The Pink Journal

Shipping in Fandom
I'm a het shipper in a slash fandom. I know that really doesn't sound like much of a problem but it can be annoying when you’re trying to be a writer in that fandom. I believe that you can’t help who you ship just like you can’t help who you love. That doesn’t mean shipping or writing a ship easy.

First let me explain some things. A het shipper, as in heterosexual, is a person that likes a male and female couple. A slash shipper is a person that likes a couple of the same sex either two males or two females. When the couple is two women, it’s referred to as fem-slash. Shipping is when you’re a fan of a couple that you want to see in a relationship.

Don’t get me started on canon or fanon shipping. That’s a whole different discussion. Also, not all ships are obvious to everyone which is part of the problem. Ships have nothing to do with the shippers personal sexual orientation.

I have been in fandom since 2011 as a fan and as a writer. As a writer being, a het shipper in a slash fandom means that you don’t have the readers that a slash writer does in the same fandom. It’s like an uphill battle to get noticed or even mentioned in the fandom. You have to be persistent and be a decent writer just to go against the popular ship.

I have some consistent readers in this fandom but I very rarely get recommended to other readers. Being recommended is everything as a fandom writer. If your stories don’t get spread then you get no new readers. No readers mean no likes, kudos, or reblogs. If your statistics are not high, there is less of a chance you get recommended. That’s the problem in a nutshell.

There are some people that believe that slash shipping is a fetish. That may be true. If shipping has nothing to do with the shippers own sexual orientation then it can be looked on as a kink or a turn on. This could explain why straight people ship slash couples.

To be fair, there are some slash couples who are written in a way that makes them seem more like a couple than good friends. Sometimes the dialogue could be interpreted either way. That is a decision made by the showrunners and the writing staff. This also makes it hard to be a het shipper in the fandom.

There is one good thing about being a het shipper in a slash fandom. I have to be a better writer just to hold my own. But am I? That is up to my readers.