About

Ship Dynamic refers to drawings by artists which represent their favorite shipping tropes. They grew popular on Twitter in April of 2019, with users sharing shipping dynamics through fan art, animations and text descriptions. The trend regained popularity on the platform in July 2022.

Origin

On April 10th, 2019, Twitter user @imzeferino^[1] posted several drawings of faces meant to represent their favorite shipping dynamics, gaining over 1,500 retweets and 5,400 likes (shown below). In a later tweet, they confirmed the drawings were representative of "Drarry," a ship of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter series.

Spread

On April 15th, 2019, Twitter user @paperdarkfish^[2] posted their version, gaining over 4,900 retweets and 11,000 likes (shown below, left). The following day, the meme grew much more popular, as many artists began posting their favorite types of ships. For example, user @soaptacularart^[3] posted their version, gaining over 4,600 retweets and 13,000 likes (shown below, right).

Other popular posts include a tweet by @Cheriiart^[4] describing a lesbian ship that gained over 7,000 retweets and 26,000 likes (shown below, left) and a post by @honenenen^[5] that gained over 2,200 retweets and 7,900 likes (shown below, right). The meme saw some spread on Tumblr^[6] but it was primarily a Twitter meme.

July 2022 Resurgence

On July 19th, 2022, artist @selpuku tweeted^[7] a fan art depicting a ship dynamic between a person and their former babysitter that gained over 16,000 retweets and 113,000 likes and became a subject of criticisms and viral discussions^[8][9] in the following days (fan art shown below).

Following the viral spread of the fan art, the ship dynamics fan art trend regained massive popularity on Twitter, with artists on the app sharing drawing of various ship dynamics, often humorous, captioning it, "my favorite ship dynamic" or "new ship dynamic."

Or example, on July 21st, Twitter^[10] user @nightfurybucky shared a sketch drawing of a ship that gained over 6,600 retweets and 26,300 likes in five days (shown below, left). Later that day, user @QUINCIES tweeted^[11] a drawing that gained over 14,700 retweets and 146,000 likes in five days (shown below, center). On July 23rd, Twitter^[12] user @DreMeMoTo posted a ship dynamic that accumulated over 27,300 retweets and 235,000 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References