Fan and shippable videos are made of popular series and shippable content may also be affected. The phenomenon started over a hundred years ago with Sherlock Holmes.
Such videos can be found on TikTok’s salkkarits\_ account, which has close to 400 000 followers, and often involves shippers. Shipper culture and shippin’ refers to bringing characters from television series together romantically. Shippin’ is fleshed out by amateur videos made by fans: a little whiskey trading and an aura of romance is created around fictional characters by means of visual and audio storytelling.
Wik recently wrote a dissertation on the topic at the University of Vaasa, for his thesis *From Interpretation to Production: audiovisual shippage production as digital self-expression*. He himself became interested in fan and shippage videos some thirty years ago in the context of the *Secret Folders* series, which became a cult phenomenon in the 1990s: one can therefore speak of both researcher and fan.
– Shipperiness has been with me for a long time, but the term itself only came to me at a later stage. I happened to stumble across a website about shippering and realised that it was as if it was written about me,” Wik recalls.
Shippings influenced by science fiction series
The paranoid sci-fi series *Secret Folders*, which was also made between 2016 and 2018, has long been popular with shippers. Especially in the early stages of the series, efforts were made to eliminate anything even remotely suggestive of romance between the main characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
The production team thought that since Dana Scully is a bit stiff, dresses modestly and shows her expertise in every situation, she is not an easy person to ship. However, it was the other way around: the strong female character and her cynical, somewhat ordinary colleague got the fans excited.
– When the speculation about the romantic relationship between the lead characters grew, the production denied the whole phenomenon: that we are now moving in some soap opera department, says Meniina Wik.
However, the production team quickly noticed that shippers and topics related to human relationships also brought *Secret Folders* commercial success and multidimensional added content value, so the direction was changed. Elements talking about shippers were brought into the series, and Mulder and Scully appeared as a couple, for example – albeit undercover.
– In the case of *Secret Folders*, shipping has clearly changed the narrative of the series and increased its popularity. Certain themes are not necessarily of interest to all kinds of audiences, but speculating on human relationships can attract the attention of a segment that would otherwise not be enamored of this kind of genre, Meniina Wik sums up.
A vampire slayer meets a game character
The so-called round figures with a gripping surface, which are often chosen as the main characters of movies and series, are best suited for shipping. The romantic hero is often just such a round figure: heroism is not so much based on maintaining public order, but the hero is also seen to act outside of order.
– The character repeats the romantic hero familiar from harlequin novels, who is reclusive and problematic, and perhaps precisely for these reasons so fascinating – So an excellent object to be saved by true love, Meniina Wik states.
Shippable characters can be found wholesale in the entertainment industry, and they are combined with each other not only in videos but also in digital art.
Crossover couples can be found in cartoons, literature, games, and television series. Jelsa refers to the supposed romantic relationship between Elsa from *Frozen* and Jack Frost from the *Rise of the Guardians* animation, while Buffy from *Buffy, the vampire slayer* has been combined in a romantic sense with, among other things, the dark-skinned and white-haired Solaufein elf from the *Baldur’s Gate* video game.
At the moment, there is a lot of shipping from, among others, the popular *Wednesday* series (2022). The main character Wednesday Addams is combined with Enid Sinclair from the series, for example, and the combination goes by the name Wenclair. At the same time, it is also a *femflash*, i.e. a relationship between two women.
Already Sherlock Holmes was being shipped
As a phenomenon, shipping is not something completely new, although it has changed its form over the years. More than a hundred years ago, there were wild speculations about the nature of the relationship between detective Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.
With the *New Sherlock* series (2010–2017), this kind of guessing has only increased. The imaginary relationship between Holmes and Watson is called Johnlock, and the Screen Rant website, for example, ponders why the men would be so perfect for each other. This would be a dream couple because they are on the side of good, love excitement, have the same sense of humor and complement each other.
– In the new series, Sherlock and Watson have a warm and caring relationship, despite the fact that they often disagree about things. I think the speculation has started from the chemistry between the characters. The production, on the other hand, has taken more steps when it has noticed that this kind of thing causes movement in the fan base, Meniina Wik states.
But what about the future? According to Meniina Wiki, it is natural that the possibilities offered by technology also affect shipping.
– I could imagine that due to digitalization, craftsmanship will disappear from videos to an ever greater extent, and machines will take videos in new directions. Shippaus could also be gamified and experienced in a new way through virtual reality.