Die for Our Ship/Comic Books

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Death is rarely permanent in comic books. But when it comes to obstacles for Fan Preferred Couples, some fans wish it was.

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• The Love Triangle Jean Grey/Cyclops/Wolverine from X-Men has long been a complicated storm of controversy. Many fans have shipped Wolverine/Jean Grey since the day Wolverine joined the X-Men, but Marvel has long refused to give into fan demands. So fans engage in Scott and Jean bashing. Marvel has also changed Cyclops (first having him abandon his wife Madelyne Pryor and newborn son Nathan Summers, something not even Jean approved of and later dealing with his post-traumatic astral possession stress by psychically sleeping with reformed villainess Emma Frost (who was also changed into a Tsundere Sue), who agreed to the sort of kinky sex/role-playing Jean refused to engage in — while they portrayed Jean Grey as a forgiving and enabling saint who ultimately gave her blessing to Scott and Emma on her deathbed). Meanwhile, perhaps spurred by those who dislike the often misogynistic views upon marriage that Marvel takes (that is, it's always the woman's fault if a marriage fails in a Marvel Comic), Marvel in recent years have portrayed Wolverine as refusing to consider a relationship with Jean out of respect for Scott, even going as far as to reject a desperate Jean's advances when she confided to Wolverine that Scott was refusing to touch her sexually. So, the Badass is "always right," and his love rival is "always wrong". <sigh>
  • In typical Mark Millar fashion, Ultimate X-Men had the "cool guy" Wolverine not only take Jean Grey's virginity, but also STAB the nerdy, put-upon "loser" Ultimate Cyclops and leave him to die to ensure that Jean would be his and his alone. And the Fan Dumb rejoiced!
    • Their rejoicing was hilariously cut short when Cyclops turned out to be Not Quite Dead, staged a return, and angrily optic-blasted Wolverine off the team. And when Jean found out about Wolverine's Murder the Hypotenuse plan, she threatened Wolverine with all sorts of Mind Rape if she ever caught him having even one romantic or sexual thought towards her.
  • Then there were the Pete vs. Piotr Flame Wars. When Warren Ellis first hooked up Pete Wisdom and Kitty Pryde in Excalibur, Colossus' initial reaction was to beat the dogsnot out of Wisdom. This, even though in his most recent previous appearance Colossus had come across as level-headed and wasn't even thinking of Kitty. Ellis himself admitted later that he wrote Colossus Out of Character. Alas, the damage was done; Colossus is still reviled by a vocal sub-group of X-fans for one Out-of-Character Moment. Many Pryde/Wisdom fanfics treat Colossus as mentally retarded at best and a rapist at worst.
    • On the opposing side, there's Joss Whedon, who retconned Kitty back into a virgin just so Piotr could be the one to take it from her. Thanks to this, the Piotr/Kitty shippers who even acknowledge that Pete Wisdom exists at all love pointing out that "he didn't count".
  • And that's not even counting all the canon Die for Our Ship examples for X-Men (and many other comic book series too) coming from those Running the Asylum. Just go to Derailing Love Interests to read them in all their tawdry glory.
  • Following the films, Iceman gets this now from rabid Romy fans. In the comics, Bobby and Rogue were just close friends, but recieved a Relationship Upgrade in the films (Which is then adapted into the Ultimate universe), and with the third film and Bobby being tempted to cheat on Rogue with Kitty (Again, happens in the Ultimate universe too), people now, whenever writing stories based in those universes, will write him off as a despicable, cheating bastard or just out right say they hate his guts now based solely on the Film Script writers.
• Any female that "gets in the way of" Batman family Ho Yay is almost guaranteed a vilifying in fandom. Catwoman is exempted because of the Grandfather Clause and her already being a villain; no one else is safe. Similarly, Lois is often conveniently ignored as if she didn't exist when there's Batman/Superman Ho Yay to be had.
  • The exception to this rule is Stephanie Brown (aka Robin IV), formerly Tim Drake's (Robin III) canonical love interest. While most of Tim's love interests gets deliberately ignored by Ho Yay shippers, they generally love Steph and her history with Tim.
  • There have been many fights about who Dick Grayson should be with; Tamarean Princess Koriand'r/Kory/Starfire or 'Batgirl/Oracle' Barbara Gordon. Even the writers got into that one: see the Teen Titans example for details on it.
  • It's been said that you just don't get between Wonder Woman shippers and Catwoman shippers when they're fighting over Batman. Sorry, but you just don't, if you value life and limb.
• In the Watchmen fandom, Rorshach/Dan shippers tend to turn Dan's canon Love Interest, Laurie, into either a) a shrieking harpy who either b) dies horribly or c) turns into a supervillian. Or all three. This allows Dan to be with his true love, Rorshach...who is a homophobic, right-wing ugly nutjob who never bathes and has No Social Skills. Oh, fandom.
• The Archie Sonic fandom's attitude towards Sally Acorn gets this way from time to time with Sonic/Amy and Sonic/Mina fans, especially during Sally's Chickification stage a few years back. Whole fan groups were dedicated to drawing/writing her getting murdered and mutilated in various ways.
• Some Wonder Woman fans hate any guy that might develop a relationship with her; they feel that nobody is worthy of her, which makes it more a case of "Die for her celibacy".
  • Exceptions: Steve Trevor due to Grandfather Clause (though he's not an option post-Crisis on Infinite Earths), Superman (although the presence of Lois means that's limited to Elseworlds), and Batman (for obvious reason).
    • There are actually a fair number of Wonder Woman/Superman shippers (not nearly enough to outnumber the Clark/Lois fans, of course, but they exist) who scream things like "OMG, WW AND SUPES ARE TEH ONLY ONES WORTHY OF EACH OTHER!!!" and excitedly fantasize about the possibility of Clark and Diana getting married and giving rise to a dynasty of Kryptonian/Amazonian super-babies. Bonus points if their first super-baby is a daughter who can grow up to inherit the mantle of Queen of Themyscira AND the mantle of Last Daughter of Krypton (Supergirl is either conveniently ignored, or goes into retirement so that Clark and Diana's daughter can become the new Supergirl). These fans unsurprisingly villify Lois Lane as an evil, shrill gold-digging "mere mortal" who is holding Clark back from realizing that his true love is Diana, and conjecture that Clark is only truly happy when he gets out of the house and goes on missions with Diana.
  • Note that, while few shippers kill them in fic, shipping Diana with Clark or Bruce is still a huge Broken Base issue and a great way to start a flame war at just about any comics forum. Rama and Io, on the other hand, Diana's two most obscure suitors (one was in a storyarc nobody read, and the other is a female love interest too subtle for most fans to pick up on), are generally liked by anyone who's heard of them and are probably protected from this mostly because most fans aren't aware of them. (So, if you're reading this, don't get any ideas.
• Die for Our Ship apparently canonically happened with the death of Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man: Suposedly, writer Gerry Conway has stated that a big reason for killing her off was that he felt Peter and Mary Jane deserved to be together.
  • Killing off Gwen was not even Conway's idea - he wanted to kill off Aunt May, but John Romita convinced him that she was needed to provide Peter with a good reason for Peter to maintain his secret ID and suggested to kill off Peter's girlfriend instead.
  • There are fans who want MJ to die so that Peter can get with someone else. Anyone else. It doesn't matter who, just as long as it isn't MJ, whom some fans consider the Achilles heel who is dragging the series down even though she is a popular and well known character who is closely associated with Spider-Man's world and is often seen as "Spidey's girl." One can only wonder how they reacted to the One More Day reset...
    • Gwen Stacy fans have been bashing MJ since Gwenny hit the bucket. No surprise, considering that fans only seem to remeber Gwen as a Purity Sue, perfect Virgin Girl Next Door type. Which becomes jarring, when they say things like 'Gwen would never sleep around and have two children like they retconned to happen (Despite Gwen originally being portrayed as the Village Bicycle), and when they accuse MJ of being a 'personality-less wimp/dumbass who just leaves him at the drop of a hat'. This is despite MJ being originally Fun Personified, a borderline Action Girl, able to outsmart and defeat villains of human level and once defeated a villain Spidey had trouble fighting. And then, there's those who actually blame MJ for One More Day and seem to think that she divorced Peter because she couldn't handle his life as Spider-Man. However, this seems to be from film fans who only heard a little about OMD and never bothered to read up on it. Then, there's the Felicia/Spidey fans and their opinions on MJ...
    • And then there are those fans also seem to clamor for Gwen to be brought back, because of how "interesting" it can be. It seems to be no coincidence that these same fans also despise Peter being with MJ, and who would stop following the title if the pair ever get back together (they are currently broken up, but clearly headed towards a reconciliation), and have no real interest in who Gwen was as a character. They just seem to want the only other significant love interest back that could legitimately challenge MJ's standing as "one true love" and Gwen is really the only fit.
    • The MJ Haters are an interesting variant of Fan Dumb, resulting in a mixture of revisionist history and willful ignorance. They insist that Peter and MJ's relationship is over and done with, and that she is now and forever just Peter's "friend," despite being in that same position in the past, reconciling with Peter on three separate occasions, including one instance of coming back from the dead to renew her relationship with the main protagonist. They insist that the new movie featuring Gwen Stacey as a love interest will cause people to see her as Peter's true love, seemingly oblivious to the three major blockbuster films with MJ as the love interest that generated it's own fanbase that more than likely regards MJ as Spidey's main girl. They seemed to pin their hopes on Carlie Cooper with a "You never know what the future might bring" attitude, but since her relationship with Spidey has ended rather messily and he's now getting closer to MJ the attitude now seems to have shifted to wanting to see Gwen Stacey come back from the dead because she's so "interesting." Basically, no one knows what will happen in the future. Except for Peter getting back together with MJ, because that thing is apparently never going to happen.
  • Yet, what's worse is that, MJ/Peter fans are often accused/blamed for the death of Gwen. Apparently, because he later ended up with MJ and the above rumour about Conway, means that Mary Jane's existence is why Gwen died, and that anyone who likes MJ is responsible for and supports the death of Gwen.
  • And while there's a lot of debate as to who was the actual Fan Proffered Couple at the time, but there seems to be a lot of mud slinging from the older generation, who seem to proffer Gwen to MJ. As seen as many of the editors and writers grew up at the time of the days with Gwen and MJ, this has lead to MJ and Peter being broken up a few times in usually unsympathetic light for MJ, leading to lots of Dork Age type moments. Then, other MJ haters cite the fact that Peter and MJ are always breaking up as reason to why they shouldn't be together. Two people shouldn't be together because they keep getting broken up by the people who don't think they should be together, I can't describe the logic failure there.
    • The older generation that shipped Gwen and Peter seemed less about how they "deserved" to be together, and more about how they DIDN'T like the idea of Peter getting married, least of all to MJ. Many argued that Gwen was clearly Peter's "One True Love." However, Gwen was dead for at least a decade by this point and Peter had dated several women by that point. It seems the argument against the marriage was that Peter had feelings for someone ELSE before, who was currently dead. As if loving someone else means that one can NEVER fall in love with anyone else ever again. In the end, it just seems like hiding behind the legacy of one character since there is really no good reason to criticize a popular pairing other than "I don't like the idea."
• Green Arrow is often vilified by Dinah/Babs shippers because of his and Dinah's relationship. They even bashed him when he was dead, but nowhere near as much as they've done since he was resurrected. It's just gotten worse since he and Dinah tied the knot, with Ollie's writers apparently liking to help the shippers with that. This may be why the other male in the picture, Dick Grayson of Robin fame, gets almost no abuse.
  • Now that Green Arrow's relationship with Chloe Sullivan has become arguably the most popular ship in Smallville fandom (or at least, the ship that gets bashed the least), many comic fans who happen to also be Smallville fans are hoping that Ollie and Chloe will get together in the comics now that Chloe's been officially introduced into the DC Canon. The Ollie/Dinah shippers will then shriek that the Ollie/Chloe shippers are "n00bs" and "not true comic fans" because they watched Smallville and that this apparently means that the Ollie/Chloe shippers are somehow not allowed to have any opinions on comic characters.
• Believe it or not, The Joker gets this a lot from the Ivy/Harley shippers. Justified in that Ivy does treat Harley better... somewhat.
  • Conversely, if you ship Harley with anyone else, be prepared to duck. There are some fringe extremist Harley/Joker fangirls will attack you and whatever character you ship her with - violently. This would probably embarrass most Harley/Joker shippers.
  • Harley gets a lot of this from people who want to see the Joker with Batman or (among people who mostly watch the movies) Scarecrow. This is goofy because Harley and Joker have broken up in the comics and are now both free to be shipped with anyone.
  • And now the Harley x Scarecrow shippers have started in on the Joker, as evidenced in multiple fan videos for the pair on youtube. Actually, probably all the alternate Harley pairing shippers have started in on him.
    • Are we talking The Killing Joke -style Joker we know and love, or are we talking the Brian Azzarello-style version who's much different?—Oh right, they're the same guy...
• Ultimate Spider-Man has relatively little of this despite the love quadrangle around Spider-Man, since the fans are fond of both the love quadrangle and its participants. There is, however, a small vocal band of Mary Jane haters who usually ship Peter/Kitty; they were most active during a short period following the Clone saga. The addition of Jessica Drew, Peter's genetically engineered female clone, has led to a lot of opportunities for alternate pairings for girls not currently involved with Peter.
• The comic version of Teen Titans has as much of this trope as the animated version. One case? Beast Boy and Raven. When Geoff Johns made the two an Official Couple, there was mass rage from not only Beast Boy or Raven fans that didn't want them paired up, but also Beast Boy/Terra fans, Beast Boy/Terra II fans, Jericho/Raven fans, Beast Boy/Cyborg fans, Nightwing/Raven fans...basically, fans of any pairing other than the two together. Much hate was directed at Beast Boy from the fans who were more sympathetic to Raven and invoking this trope, while fans more sympathetic to Beast Boy began calling Raven an evil slut and scrambled to show proof that she would be an abusive and cruel girlfriend to him, as well as stating that he would surely become weak and turn evil because of her. For some of those on Raven's side, kissing the 'green puke' has ruined her forever.
  • But the Beast Boy/Raven fans are not entirely innocent. Some of them have bashed and wished death on any other female that other fans dare suggest get paired with him, like the later two Terras or Flamebird. They got one wish when Terra II was killed off; the jury's still out on if Terra III or Flamebird will stick around.
  • Also applying to this series: Nightwing/Starfire is often bashed by fans who pair him with Oracle and who feel that a Batman character does not belong with an alien or anything more supernatural than what is normally seen in Gotham. Devin Grayson was notably opposed to the pairing and did what she could to discourage and sink it in her Titans run, going as far as to portray Starfire as a shrill, embittered harpy who would fling starbolts at Nightwing if he (easily) offended her. Let's just say that, if you value your sanity, do NOT instigate a discussion of if Oracle or Starfire would be the better girlfriend for him.
• This is actually canon for Lois Lane in many Elseworlds, where the writers are constantly offing her so that Supes can hook up with Wonder Woman. This has been so jaw-droppingly overused and cliche, and the Supes/Wondy romances have traditionally been so appallingly badly developed (Sturgeon's Law dictates that most Elseworlds be pretentious original stories with superheroes' names shoehorned into the plot), that it has given rise to all sorts of massive Unfortunate Implications, from the general feeling that Diana spends her life stalking Supes while waiting for Lois to kick the bucket, to the unsubtle Aesop that superheroes are vastly superior to us Puny Humans, and should not defile themselves by marrying one of our mortal female lumps of flesh.