The Shipper's Manifesto
| Journal Community | |
|---|---|
| Name: | The Shipper's Manifesto |
| Date(s): | 4 August 2004 - Last updated 20 September 2015 |
| Moderator: | darkhavens, shipm_mod, spren2v2 |
| Founder: | (possibly spren_cious?) |
| Type: | shipping meta community |
| Fandom: | multi-fandom |
| URL: | ship_manifesto at LiveJournal; ship_manifesto at Dreamwidth |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
- This page is about an LJ comm. You may be looking for the glossary term, Ship Manifesto.
The Shipper's Manifesto was a LiveJournal community for shippers of a particular pairing to post meta essays in support of their ship, which may be a particular fan's OTP or OT3. It accepted manifestos for het, slash, femslash, and threesomes, and is the origin of the term ship manifesto.
Essays often included links to direct new fans of the pairing toward informational and fanfic resources; hence, like newbieguide, it was a useful place to go when a fan wasn't sure how to find the Livejournal-based fandom for whatever show/movie/book they'd recently become fannish about.
Idol Reflections, a similar community with posts that were focused on individual characters instead of pairings, spun-off from The Shipper's Manifesto sometime in 2004.[1]
As of 2017, the community had 977 posts. The most recent post was in 2015, asking if people were interested in creating a similar community on Tumblr. Two Tumblr blogs (shipmanifesto and ship-manifesto) for posting ship manifestos were created in 2015, but neither one was affiliated with the LiveJournal community, and both fizzled out.
History
The first round of essays were posted starting on Monday, August 23, 2004.[2]
How It Worked
A Fan Remembers
A few months ago [a month or two after this community began], I happened across a new internet community with a curious but interesting goal. Reading the information page, I saw this description: "Welcome to Shipper's Manifesto, a project designed to bring together 'shippers of every conceivable pairing and share with the world what it is that draws us to those pairings. This community's goal is to provide readers with a detailed listing of pairings, insight into the characters behind the pairings, and contextual understanding of what makes the pairing work. This community will also provide newcomers with a starting point for further exploration." The term 'shippers comes from X-Files fandom; this was the word used to describe those who focused on or believed in the romantic relationship between Mulder and Scully. The premise struck me as a little odd ("every conceivable pairing...?") but I did rather like the idea of providing insight and resources for people who wanted to find out more about your fandom while celebrating what you loved about it in essay form. A few days later, I received an e-mail asking if I would like to be one o f the essayists, and if so, would I write about Kirk/Spock? [3]
"Hottest Ship" voting
The community celebrated its fifth year running with a Survival of the Hottest 'Ship 2009-2010 poll, where members would vote for their favorite ships and provide picspams in the comments. This mostly went smoothly, but there was some mild butthurt when the popular Zutara lost to Shang/Mulan. [4] [5] Other voters would become upset and frustrated if two of their favorite ships were pitted against each other. [6]
Featured Ship Manifestos
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Resources
Ship Manifesto Archive, a search engine where you can search by keyword or fandom to find a manifesto.
References
- ^ "I'm taking time out to clean up the ship_manifesto and its spin offs, idol_reflection and reflections_2 master lists today." — mod_journal (probably spren_cious?), Admin Post --, October 13th, 2004.
- ^ spren_cious, Admin. Post, Aug. 20th, 2004.
- ^ from a fan, Killa, in The Celebration Zine, otherwise known as The K/S Press #100 (January 2005), she goes on to reproduce her many page essay in full about Kirk/Spock
- ^ https://shipmturns5.livejournal.com/5960.html?thread=154184#t154184
- ^ https://shipmturns5.livejournal.com/5960.html?thread=152904#t152904
- ^ Dean/Castiel vs Buffy/Faith
