Joke Ship

Joke Ships are pairings within the fandom that are not intended to be taken seriously or that fans intend to seriously advocate for, and instead are primarily intended to be humorous, often drawing upon a sense of absurdity that it could not possibly happen. Many of these ships act as an affectionate self-satire of the larger shipping community and an acknowledgement of how strange and extreme shipping practices can appear to an outsider, and often act to illustrate that shipping is not inherently serious or always intended to represent a desire for canon confirmation.
Examples of joke shipping include Cargo Ship pairings, such as Mole and his shovel, but can also often include traumatic pairings including bestiality, pedophilia, or incest, under the assumption that the obviously abusive elements of these ships represents a humorous absurdity; as trauma is taken more seriously in fandom, the tendency to make dark jokes about such pairings has decreased.
Category:Terminology
Category:Shipping
Category:Types of Pairings