Have you attended the wedding of two fictional people?
Lady G, traveled from Beijing to Shanghai specifically to attend such a “virtual wedding”. The two individuals getting “married” were not actually a real-life couple, but two male characters, Seishiro Nagi and Mikage Reo, from a Japanese anime called Blue Lock.
“Today Seishiro Nagi and Mikage Reo are getting married. Welcome everyone and thank you for attending!”
When this 21-year-old girl walked into the wedding venue, she saw a line of red text scrolling across the screen, announcing that it was the wedding day for a new “couple”.
A standing sign was placed in front of the check-in counter, featuring two manga characters who wear wedding outfits happily looking at the guests. If someone with little understanding of ACG (Animation, Comics, and Games) passed by, he or she might have thought they were just a young couple who got their images drawn in a manga style.
“Welcome!” The girl at the check-in counter warmly smiled at Lady G and enthusiastically handed her a pretty paper bag, with cute cartoon images of the new couple on it. Inside the paper bag, there was an acrylic stand of the same manga characters, a wedding invitation card, and a box of wedding candies.
“Wedding favors” were laid outside the wedding hall. (Photo courtesy: Lady G)
The wedding hall was filled with pink flower branches and green vines hanging everywhere. There was even an unicorn with wings placed on the stage. The glittering crystal chandeliers illuminated the entire venue like it was a castle in the fairytale world.
“What a magical and dreamlike wedding it was!” Lady G exclaimed.
The waiter poured non-alcoholic champagne for her, which is what these two characters drank in the anime. She drank it and looked around. The water bar counter displayed many posters and stickers of these two manga characters. Every round dining table was also piled with circular badges of various sizes featuring the same characters.
Various decorations inside the wedding venue. (Photo courtesy: Lady G)
A few minutes later, more and more people with purple and white wigs as well as heavy makeup entered, who are very much resembling the manga characters that appeared everywhere in the hall. Some even dressed in wedding dresses and suits.
“This wedding event only allowed cosplayers of the characters Seishiro Nagi and Mikage Reo to enter, and no other characters were permitted,” Lady G mentioned.
When the host held the life-size cutouts of these two characters to perform the wedding ceremony, and asked this “couple” if they were willing to marry each other, she and other fans in the audience loudly and excitedly shouted together, “Yes, he does!”
Then the wedding march began to play, and the entire venue erupted into thunderous applause. Some fans even had tears in their eyes. It seemed like everyone genuinely believed in the existence of this love story.
Cosplayers are holding a wedding ceremony for their characters on stage. (Photo courtesy: Lady G)
“Even if they can’t actually speak, we understand what’s in their hearts,” said Lady G.
While the “new couple” of this wedding was fictional, people’s feelings and experiences were all very genuine.
“I was so happy all day long, as if I was getting married myself,” said Lady G. “This characters’ wedding made me feel closer to them, since they don’t have a way to come to the real world.”
If you think it is only about love and cheers, then you are probably wrong. Organizers could also make profits. Tickets for this event were in high demand, with each ticket costing around 80 yuan. Fan-made products related to the fictional couple were prepared for sale on site as well.
Lady G had learned about this fan-organized wedding event from a fan group on Weibo. This fan group currently has a total of 180,000 members, making it the largest community on Weibo for discussing recreation works inspired by anime. Even though these two male characters are not explicitly portrayed as lovers in the anime, many fans still believe there is a romantic love between them, and are deeply moved and immersed in this perceived love story.
“Although they are not the main characters in this anime, the author still gives them a lot of favoritism. I could feel the true affection flowing between them,” said this young girl excitedly, who has been shipping this couple for almost one year. Since next month is one of their birthdays, she is busy preparing for the party now.
Nowadays, more and more young people have begun holding “weddings” for their favorite animated characters in China. The forms of these “weddings” include holding a wedding ceremony at a hotel, reserving all tickets of the related animation movies in the cinema and watching them together, or hosting a simple fan interaction tea party. The organizers would typically display life-size cardboard cutouts of the anime “couples” as well as related fan-made items. They would also hand out “wedding invitations” to fans attending the event.
Last Saturday, I attended the tea party of TATSUHIME (Tatsumi Kazehaya and HiMERU). It was truly blissful.
The wedding of my ship is a once-in-a-lifetime memorable wedding.
The experience of attending pairing wedding is an overwhelming feeling of happiness.
Posts from Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social media and lifestyle platform.
This kind of fan behavior of pairing up two animated characters and envisioning potential romantic relationships between them is a common practice in shipping fandom culture. So, what is shipping fandom? Where did the trend of shipping fandom come from? Why are young people so immersed in it? And what is behind the trend of shipping fandom? Let's explore these questions together.
What is shipping fandom?
If you’ve ever considered how perfect Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are for each other, ever wished that Hermione had chosen Harry instead of Ron, or ever felt lingering regret for the unfortunate ending between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, you are shipping them.
The popular pairing of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson is also known as "Johnlock". Fannish interest in the pairing has increased following the Sherlock Holmes 2009 film and the BBC's 2010 TV series Sherlock.
Shipping, which can also be called coupling or character pairing, was initially derived from the word “relationship”. The act of shipping originated from Japanese manga fandom communities, emphasizing the speculative behaviors and the imagining process of fans pairing characters together. Later, in 1996, a term “ship” shows up to describe such behaviors, coming into use on a Usenet fan forum about The X-Files, a popular TV show. It can be defined as the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise.
Beyond the initial practice of pairing characters from Japanese manga, the phenomenon has expanded to include characters from novels, movies, TV series, and other mediums. Historical figures and real-world people have also gradually been included.
Usually, once characters are paired, various transformative works including fanfictions, videos, illustrations, and memes will be self-published on Internet platforms like YouTube, X, Bilibili, Weibo, and Lofter. Following this, an active and large-scale subculture fan community habitually producing and consuming such transformative works came into being.
Shipping is an evolved behavior of idol worship, where the object is no longer an individual, but an idealized romantic relationship, reported by Xinhua Net.
“The trend of shipping fandom dates back to years ago. Western slash culture, East Asia’s Yaoi and danmei (耽美) culture in mainland China were all rising with the development of mass media and pop culture in the 1980s-1990s,” said Dr. Yin Yiyi, the lecturer of media and film studies in Beijing Normal University.
The three kinds of culture she mentioned are all about boy’s love, which indicates that the concept of shipping originally specialized in pairing two male characters.
With the further growth of the Internet and social media, shipping fandom has been appropriated beyond its previously niche circles and become more widely known and popular. Now it has evolved to include various types of relationships, such as heterosexual pairings and female same-sex pairings.
“The sustained high-level enthusiasm of fans to pair characters is largely fueled by online communication, which serves as a social mechanism for interaction,” said Tang Yicheng, the vice secretary-general of the Popularization Work Committee in the Chinese Psychological Society.
“The fan recreations and ideas emerging in this internet subculture could further attract more audiences and spread the paired characters more widely,” Tang added. “Shipping together is always more fun than doing it alone.”
According to the 2021 shipping report from FUNJI, the Chinese entertainment company, among the 4521 respondents, 99.2% of shippers are female, with around 85% of them aged between 15-25 years old. Almost 70% of these individuals are still students. 41.8% shipped their first pairing at an age even younger than 15. This indicates that young women are the main demographic engaging in shipping fandom in China nowadays.
Character pairing is, perhaps for the first time in history, an exploration of intimate relationships freely conducted within female communities, not dominated by men nor deeply engaged by a significant male membership. It also serves as a form of self-fulfillment and mutual comfort for the members of these communities regarding their own needs for intimacy and sexuality.
“Character pairing is almost for the first time in history not male-dominated but a free exploration of intimate relationships that takes place within female communities,” said Gao Hanning, a researcher at the Institute of Literature, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
How do young females ship a couple in China?
After taking a shower, Li Jingqi lay down in bed on time at 11 pm. This 21-year-old girl, after struggling for a while with whether she should go to sleep early or not, eventually sat up and picked up her phone. From that moment, she dived into an unstoppable seven to eight-hour binge of shipping her favorite couple, reading various fanfictions, and watching videos on Lofter (the main platform for fan recreation works in China) and Weibo (similar to X).
Four main shipping platforms in China
The main platform for fan recreation works in China.
The main video-sharing platform in China, similar to YouTube
A microblogging platform and one of the largest social media platforms in China.
A popular online platform that brings together people with shared interests in books, movies, music and various activities.
“When reading fanfiction, sometimes I get very excited, but sometimes I even cry over those touching scenes,” she said.
Filled with such fluctuating emotions, this young girl was totally immersed in one romantic imaginary world after another throughout the long night. Not until six or seven am did Li, utterly exhausted, finally fall asleep contentedly.
Occasionally, Li also stayed up all night even when she had to attend classes at 9:30 am the next day. Now, staying up until 2 or 3 am to ship a couple has already become routine for her.
“When I am strongly obsessed with a fictional pairing, it feels like my entire day, every single hour apart from when I'm sleeping, is consumed by thoughts of them,” said Li. “Every day, I must check social media platforms to see if the authors make any updates in their fanfictions.”
Fanfictions, where authors create new worlds, can largely heal her heartache and remedy the regret of a character pairing’s story ending badly in the TV series, Li noted.
“That’s why I am so motivated to follow those fanfiction stories.”
Li also spent around 500 yuan purchasing a lot of merch related to her ships, including albums with limited edition postcards and stamps, PVC figures, and phone cases.
Li’s merch related to The Long Ballad (长歌行)and The Blue Whisper (与君初相识) . (Photo courtesy: Li Jingqi)
Typically, in terms of the ways that people ship a couple, there are two main aspects—consumption behaviors and content creation. Consumption behaviors, as Li did, involve receiving and interacting with fan-created content. This can include reading, watching, and discussing fanworks, as well as buying official or fan-made merch and participating in both online and offline fan events.
On the other hand, the act of creation involves fans crafting their own content for their ships, which can range from writing fanfiction to drawing fan art and even producing fan videos.
Gao Yixin, 22, is such a young girl who is very passionate about creating these derivative works for her favorite anime and fictional pairings. She has written 20 to 30 fanfiction pieces and drawn around 200 fan art illustrations in total.
Gao usually draws on the Procreate app on an iPad.
Gao mentioned that she doesn’t like looking at other’s fan art or stories when shipping characters. Instead, she prefers to continuously produce her own fanworks until her enthusiasm eventually diminishes.
“In 2022, I created 79 drawings in just six months,” she said. Gao also made several Tegaki videos (手書き), a creative format that combines a sequence of hand-drawn illustrations with background music. This type of recreation work is really time-consuming, even taking up to over a month to complete.
Painting a detailed illustration often takes Gao several hours.
Among the fanfictions that Gao wrote, the most popular series derived from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (魔道祖师) has even achieved nearly four million views. Currently, she has around 4,000 followers on Lofter.
3.896 million views
3854 followers
“At that time, due to the high heat of this piece, I created 20 bookmarks with my drawings of this romantic pairing and sent them to my followers,” Gao said.
The bookmarks Gao drawed for her fanfiction followers on Lofter.
In those fan communities focused on character pairings, the creation of works is often not just the achievement of one author but a group effort, stated Gao Hanning.
This approach puts all participants on an equal status, unlike traditional production mechanisms centered on individual creators. Therefore, the lines between author and reader, or producer and consumer, are blurred.
“As soon as someone joins this fan community and begins interaction, they simultaneously become a natural reader and a potential content creator,” she noted.
Why do young females like shipping a couple?
1. Emotional needs and fantasies of ideal romantic relationships
Since the sixth grade of primary school, Wu Hangying has already been obsessed with shipping couples and most of them are real person slash. Up to now, Wu has shipped approximately 15 celebrity pairings, across Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan.
“I always find myself irresistibly drawn to the wonderful connection my ship showed, one that is filled with mutual support and concerted effort,” she said. “It gives me a deep sense of satisfaction and bliss. After all, life is quite mundane and lacks those idealized things.”
“When I was younger, I firmly believed that my ship was truly a couple in real life,” the 21-year-old girl mentioned.
However, most of the time, she would eventually uncover that this so-called romantic relationship was nothing more than a fabrication—a deception crafted by the entertainment industry’s marketing, which made her really upset and feel betrayed. For example, she was once heartbroken when a male-male couple she had shipped for three years ended dramatically with one of them publicly announcing his girlfriend.
Now, she no longer cares about the authenticity of her ships. Whether it’s romantic love, familial affection, or friendship, as long as the emotions shared between her ship were once genuine and special, she can still find joy in shipping.
“My ship has actually become a carrier of love, which can infinitely extend my happiness and allow me to relive it,” she said. “Especially when I’m stressed, shipping is really a good way to soothe my restless mind.”
One significant reason young females enjoy shipping is that it satisfies their emotional needs, providing pleasure and relaxation during brief moments of leisure, while also fulfilling their fantasies of ideal intimate relationships.
As reported in China Statistical Yearbook 2023, as of 2022, the number of single individuals aged 15 and above in the nation stands at approximately 237 million.
According to the estimation of the Beike Research Institute, by 2030 there will be 150 to 200 million people living alone, potentially pushing the percentage of single-person households to surpass 30%. Among them, young adults aged 20-39 who live alone are expected to reach 40 to 70 million, with an increase of one to two times compared to 2010.
FUNJI’s shipping report also showed that over 90% of shippers are single, with 48.43% having never been in a relationship. Only 9.66% are currently in romantic relationships or married.
The feeling of loneliness has become an increasingly common emotional resonance among single young adults. A vast market of the “loneliness economy” has emerged as a result, which refers to an economic model where individuals who feel lonely engage in consumption to alleviate their sense of isolation. The economic activities related to shipping fandom are also a part of this.
“As for me, shipping pairings is a way to release hormones—the dopamine I release in that moment might be similar to the feelings I would experience from a real romance,” said Li Muheng, who has never been in a romantic relationship before.
Li mentioned that she wouldn’t simultaneously ship two different pairings, just as she wouldn’t date two people at the same time. If her ship were going to meet in real life, she would be very excited, just as if she were going on a date the next day.
Due to the influence of her parents’ poor relationship at home, this 19-year-old girl has always been somewhat skeptical and fearful of intimate relationships in real life, yet at the same time, she yearns for love.
“Shipping pairings is like the utopia of my inner world, holding my longing and pursuit for an ideal romantic relationship,” said Li.
According to a social survey conducted by the Renmin University of China among 234 university students, 72.32% believe that the sense of happiness gained from shipping pairings is comparable to that of being in a real romantic relationship. More than half of the respondents are willing to only engage in shipping, without pursuing a romantic relationship themselves.
Tang explained that, from a psychological perspective, the mirror neurons in the human brain allow individuals to experience a similar joy when they see others in love, which is why shipping can bring vicarious emotional satisfaction to young people.
“Generally, young people’s desire and passion for intimate relationships now is higher than in the past,” said Tang. “At the same time, they have higher requirements for intimate relationships.”
Tang pointed out that shipping is actually a form of collective reflection among young people, reflecting on what exactly the intimate relationship and love they aspire to. This reflecting approach is much safer and more efficient, as it doesn’t require personally experiencing the relationship firsthand. Young people can remain detached, without communicating, adjusting, or compromising with anyone else during the shipping process.
This idea that shipping allows for a low-risk experience of romantic relationships is particularly reflected in females’ fervent adoration of male-male pairings, which is also known as “slash pairings”.
In the Weibo shipping fan community’s Top 200 for two consecutive years, male-male pairings not only consistently led with over 60% of the total, but in 2021, this percentage even rose to 68.5%. As indicated by FUNJI’s shipping report, 94.94% of respondents have shipped male-male pairings.
As young females increasingly become the major consumers in the entertainment sector, the market has begun to cater to their preferences and demands. The popularity of male-male pairings is thus a natural development within this context.
“In these male-male love stories, whether there are conflicts or sweet moments, it all happens within a gender group that I don’t belong to, so I won’t overly project myself into it and also won’t be hurt,” said Gao Yixin.
“As a bystander, I can fully and easily enjoy this kind of fictional love,” she added.
2. Self-expression and identity recognition
Shipping a couple could not only bring joy and relaxation, but also greatly satisfy people’s needs for self-expression and recognition.
As mentioned before, in the process of shipping, there are many productive fans, like Gao, who create fanfictions, drawings and videos to portray their ships’ romantic stories. These individuals often find pleasure in expressing themselves through their creative output.
“This greatly vents my desire for creativity and expression, making me tired but really fulfilled,” said Gao.
Within shipping fan communities, fans often organize regular activities that follow set procedures. For example, to show support for their ships, they change their social media profile pictures to the same image collectively or engage in offline events.
Research suggests that these ritualistic fan activities are essentially aimed at gaining recognition by enhancing the sense of self-identity and social identity.
For shipping fans, assigning themselves specific identity labels and participating in a series of fan activities can generate a strong sense of belonging and value, thereby promoting the construction process of self-identity.
Social identity mainly comes from the identity or qualifications of group members. Individuals strive to pursue and maintain a positive social identity in order to enhance their self-esteem.
“I need the recognition from others,” said Gao, who has thousands of followers following her fanfictions on Lofter. She used to post a picture and a short essay on the social media platform casually and could get hundreds of reposts. Also, at that time, she could easily gather at least 10 fans for an offline meetup.
Gao mentioned that she wants to share with others her ideas. However, creating a totally independent work may not yield quick or favorable results, so she usually chooses to use a popular character pairing that has a fan base, as a medium to communicate with others through her creations and get recognized.
“I never think it’s because my fanfiction is so good that a lot of people follow me. If we don’t have the same ship, who would want to read it?” she said.
What is behind the trend of shipping fandom?
The rise of shipping fandom not only caters to the diverse interests of young females but is also significantly driven by the careful design and planning of producers and amplified by media promotion.
Nowadays, information fragmentation places both content creators and consumers in a fast-paced environment. In this crowded media landscape, the crucial challenge for contemporary media is to quickly capture the attention of readers to boost views. Pairing characters or celebrities has become a popular tactic to do that.
As Dr. Yin noted, the popularity of the shipping fandom is also related to the overall industry’s consumption guidance.
So, how do these producers pair characters and promote various kinds of couples? What are the business strategies behind this kind of promotion?
Producers often create compelling character pairings as a key selling point to attract more audiences, thereby enhancing the commercial value of their IPs (intellectual property).
In the Chinese cultural market, IP usually refers to a content property that can generate widespread influence and commercial value. A strong IP can not only enhance brand value, but also expand market reach. That’s why content producers and investors actively seek and develop potential popular IPs, aiming to maximize commercial gains.
1. Pairings from drama works
One important category of IP is drama works, such as TV dramas, films, animes, mangas and novels. Creators would meticulously craft romantic love stories between characters during the creative process. In other words, this kind of pairing originates from drama works’s design. The fervor surrounding these couples can not only further ignite interest in the original dramas but can also spill over to boost the popularity of new IPs associated with them.
Shinichi and Ran are the leading male and female protagonists of the classic Japanese detective manga and anime series Case Closed (Detective Conan). The two characters are childhood friends and each other’s canonical love interest.
Case 1
Kudo Shinichi & Mouri Ran
Kudo Shinichi and Mouri Ran are the leading male and female protagonists of the classic Japanese detective manga and anime series Case Closed (Detective Conan). The two characters are childhood friends and each other’s canonical love interest. The pure, youthful and sincere love between the young characters resonated with many viewers and aroused their feelings of longing. On Weibo, the pairing of Shinichi and Ran has a total of 890 thousand Chinese fans.
The high level of engagement with this character pairing has not only greatly boosted the popularity of the original series, but has also fueled the production and sales of a wide range of related merch, which has generated substantial profits.
Lan Wangji (蓝忘机) and Wei Wuxian (魏无羡) are a male-male character pairing from the Chinese period drama The Untamed (陈情令), which aired in 2019 on Tencent Video and was later bought by Netflix.
Lan Wangji & Wei Wuxian
Case 2
2. Pairings from reality shows
Apart from drama works, the reality show represents another main IP category, where members of the public or celebrities are filmed engaging in various activities in real-life situations. It typically focuses on personal relationships, competitions, or the daily lives of the participants.
Due to the relatively realistic nature of reality shows, audiences often perceive pairings formed on reality shows as having a higher chance of being genuinely together in real life. This leads viewers to get even more excited about shipping these pairings and allows them to experience a stronger sense of immersion as if the on-screen dynamics reflect real-life interactions. Similarly, popular pairings from reality shows can, in turn, boost the viewership ratings of these original programs. Their influence may also extend beyond the shows, sparking interest in new IPs.
Case 1
Zhao Qijun (赵琦君) and Yang Kaiwen (杨凯雯) are one of the most beloved non-celebrity couples from the Chinese reality dating show Heart Signal 2, which aired in 2019. They have around 210 thousand shipping fans on Weibo.
Zhao Qijun & Yang Kaiwen
The pairing of Hou Minghao (侯明昊) and Yang Chaoyue (杨超越) originated from When We Write Love Story, which aired in 2021. They stood out among the three pairings in the show due to their strong visual chemistry and natural couple interactions displayed in their every move.
Case 2
Hou Minghao & Yang Chaoyue
The pairing of Hou Minghao (侯明昊) and Yang Chaoyue (杨超越) originated from When We Write Love Story, which aired in 2021. This reality show integrated elements of drama by dividing six celebrities into three pairings, who would collaboratively create original drama scripts and act them out.
Hou and Yang stood out among the three pairings in the show due to their strong visual chemistry and natural couple interactions displayed in their every move. Fan-made edits of this pairing on Bilibili have drawn significant attention, with the most-viewed one surpassing 2 million plays.
Speculation and discussion among the audience over whether Hou and Yang were a real-life couple dramatically increased the reality show’s popularity. Fans, insatiable for Hou and Yang’s interactions on the show, have even started making videos from the pair’s other works into new love stories, indirectly driving traffic to these new IPs.
3. Pairings from user-created content
Meanwhile, the user-created content also plays a role in the popularity of shipping fandom.
In addition to the couples intentionally crafted within an IP by producers, audiences often pair characters who do not have a romantic relationship in the original work or are from two completely different fictional worlds. The shipping of such couples is usually not based on the original plots, but is fueled by fan recreations such as fan fiction, fan mangas and videos. In a word, these pairings only borrow the original settings of characters, while both their relationships and the stories between them are reimagined by the fans themselves. If these character pairings are portrayed by actors, then, as mentioned earlier, it’s also possible that the actors and other related IPs will gain more attention.
As Gao Yixin said, “Some of my ships actually don’t have an explicit romantic relationship in the original work. But as long as I want them to be a couple, they are already married in my mind.”
Voldemort (Tom Riddle) and Lin Daiyu (林黛玉) are a highly unexpected and even weird character pairing. Voldemort is the main antagonist from the British fantasy series Harry Potter, whereas Lin is the female protagonist from the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber.
Case 1
Voldemort & Lin Daiyu
Voldemort (Tom Riddle) and Lin Daiyu (林黛玉) are a highly unexpected and even weird character pairing. Voldemort is the main antagonist from the British fantasy series Harry Potter, whereas Lin is the female protagonist from the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber.
This pairing originated from a bet made by a writer with her friends in 2011. The stake of the bet was writing fanfiction based on a random draw of character pairings, and the author ended up drawing Voldemort and Lin Daiyu for combination. Thus, the first work featuring this pairing was born.
Due to the author’s skillful writing, which seamlessly blended Western settings with Eastern culture, many fans soon fell in love with this unusual couple after reading the fanfiction. Since then, many high-quality fanfictions and fan mangas about this pairing emerged, attracting more people with the unique atmosphere between the two characters.
Mycroft and Lestrade, also known as “Mystrade”, is also an unusal character pairing from the BBC television series Sherlock. These two characters have been paired by fans in the first Sherlock series, even though they never appear in a scene together at that time.
Case 2
Mycroft Holmes & Greg Lestrade
Mycroft and Lestrade, also known as “Mystrade”, is also an unusual character pairing from the BBC television series Sherlock. These two characters have been paired by fans in the first Sherlock series, even though they never appear in a scene together at that time. It’s a case of pairing the spares (the term for leftover characters getting hooked up with whoever is left in a specific cast) in order to create a Happy For Now ending.
In subsequent series, the interaction between “Mystrade” is also very limited, amounting to only a few minutes. However, their excellent characterizations still attract many fans and especially the lack of any canonical interaction between the two beloved characters offers endless possibilities for creative exploration.
The popularity of “Mystrade” has stimulated discussion about the original work and, to some extent, brought more attention. The screenwriter also realized this potential pairing, increasing their interactions in the fourth series of Sherlock.
Overall, the activity of shipping not only satisfies young people’s needs for experiencing romantic fantasies, self-expression, and identity recognition, but also brings more commercial value to the entertainment markets. Audiences’ active participation in the discussions and recreations for pairings often serves as the fastest way to popularize an IP.
In recent years, this ability to generate substantial online traffic of the shipping fandom, has already been noticed and utilized by many cultural industry giants. This kind of marketing, in turn, further attracts more people to engage in shipping. Thus, shipping fandom has become an important driving force in the virtuous cycle where participatory culture and commercial interests promote each other.