Ship Names and Categorization
An in-depth guide for the various ways in which we refer to these two wrinkly ass dudes
Ephemeralartshipping
Throughout the history of online shipping in the English-language Pokemon fandom, it has been a tradition to give ships between characters what I refer to as “Title-shipping” names as opposed to the more standard “name smush” format seen in other fandoms. This format was invented by Pokemon fanfiction writers of the early internet, who I theorize first used these words as verbs and self-identifiers (ex. "I’m a Pokeshipper", "I’m a Rocketshipping fiend!") before they became what we recognize today as singular pairing names (ex. "Preciousmetalshipping is my favorite ship!”)
This tradition has continued on even into the modern day with Generation IX, where we find the namesake for this very website! Ephemeralartshipping is a ship name coined by tumblr user @bi-hop, who I reached out to for comment. They were incredibly kind and offered an in-depth explanation behind the name! To quote directly from them:
“So, during the early days of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I was playing through my copy and eagerly going through the class material. Other people at the time weren’t really doing that, they were mainly just getting badges, but I found the teachers to all be really interesting and fun. Because of that, when I saw Brassius and Hassel’s interactions, I was charmed by them. I immediately thought they’d be a nice couple and I wanted to give them a ship name.”
“I saw no one else had yet and so I decided to try and be the first. (…) EphemeralArtShipping is ephemeral art with shipping tacked on the end. Ephemeral art refers to art that is deliberately made to be temporary and often includes natural elements like leaves, which will rot away in time. Here is an example”
And here, they attached a beautiful photograph by artist Hannah Bullen-Ryner; a representation of a bird made entirely from organic plant material.
“I looked over a few different art movement names and terms but I kept coming back to ephemeral art due to the Grass type association it held in my mind. I also thought the two of them would really like ephemeral art. They’d find the usage of time with it to be really compelling, as well as how it often pushes the boundaries of what is seen as art. (That one famous art piece of a banana taped to a wall could be seen as ephemeral art for example.)”
“So, yeah. Art term. Vaguely Grass type related. I thought it was nice for an artist couple like them, and it didn’t overlap with any preexisting ship names on the Bulbapedia list. I was surprised to see it catch on though! My other attempts at ship names didn’t, but this one did. I’m glad people like it, even if it IS hard to type as people have told me (my bad!)”
As a Pokemon yaoi oldhead, this is my favorite way to refer to the boys purely for the nostalgia (and because of it’s perfect SEO <3). Ephemeralartshipping is primarily used for Hassel and Brassius on Tumblr and by fanartists on art-selling platforms like Etsy, with moderate use on sites like Twitter and Tiktok
.I'm incredibly appreciative of @bi-hope, not only for naming my favorite Gen IX ship, but also
for getting back to me so quickly with such a great explanation of their thought process!
Please check out their blog and give them a follow if you’re able!
Hassius
Though the “Titleshipping” format lives on, it lives in tandem with the aforementioned “name smush” format that has been standardized across English-language fandom spaces for its ease of use. This is where Hassius comes into play! Hassius has a less clear line of origin, presumably because multiple different fans may have come to the same conclusion as opposed to something like ‘Brassel’.
You’ll find Hassius being used more frequently than Ephemeralartshipping on spaces like Twitter, though you’ll often see it tagged just as often on Tumblr.
ハッコル (Haccoru) and コルハサ (Coruhasa)
Japanese-language fandom spaces tend to format ship names utilizing the first few syllables of a character’s name and applying a similar “smushing” technique to create a pormanteau. However, this can vary; it’s incredibly common in Japanese BL fanbases to represent a dominant/submissive dynamic in any given ship by placing the “dominant” character’s name before the “submissive” character. This leads to a ship containing the same couple often having two discrete ship names based on what dynamics are being portrayed in the tagged fanwork.
This is how we get Haccoru (ハッサク Hassaku, Hassel’s JPN name + コルザ Colza, Brassius’ JPN name), in which Hassel is depicted as the dominant partner and vice versa in regards to Coruhasa. Not all fans are sticklers for this distinction and I’ve found that Haccoru is the more prominent ship name between the two.
Neither Japanese ship name has really made the jump over to the Western side of the fandom, so you won’t see them as often on places like Tumblr. These are the primary ship names used by Japanese language accounts on Twitter and Pixiv.
856 (Number Puns) and (Emoji Names)
Japanese BL and GL spaces, especially on Twitter, often prioritize keeping ship-focused fan content separate from the official tags – this is why it can be rare to find random BL and GL fanart in the Twitter tags of popular anime and manga that you know have a bunch of gay fanart out there. Some fandoms have their own discrete BL and GL tags, but most individual artists will use codenames for characters and ships in the form of emojis or number-based puns that make sure their fanwork never end up in the official tags or searches. Outside of content separation, it’s also helpful to have easy to remember shipnames that don’t take up a lot of space specifically to workaround Twitter’s character limit.
For Hassel and Brassius, you may see the number 856 mentioned at times. This is a type of numeric goroawase that replaces the syllables in Haccoru with commonly associated numbers – the 8 corresponds to Ha, the 5 to Ko (co), and the 6 to Ru. You may also see a specific pair of emojis; the Orange emoji and the Sunflower emoji. Hassel is associated with the orange emoji, because his Japanese name (Hassaku) is a type of orange. Brassius is associated with the sunflower emoji because of his love of Sunflora, the sunflower Pokemon :)