Ship War

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Synonyms: shipwar, shipping war
See also: shipping, OTP, Fan war
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A ship war is a heated disagreement between two or more groups of shippers. Ship wars are usually between fans of two, or more, ships with a character in common, for example the two ships involved in the Bellarke vs Clexa ship war had the character of Clarke Griffin in common, with both sides believing their ship was the best one. Unlike your garden variety of wank, ship wars span a long period of time (often years) and can involve many people in their fandom.

Common Behavior in Ship Wars

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
  • Meta/Essays: 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
  • Misuse of tags: anti-shipper posts appearing in that ship's Tumblr tag
  • Mocking Posts and Graphics: mocking the other ship, or opposing shipper groups, via graphics, like memes and manips
  • Character Bashing: bashing the character of the one who is "in the way" of each side's preferred ship
  • Incessant Discourse: a refusal to quiet down till well after the canon is closed (and sometimes not even then)

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

Calls for an OT3

During most ship wars there is usually a group of fans that will advocate for an OT3 (or OT4, or more) as a way to solve the ship war problem, and will encourage other fans to create poly fanworks. This encouragement can vary from just text posts pointing out the positives of a moresome, to the organization of fan events, like a fest or fanweek.

However, there is sometimes push-back from other fans to the idea of an OT3. This is especially common if one group of fans feels there is something morally wrong about the opposing ship, for example, in Supernatural fandom calls to ship Wincestiel (Dean/Cas/Sam) would be rejected by fans who are against Wincest (Sam/Dean) because of the incest between the two brothers. Although, sometimes fans reject the idea of an OT3 for simpler reasons, like they just don't like the third character, and don't want them involved with their ship.

History and Causes

Panel of a humorous picture meta, by coolkarmact, about the Jonsa vs Jonerys ship war in Game of Thrones fandom, but the sentiments could apply to almost any ship war

When and how ship wars started is debated. There are those put forth the idea that the Little Women book fandom has the first case of a ship war in 1868-1869[1][2], although it was slightly different from the modern use of the term, as LiveJournal jill_rg user points out:

The ship war was on, and this one was the most brutal type: not between opposing shippers, but between the shippers and the writer.[3]

Many fans were very disappointed with Louisa May Alcott's decision to "break up" Jo and Laurie and instead pair Laurie with Jo's younger sister Amy and Jo with Professor Friedrich Bhaer, and let their displeasure be known to the author and the publisher.

When the more common usage of the term ship war, meaning discord between opposing fans, started is unclear. Although, as reddit user iwasonceafangirl points out, ship wars have been going on for a long time in modern fandom, even if they were not always called that at the time:

I find it really funny when Star Wars and Star Trek fans complain about fan discourse like shipping as if it’s a modern phenomenon. I guess you can argue that the Internet added a new layer of toxicity to everything, but both of those fandoms have had raging ship wars since before the term “ship war” was coined. Sometimes people are like “the Disney sequels got all of these obnoxious girls into the fandom and now everything is about Reylo,” and it’s like, sorry dude, but people were frothing at the mouth over Luke/Leia versus Luke/Han versus Han/Leia since the moment the first movie was released. Kirk/Spock slash fic has existed in various forms since TOS came out. Say what you will about fanfiction and shipping, but they’re not new phenomena.[4]

Although, ship wars seem to be much more ubiquitous within internet fandom.

In an article The fall of fandom etiquette and the rise of the ship war writer Clare McBride posits that the birth of modern ship wars began with the Harmonians in Harry Potter fandom:

Because they’d invested so heavily in this one ship, to the detriment of making wider connections in fandom and developing a diverse interest in the series, Rowling’s revelation threatened to invalidate not only their ship, but their fandom...

In a pre-social media age, none of these could really reach or touch Rowling unless she, for some reason, actively sought them out, but, nevertheless, something had changed; the Harmonians, facing extinction, had decided to double-down and bite the hand that fed them. The ship meant more to them than the fandom did.

This is the moment that birthed zero-sum shipping, a kind of blind gamesmanship that only values a ship for whether it not it wins, not whether or not it is enjoyable. Add in the peculiar moralizing of the Harmonians, and, voila, you’ve got the recipe for fans antagonizing creators over appearing to support ships that are, in their eyes, morally unacceptable.[5]

However, others fans posit that the first modern ship war was in the Pokémon anime fandom in the late 1990s-early 2000s, between two Ash pairings, Ash/Misty (PokéShipping) vs Ash/Gary (PalletShipping). Although, this isn't as well documented as Harry Potter fandom, so it's up for debate. Plus, there may be some overlapping in the timeline between the two events.

Whereas the writer Sean Z believes that the prevalence of ship wars is tied to platform migration, especially the opt-in model of LiveJournal and the opt-out model of Tumblr:

Unlike LiveJournal’s communities, Tumblr’s fandoms rely on tagging. Instead of joining a group for your interest, you simply search for #show or #movie. This is where problems begin. A user on tumblr can tag a post with whatever tag they wish. Let’s say I was a shipper who wanted to pair off Alice and Bob on the show Great Adventures. I might tag a post “#AliceBob #GreatAdventures #ThisShowIsAmazing.” Unfortunately, until December of 2017, Tumblr did not have any built-in filtering mechanism, so every user who wanted to see posts using the #GreatAdventures tag would see my posts about Alice/Bob, as well as other pairings, like Bob/Eve, Alice/Eve, etc...

Early Tumblr fandom attempted to work around this problem with the simple etiquette “don’t tag your hate.” If you were passionate that Bob and Alice should never be together and you wanted to write an essay on why it was a horrible pairing, it would be inappropriate to use the #AliceBob tag, since that’s used by all the people who want to find content for the pairing. Instead, the early solution was to use #anti-AliceBob when arguing against something. The idea was to replicate the communities of LiveJournal by separating users who objected to a pairing to those who favored it. The term anti, or anti-shipper, comes from this tagging practice, and entered common use in 2015.

Unfortunately, this plan to help fandom police itself backfired. By creating the #anti-AliceBob tag, the fandom created a community joined together by their hatred for something. And, over time, these anti communities radicalized other members.[6]

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.[7] See also The Three Laws of Fandom.

Examples

Meta/Further Reading

Resources

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

References

  1. ^ How Little Women Pulled off a Love Triangle That Works by Rachel Leitch
  2. ^ "Happy Anniversary 'Little Women' by Joel GetterIn, posted June 22, 2018". Archived from the original on 2026-06-13.
  3. ^ Some Things Never Change: Jo/Laurie (Little Women), posted to ship_manifesto, August 19, 2009
  4. ^ Comment on [Hobby Scuffles] Week of April 17, 2023, posted to r/HobbyDrama, Apirl 16, 2023
  5. ^ The fall of fandom etiquette and the rise of the ship war
  6. ^ Toxic Fandom: When Criticism and Entitlement Go Too Far
  7. ^ See What's the difference fandom wise between today and ten years ago? ask answered by glamaphonic (31 December 2015), Anti-Shippers entry at the Fail_Fandomanon wiki.

Notes

  1. ^ TV Tropes had to lock the Die For Our Ship/InuYasha page, saying it "houses one of the most rabid and militant shipping wars of all time." It is the only page about shipping which receives this treatment.
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