Shipping characters in fiction in ways the original author didn’t intend — picturing them in new non-canon relationships — goes back at least as far as so-called slash fiction or slashfic, a type of fan fiction involving same-sex romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters. In the 1990s and possibly earlier, for example, Star Trek fanzines featured K/S slash fiction imagining Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk as a couple. Discussion of shipping, shippers, and ships — short for relationshipping, relationshipper, and relationships — started in the 1990s with The X-Files, the TV series featuring Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, an attractive pair fans fervently hoped would explore each other’s Area 51. This is part of a complete episode.
What makes a great first line of a book? How do the best authors put together an initial sentence that draws you in and makes you want to read more? We’re talking about the openings of such novels as George Orwell’s 1984...
To slip someone a mickey means to doctor a drink and give it to an unwitting recipient. The phrase goes back to Mickey Finn of the Lone Star Saloon in Chicago, who in the late 19th century was notorious for drugging certain customers and relieving...
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