They seemed fascinated by my and Meg's absorption in the Harry Potter culture, so we told them stories of the ship wars[…]
2013, Mark Duffet, Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture, Bloomsbury Academic (2013), →ISBN, page 248:
'Ship wars' are discussions, usually between female fans, about who the best partner would be for their favourite character or artist, a classic example being the debates over whether Yoko Ono was good for John Lennon.
Habermas may not have imagined ship wars as a context for practical discourse, but fandom is in fact an excellent space in which to engage in the forms of contestation he describes.