The Many 'Ships of Roswell

Is this already sounding like greek to you? Never fear. You're not alone! *g* I designed this page for a friend of mine who became totally lost while I babbled on and on about Roswell... that always happens. But this time, she wanted to find out what I was talking about. So, here you go: everything you ever wanted to know about Roswell 'Shipping.

First off, what is 'shipping? Well, I'm not an expert, but I do believe it goes something like this. You see a couple on a television show. For our purposes, we'll use Michael and Maria, since they have one of the largest fan followings. Let's say you see Michael and Maria and you just think they're the cutest couple ever. You love them. You write stories about them. You manipulate pictures for them, whatever. You worship this relationship. So, in typical rabid-fan fashion (again, as far as I can tell) "relationship worshipping" got shortened to "relationshipping", which in turn just got shortened to "'shipping". Still with me? Good. :-)

Now, 'shipping has a tendency to get grouped into two basic camps: conventional (or canon) and unconventional. The canon 'ships are the relationships that are clearly established on the show. Some of you who watch WB shows are laughing right now. I hear you. ;) This is the problem with defining canon couples... they're always changing. To preserve the sanity of all (and to avoid spoiling people who may not have seen all of season two yet) I'll give you some examples from early to mid-season one on Roswell. Max/Liz. Michael/Maria. Alex/Isabel. The couples you see acting couple-y on your television screen. There are some questions that my friend asked that I won't delve into answering; things like "What if a couple is together on the show and then they break up?" and "What if one member of a couple is cheating on the other one?" Are those still canon? The world may never know. ;) It tends to depend on the couple.

Okay! That covers a good three or four relationships. There are lots more. Where do they come from? UnConventional Relationshippers; more commonly known as UC 'shippers. This is me. *g* They're fans who adore couples who aren't together on the show, whose relationship hasn't gotten to a romantic level, or whose relationship is still subtextual. In some cases, it's so subtextual that a lot of people don't see it at all. But I digress. Examples of UC 'ships? Michael/Isabel. Max/Maria. Kyle/Alex. Liz/Tess. Michael/Maria/Isabel. Woah! Yes, there are people who 'ship threesomes, too. So, you can see now how the possibilities could be endless.

Remember how I mentioned that "Relationship Worshipping" became just plain "'shipping" on account of typical rabid-fan fashion? Well, in the spirit of that whole rabid-fan mentality, people started naming the 'ships. Why? Mostly because it's fun. And because when you have a show in which three of the main characters have names that start with the letter M, it's a lot handier than dealing with the standard inital/initial format. M/L will usually signify Max/Liz, but it could just as easily be Michael/Liz or Maria/Liz. The name game spread across the Roswell fandom like the plague (but a happy, fun plague) and pretty soon everything had names. Fans of one particular character or actor got names. Still not following? A quick example:

Dreamers are what Max/Liz 'shippers call themselves.
Cliffhangers are what Michael/Isabel 'shippers call themselves.
Hussies are what Tess/Emilie de Ravin fans call themselves.
Fehrians are what Brendan Fehr fans call themselves.

So, now that you have the basic idea, you can go look at the big ole list of ships. This contains an alphabetized listing of all the 'ship names I could find.

And since, yes, it does get confusing looking at all those names and slashes, I made it shorter by creating categorical listings as well: