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Shipping Fuel
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| Synonyms: | |
| See also: | Subtext, Slash Goggles, UST |
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Shipping Fuel is a term referring to content, interactions, or moments fans feel support or encourages the idea of a romantic, sexual, or deeply emotional connection between characters.
The kinds of things which are often sources of shipping fuel include scenes where characters share emotional or otherwise charged moments or dialogue which has romantic undertones or which are suggestive of something more. Other things like parallels between characters' stories or specific scenes or how certain narratives are constructed to compare and contrast characters and relationships might also fall under shipping fuel.
Canon and Fanon Shipping Fuel
Shipping fuel can be intentionally inserted into media. For example with pairings which go on to become canonical, especially those which were planned as endgame from early on in the media, the writers will put scenes or moments in which encourage the fans to see romantic potential between certain characters.
When it comes to fanon pairings, the term mostly gets used in two ways. For some fans, the term shipping fuel just means "this is why I like this pairing" or "this is what makes me want to ship them".
However, there can also be extensive discussions in some fandoms about whether scenes and moments are intentional, unintentional, queerbaiting, or if someone is looking at crumbs through shipping goggles.
For example, sometimes actors have chemistry that is unintentionally very good and this can lead to emotionally charged scenes or moments which were not intended by the writers to be so charged. In Motherland: Fort Salem, there is an especially charged scene which fuelled the Talder pairing fans, but many fans felt that the intensity of the scene was at least in part the result of both actresses having good chemistry with their costars in general, which was intensified in scenes between the two of them.
These grey areas can lead to heated discussions about whether a particular pairing is going to become canonical or not, veering the concept of shipping fuel away from the other main fanon use of "these things are what make me ship these characters" and more towards the way shipping fuel can be seen in the build-up to canonical relationships.
Fan Commentary and Discussions
Examples
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |