Ship Sinking / Literature

• A Court of Thorns and Roses: If Feyre becoming Rhysand's mate and acknowledging that her love with Tamlin turned toxic isn't enough, Tamlin allying with Hybern and inadvertently getting her sisters abducted certainly cements that he's no longer a romantic option
• In Tamora Pierce's Provost series, the Beka/Rosto ship favorite is sunk in a big way when she ends up falling (really quickly) for a completely new character, Farmer, effectively nulling all the delicious ship flaunting from the first and second books. While the new Love Interest is perfectly acceptable (even likable), the fandom is still in hysterics.
• Louis and Lestat from The Vampire Chronicles. After becoming super religious after a death in the family, Anne Rice had all Vampire Chronicles fanfiction removed from Fanfiction.net, had Lestat date the Queen for awhile, then pawned Louis off to a witch with Lestat's blessing. She also did this to Marius, who ended up with neither Armand nor Pandora.
• In Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, despite the vocal Laurence/Emily Roland shipping presence on DeviantArt, this ship is sunk when Emily displays clear romantic affections for Demane in Crucible of Gold. Not that the ship wasn't creepy to begin with.
  • The Laurence/Granby ship also takes a broadside in Crucible of Gold, when Iskierka blithely outs Granby to Laurence by revealing his relationship with Captain Little, to Granby's dismay. Laurence, being a 19th century British sea captain, is familiar enough with homosexuality as a concept but has a hell of a time reconciling his knowledge of Granby's good character with the new knowledge that the man is an admitted "invert". In the end, though, reconcile it he does, but it becomes clear that Granby and Little are still in a relationship.
• In Twilight's first three books, Bella comes to love Jacob and even agonizes over whether to choose him or Edward. Although it's pretty obvious she'd end up with the vampire, there is some tension in the third book. At the very least, the huge Jacob fandom hoped for some sort of relationship before the inevitable. Then the ship was totally torpedoed in the fourth book when Jacob imprints (soul-mate, true-love, only-one-for-him recognition) on Bella's infant daughter. Bella's infant daughter.
• In Little Women, Louisa May Alcott deliberately sank the Jo/Laurie ship; "I won't marry Jo to Laurie to please anybody," she wrote in her diary. Jo March's marriage to Professor Bhaer in Little Women is a confirmed Authorial Take That! to Jo/Laurie shippers. Alcott showed NO mercy to her fans' demands of having Jo marry Laurie — a Like Brother and Sister speech, a Delicate and Sickly girl who chases all thoughts of other love from Jo's mind, Jo marrying her other best male friend and beta-reader (the aforementioned Bhaer) when she's "back", and a Last Minute Hook Up for Laurie with Jo's little sister Amy. According to the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the book, Louisa May Alcott wrote the following to a friend, Alf Whitman:
  Alcott: "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect."
• Harry Potter:
  • J. K. Rowling had to do this thrice for the Harry/Hermione ship. First, in an interview about the possible pairing, Rowling said she didn't think they were suited for each other. Secondly in Half Blood Prince, with Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron becoming canon (and then the internet exploded). To drive the nail in the coffin, the last book has Harry giving the "Like Brother and Sister" speech to Ron, right after a scene in which Harry and Hermione appear as an evil illusion intended entirely to enrage Ron into attacking Harry. And it uses frequent Harmonian arguments, at that.
  • Luna/Neville took a torpedo after Order of the Phoenix was published. When asked about the seeming rapport that the "two misfits" of the Order had, JKR said that she had no plans to make that a pairing, noting that she thought Luna was far too weird for Neville's comfort levels. Word of God post-series sunk it even harder, as Neville and Luna end up with different people. The last movie makes Luna/Neville canon, one of the few major book/movie relationship differences - until even that got sunk, when Matthew Lewis (who plays Neville) stated that the film's pairing was just a "summer fling", and that both characters did eventually move on to their canon pairings.
  • Draco Malfoy and his fellow Slytherin girlfriend, Pansy Parkinson. Rowling stated that Draco went on to marry Astoria Greengrass, a Slytherin girl two years his junior who never appeared in the books.
  • Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater; according to Rowling, Percy married a woman named Audrey who also was not seen in the books.
  • Ron/Lavender Brown was sunk in the books themselves. Initially a popular Beta Couple among shippers of Harry/Hermione even though there was little interaction between them in the books, in Half Blood Prince Lavender briefly becomes Ron's girlfriend and rapidly turns into a Stalker with a Crush, becoming wildly jealous over his poorly-hidden feelings for Hermione. This did seem to have the desired effect of putting fans off the ship.
  • Then there's the Harry/Cho ship, whose sinking unfolds for all readers to see. Harry starts crushing on Cho Chang during Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. During Order of the Phoenix, they actually go on a date, but their views towards the other's friend, combined with how each of them copes with emotional turmoil (both their own and the other's) cause a fallout that leaves them parting on bad terms, By the end of the same book, that ship was sent to a watery grave, never to resurface.
  • Lupin/Sirius stands out for having had many efforts to try and sink it, but remaining one of the most popular ships in the fandom. First, Sirius died in the fifth book. Then, Lupin got a new female love interest in Tonks. Then they had a kid and died together. Then Rowling wrote a biography of Lupin on Pottermore, that refused to acknowledge Sirius and explicitly claimed he only loved Tonks, ever. Then Rowling was point-blank asked if Sirius was attracted to men, and said that he absolutely wasn't. However, none of this worked; fans of the ship happily ignored everything Rowling ever had to say (something they were used to at that point), consigned the entire thing to Fanon Discontinuity, and just kept going.
• Gone with the Wind: ... now that you mention it, probably every potential ship involving Scarlett, all very painfully. Proof that beauty doesn't guarantee true Official Couple status?
• Artemis Fowl:
  • A possible relationship between Minerva Paradizo and Artemis Fowl seems particularly well-sunk, as she is barely mentioned in the two books since her introduction. In order to send the ship straight to the bottom, Colfer said on Twitter that she would not be appearing in book 7, as she was "involved with a skier in the Alpes Maritime at the moment and only has eyes for him."
  • Fan-favorite pairing, Artemis Fowl II and Holly Short, is treated rather inconsistently by Colfer. They kiss in book 6 and book 7 is very focused on Artemis's feelings for Holly, with the book description itself playing up "embarrassing professions of love to a certain feisty LEPrecon fairy." yet Colfer has said, as the final book approaches, that Artemis and Holly will not end up together.
  • Trouble/Holly was torpedoed in the eighth book, when it's revealed that they were thrown out of a crunchball match on their third date and promptly broke up. And then Trouble started dating Lili Frond, and has been for a while, apparently.
• Star Wars Expanded Universe:
  • The authors are split into two major factions: those who approve of Jedi in love, and those who disapprove of Jedi in love. Since any author is allowed to write about any character, an anti-love author can respond to any pairing with the power of canon behind them. The marriage between Leia and Han is untouchable, but any other Jedi who fall in love will — without exception — fall to the dark side, die, suffer the loss of their love interest, go insane, and/or worse. The most maligned is probably Mara Jade's death in Legacy of the Force, sinking a pairing that had been around for more than a decade and very popular from the get go.
  • The New Jedi Order novels Conquest and Rebirth built a lot of potential romance between Anakin Solo and his childhood friend Tahiri Veila, right down Anakin giving Tahiri her First Kiss, except that in the next novel Star by Star Anakin is killed.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Harry/Luccio, at the end of Turn Coat.
  • Harry/Susan is also looking unlikely after the former is forced to kill the latter to destroy the Red Court at the end of Changes.
• The Will of the Empress spent so much effort on sinking ships between Briar and any of the girls, you'd think these ships were out when Tris decided to play with some hurricanes.
• Stephanie Barron did it via a previously unmentioned and unexpected love interest for Lord Harold in Jane and the Stillroom Maid. Still bitter.
• In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Percy/Rachel ship is sunk in the final book, when Rachel realizes that her attraction to Percy was mostly due to her destiny in becoming Camp Half-Blood's new Oracle. It works out fine, since Percy and Annabeth have their Relationship Upgrade not long after.
• The Pendragon Adventure sets up Bobby/Loor only to knock it down a few books later.
• Though it is a Crack Pairing JayxStick of Warrior Cats accumulated quite a fandom. In The Fourth Apprentice, Jayfeather breaks the stick. Word of God says that JayxStick was a romance and therefore it had to be doomed like many other romances in the series.
• Much to the surprise and sadness of The Inkworld Trilogy's fans, Inkdeath brutally took down Meggie and Farid, who had already achieved Official Couple status in the previous book. Instead, they paired Meggie up with some inventor guy who hadn't even been mentioned in the previous books and had almost no importance to the plot. Then they made it seem, intentionally or not, as though Meggie picked him instead Because Destiny Says So.
• The Lifebonding of Dirk and Talia in Arrow's Fall , third novel of the Arrows trilogy of the Heralds of Valdemar series, officially shot down any hope of Skif and Talia hooking up, setting their Like Brother and Sister promise firmly in stone.
• Many fans of the Skulduggery Pleasant series watched the buildup of ship hints between Tanith Low and Ghastly Bespoke with growing enthusiasm. Then, in the fifth book, when it was beginning to seem like Ghanith would become canon... a Remnant possessed Tanith (possibly for good), leading her to run off with Billy Ray Sanguine. The shippers were displeased.
• Aragorn/Éowyn got torpedoed in The Return of the King. Éowyn's Lady of War and Dogged Nice Girl qualities are no match for Arwen - Love Interest, World's Most Beautiful Woman, and Interspecies Romance. Unlike most modern ship sinking, this torpedo is vital to the plot: Aragorn himself says she's Loving a Shadow as he's trying to heal her massive injuries, and he's proved right when she doesn't wake up from her subsequent coma when Aragorn calls out for her, but hearing her brother Éomer call out for her is what brings her back since she knows him well and loves her like the kind brother he is, instead of loving an image of him like in Aragon's case. Also, she ends up falling in love with Faramir once they get to know and love each other for the persons they actually are.
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay kills off Katniss/Gale with authority when President Coin orders a False Flag Operation, which Gale had previously suggested, that kills Katniss' kid sister Prim. Observant fans will notice that the ship begins to sink as early as the first half of Catching Fire when Katniss follows up her scene of seemingly choosing Gale by going to bed and wishing Peeta was there to hold her. It takes another serious blow in Mockingjay when Katniss declares that if she can't have Peeta she wants to kill Snow and then die herself, rather than move on and be with Gale.
• Mommy and Hunter are two points of a Love Triangle in The Fire-Us Trilogy, but are so incredibly squicked out after receiving The Talk that they can hardly even bear to look at each other for most of the third book. In spite of this, by the end it appears that their freindship, at least, is almost certainly salvageable.
• GONE: Caine and Diana had a pretty passionate- and large - fandom, in spite of, or perhaps paritally because they were are both villains in love, and appeared to be redeeming each other and bringing out the humanity in the other, especially in LIES...Then Caine spends the next book lying to Diana for sex, betraying her, threatening to rape her and then bragging to the entire town about it. Diana then leaves him when she realises she's pregnant, and doesn't want Caine anywhere near her baby.
• Bridget Jones: Anyone hoping for Bridget to end up with Daniel Cleaver had their ship sunk at the end of the second book, where Mark Darcy asks her to move abroad with him. Bridget/Mark was then sunk by the third book where Bridget is Mark's widow after he died five years previously (and by the end of the book, Bridget is common-law married to another man and has adopted his children), causing fans to become furious when the news leaked on the internet before the book's release.
• The Discworld Tiffany Aching novels: Despite occasional moments of jealousy towards Roland's fiancée, by I Shall Wear Midnight Tiffany is very fed up with the Shippers on Deck who think that just because they're both different (she's a witch, he's the duke's heir) that means they're the same. She reconciles with Letitia, and begins a relationship with a castle guard who's smarter than he appears.
• Worm:
  • In Imago 21.1 Tattletale specifically told Parian that none of the other girls on the Undersiders were gay (killing both Tattletale/Skitter and Skitter/Bitch).
  • In Sting 26.3 Clockblocker rants about "some dingbats online" shipping him with Weaver.
• Done preemptively with the two main heroes of Mistborn, Vin and Kelsier. Kelsier is thirty-eight and Vin is sixteen, but beta readers kept shipping them, so the author added a few paragraphs where Kelsier loves Vin as an adopted daughter.
• Part 2 Volume 4 of Ascendance of a Bookworm ended with Myne having to change her name and getting adopted by the local Archduke, which put an end to any chances of her growing up and getting together with her dear friend and confidant (and minder) Lutz, which had been a fairly popular ship at the time. For either maximum irony, or a way of throwing a bone to their shippers, that same volume also introduced Heidi and Josef, whom the author explictly described as what Myne and Lutz would've been like had they grown up together and gotten married.
• October Daye: In "Full of Briars", Quentin explains the reasons he and Raj will never be boyfriends (though they do flirt sometimes). Both are princes, Raj of the Court of Dreaming Cats, Quentin of the entire Westlands (though the cait sidhe are technically not subject to the High King), and neither can be seen to be more loyal to another kingdom than their own, which dating each other would imply.