Ship War

Synonyms:	shipwar, shipping war
See also:	shipping, OTP
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(n.) A heated disagreement between two or more groups of shippers. Unlike your garden variety of wank, ship wars span a long time (often years) and involve many people in their fandom. Symptoms of a ship war include:

• rants, both of the "we're obviously right" and "why can't we all write our porn and get along" kinds

• long-winded essays trying to prove canonicity or superiority of the preferred ship (sometimes going overboard and claiming every scene with one or both of the characters as proof, in a very convoluted, Dan Brown fashion) or pointing the flaws in similar essays by rival shippers

• a refusal to quiet down till well after the canon is closed

• anti-ship/per posts appearing in that ship's Tumblr tag

Ship wars often aggravate other fannish behavior such as flames ("if you like X/Y, you're Z!") and character bashing.

In the 2010s, there has been fannish discussion about how the arguments in ship wars have changed, from whether or not a ship has canon support to whether or not a ship is morally good. See also The Three Laws of Fandom.

Examples

• Mulder/Scully, the May and June 1996 "relationshipper wars" on alt.tv.x-files. See On Relationshippers... (May 13, 1996) -- PUSHER was a 'Shipper!! *gak*!; archive link (May 28, 1996) -- my problem with the "relationshippers" (May 29, 1996)
• the Harmonians incident in Harry Potter
• the Ray Wars in due South
• Clana/Lana Lang war in Smallville
• Caryl vs Bethyl conflict in The Walking Dead fandom
• For a time, at the beginning of The Originals, Klaroline shippers were involved in quite a vocal conflict with other fans of the show (and the character of Klaus) due to potential love interests being introduced. This resulted in severe hate being directed at the characters of Hayley Marshall and Camille O'Connell and the actresses portraying them.
• Westallen vs. Snowbarry in CW's The Flash fandom
• Spuffy vs Bangel vs. Spangel in Buffy fandom
• The long-standing Love Triangle Debate in Final Fantasy VII fandom - mostly Cloud/Aerith fans vs. Cloud/Tifa fans
• Aang/Katara vs. Zuko/Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom
• Lucas/Maya vs Lucas/Riley in the Girl Meets World fandom
• Willabeth vs Sparrabeth in the Pirates of the Caribbean fandom.
• Ichigo/Rukia vs. Ichigo/Orihime in Bleach fandom
• Gillovny vs. Gorgans (RPF) in the Gillian Anderson/David Duchovny fandom
• Bellarke vs Clexa in The 100 fandom
• Jonsa vs Jonerys in Game of Thrones fandom
• Dozens in the Fire Emblem fandom; the most notable being Chrom/Sumia vs Chrom/Female Avatar in Awakening, Ike/Soren vs Ike/Elincia vs Elincia/Geoffrey in the Tellius duology, Alm/Celica vs Celica/Mae in Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, and all ships centered around Lyndis in The Blazing Sword.
• Ash/Misty vs Ash/Serena in the Pokémon anime fandom, though all Ash/female companion ships have been involved in the ongoing war since Advance Generation.
• Ranma/Akane vs Ranma/Ukyo in Ranma 1/2 fandom.
• Inuyasha/Kagome vs Inuyasha/Kikyo in Inuyasha fandom.
• Kamui/Subaru vs Seishirou/Subaru in X/1999 fandom.
• Sheith vs Klance in Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom.

Meta/Further Reading

• Shipper Wars Rant, ^{Archived version} by Melusina (2004)
• you have got to be kidding me; archive link by seperis (2006)
• MY FUCKING FANDOM GIVES ME FUCKING FITS, part 34,849 by Hth (2007)
• Ok, well don't say I didn't warn you.; archive link; WebCite by Bokai (May 2017)
• antishipping as the cool new trend, or: why are most antis under 25 years old? , freedom-of-fanfic (June 2017)
• Could you talk some more about how current antis relate back to the LJ social justice scene and when the morph from debating fanworks to dissing people happened?; archive link, ffreedom-of-fanfic (July 2017)
• The ship wars: what it means when fans don’t agree who belongs together

Resources

The TV Tropes article on Ship to Ship Combat provides many more examples.