Die for Our Ship/Fire Emblem

Fire Emblem as a WHOLE has this in spades. Thanks to the support system, which gives characters both nifty Character Development and stat bonuses, Fire Emblem tends to be a breeding ground for Ship-to-Ship Combat with the unique difference that Shipping in Fire Emblem - and thus arguments thereof - is often concerned with gameplay viability as much as it is with the romantic dynamic between the characters. It doesn't help that several fans view certain ships as a better couple. The gameplay for the series actually allows the player to do this in game - with Perma Death in near-full effect across the games, if you don't like a character, you can intentionally use a Uriah Gambit to get the character out of the way.

Examples of Die for Our Ship in the Akaneia games:

• In Fire Emblem 3, some fans decided Marth went better with either Katua/Kachua/Catria. However, they're generally pretty civil with Sheeda/Shiida/Caeda x Marth fans. Its mostly the Marth/Mary Sue or Marth/Roy shippers (despite the fact that they don't even exist in the same universe and therefore never interact in the FE games) (who generally never even played the game) who do the bashing. Just look at these inflammatory comments done by a member of the Smash bros Fan Dumb.
  • Many Palla/Abel shippers absolutely loathe Est, Palla's little sister and Abel's canon wife, going so far as to claim that Est is "evil" and "stole Abel away from her poor big sister".
  • We should not forget that Marth's older sister Elice gets bashed by Merric/Linde fans, since she is Merric's Victorious Childhood Friend and thus she "cockblocks" Linde's crush-like admiration on Merric^[1] that makes her want to become stronger and more beautiful for him.

Examples of Die for Our Ship in the Jugdral games:

• Fire Emblem 4 suffers from a bit of this as well. As Perma Death and Relationship Values are both important parts of the game, the player can literally invoke Die for Our Ship:
  • Beowulf suffers a lot of hate in the fandom as it is, but Finn/Lachesis gives the haters even more fuel for their fire. In turn, Beowulf fans scorn the Finn/Lachesis pairing, blaming its very existence for the fact that their favorite character isn't liked.
  • Levin/Fury fans turn up their noses at Sylvia. Levin/Sylvia fans turn up their noses at Fury. Levin/Tiltyu fans turn up their noses at both. Out of them, Sylvia seems to get the most hate for supposedly being "too clingy" and "too immature/bitchy", and not to mention her children Leen and Corpul are regarded as Tier Induced Scrappies.
  • And it's worth noting that the Fire Emblem 4 manga made by Nea Fuyuki does not include Lynn/Leen or Leilia/Laylea at all, and make Ares/Aless (who's basically her canon interest) interested in Yuria (who just sees him has a good comrade, at least until the very end, and has an unrequited love for Celice, who's in mutual love with Lana : the Love Triangle between Celice/Lana/Yuria, on the other hand, are canon in-game and the other Fire Emblem 4 related media hint at). Likewise, in Mitsuki Oosawa's version, Holin and Beowulf don't not exist and Ayra and Lex are paired off while the Brother-Sister Incest vibes between Eltoshan and Lachesis go off the ceiling, and once he dies she goes off with Fin. Granted, all 3 mangakas who did official Fire Emblem 4 manga went with their personal pairing preferences, but Nuts Fujimori, at least, hasn't excluded any characters in her version.
    • Holin and Beowulf got off easy by not being featured in Oosawa's manga ('sides, she did draw them). Eltoshan's wife/Aless's mother (named Grahnye in the canon game, but here is named Iria) is made into a spiteful, cold Rich Bitch who's perpetually jealous of Eltoshan and Lachesis' closeness: once he's leaving to Augusty, she cruelly tells them that if they're lovers, their love is oh so condemned to death, is later seen whining to Lachesis when she tries to take command of Nodion after Elto is imprisoned, and gives her permission to join Sigurd's crew only in hopes to get her killed in battle. And once Elto kicks it, she shows almost no emotion after his death, and is eerily happy to know that "that child" (Lachesis, obviously) is crying and suffering for it (And she is). We don't know almost anything about Grahnye/Iria in canon aside of her being from Lenster and her demise before Gen 2 rolls in, so was it really needed to make her such a bitch so Elto/Lache would look better?

Examples of Die for Our Ship in the Elibe games:

• Let's not forget the fighting that goes on over which pairings create the children of certain characters in Fuuin no Tsurugi aka Fire Emblem 6.
  • • Or the fact that there are 6 different endings involving marriage for Roy. While not as fierce as say the Eliwood/ Hector/ Rath / Lyn affair, shippers tend to have a lot of hate for Roy's teacher Cecilia.
• As mentioned above, in Fire Emblem 7, Ninian the Dancer is the biggest victim of this from from rabid Lyn/Eliwood, Eliwood/Hector, and Eliwood/Mary Sue fans who bash her for being angsty (for reasons which aren't necessarily related to Eliwood) as well as for standing in between their pairing of choice.
  • Similarly, Priscilla is bashed six ways from Sunday because all her supports are boys...who happen to be part of the fandom's most popular slash pairings (and in some cases, one reasonably popular het pairing). She gets called a slut, a whore and a leech and one particular fan has even accused her of being a Mary Sue just because men like her.
  • Angst-ridden Pheraen knight Harken is often forgotten or shoved aside so that his canon fiance Isadora can hook up with dashing thief Legault.
  • Sain already gets a lot of crap for being a flirt as it is, but throw pairings like Kent/Fiora and Wil/Rebecca into the mix and it gets worse.
    • Some Wil/Rebecca fans not only hate Sain, but also detest Rebecca's other possible love interest, Lowen.
  • People who pair Erk with other people often bash Serra in the process - especially in fanfiction, where Erk seems to become a mouthpiece for the author's hate of Serra. Serra herself is portrayed as a selfish Erk-obsessed shrew of a woman (there is a fic where she was willing to let one of the other girls die from an injury so she could have Erk to herself) and is "properly" rebuffed in the end. Similarly, Erk is bashed by people who pair Serra with Oswin or Matthew, who portray him as if he truly loathed Serra instead of caring for her yet not being able to say it.
  • Leila and Matthew's canon love for her are shoved to the side to make room for the more popular Matthew/Guy, in spite of Leila canonically dying, which should if anything provide a good basis for a Hurt/Comfort Fic that has Guy helping Matthew getting over his grief, etc. Fans can be so stupid sometimes.
  • Some Kent/Lyn fans can be quite adamant about their shipping preferences, especially in the case of Kent/Lyn vs Kent/Fiora, Lyn/Rath and Lyn/Tactician:
    • Kent/Fiora is an odd case in that the shippers don't hate Fiora herself but rather her supports with Kent, decrying them as out of character and comparing them to bad fanfic.
    • Rath is sometimes disliked by the shippers for being too quiet and seemingly apathetic towards Lyn in their supports. Which makes no sense considering that Rath isn't apathetic or insensitive, just... genuinely Not Good with People. (And considering his backstory, for very good reasons).
    • Tactician/Lyn hate is somewhat understandable because it exists mainly in fanfic, where the Tactician is beefed up into an overly perfect Gary Stu and Lyn's other love interests are made to look like assholes in order to validate the pairing. Still, there can be exceptions to the rule...
  • As a "bonus", some anti Kent/Lyn shippers falsely accuse Kent of being "creepy", "selfish", "domineering" and "too possessive" of Lyn. If they ship Rath/Lyn, they may even accuse the guy of being racist against Nomads too, due to his "cultural shock" in the first part of the game and acting a little forceful in Araphen. (Something that Kent himself aknowledges few later as a mistake, apologizing to Lyn for being unsensitive.)
  • While not nearly as prominent as others, there's a small but increasingly loud coalition of hate developing for the Nino/Jaffar pairing; people denouncing it as "unhealthy", calling it "pedophilia" when Jaffar's age isn't ever brought up in the game AND Nino isn't a prepubescent child either, or claiming their very emotional A support "ruined" Jaffar's character nevermind how Jaffar was also kind-of emotional when he asked Legault to take care of Nino in case he kicked it. A good chunk of these people, unsurprisingly, are Erk/Nino shippers. And sadly, it keeps spreading on ths very wiki, as there are some Jaffar bashers that keep inserting jabs at both him and the Jaffar/Nino pairing wherever they can.

Examples of Die for Our Ship in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones:

• In Fire Emblem 8, some Joshua/Artur and Joshua/Marisa fans quite vocally bash Natasha and the Joshua/Natasha couple. Some Seth/Eirika shippers also seem to have a special dislike for Natasha as well; in general, Natasha is often accused of being a Gold Digger due to the fact that both her paired endings are affluent men... never mind that she doesn't even know Joshua is a prince in their supports, and that the ones with Seth show her as a Workaholic who comes to collapse at some point because she won't stop healing and caring for the people around her.
  • Joshua/Marisa shippers aren't innocent either. Far from it. They portray the sweet cleric as a shrill and evil bitch who does everything in her power to keep Marisa away from Joshua so she can marry him, while derailing the cool-headed but still naive Action Girl into a angsty tragic lovelorn heroine who worries more about Joshua finding her desirable or not than the self-improvement she seeks in canon.
  • Colm is bashed as well by people who prefer to pair up Neimi with someone else.
  • And then there's the small but still very persistent war among Eirika shippers, in which Prince Innes and Prince Lyon are derailed in order to make Seth look like the better choice. (Meanwhile, Master Saleh and Forde are just plain ignored.)

Examples of Die for Our Ship in the Tellius games:

• Fire Emblem 9 has Ike/Soren shippers who bash Elincia to no end. This, despite the fact that Ike shows no interest in her romantically. It's mostly stopped now that the sequel shows Elincia really coming into her own. The tenth game implies she ends up with Geoffrey. And you can make Ike and Soren's Ho Yay more or less canon if you get their supports.
  • These days, the Ike/Soren shippers are a lot more sane than the Ike/Elincia shippers. One particular fan of the latter demonizes the fuck out of Geoffrey, as you can see throughout this topic.
  • Not to mention the very, very ugly war between Tibarn/Reyson shippers and Naesala/Reyson shippers.
    • Another one where the tenth game comes to the rescue, as it sets up a canonical relationship between Naesala and Reyson's sister, Leanne, who becomes the mother of his children (a little heron girl and a little raven boy). Looking back on it, there were definitely hints of that relationship back in the ninth game, where Leanne was just an NPC.
• In Fire Emblem 10, main character Micaiah occasionally gets bashed for her romance with Sothe and standing in the way of Ho Yay, on top of getting accused of being a Canon Sue.

1. ↑ Well, OK, this person is never identified as Merric, but the shippers assume it is for some reason