Shipping



Shipping is the term used to describe a personal preference or belief that two or more characters in a fictional work belong together in a romantic sense. It is an abbreviation of "Relationshipping". Shipping has been a part of the Pokémon fandom since its inception.

Different fandoms have different nomenclature for their ships. In the Pokémon community's case, they follow the pattern of "(one or more words)Shipping", or a portmanteau of the characters' japanese names. For instance, Ash and Misty's ship is called PokéShipping or Satokasu, though many more names exist.

It should be noted that characters being in a canonical relationship does not preclude fans from shipping them with others, nor is it impossible to ship two or more mutually exclusive ships simultaneously.

Glossary of Shipping-Related Terms
Ships - The relationships themselves.

Shipping - The act of shipping two characters together.

Starboarding - A belief that a character has a one-sided attraction to another character. In other words, a one-sided ship.

Headcanon - Personal ideas concerning the characters, the setting or their relationships. These may or may not be supported by canonical information.

Rarepair - A seldom-seen ship that is considered to be not very popular in its community.

Endgame - A ship that represents a permanent relationship and occurs after other, more fleeting ships.

Yaoi/Yuri/Het - Terms used to reference the genders of the characters involved; Yaoi content implies relationships between two boys, Yuri content is the same but involving two girls, and Het is an abbreviation of 'hetero', or opposite-gender relationships.

OTP - A person's favorite ship, bar none.

OT3, OT4, etc. - A ship involving multiple characters rather than just two.

NOTP - The opposite of OTP, a person's most disliked ship.