Umeko

Don't do it. It's just frustrating and confusing.

And yet it's what I spent the last couple days doing on Twitter. :V

Basically, I was discussing with sato-san (a prolific doujinshi artist who is fairly well-represented in my doujinshi collection) about an unauthorized redistribution of one of her fanarts that I had seen. (If you're interested in the conversation leading up to this, you can find it here.) And from there we got onto the subject of shipping names.

WARNING: I make some deriding comments about some shipping names and even the process by which our fandom names ships. For the former, I am by no means insulting the ships themselves, nor whoever chose the names for them - I am merely expressing bewilderment over the names and how much sense (or lack thereof) they make to someone seeing them for the first time. For the latter, it's more self-deprecating humor than anything - after all, I've coined the names of a few (totally weird) ships myself. :P

On to the conversation!

Originally Posted by sato-san

I tried searching "steven may" on fanfiction.net, which I was pointed towards, but I couldn't find the fanfic with my art on it~. I wonder if it wasn't a good way to search? There's no money involved in it so there's no need to say anything, but the whole selling pirated doujinshi on amazon using the Kindle is pretty, yeah...

(note here: for whatever reason I misread her "I wonder if it wasn't a good way to search?" as "I wonder if it wasn't explained to me very well?" Dunno how I misread it that way, but I did, thus the first part of my following response.)

Originally Posted by Me

@strpenguin It's because my Japanese is super horrible, yeahhhhh (jk) Well, why don't you try searching for "hoennchampionshipping"? It means "Daiharu" in English.

After this I pretty much curled up in a ball and laughed myself silly because it has always seemed - and I reckon will always seem - ludicrous to me to imply that the English fandom's usually-totally-random-and-verbose shipping names can be considered translations of the Japanese fandom's consise-and-logical ones.

Originally Posted by sato-san

@Umekopyon No, your Japanese is very good, so on the contrary, it's been very helpful to me (；´Д｀) Thank you so much. I searched for "hoennchampionshipping," and sure enough, the picture I drew came up. So it means Daiharu, huh~ φ(｀д´)

And then sato-san started musing on our shipping names in general. XD

Originally Posted by sato-san

I googled hoennchampionshipping and I'm not sure whether to call this a chaotic mess or a fanart reproduction flea market wwwww Normally I had imagined the term as fangirling over the Hoenn region Champion, but it's actually a ship with the rock maniac. Is that what you'd use for the yaoiz too?

And so I wrote a veritable essay on the matter.

Originally Posted by Me

@strpengion Most of the names English-speaking fans give ships don't make any sort of logical sense www The naming method is basically "whatever is suggested first becomes official!" wwwww Example: Shinji/Satoshi is apparently comashipping... Coma? What? What is that some Eva joke?? wwwww

Originally Posted by Me

@strpenguin As for Daigo/Yuuki, it's not hoennchampionshipping, but advancedchampionshipping... I think? I think advanced[snip] is used for Daiharu too, but it isn't used very much.

Originally Posted by Me

@strpenguin Ah, I looked into it and tensaishipping is used more often than advancedchampionshipping for Daiyuu. Ten... sai...... frankly those two aren't the first I think of when I hear "genius," but...

sato-san quote-retweeted the first and third of those tweets, adding "(ﾟДﾟ )I see, I see..." to each. XD

Originally Posted by sato-san

@Umekopyon I've been wondering for a while what the basis was behind "~shipping" terms, so finally I understand w It was very intriguing and interesting to speak to you directly about this and unravel the mystery!

And... apparently she got something out of it! I'm not sure what, because frankly I was doing nothing but confusing myself during my pathetic attempt to explain, but I suppose I did something right yeahhhhhhhh!!!