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Shipping (fandom)

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Shipping is a general term for emotional and/or intellectual involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction. Though technically applicable to any such involvement, it refers chiefly to various related social dynamics observable on the Internet, and is seldom used outside of that context.

Shipping can involve virtually any kind of relationship — from the well-known and established, through the ambiguous or those undergoing development, and even all the way to the highly improbable and the blatantly impossible. People involved in shipping (or shippers) assert that the relationship does exist, will exist, or simply that they would like it to exist.

Etymology

Though ship is undoubtedly a derivative of the word relationship in some way, where and when it was first used to indicate involvement with fictional romance is unclear. A common belief is that the term originated in the fandom for the anime series Pokémon, with two American fans who, in discussing their belief in a romance between series villains, Musashi/Jessie and Kojirou/James (known together as Team Rocket), hit upon the pun RocketShipper as a way to combine rocket ship and relationship.

However, the archives of the newsgroup alt.tv.x-files show that the word shipper was already in established use among fans of The X-Files as early as May of 1996 [1]— just three months after the first Pokémon games were released in Japan. It would not be until 1998 that any of the Pokémon games, manga, or anime would be translated to English, where the relationship/rocket-ship pun would exist (the first known uses of the term in the Pokémon fandom were during mid-to-late 1999). It seems clear that the Pokémon fandom was not the sole or first inventors of the term shipping in this sense, as is sometimes claimed; but regardless of that, it may well have played a key role in the development of the term as is known today, by separately developing and popularising it.

Notation and terminology

The term ship and its derivatives in this context have since then come to be in wide and versatile use. Shipping refers to the whole phenomenon; a ship is the concept of a fictional couple; to ship a couple means to have an affinity for it in one way or another; a shipper is somebody significantly involved with such an affinity, and so forth.

Various naming conventions have developed in different online communities to refer to prospective couples, probably due to the ambiguity and cumbersomeness of the "Frick and Frack" format. The most widespread appears to be putting the slash character (/) between the two names (Frick/Frack). Other methods include

  • using the letter X in place of the slash (FrickxFrack)
  • putting characters' names in CamelCase (FrickFrack)
  • abbreviating both names (usually taking only the first letter of each, with additional letters used if necessary to avoid two or more couples in the same fandom sharing a name) (Fri/Fra)
  • using the initials of either the characters' first names or their full names (FF or FAFB)
  • forming a portmanteau from the names of the two participants (e.g., FooBar, where the names of the characters would be, for example, Foolhardy and Barbeque); this is common mostly within fan communities of anime in emulation of the naming conventions for couples used in the equivalent Japanese fandoms.

Under the right circumstances, fandoms tend to evolve unique trends in their shipping notation. The Pokemon, Harry Potter and Yu-gi-oh! fandoms have specific semi-descriptive names corresponding with their ships (The Harry Potter Fandom, in particular, has taken this a step forward and uses puns on the naval ship/fandom ship linguistic duality in the form of HMS foobar); the Saiyuki fandom has a system by which each of the main characters is assigned a number corresponding with their name, and a ship could be referred to as "1X5" or "2X4" (a smiliar notation system is in use among Gundam Wing yaoi enthusiasts); many ships in the Gilmore Girls fandom are referred to by their own individual nicknames, such as JavaJunkie (Luke/Lorelai), Balcony Buddies (Christopher/Lorelai), Literati (Jess/Rory), and Trory (Tristan/Rory). This system is also used in many other fandoms, such as referring to the John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir ship in the TV series Stargate Atlantis Sparky or Shweir, and calling the non-canon ship of Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter franchise Dramione.

Influence in online society

Popularity

Though it takes many forms and influences different communities in different ways, the phenomenon of shipping is practically ubiquitous. Searching any forum discussing an ongoing work of fiction is bound to yield comments, discussion threads and even whole active forums and communities dedicated to the subject.

There are several factors which are believed to be responsible for the high popularity of shipping:

  • Cultural emphasis. Romance is one of the major subjects occupying mankind, and shipping is just yet another manifestation of that fixation.
  • Sympathy. People often sympathise with the themes associated with certain fictional characters and relationships, capitalising on these themes by placing importance on them; romantic relationships, existent or potential, are no exception. Sometimes this is taken to the extreme of a certain character being regarded (consciously or subconsciously) as a stand-in for the shipper, who is vicariously fulfilling a fantasy relationship.
  • Resolution. Often the authors behind the pieces of fiction in question knowingly create situations, foreshadowing and open plot threads that seem, for all practical purposes, to be headed towards a resolution involving characters connecting with one another and becoming couples. Often the theme of romance will be introduced and toyed with, teasing the fans and leaving them speculating as to "where this is going".
  • Prediction. In something of a feedback loop, the popularity of shipping leads many people who otherwise wouldn't have much interest in the subject to attempt predicting the eventual outcome, if only because they are much more likely to find somebody willing to discuss this subject than any other.

The influence and prominence shipping has on a specific online community will, mostly, be the projection of two factors: The way the author of the work-in-progress at hand treats the subject of romance in their work (intentionally and unintentionally), and the preexisting tendencies of the specific target audience likely to both come in contact with said work and discuss it online. The many combinations of those sole two factors possible already make the actual manifestation of shipping in online communities amorphic and hard to define, sometimes to the point of hardly being recognisable as different instances of the same phenomenon. Teenagers, in general, appear to be the most eager target audience to engage the subject, while a roughly equal mixture of males and females in the work of fiction will lend itself to more prominent shipping discussion than otherwise- and even more so if these characters are all coming of age, which is one of the most powerful ship discussion stimulators.

Non-conventional ships

Though they certainly tend to be the most commonly encountered, heterosexual relationships are not the be-all and end-all of shipping. The most prominent example of this is the wide support of homosexual relationships (also known as "slash" or the borrowed Japanese terms yaoi, male homosexuality, and Yuri, female homosexuality), with stories of male homosexuality, thanks to their large fanbase, being by far the most prominent. There are even online groups affiliated with romance that is considered taboo by many, such as incest and bestiality.

The term "slash" itself predates the use of "shipping" by at least some 20 years. It was originally coined as a derogatory term to describe Kirk/Spock (or "K/S"; sometimes spoken "Kirk-slash-Spock", whence "slash") homosexual fan-fiction, which has been a mainstay of a segment of Star Trek fandom since the early 1970s. For a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, both "K/S" and "slash" were used to describe such fan-fiction, regardless of whether or not they were Star Trek related. But as homosexuality became more accepted in society, so too did the terms lose their derogatory connotation. "K/S" eventually fell out of use altogether, but "slash" became a universal term to describe all homosexual themed fan works.

Parallel to this development, the term "slash" was also being used in some fandoms to denote fanfiction or other fan works depicting sexual acts with an implied rating of NC-17, whether homosexual or heterosexual. It is likely that this is the same "slash" term born of the Star Trek fandom, but adapted to the pornographic focus that commonly dominates fanfiction and fan works in the Kirk/Spock ship, as well as the ships of other homosexual couples, allowing the use of the term to spread to heterosexual ships. However, this use of the term has now become largely archaic due to the standardization of terminology by large fandom sites such as fanfiction.net.

Discussion and debate

One of the more universal manifestations of the shipping phenomenon is the tendency of enthusiastic fans to discuss and debate the merits of their favored (and less favored) pairings in online forums. The degree to which these discussions gain prominence among their respective forums is influenced by a number of factors, though the most significant seems to be the potential of the subject's development in the work in question. That is, romantic plot threads capture the interest of the fans much in the same way that other plot threads do: through introduction of opposing forces to create conflict. Fandoms corresponding to series in which this has not been adequately done—for example, by the inclusion of only couples already very much in love without any factors that might disturb this in the foreseeable future, or by failing to include anything indicative of romance at all—characteristically see very little shipping discussion compared with fandoms for series in which it has (though as previously noted, shipping seems to be an inherently appealing subject and will often garner attention vastly out of proportion to its share in the work in question).

Ship debates are different from other similar online debates in that they do not wholly correspond to reality but rather have to take the fictional nature of the subject matter into account. Two levels of argumentation are commonly encountered—one consists of attempts at logical, neutral prediction and the other of confrontations regarding where the canon should go if it wants to create the most convincing, emotionally powerful or otherwise aesthetically appealing narrative (and why). These two planes of reasoning are not quite mutually exclusive—they intersect through the important concept of authorial intent, and it is usually possible to make limited inferences as to what the author would consider a "better" story and thus be likelier to write; and aside from that arguments valid on one plane might amount to conclusions valid in the other. Shippers commonly resolve that a relationship the author is portraying as positive must be positive by definition, and change their emotional point of view accordingly (or at least, try to); and even more commonly, shippers let their personal preference dictate a less than neutral distribution of the benefit of doubt regarding what is objectively less or more likely the author is trying to convey.

On the other hand, Ship Debates share many similarities with other online debates in their sociological and logical patterns. In part naturally arising from the nature of forums, in which there are no arbiters to speak of and proving one's point logically is often secondary to making a strong impression, they are strewn with fallacious logic and farfetched theories (the growth of which is strictly dictated by ad-hoc necessity rather than anything resembling rational synthesis of the available evidence). With fandoms large enough and debates thick enough with accumulating bad blood, factions can arise, which in extreme cases become so hostile as to trivialise the matter of the actual dispute at hand.

Most people who have been participating in debates which have gone this far for long enough tend to be aware of this to some degree and often keep debating for the sake of sportsmanship, loyalty to their faction or out of a sense of commitment to spread their truth and make sure that their side of the issue is heard. Newcomers, on the other hand, tend to step in blissfully unaware of this situation, share their opinion and be shocked at the polarized response, typically containing extremes such as enthusiastic approval or sarcastic mocking with little middle ground. This form of conflict has led to the shipping phenomenon often being featured in fandom wank, a well-known weblog hosted at Journalfen.net which specialises in mocking fan over-reactions.

Like most other emotionally charged online discussion ship debate tends to eventually die out of participant starvation rather than experience swift logical knock-outs - Since, again, the debate was never organised but rather emerged out of the collective conflicting opinions of the members of the fandom in question, and thus lacks a frame to define why or when it ought to end, and technically even exactly what it is about beyond the fuzzy involvement of romance in the series. With series of a large enough scope these debates can go on for even years on end, accumulating and assimilating many issues- related to the series or not- which have very little to do with their original premise.

This fundamental hole in the structure of typical ship debates leaves it unclear which side is winning, or even which side has the "advantage", to the degree it could even be defined at all. One method of measuring which side has the more convincing case is popularity polls (though they are subject to all sorts of collective bias and are not a solid predictive tool- The Naruto series, for example, seems to be headed towards a resolution of its romantic plot threads which at one point in the past was less popular than its main alternative in the series' western fandom by a factor exceeding four to one and apparently remains less popular within the western subset of the fandom even now).

Fan works

In fan fiction circles, authors often let their shipping tendencies influence their work and espouse a certain romantic pairing between two particular characters in their fiction; in fact, the pairings found within are considered such a defining factor that story summaries in fiction archives often notify the potential reader of them while neglecting other important features. The extremity of this phenomenon can be found in certain sections of the fanfiction archive fanfiction.net, and many other fan fiction archives, where fanfiction is searchable by rating, length, genre, date, language, and pairing. While this in part reflects an emphasis on shipping by many fan fiction authors, it is also considered a useful service to those readers who only wish to read about certain pairings (or conversely, wish to avoid reading stories involving pairings they dislike).

Though to a lesser degree, this influence still exists in other fan works. Since fan art, for example, is by nature more focused on a particular scene or character(s) and allows for less flexibility in terms of theme integration, it is usually either without shipping influence at all or wholly a tribute to a certain pairing.

Example cases of shipping-conflicted fandoms

Template:Spoilers

Daria fandom

Daria fandom was marred through its entire run by shipper debate. From the series' first season, the main conflict was between people who thought that the title character, Daria Morgendorffer, a wisecracking, green-jacketed, cynical, intellectual teenager, should have a relationship with Trent Lane, a slacker rock-band frontman, whom Daria met through his sister, her closest friend Jane Lane (a slightly less cynical artist), and people who thought that such a development would signal a turn away from the more subversive aspects of the Daria character, and thus the show, notably represented in such episodes as "This Year's Model", where Daria sends armed mercenaries to a modeling agency tryout.

The show's writers responded by having Daria develop a crush on Trent, even having Daria go as far as to get a piercing because Trent encouraged her on (Daria thought the better of it eventually; the hole closed soon after Daria took the piercing off), as well as having her get rashes on her head at the sight of Trent. Trent, however remained involved with his off-and-on girlfriend Monique (who also was in a rock band), who immediately became a target of 'shipper ire. The crush ended in the third season's finale, "Jane's Addition", when Daria realized that Trent could never satisfy her in the long run.

In that very same episode, the viewership met, for the first time, Tom Sloane, a charming and intellectual son of privilege who nonetheless drove a Ford Pinto. Although Tom became Jane's boyfriend, threatening Daria and Jane's friendship in the process, Daria and Tom warmed up to each other throughout the fourth season, leading up to its finale, "Dye! Dye! My Darling," broadcast August 2, 2000[2]. With Jane and Tom's relationship in crisis, a heated argument between Daria and Tom leads up to not one but two kisses. With Daria indecisive as to whether this relationship should be pursued further, Daria and Jane's friendship was in tatters for the rest of the episode. (Tom and Jane broke up.) In the made-for-TV movie "Is it Fall Yet?," Daria decided to begin a relationship with Tom, and Daria and Jane patched their friendship together.

The uproar this caused was instant. The 'shipper faction having won the initial debate (in fair part having do with other artistic decisions Daria made after Season 1, such as a musical episode, "Daria!" extended dream sequences laden with 70s-80s detective show references ("Murder, She Snored"), and human representations of the major holidays (and Guy Fawkes Day) manifesting themeselves in Lawndale in "Depth Takes A Holiday"), conversation now turned to whether Tom was more appropriate than the long-dismissed Trent. The conversation ran in favor of Trent. The debate was satirized by the show's writers in a piece on MTV's website. [3]

In the series finale made-for-TV movie, "It is College Yet?", Daria and Tom break up over the fact that they are going to different colleges. The debate was over, and so was the series.

In interviews done after the series' run, series creator Glenn Eichler revealed that "...any viewer who really thought that Daria and Trent could (have) a relationship was just not watching the show we were making," [4] Tom came about because "...going into our fourth year...I thought it was really pushing credibility for Daria to have only had one or two dates during her whole high school career," and "teaser" episodes like "Pierce Me" were "...intended to provide some fun for that portion of the audience that was so invested in the romance angle. The fact that those moments were few and far between should have given some indication that the series was not about Daria's love life." [5]

Harry Potter fandom

The Harry Potter series is infamous for generating what was probably one of the most intense shipping debates to ever occur in the collective history of fandom. Spanning nearly seven years, from early 1999 to mid-2005, the "ship debate" as it was known saw supporters of the prospective relationship between Harry and his close female friend Hermione Granger constantly at odds with supporters of Hermione winding up instead with Ron Weasley, close friend of both – to eventually draw attention from the mainstream media and even J.K. Rowling, series author, herself.

The debate was mostly held within the Harry Potter for Grownups discussion group, with the focus later shifting to a thread inside the FictionAlley forums called "The DeathMarch" (later renamed to simply the 'Debate Thread' to do away with the extreme connotations of the former). The factionalism that consequently emerged, however, was much more far-reaching within the fandom. Many prominent web sites, such as The Sugar Quill and Fiction Alley, had shipping agendas which had contributed much to their creation and in a way even defined them; Being a famous or effective ship debater could gain a fan a status very similar to that of an accomplished author of fan fiction.

The deciding point that signaled the debate's transition from just another discussion into a miniature online war was the release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which developed the issues of romance in the series significantly and set several trends for the debate's continuation. Harry/Hermione supporters, their favored plot threads set back by Ron's apparent developing feelings for Hermione, turned to more complex venues of argument using symbolism, subtext and metonymy to support their case, arguing that what other fans perceived as clues were in fact a cleverly-constructed smoke-screen (or red herrings). Quotes from Rowling which seemed to contradict the possibility were usually countered by claiming them to be deliberate obfuscations designed to lure the astute observation off-course (though such claims were far from undisputed, given that these allegedly vague quotes included such phrases as "[Harry and Hermione] are very platonic friends"[6]).

Another front fans of the Harry and Hermione relationship had to deal with was the alternative of Harry ending up with Ginny Weasley, Ron's younger sister, whose obvious crush on him served as a comical plotline starting in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Arguably this debate was conducted on more even ground, as Harry/Ginny largely lacked the concrete build-up Ron/Hermione used to challenge Harry/Hermione with; instead arguments promoting this possibility were of similar types to Harry/Hermione arguments, claiming metaphor, use of archetypes, and genre conventions. Much of the case for Ginny as Harry's eventual significant other was by elimination—arguing that Rowling's quotes had eliminated Hermione and that other alterives, such as Luna Lovegood, were unsuitable for various reasons.

Many fans had hopes of the shipping question being resolved with the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; for a time, referring to "book five" in the debate was practically synonymous for alluding to that time when J.K. Rowling would unambiguously put the conflict to rest. However, the book failed to resolve the shipping question, and what little evidence was there could have been (and was) interpreted either way; One example of this is the apparent end of Ginny's crush - it was hardly unreasonable of Harry/Hermione supporters to view this as a logical step towards their ship, even if in retrospect they were mistaken. Similarly, Rowling's statements regarding the shipping question in interviews, online chat sessions and such slowly became more vague as well, perhaps because she became aware of online shipping around this time and didn't want to spoil something her fans were so excited about.

The much-anticipated resolution did not come until two years later, with the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The apparent subsiding of Ginny's feelings in the previous book was used to create an ironic twist: Harry suddenly develops a crush on her, convinced that he has missed his opportunity with her. In the end Ginny turns out to never have given up on Harry after all, but merely taken Hermione's advice to try and date other boys to boost her self-confidence and be more like herself around him. Though their romantic relationship beocmes one of the few sources of comfort in Harry's difficult life, he makes a bold decision to break it apart for fear that Voldemort would learn of it and target Ginny. Rowling later commented that she had planned Ginny as Harry's "ideal girl" from the very beginning.

As might be expected, Harry/Hermione shippers—who had made strong emotional investments in their chosen pairing—weren't pleased with this outcome. Some very dejected fans of the pairing declared Rowling a cheap cop-out show and her implementation of the Harry/Ginny romance two-dimensional and lacking; Others modified their red-herring theories, noting that neither the Harry/Ginny nor the Ron/Hermione relationship was technically extant at the end of the book and arguing that events in the seventh book will not change this situation. Still others conceded that their ship was unlikely to come to fruition in canon but believed that it would enhance the books if it did.

Though this final resolution caused plenty of fireworks in and of itself, the effect was dramatically amplified by an interview with J.K. Rowling conducted by fansite webmasters Emerson Spartz (MuggleNet) and Melissa Anelli (The Leaky Cauldron) shortly after the book's release. During the interview Spartz commented that Harry/Hermione shippers were "delusional", to which Rowling chuckled, though making it clear that she did not share the sentiment and that the Harry/Hermione fans were "still valued members of her readership". This incident resulted in an uproar among Harry/Hermione shippers, some of whom announced that they would return their copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and boycott future Harry Potter books, leveling criticism at Spartz, Anelli, and Rowling herself. Many complained that both sites had a Ron/Hermione bias and criticized Rowling for not including a representative of their community. The uproar was loud enough to merit an article in the San Francisco Chronicle[7].

Rowling's attitude towards the shipping phenomenon has varied between amused and bewildered, as she revealed in that interview. She explained:[8]

Well, you see, I'm a relative newcomer to the world of shipping, because for a long time, I didn't go on the net and look up Harry Potter. A long time. Occasionally I had to, because there were weird news stories or something that I would have to go and check, because I was supposed to have said something I hadn’t said. I had never gone and looked at fan sites, and then one day I did and oh - my - god. Five hours later or something, I get up from the computer shaking slightly [all laugh]. ‘What is going on?’ And it was during that first mammoth session that I met the shippers, and it was a most extraordinary thing. I had no idea there was this huge underworld seething beneath me.

In a later posting on MuggleNet, Spartz explained:[9]

My comments weren't directed at the shippers who acknowledged that Harry/Hermione was a long shot but loved the idea of them together. It was directed at the "militant" shippers who insisted that there was overwhelming canon proof and that everyone else was too blind to see it. You were delusional; you saw what you wanted to see and you have no one to blame for that but yourselves.

Rowling has continued to make references, though less humorous and more to the severity of the shipper conflicts. In one instance she has joked about trying to think of ways of proving to Emerson, when inviting him for the aforementioned interview, that it was really her and not "some angry Harry/Hermione shipper trying to lure him down a dark alleyway"[10]; In another, she has described her impression of the Harry Potter fandom's shipping debates as "cyber gang warfare".[11]

Xena: Warrior Princess fandom

The Xena: Warrior Princess fandom saw often nasty "shipping wars" that turned especially intense due to spillover from real-life debates about same-sex sexuality and gay rights.

Shortly after the 1995 debut of the action/fantasy series about a woman warrior seeking redemption for a dark past, some viewers began to see hints that of a romantic attraction, or possibly a sexual relationship, between Xena and her sidekick/best friend Gabrielle. Toward the end of the first season, the show's producers began to play to this perception by deliberately inserting usually humorous lesbian innuendo (the subtext) into some episodes. The show acquired a cult following in the lesbian community. However, Xena had a number of male love interests as well, and from the first season she had an adversarial but sexually charged dynamic with Ares, the God of War, who frequently tried to win her over as his "Warrior Queen."

While subtexters (Xena/Gabrielle fans) were the largest single group in the active Xena fandom, Xena/Ares shippers were a visible presence as well; they were joined by Gabrielle/Joxer shippers after Joxer, a bumbling warrior wannabe who sometimes followed Xena and Gabrielle on their adventures, fell in love with Gabrielle. The debates among fans of these "ships" were frequently tinged with sexual politics. Many straight fans strongly rejected the idea of a sexual relationship between Xena and Gabrielle, for a variety of reasons. Some felt that such a relationship would play into the stereotype that strong women who live independently of men have to be lesbians; some supported other pairings; some simply did not see a sexual dynamic between the characters; and some were generally hostile to same-sex relationships. Meanwhile, many lesbian fans felt that Xena belonged to the gay community as a lesbian icon. Some claimed that any nonsexual interpretation of the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle, and any support for a heterosexual pairing for either of the heroines, was either actually motivated by homophobia or objectively contributed to the oppression of gays.

These conflicts came to a boiling point in the show's fifth year. The fourth season had raised the subtext to a new level: A storyline in which Gabrielle was nearly lured away from Xena's side by the charismatic cult leader Najara was seen by many as a thinly veiled lesbian love triangle; another storyline affirmed that Xena and Gabrielle were "soulmates" who would meet in many lives, and the season finale showed their present-day incarnations (with Xena now male) sharing a romantic kiss after remembering their lives as Xena and Gabrielle. While the episode was a comedy that poked fun at the fandom, many saw it as "outing" Xena and Gabrielle, and expected them to be overtly shown as a couple when the show resumed.

Instead, in the fifth season, the producers played down the lesbian subtext somewhat and introduced a storyline in which Ares declared his love for Xena and offered her his help in a conflict with the other Olympian gods (caused by a prophecy that Xena's newborn child would cause their downfall). While Xena repeatedly rejected Ares, it was often suggested that she at least felt a strong sexual attraction to him and possibly something deeper as well.

The official Studios USA Netforum became a site for ferocious battles between Xena/Ares shippers and subtexters, many of whom felt that the show's producers were betraying the lesbian fan base and pandering to homophobes. In the sixth season, the subtext was ratcheted up again, to a point where many subtexters believed Xena and Gabrielle were "outed" and the subtext became "maintext." However, several sixth season episodes also played up the Xena/Ares dynamic, and the ambiguity of both relationships (whether Xena and Gabrielle were lovers and whether Xena reciprocated Ares' feelings) continued to fuel the "shipping wars" on Xena message boards.

These wars did not abate even after the show ended; with no fresh material from the show itself, both Xena/Gabrielle and Xena/Ares fans looked for new ammunition in (often contradictory) comments made by the actors and staff. In January 2003 many subtexters felt that their views had received official validation when Lucy Lawless, the star of the show, told Lesbian News magazine that after watching the series finale (in which Gabrielle revived Xena with a mouth-to-mouth water transfer filmed to look like a full kiss) she had come to believe that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was "definitely gay."[12]. However, in the interviews and commentaries on the DVD sets released in 2003-2005, the actors, writers and producers continued to stress the ambiguity of the relationship, and in several interviews both Lawless and Renee O'Connor, who played Gabrielle, spoke of Ares as a principal love interest for Xena. In the interview for the Season 6 episode Coming Home, O'Connor commented, "If there was ever going to be one man in Xena's life, it would be Ares."

In May 2003 the "shipping wars" led to a split on the largest surviving Xena fan board, Talking Xena[13], with the majority of Xena/Ares shippers leaving to start a new board, Xena Online Community[14]. Today, both boards have a mix of subtext, shipper, and general fans, though Talking Xena still leans in a subtexter direction and Xena Online Community in a shipper direction. Both boards have separate forums for Xena/Gabrielle and Xena/Ares fans as a way to "keep the peace."

In recent years, the Xena fandom has seen a growing number of "bitexter" fans who embrace and appreciate both relationships.

References

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