I genuinely think the fan war stuff came from the producers of the show picking up on the fact that people were shipping the characters in real life, and wanted to translate it to the show and also poke fun at that culture in a meta way. Basically a nod to the audience to say "stop taking these ships so seriously because we never have!". They did a similar thing in victorious just in a less explicit way. And I agree this show was so ahead of it's time in many ways. Excited for the rest of the season especially iParty with Victorious :)