the temp subpage. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:51, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've got back in contact with ChaosRocket (The person whose site you're linking to there), but considering she's already seen the article here with the sections from her essay, and didn't raise any complaint, I don't think there's a problem. --Mukashi 00:41, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

I take that back. She never came outright and said anything, but after I noticed that the copyright vio message was put in my someone without a login, I compared her IP to the one she uses on the forum where the article was shown to her, and it matched perfectly. Apparently she does care afterall, strange considering that she's declared several times now that she's long since done with Shipping. Can't be helped I suppose --Mukashi 00:52, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

I don't think it'll be too hard to write the same basic points up in a new way, and then there won't be any copyright problems to worry about. The basic points seem to be:

• There are multiple conventions for identifying ship names; they include:
  • Putting the complete names together, separated by a slash, and appending "-ship/-shipping/-shipper"
  • Putting the first initial of each character's name together, separated by a slash, and appending "-ship/-shipping/-shipper"
  • Creating specific names for each particular ship that end in "-ship/-shipping/-shipper"
    • Sometimes a single pairing will have multiple ship names; the ship names may reflect specific beliefs/preferences about the nature or history of the relationship.
    • Sometimes two ship names will have the same literal meaning but one will be considered a derogatory term. (How prominent is this? Are there any examples other than Gakishipping?)

It used to be fairly prominent, however it's started to fall into disuse, not so much because of inapplicability of the terms, but simply because of a steady drop in the number of Shipper discussions since the PokéShipper/PalletShipper debates ended in late 2001. When there is discussion however, the terms are still rather frequently used. Recently, many of the more immature Shippers (Especially those from the Serebii.net forums) are simply called "Gaki's", regardless of what Ship they follow. That trend was started by someone who actually understood what Gaki means in Japanese, but most of the people who use it don't know about that, and simply see it as a new definition of GakiShipping.

The most common examples for specific beliefs/preferences and derogatory terms, besides GakiShipping, would most likely be AdultShipping (Non derogatory, implies Satoshi's mother and Ookido are having an affair), TwerpShipping (Yet another name for Satoshi/Kasumi. Actually the original name, but nowdays, mainly used by RocketShippers to describe SatoKasu fans who don't believe in any other Ships), and ShiShi (Shigero/Satoshi, using the yaoi naming method mentioned in the article already [and probably being the only common usage of that method in Pokémon Shipping]. Named for a PalletShipping mailing list which was known for strongly flaming anyone who disagreed with them. The list no longer exists I believe, but the name survives.) --Mukashi 12:42, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

One thing I find missing is the "HMS"-style ship names of Harry Potter fandom as used at [1] and elsewhere -- Lily/Sirius is "HMS Copper & Black", Draco/Ginny is "HMS Fire and Ice", et cetera, with the "HMS" sometimes being left off. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:14, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A suggested "To Do" list

• Replace the apparently copied material about specific naming conventions
• Move the article to Shipping (fandom) and rewrite it to be about shipping (the phenomenon) rather than shippers (the fans).
• Rewrite the intro to note first that shipping is any belief or desire for a particular romantic relationship between fictional characters, and then mention that writing fan fiction is one way this belief/desire can be expressed.

Sounds good to me. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 20:29, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps seperate sections inside the article for some of the more prominent and active Shipper fandoms would be appropriate? Shipping culture, I've found, tends to differ so wildly between fandoms that it's often hardly recognisable as the same phenomenon. --Mukashi 12:45, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Differ in what ways? I think there are probably too many shipper fandoms to single any out and say "these are the most prominent shipper fandoms and you should know about them", but it would be good information to give an idea of the range of variation that exists among them. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:13, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so sure that we couldn't single a few out. Sure, there's lots of Shipping fandoms, but very few have reached the level of sophistication and organisation as some others have. There's dramatic differences in both levels and types of organisation (From individuals to huge government like structured clubs), internal politics (eg. Pokémon fanfic writers for a time rejecting the term Shipping, and simply calling themselves fans of a couple, with Shipping gaining for that time the connotation of only being for those who want to debate the merits and likelyhoods of the various ships) & naming methods for starters. Putting those aside, there's also the point that several Shipping fandoms have exerted a strong influence on the others, such as X-Files (Developing the term), Pokémon (Popularising it with anime fans, who took the terminology with them when they grew out of Pokémon and broadened their anime watching habits), Star Trek (They might not have called slash Shipping, but shipping does owe a lot of its early roots to those early slash writers), and so forth. --Mukashi 20:42, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

I'd agree with that, except that getting an NPOV look at digimon shipping would be next to impossible, though I'll do what I can ^_^ birdboy2000 0:00, 2004 Dec 12 (EST)

I've created Shipping (fandom) along with a more general intro and no plans to use copyrighted material. It is, of course, still very much in need of contributions. AceMyth 18:43, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

It's frankly rather disappointing that you unilaterally replaced all the contributions that have been made to this article, all the refinements that have been done to it over time, in order to create a new article in the place that this article should have been moved to. It would have been wiser and politer to ask whether anyone else thought we should scrap the entirety of this article and start all over. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:21, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I tend to agree that this should have been discussed (next time—remember this for next time), but we do need to leave something in place here as a disambiguation, since shipper isn't always used in the fandom sense. Now that it's been done, I would say that the thing to do is to accomplish a proper merge (with full credit given), then once that is done, convert this into a disambiguation page. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 23:03, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Most content in this article is either redundant (did we really need a whole paragraph detailing examples of pokemon ship names in the first place?) or can be integrated into the new one fairly easily (most of it, frankly, already is). Except for the in-depth info on the roots of shipping naming conventions, which has not been integrated yet, I don't really see how what I did can be viewed as anything other than an improvement. AceMyth 01:13, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, yes, you already made your view known that this article was crap that at best had portions here and there that could be salvaged. I hope you have fun doing it. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:38, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The "shipper" article wasn't "crap", it was just written from a too narrow perspective to cover the whole shipping phenomenon and used an ambiguous name as the title, and that's what I was trying to solve. I'm sorry if it came across looking like I was out to destroy your work so I can "have fun with my new article", as you put it. It's no more my article than it is yours. --AceMyth 00:09, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

So, what parts do we still have to merge before this becomes a redirect to "shipping"? --62.0.95.42 16:39, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't see anything. Doesn't look like anyone else does either. Let's kill this one already and get to work on the new article. --Mukashi 07:31, 2004 Dec 20 (UTC)