[HPforGrownups] What is a shipper?

[Aberforth's Goat]

No: HPFGUIDX 9405

Welcome to the club Steve!

A shipper is a person with one or more twisted hormonal obsessions
concerning any given combination of those sweet children in HP. There are,
for instance, Ron - Hermione shippers, Hermione - Harry shippers, Ron -
Harry shippers, Snape - Draco shippers, even Sirius - Ginny shippers. A word
to the wise: never mess with shippers. Most of them are armed (and fingered,
too) and arguing with any of them could be dangerous to your sanity.

The word comes from relation-"ship" and is common in the weird, wild world
of fanfiction, where horribly addicted fiction junkies add their own
endings, continuations, sequels, prequels, variant readings, textual
emendations, poems, songs and dance routines to their favorite stories. Like
most addictions, it starts with relatively harmless stuff--joining this
club, for instance. After a while, you get curious and take a surreptitious
squint at one of the fanfics. It's kind of fun. You giggle a lot. You've
taken your first hit.

Within a few weeks you're living in a surreal cloud of tripped out acronyms
like PoU, DD, DS, ASA, and TSTNE. People who fail to get professional
therapy often end up having to deal up fiction of their own to support their
habits.

<sighs> But it's so much fun ...

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray)
_______________________

"My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practising
inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers,
but did Aberforth hide? No he did not! He held his head high."

Note: "Aberforth's Goat" is usually a human being. In fact,
a mild-mannered anabaptist theologian with a wife, two
children and a bad case of Harry Potter mania.