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We Count Down the Top 5 Ships on the Entire Internet
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Warner Brothers / FB/HarryPotterMovie
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Warner Brothers / FB/HarryPotterMovie
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If you’re reading this, you probably know all about “shipping” in the fandom sense. That is, rooting for two (or more!) characters to be involved with one another in a romantic way, whether or not canon (the original work) says it’s legit.
Everybody has their favorite ships. OTPs, NOTPs, BroTPs. But what are the biggest ships? Which lovebirds do the fandoms most support? We at SparkLife set out to answer this pertinent question.
Archive of Our Own (or AO3) is the fanworks site we chose to conduct this totally scientific study. As of this writing, it’s got 1,200,000+ works, 335,000 registered users, and countless readers. It also has one of the best tagging systems of any site for fanworks, which is why we chose it for this, uh, research.
To compile this list, we focused on the five biggest fandoms on AO3 set in fictional universes (apologies to our One Direction fans). In each fandom, we checked the sidebar option for relationship pairings and marked the hugest one. We then ranked the ships 1-5 by number of works total about them.
And believe it or not, we found a bunch of similarities in all five fandoms. Check it:
At any rate, the number of writers, readers, and fan sites is a testament to the increasingly involved nature of fans who consume media. It’s not enough to just watch. We want to feel connected to these stories. We want to roll around in these characters’ worlds. So we write 120,000 word novels, compose scholarly essays, draw incredible fan art, devour theories—all based on a few lines of dialogue and some raised eyebrows. It’s an incredible amount of work and dedication, so the fact that many adults dismiss it as kid stuff is simply preposterous.
So let’s get to the ships.
Kath is a fangirl first and writer second. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is way more fun than it sounds. If she isn't flailing around on Tumblr or writing articles, she's probably out running, reading, or thinking about food.
Wanna contact a writer or editor? Email contribute@sparknotes.com.