Ship-to-Ship Combat

'Tis what you get when Avatar: The Last Airbender fans go mad.

Casey Jones: Not even close, Zip-neck. Professor and Mary Ann. Happily ever after.
Donatello: Heh! No way, Atomic Mouth. Gilligan was her main man. They'd be married and have six kids by now.
Casey Jones: Gilligan was a geek, Barfarooni!
Donatello: You're the geek, Camel Breath.
Casey Jones: Dome Head.
Donatello: [feels his head for a bit] Elf Lips.

—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

AKA Shipping Wars. Nothing to do with naval warfare (or space warfare for that matter). Or UPS vs. FedEx.

Many fans ship. Some of them have a distinct ship that they like over all others, while some of them support several, sometimes contradictory, pairings. Some of them like to debate a pairing while keeping in mind its status in canon, while some of them discuss it believing their pairing is Canon (or will inevitably be). Now throw in the power of the Internet to connect everybody (and everybody's opinions) with everybody else...

Shippers tend to become emotionally invested in their pairings, and Internet shipping discussions can be quite difficult to keep peaceful. All too often, they can't help but devolve into heated quarrels where preferences are insulted, ad hominem attacks are thrown, and comparisons to Nazis are made (though, to be sure, the latter aspect is just as capable of arising from any subject of disagreement currently known to exist).

These Flame Wars are known as Shipping Wars: verbal arguments between people with different opinions about romantic relationships between fictional characters. There are those who bash whoever doesn't like their ship of choice, those who bash whoever likes a certain ship, and those who do both, usually basing their attacks on how Fanon the discussed ship is. The fact that most ships really aren't canon and will never be is usually ignored. Particular hatred for a pairing or a character who gets in the way of a pairing manifests in the form of Die for Our Ship. Alternatively, fans might pair that character with another character, getting him or her out of the way of their favorite ship. This creates "alliances" between different shippers called Ship Mates.

Common victims include Platonic Life Partners, Heterosexual Life Partners, and Lovely Angels. On one hand, lots of fans see Subtext, hints, and evidence where there really isn't; on the other, if there is some degree of subtext, other fans will adamantly refuse to see it and insult those who do. The Draco in Leather Pants also tends to be paired up a lot, and Shipping Wars erupt when deciding to whom he belongs.

Please note: someone just simply stating their opinion about whether they like a pairing or whether they think it's canon or not isn't Ship To Ship Combat or a ship war, that's just having a discussion. Or even when someone makes fun of a pairing. It's when the fans of a certain pairing start actually attacking and insulting the fans of another pairing that it becomes Ship To Ship Combat, such as if someone says they don't like a certain pairing or doesn't think it's canon and the fans of that pairing become enraged and start attacking that person for their opinion.

Trope Co, we'd like to order an emergency supply of MST3K Mantra, please.

Examples of Ship-to-Ship Combat include:

Anime and Manga

  • A shipping war has sprung up in Sonic X, centered around Tails/Cosmo vs Tails/Cream. Fans are prepared to kill the characters off to get their ship. In Tails/Cream's case, this isn't necessary; Cosmo died in the last episode. However, Tails/Cosmo fans find ways to return her to life, often via the seed Sonic found. This is illustrated in a somewhat disturbing manner here.
  • Bakugan is somewhat a curious case, as the main target is not Dan, but Shun, his Lancer and Foil. The first season teased Alice, while third season teased Fabia. Surprisingly, the shipwar is notably low on bashing and cursing too, with each sides prefer to piling evidences trying to top each other.
    • The fans' general agreement about Fabia's striking resemblance to Shun's deceased mom can be used to support her or against her.
  • What is generally considered the bloodiest ship war ever took place in the Pokémon fandom. The main debate seems to be what combination of the constantly-fluctuating Power Trio should hook up; there's at least thirty possible sides, each with a knife to the throat of the others. Also, there's the Rocketshipping (Jessie/James) debate, a particularly odd one in that there's really no one else to pair them up with.
    • The main war was between Pokéshippers (pairing up Ash/Satoshi and Misty/Kasumi) and Palletshippers (Ash/Satoshi and Gary/Shigeru).
      • The "official" list of named ships for the fandom literally has Over Nine Thousand entries.
      • Perhaps the fanatical nature of Ship-to-Ship Combat is best exemplified by the fact that the Ship War can be described as HAVING TREATIES and civil wars. There are times to just give up, fanboys AND fangirls.
  • Considering the core cast contains no less then ten main characters, there are literally dozens of one-season villains and one-shot "best friends", and the two members of the most official couple have five or more suitors apiece—and there are several canons to the series—it's no wonder Sailor Moon is a quagmire of ship related insanity. Specifically, the debates between Mamoru fans and Seiya fans can get really ugly. There's also the Uranus/Neptune shippers versus the "they're just close cousins!" sect... although that one is more a battle against outright lies (example: Prince Uranus) by fans who don't like same sex pairings.
  • Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle fans tend to pick a side between Kurogane/Fay and Kurogane/Tomoyo. All of this is based on subtext (this is CLAMP, after all), but Die for Our Ship is common.
    • There was also Kurogane/Fay and Chi/Fay, although the latter ship pretty much died out later on.
  • Spike/Julia vs. Spike/Faye for Cowboy Bebop. Many Spike/Julia fans insist Faye is a slutty, obnoxious bitch who's too immature and whiny for Spike, while Spike/Faye fans often believe Julia's a fickle syndicate whore who destroyed Spike's relationship with his former best friend and ultimately got him killed.
    • Which is kind of silly, because Spike never showed any interest for Faye in the first place. Throughout the entire series, Spike's motivation was Julia. If anything, as shown from the last few episodes, Faye has one-sided feelings for Spike. The point of the series is that Spike is living entirely in the past, to the point where he's not even really experiencing the present.
  • Shinichi/Ran and Conan/Ai for the Detective Conan fandom. Some boards even ban threads discussing either pairing. Though the English-speaking fandom is fairly peaceful, you still need to tread carefully...
  • Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds Scoopshippers, take arms! Tonight, the Careshippers come! But THEY ARE NOT PREPARED!
  • Many Naruto fans enjoy milking the loads of possible combinations within the Five-Man Band for all they're worth.
    • The Naruto fandom's version is Naruto/Sakura fans versus Naruto/Hinata and Sasuke/Sakura fans. Starting a shipping thread on any of these couples, on any anime/manga message board, is tantamount to throwing a live hand grenade.
    • Apparently, a new group is forming that's against all three big and popular ships, mostly out of disgust for the canon portrayals of the relationships and the years-long ship war over them.
    • Even side ships are not safe. Shikamaru/Temari and Shikamaru/Ino wars can pop up at any time. And you're just asking for it if you say Sasuke should end up with Karin and not Sakura or Naruto.
    • And never, ever get yaoi involved, because then hell really has broken loose. Most yaoi shippers will stay out, but the ones out for more amusement/blood will insert themselves into the argument by saying their ship is better/more canon than the others being "discussed".
      • Heck, even people on the same side of shipping can be incredibly vicious. Sasuke/Naruto vs. Naruto/Sasuke, anyone? And don't you dare say these are the same pairing deep down. For those of you who are understandably confused, the order apparently indicates who the dominant person in the relationship is...
    • Neji/Hinata vs. Naruto/Hinata has been known to get pretty messy, too. Naruto/Hinata shippers can't seem to wrap their heads around Neji's Heel Face Turn, claim that Hinata had absolutely nothing to do with it, or else they claim that Hinata will lose her purpose as a character if she ever gets over Naruto and moves on with her life. Or, uh, maybe they just don't like the idea of incest...Neji and Hinata are cousins... Neji/Hinata shippers tend to demonize Naruto as someone who is so Oblivious to Love that he would downright forget that he was dating her and go running off to try to woo Sakura at a moment's notice, ooor they'll put up the defense that "Neji and Hinata have to get married, so they can keep the genetic phlebotinum in the family". Nevermind that an Arranged Marriage is no guarantee of love and decidedly not a replacement for Character Development.
    • Anything involving the Akatsuki, particularly Deidara.
  • Bleach: The Ship-To-Ship Combat between fans of Ichigo/Orihime versus fans of Ichigo/Rukia is particularly bloody.
    • Most of the existing Bleach forums (including the default named one) out there were established during the Soul Society arc, a period of time when the fandom considered Ichigo/Rukia to be canon and Ichigo/Orihime to be mere crack shipping. However, as the latter pairing gained development, the forum environments turned hostile (as some moderators were more likely supporters of the former) and wank ensued (possibly causing the downtime of an entire forum during a peak period). To this day, shipping sections on Bleach forums are usually heavily regulated (in one case, completely missing), and the majority of Ichigo/Orihime fans have banded together on their own ship-oriented forum.
    • Rabid Ulquiorra/Orihime fans have also joined in the Ship-To-Ship Combat against Ichigo/Orihime. Interestingly some of them seem to fight only on behalf of Ichigo/Rukia while still bashing Orihime for "being weak" and "not going off with Ulquiorra", and at least some of those people have become infamous in fandom for just this.
      • Adding to that, some rabid yaoi and Ichigo/Orihime fans have jumped into the Ship-To-Ship Combat by bashing on Ulquiorra/Orihime and a tad on Rukia with accounts dedicated to it, and obnoxious stamps [dead link] . Noting the first reference, it's particularly noticeable how much utter contempt there is for Orihime. She just can't win in fandom.
      • Funnily enough, declaring oneself an Ishida/Orihime fan will usually make shippers of any of the "main" Orihime pairings look at you like you just said something really odd and give you the internet equivalent of a pat on the head and a "right, you go on along, dear." (Unless you're an Ishida/Orihime fan who's associated with... a rather polemic BNF and her cohorts: then you'll be completely damned.)
    • It gets even worse when both Japanese and American voice-actors for Ichigo offer their opinion on the shipping issue, and one side of the war switch from fangirling to instant hate.
  • Black Butler pretty much is a war within itself nowadays, especially with the new season. (What else is expected though, when every male in the show is a total Bishonen?) Despite the only confirmed canon pairing being Sebastian/Any Cat He Can Find (and yet it's not beastiality at allllll), many fangirls persist over pairings like Ciel x Sebastian, though this is probably somewhat canon in its own right. You'll also stumble along Sebastian paired with Meirin, Finnian, Bard, Alois, Lau, Claude, Tanaka... Try giving a solid standing for your pairing in a ship board, or especially on YouTube, and you'll usually have at least 5 people calling you a bitch. This fandom tends to be nicer, but still.
    • Aside from the most common pairings of Master/Butler, Ciel/Sebastian and Alois/Claude, the circus arc opened a new possibility of a Heterosexual Pairing with Ciel. Yes, it's possible. You now have the option of supporting Ciel/Lizzy, or Ciel/Doll aka Freckles. You can find a couple forums with wars about this. A lot of it is troll logic about how if Ciel really loved Doll, she'd be in the anime, or if he loved Lizzy, insert whatever reason you like. Oh, and if you think you're safe just sticking to Alois/Ciel, which is practically Belarus/Russia based on certain fansubs, you're not.
    • Actually, the only pairing that doesn't get too fought over is Lau and RanMao. It's rarely shipped, but no one fights over it. Probably because it's pretty undeniable that it's hot.
    • Ciel/Lizzie (and Lizzie in general) is getting some more support lately, though, as we learn that Elizabeth did learn swordmanship, is good enough with it to protect Ciel from zombies, and she won't keep hiding it anymore... Will that bring wank? Only God knows.
  • Rurouni Kenshin fandom has no shortage of shipping wars to decide who was/would be be better for Kenshin: Kaoru or Tomoe. Though they're usually one-sided: Tomoe wasn't introduced till the final arc of the manga and doesn't even show up in the anime (only the Tsuiokuhen OVA) and is the tiniest bit dead by the time the main story starts. Guess who has the bigger fanbase.
    • Don't forget Shura, the Pirate Lady Kenshin meets. A smaller fanbase desperately wanted her to be with Kenshin.
    • In regards to Megumi/Kenshin... Megumi actually became quite the victim of ship-based bashing. Kaoru/Kenshin shippers did not take her teasing personality in stride as well as her open interest in Kenshin (which she didn't relinquish until the Kyoto arc), and accused her of being a whore who only wanted to get into Kenshin's hakama and hated Kaoru (despite Megumi being a Cool Big Sis to Kaoru and doing what she could to help her when she had an Heroic BSOD). They mellowed out later and started shipping her with Sanosuke instead, and then Tomoe took her place as "Kaoru's love rival".
  • Digimon fandom suffered from a terminal case of Pair the Spares in its early years that went something like this: "Digidestined must be paired up in descending order by importance." Thus, Taichi/Sora, Mimi with either Koushiro, Yamato, or Jyou (despite that she rarely even speaks to the first two) and Takeru/Hikari. Then Hikari was bumped up to female lead in the next season opposite newcomer Daisuke, and a whole new pairing sprang up. Which wasn't helped at all by the continued and increased Ship Tease of Takeru/Hikari. Then everybody stopped keeping track when the Distant Finale paired Yamato with Sora.
    • The flame wars between Takeru/Hikari and Daisuke/Hikari fans got so bad that both sides eventually agreed to a peace treaty.
    • Taichi/Sora and Yamato/Sora fans still have it out once in a while. Taichi/Sora fans rationalize that Yamato comes off as a huge douche for part of the second season, and therefore can't stand the thought of him ending up with Sora, or that Taichi and Sora were "obviously" flirting/in love with each other for the entire first season and that Sora ending up with Yamato instead was a giant cop-out. Yamato/Sora fans just use the Distant Finale for rationalization, with some of them pointing out that many people end up with someone other than their oldest friend/first crush. And in the middle, the Taichi/Yamato fans- often considered the most populous shippers in Digimon fandom- are very bitter because of the constant Ship Tease between Taichi/Yamato in the first season, including official Taichi/Yamato art published in a magazine. The whole debate over whether Yamato and Sora were Strangled by the Red String or not will probably never fully die out, in fact.
  • On the flip-side, in some series, you must beware any pairing that blasphemes against the Ho Yay. There's a reason that Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing are shipping minefields.
    • "But Master Marik, it is obvious that Yugi is in love with Tea." "What? No way, that's insane! What kind of messed up fanfics have you been reading?"
  • The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise has the battles between the Nanoha/Fate and Nanoha/Yuuno factions, which is not helped by the creators knowing about it and fueling both sides with loads of Ship Tease to keep the flames burning. There even seems to be a division in the lesser ranks of the production themselves; for example the Megami Sound Stages seem to support Nanoha/Yuuno; while the actresses who play Nanoha and Fate are convinced they're a couple. These flames, however, while apparently violent, tend to be pretty friendly overall (perhaps due to the theme of the show itself), and people who take it as Serious Business are routinely mocked in the fandom.
  • The Prince of Tennis fandom is FULL of passive-aggressive fights because of its Ho Yay and Foe Yay. The Tezuka x Fuji pairing is often bashed by fans who ship them with others, specially Fujicest and Atobe x Tezuka fans ( And it's made worse after Fuji and Tezuka DO get Ship Tease in the manga itself), the few Ryoma x Sakuno and An x Momoshiro fans are often automatically accused of being "homophobic" or "having the icky, useless girls take Ryoma away from Momo" by slash shippers (even if they do ship some slash couples alongside the het ones), Inui x Kaidoh fans bash Yanagi and the Inui x Yanagi pairing and fans, Sanada x Yukimura do the same with Atobe and Atobe x Sanada and vice-versa (Atobe x Sanada peeps retort by bashing Yukimura)...
  • Macross Frontier fandom has fighting between those who want Alto to end up with Sheryl Nome (the accomplished star), or with Ranka Lee (the Moe starlet). Naturally, this irks the fans who are in it for the Humongous Mecha, the story or the music, or some combination thereof, as one anonymous 4Chan user put it: "This kind of ship-to-ship combat doesn't belong on /m/!"
    • More interesting is that while all Macross series have love triangles, this one is especially complicated since there is some subtext between Ranka and Sheryl and even some scenes that can imply a threesome end. So the shipping war is actually between Ranka/Alto, Sheryl/Alto, Sheryl/Ranka and Ranka/Alto/Sheryl.
    • This is mostly a redux version of the shipwars in the original Macross fandom. Replace "the accomplished star" with "the Broken Bird Bridge Bunny" (Misa), and the "moe starlet" with "the Chinese Girl that became a rising Idol Singer" (Minmay) and BRACE YOURSELF for the Hikaru/Misa fans going absolutely BERSERK at the mere mention of Minmay, bashing her and falsely accusing her of being a slut who played with Hikaru's feelings since the beginning (despite how she dealed with problems of her own) and who is oh-so inferior to the Ultra Mature And Powerful Strong Woman Misa (despite Misa being much more complex than that.)
  • The Inuyasha fandom is more or less evenly divided between fans who think that Kagome is an abusive Scrappy whose love for InuYasha isn't nearly as true as that of tragic paragon Kikyo, and fans who think that Kikyo is a psycho ex standing in the way of InuYasha and Kagome's true redeeming love. Never mind that one is the reincarnation of the other, and thus the question is less "who" than it is "when".
  • Tamao and Yaya didn't have it easy despite a good army of shippers for their side for Strawberry Panic. While the original vote was open-ended, the anime had the pairings settled as Nagisa with Shizuma and Hikari with Amane. And Tamao doesn't even have another girl to fall back on... talk about fighting for a sinking ship.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion is rife with this, though of a more subtle and insidious brand than any of those above. Although there is the usual mutual enmity between the Rei/Shinji shippers, the Asuka/Shinji shippers, the more controversial Misato/Shinji shippers, the Kaworu/Shinji shippers, and (God forbid) the occasional vicious fans of Mana Kirishima, the worst offender is the internal strife amongst the most devoted Asuka/Shinji shippers. These are typically people who feel vindicated that theirs is the only ship that is canon in regards to the admittedly ambiguous movie. A/S shippers, while agreeing on the basic tenet of their mutual ship (that two people, commonly referred to as Asuka and Shinji, are romantically entangled in some way) agree on little else. There are vicious, exhaustive arguments about the dynamics of the relationship, and the canonicity of the dynamics of the relationship. Thanks to the ambiguity and infinite variability of interpretations of the series, each shipper has their own personal character interpretation which each defends with fanatical fervor even against others within the same shipping subset. This has been made worse in the recent months by the recurrence of arguments over the validity of Asuka/Shinji yuri, yaoi, and gender-swap pairings versus the original ship, further factionalizing the demographic.
    • The fact that there are several Alternate Continuity settings to work with can complicate matters even further. The Rebuild of Evangelion films have also helped reignite the debate by giving a new continuity to work with and, as of the second movie, indicating that Shinji/Rei is an Official Couple. Militant Shinji/Asuka shippers and fans of the original series believe that their hook-up "doesn't count" because Rei will "inevitably" be revealed to have been built with the DNA of Shinji's mother Yui just like in the original series and that she and Shinji are simply confused about the type of love they have for each other, whereas Shinji/Rei shippers argue that their love for each other is obviously romantic with Asuka herself acknowledging it and that Rebuild is an Alternate Continuity that has already made changes to the plot and characterizations and is not obliged to make Rei exactly like her NGE self. It's safe to say that you pretty much do not want to bring this up in a forum if you value your life.
    • Yes, Neon Genesis Evangelion deconstructs shipping, too! Or at least makes it utterly incomprehensible. Either way, in true Eva fashion. Anno has taught us well...
  • Back in the early days of the Internet, the large and prolific Ranma ½ fanfic community engaged in a huge three-sided shipping war among the partisans of Ranma's three "official" fiancées. The Flanderization, mischaracterization, recriminations, demonization, and outright nastiness still echoes through Fanon more than a decade later.
  • For Black Cat, Creed/Train fans and Saya/Train fans don't really get along. Huge arguments were made over whether Train ever liked Saya as more than a friend, which evidently would make it more canonical than the pairing of Creed and Train. Not that any of this really matters, considering that Saya died very early in the story and that Creed is the Big Bad with a rather questionable grip on sanity and whose obvious homolust towards Train is equally obviously one-sided.
  • Amongst Shugo Chara fans, there is definitely animosity between the Tadase/Amu and Ikuto/Amu factions, with the expected Die for Our Ship mentalities.
  • The Konata/Kagami vs. Konata/Miyuki camps in Lucky Star, even though this anime spends much of its time satirizing anime tropes and conventions. Oh, the irony.
  • Among Code Geass fans, the pairing wars between Lelouch/Kallen and Lelouch/C.C. shippers can get pretty vicious at times. And they're hardly the only two ships out there: there's also Lelouch/Suzaku, Lelouch/Nunnally, Lelouch/Euphemia, Lelouch/Shirley, Lelouch/Rolo...yeah. That's not even getting into all the Suzaku ships, either: there's Suzaku/Euphie, Suzaku/Lelouch, Suzaku/Gino, etc..
    • It's too bad that so few accept Kaguya's point of view: "If I can't have him all to myself, let's share him!"
  • SHUFFLE!, dear God, SHUFFLE!. The fiercest Ship-To-Ship Combat happens between the Instant Fanclubs Ai Ai Asa-senpai and Kitto Kitto Kaede-chan.
    • Generally, Ai Ai Asa-senpai members are the targets of an Enemy Mine by all the other fanclubs, even going as far as to call Asa a "selfish bitch." Your Mileage May Vary on Asa in general.
  • Oddly averted in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn fandom. Everyone is free to ship whatever they like, and very few people would have a serious debate about it, since most people are multi-shippers. Considering Tsuna and the Loads and Loads of Characters, it's not hard to see why. Although there seems to be opposition between Gokudera/Tsuna shippers and Yamamoto/Gokudera shippers.
  • If you ever see the name "Haruhi Suzumiya" used in conjunction with the word "Shipping", get out while you still have the chance. Someone is going to get flamed. Odds are, everyone will. In other words, never discuss your favorite pair with Kyon involved. Side pairings aren't exempt either; Haruhi/Mikuru is particularly divisive even when Kyon isn't in the discussion.
  • X 1999: Seishirou/Subaru vs. Subaru/Kamui [dead link] , anyone? In addition, Fuma/Kamui vs. Subaru/Kamui is a bloodbath in its own right.
  • Fruits Basket fandom has had many a pairing war between Kyo/Tohru and Yuki/Tohru fans, with the occasional alternate pairing thrown into the mix (Kyo/Kagura, Yuki/Machi, Shigure/Tohru...Momiji/Tohru...anyone/Tohru...).
  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni has a somewhat mild case of this. There's Rika/Hanyuu vs Rika/Satoko vs Rika/Keiichi vs Keiichi/Satoko vs Akasaka/Rika. However, the most obvious is Keiichi/Rena vs Keiichi/Mion. For some reason, Keiichi/Rena was more popular in the past, but now Keiichi/Mion is. Same with Rika/Satoko and Rika/Keiichi, that used to be the least popular Rika pairings.
    • Post-Kai anime OVAs seem to be having a field day with the Rena-Keiichi-Mion love triangle. This has only added fuel to the shipping war flames.
  • D.Gray-man: The shipping wars of pairing Allen with their favorite OTP. The sad thing is that he hasn't even really shown that much interest in any of them, being a confirmed Celibate Hero who has expressed adamant disinterest in anything romantic. There's the obvious wars between Lenalee/Allen and Road/Allen fans, and then there's the Ho Yay / Foe Yay shippers (Kanda/Allen, Lavi/Allen, Tyki/Allen)...
  • Axis Powers Hetalia used to be not as bad as some other fandoms about this, as shippers can find foundation for virtually any ship if they're good at Wiki-fu, and multishipping and Ship Mates are common practices in the fandom. Key word: used to be.
    • The most prominent example is the struggle between America/England fans and anti-fans. America/England is easily the most popular ship in fandom, but its massive popularity has caused many fans to attack it as "too popular" and "taking attention away from the much more interesting ships" (which usually means "gets more attention than MY ship", considering that Russia/America and France/England fans tend to be the loudest about this) and the APH Hatedom and Fan Haters to make it their main target. It's reached the point where some America/England fans don't even post their fanfic/artwork at the main Hetalia community on LJ and many fans avoid the community as a whole because they feel that uneasy about the general attitude there.
      • In regards to Russia/America, France/England and America/England, it isn't uncommon to see one of the characters portrayed as a 'villain' of sorts to give the shipper's OTP that 'push'. Examples include turning the 'potential threat' into a rapist or Domestic Abuser, bloodying up the character or taking negative stereotypes and using them to their advantage.
      • You just know a fandom has a serious case of Ship-To-Ship Combat when the very first reaction to Portugal's prospect appearance is people using the character to attack America/England, claiming that Portugal is England's "true partner" and the pairing will "take down" America/England. Poor Portugal only exists as experimental sketches and doesn't even have a personality yet, and people are already gearing up for a shipping war, much to the annoyance of those who just want to ship in peace.
      • There are even some explicitly anti-America/England fanfics out there that are essentially rants placed in the characters' mouths about how America/England deserves to be hated/bashed for daring to be too popular (read: more popular than the author's preferred pairings). Truly, America/England is the Base Breaker ship of APH fandom.
      • Let's not forget how the anti-America/England fringe try to cash on the Incest Subtext betwen them, falsely claiming that their relationship would be Parental Incest. This is despite how England refers to himself as "this child's older brother" in the "Battle for America" strips, and America saying "I'm not your little brother" anymore in "Cleaning Out the Storage", thus making this relative squick lower as they do not consider themselves as adoptive father and child.
    • Rabid Poland/Lithuania and Russia/Lithuania shippers engage in Die for Our Ship against the other's preferred Liet suitor regularly. The former camp cashing in on Russia's status as the local Psychopathic Manchild and Memetic Molester to turn him into a Complete Monster and ignore his tragic backstory as well as his Despair Event Horizon; the latter camp exaggerates Poland's initial selfishness to Jerkass levels and accuse him of being too shallow and brainless for Lithuania, erasing Poland's Character Development. (In case you're wondering what happens to Belarus in all this, she's usually just ignored completely because of her not being a major character and the Belarus/Russia and Belarus/Lithuania camps being much smaller and less vocal than the other, more popular rival ships like Russia/America, Russia/China, etc. But yes, STSC between the latter group of ships and Russia/Lithuania has been spotted from time to time, with Russia/Liet fans either making Belarus a Complete Monster who would rape Liet to make him too "impure" for Russia, or blaming her for Russia's inability to make friends.)
    • In Japan where England/Japan is one of the most popular pairings, there was a huge conflict between rabid shippers (most of them were actually trolls) of Japan/England and America/England that involved trolling, personal attacks, deleting each other's videos in Nico Nico Douga under false accusations, etc. Note, though, that it was essentially a 2ch shipwar getting out of hand and the majority of shippers (the sane ones) on both sides were dismayed by it. (In fact, America/England shippers on both fandoms generally either regard Japan as a best friend to both America and England or having one-sided feelings for England that he's not planning to act on; and England/Japan fans either ignore America altogether or use England's America-related angst as great opportunity for some hurt/comfort). A few America/Japan shippers got mixed up in that mess too, although in smaller numbers (America/Japan fans tend to portray England as the sympathetic unlucky rival and/or friend). Funnily enough, soon after the combat died out, there was a boom of fanart and doujinshi for the Outcasts OT3 (America/Japan/England). Coincidence? I think not.
    • Poor Italy and the pairing Germany/Italy are also targets of much hatred by rabid Prussia/Germany and Austria/Germany shippers. The former are especially loud about it, with some of these fans becoming notorious for whining about how their ship is so "oppressed" or how Germany/Italy is so "unfairly popular", even in communities where Prussia/Germany gets as much attention and fanworks as Germany/Italy does, if not more. In fact, there was an epic event when a mod in the Germancest comm tried to go Playing the Victim Card by framing people who had called her out on her rabidness and then claiming they had hacked into the comm. Screencaps are here!
    • And there's the ongoing feud between rabid Austria/Hungary and Prussia/Hungary fans. Apparently, you either think that Austria and Hungary's love is so ultra sacred that they should not even be allowed to think of looking at other potential partners lest rabid fangirl dreams will be Ruined FOREVER and True Love will not survive (eeeeeh?), or you think that Austria is a snobbish, boring, abusive, rapist asshole whom Hungary got "Strangled by the Red String" with via the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Compromise and MUST dump like a hot potato so she can "reaffirm her feminist stance" by throwing herself into the arms of the "more fun, manly, passionate and entertaining" Prussia (wut?).
    • Fans are divided on whether Greece should be with his rival Turkey or his friend Japan, with the respective viewpoints boiling down to "Greece and Turkey obviously have Belligerent Sexual Tension in canon and they make for a far hotter and more interesting ship than Japan ever could with Greece" vs. "Greece and Turkey obviously hate each other's guts in canon and Japan is the perfect match for Greece." Though it's really just the Vocal Minority of Turkey/Greece shippers who look down on Greece/Japan as "boring and non-historical" and Greece/Japan shippers who look down on Turkey/Greece as "abusive and non-canonical" who can get a bit snarky at times.
      • The worst by a mile, however, are the militant Turkey/Greece fans who attack Japan as a Relationship Sue with little to no evidence, the anime as promoting a "historically unimportant" pairing over a "historically important" one (but never the webcomic or manga, funnily enough), and/or the Greece/Japan ship as "unfairly popular" (even though Greece/Japan, while somewhat more popular than Turkey/Greece, gets nowhere near the popularity of the F/A/C/E ships, which makes the "gets more attention than my ship" sentiment behind this claim even more obvious). The majority of Turkey/Greece fans are not like this, of course, with many of them even shipping both Turkey/Greece and Greece/Japan, and the Vocal Minority is at least merciful enough to leave Japan alone in their fanworks, but that doesn't make the minority's accusations any less embarrassing.
      • Regarding Japan ships in general, there's some division between those who think Greece/Japan is a Moe Couplet and those who think it's just a snoozefest, those who think England/Japan is the true Moe Couplet and those who think it really isn't, and those who find China/Japan or Japan/Taiwan more interesting and "historically canon" than the aforementioned ships and those who find them squicky due to the conflicted history between them. Like with the Turkey/Greece vs. Greece/Japan debate mentioned above, it isn't too bad as multishipping is accepted. So long as you leave out the minority of Fan Dumb who like throwing around the terms "Crack Pairing" and "unfairly popular" in regards to the top two Japan pairings with little to no logic behind them, that is.
        • Japan/Taiwan seems to have a pretty bad reputation in the West, however. As it's the most popular pairing for Taiwan in J-Fandom and pretty much the only het choice for Japan that is mildly aknowledged by canon, many W-fans side-eye it hard and extrapolate their issues with Taiwan's characterization in many artworks to their real opinion on Taiwan the character, accusing her of being a Mary Sue and sometimes being harsh to everyone who ships it, saying that the Japan/Taiwan shippers are "creeps who ignore the issues of the Japanese colonization to imagine themselves as Taiwan" among other things.
    • Spain/Romano has also been under fire lately, as they're often accused of pushing their couple into other shippers' faces due to some Himaruya notes, or hating on America/England shippers and accusing England of being a pedophile. Of course this isn't always the case and the latter accusation was actually exaggerated and used in propaganda by some anti-fans to discredit the pairing—but the Vocal Minority of Spamano fans don't help the pairing's case with their own pushiness and make the generalized accusations all too closer to reality to ruin it for everyone else.
      • Spain/Romano vs. Romano/Belgium has started to become this trope, due to a few fans on both sides having tendencies to tear down the rival pairing and invalidate it as "incestuous and sick". Anti-Shipping Goggles also play heavily into the debates of who Romano really likes. To some, a third option doesn't even exist because there's just no possibility of him being bisexual—not to mention, it adds more fuel to the Het Is Ew camp's unfair "Belgium and the other Hetalia girls are only stupid and anti-feminist Relationship Sues!" accusations.
      • Some France/Spain fans do not take too kindly to Romano's abrasive personality and the idea that Spain would be more attached to a "historically insignificant" colony of his than a "healthier" relationship with France, who he was said to have an undesirable yet inseparable relationship with. Though it's still yet to reach a toxic level like with America/England's involvement in shipping combat, a vocal group of fans have thrown potshots at Romano and accuse him of being in the way of Spain's happiness with France or any male that's not "an abusive, heartless psychopath" that Spain is too dumb to see the bad in. Oh, and don't forget the Romano bashers who insist on Romano being a bigot and an homophobe in canon too.
    • The biggest victim of these ship wars, ATM? Seychelles, the local Nubile Savage and Plucky Girl. She was a minor character with a mere cameo in the comics... then she became an Ascended Extra in Gakuen Hetalia (both the original script and the PSP game), and then the poor girl started getting shit from everyone coming from everywhere. The Het Is Ew camp called her a Relationship Sue, the "fandom feminists" accused her of being "offensive" and "submissive to males", and the USUK and FRUK rabidshippers accused her of standing in between their beaus because she had some degree of Ship Tease with both England and France. (Nevermind that France is after Anything That Moves, that Gakuen Hetalia isn't that centered in romance but more in The Power of Friendship, that Seychelles isn't exactly shown as submissive or an Extreme Doormat to either France or England, and that in the PSP game itself Sey actually helps America to gain England's attention after a fight, which can easily be interpreted as her Playing Cyrano for them.)
    • Prussia/Canada gets Fan Dumb from both sides, thanks to garnering both rabid fans who tout it as indisputably canon and interpret everything remotely related to either character as ironclad proof that Himaruya is shipping the two together and rabid haters who attack it as an insultingly baseless pairing that only shallow fangirls who don't give a whit about history or canon would think is remotely plausible. The first camp is definitely annoying considering that they've done things like declare that Prussia's character song was obviously a love song to Canada on absolutely no evidence or applying Die for Our Ship treatment to Cuba and Lovable Sex Maniac for no other reason than feeling "threatened" by their bonds with Canada, but so is the second camp who often acts as if the mere popularity of Prussia/Canada is an affront to the entire fandom in spite of it being far from the only Hetalia pairing that gets little support in canon or history.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler has had a lot of escalating Ship-To-Ship Combat ever since the introduction of Athena Hellos, Hayate's canonical first girlfriend. While the old shipping lines (Hayate/Nagi vs. Hayate/Hinagiku vs. Hayate/Nishizawa vs. Hayate/Maria, etc.) still exist, the major battle seems to be between those who think Hayate and his New Old Flame are destined to be together forever without any doubts, and those who think that she is an evil Yandere who ruined Hayate's life by utterly destroying his self-esteem and must be slutshamed to no end because she is somewhat more openly fanservicy than the other girl.
  • Death Note has a couple pairings, such as Light/L, Mello/Near, and Mello/Matt, along with pairing any of the above with an original character in fanfiction.
    • There's also a minor shipwar between Light/Misa and L/Misa shippers. Needless to say, neither get on well with the Light/L shippers who were as much of an inspiration for the Het Is Ew trope as Heero/Duo. The shipping wars simply tend to be more along het and slash lines rather than within the slash and het fandoms, with Misa and Halle getting bashed because they take Light and Mello away from their potential male partners.
  • Back in the early years of the Slayers fandom, there were some pretty heated ship wars between Lina/Gourry and Lina/Zel shippers, made even more fun by Lost Universe with shared voice actors and character archetypes, not to mention Fanon shared continuity. It's calmed down considerably since.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED would have been bad enough: Kira/Fllay vs Kira/Cagalli vs Kira/Lacus vs Kira/Athrun vs Athrun/Cagalli vs Athrun/Lacus (+ /- Yzak/Shiho vs Dearka/Yzak vs Dearka/Miriallia vs Tolle/Miriallia, and Mwu/Murrue vs Andy/Murrue), but then Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny gave us Athrun's Harem, Shinn/Stellar vs Shinn/Luna (+ /- Shinn/Rey), and Ship Sinking (and in one case, Ship Raising). Minefields aplenty for all.
    • And then Shinn and Lunamaria's Japanese voice actors got married. I guess that's a solution, too?
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has seen its share of Ship-To-Ship Combat, with fans endlessly debating about who Setsuna should be paired with, whether it be with Marina Ismail, Feldt Grace or Nena Trinity. It doesn't help that supplementary materials (which incidentally are considered non-canon) released lead to complications as to who Setsuna will really end up with, thus leading to further confusion and debate.
  • Although not as bad as it used to be, the Fullmetal Alchemist anime fandom fought hard over the classic trio of Ed/Winry, Ed/Rose and Ed/Roy. Poor Rose herself was on the receiving end of Die for Our Ship quite a bit, to the point that even mentioning her name on a Ed/Winry forum is ... discouraged.
    • Even more discouraged is throwing Armony and Sophie's names out as Ed pairings. The people who actually have played the games and know what you're talking about will either love/appreciate you, or want you dead. Even though Armony and Ed are pretty canon solely for Broken Angel, it's a small fanbase on the webs.
      • And now[when?] that we'll get a new movie for FMA after the canon series has ended, the new female character is already getting Mary Sue calls and "she better not break up my OTP" shit. We don't know anythingabout her, and she's still being accused of Suedom? Come on, Fan Dumb!
    • Possibly the craziest section is the one who ships Ed/Fangirl (or Anyone/Fangirl). Yes, you read that right; wherever you go in the FMA fandom, you're going to find at least a couple crazies who are completely convinced that they are married to Ed or Al, or at least dating them, and that the fictional characters hate the rest of the fanbase for even suggesting other pairings. It's sadly some Serious Business when these folks come out, because at least 70% of the time, they aren't trolling.
    • The manga fandom itself has had better luck, but wars have arisen between fans who insist that Roy/Riza and/or Al/Mei are Official Couples and fans who insist that there isn't enough evidence to claim that they are. Basically, it's ship vs. no ship here.
  • Vampire Knight, with Zero/Yuuki vs. Kaname/Yuuki in particular. Is Kaname a creepy and incestuous Bastard Boyfriend who wants to dominate Yuuki's life? Is Zero a wangsty moron who gets in between Kaname and Yuuki's True Love? Is Yuuki a "Canon Sue", thus "undeserving" of both guys? This whole ship war between both ships is the reason some fans stopped reading the manga altogether.
  • The Ouran High School Host Club fandom has conflict between the canon pairing Tamaki/Haruhi and other pairings, particularly Hikaru/Haruhi, but Kyoya/Haruhi is also popular. Some even support the twincest Hikaru/Kaoru pairing.
  • The Hellsing fandom is usually divided over Alucard/Integra vs. Alucard/Seras vs. Girlycard/Walter vs. Integra/Seras vs...you get the idea.
    • The whole Alucard/Integra vs. Alucard/(insert other character here) wars is taken to an even further extent when one takes word of Kouta Hirano into consideration. Those who support the former pairing point to evidence that there's some sort of hidden romantic attitudes/sexual tension between the two. Those who support the latter pairing point out that the relationship between Alucard and Integra is purely "Master & Servant". And then there are those who believe the relationship is purely ambiguous...yeah...
      • The issue was that Hirano's statement about the relationship was given five years before the manga concluded as an answer to a person who asked how far will it go, a question that he was nervous to answer (like he would spoil his ending where Alucard returns/isn't dead). He has always been very enthusiastic and supportive about Alucard/Integra (and Pip/Seras) with cover art, complimenting Alucard/Integra Japanese pairing fansites with sketches (before 2chan started vicious wank about him that drove him off the internet), keeping exclusively romantic cosplay pictures of them in his camera during his travels, and making gag fanservice goodies for fans in Comiket. Somebody should ask him now that everything is over. If you dare.
    • There's also Major/Integra or Maxwell/Integra vs. Alucard/Integra and Pip/Seras vs. other Seras pairings. Not in the Japanese/Chinese/Korean fandoms, however; they seem to be generally chill about pairings and shipping in general.
  • Within the Soul Eater fandom, you've got poor Death The Kid. Should he end up with Maka? Chrona? Black*Star and/or Soul? Or, perhaps he should end up with either Liz or Patti (or both, due to Kid's love of symmetry)? You're pretty much in a metaphorical mine field with this one..
    • There's also Soul/Maka VS Soul/Black*Star VS Soul/Blair.
    • And, while we're on the subject of Maka, the most popular people to pair her up with are Kidd, Soul, and Chrona. Fans often disagree over which one is the true OTP.
  • Mocked in Goku Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, being described as a "battle with no winners."
  • Ship Yami and Yugi? Anzu is a brainless harridan. Ship Kaiba and Yugi? Joey is a Token Homophobe for some stupid reason. Ship Kaiba and Joey? Mai is a heartless slut. (Yes, this is a gross oversimplification.) The Yami/Yugi and Yugi/Anzu fans in particular seem to have it in for each other. Unless they choose door number three...
  • It's still pretty quiet for now but shipping wars are pretty common in Amagami SS. Even though every single girl gets 4 episodes an arc. It's gotten to the point that the shippers are getting withdrawals due to the fact that they can't bash somebody due to the fact that they're not the love interest of that arc.
  • The Ship-To-Ship Combat in Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai! is mostly between the Incest Subtext fans who ship Kyousuke and his sister Kirino and the No Yay fans. Among the No Yay fans, there are fans for Kyousuke-Manami (who consider her the most sane and normal of the choices) against fans for Kyousuke-Kuroneko/Ayase/other girls (who are seen as the more interesting choices).
  • As a series with a boy with 31 girls as his harem, Mahou Sensei Negima is bound to have this. Even though Asuna/Negi and Nodoka/Negi are the two favorites, Chisame/Negi is getting more popular, having at least one in-universe endorser and rabid fans who tout it as if it was already canon. However, the actual fights do get ameliorated, mainly because there is one shipping that everyone can agree on: Setsuna-Konoka. God help those who go against this sacred pairing.
  • The combat for the Slayers franchise has thankfully died down over the years, but it's still looming about. The main contenders: Zelgadis/Amelia vs. Zelgadis/Xellos vs. Zelgadis/Lina; the third pairing is also pitted against Lina/Gourry, which is also sporadically pitted against Gourry/Sylphiel. Strangely, no one bashes Xellos/Filia.
  • Yu Yu Hakusho: Hiei/Kurama vs. Hiei/ Mukuro. The former wins half the time through ranting and fangirlism, while the latter calmly explains why they should be together (and they generally do a good job in doing so. It helps considering that Yoshihiro Togashi initially was going to have Hiei and Mukuro get together...) Also, Yusuke/Keiko vs. Yusuke/Anyone else. And let's not get started on how many Mary Sues get together with either Hiei or Kurama and begin their own combat...
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica had STSC almost since the beginning. Homura/Madoka vs. Mami/Madoka can get pretty bloody once or twice, and then there's quite the "potential" in Sayaka/Madoka vs. Sayaka/Kamijou, and let's not forget Madoka/her long-haired self seen in the OP
    • After episodes 7 and 8, a possible secondary ship war started among the Sayaka/Kyouko, Sayaka/Kamijou and Sayaka/Madoka groups. With a huge side dish of Hitomi/Kamijou, or better said, "HITOMI YOU WHORE, GET AWAY FROM SAYAKA'S MAN!".
    • The STSC is notably absent between Mami/Kyouko and Mami/Madoka. Even with the official description of Mami's hypothetical witch-form having representation of both Kyouko and Madoka in it.
  • Want to start an argument, you know, just to spice things up a little? Get a bunch of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing fans together, and start debating Heero x Duo vs. Heero x Relena. Wanna spice things up even more? Bring other pairings into the equation...conventional and...otherwise.
    • You don't even need to pit 2/1 and 1/R fans against each other. Go to the "correct" fandom corner and say that Duo should top Heero. Watch the fangirls in that corner tearing each other down about that.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam AGE is starting to see an intense shipping war between those who support Flit/Emily and those who support Flit/Yurin. While it's agreed that both pairings would be good and have their own high points (Yurin is a sweet Nice Girl and the Ensemble Darkhorse, but Emily has the advantage of knowing Flit for a longer time), the fact that Flit's son Asemu resembles Emily in concept and promotional art has some shippers going at it. The fact that the Wham! Episode has poor Yurin die in the WORST way possible does NOT help the series's case.
  • Tiger and Bunny is mostly a peaceful fandom, but it's starting to show early symptoms of this since Kotetsu/Karina and Kotetsu/Barnaby fans have been spotted fighting it out. Is Karina a "girly thus weak" little bitch who gets in between the oh so sacred Ho Yay between Kotetsu and Barnaby? Is Barnaby a selfish, immature Jerkass who treats Kotetsu like shit just to satisfy his ego - sooooo unlike the sweet, pretty Karina would? Be careful about expressing such thoughts...
  • Elfen Lied is notable for two reasons. First, the main Love Triangle is between the Unlucky Childhood Friend Clingy Jealous Girl and a psychopathic, sadistic Yandere with a tragic backstory, which was engineered from the ground up to drive the fanboys into frothing hate on both sides, up to and including cheering on mass murder and genocide because "everyone deserved it." Second, because the anime writers got in on the shipping war in favor of Kouta/Lucy, while the manga supports Kouta/Yuka. Accordingly, Yuka's Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies are played up to the point of Flanderization, while Lucy's sadism and malice are played down in favor of her bitterness and rage at the world (which are easier to sympathize with). Lucy also appears to survive her final battle in the anime, but as it's Cut Short, the anime team don't get to resolve the Love Triangle.
  • Saint Seiya: in the countries where the anime/manga is popular, there's usually ship wars that go way beyond the levels of verbal hate and acrimoniousness, often expanding itself into Real Life bashing.
    • The more remarkable examples are the Saint Seiya ship wars of Het Yay fans (fueled by the massive creation of Relationship Sues, once Saint Seiya has too few women on cast) against Ho Yay fans and vice-versa. In several occasions the ship war went to extremes of public detracting of fanwork artists' personal lifes, public menace of aggressions and even real legal offenses.
      • Not to mention how the fanatical Yaoi fangirls mixed this with What Measure Is a Non-Badass?, trying to erase and deny ANY kind of influence that the few girls in the cast had on the guys, either romantic or friendship-like, just because they thought the girls were all weak and stupid and "not feminist enough to deserve being paired up." Shun/Hyoga shippers were really bad about it, bashing Princess Freya from the Filler Ansgard arc despite how much of a Plucky Girl she is and hissing at the mere mentions of Shun's Unlucky Childhood Friend Jun. And the less said about their thoughts on Saori, the better.
    • To mention: also the pure Ho Yay fandom of Saint Seiya get involved in several bitter ship wars into itself, most noticeably motivated by the debates of "what should be the "right" guys to ship according to what we see" and "what guys are never acceptable to ship together". These can get very, very bloody: i.e. you do NOT go into the path of a Shiryu/Seiya fangirl and tell her Shiryu should go with Mu instead without expecting at least some snark, and at worst nonstop flames.
    • And last but not least? The purely het side wasn't much better, to be honest. The Shaina/Seiya and Saori/Seiya shippers were horrifyingly cruel to each other and their characters: Shaina was "a stalker and a slutty bitch", Saori was "pathetic, a coward, and not feminist enough". They also liked to bash the crap out of Miho despite how she, in practice, was put firmly in the Unlucky Childhood Friend role.
  • In the Da Capo anime, Nemu is officially the winner of Junichi with the exception of Da Capo If, in which Kotori wins, mainly because Nemu's dead, since the sequel, Da Capo II, follows their grandkids. However, a lot of fans support some of the other girls since Nemu is usually seen as The Scrappy. Of the other remaining girls, Kotori often gets the most support, since she has some decent characterization and seems to get along very well with Junichi in the anime.
  • Durarara!!: Some Shizaya fans will rip out the throats of anyone who mentions Namie or Vorona, while Mikado is just torn to pieces between everyone who wants him as their OTP Uke.
  • After episode 19 of Mawaru Penguindrum, there has been some seriously fierce ship wars between fans of Kanba/Himari, Shouma/Ringo and Shouma/Himari. It's extremely complicated to explain due to how much of a Mind Screw the series is, but basically it's like this: the third ship didn't have much Ship Tease until the aforementioned episode, and since it goes between the other two, the fans of said "other couples" were seriously thrown off and started warring against it due to possible Ship Sinking. The Kanba/Himari supporters are 'specially loud in their displeasure, due to the Broken Base factor in regards to Kanba the Memetic Badass and Shouma the victim of What Measure Is a Non-Badass?; the other "faction" mainly tends to panic about the possible consequences, but generally don't bash Shouma. (Though there's not a complete lack of such behaviors.)
  • While the Shin Megami Tensei franchise as a whole hasn't been totally devoid of this, Persona 4 has brought pretty big ship wars afloat (Hur hur hur). As of episodes 9 and 10 (the ones dealing with Rise Kujikawa), the shippers have been going rather wild: Rise/Narukami fans (the MC is named Yuu Narukami in the anime continuity) have rubbed the buttloads of Ship Tease they got in the faces of everyone and claiming "RISE END CONFIRMED!" in many forums and Image Boards (specially on 4chan). Which obviously doesn't go well with the Chie/Narukami and the Yukiko/Narukami fans -- specially the Yukiko/Narukami shippers, since Yukiko seemed to be the one favored until then. And we (by "we", it's meant everyone in the fray) are just waiting for the moment Naoto will fully join in...


Comic Books

  • During the time when Sonic was trying to decide between Mina and Sally, there were flame wars over which was better for him. Things died down a bit when Mina got her own boyfriend and Sonic and Sally got engaged. (Of course, then they went and broke the engagement off...) The fact that Sally was going through her Chickification didn't help, and resulted in numerous hate pages dedicated to what a horrible bitch she was while Mina was clearly the only girl for Sonic.
  • Batgirl/Nightwing vs. Starfire/Nightwing. That's all. Really not helped by the writers who go Running the Asylum and favoring their own pet pairing while derailing the other. (in example, there's Devin Grayson's canon DFOS against Kory to favor Babs.)
    • There's still a Terra/Beast Boy vs Raven/Beast Boy war, fueled mainly by Terra 2 and the fans of the cartoon who came to enjoy the comics. Terra died, for good this time, but that hasn't made the war go down.
  • There's also Batman/Catwoman vs. Batman/Wonder Woman. While they don't have the above Armed with Canon combat among those Running the Asylum, this is more than made up for by the fact that Batman/Wonder Woman has far more support from the DCAU than the main DC comicsverse, and so the combat is frought with a degree of Alternate Character Interpretation unseen by say, the Superman/Wonder Woman ship, which has no canon support and whose fans are considered irrelevant at best, Harmonians at worst.
  • Carlie Cooper is not popular with supporters of the Spider-Man/Mary Jane pairing. It seems to go only one way, though, since Carlie doesn't have as established a fanbase yet.
    • But, for a more even footed warground, try Spidey/MJ vs Spidey/Gwen. Usually, Spidey/Gwen is spared by the others due to her death, but the Spidey/Gwen fans seem to just plain hate Spidey/MJ for happening, since its been cited as the (unconfirmed) reason for Gwen's death. Apparantly, that Gwen was becoming boring to the writers and that the suits in charge wanted a major death isn't usually taken into consideration, and some cite OMD as something that needed to happen. However, some MJ/Spidey fans seem to be rather unsympathetic towards the death of Gwen, or will try to rationalize it as a good thing, either because it kickstarted the bronze age, it allowed Marvel to step away from bright eyed idealistic stories, or that Gwen was getting boring.
      • Now, neither side is helped by the fact Stan Lee has stated he envisioned Gwen Stacy as Spidey's true love, then he goes and has Spidey and MJ get maried in his personal comic strip, or how he showed support for Joe Quesada breaking up the couple, only to then put the two back together in his aforementioned comic strip. The guy likes trolling the fans, don't he?


Films

  • Back in its heyday, Pirates of the Caribbean fandom was split into approximately three groups: the people who wanted Will/Elizabeth (Willabeth) to happen, the people who wanted Jack/Elizabeth (Sparrabeth) to happen, and the tiny group who completely stayed out of it and just watched the madness, usually complete with pointing and laughing. On one forum, these "debates" got to be so bad that the administrators completely shut down all "shipping debates", and had to relegate the respective shippers to their own discussion threads
    • And it wasn't just that forum either... fans on a certain website's message board did it too. To extreme levels. There was a point where there was nothing on said forum but shipping "team" threads, and bashing of X character.
    • And when you add in the Ho Yay shippers, things just go nuts. Team Jack/Will and Team Sparrington are the major players here; the latter often aligned itself with Willabeth shippers, while the former just wanted Elizabeth to die horribly.
  • The Star Trek fandom is split between Spock/Uhura, the Official Couple, and Kirk/Spock, the grandaddy of all slash pairings. Some of the fighting has gotten very nasty, resulting in some very homophobic remarks from Spuhura shippers and accusations of Abrams "pandering to middle America" from Spirkers, as well as some racially-tinged Ron the Death Eater directed at Uhura.
  • Not even Pixar is safe anymore. Ever since |Toy Story 3 came out and the amount of Buzz/Jessie shippers increased tenfold, shipping "debates" have sprang up. More extreme Woody/Jessie shippers defend their side till the end, some seemingly convinced that Pixar is intentionally toying with them (no Pun intended). Still, Buzz/Jessie shippers aren't innocent either, as some will jump on any Woody/Jessie piece and decry it non-canon. Then you bring Buzz/Woody into the mix...no wonder people like the idea of a Toy Story OT3 so much.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles In-universe in the 1991 live action movie, which provides the page quote, with Donatello and Casey Jones arguing about Gilligan's Island. Casey thinks the Professor and Mary Ann are the better couple while Don prefers Gilligan and Mary Ann.


Literature

  • Older Than They Think: Russian author Alexander Pushkin's verse novel Eugene Onegin (published in serial form in the early 1800s) attracted quite a bit of this. What's more notable is that the author actively took part. At one point, he asked a group of fangirls where they saw the various ships of the novel going. When he didn't like their answers, he then lectured them on why their favored ships were wrong. Granted, he had a good point, since the shippers' preffered ships were incompatible with the book's aesop, but most people reading Eugene Onegin in serial form probably weren't aware there was a deeper literary point to the shipping drama.
  • Harry Potter's is probably the biggest and one of the first to take place in the virtual world of the internet. Even Rowling described it as akin to trench warfare. It can happen between any ship, though the largest and bloodiest (virtually, of course) was between the Ron/Hermione ship and the Harry/Hermione ship, for obvious reasons. Though true shippers tended to stay with their own ship (because it's much more fun to talk with people who agree with you, than fight with people who don't), there were obnoxious militant fans on both side with a tendency to enter chat rooms or forums and spam them. There were also very vigorous debate threads on many of the main fansites. The war was exacerbated after the release of "Half-Blood Prince" and the infamous interview Rowling gave in which the interviewer suggested that any left over Harry/Hermione fans were "delusional." Rowling agreed that they were misled, which led to quite a lot of fan hate in her direction. The war fairly ended with the release of the seventh book, because there really wasn't any reason to fight after that.
    • Notable in this ship war were the "Harmonians," the Harry/Hermione ship's lunatic fringe, who were probably responsible for most of the wank with their conspiracy theories, insistence on seeing symbolism that didn't exist, and invocation of Death of the Author when it was pointed out to them that said symbolism didn't exist. They're mostly gone now, though.
  • Twilight: Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. Since the release of Twilight in 2005, shippers have argued vehemently, and even resorted to physical violence, flame wars, and hate fics, over whether Bella should end up with Edward or Jacob. On the other hand, Edward/Jacob shippers argued that Edward and Jacob were really in love with each other.
    • With the release of Breaking Dawn and Bella choosing Edward and marrying him, and Jacob imprinting on Bella and Edward's half-human, half-vampire hybrid daughter, Renesmee, despite author Stephenie Meyer's writing suggesting a possible romance developing between Jacob and Leah, shipping wars continue, albeit over Jacob/Leah (or "Blackwater") and Jacob/Renesmee. Meyer herself has rebuffed any indication in her writing of Jacob/Leah suggestions, saying Leah has "absolutely no romantic interest in Jacob". Despite this, Meyer's stated interest in writing a possible sequel series to the Twilight Saga, featuring Renesmee's or Leah's POV, and likely featuring Jacob heavily, has served to ignite further flame wars between Blackwater and Jacob/Renesmee shippers.
    • Of course, the Saga's multitude of minor characters also has ignited smaller shipping wars, including Edward/Bella vs. Jasper/Bella vs. Alice/Bella vs. Alice/Jacob vs. Jacob/Rosalie vs...well, you get the picture. Even anti-Twilight forums like Twilight Sucks debate over which Twilight couple is the "best" and "worst".
  • The Hunger Games: Team Peeta vs. Team Gale. Even with the release of Mockingjay, and Katniss ultimately choosing Peeta, marrying him, and having kids with him, the epic war over whether Peeta or Gale is better for, or "deserves", Katniss more has reached staggering proportions.
  • Perhaps the oddest fandom to have this going on is Les Misérables of all things, vis, Marius/Eponine vs. Marius/Cosette. The stupidest arguments from each side are that Marius/Cosette reeks of boringness and that Marius/Eponine shippers are so socially locked out that they feel better looking up to a street urchin. Try not to trip on the Eppie Sues and avoid any variations on the phrases "First Girl Wins" or "Stalker with a Crush" if you want to keep all your limbs.
  • Hilarity Ensues when Ship-To-Ship Combat breaks out between the writers of a collaborative work. This has happened at least twice to the Star Wars Expanded Universe:
    • Timothy Zahn may have initially written Mara Jade as a Love Interest for Luke Skywalker; at any rate, his ending of The Thrawn Trilogy certain set the foundation for a relationship. Other writers had other ideas (including one who wanted Luke to be with Callista Ming instead), and Mara ended up not-quite paired with Lando Calrissian. On Zahn's return, he retconned Mara's implied courtship of Lando to a spying mission, and to further hammer the point home had Luke propose to her. Which she naturally accepted. And then she was killed off some time later, which many angry Luke/Mara fans viewed as Ship Sinking by vengeful writers (though it probably wasn't, or at least had more to it than that).
    • In the New Jedi Order cycle, which of Jaina Solo's suitors she prefers (if any) is strongly dependent on who's writing this month's novel. Even after that, Troy Denning broke up her and the "winner" in his trilogy of very silly novels taking place immediately afterwards, reportedly because he doesn't like the couple. Hilariously, though, Dark Horse Comics seems to have gotten in the last word by setting up an Empire run by a dynasty with the New Jedi Order winner's last name... and Force-sensitivity.
  • The biggest pity in the world is that Little Women wasn't written 150 years later. It would have been grand to watch the Jo/Laurie and Amy/Laurie Ship Wars unfold, the outrage when the author deliberately sunk the Fan-Preferred Couple, and the various creative and excruciatingly painful ways Amy must die. But unless Alcott's fans' letters are preserved in a museum somewhere, one of the earliest Shipping frenzies is lost to time.
    • What evidence remains suggests it was a ship war for the ages, with poor Professor Baeher and Amy taking the worst of it. Now if someone only found some nineteenth-century fan fic in a trunk somewhere...
    • Actually, the STSC still lives. The Jo/Laurie "essay" in the Ship Manifesto LJ comm is full of Amy bashing, Relationship Sue calls and "Jo/Laurie OTP!" bitching from both the rant's author and the commenters.
  • Probably the most vicious ship war of the 2000s (or at least the most Merchandise-Driven ship war of all time): Team Jacob vs. Team Edward. It doesn't help that this is a fire that's being fueled by the media, as well as more merchandise than you can shake a stick at. Including official "Team" t-shirts, so the whole world can know which Ship you are on.
    • Twilight is open season when it comes to pairings. And whenever you show the sliiiiightest support for ANY pairing in this fandom, bam. 600 fangirls, usually gramatically challenged, are all on top of you. It's like the Zombie Apocalypse but scarier, complete with the sizeable Hatedom eagerly egging both sides on, quietly changing their backgrounds to Team Raptor.
  • Warriors: Apart from having an extremely divided fanbase on the basis of favourite characters, you can find a ton of fanfic for pretty much all pairings you can think of (and also for some that you can't).
  • Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: lovers or just "blood brothers"? A classic question. Ask it to any serious fan of the books and they will enthusiastically respond—shippers going off on endless subtext rants and non-shippers calling the shippers ignorant and/or delusional. The huge amount of Ho Yay in the recent movie just added fuel to the fire.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia - Don't mention Susan/Caspian to people who ship Caspian/Ramandu's Daughter (aka Lilliandil) or Susan/anybody but Caspian. Just don't.
  • Jane Austen's niece Louisa Knight claimed that, when she was 8-years-old, she observed her aunts Jane and Cassandra having a mock debate over whether Fanny Price of Mansfield Park should have ended up with her Stalker with a Crush Henry Crawford or {{Edmund Childhood Friend Romance}}, leaving Janeites forever tortured without knowing the details. If only they had conducted their mock Team Crawford vs. Team Edmund ship war in letters!
  • Team Rebecca got so vocal in the 19th century Ivanhoe fandom that Sir Walter Scott had to write them a letter explaining why Wilfred didn't end up with Rebecca.
  • Within the Wicked fandom you either believe the story is a Star-Crossed Lovers story between Elphaba and Glinda, or you don't. The ship even has several musical casts (including the original cast) and apparently even the author on its side. There are however fans of the ever-popular rival ship "Fiyeraba", Fiyero and Elphaba, which is equally as canon (and more-so apparent in the books and musical).
  • A Song of Ice and Fire sees Ship To Ship Combat not between individual ships, but between philosophies of how shipping should work. On one hand you have the traditional shippers, who focus on chemistry and how hot a given pairing would be. On the other hand you have political shippers, who pair people up based on political advantage. The political shippers generally concern themselves only with prominent noble characters.
    • An example is the potential pairings for Sansa Stark. The romantics love to match her up with Sandor "The Hound" Clegane, the only living character, as many shippers claim, with whom she had mutual chemistry. The politicals point out that the Hound has no political influence, having deserted his own liege lord, and therefore a match with Sansa would be of no value. Also the living part may or may not still be the case. They prefer to match her up with people who could offer her power, typically Harry the Heir or Aegon Targaryen. She has yet to meet either of them face-to-face.


Live Action TV

  • In Buffy fandom, if you suggest that Angel is Buffy's true love and their relationship is tragic and believable compared to the Masochism Tango of Spike and Buffy, the Spuffy 'shippers will hit you. If you suggest that Spike is Buffy's true love and their relationship was gritty and realistic compared to the hopeless and boring idealism of Buffy/Angel, the Bangel 'shippers will hit you. If you suggest that Angel and Spike had no interest in Buffy at all except for fighting over her because they're really in love with each other, the het 'shippers will hit you. If you suggest that neither Spike nor Angel had interest in each other and they both love Buffy more than anything else in the universe (including beer, pizza, chocolate and any ex-girlfriends they might have had long commitments with), the slashers (and a lot of people who prefer Angel as a series) will hit you. If you admit to 'shipping anyone with Riley Finn, they'll all hit you.
    • This was entertainingly summarised on fandom_wank as: Buffy spent nearly a hundred hours slaying vampires and around 30 minutes shagging two of them. Guess which caused more wank?
  • As for Angel, it's probably not wise to bring up Buffy's name when there are Angel/Cordelia shippers about. Nina doesn't fare much better- not since Cordelia was effectively Put on a Bus.
    • Then there's all the fun that goes on between Wesley/Fred vs. Gunn/Fred vs. Wesley/Gunn vs. Wesley/Lilah shippers. It is not helped that by the fifth season, EVERYONE WAS FRIKKIN' IN LOVE WITH FRED. Seriously, rewatch the episodes surrounding her death. You will understand.
      • And then when Fred was permanently possessed by Illyria, and you had Fred/Wes fans versus Illyria/Wes fans arguing over which was better. Which is kind of... weird, when you think about it, what with Illyria being a millenia-old demon-god-thingy.
  • The fans of Jake/Heather (Jericho) would argue pretty frequently with the also ship teased Jake/Emily fans. Jake/Emily is canon, Emily is a regular to Heather's guest star, and got far more screentime in Season One. Jake/Heather is more popular, Heather is rather well-liked in the fandom as a whole compared to Emily being at least a moderate case of The Scrappy, and Heather got far more screentime in Season Two. Jake/Emily fans say that they have a history together and have fittingly similar personalities, while Jake and Heather are nothing alike and she's naive and annoyingly perky. Jake/Heather fans say that Jake needs someone who's less trigger-happy, impulsive and angsty than he is, while Jake and Emily have a bad history together, and she's useless, self-entitled and a bit of a Faux Action Girl. Oh, there was even conflict amongst The Powers That Be; John Turteltaub supported Jake/Heather while Carol Barbee supported Jake/Emily. Barbee won.
  • Rose vs. Martha and Rose vs. River bitchfights in Doctor Who fandom get epic, complete with racism, classism, occasionally ageism and sometimes, hilariously, speciesism - some fans are actually capable of arguing that other than the Doctor's true love, all other companions are goldfish to him. Or hamsters. And then some fans follow up on this argument and elevate Doctor/Master to somewhat distressing levels. At large, whenever finding any post at all that discusses the Doctor's love life, the only right response is "in before Fandom Wank".
    • There are also Doctor/Donna, and Doctor/Jack fans who can get quite loud about things. Then, of course, there are all of the people who think that the Doctor is Asexual, never mind that there was an one shot Love Interest as early as in the episode "The Aztecs" in first season ever back in 1963. There have also been a few arguments between fans of Nine/Rose and Ten/Rose (and yes, even Eleven/Rose). Daleks? Aim for the eyestalk. Sontarans? Back of the neck. Shippers? Run. Just run.
    • It almost seemed like they were trying to encourage this in the new series with Amy being torn between the Doctor and Rory. Unfortunately, it hasn't gotten any better even now that Rory and Amy have gotten married. You'd think that would settle the debate, but no-- some Doctor/Amy shippers are convinced she only married Rory out of pity or a sense of obligation and that she doesn't really love him, despite all canon evidence to the contrary. Fanfiction contains an almost disturbing amount of making Rory Die for Our Ship. If not that, then he's turned into a grossly-exaggerated bumbling idiot, despite the fact that he Took a Level in Badass canonically.
    • Many fans ship Doctor/Companion no matter what, and god forbid anyone who dares to disrupt this. Mickey Smith, Joan Redfern (to a small degree), River Song, and Rory Williams are often victims of this, along with any companion who is not Rose.
  • Torchwood has this for Jack/Ianto fans vs Gwen/Jack fans. The Owen/Tosh contingent is much saner and calmer.
  • In the Stargate SG-1 fandom, the two major ship factions were the Sam/Jack faction, and the Daniel/Jack slash faction with Sam/Daniel and Janet/Daniel shippers getting railroaded by both sides.
  • Stargate Atlantis tended to split between John/Elizabeth and John/Teyla, with most of the brutal fighting occuring in season two before the writers ruined the show. After that, it became more like McKeller (McKay/Keller) vs The Internet.
  • Stargate Universe manages an aversion in Scott/Chloe vs. Eli/Chloe. The rivalry is there, but the two groups are more often united against the Chloe/Airlock group.
  • While not as severe as many examples, there is tension in the Heroes Fandom between Mohinder/Sylar shippers and Mohinder/Matt shippers.
  • Veronica Mars is the centre of some refreshingly vitriolic flame wars. The two dominant camps are the Logan/Veronica and Duncan/Veronica ones—in spite of Duncan absconding to Australia at the end of season 2—followed up by the progressively-smaller Piz/Veronica, Wallace/Veronica,Lamb/Veronica, Mac/Veronica and Keith/Veronica. You'd think the latter two didn't exist, but they're out there. Oh yes, they're out there...
  • iCarly has "Creddie" Carly/Freddie vs. "Seddie" Sam/Freddie. This become a huge war in Season 2 when the previously unteased Sam/Freddie pairing shared their First Kiss. It kept growing with a series of episodes with Ship Tease for both the pairings. It's become as big and lasted as long as Kataang vs. Zutara did. Fights range from sides declaring that Word of God is secretly shipping their OTP, that the Word of God is simply pandering to that side before he delivers the opposite side to canon, what colour each ship 'owns', how long various kisses between the pairings are, if certain looks or moments are considered 'shippy' or just random freeze-frames that anyone can find if they went frame by frame to find, that certain fans interpret things such minute evidence that it cannot possible be realistic evidence. This war extends over at least a half-dozen websites, including LiveJournal, Twitter, YouTube, TV.Com, TWOP, IMDB and the Word of God's blog.
    • Carly/Sam also has a significant following. Said following frequently gets ranted on due to the simple fact that they're both girls.
      • Turned into an actual war, by the writers, in the episode iStart A Fan War.
    • iOMG saw the war continue into 2011 and after the Seddie storyline was indecisive with neither a Ship Sinking or them becoming an Official Couple it has continued into 2012. For a show which started airing in 2007.
  • The House MD fanbase is a fairly even split between Huddy (House/Cuddy), Hameron (House/Cameron) and Hilson (House/Wilson) all of whom spend a lot of time at each other's throats. All insist their ship is canon, based on purely circumstantial evidance.
    • Hameron shippers were rabid over Chase and Cameron's engagement, and continue to insist that they will Die for Our Ship. See Unpleasable Fanbase.
    • It doesn't help that Hugh Laurie himself thinks the show will go through Huddy, Hameron, and Hilson if the show lasts long enough. Or that Robert Sean Leonard (who plays Wilson) has called the House/Cuddy storyline "boring" a number of times.
    • When Cuddy started dating Lucas the Huddy fans and the Luddy fans got into some serious fights.
    • And now that Cuddy and House have finally hooked up, shipping wars are usually between Huddy fans ("YES! This is SO overdue!), Hilson fans ("Ugh, not Cuddy! She sucks! HOUSE/WILSON FOREVER, BITCHES!") and the non-shippers ("I knew this show was going downhill! That's it, season 8 is NOT happening!"), with everyone accusing the other of being losers ("Huddies are brainless fangirls!" "Hilsons are delusional yaoi fanfic writers!" "Non-shippers are romanceless and blind!") And yes, you can expect every group to claim to be the majority.
    • What about us Hirteeners? Is that even the right term? House and Thirteen seem too have waaaaay too much chemistry for it to be just a coincidence. Then again, even Chase and Thirteen do. Maybe she is just that way with everyone. She is this troper's favorite female on the show, but all other tropers seem to hate her here, so maybe I'm delusional.
    • It appears that House/Wilson may have emerged as the unlikely victor in this shipping war after all, since House faked his own death and literally rode off with Wilson into the sunset at the end of the series finale.
  • Lost: Jate and Skate shippers continue to be locked in battle.
    • And in Season Five, the writters decided to add Suliet into the mix.
      • Everyone always forgets poor Jacket!
    • Not to mention the Desmond/Claire vs. Charlie/Claire shipwars that happened in the earlier seasons, and the Michael/Sun vs. Jin/Sun shipwars...in fact, why don't you just go look at the season 1 Lost promo for the UK on YouTube; it's a minute and a half of beautiful ship war dancing.
  • Firefly shippers of River/Mal and River/Jayne are locked solidly at each others' throats, if only because both of them have about the exact same amount of canon support for their respective ships, and it's probably a good idea to keep both sides isolated from the River/Simon shippers.
    • For that matter, the Simon/Kaylee and Jayne/Kaylee shippers don't really see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. Can't imagine why.
    • Suggesting that Nandi might have been better for Mal than Inara tends to really annoy the Mal/Inara shippers.
    • And once you add Ship Mates into the mix, the whole thing escalates into a full scale war between the Mal/Inara-Simon/Kaylee-Jayne/River alliance and the Mal/River-Jayne/Kaylee-Simon/Inara faction. And that's without even getting into the rivalries between popular slash pairings like Mal/Simon and Jayne/Simon or River/Kaylee and Inara/Kaylee.
      • And god forbid shipping the crazy underaged broken girl with anyone Squick you out.
      • If you ship Simon/Inara, Jayne/Kaylee and Mal/Zoe, the Jayne and Wash fangirls will hunt you down.
      • Strangely enough, if you ship Wash/Zoe you're safe from all sides. Probably because they're the only canon ship, and Joss gave them very lovely scenes together which left a lot of viewers pleased with that ship.
  • While most of the time the One Tree Hill fandom passes under the radar, if they really want to, they can make
  • Back in the early ages of fandoms and fighting, there was the JAG Shipping wars. All pairings were argued but beware and prepare if you favoured anyone currently going out with either Harmon Rabb or Sarah Macenzie.
  • Smallville. The Clanaphiles, the Cloisers, and the Chlarkers have all been at each others' throats, and now they're all at the Chlolliers' throats.
    • The Clexers, on the other hand, are split between enjoying their Ho Yay while engaging in Pass the Popcorn on the other shippers' Flame War, and rabidly dedicated to the mission to depict all females and non-supervillains within ten miles of Clark Kent as vicious shrieking Yanderes or total morons.
      • The various shipper groups in the Smallville fandom have also been known to fight in proxy wars on behalf of ships that serve as Ship Mates to their own One True Pairing. For instance, Clois shippers were often allies with the Chimmy shippers from Seasons 6 through 8 because it kept Chloe away from Clark, so it felt right to support Chimmy (the Chimmy shippers didn't always reciprocate the good will though. Some shipped Chimmy because they felt that Clark didn't "deserve" Chloe). Similarly, some Chlark shippers supported Lollie because it got Lois away from Clark.
      • The Ship-to-Ship Combat in the Smallville fandom even extended to arguments over the amount of screentime each potential love interest received. If Lois was getting a lot of screentime, the Chloe/Clark shippers would scream that the writers were destroying Chloe to make way for Lois. If Chloe was getting a lot of screentime, the Lois/Clark shippers would complain that Chloe was a "waste of time" because she wasn't in the Superman comics (she is now though). And if Lana was getting a lot of screentime, EVERYONE outside of Lana's small-but-devoted fandom would complain. Ironically, a lot of these shippers didn't seem to even care that much about Clark; they simply viewed him as some kind of trophy to be awarded to the "best" girl.
  • Dark Angel fans are split between Max/Alec and Max/Logan, the latter being canon in the Expanded Universe books.
  • Big Bang Theory fans argue whether Penny should be dating Leonard or Sheldon. A third faction insists that both pairings detract from the quality of the show. However, since the (majority of) the fans try to maintain a level of civility, it's more of a Cold War than an all-out firefight.
  • In Supernatural fandom, the Sam/Dean and Dean/Castiel shippers have been butting heads since Cas first showed up at the beginning of Season 4 and introduced possibly the first significant competition for Sam/Dean's popularly-held Fan-Preferred Couple status.
    • And then there's the rise of Sassy (Sam/Castiel) as a non-crack ship circa Season 6.
      • Which has only gotten stronger in Season 7, becoming even less of a crack pairing. However, most Sassy shippers have the sense to stay on the fringes of the fandom and avoid the firefight between Wincest and Destiel.
  • The Secret Life of the American Teenager has Ben/Amy vs. Amy/Ricky vs. Ricky/Adrian and even Adrian/Ricky vs. Ricky/Grace vs. Grace/Jack before Ricky and Grace broke up in Season 2 and Grace got back together with Jack.
    • And yes, the writers play with all of these shippings and more. In fact, it's essentially the premise of the entire series. However, the biggest factions seem to be Amy/Ricky vs. Amy/Anyone else and Ricky/Anyone else.
  • The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica had some serious Anders/Starbuck vs. Lee/Starbuck wars. Apparently there were a lot of fanfics that depicted Anders being unfaithful to Starbuck whereas in the show, it was the other way. Thankfully most people abandoned it after the obnoxious love square of Season 3 in favor of the more solid and certainly more pleasant Roslin/Adama relationship.
  • Skins fans have a bizarre war going on between two completely canon and perfectly compatible ships; Freddie/Effy and Naomi/Emily. The war turns out to be rooted in the amount of screen time and importance the show gives to each (Naomily were the Beta Couple in S3, but Freffy became more Beta-like in S4). Freddie being murdered by Effy's psychiatrist with a baseball bat in Effy's S4 episode has resulted in somewhat of a cease fire, though, as the two camps united against the common enemy.
    • Effy/Freddie vs. Effy/Cook counts as well.
    • Similarly, Glee has a war between Finchel and Klaine despite the fact that both work together. It's not a fair fight considering thst B outnumbers A at least 3 to 1 and isn't even Rachel's biggest fanbase
  • Try to have any discussion about any character in Robin Hood and you'll probably end up in a Shipping War about whether Marian should have married Guy or Robin. Guy fans argue that Guy/Marian had more chemistry, highlight Robin's faults (arrogance, impatience, immaturity) and downplay Guy's indiscretions (burning Marian's house down, threatening her with execution, dumping his infant son in the woods, killing innocent peasants, among many more). Robin fans cite hundreds of years worth of legend, the fact that Marian chose Robin of her own free will, that Guy stabbed her to death with a giant sword, that Robin and Marian get a Together in Death scene, and that Guy himself eventually admits to Robin that "she was always yours." And the debate still rages...
  • The Merlin fandom tends to be divided in slash and het camps—those who think Merlin and Arthur are fated to be, and those who don't. The het camp was mainly comprised (in the beginning) by Arthur/Morgana, Merlin/Morgana, and a smaller faction of Lancelot/Gwen shippers, and all these factions were relatively civil to each other. However, the writers did not help matters any by giving the characters' relationships a drastic turn-around in series two and declaring most of these ships Doomed by Canon via the inclusion of the (mostly non-existent in series 1) Arthur/Gwen ship, complete with True Love's Kiss and everything. This resulted in most of the other shipping camps putting down not only this ship but the show as a whole for reasons varying from "bad writing," to "feels forced," to TPTB not being bold enough to deviate from the original Arthurian myth. Arthur/Gwen shippers, not to be deterred, arm themselves with canon to defend their ship, making the ship debates hark back to times Older Than Print. Nowadays a lot of the fans involved have left the fandom in disillusionment at the reasons above-mentioned, so it hasn't been quite as bloody as it could've been, but the potential remains as those still loyal wait for the start of series 3 in 2010.
    • With the conclusion of series 3, the shipping war finds itself in a bizarre stalemate. Arthur/Morgana was well and truly sunk with the revelation that the two of them are half-siblings, and Merlin/Morgana took a bit of a battering due to the fact that Morgana is now trying to kill everyone (though the two make up for it thanks to the insane amounts of Foe Yay between them - this scene is widely known as "the eye-fucking in the woods"). After what was initally a case of Strangled by the Red String, the writing of Arthur/Gwen significantly improved, leading to a wider acceptance of these two as a couple (as well as a Flash Forward to Guinevere's coronation that more or less cemented them as end game). However, the reappearance of Lancelot at the end of the season has led to many Arthur/Merlin shippers hoping that the legendary Love Triangle will take place so that Arthur turns to Merlin for comfort. However, since this is Saturday night family programming, the odds of that happening are practically nil.
      • End of season four update: Sure enough, the Lancelot/Guinevere liason was the result of an enchantment and Arthur and Guinevere got married at the end of the season. Latest reports from the set of season five have indicated that Guinevere will have a more prominent role in the show now that she's Queen of Camelot, and that she'll be Arthur's main confidant. Merthur fans have not taken this particularly well, and some are complaining that her presence is going to ruin the bromance dynamic.
  • Things got a bit hairy within the fandom of The Sarah Connor Chronicles once the John / Cameron ship's popularity became more prevailant. Some fans found the idea of John Connor, the man who smashed Skynet being a Robosexual to be inherently squicky. Detractors would latch on to whatever alternatives they could find, as long as they weren't metal. First it was John/Cheri, then it was John/Riley, finally John/Allison before the series was abruptly canceled. You even had some who clung to the idea that Kate Brewster would eventually show up and re-establish Terminator 3's Official Couple, despite the fact that in TSCC's contnuity John would be a bit young for her (due to Time Travel).
  • Not quite Ship to Ship, but Star Trek: The Original Series fandom has been arguing for decades about whether Kirk and Spock are lovers or just very close friends. Shippers accuse non shippers of ignoring the "glaring" subtext, non shippers accuse the shippers of "ruining" a great platonic friendship. You'd think people on both sides would've agreed to live and let live by now.
    • On the other hand, Kirk/Spock versus Spock/McCoy tends to be a pretty laid-back argument (which, it must be said, frequently culminates in the agreeable solution of having a threesome).
  • Despite the majority of the fandom preferring Jess/Rory, the fandom still bickers over who is the right boyfriend for Rory Gilmore.
  • The problem with Law and Order in any of its incarnations is that no-one ever gets together, ever, so the fans have to run with the subtext. And how. Arguably the best example is the approximate 50/50 split in the SVU fandom between Alex/Olivia and Elliot/Olivia, which, fuelled by the fact that both ships have had a lot of Ship Tease over the years, can get fairly heated.
    • But while the producers have sunk the Elliot/Olivia ship repeatedly, Stephanie March has recently made the Alex/Olivia fans very happy. In an interview with After Ellen, not only is she not freaked the hell out by the Les Yay implications, but admitted that she thinks it's possibile that Alex and Olivia are in love, and that they may have been having a Grissom/Sara-eque quiet, offscreen relationship. We now have yet another reason to love you, Stephanie March.
  • Xena had some incredibly intense shipping wars between Xena/Gabrielle and Xena/Ares due to its spillover into real-world issues of LGBT rights and representation. In a time when there was virtually no positive LGBT representation on television, the implied relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was all that viewers had. Picking up on this, the writers and actors played up the subtext. Xena/Ares and other shippers denounced this as Pandering to the Base. Xena/Gabrielle shippers, or "Subbers" often interpreted this as homophobia.
  • Passions: Do NOT mention Sheridan and Luis to a Fancy and Luis fan and DEFINITELY DO NOT mention Fancy and Luis to a Sheridan and Luis fan.
  • Degrassi's Season 9 movie seemed to spark this, as the canon pairing became Spinner/Emma which annoyed all Sean/Emma and Spinner/Jane fans. And that's only the most recent one; before that, there was Sean/Emma vs. Sean/Ellie, Sean/Ellie vs. Craig/Ellie, Craig/'female character' vs. Craig/'female character' vs. Craig/'Male character', Declan/Holly J vs. Spinner/Holly J, Declan/Holly J vs. Declan/Clare, Eli/Clare vs. K.C./Clare vs. Declan/Clare vs. Jenna/Clare... I could go onm but I would break the page.
  • Forever Knight has had 14 Ship Wars as of November 2011, and each take place as a virtual convention in Fan Fiction format on the fandom's main list, http://forkni-l.psu.edu+. There are several "factions", grouped by favorite character or ships of said characters, and each factions name refers to those groups. "Knighties", for example, are fans of Nick Knight, the main character, "Cousins" are fans of "Uncle" Lucien La Croix, the Nick&Nat Pack are those that ship Nick and Natalie, and so on. The authors write for themselves and each faction writes for its character of focus. Each of these wars are meant to be fun, there is very little serious Die for Our Ship.
  • Big Wolf on Campus has Tommy/Merton VS Tommy/Lori VS Tommy/Stacy VS Merton/Lori VS Tommy/Becky among others.
  • Samurai Sentai Shinkenger has Takeru/Mako and Chiaki/Kotoha vs Takeru/Kotoha vs Takeru/Ryuunosuke, and Juzo/Dayu vs Doukoku/Dayu. Takeru being a major Launcher of a Thousand Ships does not help.
    • The first signs of Ship-To-Ship Combat for Super Sentai appear to have begun with Hikari Sentai Maskman, where more than twenty years on debates are still raging over whether Red Mask (also named Takeru!) should end up with Iyal, Momoko or Haruka.
    • Ran/Jan vs Ran/Retsu for Juken Sentai Gekiranger
    • And now, Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has begun to heat up with the Ship Mates of Marvelous/Ahim and Joe/Luka vs Marvelous/Luka and Joe/Ahim. Don doesn't seem to get a look-in.
    • Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger has an ongoing debate over Hoji/Jasmine vs Tetsu/Jasmine; the former group of shippers trying to push Hoji and Jasmine's positions as the most "pro" and "senior" of the team, the latter group arguing that Hoji is still hung up on his ex, Teresa.
  • Kamen Rider:
  • In the NCIS fandom, Gibbs/Tony slashers and Tony/Ziva shippers hate each other. Violently. G/T fans also like to make Ziva Die For Their Ship. Kate doesn't get nearly as much flack.
  • Thanks to the Love Dodecahedron nature of the show, Glee fans have quite a number of these happening: Puckleberry vs. Finchel is one of the most notable. But as of late the most vicious war seems to have developed between Klaine (Kurt/Blaine), Kurtofsky (Kurt/Karofsky) and Kum (Kurt/Sam) shippers. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?
    • There's also a lot of hate between Brittana (Brittany/Santana) and Arittany (Brittany/Artie) shippers.
  • Tinsel: Team Kwame vs. Team Soji over Telema Duke. The fandom can get quite vicious at times with Team Soji fans labelling Team Kwame fans liars and Team Kwame fans calling their rivals wimps.
  • Usually averted in Criminal Minds fandom, largely due to the fact that since Haley Hotchner was killed there are precisely no canon ships to get invested in. The conflict is, instead, between those who want ships in canon and those who don't. However, a scene or two that appeared to hint about something shippy possibly developing between Reid and Ashley Seaver at some point in the future galvanised a certain Anti-Ship Combat from those who specifically didn't want that ship happening.
  • In-universe example occurs in Community episode Pascal's Triangle Revisited between "Team Britta" and "Team Slater".
  • Soap Operas in general are the source of some of the most heated shipping wars in existence, and the extremes that some shippers go to can get pretty damned creepy.
  • The X-Files. Oh, sweet Jesus. The early years of the show's run coincided with the Ur days of wider-spread internet use, and whole message boards and mailing lists could be devoted to ship wars. Pick any conceivable pairing and somebody shipped it, so the battles could get entertaining and really, really confusing. Disparate ships would sometimes unite against a pairing they considered a common foe, and even message boards supporting the same ship could wind up at war over some minor disagreement. Shipping could be some Serious Business in the fandom.
    • Then there were the noromos (short for 'no romance') who objected to shipping in general, especially as the series went on and it became more blatant between Mulder and Scully. Their chief complaint was that they felt it got to the point where it detracted from the plot. They went to war with absolutely everybody.
  • A fanwar was attempted on Fanfiction.net for Suite Life On Deck between Cody/Bailey (Cailey) and Zailey (Zack/Bailey). It managed to be avoided when initiator was revealed to be a Cailey shipper posing as a Zailey shipper.
  • This has broken out in CSI: NY fandom, although it's often more "many ships against one ship" where Danny and Lindsay are concerned. "No chemistry" assertions are hurled and it's often compounded by a general dislike for Lindsay as a character.
  • CSI had conflict over Grissom/Sara to some extent, but it never narrowed down into one ship against another, it was more another 'many ships against one' thing.
  • Bones Do not try to argue in favor of Brennan/Sully to a Booth/Brennan shipper.


Music Videos

  • Not even the Vocaloids could avoid this one, despite the fact that the canon changes with EACH. FREAKING. SONG. Because there is no official canon source to determine who should be paired with who, you'd think the fans would just mind their own business, right? Nope.
    • The most obvious arguments being KaitoxMeiko vs. KaitoxMiku and RinxLen vs. either one with anyone else.

Theatre

  • In the Wicked fandom, there's Fiyeraba vs. Gelphie. It can get... heated. The Gelphie fandom seems to be the largest, though, probably because of the quite big number of gay people in the musical theatre fandoms.
    • Oh I don't know, this troper's experience is that both types of shippers just pretend the other doesn't exist. On fanfiction.net at least shippers just make sure they label their fics "Fiyeraba" or "Gelphie" and make sure they don't read the paring they don't ship. For all intents and purposes they're two different fandoms sharing the same archive; Gelphie shippers only read and review Gelphie fics and vice versa and, very occasionally, a fic that isn't shippy will get reviews from both types of shippers (but still normally mostly from the members of the ship they write for) - in my experience it's all very civil.


Video Games

  • The World Ends With You can get pretty bad in this regard, although it's mostly civil.
  • In what is probably the most wide-spread example of this trope, the Touhou fanbase is, ostensibly, nothing but a GIGANTIC NAVAL WAR. Marisa Kirisame is probably the most disputed, having no less than 4 even divisions.
    • Your Mileage May Vary. Most fans often have preferred ships but realize that in the world of Touhou, everyone belongs with everyone else. Fanworks often portray in-character ship wars as comedy. (IE Alice versus Patchouli for Marisa, Keine glaring at Mokou hanging out with Kaguya, and so on). Oh, and the whole mess with Marisa is parodied here (site NSFW).
  • Sheena/Lloyd vs. Colette/Lloyd in Tales of Symphonia fandom, with Sheloyd shippers arguing that Colette is too annoying, and Colloyd shippers arguing that Sheena is favored because of her Ms. Fanservice role.
    • Oddly enough, the Yaoi Fangirls don't do this as often. Key words: as often. You don't get between a Genis/Lloyd fan and Zelos/Lloyd fan if you value your brain cells.
    • Kratos/Anna and Kratos/Raine shippers were also pretty nasty to each other a few years back. And let's not get started on what Kratos/Yuan is to either of them...
    • Tales of Graces fandom is split between Asbel/Cheria, Asbel/Sophie and Asbel/Richard fans, especially since Asbel's official love interest Cheria isn't very well liked.
    • The Tales of Legendia fandom is not large, but it sheds some blood over which couple is the OTP - Senel/Shirley, Senel/Stella or Senel/Chloe (the latter two more than the first, due to Shirley's reputation).
  • Fire Emblem fandom is stuffed with this, especially the 4th and 7th installments. Word of advice to forum newbies? Do not, under any circumstances, bring up the subject of Roy and Lilina's mothers. Or Wolt's father. Heck, don't question or mention the parentage of any kid whose name isn't Klein, Clarine, Hugh, Igrene, Rei/Ray/Lleu, Lugh, or Fir. You'll be sucked into a neverending stream of arguments and namecalling.
    • The FE6 discussion is insane. Rebecca was Wolt's canon mother, but the father had to be either Wil (Guy Next Door, Nice Guy), Lowen (fellow cook, Nice Guy too, saved Rebecca from bandits so she adores him ever since then) or Sain (Chivalrous Pervert). Lyn is the prime core of the battles, due to her 4 romantic options (or 5, if you're a Les Yay fangirl for Lyn/Florina): Kent (Bodyguard Crush, Eliwood (The protagonist. What else needs to be said?), Hector (the bickering they have every other chapter in Hector Mode, along with their conversation in 29x/31x if they have an A support), and Rath (due to the existence of Sue in FE6, who looks like both of them). Hector is also madness, with 3 wives: Florina (Bi the Way Shrinking Violet, really wants to thank him for saving her and might have a crush on him), Lyn (explained earlier), and Farina (Florina's middle sister, exclusive to Hector Mode, recruitable in chapter 25). Eliwood has 3 wives as well: Ninian (according to the Marcus/Lilina supports in FE6), Lyn (STILL explained earlier), and Fiora (most lords of Fire Emblem are paired with Pegasus Knights, this is merely tradition, also possible canon from the Marcus/Lilina supports in FE6 since they involve her homeland Ilia).
    • Plus, even Rei and Lugh could be argued, since their mother Nino has two potential husbands. There's enough in-game evidence to support Jaffar as Nino's canon love interest, but she can marry Erk if you get them to A support. And their supports are just as meaningful and sweet as the Nino/Jaffar ones, even without outside interaction. Oddly enough, though, this doesn't create as big of an argument as discussing the Lords' pairings does.
      • That might be because the wank fuel goes to the Erk/Priscilla vs. Erk/Serra ship wars instead. Priscilla? Stupid, bland, idiotic Purity Sue! Serra? Bitchy, mean, shallow Jerkass! You could go on for YEARS in regards to that one.
      • Actually, Jaffar and Nino is often bashed and falsely accused of being Lolicon and creepy. Thing is: Jaffar's age has NEVER been brought up in-game, yet he looks to not be past early 20's... and Nino is 14, not 11 or 12. Pedophilia it ain't, people. Not to mention that anyone who bothers to do the math should know that Nino was 20 when she gave birth to the twins. Unsurprisingly, the major part of the Jaffar/Nino bashing comes from Erk/Nino rabidshippers who think 15-year-old Erk is inherently better than the older Jaffar due to his and Nino's similar ages, ignoring that Erk has his own issues as well.
    • Given that Genealogy of Holy War made shipping a game mechanic, we probably shouldn't be all that surprised. Never ever mention names like "Levin", "Lachesis", "Ayra", "Sylvia" or "Tailto" unless you want to be thrown into a burning fire about who should go with who, the advantages of pairing one and another, etc.
    • There have been more than a few terse words over who Ike might possibly end up with, though it tends to be divided between people who ship Ike/Soren, and those who deny that Ike could be anything other than 100% heterosexual. It's usually not TOO bad, unless someone happens to mention that Ike shows zero romantic/sexual interest in women and that Ike/Soren is very strongly hinted canon. Then things can get ugly. Oddly enough Ike/Ranulf gets a pass, probably because it's not nearly as popular and neither side has as much "evidence" for their case.
      • As of now, the biggest fight leaves Ike/Soren aside and get behind Ike/Elincia and Elincia/Geoffrey shippers. Some Ike/Elincia shippers are simply brutal to Geoffrey, and one of them brought up a massive wank when she wrote a fic in which Geoffrey burned museums and killed innocent people because Ike and Elincia were together. Not helped by her using mental illness as an "explanation" of Geoffrey's "issues".
    • Awakening marks the return of the Lover/Inheritance System from Genealogy... the cannons are already firing. Tip: Don't mention "Nono" or "Sumia" in regards to pairings- unless you want to have your brain melted... violently. (Furthermore, don't mention n_n in any given situation, or you'll cause an Internet Backdraft)
  • Not the worst problem of the immensely Broken Base of Sonic the Hedgehog, but it pops up from time to time. See Tails/Cream versus Tails/Cosmo for the tip of the iceberg, along with the mixed consensus on Sonic/Amy.
    • There's quite a bit of animosity between fans of Sonic/Amy and Sonic/Sally. Somewhat odd because Sally and Amy mostly don't exist within the same series—Sally does not appear in the games or Sonic X, while Amy does not appear in Sonic Sat AM. The only version of the franchise where both Amy and Sally exist is the Archie comic, in which Amy has a large hurdle to getting Sonic's attention—having a 10-year-old mind in a 15-year-old-body.
    • And then there are the fans who question Sonic's sexuality. Sonic/Amy vs. Sonic/Sally is nothing compared to the Sonadow (Sonic and Shadow) vs. other female character shipping.
    • And don't get them started on the question of who Rouge is into. Just...don't. It isn't helped at all by the Ship Tease she's gotten in canon with Knuckles, Tails, Shadow, and that's not even getting into Sonic Chronicles... or the fans...
    • It is not well known and the groups are not very big, but after the Sonic Rush series came out, there has been quite a few intense flame wars between Sonaze, Silvaze, and Shadaze. Some Sonaze fans-considered the underdog and most peaceful of the three right behind Shadaze-suspect Sonamy fanatics secretly hit them behind enemy lines.
  • The Baldurs Gate community, while small and generally quiet and civil on the subject, features an interesting and unusual take on Ship-To-Ship Combat, in that there's virtually no discussion, and a great deal of fan art and fan fic, many of which espouse one (or more) ships and ignore, or on a rare few occasions, publicly torpedo other ships. This is mainly because everyone except for the main character is an Optional Party Member.
  • In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard has a grand total of five romantic interests per gender, and three side love interests. Fans generally remain pretty calm, since they're allowed to romance whomever they please. It's not until non-canon love interests enter the picture that things start to heat up. This is noticeable when it comes to ships involving Garrus, Thane and Tali, as they are almost exclusively shipped with Commander Shepard (female for the former two and male for the latter). Their fans get very defensive and it's not uncommon to see volleys fired at people who prefer to ship the love interest in question with someone else (such as Thane with Samara, Tali with Kal'Reegar and Garrus or Thane with a male Shepard) even if they're not provoked.
  • It may be a BioWare thing in general. Knights of the Old Republic has one official ship for a male Revan, two (a het and Gay Option) for female. Fans will either take them as a given, or spin off into other territories like F!Revan/Canderous. Jade Empire has a smaller fanfic base, but the Spirit Monk's romantic choices are mostly a non-issue, even with the Bi the Way status of Sky and Silk Fox.
    • Dragon Age fandom was relatively quiet on this front, with some minor exceptions (do not mention the Darkspawn Chronicles DLC if you value your life, and there's some backlash against Female!Cousland/Alistair simply because it's the most frequently shipped pairing). The sequel, OTOH, has an ugly ship war going on between Hawke/Anders vs. Hawke/Fenris, which is fueled by the fact that the two characters represent the game's diametrically opposing views on mages, itself an endless hotbed of wank in the fandom. Hawke/Merrill is fairly safe, and Hawke/Isabella is also smooth sailing.
  • The Kingdom Hearts fandom, especially as of the second installment, seems to be comprised of two groups: those who regard shipping as Serious Business, and those that ship for fun or to point at and laugh at the first group. The introduction of Organization XIII basically just gave the former group license to spark flame wars over the relative merits of the #### ship of the day (12 males that hang out in a castle all day? Why, it's like shooting fish in a barrel!). Oh, and never mention AkuRoku if you value your head.
  • Pick a Final Fantasy pairing, ANY Final Fantasy pairing, but in particular, BEWARE of Final Fantasy VII, and especially any pairing with the words 'Aerith' or 'Tifa' involved anywhere at all.
    • EVERY Final Fantasy game gets this, to some degree. There is a reason why OT3 shippers are coming out of the wordwork for this series. In many cases, they're the fans who have grown sick of the shipping wars and who have decided to Take a Third Option.
    • Final Fantasy X-2: Back when the fandom was more active, there was something of a friendly rivaly between the Gippal/Rikku and Gippal/Baralai ships. That neither had any real canon support probably helped a lot.
  • Golden Sun: The wars between the four combinations coming from Isaac, Garet, Jenna, and Mia (just to clarify, I'm talking hetero pairings here) are kinda like a Mexican Standoff, except everyone is, well, shooting at each other. Heck, the four pairings from that one group could easily fuel debate for several years without touching the dozens of other pairings in the GS 'verse. However, a lot of the pairings are just for fun (Magmashipping, anyone?).
    • The third game is set to star the descendants of the heroes from the first two games. Things are already getting ugly.
      • It Got Worse. It got SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE. From the beginning, Soulshippers(Matthew/Sveta supporters) and Dawnshippers(Matthew/Karis supporters, including me!) were at eachother's throats. Then came Newwindshipping or Galeshipping or some other shit, which is a KARIS/SVETA FEMSLASH.
      • One pairing has been confirmed canon, but its partner...seems to have been sunk. The first four playable characters each have a member of the first game's party for a parent, and none of them are siblings, which means that neither Isaac nor Garet ended up with Mia. However, Isaac x Jenna is canon.
  • Don't get started on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. There's LOTS of Phoenix/Edgeworth shipping and lots of Phoenix/Maya shipping, both of which are hostile to other ships (Phoenix/Iris for starters) and each other. In fact, yaoi is the main ship, the figurehead being P x E. If you don't ship that or if you don't ship yaoi and instead ship a hetro that isn't P x M, you are totally in for a nightmare of harassment and ridicule. Also beware of Mia/Diego shippers, though most are friendly enough if you don't question the canonicity of their ship.
    • Now it's going on between Edgeworth X Franziska and Edgeworth X Kay shippers in the Japanese fandom.
  • Go to any forum about The Legend of Zelda and you'll find ample discussion about which woman (or man) Link should end up with. Given that Link has no real personality but the player's, you have to wonder if shipping debates are more about which person the player wants to end up with.
    • One game where it's particularly noticeable is Twilight Princess, with Link alternatively paired with the traditional (Princess Zelda), the newcomer (Midna), and the childhood friend (Ilia). Of course, some people just ignore all that and jump straight for Midna/Zelda...
    • Between Zelda, Malon, Saria, and Ruto, Ocarina of Time was an open invitation for Ship-To-Ship Combat. The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time Ocarina of Time]] fandom also gave us, illogically enough, Zelda/Link vs Sheik/Link.
  • Devil May Cry is vicious for this. To begin with, there's already a canonical division for the first three games in Trish, Lady, and Lucia (in order of general popularity). Some people are squicked out by the fact that Trish looks like Dante's mom, even if she does appear in the most supplementary material, so they go with Lady. Pairing Dante with Lucia is not as common due to Devil May Cry 2 not being all that popular. However, a vocal minority points to the Devil Arm Nevan, a succubus, as a possible choice for Dante. Another vocal minority points to Dante's obvious Action Hero origins and that he HAS no canonical love interest. Then the disturbing chicks point out that Dante and Vergil together is hot times two and so come up with as many excuses as they can for that. The only relationship which has remained untouched is Kyrie/Nero...
    • And now, we have Dante/Bayonetta.
    • Kyrie/Nero is hardly untouched. Perhaps a minority, but the Dante/Nero shippers can be quite vocal, especially if you so much as mention Kyrie.
  • Psychonauts has Sasha/Milla and Lilli/Raz versus Sasha/Raz and, occasionally, Lilli/Milla. Although this tends to consist of the former getting Squicked out at the latter and the latter making arguments as to why It's Not Gross.
  • While this is mostly avoided in the Spyro series due to the existence of three continuities, there are still Spyro/Ember vs. Spyro/Cynder wars that go on. The Broken Base doesn't help matters. Sometimes Spyro/Elora even finds its way into the war.
  • Star FOX's combat revolves all around Fox: Fox/Krystal vs. Fox/Fara (oftentimes ending badly for Krystal...) vs. Fox/Falco vs. Fox/Wolf, a notable exception being Wolf/Krystal, and, more recently (and for no apparent reason), Fox/Miyu. Fox/Falco also gets pitted against Falco/Katt every now and then, and the Fox/Krystal Official Couple occasionally goes against Panther/Krystal, which is usually the target of Die for Our Ship anyway.
  • Should Leon S. Kennedy be with Claire Redfield? Manuela Hidalgo? Ashley? Or Krauser? Fans will never fully agree.
  • Thrall's new bride (or at least fiancée) Aggra is apparently the target of many a Revenge Fic from Thrall/Jaina shippers. Now, she did kind of come out of nowhere, apparently for the express purpose of Ship Sinking...but even with that in mind, it gets pretty vicious.
    • Even before Aggra existed, there was already a bit of a ship war between Arthas/Jaina and Thrall/Jaina.
  • The Disgaea fandom fights over whether Laharl should end up with Etna or Flonne, or if the latter two end up with each other.
    • In the third game, Mao/Beryl VS Mao/Almaz fights are common.
  • Star Ocean the Second Story has the Claude/Rena shippers at odds with the Dias/Rena shippers, with the Claude/Dias, Claude/Ashton and Dias/Ashton fans occasionally joining in. (Oddly enough, the various Yuri pairings, the het pairings that don't involve Rena, and pretty much any pairing involving Noel are ignored in shipping wars.)
  • In the Portal fandom, you've got Chelldos (Chell/ GLaDOS ) vs. Chelly (Chell/Wheatley) vs. Wheatdos (Glados/Wheatley). And that's just the main trio.
    • However, the "shipping war" aspect is generally absent, especially on the Portal Kink Meme, where they even discussed what fun it might be to get into raging arguments about whether Chell should be with GLaDOS or Wheatley or neither while other posters tried to appeal for calm, but eventually decided it wouldn't as good as shipping their favourite couples, writing about them and tolerating others to ship and let ship.
  • As mentioned above, Shin Megami Tensei has its share of this:
    • Persona 2 has mostly the rabid Tatsuya/Jun shippers, who don't seem to take the existence of Tatsuya/Maya shippers kindly.
    • Persona 3 gives us all of Minato's possible pairings, with Yukari Takeba getting the bigger pot shots (Double if it's from Minato/Aigis or Minato/Mitsuru shippers). If we go to the FemMC route, it's not wise to mention how Minako/Minami/Hamuko can get together with either Ken Amada or Shinjiro Aragaki ; both pairings are known for rising HUGE hackles in the fandom.
    • Persona 4 has a particularly bloody war between those who ship the MC with either Chie, Yukiko, Rise or Naoto. The latter is specially... complicated, and this is all we'll say about it. As mentioned above, it has sorta died down (at least on /a/) after Persona 4 had everyone pegging the MC as a Memetic Sex God.
  • Pretty much comes with territory, in regards to Katawa Shoujo. While Lilly and Hanako have the largest camps, every girl has a strong following. Shizune fans in particular can be downright militant in their support, largely as a result of having to constantly battle the Hatedom the character has developed since release due to the Base Breaker nature of her route, and her rivalry with the much adored Lilly.
    • On the forums, it's fairly common for posters to rank the routes/girls in their signatures with ">" or "=" signs. For example, Favorite>Second favorite>Tied for third=Tied for third>Least favorite
  • There is quite a significant number of people in the Halo fandom who point out that no relationships between Spartans can happen, but somehow there still seem to be fan pairings. John/Kelly, John/Cortana, John/Miranda, and John/Thel being the most dominant in the fandom. The first three are easily the most popular, but the last one seems to be growing at a snail's pace. John/Miranda supporters were not held back by the fact that Miranda died in Halo3, they just change the outcome of the battle to say that she survived. Really, none of these pairings could happen, because Spartans are engineered to have no sex drive. But the fans don't listen.


Web Comics

  • Misfile contains a rare example of a ship fighting itself. Ash/Emily shippers all want to see Ash and Emily hook up, but because Ash is a boy turned into a girl they can't agree on how the comic should end. One side desperately wants Ash to decide to stay a girl, the other wants to see Ash back as a guy. The fighting hasn't yet reached dangerous levels, but the arguments crop up with regularity.
  • While the Megatokyo fandom as a general rule tends to be quite civil, there does seem to be a distinct undercurrent of dislike between fans who think Piro should stay with his current girlfriend, Nanasawa Kimiko, and those who would like to see him get back together with his previous girlfriend, Tohya Miho. One can generally tell which girl a particular fan supports by whether he refers to Kimiko by her given name, or by her familly name (Nanasawa).
  • Sluggy Freelance has a number of One True Pairing's. Torg is most often paired with Zoë, Gwynn, Sasha, or Aylee (the alien), and Riff with Gwynn, Sasha, or various insane ladies. Currently, Zoë is dead and Torg is working closely with Sasha, but he is working with her to get Zoë back and Sasha may be his sister anyway, so who knows. Then there's Oasis...
  • Homestuck still suffers from this, although considering the series' romance is Love Dodecahedron it's not all that much, fandom attitude having finally given in to Ship All The Things, Fill All The Buckets, and Threeway Fixes Everything. For the most part, it was much worse in the past. Since most major pairing factions have stopped caring, the main two locked standing in an eternal bloodbath are Dave/Terezi and Karkat/Terezi. It doesn't help they've both convinced their side is solid, set-in-stone canon when neither one actually is. Dave/Jade has tried to make the fight three-way and is subsequently ignored by both sides, because even though it's arguably just as canon as the other two, the fans aren't really out for blood and simply cannot compete with the escalating violence. The rest of the fandom suffers small skirmishes, (John/Karkat vs Dave/John or John/Vriska, PBJ vs anything that stands in its way, Karkat/Jade vs whoever feels like kicking them around today) but nothing touches the epic bitchfight of Terezi's flushed quadrent. It's enough that it's become an increasingly popular trend to Take a Third Option and ship Dave/Karket, who have spoken once in the entire comic. Surprisingly enough for the sub-Love Dodecahedron of Aradia-Sollux-Eridan-Feferi-Equius, there isn't all that much infighting and most combinations are acceptable in fandom eyes. Sollux/Aradia and Sollux/Fereri still skirmish some, but seemed to have stopped actively trying to kill each other.


Web Original

  • Happens literally in The Unity Saga as Seven of Nine kills Mara Jade, though at least both parties were established as loving Luke


Western Animation

  • Depending on the board, Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom is either surprisingly civil or at least as bad as any other. The main fight is between Kataang (Katara/Aang) and Zutara (Zuko/Katara) (and yes, there are Portmanteau Couple Names for all of them). Watch out for Ship Mates.
    • The series finale features literal Ship To Ship Combat, in addition to ungodly amounts of Ship Tease. Given the creators' awareness of their fanbase's tendencies and the ship-tease short they put together for Comic-Con, the odds of this being unintentional are approximately zero.
    • Don't forget the whole Mai/Zuko versus Zuko/Katara schpeel. The battle seems to have died down a bit, but there are still many fanatics who subject Katara or Mai to Die for Our Ship. Mostly Mai, as these vids demonstrate. Good luck finding similar vids bashing Katara. It Got Worse when Bryke confirmed that Aang and Katara have a kid when they announced The Legend of Korra, with some Zutarians even insisting that Katara had to have gone to Zuko for comfort after Aang's death (if not well before). The latter has some Zutarans heralding the "revival" of Zutara, or claiming Zutara to be an Anchored Ship.
    • This comic takes the trope to its literal extreme- or perhaps its littoral extreme. (And this one does the same, but speaks more for those who tend not to ship).
    • Zutara was taken to another extreme when Zuko was revealed to have a daughter who became the next Fire Lady, but her mother was not named, causing Zutarans to go so far as to claim that Zuko's daughter was his and Katara's, even though Zuko most likely married Mai, and Katara married Aang.
  • Speaking of Korra, a war is already brewing between Korra/Mako fans and Asami/Mako fans. It doesn't help that many Zutara shippers Jumped Ship to Makorra after Zutara was definitively Sunk.
    • More recently, a war has begun brewing between Korra/Mako fans and Korra/Bolin fans as well, including arguments on which brother "deserves Korra more" and vice versa.
      • And then all those ships were steadily sunk with the following seasons, the final blow being the final episode implying (with Word of God confirming) that Korra/Asami were the Endgame
  • Teen Titans was famous for ship wars during its run. Most notably, Beast Boy/Raven shippers vs. Beast Boy/Terra shippers, Beast Boy/Raven shippers vs. Robin/Raven shippers and Robin/Starfire shippers vs. Robin/Raven shippers. All they need is a Starfire/Terra ship, and the Mexican Standoff will be complete.
    • Cyborg was completely left out of this. Apparently shippers either liked him too much or hated him too much to ship him. We may never know.
      • Actually, there was a quick Cyborg/Raven vs. Cyborg/Jinx ship battle, but it didn't last long, as most accepted that he's best paired with Bubblebee.
  • Oh, be thankful that the shipping wars of Daria are over! There are STILL Daria/Trent shippers out there—the biggest contingent, who were set to declare holy war when the Word of God Jossed that pairing in the third season finale by showing that reality would never support the pairing. Still, that's NOTHING compared to what happened a season later. Want to start a war in Daria fandom? Two words: "The Kiss." Daria/Tom shipping has caused heated arguments the way the Sun provides heat and light for the Earth. And the real irony is that in the end of the show, they broke up and Daria stayed single, so neither pairing is is One True Pairing.
    • Then don't forget those who still cling desperately to Daria/Jane.
  • Where to start with the convoluted Ben 10 fandom? Said fandom has three major ships, Gwen/Kevin, Ben/Gwen and Ben/Kevin. During the air of the original series, the Ben/Gwen and Ben/Kevin shippers were the most common (Gwen/Kevin was still a Crack Pairing)...
  • The Code Lyoko fandom features a large group of people who ship Aelita and Odd and are combated vigorously by the people who support Aelita and Jeremie, the show's Official Couple. But of course this is nothing when it comes to the Ulrich/Yumi/William/Sissi debates.
  • As this fanart will demonstrate, not even Thomas the Tank Engine fandom is safe from shipping wars. It does not help however that that some of the episodes have hinted towards crushes between the engines (such as Rosie trying to follow Thomas everywhere in her introductory episode, or Thomas blushing on seeing Flora in her introductory episode). Brain Bleach is on offer here.
  • The Kim Possible fans of the Kim/Ron pairing will viciously attack any fans of Kim/Shego like a piranha-feeding frenzy. Any sign of Kigo Fan Art will invariably get several negative comments from a Kim/Ron supporter; the same can be said of any Fan Fiction.
    • And of course, Kigo shippers will invariably call the Kim/Ron pairing"mainstream" or "not gritty enough" or accuse the Kim/Ron shippers of homophobia.
    • There was a major fight that occurred between the Kigo and K/R shippers a while back. Nowadays, the topic is kept out of most forums for obvious reasons. Most enjoy both shipping sides nowadays and there are some that even enjoy mixing the ships.
  • The Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers Ship-To-Ship Combat is actually about only one pairing, namely Chip/Gadget. Those who favor that pairing oppose those who do not want to see Chip and Gadget together, regardless of alternatives. This led to two flame wars on the Usenet in 1997 and at the fan forum Acorn Cafe in 1998. Further flame wars could only be prevented by the experience gained during 1998's St. Valentine's Day Massacre and by "agreeing to disagree". A third, rather small faction among them call themselves the Neutrals and dislike the wary ways of both Pro and Anti fundamentalists. Mind you that there has never been a canonical pairing in this show.
  • South Park has a lot of this, especially since You're Getting Old aired, where Kyle didn't want to be Stan's friend anymore, and was seen playing with Cartman and smiling at him at the end of the episode, implying that the whole Foe Yay between Cartman and Kyle is slowly replaced with a building friendship. The rabid Stan/Kyle and Cartman/Kyle fans went crazy, especially since there was a war between the ships even before the episode.
    • Then there are smaller battles in the fandom, between Cartman/Butters fans and Kenny/Butters fans, Cartman/Wendy vs. Stan/Wendy and Craig/Tweek vs. Craig/Thomas vs. Craig/Clyde.
    • As of season sixteen, especially on sites like Tumblr, Stan/Kyle fangirls have begun widdling down or switching in favor of Cartman/Kyle, which in Cartman Finds Love becomes somewhat canon.
  • Total Drama: A complicated situation, due to Loads and Loads of Characters and lots of Ship Tease. The biggest one is between the original Official Couple, Duncan/Courtney, and the new canon, former Fan-Preferred Couple Duncan/Gwen. The fact that the latter got together thanks to Duncan cheating on Courtney doesn't help.
    • Gwen/Trent, also originally canon, used to be heavily involved in this fray too before being sunk. They still tend to side with Duncan/Courtney as a Ship Mate, though, as do Cody/Gwen supporters.
    • Loony Fan Sierra, Cody's Stalker with a Crush, is the perfect casus belli of Shipping Wars. Many Noah/Cody and Cody/Gwen supporters despise her, though the more forgiving ones are willing to tolerate her after season three ends with her and Cody as Just Friends (and the resulting fact that she no longer makes his life a living hell).
  • Strangely, the Happy Tree Friends fandom engages in this. The wars often revolve around who Flaky will end up with (the most noteworthy pairing is Flaky x Flippy). Never mind that Flaky is a character who is never romantically involved and her gender is still quite the subject of debate.
    • And then, there's Flippy/Flaky vs. Flippy/Splendid, as well.
  • The Invader Zim fandom has little fighting, probably because the show only focuses on a few main characters and Dib/Gaz is unpopular for obvious reasons. The biggest ship war is actually just between those who like ZADR and those who despise it, especially since Jhonen Vasquez says it makes him "sick to his ill-prone belly." Building on that, there is a small collection of anti-shippers who are against pairings in general, but ZADR is where they direct most of their ire.
    • There is actually a pretty big fight between Zim/Dib shippers and Zim/Gaz shippers.
    • And let's not forget Zim/Tak and Dib/Tak. Or Gaz/Tak.
  • A completely Inverted Trope in Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers where out of the four main characters, Zach is Happily Married and unquestionably devoted to Eliza and his children. Shane and Niko are shipped together (despite his tendency to acquire a mostly-Unwanted Harem), and Robert Mandell admits he was planning to marry them off. Walter manages to charm a Recurring Character who left Shane's Unwanted Harem when she saw that Walter wasn't the useless goof she initially thought he was.
  • In Phineas and Ferb the biggest question is with whom Isabella should end up with. Fans usually ship her with the two principal brothers. That's because she's the only one female character of their age with a important role.
      • Recently a joke in "Quantum Boogaloo" Ship Teased Ferb/Isabella (Ferbella), but this pair was never developed in the series.
      • Isabella has a crush on Phineas. Because of this, Phineas/Isabella (Phinbella) simply has much more canon evidence and a significantly larger fanbase.
    • That's also a rather controversial question of who Ferb should wind up with. Canonically, he has a Precocious Crush on Vanessa, who at sixteen is about two-to-six years older than him. Many fans, however, decided to pair him with Gretchen, who originally seems to be chosen simply because she was the first girl his age (other than Isabella) to have a name; They have never interacted, though, despite how many times the Fireside Girls have helped in Phineas and Ferb's projects. And of course, some fans Take a Third Option and just invent an Original Character, pair Ferb with somebody else in the show, or have a threesome.
    • Another possible war that could break out is between the Phineas/Ferb shippers and...well, like the Invader Zim example above, just the people who hate that pairing.
    • An upcoming episode reveals that Johnny, who fans had generally written off as a Boy Of The Week, is now Vanessa's boyfriend. It won't be long now before Johnny gets subjected to the madness of the rabid Ferbnessa shippers.
    • And now Vannesa broke up with Johnny...but got a thing for Monty Monogram. here we go...
    • This was mostly averted between Jeremy/Candace and Candace/Stacy shippers. Most of the later also support the former. And there isn't any reported sighting on any debate between the two thus far.
  • Metalocalypse, despite its veritable buffet of pairings and a fandom that just loves the Ho Yay, has thus far avoided this. Every possible pairing has its supporters, some quite staunch, but as a whole the fandom is laid back enough to live and let live, with the Skwisgaar/Toki, Toki/Nathan, and Nathan/Charles supporters sharing forums and communities in relative harmony.
  • While not as extreme as some of the others mentioned on this page, there's the Green Lantern/Hawkgirl shippers vs. the Green Lantern/Vixen shippers for Justice League Unlimited, even though both are canon, and there was a big reveal about Warhawk being Green Lantern and Hawkgirl's son in the future, and Word of God has pretty much said the Green Lantern/Hawkgirl shippers have reason to be victorious in this fight. And yet there's still friction between them.
  • The "Shipping Wars" within the Danny Phantom fandom. It became (in)famously known as the "True-Fan VS Anti-Fan" wars, and ran rampant throughout sites like Deviant ART. The wars pretty much boil down to Canon (Danny/Sam) VS Fanon (Danny/Valerie) and/or Heterosexual Parings (Danny/Sam, Danny/Valerie) VS Slash (Danny/Vlad, Danny/Dash, and even Danny/Himself *Don't ask*).
    • How bad was it, you ask? Well, anyone who supported "Fanon" parings was considered an "Anti-Fan" whom the "True-Fans" disregarded as "filth and pornography" (Even if artwork/fanfic of said "Fanon" pairing was completely "G" rated). Likewise, the supporters of "Canon" pairings were called "Canon Nazis" whom the "Anti-Fans" would often accuse of "not understanding artistic freedom". Not to mention that simply being friends or liking the artwork of someone on one side of the battlefield automatically made you enemies with the other. Thankfully, these days, the war seems to have died down a bit.
  • The Fairly OddParents has its own, with the main combatants seeming to be Timmy/Tootie and Timmy/Trixie. However, Veronica/Timmy also has its own devoted fanbase (even though Veronica was only shown to like Timmy in two episodes and she expressed it in a very... interesting way. There is also a minority of Timmy/Vicky shippers, who seem to be in it mostly for the 'straight shota'.
    • The Tootie/Timmy shippers won out in the end, as the Fairly Odd Movie reveals that Timmy gives up his fairies for Tootie, but a loophole in the rules allows him to keep his fairies, so long as he uses them for unselfish purposes. Tootie also is allowed to learn of the fairies. Although the movie is not the finale of the series itself, it seems to set the events of the future in stone. Despite this word coming from the creator himself, fans against this couple are still trying to claim it is not part of the canon series. Yeah, you heard that right, Negative Continuity Nicktoons have non-canon and alternate timelines now.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door. Say one shipping, and you'll have shippers SWARMING YOU WITH FURY. For example - 4/86 - You'll have 2/86 after you and 4/3 after you, and 2/86 will have 2/5 after them, which will have 1/5 after them, and will have 1/Lizzie AND 1/362 after them, and so on and so forth. You may want to wear battle ready armor for this.
  • Gargoyles fandom has had this going on for over a decade after Goliath's daughter Angela hooked up with Broadway over Brooklyn (and Brooklyn himself was very graceful about his "loss"). While most fans understood that Broadway was the correct choice, even if not the obvious choice, there are still fans who believe she should have hooked up with Brooklyn, and it intensified after Greg Weisman came out and said that Brooklyn's attraction to her was shallow and superficial. The recent arrival of Brooklyn's true love, Katana, seems to have finally laid this to rest... however there are still some hold outs because "Katana is not hot." (This is what Katana looks like, by the way.)
    • For a period, several years back, there were militant shippers who believed that Demona and Elisa Maza should be a couple. While some were doing it just for the fun, there was a rising faction who was dead serious about it. They even denounced Greg Weisman as a writer, and attacked him for not writing "realistic relationships." So, according to these people, Demona and Elisa were meant for each other. One is a human, and one wants to commit mass genocide upon humanity, and both despise the other.
  • X-Men Evolution has a few interesting ones. Lancitty(Lance/Kitty) vs. Kurtty(Kurt/Kitty) is the biggest one and dates back to the start of the fandom. Some Kurtty fans like to bash Lance as a violent bad boy who is all wrong for the innocent and sweet Kitty and should be with someone like Wanda or Tabitha, while Dogged Nice Guy Kurt is the one for her (Sometimes depicting him alot more violently than usual and being rather immature about it). Lancitty fans will point out that Kitty is attracted to Lance, and never showed the slightest romantic interest in Kurt. who is in a relationship with Amanda (Sometimes agressively saying 'ITS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN' and be rather immature about the matter as well). They are also quick to remind anyone they have Canon behind them as the Official Couple since Lance and Kitty are hinted to get back together at the end.
    • And, that's not even mentioning the Piotr/Kitty fans. Usually, they're spared by the other fans due to Piotr's little screentime, but due to the fact he's Kitty's comic love interest and in a few scenes at the end of the third season Kitty and him proved to work well together he's just as much up for grabs by the less tollerable fans. Sometimes, he'll get off light with just a casual 'It didn't happen', sometimes he'll get a 'he was too old for her' (Which is funny, since his age wasn't ever stated, but he appeared to be only around Scott's age, the same as Lance), but, sometimes he'll just get treated like garbage, or Out of Character Moments from the comics will be given as 'evidense' to him being wrong for Kitty.
    • Another one is Scogue(Scott/Rogue) vs. Romy(Gambit/Rogue). Rogue had a crush on Scott that last for three seasons of the show; this pairing proved very popular, much more so than Scott's always inevitable hookup with Jean. But it was challenged when Rogue's longtime comic boyfriend Gambit appeared on the show. Now, every detail about Scogue is bashed (Including its name, seriously, some cite that 'Scogue or Rott sounds terrible') by the Romy fans.
      • And, lets not forget how Jott (Scott/Jean) is treated by Scogue fans. Or Jean herself, who apparently is a slutty evil Alpha Bitch in the view of eabid Scogue fans who think Popular Is Dumb despite how Jean was portrayed sympathetically in the show, or creepily overproject their own teenage experiences on the Love Triangle: Rogue the Misfit is automatically good, Jean the Spoiled Sweet is automatically bad, Scott is Rogue's "prize penis" for being the Cool Girl, etc.
  • Adventure Time had a quick little shipping war between fans of which girl they thought was better for Finn. Marceline the Vampire Queen or Princess Bubblegum. The war was ended when Marceline/Finn was sunk by Marceline herself and "Mortal Recoil" has given Bubblegum an age regression, turning her 13, and making her a compatible Toy Ship with Finn.
    • Finn dates Princess Bubblegum in her age-regressed state but it doesn't last. In the episode "Too Young," PB returns to her proper age to evict a "friendly" usurper.
    • In the episode "What Was Missing," Bubbline (Marceline/Bubblegum) took off big time. The episode itself seems loaded by the writers with slashy tinder.
    • Finn has a new love interest in the Flame Princess. Shippers are already starting to get into combat mode.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: There are ships that pair Rainbow Dash with Applejack, but there are others that pair her with Pinkie Pie. Fans of one ship will immediatly (upon realization) state they don't like the shipping, while stating however, that the story is [X] ([X] being their humble, critical opinion on the author's writing) and so living on to their promise of "loving and tolerating the $#¡+ out of you".
    • Your Mileage May Vary. While many fans promote "love and tolerance", many still start ship wars.
      • Flutterdashers and Appledashers in particular.
    • If you pair Lyra or Bon Bon with anypony other than each other, you can expect to at least a few times be called either A) a troll, B) a homophobe, C) an idiot, or D) all three. Many Lyrabon fans are perfectly normal, but a lot of them are so possessive of both characters that if you don't accept the shipping of them as "almost canon," you'll soon meet a lot of people who neither love or tolerate your opinion.
    • Some plot points to the Valentines Day episode, Hearts and Hooves Day, were revealed early. It was revealed that the Cutie Mark Crusaders try to hook up Big Macintosh and Cheerilee. Big Mac and Fluttershy is one of the most popular ships in bronydom, so naturally, the Fluttemac shippers took exception - before the episode had even aired and before it was established that anything had changed in the first place.
      • And a lot of people found the episode a Crowning Moment of Funny because in a way it said "shipping is bad" since the plot was about making two people fall in love because you think they'll work. Cue a bunch of teasing fanart all around.
  • In-universe example: Gargamel starts one of these in the Season 1 episode of The Smurfs "Romeo and Smurfette" when he has a Mind Controlled Smurfette say that she's decided to marry either Hefty or Handy. All the other smurfs take sides, and things get so violent that Papa Smurf has to divide the village with a This-Is-My-Side line to keep Team Hefty and Team Handy from killing each other. We couldn't make this stuff up.
  • In the Young Justice fandom there are many ship wars, but the main ship war being Spitfire (ArtemisXWally) and Traught (ArtemisXRobin). BirdFlash (WallyXRobin), Chalant (RobinXZatanna), and BabsXRobin often get caught in the crossfire.
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