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 iscanon (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, though sometimes it can include real person fiction. 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 canon/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 seeSubtext, 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
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Anime & 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 botably low on bashing and cursing, with each side prefering to pile evidence to try and top each other.
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, although there's no one else to pair them up with - Anti-Rocketshippers simply hold the opinion they're not interested in each other (and usually that James is gay).
The main war was between Pokéshippers (pairing up Ash/Satoshi and Misty/Kasumi) and Palletshippers (Ash/Satoshi and Gary/Shigeru).
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.
There was also Kurogane/Fay and Chi/Fay, although the latter ship pretty much died out later on.
Magi - Labyrinth of Magic has Sinja (Sinbad x Ja'far) shippers versus Sinju (Sinbad x Judal) shippers. Fanarts of Sinbad often features either Jafar or Judal as his romantic interest. While Sinbad's relationship with Judal is more Foe Yay than Ho Yay as with Ja'Far, both ships are more or less equal in power. There are also some who support Princess Kogyouku's huge crush on Sinbad, and while this hasn't translated in Kyougoku bashing yet... eh, it shouldn't be discarded.
There's people out there that would prefer see Morgiana with Hakuryuu rather than Alibaba despite the Canonical evidence that shows she likes the latter...
Also, if you support Kogyouku's crush on Sinbad, you might be marked for a very painful death.
Ao-Kuro shippers (Aomine x Kuroko) against Kaga-Kuro shippers (Kagami x Kuroko). Aomine and Kagami are very similar in many ways, both being Kuroko's past and present 'Light' respectively. More often than not, Kaga-Kuro fanfic will usually portray Aomine as an antagonist, and vice versa for Ao Kuro fanfics.
Momo-Kuro (Momoi x Kuroko) against Ao-Momoi (Aomine x Momoi). Momoi has a heavy crush on Kuroko since their middle school times, but chose to go with Aomine to Touou high-school to take care of him instead ('childhood friend's duty' as noted by Momoi). This causes fans to argue whether Momoi's feelings for Aomine is purely platonic or not. Plus, Aomine once mentioned that he likes "women with big boobs", which Momoi clearly has. One of the end cards in the anime which showed Momoi lying down with Aomine doesn't help either, it was a blatant Ship Tease by the animators, leading fans to question their relationships even more.
Ao-Momoi vs Ao-Kuro. Moments after the end-card was shown, a fan-edited version replacing Momoi with Kuroko was instantly uploaded to the internet.
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.
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds 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.
That group is composed mainly by Sasuke/Naruto fans (and Sasuke/Karin, so that disgust is as much as pairing wars as the rest of them). The number of neutral parties is actually quite small in comparision.
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...
The flames and the war have turned out pretty nasty after Neji's death and sacrifice for Hinata. There were ugly battles between Neji/Tenten vs. Neji/Hinata vs. Naruto/Hinata fans. Neji/Tenten fans defended their ship by sustaining that Neji's sacrifice for Hinata was only proof of familial love, not romantic, while the Neji/Hinata fans saw it as proof of both familial and romantic (since simple cousins don't usually do that kind of sacrifices for each other), with more on the romantic part (since, in Japan, cousin romances are viewed just like the other romances and since "Naruto" is a Japanese show, anything could have been implied). Heck, even Naruto/Sakura fans decided to throw their two cents in, calling out Hinata for 'selfishly getting Neji killed'. On the other hand, a part of the Naruto/Hinata fans sustained that, even if Neji had that kind of feelings for Hinata, Hinata still didn't care about Neji and still loved Naruto, while another part sustained that Neji actually gave "his blessing" for the Naruto/Hinata ship and, along with his death, he has gotten out of the way. It doesn't matter that none of all those had actually anything to do with the true reasons Neji died for; namely that Hinata was prepared to give her life to shield Naruto from Tobi's wood jutsu, and Neji jumped in the path of the stakes before they reached her.
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 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 a Crack Pairing. 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 or missing entirely, and the majority of Ichigo/Orihime fans have banded together on their own ship-oriented forum.
Some Ulquiorra/Orihime fans have also joined in the Ship-to-Ship Combat against Ichigo/Orihime. Orihime is frequently criticised for not falling out of love with Ichigo and is blamed for the Break the Cutie events that happen to her — some of them being caused by Ulquiorra. Alternatively, these "special" fans tend to deliberately handwave or completely erase Ulquiorra'slesssavorytraits to make him look like Orihime's "perfect prince" who'll whisk her away from Ichigo... nevermind that the major appeals of the couple would be the potential Mind Game Ship, Angel/Devil Shipping, Corrupt the Cutie and/or Foe Yay aspects.
Some yaoi and Ichigo/Orihime fans have jumped into the Ship-To-Ship Combat by bashing Ulquiorra/Orihime and a tad on Rukia with accounts dedicated to it, and obnoxious stamps. Noting the first reference, it's particularly noticeable how much utter contempt there is for Orihime. She just can't win in fandom.
Ishida/Orihime fans find shippers of any of the "main" Orihime pairings regard them as really odd, receiving the internet equivalent of a pat on the head and a "right, you go on along, dear."
Similar to the Ishida/Orihime fans, Ichigo/Tatsuki shippers barely register on the radars of any other Ichigo-related ships. Considering the fact Tatsuki is considered a secondary character, this is not surprising.
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 Bishōnen?) Despite the only confirmed canon pairing being the (platonic) love between Sebastian/Any Cat He Can Find and the closest thing Ciel has to a canon "loveinterest" is Lizzie many fangirls persist over pairings like Ciel x Sebastian, which has some Yaoi Fanservice in the manga and was Turned Up to Eleven in the anime (especially in season 2). Though Sebastian's obsession with (eatting) Ciel's Soul may make it 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. 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.
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.
Megumi also 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 herwithSanosuke instead, and then Tomoe took her place as "Kaoru's love rival".
Very ironically, some rabid Sanosuke/Megumi did NOT take the apparition of Magdaria and the Ship Tease she got with Sanosuke well at all, and even Magaria's death wasn't enough to shut them up. ("Weh weh, the bitch is dead but Sano is so saaaad! Why ddi they create that bitch only to get her killed and make Sano cryyyyy! WAHWAH!")
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 so Sora ending up with Yamato instead was a giant cop-out. Yamato/Sora fans use the Distant Finale, the fact that Sora willingly chose Yamato over Taichi without anyone pressuring her into it (and having her back off could have sexist Unfortunate Implications about her feeling that "she owes Taichi affection"), the other fact that Taichi got over Sora's supposed "friendzoning" in less than 24 hours (and even showed attraction to another girl named Catherine so he wasn't as "hurt" and "spurned" as Taichi/Sora fans insisted he was), and how it breaks the "Hero gests together with Heroine" clichés 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.
"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 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.
Nanoha/Chrono was a third fleet in the running for a long time, too. You should have seen the looks of disbelief when the authors sank the possibility of Chrono/Nanoha or Chrono/Fate by pairing him up with Amy and making his mother adopt Fate (not that this last one would stop some people, of course). At least the shippers of that have some comfort: it's canon in Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever, in which neither Yuuno, Fate nor Amy exist.
Anyone who spends time on the AnimeSuki Forum learns about the historic and brutal 300 vs. LegionFlame War. The supporters of NanoFate shipping called themselves Legion due to their sheer numbers, while YuuNano shippers called themselves 300 since they're so few.
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 — apparently inspited by the anime subtext). Taka x Fuji fans are NOT innocent of this either, as sometimes Taka/Fuji fan corners are made of passive-aggressive jabs about how Tezu/Fuji fans are "only in for the pretty UNLIKE OUR MUCH DEEPER SHIP".
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 these "homophobes" do ship some slash couples alongside the het ones.
The Het is Ew factor gets even worse if you even mention the girls from the Dating Sims. These stupid Mary Sue whores! They "straighten" super gay gay GAY characters with their evil vaginas and steal them from their "more deserving" male lovers, EWWWWWWW!
Inui x Kaidoh fans bash Yanagi and the Inui x Yanagi pairing and fans, accusing Renji of being hateful and cruel towards Inui as well as a bad and abusive friend when they were younger;
Sanada x Yukimura fans bash Atobe and say he's "stealing" Sanada from his beloved leader and Childhood Friend when he could have whoever else he wanted. Sanada x Atobe fans bash Yukimura and accuse him of being a self-absorbed verbal abuser who manipulates his "Love Martyr" Sanada into loving him for his own amusement.
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 BirdBridge 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. There is great mutual enmity between the Rei/Shinji shippers, and the Asuka/Shinji shippers, which isn't helped by the fact that Asuka and Rei pretty much hate each other in canon. There are also the more controversial Misato/Shinji shippers, the Kaworu/Shinji shippers, and the occasional fans of Mana Kirishima. 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.
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. 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.
And now, thanks to Evangelion3.0, the fight has boiled down between the Shinji/Asuka fans and Mari/Asuka shippers, apart from giving the Kaworu/Shinji pairing more ground and possibly written off Shinji/Rei.note More explanation in Rebuild of Evangelion, spoilers ahead
Yes, 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 ˝ 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.
It got so silly that people actually accused a group called "The Defenders of the True Fiancée" of spreading viruses and hacking websites. One particularly notorious shipper even accused the animators of conspiring against his favorite character.
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..
SHUFFLE!, dear God, SHUFFLE!. The fiercest Ship-To-Ship Combat happens between the InstantFanclubsAi 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."
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 Loadsand Loadsof 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.
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 confirmedCelibate 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 has seen a rise in this over the years. Of course, when you've got Loads And Loads OfAnthropomorphic Nations, a fair amount of Ship Tease, and a distinct lack of Official Couples, you can justify pretty much any pairing under the sun. The result is that people who ship Nation X with Nation Y will find themselves at odds with those who ship either X or Y with another character. Has it's own page here for specific examples.
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.
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.
Of course some ship him with Graham and Gundam as well.
With the announcement of a new Fullmetal Alchemist movie after the 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 ANYTHING about her, and she's STILL being accused of Suedom? Come ON, Fan Dumb!
Although not as bad as it used to be, the 2003 anime version's 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. (Winry and Roy were usually spared, due to greater potential for Tying Up Romantic Loose Ends and the fact that they were well-liked characters in general, whereas Rose was divisive even outside of the shipping wars.)
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.
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.
Not entirely. Those insisting they aren't official are often hardcore Roy/Ed or Al/Winry shippers (respectively). The fact that Ed and Winry are an Official Couple as of the end of the series doesn't seem to matter here.
Vampire Knight, with Zero/Yuuki vs. Kaname/Yuuki in particular. Is Kaname a creepy and incestuousBastard 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 ot3f 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.
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 Soul, Kidd, and Chrona. Fans often disagree over which one is the true OTP.
Fans of Chrona/Maka are divided on whether it'smaleChrona/Maka or femaleChrona/Maka.
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.
YuYu 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...
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.
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 Dark Horse, 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 Yurindie in the WORST way possible does NOT help the series's case.
Tiger & 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 Jerk Ass who treats Kotetsu like shit just to satisfy his ego - sooooo unlike the sweet, pretty Karina would? Be careful about expressing such thoughts...
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 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 OTPuke.
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.
While the Shin Megami Tensei franchise as a whole hasn't been totally devoid of this, Persona 4: The Animation has brought pretty big ship wars afloat (Hur hur hur). As of episodes 9 and 10 (the ones dealing with RiseKujikawa), 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 many panicked in the moment Naoto sorta joined in...
Aquarion EVOL, oh boooooooy. The Zessica/Amata and Mikono/Kagura factions are totaly vicious against the Mikono/Amata pairing. Amata is called "tool" and "ungrateful bastard" for rejecting Zessica's love, Mikono is called "slut" and "weak" for not falling into Amata's arms right away and being confused about Kagura, Zessica is Mary Sue-fied by self-projecting fangirls and fanboys who think Amata owes her cock because she loves him and would sacrifice lots of things for him. On the flip side Kagura is either made into a heartless and evil brute (ignoring how he isn't without his depths), or Marty Stu-fied a la Zessica while his fans insist that Mikono owes him vagina for being his Morality Pet — so her going for Amata instead makes her "a shallow and traitor whore".
Natsu/Lucy vs Natsu/Lisanna. Lucy fans will often point out Natsu's lack of any sort of interest in Lisanna after her return, and fanfics will have her stay dead. Lisanna fans will cite the anime filler scenes that set her up as Natsu's tragic former love interest, their and fanfiction will often have Lucy turn out to have been a shallow replacement for her who is booted from or ignored by the guild upon Lisanna's return.
Erza/Jellal vs Erza/Natsu vs Erza/Gray. Gray and Natsu fans get along pretty well by uniting against Jellal. While he's got canon on his side (he and Erza are the only characters to even kiss thus far, the only main characters to admit to having mutual feeling, the only ones to have a heavily developed romantic history and interactions, the only...) it's easy for Natsu and Gray fans to point out that he's also the only one to have seriously harmed Erza, often claiming that being Brainwashed and Crazy at the time doesn't excuse him because he still physically did it, and it's easy to create a story where Erza comes to that same conclusion and decides to ignore him.
Never EVER ask Madlax fans who is a better love interest for Madlax. If you pick Vanessa, you'll be harshly told that she's dead so she shouldn't really count. If you pick Limelda, people will scream at you that she's an icky Psycho Lesbian who killed Vanessa and doesn't deserve Madlax.
The SoulEater shippers thankfully aren't too vicious about it and people mostly just ship what they like and ignore everything else, but exceptions of course happen.
The biggest ship in the fandom is Soul/Maka (which has the most canon evidence too), but Maka/Crona has its fair share of supporters (the relationship has a hurt-comfort dynamic which appeals to some people), and so does Death the Kid/Maka (because they're the most similiar to each other in personality).
Who Death the Kid should end up with is also a controversial topic: we have Kid and one of his twin guns-morphable-to-hot-chick Liz (out of pairings involving Death the Kid this one is probably the most plausible - Liz is shown to have an admiration of him as a result of giving her and her sister, Patty better living conditions and she is also the only person capable of dealing with, and even accepting his Super OCD issues to a certain extent), the aforementioned Kid/Maka and Kid/Crona (I would elaborate, but... I got nothin').
Aaand then there's also the subject of professor Stein: should it be Stein and Medusa (they have shared a lot of Foe Yay moments), Stein and Marie (who are also subject to Ship Tease), or Stein/Spirit (well, they are partners, but with Spirit's love of women...).
In the mid-Nineties, Slam Dunk had huge ship wars. Asking a Yaoi Fangirl whether Rukawa should go with Sakuragi or Sendoh; or whether Sendoh should go with Rukawa or with Koshino, was... well, unsafe. And 90% of yaoi fans had nothing kind to say about Sakuragi's canon crush Haruko: either she was a dumb and ungrateful bitch for being oblivious to Sakuragi's feelings for her, or she was a Bad Role Model for little girls for daring to have a crush on Rukawa.
In regards to Love Hina fandom... Put a Motoko/Keitarou and a Naru/Kaitaro shipper in the same room. There will be blood.
And don't add a Shinobu/Keitaro shipper. You risk getting an Earth-Shattering Kaboom right in your face.
Even worse: bring in a Mutsumi/Keitaro shipper. Say your prayers, everyone.
One Piece, as a No Hugging, No Kissing series, doesn't have that many shippers. However, it is full of deep bonds between characters and sometimes vague interaction between them that could serve as a basis for a potential relationship. Some of the biggest conflicts between the fandom are:
Who Luffy should end up with: Nami, the spunky navigator of his crew, with whom he shares a very deep bond which can be seen as romantic or not with ease — and not to mention Nami seems to be quite focused on other matters rather than whether Luffy will bone her or not. Or Boa Hancock, empress of Amazon Lily Island who fell madly in love with him, although her displays of affection are Played for Laughs and while Luffy is grateful for her help during the Marineford arc, he explicitly stated that "he wasn't going to marry her".
Of course there is also a lot of disagreement on the topic of who Nami herself should be with: the aforementioned airhead of a captain Luffy, girl-crazy cook Sanji or the stoic, serious swordsman Zoro.
Robin also gets some attention from shippers, albeit in her case it is mostly limited to whether she is better fit for Team Dad shipwright Franky or Zoro.
There is also a pretty big following for the coupling of Sanji and Zoro, because of their constant married-couple-like bickering, although these people mostly don't involve in arguments over other pairings for understandable reasons...
Also, there's a small but very loyal corner of Zoro/Luffy shippers who want their own share of deep and mutual trust to go beyond. And not all of them get along with other Luffy-shipping fans.
Comics
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.
The British counterpart, Sonic The Comic, has some mild ship-to-ship combat. It mostly centers around Tekno's and Amy's Romantic Two-Girl Friendship, and The Scrappy Shortfuse. Word Of God is Tekno and Shortfuse have a "thing" for each other, though it wasn't shown much in the comics (the fan-continuation tries to make up for it with mixed results). Shortfuse is The Scrappy due to his annoying insistence of saying backstory everytime he appeared, and there was already a train of thought in the fandom that Amy and Tekno were "too" friendly.
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, that was first fueled mainly by Terra 2 and the fans of the cartoon who came to enjoy the comics. Terra 2 was later killed off as cannon fodder in an event, but the wars continued when DC brought out a third version of the character (albeit one not very connected to Beast Boy or the Titans). The second and third Terras have since been erased by the New52 reboot, in which only the first one now exists as an active character. As she's partnered off with Beast Boy, ship wars have started anew.
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.
Funnily enough, Superman/Wonder Woman is currently (or will be) canon in the D Cn U.
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.
Don't forget Spidey/MJ Vs. Spidey/Black Cat either.
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 married 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 OT 3 so much.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles In-universe in the 1990 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.
Also in the MCU, any mention of the possibility of a love triangle between Thor, Jane, and Sif in Thor 2 has led to snide remarks being traded between Thor x Jane shippers and Thor x Sif shippers, occassionally interrupted by Team Loki. Odin help us all if they actually go with the love triangle in the sequel.
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 and Harry/Ginny ships vs. 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 leftover Harry/Hermione fans were "delusional." Rowling agreed that they were misled (but did specifically say they weren't delusional), 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 Sucksdebate 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.
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. It has even reached this very wiki, sadly.
Warrior Cats: 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 2009 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.
Peter/Susan and Edmund/Lucy fans weren't pleased when Caspian appeared in the picture, cause it spurred other ships like Caspian/each one of the Pevensie siblings. Most prominently:
Caspian/Susan vs Peter/Susan, which spurred fiction like Caspian/Susan/Peter, since the second film, Prince Caspian. The film supports that accidentally and indirectly, since Peter and Caspian have a feud since the beginning, Peter initially hating and bashing Caspian, while Susan is instantly swept off her feet by Caspian.
Caspian/Lucy vs Edmund/Lucy, which spurred fiction like Caspian/Lucy/Edmund, since the third film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The same as above, this time Lucy wanting to be noticed by Caspian and trying to be like her older sister, while Edmund is revealed at one point to be jealous of Caspian. When Edmund is tempted by evil again, he actually tries to get rid of Caspian, because Caspian opposes Edmund's intention of becoming powerful and rich with Lucy through the magic pond that turns everything into gold.
Caspian/Susan vs Caspian/Lucy, most prominently, but also vs Caspian/Peter vs Caspian/Edmund.
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, 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 Starcrossed 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.
You're forgetting Petyr/Sansa, which as of the end of A Feast For Crows looks like it could possibly happen (especially given as Sansa's final chapter in the book is one long hormonal prelude that reads like her sexual awakening, and concludes with the two of them kissing). Petyr/Sansa shippers fall into the "political" category and are some of the biggest "Sansa for Queen in the North" supporters you'll find, as he clearly intends to raise her up via marriage to Harry, and while there are a few people who ship both Petyr/Sansa and Sandor/Sansa, by and large these two factions detest the other ship.
Artemis Fowl doesn't have any portmanteau couple names, but the battle between Artemis/Holly shippers and Trouble/Holly shippers doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon, particularly since neither side can be Armed With Canon yet.
A slightly lesser debate is Artemis/Holly versus Artemis/Minerva. Some people can be very very cruel to poor Minerva...
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... with the obvious exception of Riley/Xander, which is just common sense - in the comics Xander even admits to being a Team Riley shipper, which makes sense for his character.
Funnily enough, averted with Willow/Tara vs Willow/Oz shippers who generally tend to get along just fine. In their mutual hate of the Willow/Kennedy shippers, that is (yes, all 14 of them). There's also the fact that Oz and Tara are possibly the two characters in the fandom who are least-hated. Granted, both received their fair share of vitriol in the early days (especiallyTara), but nowadays they are almost universally-adored by all fans.
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.
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".
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.
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.
The Rose vs. Martha vitriol has some hilarious examples here, but they were wanking even pre-Martha, which can pretty much be summarized by this bingo scorecard◊ a user named nostalgia drew up.
Torchwood has this for Jack/Ianto fans who can get quite vicious toward the 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.
Also, a lot of Eli/Chloe fans jumped ship for Eli/Ginn when it appeared.
While not as severe as many examples, there is tension in the HeroesFandom 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. A huge war began in Season 2 when the Sam/Freddie pairing shared their First Kiss, after Freddie had openly pined for Carly prior to that point. The war grew as big Kataang vs. Zutara did, while lasting longer. Both sides declared that Word Of God secretly shipped their OTP, that Word Of God was pandering to one side before making the other canon, what colour each ship 'owns', timing to the second how long various kisses lasted, thinking too much into freeze-frames and interpretations so involved the Doctor Who fandom would be proud. The height of the conflict extended over a dozen websites and was notable for the entire fandom shifting from LiveJournal over to tumblr and restarting the war there. Carly/Sam also has a significant following that is hated on because they're both girls. It was such an integral part of the fandom that it was turned into an actual war, by the writers, in the episode iStart A Fan War, featuring groups of supporters for the named ships fighting each other In-Universe.
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. Not even the finale of the series could stop the war. Sure, Carly goes out of her way to plant a big romantic kiss on Freddie, which he celebrates. But just prior to that event, Freddie had made a joke about 'wanting to get back together' with Sam. Then the creator put in a Flip Flopof God onto his blog about the ending, leaving Creddie fans trying to explain why you wouldn't just romantically kiss someone on the lips to say goodbye, while the Seddie fans cling to the creators explanation about it being a 'goodbye kiss' and hope that Freddie wasn't joking about wanting Sam back.
The war will continue onto another show. After the cancellation of Victorious and the end of iCarly, Nickelodeon greenlit a new series, named Sam And Cat. A crossover between Sam, and Cat from Victorious. Which has left the Seddie fandom pushing for a reunion to sink Creddie then give Sam & Freddie a Relationship Upgrade even though Freddie isn't a cast member. It's not inconceivable that with a typical 4 season & Dan Schneider's trolling, the war could last into 2016 or even 2017. A full decade since the original iCarly pilot was filmed.
The House 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.
Chase and Foreman recieve lots of hate from Cameron/Thirteen shippers for their respective involvement in Chameron and Foreteen. Surprisingly, it goes both ways, with Cameron and Thirteen recieving hate from Chase/Foreman shippers, for their involvement in Chameron and Foreteen.
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.
One Tree Hill fandom has an ongoing Brooke/Lucas versus Peyton/Lucas ship war, despite the fact that Brooke/Lucas ended their official relationship in S4 and Lucas/Peyton ended the show together.
Gossip Girl fandom has become somewhat of a Broken Base between fans of Chuck and Blair versus Dan and Blair. Chuck and Blair had been declared endgame by Word of God but when Dan and Blair was introduced in S4 (romance in S5), many fans immediately loved the pairing.
This ship war largely centers over perception of Chuck and whether he is a Jerkass or a Woobie after he (among other things) traded Blair for a hotel (yes this was a plot) and had a few Crazy Jealous Guy moments but also a possible redemption arc, depending who you ask.
Less vocal are other smaller shipwars like Nate & Serena versus Dan & Serena (both couples are Highschool Sweethearts ). The Blair pairings however seem to be the most popular in the fandom.
Don't forget the Nate and Serena vs. Nate and Jenny.
As of the finale, Blair and Chuck and Dan and Serena each got married with Nate and Jenny single (leading writers to Pair the Spares)
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. More recently, since Clois and Chlollie gradually became the more dominant ships in and out of universe, many of the remaining Chlarkers have been at the Chlolliers' throats as well. 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 Cloisers have also largely engaged in Pass the Popcorn with one another while the non-canonical ships duke it out.
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 Chloe supporters shipped Chimmy merely 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.
The 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.
In The Vampire Diaries fandom, there is an intense rivalry between Stefan/Elena (Stelena) shippers and Damon/Elena (Delena) shippers. Some Stefan/Elena shippers have made their animosity and dislike towards Damon/Elena shippers so evident within fandom that they have come up with names for both the opposing ship (Delena) as well as its fans. Some of the terms and names some Stefan/Elena shippers use or have used against the ship Damon/Elena and its shippers include DE-lusional, DE-nial, DE-ath, DE-struction, DE-speration, DE-vil, etc. Some Stelena shippers often use negative words to describe Delena or their feelings about Delena, with the words beginning with the letters DE. DE is the abbreviated name for Damon/Elena. The shipper wars that take place between Stelena and Delena shippers within fandom mostly have to do with who Elena should choose, who Elena has better chemistry with, or who Elena should end up with at the end of the series. Between the two fan groups, it appears as though Stefan/Elena shippers are much more quiet, calm and less vocal (but still a large, solid fan base), while Damon/Elena shippers are much more loud, vocal and even "rabid" about their ship, believing that their loudness and vocality might have an influence on Damon/Elena possibly becoming a couple on the show. Sometimes the shipper wars between Stelena and Delena often turn into Salvatore brother wars, with Stefan fans sparring with Damon fans.
Another shipper war taking place in the TVD fandom are Tyler/Caroline (Forwood) shippers and Klaus/Caroline (Klaroline) shippers.
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'sindiscretions (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'sOfficial 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).
The problem with Law & 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 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.
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. 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.
And let's not forget how much ship-to-ship combat Sean/Emma went through before that. Chick Magnet boyfriend + Creator's Pet girlfriend = lots of people shipping Sean/anyone but Emma. To wit, Sean has been paired with Emma, Ashley, Ellie, and Amy in canon; in fanfic, this includes Paige, Manny, Craig, Tracker, and Jay.
Now part 3 of season 10 has Fiona/Adam vs. Fiona/Holly J. Full. Freaking. Stop.
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.
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.
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.
In the source material, the Ship-to-Ship Combat between the Chiaki/Kotoha shippers and the Takeru/Kotoha shippers was understandable because there was what could reasonably be interpreted as Ship Tease for both pairings in the series. However, Emily has shown no discernable romantic interest in Jayden, nor he in her, so the fact that there are even Jayden/Emily shippers is puzzling to begin with.
Many Jayden/Emily shippers insist that, unlike Mike/Emily (who are obviously shown to be attracted to one another and are holding hands when they leave the Shiba House for Emily's home at series' end), Jayden and Emily's "love" is supposedly so deep that it isn't immediately obvious, but it is there.
Some Jayden/Emily shippers admit to being general Red/Yellow shippers (whether or not the Sub Text even exists) out of their general dislike of the frequent Red/Pink ship (whether or not the Sub Text even exists). Some of these shippers also cop to being Takeru/Kotoha shippers who hoped that a Jayden/Emily ship would have been a sort of second chance for Word Of God to give their chosen ship validation. Given that Word Of God has all but declared Mike/Emily official, it would seem that the Chiaki/Kotoha shippers were the ones who got the second chance.
For Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, there is the ever-infamous war between those shipping Tommy/Kimberly and those shipping Tommy/Katherine, mostly containing aggressors from fans of the former who hated having their ship sunk. This has in turn caused angry retaliation from the latter faction. Then oddly enough, you occasionally get Jason/Kimberly shippers that consider Tommy to have been a Marty Stu that "stole" her away. Tommy's reappearance for Power Rangers Dino Thunder introduced Tommy/Kira shippers as a third faction in the combat.
Kamen Rider Kiva: Otoya/Yuri vs Otoya/Maya and Wataru/Mio vs Taiga/Mio. The show encouraged this, since both Love Triangles had a heavy influence on the plot.
Kamen Rider OOO: Eiji/Hina vs Ankh/Hina vs Ankh/Eiji. There's also some conflict between those who think Mezool / Gamel would be adorable, and those who find it creepy since Mezool is a pre-teen girl in her human form.
In Kamen Rider Fourze, Ryusei's most constant love interest is Tomoko (who is ostensibly his girlfriend by the time of Movie Wars Ultimatum, set five years after the events of the show) but two other women (Inga Blink and Shirakawa) had romantic interest in him, leading to arguments over which one he should have ended up with.
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 flak.
Glee. Good Lord, where to begin? Thanks to the Love Dodecahedron nature of the show, any given character will have a fair number of onscreen relationships (both actual romances and subtext). ALL of which have their diehard supporters who will raise hell if their favorite pairing is broken up (or never started at all in the case of subtext). A particularly nasty ship war that comes to mind was in the second season between Brittany/Santana and Brittany/Artie, complete with accusations of But Not Too Gay for making Brittany date a boy, But Not Too Bi for making her stay with Santana in the end, and Unfortunate Implications for how Santana convinced Brittany to cheat on Artie with her, and whether or not Artie was justified in lashing out at Brittany which caused her to break up with him. This is but one example of the bitchfights between shippers. The forum battles get epic.
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.
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 broke out in CSI NY fandom, though it was more of a case of "many ships against one ship" in the case of the Danny/Lindsay ship (Danny/Flack, Danny/Angell, Danny/Rikki, and Danny/anyone-but-Lindsay vs. Danny/Lindsay). Claims of no chemistry, Character Derailment for Danny, lack of believability, excessive screentime, were among the arguments flung against Danny/Lindsay by the anti-D/L faction, compounded by their general dislike for Lindsay as a character.
Mac is also in the middle of this, with Mac/Jo vs. Mac/Stella vs. Mac/Christine vs. Mac remaining single, eternally mourning Claire. Mac/Peyton is the exception because Peyton is generally regarded as The Scrappy. There is a Mac/Lindsay faction, plus the inevitable slash ships, but the four previously mentioned groups are the primary combatants.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation had conflict over Grissom/Sara, mainly from Grissom/Catherine, Sara/Nick and Sara/Greg at the beginning, but Grissom/Catherine sort of tapered off afterwards, following this, 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.
The A-Team has had near-constant conflict between two primary ships - Hannibal/Face and Murdock/Face. While all out ship wars aren’t the norm for this fandom, fans are still extremely defensive about their OTPs, with a simmering Cold War of sorts stretching back to the mid-80s. The argument, however, usually seems to be mostly concerned with who Face happens to be sleeping with on the team. Both camps tend to cite a plethora of examples from episodes as to which ship is better supported by canon, despite the fact that the show contains roughly equal amounts of unintentional innuendo from Hannibal, and inappropriate touching by Murdock. Murdock/Face, however, typically wins out as most popular.
This problem has been further compounded by the 2010 movie, which most new fans claim more heavily supports Hannibal/Face, or even B.A./Face or Sosa/Face (gasp!), over Murdock/Face, leading to tensions with the old fans of the show.
Some fans choose to bypass this conversation altogether, and go for a Hannibal/B.A./Murdock/Face ship instead, although this, again, is more common in the movie fandom.
Even a relatively obscure fandom like The Addams Family isn't safe. A ship war that began with the advent of the Broadway musical pits Wednesday's adolescent crush Joel (from the second movie) against her fiance Lucas (from the musical). The factions might as well be re-named "Those Who Haven't Seen The Musical" and "Those Who Have" respectively.
In the "Series/Hollyoaks" fandom, there is the Stendan VS Stug war which raged on to disturbing levels, where even side ships that didn't take place (Bruglas shippers) got attacked. Now that Stendan won, but Brendan has gone off to prison for the foreseeable and Stug has been pronounced dead (regardless of being married still), the Stendan shippers have turned their hate to anything Doug related, which is his new pairing with John Paul, which sees the end of Mc Dean and who knows when this will end.
Music
There was an infamous bit of Ship-to-Ship Combat in X Japan fandom that actually led to legal threats being made and a large swath of bandslash being deleted out of fear of the Big Name Fan making them. It started around 2008, when a rabid Yoshiki x Toshi shipper managed to acquire status with a then-official forum. The shipper happened to loathe hide and anyone who shipped hide x Yoshiki, and went about issuing legal threats to (and having her friend who was The Cracker hack) several well-known hide x Yoshiki writers. Most writers of the pairing deleted their fics or apologized or went underground at the time - the result being the deletion of almost all extant Yoshiki x hide or hide x Yoshiki slash at the time, unless the writers were so stupid as not to care about the possibility of legal action, or so angry they ignored it. Eventually the Flame War and the threats calmed down due to a variety of factors (the BNF losing official status, Yoshiki being far more open about his love for hide to the point where it became as close to canon as Real Life gets, hide fans and Toshi fans no longer being in open combat due to the events of 2010) but the result remained - anyone looking for slash in the fandom with that pairing likely will not find anything of quality.
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.
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.
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.
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) — and the kid resembled the three of themnote (He has Wil's Archer class and hairstyle, Lowen's personality and hair color, and Sain's eyes/features) Lyn is the prime core of the battles, due to her 4 romantic options (or 5, if you're a Les Yay fan for Lyn/Florina): Kent (Bodyguard Crush), Eliwood (The protagonist), 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 WayShrinking 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, a few slight hints in FE7's main story, and him saving her at one point in Lyn's story), Lyn (STILL explained earlier), and Fiora (several lords of Fire Emblem can be paired with Pegasus Knights or have Ship Tease with them, 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 Jerk Ass! 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 "Lewyn", "Raqesis", "Ira", "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 "Nowi", "Tharja" or "Sumia" in regards to pairings- unless you want to have your brain melted... violently. (Furthermore, don't mention Nowi's daughter Nah or Sumia's daughter Cynthia in any given situation, or you'll cause an Internet Backdraft). The rabidness of some Chrom/Female Avatar and/or Chrom/Sully fans does NOT help.
And even worse, do NOT try to decipher what Priam said about being "a descendant of Ike". The wording is vague already, but MANY fangirls started screaming in horror since they assumed it HAD to mean that Ike/Soren was automatically jossed, while smug anti-shippers clapped their hands in glee for the same reasons.
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 (Sonic/Blaze), Silvaze(Silver/Blaze), and Shadaze(Shadow/Blaze). Arguably,Sonaze is the most popular of the three due to the occasional teasing of the ship in various media, but that won't stop the 3 from going at each other.
The Baldur's 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 variety of love interests to choose from of both sexes (not that it stops people from shipping Shepard with non-canon options too). Each pairing has its supporters, and while most of them are "live and let live," there are certain sects that are vehemently against certain characters being paired with anyone else besides Shepard (namely, Garrus, Thane, Tali, and Liara). The fact that Garrus and Tali hook up in the third game—provided they were not romanced at all—only threw gasoline on some fires. And then there's the Joker/EDI and Joker/Shepard ship combat as well...
Mass Effect 3 ignited a firestorm of Shepard-centric ship warring, largely due to reduced screen time for the Mass Effect 2 love interests and the controversial way several of their storylines were wrapped upspoilers Jacob will leave you for another woman, Thane will succumb to his illness, and the only way to keep Kelly from getting killed is to convince her to change her name when that dialogue option is available.. Among Fem Shep die-hards, Shepard/Kaidan vs. Shepard/Garrus is probably the ugliest ship wars get in the fandom. In general, most Shepard-centric ship wars in the fandom seem to fall along the lines of humans vs. aliens, with accusations of favoritism by the writers across the board. Shipping is such Serious Business in Mass Effect fandom that a fan survey was created on it and sent to Bioware.
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. In the case of both Mass Effect and Dragon Age, BioWare, to varying degrees of success, attempts to not officially designate a character the 'proper' love interest—every player is free to choose who their love interest is, making any conflict inherently pointless.
The Dragon Age fandom, in fact, 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 second game, 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.
EVERY Final Fantasy game gets this, to some degree. There is a reason why OT 3 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.
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.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: There's plenty 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. Yaoi is one of the main common ships, the figurehead being P x E. If you don't ship that or 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.
Combat is also 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 The Legend Of Zelda 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...
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 some Yaoi Fangirls point out that Dante and Vergil together is hot times two. The only relationship which has remained untouched is Kyrie/Nero...
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.
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 PortalKink 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.
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 Makoto/Minato/the MC's possible pairings, with Yukari Takeba getting the bigger pot shots (Double if it's from MC/Aigis or MC/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.
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 care.
A rather interesting case: Normally, Warship Gunner 2 is about warships blowing each other up. But the unlockable Special missions seem to intend to instill this idea - one of them is in fact an Escort Mission where you travel around sightseeing, and the three "love interests" (two men - one of whom is an old man - and a German doctor who is a looker in her own right) actually dig out naval fleets with the intention of blowing each other up over the Player. Fortunately you put a stop to this.
Surprisingly enough (especially for a game with one male and two female leads) Skies of Arcadia has almost none of this in its fandom. This is because the game neither sinks nor confirms the Vyse/Aika or Vyse/Fina pairings - and unmissable dialogue with each girl indicates that she is in love with Vyse, but completely accepting of the fact that he loves the other girl (and they both get along very well). The fandom has as such largely accepted the interpretation that the game is hinting at a Vyse/Aika/Fina One True Threesome.
Fans of Bang/Litchi and Litchi/Arakune fans are often seen battling around the Internet. Consequently, Bang/Litchi fans tend to also be Arakune haters.
Jin/Tsubaki fans often attack poor Noel, even though Jin/Noel was sunk in the port. Since Continuum Shift, Jin/Makoto is gaining popularity as a pairing, but conflicts between fans of the two pairings are rare. Chronophantasma may simply end up igniting a cold war, however. Oh, and there's a portion of the community who prefer to Take a Third Option and leave Jin as a Celibate Hero, instead supporting Hakumen/Tsubaki, causing more friction. Finally, we have fans of Jin and Mai Natsume, the protagonist of Blazblue: Heart Remix: a likely reasoning behind this is similarities between them and Ky/Dizzy.
Ragna is paired with practically everyone, but the most common pairings are Ragna/Rachel and Ragna/Noel. These two are the most aggressive of the fandoms, and battles wage constantly between the two. Not helped by the questionable nature of both pairings: on one hand, the age gap between Ragna and Rachel is ridiculous, and Rachel is a lolicon. On the other hand, the fact that Noel is a clone of Ragna's sister leaves a bitter taste in some people. What's worse, the game seems to hint at both.
The Fate/stay night fandom is divided between people who ship either Shirou/Saber, Shirou/Rin, or Shirou/Sakura. The former two pairings have the biggest fan followings, with the latter being the least popular of the three; perhaps not too surprisingly, the biggest ship wars seem to consist of Shirou/Sakura shippers arguing with Shirou/Rin and/or Shirou/Saber shippers.
Do not mention either Sumika or Meiya, or which would be better with Takeru on any forum or thread dedicated to Muv-Luv. And especially don't say the words "Noble Confidant". That is, provided you value your Brain Cells: It gets more violent than a BETA attack.
The King of Fighters fandom used to have very fierce ship wars in the second part of The Nineties, and sometimes these still pop out once in a while. Kyo Kusanagi x Iori Yagami is one of the most famous/infamous cases of slashy Foe Yayever in any videogame fandom, and whoever mentions Kyo's canon girlfriend Yuki or even hints that they ship Kyo with her... will likely be called "homophobe", "heterosexist" and/or "boring", with bonus "Yuki is a bland, antifeminist, Mary Sue-ish Damsel in Distress and a Take That to fangirls from the creators so SHE MUST DIEDIEDIE for the sake of both feminism and yaoi" cat-calls in between. The few Kyo/Yuki fans that are still around may react via passive-aggressively accusing ALL Kyo/Iori fans of being "canon breakers", "shallow", "bitchy", "self-loathing misogynists who fetishize men but bash women for 'not being strong enough'", and/or of supporting a pair where the two men hate each other without any traces of mutual respect without any other basis than 'they look hot'.
It's not much better whenever AthenaAsamiya, who's hinted to have a crush on Kyo in some continuities, is mentioned. Kyo/Athena fans will whip out the "Yuki is WEAK and ANTI-FEMINIST and DOES NOT UNDERSTAND KYO ENOUGH, so Athena DESERVES Kyo's affections better since she's more interesting, stronger and prettier" argument, while Kyo/Yuki fans will either repeat the aforementioned "hey don't be canon breakers, Kyo and Yuki haven't broken up for all we know" argument or ask "if you think Athena such a Strong Woman, why are you making her worth depend less on HER and more on whether Kyo finds her pretty or not?" This will get more complicated if Athena's Dogged Nice Guy Kensou is brought up: some Kensou/Athena fans will just support the idea of a possible "double date", while others will accuse Athena of being an "ungrateful bitch who doesn't appreciate Kensou" and/or "a shallow slut who throws herself at the feet of an already taken man while passing up the feelings of the guy who loves her and said taken man's girlfriend". (Nevermind that Athena is an Idol Singer as well as a fighter so she cannot go into datesand that she's totally dedicated to her career.)
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 Pairings. Torg is most often paired with Zoë, Gwynn, Sasha, or Aylee (the alien), and Riff with Gwynn, Sasha, or various insane ladies.
Homestuck has 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. 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. The rest of the fandom suffers many fights, (John/Karkat vs Dave/John or John/Vriska, PBJ vs anything that stands in its way,( but nothing touches the epic bitchfight of Terezi's flushed quadrant. It's enough that it's become an increasingly popular trend to Take a Third Option and ship Dave/Karkat- which gets a lot of general hate. Not to mention the sub-Love Dodecahedron of Equius-Aradia-Sollux-Eridan-Feferi, though it's fighting is relatively tame. Sollux/Aradia, Sollux/Eridan, Eridan/Feferi, and Sollux/Fereri definitely skirmish some [in different fight variations], but seemed to have stopped actively trying to kill each other. However, after the 4/12 updates, there was a lot of Jadekat vs. Davejade fighting going around, and though most of the fighting was nullified by the 4/13 update, a lot of battling is still going down between the two ships. It's also worth mentioning that the fact that there are 4 ways to ship, 3 requiring two participants and one requiring 3, which doesn't help, only contributing to in-ship fighting [red quadrant vs. black quadrant mainly, but also with red vs. black vs. pale vs. ashen [featuring another character].
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.
The was also 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 thesevids demonstrate. Good luck finding similar vids bashing Katara. The situation heated up even more 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.
What's worse is that the established relationship of Zuko and Mai at the end of the series has been broken up in the spin-off The Promise. Since Zuko does have a canon grandson he does or did have a relationship with someone. The resulting fan war could tear the very internet apart. Ironically, Katara is probably the only female that is not single by the end of the comic.
Well there is a upcoming sequel to the comic called The Search so they may get back together in there and people probably missed the shiptease of Zuko and Suki in the Promise though.
Speaking of The Legend of Korra, there's already a huge 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.
Ever since the finale has aired, Mako is starting to get shipping-related hate for an entirely different reason: he and Korra hook up, which is all fine and dandy...but we aren't told if he officially broke up with Asami beforehand. It's certainly feasible that they ended things offscreen, but now you have people claiming he's most likely two-timing both women.
Ever since the revelation that Lin and Tenzin once were in a Childhood Friend Romance, the Tenzin/Lin shippers have started to push for their ship and bash the shit out of Tenzin's actual wife Pema, labelling her as a slutty homewrecker without any evidence. Naturally, the Tenzin/Pema fans have retaliated...
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 Bumblebee.
Parodied in the show itself; Control Freak is broadcasting a live feed of his Death Course to fellow geeky supervillains, and they briefly argue about whether Robin or Beast Boy is better for Starfire.
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 GodJossed 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)...
There seems to be attempted Ship Sinking in Season 2, what with the added emphasis on Ben's Canon girlfriend Julie. The primary effect of this has been to make Ben/Gwen shippers and Ben/Kevin shippers ally against their common foe.
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 somewhatcanon. Yet, this only escalated the fighting even more, and fans of other pairings like K2 and Candy have also jumped on the bandwagon of standing their ground against the growing number of Kyman fans.
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. Never mind that Flaky is a character who is never romantically involved and her gender is still quite the subject of debate.
And there is the well known, Flippy/Flaky vs. a part of the fandom that can't stand the couple.
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 Vasquezsays 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.
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.
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.
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 deviantART. 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.
Wolf O'Donnell stepped forward and created the iconic ship to end all ships. Cream Soup. Other wise known as Danny and the Fenton Thermos. The Cream Soup ship was for those who simply don't want to get so involved in shipping. Fanons are slowly starting to use this one.
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 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. Marcelinethe Vampire Queen or PrincessBubblegum. 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, with both Finn/Bubblegum and Finn/Marceline shippers screaming at her while Bubblegum/Marceline fans team up with Finn/Flame Princess shippers so they can have their cake and eat it whole.
Despite a little bit of shiptease and a growing number of fanarts, Finn/LSP has mostly avoiding going to war.
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 $#ˇ+ out of you".
While many fans promote "love and tolerance", many still start ship wars, PinkieDashers 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.
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.
Speaking of which, there can also be quite a bit of friction between FlutterMac (Fluttershy/Big Mac) and TwiMac (Twilight/Big Mac) fans (though it doesn't usually reach the fevered level of some of the other ship wars).
Let's face it, you really can't bring up a pairing without people complaining about how that pairing sucks. Notable examples include shipping OCs with canon characters, merely mentioning Trixie in a non-Twilight/Trixie story (because Twixie has quite a few vocal fans), the very implication of Bic Macintosh going with anypony except Fluttershy or Cheerilee, any of the Background Six getting together with anypony other than their double (Derpy and the Doctor, Lyra and Bon Bon, and Vinyl Scratch and Octavia), and most anything involving Princess Celestia.
Based upon recent forums, a three-way conflict seems to be underway. All three factions are fighting over whom Rainbow Dash should be shipped with. AppleDash (Applejack X Rainbow Dash) is the most popular and generally most organized faction; FlutterDash (Fluttershy X Rainbow Dash) seems to have the most zealous and passionate fans; and TwiDash (Twilight x Rainbow Dash), based on the sheer popularity on FimFiction.net, is gaining momentum the fastest out of the three and is recruiting more and more casual first time shippers.
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. Some people have compromised with an OT 3, Museum Heist (RobinXWallyXArtemis).
Hey now, let's not forget Blue Pulse (BlueBeetleXImpulse).
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Ahsoka is paired with every single male character on the show. Lux/Ahsoka (Luxsoka), Captain Rex/Ahsoka (Rexsoka) and Anakin/Ahsoka (Anisoka) are the three biggest ones, but then of course Boba/Ahsoka, Barriss/Ahsoka, Bane/Ahsoka all exist and are somewhat popular.
The show also has some very disturbing pairings being supported. Count Dooku/Ahsoka is what we're talking about here.
Is it any wonder that all of these pairings have Ahsoka in them?
Superjail!: For a time on sites like deviantART, shipwars could get very vicious, especially if they involved male/female pairings vs. male/male ones (or in rarity, female/female). This would lead to some fans from either camp flinging stereotypes about the opposing one, with het shippers being called homophobes and the slash shippers being accused of "oppressing het". Not as bad as Danny Phantom in the end, but still mind-boggling.
In the days of season 1, Warden/Mistress ("Misden"), Warden/Jared ("Jayden"), and Warden/Future Warden ("Wardencest"/"Timeshipping") went head-to-head, with Warden/Jailbot ("Warbot") also another option considered. Once Lord Stingray entered the picture in season 2, select fans of "Stingden" and Misden began arguing over which pairing would be more canon and which of Warden's nemesises was more worthy of him. This lead to both Mistress and Stingray getting hate from the other's fans out of the idea that either one was in the way of their desired pairing. This seemed to die down a little after "Stingstress" since the Mistress wound up sleeping with Alice.
The All Grown Up! fandom was prone to this and the show's main forum was rife with it. Essentially, it was Tommy/Kimi vs. everyone else, as Tommy/Kimi broke up two of the show's other popular ships (Tommy/Lil and Phil/Kimi). Chuckie/Angelica shippers tended to be more prone toward the Tommy/Lil-Phil/Kimi side of the fence, just to stir the pot further.
An attempt at a fan-written continuation of the series collapsed into a several-page argument between Tommy/Kimi, Phil/Kimi and no shipping at all. This was largely due to long-standing rivalry between the writers involved, but the passion of the whole thing was indeed kind of frightening.
when Avatar fans go mad.
