Darkship
| Synonyms: | 🎱🎀 |
| See also: | |
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Darkship is a shipping term popular in some circles on TikTok which is used to describe shippers, individual ships and particular ship dynamics. It's in the same vein as similar terms such as proship and comship, though has a different meaning. Some fans may combine them to a single word with dashes, such as "pro/com/darkship," however.
To some fans, darkships usually involve pairings that are taboo in some way, such as incestuous, pedophilic and/or physically abusive. It is also used to describe ships that do not align with canonical sexuality, whether actually canonical or insisted by widespread fanon. Loli and Shota pairings may also be categorized as darkships. The term differs from comship to some fans, since comship implies a "complicated" relationship while dark ship is for "taboo," aka "dark" relationships; I.E. darkships are under the umbrella of comships but only a small portion of comships are darkships.
The emoji combo 🎱🎀 may be used to tag fanworks on TikTok which relate to "dark ships." Some fans may identify with the label and as "darkshippers." Some fans have the emoji in their bios to indicate they are darkshippers. The emoji is used both in English-speaking and in Russian-speaking fandom.
References/Further Reading
- Explaining proshipper emojis/terms by tranquill_dove, Archived version (December 2023), a post on TikTok which lists emojis related to proship, dead dove, profiction, comship and darkship.