a variant of romance focused on exploring a relationship between two or more characters from the original fandom(s). it has several sub-genres, including slash (which focuses on homosexual pairings, usually of the male variety), femslash/femmeslash/yuri (same as slash, but exclusively female/female), crossover shipping, which focuses on a romance between characters from multiple fandoms, and "friendshipping", which focuses on platonic relationships. in another context, the term "shipping" within the community may mean that a fan is heavily invested in a relationship between two characters.