User blog:The Primordial Clok-Roo/Crash Bandicoot Shipping

Many of you that have found this and are reading it are probably wondering "What's all the fuss about? I mean, isn't this normal?" Well, yes... and no. This is something I want to get off my chest, and this Wiki is the perfect place for me to do it.

Let's get one thing straight first: I am a long time Crash Bandicoot fan. In fact, I've known and loved this series since I was pretty much a toddler. No kidding; I was barely one-year old when Crash Bandicoot released on the PlayStation, and by the time I knew how to use a PlayStation controller, I was hooked on the series. INCLUDING the less-popular post-NaughtyDog titles, which I personally enjoyed...! Mostly. (Glares at Twinsanity... and now glares at It's About Time.) So I feel confident in that I am a good source of knowledge when it comes to shipping in the Crash Bandicoot fandom. Not the know-all-be-all, but well-rounded, shall we say.

The unfortunate truth is that shipping is this series has never really been big. Or at least, it WAS that way. I'll get to that in a minute. Even before (and for that matter, during) the decade long series' console hiatus, only a small handful of ships existed and were supported. Off the top of my head - and sticking exclusively to characters FROM the series - these are the top 5 Crash Bandicoot ships that I can think of: Notice something common here? Yeah. All but ONE of these ships does not have a portmanteau name... and that one I have given is the only one that I have heard. The others don't have one. There are probably other ships that I could have put here, but these are the ones that really come to mind when I think late-2000's Crash Bandicoot shipping scene.
 * 1) CrashxTawna - the het ship between Crash Bandicoot and Tawna Bandicoot
 * 2) Crashadena - the het ship between Crash Bandicoot and Pasadena O'Possum
 * 3) PinstripexTawna - the het ship between Pinstripe Potoroo and Tawna Bandicoot
 * 4) NGinxCoco - the het ship between Dr N. Gin and Coco Bandicoot
 * 5) CrashxNina - the het ship between Crash Bandicoot and Nina Cortex

This is what I meant when shipping in the series was small - so few ships used to exist and they did not have agreed upon ship names. And this is especially problematic when you are searching shipping artwork and/or fan-fiction. Unlike Sonic the Hedgehog, where you have quick and easy names like Sonamy, Knuxouge and Silvaze that you can search, you don't have that luxury in this community. What makes it even harder is that DURING the franchises peak when a lot of this artwork existed in the first place, it was before search tags existed on many of the sites... so yeah, lots of artwork has basically been ghosted from existence. You'll have to trawl through a LOT of old stuff to find what you want.

And then came along Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, and the shipping scene for this series literally EXPLODED in no time! How did this happen? Well, I can sum it up in one word: Beenox That's what happened.

The developers of the game, Beenox, went to the ends of the earth to include just about EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER from the Crash Bandicoot series into this one game! When you leave aside the joke characters and semi-duplicates, you have well over 40 unique characters! Most of these characters were also one-off and/or forgotten characters, so when they came back their popularities just sky rocketed! Pasadena O'Possum; Yaya Panda; Megumi Bandicoot; and so many more suddenly became well loved characters! And before we knew it, all new ships had been created overnight! While there is no concrete list of what ships are deemed common or not - given how recent most of them are - let me list off just SOME of the ships I have seen since the game's release that I do not recall existing before (these are ones I've only seen, remember; I don't know if they're popular or just someone's fantasy): And remember, I'm intentionally IGNORING any and all crossover ships! Add that in there, and the numbers go up! Heck, I've even seen someone who supports a ship between Megumi and Espio... that's right: Megumi of the Nitro Squad and Espio of Team Chaotix! And this isn't even counting the new one generated from It's About Time with Dingodile and Tawna! ... But again, we see the issue of their being no agreed upon shipping names. Even for some of the arguably more popular ones among this bunch, like Crunch & Ami and Coco & Yaya.
 * CocoxYaya - the femslash ship between Coco Bandicoot and Yaya Panda
 * CrashxMegumi - the het ship between Crash Bandicoot and Megumi
 * CrashxYaya - the het ship between Crash Bandicoot and Yaya Panda
 * CrunchxAmi - the het ship between Crunch Bandicoot and Amu
 * FakexMegumi - the het ship between Fake Crash and Megumi
 * FakexPasadena - the het ship betweem Fake Crash and Pasadena O'Possum
 * HastyxYaya - the het ship between Hasty and Yaya Panda
 * KomodoxYaya - the het ship between either Komodo Joe or Komodo Moe and Yaya Panda
 * PinstripexPasadena - the het ship between Pinstripe Potoroo and Pasadena O'Possum
 * Nitro Squad - femslash and/or polyship city this one! Could be any mix of Isabelle, Megumi, Ami and Liz, or even Tawna!

I think it's therefore safe to say that Crash Bandicoot shipping is in a weird position at the moment. What started out as a small scene with only a few but stable ships has suddenly become this game of "throw any two characters together and see who sticks." It's almost like it has regressed BACK into its infancy stage and finding it's feet, but using characters that have almost no canonical interactions. What ships have been established as popular have had years to build up, but only three of them can be barely classified as 'canon' as they are depicted in the series. Everything else is pure fanon.

It's both sad and pleasing that the shipping scene is like this; sad because there is currently no ground support for any of the ships outside of "because I like it" and pleasing because there are some truly great characters here that deserve a second chance. But given where the franchise sits canonically right now... will we ever see any of these gain in-universe support? Or will they forever be baseless fanon for the fans to mess around with?

I would genuinely like to here from other Crash Bandicoot fans what their thoughts are of the Crash shipping community. If you are a Crash Bandicoot fan - and I'm assuming you ARE in the shipping community, why else would you be here? - please let me know below what your thoughts are... And if you want to share it: what's your Crash Bandicoot OTP?