Just For Fun / The Ship Yard

Every fandom ships, known fact. Often there is Ship-to-Ship Combat, and sometimes there are a few Ship Sinkings, causing fans to Abandon Ship.

The tropers saw this, and decided that there were not enough nautical puns. So they gathered their collective insanity, and built The Ship Yard!

The Ship Yard contains Pun-based entries that probably wouldn't fit the Three Rules of Three, and thus aren't exactly tropes.

Just in case it's not perfectly clear: This has nothing to do with a facility for producing sailing vessels, or the New England microbrewery.

---

The products of the TV Tropes Official Ship Yard include:

• Achille Lauro: Ship whose supporters try to force into canon by threatening physical violence to the creators and which later on fails altogether.
• Admiral Beatty: The one poor bastard in any shipping community whose preferred ships keep blowing up in their face.
• Aircraft Carrier: Ship that serves as a launch pad for Cloudcuckoolanders. Official Aircraft Carriers may also have a sizable complement of Torpedo Bombers.
  • Nimitz: An Aircraft Carrier with more Torpedo Bombers than you can shake a stick at.
  • May alternatively involve aircraft.
• Alang: The name of the place where old, once big and proud, but now outdated ships end.
• Air Ship:
  1. A particularly fanciful ship.
  2. Shipping between characters that are pilots, or work on a plane or flying base.
  3. Shipping Cloudcuckoolanders.
  4. Shipping one or both members of Air.
  5. Shipping Michael Jordan in a real fic.
  6. Shipping pegasi.
  7. Shipping characters with powers over air.
  8. Shipping Final Fantasy characters. Or Girl Genius characters. Or both.
• Allied Ship: A ship that supports another (perhaps by removing a person from an official ship to justify a fanon one).
• Andrea Gail: A ship that only gets a lot of support after it has been sunk, often by a Hurricane.
• Anti-Ship Missile (also called Air-to-Sea Missile): When Word of God simply states that a particular ship isn't going to happen (Compare Ship Sinking), but can come from other shippers and anti-shippers.
• Anti-Shipping Aircraft:
  1. Someone or something that fires a lot of Anti-Ship Missiles.
  2. A Torpedo Bomber, when dealing with older companies that are less up to date.
• Apprentice Ship: A ship that interprets a mentor/pupil relationship as romantic.
  • May be called an Intern Ship if it sprouts from a boss/employee relationship.
• The Argo:
  1. A ship of mythological heroes, especially Greek ones.
  2. A ship that takes place in the background story, before the main action of the film/series.
• Artificial Reef: When the authors take a Sunken Ship (whether of their own doing or one that has been spontaneously abandoned by the fandom) and use the remains to create something new.
• Aviation Cruiser: A ship with heavy armament of its own, supplemented by a complement of on-board helicopters for anti-submarine work and aircraft for air defence.
• Backfire Raid: A massed assault by Anti-Ship Aircraft, capable of sinking entire convoys. Even the most vigilant, Aegis System-equipped fleets can expect to suffer losses from a well-executed raid.
• Barque: Shipping two canine characters.
• Bass Boat:
  1. Shipping Vinyl Scratch.
  2. Shipping real-life bass players with someone.
  3. Shipping Bass.
• Battlecruiser: A ship based on a Dating Catwoman-style dynamic.
• Battle of the Atlantic: A very long battle between two "big tent" shipping camps that ultimately ends in a solid victory for either side.
• Battle of Jutland: An epic battle between multiple ships that ends with a Pyrrhic Victory for one ship.
• Battle off Samar: Horribly mismatched Ship-to-Ship Combat that the underdog nonetheless somehow manages to win.
  • Taffy III: The underdog ship in question.
  • Like if NaruHina and Ichigo×Rukia became canon.^note The former is now canon.
• Battle Ship:
  1. Alternative name for Foe Yay Shipping.
  2. Particularly aggressive Shipping fandom, eager to engage in Ship-to-Ship Combat.
     • Yamato-class Battleship: Biggest, most popular, and most well-armed ship in the fandom. Still remains fanon.
     • Or a mighty Battle Ship that's nonetheless sunk by whatever it was prepared for the best.
     • Iowa-class Battleship: Economy version of the Yamato, not as impressive as its bigger cousin, but faster and more practical to support. Even when all other battleships are moored or sunk, the Iowa will still be at sea, though often for reasons its builders envisioned only as a secondary mission, if at all.
     • Hindenburg-class Battleship: A ship that both needs to be highly aggressive to survive and requires far more support than can ever be gathered. Hence, it never came into existence.
  3. Shipping two warriors.
  4. Pocket Battleship: Like the above, but with more wank involved.
  5. A Huge Battle Ship: The same, but with giants.
• Battleship Mutsu: A ship that suddenly explodes, followed by half the supporters abandoning ship, while the other half continue to try in vain to keep it afloat.
• Battle of Trafalgar: Ship-to-Ship Combat where one side wins overwhelmingly.
• Becalmed Ship: A relationship so stable some people find it boring.
• Bermuda Triangle: A fan community where shipping just... disappears. There's no official ban, but any questions related to ships tend to go unanswered.
• Bismarck: A ship that sinks a very popular ship, resulting in all of that ship's fans and their friends ganging up to destroy it.
• Blackbeard: A fan who takes advantage of ships.
  • Stede Bonnet: A fan who tries to take advantage of ships but tends to fail.
• Boat Lift: An author who is known for making all kinds of ships from the fandom official.
• Bounty: A ship where the leadership makes unpopular decisions, leading the rank-and-file shippers to mutiny.
• Brinkman Ship: A ship that always causes trouble and where shippers try to gain support of their ship by any means neccessery.
• Bull Ship:
  1. Not going to happen.
  2. A ship where one or both of the shipped is a bull/are bulls, or vaguely bull-like creatures, such as minotaurs, Ichigo's Hollow transformation in Bleach, and random people wearing horns on their head.
• Cabin Boy: A character whose importance is diminished by a particular ship is the Cabin Boy of that ship. There may be more than one, and it does not have to be male.
• Canoe: A ship that is perfectly functional, yet tiny, largely ignored, and whose fans must work with little help from the official canon.
  • Kayak: A canoe that receives sudden Word of God confirmation
    • Creeker: A kayak going through some very rough waters.
    • Freestyle Kayak: A kayak where one or both characters are very acrobatic.
• Canon Fire:
  1. When a ship is Jossed by canon events. See Ship Sinking.
  2. In-series jokes at the expense of a particular ship.
• Canon Ship: Another term for the Official Couple.
  • Kanon Ship: Anything involving Ayu from Kanon. Uguu~
  • Loose Canon Ship: A ship where one (or even both) of the parties is an obvious Ax-Crazy or Yandere.
• Canoneer: A fan who supports only pairings present within Canon, often to the point of attacking anyone who writes or draws any other ship.
  • Shark: A fan who attacks fans of recently sunk ships.
• Cape Horn: A fandom where shipping is infamously dangerous.
• Captain Obvious: The one fan in every fandom who makes "shocking" and "insightful" observations about his favorite ship that the rest of the fandom has already been discussing for quite some time.
• Caroline: Shipping two radio anchors.
• The Catamaran:
  1. A pair that is shipped because they end up captive together a lot.
  2. A ship where one or both involved are cats or part-cat.
  • The Katamaran: A ship that rolls over and absorbs all other ships. See for example Mike and Gillian in Stranger in a Strange Land.
  • Triamaran: The same, but with a threesome.
• Censor Ship: Shipping in a way that gets rid of the Squick-inducing elements.
• Champion Ship:
  1. Pairing two top-ranked and decorated athletes/martial artists/soldiers/gamers, possibly from rivaling schools/dojos/armies.
  2. Pairing a woman with the knight who carries The Lady's Favour.
• Christening: The event that makes a ship canon.
• Citizen Ship: Shipping ordinary civilians together.
• Classification Society: A group of fans dedicated to creating the Registry (which see) and ensuring that all ships are built to code (i.e. opponents of Crack Pairing and Jossed ships in all their forms).
• Clipper Ship:
  1. A ship that moves along very quickly, but is highly precarious.
  2. A ship with at least one member being from the 19th century.
• Coastal Defence Ship: A ship that protects the fandom from coming under attack from other fandoms.
  • Ilmarinen And Vainamoinen: "That fandom must be quite the naval power: even their Lightships are armed with big guns!"
• Cog: Shipping in a medieval Northern/Central European setting.
• Containerized Shipping (a.k.a. Isotainer Ship): Shipping communities that break up the fandom into non-overlapping compartments. Example: School Rumble, with the Tenma shippers vs. the Eri shippers.
• Contraband Shipping:
  1. Alternative name for Crack Pairing.
  2. A ship where no one's in a band.
• The Constitution: A ship that canon can't harm, no matter how hard it tries.
• Convoy: A number of Ships whose fans mutually support one another in order to ensure that their particular Ship survives.
• Cool Ship: Alternate name for The Yacht. Sadly, already in use for something else.
• Coracle: An inconspicuous and unlikely ship that ends up surviving the series run against all odds.
• Corvette: A ship of two characters who spend a lot of time in fast cars together.
  1. Alternately, a ship that springs up very fast.
  2. Shipping a character and the car.
• Costa Concordia: Someone gets laid quickly with catastrophic consequences.
• Cougar Ace: A ship that ALMOST sinks, to the point where nearly all of its fans Abandon Shipping, but is somehow rescued. Does not have to involve an attractive older woman and/or a handsome young cyborg.
• Court Ship: A ship involving lawyers, judges, or jurors.
• Craftsman Ship: A pairing between two people who pursue artistic crafts. Or shipping two Craftsman tools together.
• Cruise Ship:
  1. An Official Couple.
  2. A Ship with more than two participants, anything from a threesome to a whole-cast-hell-throw-in-a-crossover-or-twenty orgy.
  3. One with Tom Cruise involved.
  4. A widely accepted pairing, canon or otherwise, that very few fans dispute or go against
• Cutty Sark: A well-known and highly thought of ship that has staying power.
• Damn the Torpedoes: The cry of shippers who ignore Torpedoes and Anti-Ship Missiles.
• Danger To Shipping: A fandom that is averse to the practice in general, and will kick you out for bringing it up.
• Davy Jones Locker: A forum/LJ community/message board/what-have-you for shippers of sunk ships.
• Dealer Ship:
  1. Shipping two car dealers.
  2. Shipping two blackjack dealers.
  3. Shipping two characters who are involved in the drug trade.
  4. Shipping two characters until one of them becomes older than 16.
• Death Star: A ship which would completely destroy a fandom or work if it ever became canon.
• Depth Charge: Something that damages a ship but does not kill it.
• Destroyer:
  1. In collaborative works, a ship that fires Torpedoes at other ships.
  2. A ship skilled at defending itself from Submarine attacks.
  3. A ship so radical that it carelessly wrecks the whole setting.
  4. A ship (seemingly) designed to sink lots of smaller ships, for instance between the two most shipped characters (or their parents).
• Dictator Ship:
  1. A ship jam-packed with master/servant relationships and the like.
  2. How you'd categorise Hitler/Stalin slashfic.
• Dinghy: The pairing of two Ensemble Dark Horses. For example, Flippy × Flaky.
• Distress Call: A sequence of events that show that a ship is sinking and that the fans should prepare to Abandon Shipping.
  • Distress Beacon, AKA EPIRB: What is usually sent out if a ship sinks so quickly that there's very little time to Abandon Shipping.
• Dreadnought: The most powerful ship. Slow, but capable of destroying huge ships with a single volley, and capable as well of resisting many Air-to-Sea Missiles. Or alternately, a very bold shipping effort (i.e. dreads nought).
• Dredging The Ship: When a ship that has previously been sunk is suddenly resurrected by the author after having a change of heart.
• Drydock: When a Ship is sunk but later reappears, sans author approval, it's been hiding here.
• DUKW pron. "duck": a ship that's been Put on a Bus.
• EA Bryan: A ship that may have been put together okay, but complete and total incompetency in handling it results in a spectacular self-destruction.
• East Indiaman: Similar to Merchant Ship but the fans and author are willing to engage in Ship-to-Ship Combat over it.
• Edmund Fitzgerald: A sunken ship that inspires Filk Songs.
• Ehime Maru: A ship that is sunk by a Submarine, but not in the usual way and not on purpose.
• Eldridge: A ship that fans claim to be supported by the author but no evidence suggests that the author is even aware of said ship.
• Ekranoplan:
  1. The ship of all ships, even more than the Dreadnought. Hard, tough, powerful and with all the speed and sneakiness of the Hydrofoil. Using conventional naval warfare, this ship will not go down, no matter how much Canon fire you throw at it, and it's pretty much vulnerable only to Flak Artilleries pointed at the ship.
  2. Seems a pretty silly ship at first, but then takes off.
• Enemy Ship:
  1. Another alternative name for Foe Yay Shipping.
  2. A ship that rivals the shipper's OTP.
• Escape Raft: A back-up ship to support in case the shipper's OTP is destroyed, e.g. "If Bob/Lucy doesn't work out, Bob/Jessica is my Escape Raft."
• Ever Given: A ship that becomes so big that it disrupts the fandom's attempts to ship anything else.
• Express Shipping:
  1. Pairs thrown together in a big hurry in response to canon developments or the introduction of new characters.
  2. Or a pairing that fall in love very quickly.
• The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships:
  1. A character that's been shipped with every member of the cast, gender, orientation, age and views notwithstanding. And don't think they'll stop with the show's character cast. Often overlaps with The Smurfette Principle in that the lone female member of an ensemble will inevitably be shipped with all members of her Five-Man Band (and then some).
  2. A conspicuously attractive actor or actress whose appearance in a role makes their character skyrocket in popularity in the shipping world and/or instantly turns an unsympathetic character into a Draco in Leather Pants (e.g. Tom Felton was arguably The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships for Draco Malfoy; Alan Rickman definitely was for Snape.) See also Self-Fanservice.
• Fellow Ship: Male-male/Yaoi pairing, especially long time companions. Gimli/Legolas
• Ferry: A ship that keeps going back and forth between being Fanon and Ascended Fanon.
• Finnjet: A ship that appears very quickly but is a nightmare to maintain.
• Fire Ship: A ship that fans know will fail, set up purely to take other pairings down with it.
  • Hellburner: A Fire Ship specifically engineered to produce some spectacular fireworks.
• First Mate: Why, the first character in a brand-new franchise to get shipped by the fans, of course.
• First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal: Wild, chaotic, every-ship-for-itself Ship-to-Ship Combat at point-blank range in the middle of the night.
• Fish and Ships: Shipping two characters that live under the sea.
• Fishing Boat: A ship that actively goes looking for evidence to support it.
  • Alaskan Crab-Fishing Boat: A Fishing Boat that exists in works that are especially dangerous to shipping.
• Flag Ship:
  1. An Official Couple that the series revolves around, or is otherwise heavily promoted by official sources.
  2. Any pairing between characters from Hetalia: Axis Powers, Countryhumans, Scandinavia and the World, or any media involving Nations as People.
  3. A romance between two patriots.
  4. Any pairing between a patriot and their flag (e.g. Enjolras/Flag)
• Flak Artillery: A segment of the fandom that insists in the possibility of a ship regardless of the Word of God; i.e. something that fires against Torpedo Bombers. Also known as SAM Battery or AA Battery.
  • Aegis System: A particularly influential and well-coordinated segment of fans who possess this.
• Fleet: A series where fans are known to have groups of ships, not just one. Best example is Naruto, where one is likely to be something along the lines of a Naruto×Hinata, Sakura×Sasuke, Shikamaru×Temari, and Neji×Tenten shipper.
  • Imperial Fleet: A series where multiple such possibilities are made/suggested in canon. Examples: My-HiME and My-Otome, which makes/implies connections with Shizuru×Natsuki, Haruka×Yukino, Chie×Aoi, Arika×Mashiro, and Mai×Mikoto. Notice a pattern?
• Fog Ship: Any ship involving an A.I. or Ridiculously Human Robot.
  • Fleet of Fog: A Fleet where all pairings involve those mentioned above.
• Freak Wave: Immense amount of freaky supporters of one particular and particularly wacky ship appearing within a short timespan. Powerful enough to get even a Canon Ship to struggle.
• Free Shipping:
  1. Shipping possibilities provided by the characters in the story.
  2. Shipping possibilities provided by the creators themselves.
• Freudian Ship:
  1. An A×B ship where Character A mistakes Character B for a third Character C. (Example: Aerith×Cloud×Zack.)
  2. A not-quite-official ship that's very heavy in subtext.
  3. A ship where the character really just wants to kill his father and sleep with his mother.
  4. Shipping a parent and child.
• Friend Ship: Shipping two characters who claim to be Just Friends or Like Brother and Sister.
• Frigate: Any ship of medium-sized popularity.
• Full of Ship: A fan whose Shipping Goggles are welded on, and can literally think of nothing else when viewing works.
• Garbage Scow: An unpopular ship that is constantly dumped on by most of the fandom.
• Generation Ship:
  1. A May–December Romance ship.
  2. A ship based on the principle of Generation Xerox (his dad and her mum should have got together, but didn't, so...).
  3. Kirk×Picard.
  4. A teen couple whose divorced parents are also dating each other.
• Ghost Ship:
  1. A pairing with the minor obstacle of one side being dead (or "just hiding") at the time. Can also refer to a pairing where both members die in canon, typically at or near the same time, not just one dying/dead while the other remains alive.
  2. The Crack Pairing that wouldn't go away, or the Draco in Leather Pants ship that refuses to die despite the best efforts of the author and other fans.
  3. A ship involving undead characters. Most ships in Bleach qualify for this definition of Ghost Ship by the very nature of the show.
  • Flying Dutchman:
    1. A Ghost Ship that actually outlives the run of the series.
    2. A ship that exists at least in part to redeem a character.
• The Good Ship Lollipop:
  1. A ship that happens to be Sickeningly Sweet.
  2. An alternate name for Toy Ship.
• Going Down With The Ship:
  1. An extreme reaction to seeing one's favourite ship sunk. In other words, taking Die for Our Ship rather too literally.
  2. Or, slightly more reasonably, to stop watching the show when one's ship is sunk.
• The Good Shipherd: A member of an online community who is skilled at maintaining peace between differing shippers. Alternately, a character within a work who keeps the peace when The Matchmaker and the Shipper on Deck disagree.
• Grand Admiral: A Fandom VIP who reached that status through frequent shipping of a particular pairing.
• Great Eastern: Trying to ship as many characters as one can in an early stage of the fandom.
• Gunship:
  1. Shipping two Gunslingers.
  2. Shipping two members of the military.
  3. Shipping a Badass and his gun.
  4. Anything that requires a shotgun wedding to work.
• Hard Ship:
  1. A not-quite-Crack Pairing that nevertheless requires a lot of effort to justify.
  2. A pairing involving one or more rock-based, metallic, or crystalline character.
  3. A particularly explicit slashfic involving... Does the obvious really need to be stated?
• The Harbour: A point in canon where both members of the ship are no longer seen together a lot.
• Heaven Ship: A pairing confirmed by putting two characters Together in Death.
• HMS Hood: An old and venerable ship that gets into Ship-to-Ship Combat with a newly-popular and quickly-climbing ship and is obliterated so quickly and thoroughly that it almost never comes up again, leaving behind scant few traces of its existence.
• HMS Revenge: When shipping meets Revenge Fic. For example, pairing The Scrappy with an Abhorrent Admirer, or pairing two Scrappies together.
• Home Port: The work/fandom to which a particular ship belongs. Should the ship involve any kind of Crossover, it is the fandom where the ship has more support.
• Horseman Ship:
  1. Shipping people who spend a lot of time riding together.
  2. A ship involving BoJack.
• Hospital Ship: A ship involving the Florence Nightingale Effect.
• Houseboat:
  1. Shipping characters in a house together.
  2. Shipping Sapient Houses.
  3. Shipping a character with their house.
  4. Shipping characters from House.
• Hull Breach: When a ship is damaged and facing destruction.
• Hurricane: A storm or other weather-based event that manages to destroy at least one ship.
• Hurtigruten: The art of making shipping in a very complicated canon into daily routine.
• Hydrofoil:
  1. Very evasive ship with a low radar profile known for being extremely difficult to sink with Torpedoes, but seldom lasts long in Ship-to-Ship Combat. Basically, a weaker Ekranoplane.
  2. A ship where one of the characters is the foil of the other.
• Iceberg: A plot event that causes a Ship Wreck. The damage is often mistaken for that of a Torpedo.
• Ice Breaker:
  1. A ship between two Yanderes, breaking through everything that get in their way.
  2. A ship that requires a Defrosting Ice Queen.
• I'm On a Boat:
  1. A ship that is meant to parody shipping.
  2. A ship between two unimportant characters that is played up to be the Yacht.
  3. When the shipper is part of the ship or is a Shipper on Deck or a Navigator.
  4. Shipping The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.
• Inflatable Raft: A ship whose very small fanbase is getting bigger.
• The Intrepid: An undefeatable and much beloved ship.
• Intelligence Ship:
  1. Shipping secret agents.
     • "Okean" class trawler — a ship involving Soviet agents.
  2. An alternative name for Pair the Smart Ones.
• Ironclad: An unpopular ship, constantly under attack from rivals, that manages to remain afloat because despite not being official canon; it has a massive body of supporting evidence to act as armor.
  • Battle of Monitor and Merrimack: An epic battle between two Ironclads that causes ripples throughout the fandom and beyond.
• I Saw These Ships Come Sailing In:
  1. What you can say when you knew that somebody was going to ship a certain pair, and it happens.
  2. A Christmas-themed ship.
• Jetsam: Events in canon ignored by certain shippers to keep sailing.
• The Junk:
  1. A ship that results from all the other characters being shipped already so the fans decide they should just Pair the Spares.
  2. If playing on 'junk' being a Chinese boat:
     1. A pairing of two Chinese characters.
     2. A pairing that invokes Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow or the inverse.
     • The Junk and the Dhow: Shipping a Chinese character with an Arab.
• Kamchatka: A ship whose fans have a history of needlessly antagonizing other ships. Often prone to accusing others of being Torpedo Boats regardless of their true intentions.
• Kamikaze: A creator so hell-bent on either stopping shipping or taking down one particular ship that they're willing to jeopardize or even ruin their work of fiction.
• Kattegat: A fandom where shipping turns out to be surprisingly dangerous.
• Kin Ship: Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
• Lake Boat: An obvious ship between minor characters that has a small fandom but no competition.
  • Lake Freighter: A ship between minor characters that becomes disproportionately popular, e.g. Lyra and Bon Bon.
    • Queen of the Lakes: Title awarded to the biggest lake freighter of them all, generally judged in terms of disparity between the importance of the characters and the popularity of the ship. ^note  LyraBon may very well be the current Queen, but such things are difficult to measure objectively.
• Landing Craft: A ship whose fans invade Internet forums in order to promote it.
  • Landing Craft, Tank: Armored support that fans bring with them in the form of evidence in favor of the ship(s) that they support.
  • D-Day: What happens when a large number of fans of a particular ship (or ships) invade an Internet forum.
• Landlubber:
  1. A character who is never or almost never shipped with anyone.
  2. Someone who doesn't participate in Shipping communities or discussions. (If you don't understand what half the jargon on this page means, that means you.)
• Leader Ship: Shipping commanders together.
• Liberty Ship: A ship that, once formed, quickly gains a large amount of evidence in favor of it.
• Life Boat: Alternative name for Last Minute Hook Up.
• Life Jacket: Whatever arguments or reasoning shippers need to get to their Escape Raft.
• Life Ship: When real-life actors who play the characters involved in a popular ship get together. Examples include:
  • The romance that briefly appeared to be brewing between Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) in early 2008.
  • The confirmed relationship between Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli) and Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet). Somewhat creepy, because they play uncle and niece on the show.
• Lighthouse: A character used as a matchmaker, especially if they say "I Want My Beloved to Be Happy" when the usual alternative is making that character Die for Our Ship.
  • Lightship:
    1. Shipping two characters who both want their beloveds to be happy.
    2. Any ship involving Light Yagami.
• Limpet Mine: A sneaky way of Ship Sinking. Usually in the form of small hints and implications rather than an outright Word of God proclaimation like an Anti-Ship Missile.
• Lloyd's of London: A character created to be paired up with the "out" partner of a sunk ship.
• Long Distance Shipping: Shipping two characters who never even met in canon. There is a very high chance that it will be sunk when they do meet officially.
• Longship: A pairing involving Horny Vikings.
• Lordship: Matching up members of the British peerage, or perhaps other sorts of lords, such as a Time Lord with a Dimension Lord.
• Lord Horatio Nelson: A shipper who whipped canon.
• Lost in Shipping:
  1. Character Derailment by the fans in favor of their personal ship. A whole shipping crate full of leather pants for the Ensemble Dark Horse and/or White Hair, Black Heart.
  2. Random inclusion of Lost characters in a relationship.
• Love Craft: A ship involving two Eldritch Abominations.
• Love Boat:
  1. A show that encourages shipping. A lot. The greater the gender ratio of the core characters in a show in either direction, the more likely the show will become a Love Boat (but not The Love Boat, mind).
  2. A ship whose fans always include sex in their discussions of it.
  3. An extremely popular ship.
  4. A pair that, in canon, is as together as together can be. Impossible for other shippers to ignore, but if you know shippers, you know that won't stop them (see Lost in Shipping).
• Lusitania: A Sunken Ship leads to a whole lot of Ship-to-Ship Combat.
• Maelstrom: A plot point that harms several ships.
• Man-o-War: A ship that, if present, automatically sinks another one. If it doesn't happen in canon, those who support it will try to make it work in fandom.
• Man Overboard: Alternative name for Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends.
• Marksman Ship: A pairing between two crack-shots. May or may not involve the other kind of Gun Porn.
• Mary Celeste: All characters involved in the ship disappear without warning.
• Mary Rose:
  1. A previously-stable ship that, upon one or both of its characters being Retooled, sinks due to flaws created when new features fail to mesh with the original design(s).
  2. Another name for the Rosemary ship.
• Merchant Ship: A ship promoted metatextually in order to sell more licensed merchandise; e.g. because it appeals to a Periphery Demographic with more money than the core audience.
• Micro Ship:
  1. When one of the partners is small. Examples: Taiga, Shana, Klan Klein, Ohtani Atsushi, and the protagonist of Yotsunoha. Compare Tall Ship.
  2. A very rare, unpopular non-crack ship that none the less has support.
• Mid Ship Man: Someone who is still in the middle of deciding who they ship.
• Mile-Long Ship:
  1. An extremely popular ship.
  2. A ship between two characters with a large physical distance between them.
• Millennium Falcon: A ship that, despite being controversial, has never managed to be taken down permanently.
• Missing the Boat: A ship that has been teased, but never resolved one way or the other due to stall tactics, leaving the Unresolved Sexual Tension unresolved because, for example, one or both parties was Twice Shy and Could Not Spit It Out. Yumi×Ulrich, for example.
• Model Ship:
  1. Shipping two current or former models or fashionistas together, e.g. shipping Fluttershy or Rarity and Fleur de Lis together.
  2. A pairing used to show how shipping works, with little (if any) serious support from the author and fanbase.
• Mother Ship:
  1. The Mother of All Ships in the respective franchise, such that sinking the Mother Ship simultaneously destroys the stability of the shipping fandom (generally by ruining delicate Pair the Spares and Ship Mates permutations).
  2. Any pairing involving a mom.
  3. Shipping characters from the Mother series together.
• Museum Ship: A ship that no longer inspires any new material, but still has its fans.
• Mutiny:
  1. Supporters of the same ship have different ideas on how the ship should be handled and portrayed, leading to infighting within the ship's fan base.
  2. Ship-to-Ship Combat between different writers of a collaborative work.
• My Ship Sails In The Morning: A ship supported by King Harkinian.
• Naglfar: A particularly Squicky ship. Named for a ship made out of dead people's toenails from Norse Mythology.
• Naval Arms Race: When rival shippers repeatedly come up with new ships and examples to support their ships to outdo each other.
• Navigators: The people who play the characters in any given ship.
• Nice Boat: A ship that ends in a Murder the Hypotenuse situation.
• Noah's Ark: A ship involving animals.
• Not Even God Himself Could Sink This Ship: Blasphemous Boast from dedicated shippers who refuse to Abandon Ship despite a barrage of Torpedoes or a massive Iceberg.
• Nuclear-Powered Ship: A ship involving Keet and Genki Girl. Energies are trememdous.
• Obra Dinn: A Sunken Ship that was never real in the first place.
• One Little Ship: A small, seemingly insignificant ship that turns out to have a huge impact on the fandom.
• Ourang Medan: A ship that fans claim is sunk by the author but no evidence suggests that the author is even aware of said ship.
• Outrigger: A Beta Couple pairing that supporters of other ships encourage because it helps keep their own afloat.
• Overnight Shipping: A ship that immediately explodes into widespread popularity, within a day or two.
• Paddle Boat:
  1. A ship with a strong S&M vibe, either because of the power dynamics involved, the fact that one of the parties involved just happens to wear fetishy stuff, or, well, anything, really.
  2. Any ship based on Mark Twain's works.
• Partisan Ship: A ship that's popular with a political party, but hated by their opponents.
• Partner Ship: When two characters who are co-workers, allies, traveling buddies, or something similar are paired in fanon. Similar to a Friend Ship, but instead where the canon relationship between the characters is more so business related than anything else. A common source of Ho Yay.
• Patrol Boat: A pairing supported by an extreme minority of the fandom which an author writes to see whether or not other people like it. If done successfully, it could be promoted to a Cool Ship.
• Pearl Harbor:
  1. When a neutral ship joins in a shipping war due to a massive unprecedented attack by one of the sides.
  2. When multiple ships are violently sunk at once.
  3. When multiple ships are sunk before they can really get off the ground.
• Perfect Storm: A nasty combination of events, usually occurring at a particularly important point in the plot, that threaten at least one ship (if not more).
• Penman Ship: Shipping two calligraphers together.
• Phalanx:
  1. The last defensive measure a shipper has against attempts at Ship Sinking by Anti-Ship Missiles.
  2. A furious barrage of counter-arguments that support/defend one's ship - only effective against one or two attacks, not multiple (see Backfire Raid).
• Pirate Ship:
  1. A ship in which one participant sweeps in and steals the other from their current S.O.
  2. A ship involving characters who are pirates.
  3. Where fans dub their own dialogue onto clips and post them on YouTube to support their Ship. (No, I don't know if it really happens. I'd be more surprised if it doesn't, though.)
  4. A ship that becomes the dominant focus of a show whose original premise was non-romantic.
• Plague Ship:
  1. The least popular ship in a fandom, or just one that will cause a backlash.
  2. A ship that finally gets together in an otherwise drama/action-centric series, and then triggers an outbreak of other pairings, gradually pushing the whole thing towards the romance genre (if it's not all part of wrapping up the series).
  3. A ship that, when brought together or even hinted at, causes the show to Jump the Shark.
• Pool Float: A ship so tiny and unrecognized that there is little to no discussion and content for it. Very few people ship it and often at times there is only one shipper. Pool Floats are often crack pairings or Ships That Pass in the Night.
• Premiership: Pairing heads of state (Truth in Television: Bush/Blair).
• Prepaid Shipping: Supporting a pairing when one or both of the characters haven't actually made an appearance yet (including characters from a series that hasn't started). Makes shipping more convenient when the time comes, since people don't think to question a pairing that's already well-established.
• Preußen: When you learn the hard way that shipping five characters in one go will fail quickly and spectacularly.
• Prison Ship: A ship that's created when the characters involved are locked in a jail or dungeon together.
• Q-Ship:
  1. A ship dismissed as unlikely and therefore harmless by the rest of a fandom busy with Ship-to-Ship Combat that suddenly deploys the massive firepower of Authorial approval from seemingly nowhere.
  2. Any ship involving a character played by John de Lancie.
  3. Any ship involving a certain James Bond character.
  4. A combination of definitions 2 and 3.
  5. A ship involving a Bridget-type character.
• The Queen Mary:
  1. In Fan Fic, when the author matches a canon character with an OC.
  2. Alternatively, when the fanfic author treats their OC as the Launcher of a Thousand Ships.
• Queen Mary 2: The same, but with an utterly overdone OC (who is also utterly rich) on a utterly overdone scale. Bonus points if the shipped characters travel to Hamburg at some point where at least the OC is highly popular.
• Raft: Pairing up two characters just to have some ship, but not putting much effort into it.
• Railway Ferry:
  1. Shipping in The Railway Series.
  2. Shipping characters on a train.
• Ramming Always Works: When one ship's fanbase decides on one last suicidal attack on their perceived opponents. Large Ham Klingon captain optional.
• Rear Admiral: A Yaoi shipper who always ships a certain character as Uke.
• Reconnaissance Ship: Shipping two Stalkers With A Crush.
• Red Light Quarter: Keeps Shippers distracted for a while.
• Reefer Ship:
  1. Cooler than a Cool Ship.
  2. Shipping involving marijuana.
• Relation Ship: See Kin Ship.
• The Registry: A comprehensive list of all significant ships in a fandom.
• Reporting Name: What you call a ship when you either don't know or care what the fandom calls it.
• Rocket Ship:
  1. A ship involving rockets...
  2. ...Or Team Rocket!
  3. ...Or involving astronauts. Most of the Real Life ones end up well (although only one is widely considered to have ever actually ended up in the logical conclusion), and then there was that incident with the diaper...
  4. A ship that is so Canon and mammothly obvious that nobody bothers to touch it. It's out of their league. Then both characters are put on bus out and we can only assume they are living out their happily married days on the moon.
• Rogue Wave: A plot twist that comes out of nowhere and sinks at least one ship.
• Rowboat: A ship so blatantly unlikely that even its constructor doesn't consider it seaworthy. May get wistful mentions by fans who're forced by considerations of realism to support a different ship as their main vessel.
• Royal Caribbean: Pairing up at least one non-pirate character from Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Ruler Ship: Shipping kings, emperors, and other people of such ultimate authority.
• Run the Ship Aground: Where a Ship Tease is stretched beyond believability.
• Rush Shipping:
  1. See Express Ship above.
  2. Shipping two StarCraft Zerg players together.
  3. Anything that involves at least one member of Rush.
• Sailing Ship:
  1. When old people get shipped.
  2. A ship that's been around too long already.
     • Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope: Preliminary materials that provide support for such a ship.
• Scapa Flow: A fan community which a large number of ships call home. Often difficult to navigate unless you take the time to learn about all the Ship Wrecks.
• Scholar Ship: A ship involving very intelligent people. See also Pair the Smart Ones.
• Screw: Whether you want to admit it or not, this is a key component that gets a modern Ship moving. Stop giggling.
• Scuttling the Ship: When a character sinks a ship by killing the person they're shipped with.
• Sea Shepherd: A ship that attacks others based on some kind of moral justification. Tends to go hardest on No Yay and Yaoi ships, for obvious reasons.
• Seawise Giant: A ship that's so blown out of proportion that it doesn't have the slightest chance of ever entering anything that counts as canon.
• Sewol: A ship that's blatantly in the process of sinking but its supporters are desperately trying to convince fans to stay aboard.
• Sextant: An instrument used to keep a Ship on course. I said stop giggling.
• Shanghaied: When fans are forced into supporting a ship against their will.
• Shantyman: A fan whose pairing of choice inspires fellow fans to accompany him or her with their own fanwork based on said pairing.
• Shelling of Yeonpyeong: When fans of the random Crack Pairing that everyone hates attack a major, well-established ship solely for the purpose of trolling.
• Ship Ahoy!: The first suggestions of a potential shipping.
• Shipboard: Forum where nothing but pairings in fiction is discussed.
• Ship Freeze: When fans stop shipping two characters, then continue after some period of time.
• Ship Happens: A common response from the audience to a ship they did not expect.
• Ship in a Bottle: A small, self-contained ship with little impact on the surrounding work and fandom.
• Ship Keeper: A fan who persists in their minority ship, or becomes its main supporter.
• Ship of Fools:
  1. Plucky Comic Relief×Cloudcuckoolander, a match made in heaven — like Hanazawa and Kanzaki from Beelzebub.
  2. A ship you would have to be crazy to back.
  3. A ship involving two jesters.
  4. A ship where both characters are idiots.
  5. Minato Arisato×Seta Souji/Yu Narukami.
  6. Kid Detective Yu Narukami × Phantom Thief the Phantom.
• Shipping and Handling:
  1. The delicate logical contortions fans often go through in order to make a favorite ship "work."
  • Panel Beating: Hammering the raw materials (conversations, looks, curiously appropriate poses, casual meetings) into "proof" for a Ship. Most often used in an Anime Music Video.
  1. Shipping motivated mainly by the fans being alone in bed with the door locked.
  2. The romantic and sexual elements, respectively, of the ship.
• Shipping Crate:
  1. The container in which you ship your cargo.
  2. Locked in a Freezer with romantic overtones. Like the time Tony and Ziva got locked in a shipping container in NCIS.
• Ship of the Line: Heterosexual pairing in a fandom overrun by Slash Fic.
• Shipping Company:
  1. Merch manufacturer supporting one particular ship.
  2. Matchmaking friends.
• Shipping Costs: The inevitable increase in angst after a pairing becomes official in order to maintain dramatic tension.
• Shipping Department: A forum/LJ Community/chat room set up for fanfic authors writing a ship, so they can collaborate.
• The Shipping Forecast: Predicting either the most popular ships or the canonical pairing of a new character.
• Ship's Navigator: When one character in a ship helps to guide the other, such as in a Hurt/Comfort Fic.
• Shipping News: New developments that affect the state of a ship, whether positively or negatively.
• Ship Repairs: When fans try their hardest to hold up a pairing when it's been jossed by Canon to avoid Ship Sinking
• Ship Shape:
  1. The current state of a ship, both in canon and among the fandom.
  2. A work where every character is dating exactly who you think they should.
• Ship-to-Shore Calls: When fans send messages to the Word of God supporting a non-canon ship to try to convince them they're doing it wrong.
• Ship of Theseus: A ship where the characters involved are gradually replaced with different-but-equivalent characters, leading to debates over whether it's the same ship or a new one.
• Ship Wreck: Ship Sinking that isn't a direct effort from the creators.
• Ship of the Damned:
  1. A ship long thought wrecked but comes back with vengeance anyway, despite one of the characters being dead or foretold to die.
  2. A ship between dead bad guys.
• Ships of the Desert:
  1. Shipping anyone on Tatooine.
  2. Shipping the Sandsiblings, sometimes with each other.
  3. Paul×Chani.
  4. Anything in Aladdin.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: A ship with the minor obstacle that those involved have generally not interacted much, if at all, and might not even know about each other's existence.
• The Shipyard:
  1. The original series, where a ship originates from.
  2. Fanfic sites, where ships are built and carefully manufactured.
  3. This page.
• Sir Francis Drake: An influential shipper who the creators can't stand.
• Slave Galley: A ship whose fanbase supports it by forcing other fans to write stories about it.
• Smuggling Ship: Carries a whole lot of illegal drugs.
• Sniping: Taking down a ship the sneaky way, as opposed to Ship-to-Ship Combat.
• Sonar Operator
  1. A member of a ship who monitors the activities of other ships and submarines.
  2. A character who ships fellow cast members.
  • Going Active: Actively asking the submarine what it is doing, sometimes to the point of annoyance.
• Space Hulk: An old ship, long since sunk, which nonetheless retains a surprising number of rabid fans. Don't go near it, or they'll come crawling out of the ventilation system to shred you!
• Space Ship
  1. Sci-fi shipping.
  2. Shipping between characters arguably in the same continuity, even if on different planets.
  3. A ship, IN SPACE!
• The Spanish Armada: A ship that's notable for flopping flat on its face.
• Speedboat: Shipping derived from speed dating scenes.
• Sportsman Ship: Shipping two male athletes.
• The S.S. Minnow: A ship which seems cute and fun at first, but eventually runs aground and becomes tiresome. See also "Old Shame".
• Star Ship: Shipping real-life celebrities, especially if one also ships their characters with each other. (For example, if a Harmony shipper wants Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson to hook up.) Related to Life Ship.
• Stealth Ship: A ship you don't see coming until it becomes canon. More a concept than a reality at this present time, owing to to the fact that any canon ship is inevitably already being shipped by someone, somewhere. An example of this would be Meagan and Prof. Fleinhardt in NUMB3RS.
• Steamboat:
  1. A ship whose primary audience appeal lies in the fact that both (or all) participants are extremely sexy. Similar but not identical to the Yacht.
  2. A romance between elderly characters.
  3. A pairing in Victorian England.
• Strength: A ship involving a Funny Animal and a human.
• Stripped of Their Epaulets: What happens to the Canon love interest when fans dump them for someone else.
• The Submarine: An Author or company that is particularly aggressive towards ships in general, or ships that don't fit canon. J.K. Rowling, Alex Hirsch, and Rumiko Takahashi are good examples of the Author Version.
  • Akula/"Typhoon" Class: The world's largest Submarines, capable of firing Nuclear Torpedoes.
    • Red October: The one that tops them all. You'll never know before it hits you.
  • Seawolf class: The world's quietest submarine, which you don't hear at all unless it's attacking ships. It also charges a lot for its work.
  • "Alfa" class: Very fast and very noisy submarine — tends to be very obvious when present, but has a tougher hull than one would think.
  • U-Boat: A particularly nasty Submarine.
    • That or a German one.
    • Das Boot: Will fight any non-canonical ships the best they can, but ultimately lose against the fans, and can be lucky if they make it out of the war without going under altogether.
  • K-Boat: An ostensibly dangerous submarine that spends most of its time malfunctioning and blowing up of its own accord rather than threatening ships. Not to be confused with shipping in Korean-based fandoms.
  • The Nautilus:A submarine who takes down ships because of a personal vendetta.
  • Boomer: Stealthy submarine that only reveals its existence when it launches its battery of Nuclear Torpedoes.
  • Soviet Submarine Exercises: Moving ships involving characters from Dollhouse, who are "submerged" so to speak.
• Suez Canal: An often-handwaved plot device that allows for otherwise highly unlikely shippings to work.
  • Post-Suezmax: A ship so mind-bogglingly unlikely that even the Suez Canal can't get it anywhere.
• Sunk by Chiron: A ship that sank because one of the shipped characters dies before they could get together.
• Sunken Ship: A ship that has been hit by a Torpedo.
• Supertanker:
  1. A ship that carries a whole lot of emotional cargo.
  2. A ship that required lots of booze to happen.
• Swordsman Ship: A ship between two sword wielders. May or may not involve "crossing swords".
• Tall Ship: Both partners are at least 5'10".
• Three Sisters: A trio of female siblings who manage to interfere with a ship in such a way that they end up sinking it.
• Time Ship: When two characters, one of which lived earlier than the other, are shipped, e.g. Hermione×Young!Remus in Harry Potter.
• The Titanic:
  1. Alternative name for a ship that's a Fan-Preferred Couple. Appropriately, it gets sunk by an Iceberg.
  2. A seemingly unsinkable 'ship which is suddenly and decisively sunk with no way to bring it back.
• Torpedo: What a story launches when it takes a turn for no other purpose than to sink a ship.
  • Nuclear Torpedo: Something that not only sinks a ship, but takes out a lot of the fandom with it.
  • Supercavitating Torpedo: An impossibly fast torpedo that some ships may not even be aware of before it strikes. More attentive ships can usually only cry "Oh......[Expletive]!" before it detonates.
  • Transphasic Torpedo: A torpedo purposefully designed to sink a specific ship or ship class.
• Torpedo Boat: A fandom member that really enjoys sinking other peoples ships (may be attached to a ship, fleet or convoy themselves).
• Township: Shipping the Anthropomorphic Personifications of population centres. Dickens liked LondonxParis, but nowadays NY-Lon is a popular one.
• Tramp Steamer: Ships involving a loose woman (or a pretty one).
• Trawler: Trying to randomly drag as many characters into ships as possible just because.
• Das Traumschiff: A ship too kitschy to be even halfway believable.
  • Traumschiff Surprise: The same, but invoked for comedic purposes.
• Trimaran: Being crazy enough to support a Love Triangle.
• Trireme: A ship that works on several levels.
• Tugboat: A small, powerful ship that helps the main ship. Frequently used in numbers of two to four to be really sure.
• Uncharted Waters: A ship that's initially strange and unheard of in the fandom. Almost always a Crack Pairing, but can become The Yacht.
• USS Enterprise: Kirk×Spock and other once big but now aged Star Trek ships.
  • USS Voyager: Shipping two characters on a long journey home.
  • USS Discovery: A ship that ends up splitting the fandom because of its effect on previously established ships.
• USS Indianapolis: A ship that's just been hit with a massive Torpedo and has sunk, but devoted shippers still crowd around the wreckage despite repeated attacks from sharks in the form of Word of God and the fandom itself trying to make the rest of the shippers Abandon Shipping.
• USS Maine: A ship that gets sunk, but whose members launch all-out war on other ships/the creators, regardless of their actual part in dooming the ship.
• Vasa: a ship that is built up to be the biggest in the fandom, but when it finally sets sail it almost immediately founders and sinks.
• Viking Funeral:
  1. A deathbed confession of love. Named for the tradition of cremating a dead warrior on a burning ship.
  2. A Battleship that gets sunk in the most epic way possible, such as a Battle Couple that confesses their love and fights the enemy to the death simultaneously.
• Wailing Ship: A ship built primarily on Angst.
• Warship: Dramatic romance at wartime. Rhett×Scarlett and the like.
• Washington Naval Treaty: An agreement within a fandom to not support two obviously opposing pairings so as to prevent ship wars.
• When The Ship Comes In: The long-awaited moment when one's favorite pairing gets a Relationship Upgrade.
• When the Ship Hits the Fan:
  1. A popular ship becomes canon but dramatically changes the tone of the series, and/or angers a lot of fans, including fans of the ship. A good example would be the Gwen/Kevin pairing of Ben 10: Alien Force.
  2. A couple gets together in canon, then breaks up.
  3. Something happens that causes a large proportion of fans to Abandon Shipping.
  4. A single development that impacts a large number of ships at once.
• Wilhelm Gustloff: A ship that, when sunk by the authors, will deal immense collateral damage to the fandom.
• Wor Ship:
  1. When the fandom abides by one specific set of ships and any other pairings are considered heresy.
  2. Shipping two gods/divine beings.
• The Yacht:
  1. The Cool Ship of shipping. A ship running on the Rule of Cool, like the hypothetical Wolverine×Shego pairing suggested elsewhere on this wiki.
  2. A pairing between two rich people.
  • Gigayacht: A Yacht that exists only to trump other Yachts, no matter how ridiculously over the top it has to be to achieve that, such as Adult Nanoha×Kamina.

---