Main Tropes Index

There is usually a One True Pairing in most fiction: if you ship any other pairing than Ranma and Akane or Neo and Trinity, you are categorically rejecting the canon, and have proven yourself willing to Die For Our Ship.

But there are some forms of New Media, especially Dating Sims and Visual Novels, where there's no real canon at all. While Dating Sims sometimes have a True Ending that is canon, half of the time they don't, and so any and all pairings is equally canon - part of a quantum sea which only collapses into a relationship depending on the tastes of the observer. Tokho by Tayuka is no more and no less canon than Kei by Tayuka - there's no True Ending in Elven Relations. Nither is Keenan Caine as opposed to Josh Preston with Sara Smith - they're characters from a Bliss Stage one-shot that could go either way, or in a completely different direction!

When that happens, and when you ship your favorite pairings, you're on a Trans Dimensional Ship.

This still, of course, doesn't prevent a normally Crack Pairing from being any less cracked.

Examples:

Video Games

Shipping in Persona3 is Trans-Dimensional by the nature of that game's Dating Sim aspects, although it could be argued that the True Ending is the one where you go for everyone and gain the ultimate Persona fueled by all of them, Orpheus Telos.
Pick a Dating Sim. Any Dating Sim. fate/stay night and Elven Relations immediately spring to mind.
Final Fantasy VII has a dating sequence with Aeris, Tifa, Yuffie or Barret depending on which character you treat the best. All of them reveal some characterisation detail to the point where it's impossible to choose just one to be canon (some people even argue that they're all canon).
The Harvest Moon games have multiple pairing options, though there's usually a "default" spouse who's signifcantly easier to woo than the rest. (In something of a subversion, it's almost never the Yamato Nadeshiko for guys.)
While The Sims 1 & 2 both start with some established couples, and 2 at least nudges the player in certain directions, it's possible to break up any relationship in favor of almost any other. The characters for The Sims 3 are apparently a prequel of Pleasantview, probably a wise decision to forestall any "Nooo! Cassandra belongs with Don!" moments.

Tabletop Games

The Bliss Stage one-shot has many characters in relationships set to explode. While This Troper is partial to Sara and Josh, the fact of the matter is that there can be no canon of a one-shot scenario meant to be played a million different ways.

Toy Ship

« Shipping Tropes »

Twincest

This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.