Robo Ship

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Plenty of robots to ship in this show.

Part man, part machine, all fan-preferred.

Basically this is fans Shipping a sentient machine, whether a robot, computer or otherwise, with someone else, usually an organic lifeform or human, or even another machine. Overlapping heavily with Fan-Preferred Couple, robo ships differ in that the relationship is not sexual in nature and sex may not even be possible for the couple in question... And people ship them together anyway due to compatible personalities. This can occur due to fandom reading things into a platonic friendship, a Relationship Writing Fumble that makes the couple in question seem closer than ordinary friends, or because canon is either sparse on pairings or the ones it does have aren't very popular. Robo Ship pairings tend to run into some problems due to What Measure Is a Non-Human? and Fan Dumb, so expect the same amount of Die for Our Ship as you would with a normal coupling.

Semi-justifiable if the object in question is an Instant AI, Just Add Water or Ridiculously Human Robot in-as-far as having personality and thinking, though Your Mileage May Vary on whether or not it's still Squick. Can even end up with a Robotic Spouse.

Compare Cargo Ship, Robosexual.

Examples of Robo Ship include:

Anime and Manga

  • The possible relationship between Negi and Chachamaru in Mahou Sensei Negima (they recently[when?] had a pactio kiss).
    • A really, really long kiss. It went for four pages. Though this was because Chachamaru, who as a robot at least partially believes she has no soul - a requirement for the pactio. Negi ends up apparently pushing it through out of sheer will and magical power, though this could have something to do with his heritage (the royal magic his mother had, and that his line established the pactio system).
  • Mazinger Z: Mazinger-Z and Aphrodite A (and later Diana-A). Also, Mazinger-Z and Minerva-X (a sentient FemBot was expressly designed to be Mazinger's Battle Couple). Minerva-X considered matter-of-fact she was Mazinger's partner. Action Girl Sayaka insisted only HER FemBot -Aphrodite-A- was true's Mazinger partner.
  • If you check the Trinity Blood section of Fanfiction.net, you will see that Tres X Abel is a very popular pairing.
  • Roger and Dorothy in The Big O.
  • Shugo/Aura in .hack//twilight.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 - Gundam Meister Tieria Erde (an Artificial Human) is often paired with, well, almost everyone, but that includes the AI supercomputer Veda. Which actually has more canon support than any pairing for him except Tieria/Lockon. There's also Setsuna, who's sometimes paired with his Gundams, but that's more of a Cargo Ship since they're not sentient.
    • Made canon in the movie, where Mileina admits her love for him, much to her father's dismay
  • In Digimon, human/Digimon pairings can be seen this way, as Digimon are actually computer programs. It's less Squicky than in that other monster show because Digimon are clearly sentient.
  • Ryuunosuke Natsume and Atsuko Higuchi from Nuku Nuku Dash. He's pure human. She is a super powered cyborg with the brain of a cat. Are we sure this isn't actually a demented form of bestiality, instead?
  • Sorta-maybe (in typical Neon Genesis Evangelion fashion) Gendo/ Unit 01.
  • 90% of the shipping in Rozen Maiden falls either into this category or Cargo Ship, depending on what you consider the dolls to be.
  • Eve no Jikan has these in both the robot/robot (Koji/Rina) and robot/human (Rikuo/Sammy) varieties, although only the former is official.

Comic Books

"I like you! Let us burn things together!"

  • Both the JLA and the Avengers main android members, Red Tornado and Vision respectively, are or have been in the past married to human women.

Film

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL/David Bowman. Squick.
    • It gets either more or less squicky in 2010 and the last two books when Dave rescues HAL from Discovery just before Jupiter turns nova, destroying the ship. In the third book, they're shacked up together in the monolith. By the fourth book, they've merged into one entity referred to as 'Halman.'
      • Which makes this particular ship.. CANON.
  • Common as dirt in Tron fandom. Justified because at least half the characters are sentient computer code.

Live-Action TV

Sarah Jane: Does he still stroke bits of the TARDIS?
Rose: Yeah! Yeah! He does! I'm like, "Do you two wanna be alone?"

    • Then a bit more explicit:

Eleventh Doctor: Look at you. Oh, you sexy thing.

    • Eleven says "Thanks, dear" when it gives him a new screwdriver. In series 6, Eleven actually kisses the front door of the TARDIS when he's reunited with it in the sickbay of the ghost ship where the missing crew and Rory were being held.
    • Then properly, with a human manifestation of the TARDIS kissing and... biting him, and insisting that her name is "Sexy Thing", since that's what he always calls her.

The Doctor: She's the TARDIS ... and she's a woman!
Amy: (beat) Did you wish really hard?

    • Some people started shipping Rory/TARDIS after the aforementioned human manifestation called him "the pretty one" and briefly shared a telepathic connection with him. As it turns out a few episodes later, Rory, the TARDIS and Amy conceive a child together. All three of them. That's 100% canon now. The Doctor is a bit weirded out by it, then proceeds to marry said child -- long story.
    • One of the audios, Zagreus, had fun with this idea—the TARDIS appears as a personification in the form of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and announces it is betraying the Doctor after what it feels has been gross mistreatment. Later on, this personification fires at a trio of companions with its handgun whilst shouting about them "leaving their dirty knickers all over the place". If there was still an "I'm not making this up" page the link would go here.
      • Along the same lines, one short story had a jealous TARDIS try to impersonate Romana, the Doctor's then-companion.
      • Then there's the Faction Paradox story where the TARDIS's sister accuses the TARDIS of wanting to have a kid with the Doctor. And that's quite apart from the fact said story reveals the TARDIS has parents...
      • Another Faction Paradox story details the fucked-up relationship between the TARDIS "Compassion" and her Ax Crazy firstborn son "Antipathy".
    • Also, Master/TARDIS.
    • There's a few three-way fics of Doctor×female Companion×TARDIS.
    • One fic had the Threesome of the TARDIS, the statue of Aneurin Bevan in the pedestrianised bit of Cardiff city centre (it was wearing Captain Jack's coat, and the fic was unclear as to whether or not it was channelling his spirit) and the Weasleys' Ford Anglia.
    • Red Dwarf crossover "Incompatable": K9×Skutter.

Toys

Video Games

  • GLaDOS/Chell, Portal, which tends to accompany fan interpretations of GLaDOS as a Psycho Lesbian Yandere computer.
    • As of the sequel, Wheatley/Chell have gotten a healthy dose of this as well—not to mention Rick the Adventure Sphere.
    • Atlas and P-body of Portal 2's co-operative play mode get a lot of this too. Given this picture [dead link], and being another of those games with hug gesture, Valve may be invoking this deliberately.
  • Aigis and the Protagonist from Persona 3, as she 'always wants to be by your [the protagonist's] side'. Protagonist's gender irrelevant.
  • Ciel and Zero of Mega Man Zero. It's canon, on the former's part, that is...
    • As if that's not enough, Zero 4 introduces us to Craft and Neige. Unlike the ship above, it's canon on both sides. And a very important part of the game's plot.
  • Fans tend to think of Curly and Quote from Cave Story as a Battle Couple.
  • Roll and Bass/Forte. It's just dang CUTE. And not only that, the apparent ages of the two make it something of a Toy Ship as well.
  • Mass Effect 2 has Joker/EDI, which is even alluded to in-game ("I think you're taking the human-machine interface a little too far.") There's also Shepard/Legion, which is partially supported by the fact that Legion, despite being a robotic Mind Hive with no real emotions, seems to somehow have a crush on Shepard. Or, for those who like Foe Yay, Tali/Legion.
    • And as of Mass Effect 3, Joker/EDI can potentially become canon.
    • Technically applies to everyone in the Galaxy during the Synthesis Ending.
  • Taken to a Squicky level with a sidequest in Knights of the Old Republic. A grieving widow becomes far too attached to her assistance droid. The droid does not reciprocate the feelings.

C8-42: She tried to treat me as her dead husband. It was not healthy for her.
Player Character: Er... all the time?
C8-42: You Do NOT Want to Know

Web Comics

Web Original

"They lived normally with good times and bad, cosy candlelit evenings and occasional quarrels, for the rest of their eternal lives."

  • The Lopez-Sheila-Caboose freaky love triangle from Red vs. Blue, as Lopez is a robot and Sheila is a sentient tank. Tex and Church probably also qualify (Reconstruction spoiler).

Western Animation

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Robo_Ship?oldid=1990354"