I ship it. Both figuratively and literally.
"When I was six, my Power Rangers were married and divorced in more combinations than Fleetwood Mac!"
—Kurt, Glee
These tropes are about people getting involved in characters' romantic relationships. Since real-life people are infinitely more into pairing fictional people than fictional people are, most of these are Audience Reactions. For tropes actually dealing with shipping vessels, please look here. For the shipping of tropes, consult the Trope Co. catalog. Warning: loads of puns ahead!
Tropes:
- Abandon Shipping: An event that leads to the fandom abandoning a pairing.
- Actor Shipping: Shippers who ship the actors instead of the characters.
- Anchored Ship: When two characters aren't in a relationship/can't be paired, but it's only for now and can theoretically be reversed.
- Angel/Devil Shipping: Shipping an innocent and pure character with a dark and cruel character.
- Alternate Self Shipping: Shipping two alternate versions of the same character.
- Cargo Ship: Shipping a sentient being with an object.
- Crack Pairing: Shipping a pair that would be insane as a couple.
- Crossover Ship: Shipping two characters from different works.
- Die for Our Ship: A character is The Scrappy, but only because of reasons related to shipping.
- Dry Docked Ship: Characters who are not together, but the fans like to think that they used to be together.
- Dry Docking: The opposite of shipping. When fans break apart an Official Couple.
- Fan-Preferred Couple: The fans prefer an unofficial pairing over the Official Couple.
- Faux Yay: Characters pretend to be gay.
- Foe Yay Shipping: Shipping a pair of enemies.
- Ghost Shipping: Shipping a live character with a dead character.
- Gotta Ship 'Em All: Everyone is shipped with one another.
- Het: Straightness. Being sexually attracted to the other gender.
- Het Is Ew: The disapproval of heterosexual ships.
- Ho Yay: Fans interpret things with homoerotic subtext.
- Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Using an actual word to refer to a pairing.
- Incest Yay Shipping: Shipping people who are related.
- Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Character is shipped with everyone.
- The Matchmaker: Someone tells someone else to pair up with a third person.
- Matchmaker Crush: The matchmaker ends up with a crush on one side of the pair they wanted to happen.
- Matchmaker Failure: The Matchmaker fails to set two people up with each other.
- Matchmaker Quest: Character A sends Character B on a quest so they can impress Character C, who they are in love with.
- Mentor Ship: Character shipped with their mentor.
- Mind Game Ship: Person shipped with the character they mess with mentally.
- Minion Shipping: Two minor villains who are shipped.
- No Yay: A Squicky or scary pairing.
- Official Couple: Two characters are canonically a couple.
- Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: The Official Couple have a bad life.
- One True Pairing (usually abbreviated OTP): A group of fans' preferred ship.
- One True Threesome (usually abbreviated OT3): When a group of fans ship three characters together. A form of Polyamory.
- Parent-Preferred Suitor: When a parent supports a particular Love Interest of their offspring in winning their offspring's heart.
- Portmanteau Couple Name: Referring to a couple as a portmanteau of the peoples' names.
- Preemptive Shipping: Shipping characters together before the work they're in has introduced them properly.
- Robo Ship: Shipping a machine with a non-machine.
- Ship Mates: When a fan supports pairings that don't interfere with their favourite pairing.
- Shipper on Deck: A character ships two other characters in-story.
- Shipper on Set: An actor ships two characters in a work they star in.
- Shipper with an Agenda: Shipping with a reason beyond thinking the couple is cute.
- Shipping: Pairing characters up in Fan Works.
- Shipping Bed Death: Two characters get together and then the fans lose interest in shipping them.
- Shipping Goggles: Person reads everything as romantic/sexual subtext.
- Shipping Torpedo: The opposite of a Shipper on Deck. A character who tries to break up a couple.
- Ship Sinking: A moment which means that two characters can't logically be shipped.
- The Ship's Motor: A piece of fanon which helps a ship happen.
- Ships That Pass in the Night: Shipping two characters who have very little on-screen interaction.
- Ship Tease: Two characters are teased as a couple in-universe but don't actually get together.
- Ship-to-Ship Combat: Fans arguing about who should be shipped to whom.
- The Ship Yard: Non-tropes with punny ship-related names.
- Slash Fic: A fanfic pairing two characters of the same sex together.
- Sleeping with the Boss: Person has sex with someone they're in authority over.
- Starboarding: One-sided shipping.
- Super Couple: A pairing which intrigues everybody.
- Theme Pairing: Couple is chosen due to their similarities.
- Toy Ship: Shipping children.
- Ukefication: Character is subjected to OOC amounts of Badass Decay for the sake of shipping.
- Undercover as Lovers: Alice and Bob are in disguise, pretending to be lovers.
- Unequal Pairing: A romantic/sexual relationship where one has more power over the other.
- War Ship: Shipping two characters who are on different sides of a war.
- Yaoi Fangirl: A woman or girl who watches male anime characters making out.
- Yuri Fan: Character who ships females.
