The Ultimate Crackshipping Contest · 10:03pm Dec 21st, 2018
This is a special time of year. A time where people gather around the fire with their loved ones, sharing in the warmth and closeness with their family and friends. The spirit of the holidays. Or, if you’re me, time to hunker down in your parents’ basement and play video games. It’s also a time where not many people are writing new stories here on Fimfiction, save random Hearth’s Warming fluff. Recently, though, I had an epiphany, thanks to all those things. A most glorious idea, for a writing contest.
See, I very much appreciate a good crackship. Both reading and writing such stories. Even when I probably shouldn’t. I also like crossovers, because, hey, there are good franchises besides MLP, and having characters from other universes interact leads to a variety of wild scenarios. Which brings us to the premise of this competition. Unless you’ve been living under the world’s largest rock, you’ve probably heard of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. In the game, there are hundreds and hundreds of collectable spirits, each representing a video game character.
Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to romantically pair a randomly generated spirit from off of Smash Ultimate’s Spirit Board with a character from Friendship is Magic or Equestria Girls. To reward those who produce the best results, the top three stories, as determined by myself and the other judges, will each receive $25 in Nintendo eShop credit, a $25 Amazon gift card, or $25 worth of games gifted to them on Steam, whatever their preference.
I will be assigning the spirits in batches, omitting repeats if they occur. Simply declare your interest in entering below and I’ll roll one up for you. If you don’t like the spirit you end up with, for whatever reason, you may request a new one. However, you may only do so once, and MUST use the second spirit, so think carefully. Keep in mind that some of them are literally just inanimate objects, and you’ll have to make that work. Or, you might get a spirit that’s actually multiple characters in one, like Bord, Cord & Barst. In that case, you can either have them all form relationships with one individual or spread the love to multiple.
I fully expect many people needing to do research on the character they get, which might take a lot of time. Keep in mind that I’ll have to suffer through countless wikis looking up all the ones I don’t know before grumbling about it.
Notably, you don’t have to commit to a particular MLP character in advance. So, as an example, if your spirit ends up being Koopa Troopa, you could elect to ship it with Tank, as they are both tortoises.
Here are the rest of the rules. Please read them carefully before asking questions:
- Only one entry per person is allowed.
- Entered stories must be new to Fimfiction, and have both the Crossover and Romance tags. Additional genres can be anything. I expect Comedy will be easier for most, but if you want to submit a serious drama and think you can pull it off well, there’s nothing stopping you.
- No Mature stories. Sexual themes are OK as long as you keep it Teen rated. There is a firm ban on anything steamy involving children or infants, as that would be bad.
- Submitted stories have a word limit of 20,000. Please don’t go over, or I’ll be rather peeved at you, and your story’s reception may suffer. Still, I assume that’s plenty to work with for most authors.
- Stories must be submitted to the contest group before midnight on February 28th. That gives you over two months, which should be plenty of time. There will be NO EXTENSIONS. I’ll post any updates on this contest in the group as well, so be sure to join.
Also, I don’t actually have any other judges lined up yet, so if you’re a proven writer and/or critic and want to help me facilitate this nonsense instead of participating, please let me know. I figured it would be easier just to wait for volunteers once everything was on the table rather than running around asking people I knew beforehand. Or, if all this sounds exciting, and you want to read as many silly shipfics as possible, it would be a huge help if you could spread the word. The more the merrier, after all. Heck, you could even contribute to the prize pool if you want to. I know $75 in total isn’t much, but I’m unemployed and thrifty.
Well, that’s if from me. To those participating, good luck!
~ Thought Prism
Ooh, sign me up! I'll be sure to provide a signal boost after I finish my Jinglemas entry.
Sign me up!
I’m down for a shot at it!!
Looking forward to reading a few, not entering as i'm not that motivated of a writer and limited knowledge
I'm in!
Me plz!
Me please!
I am so gonna regret this, but I'll give it a shot. Fingers crossed for someone I know!
(Also, verdict on Equestria girls entries?)
4983921
I figured you'd jump at this. FanOfMostEverything, your assigned spirit is everyone's favorite Space Hunter, Drake Redcrest, from the Chibi-Robo! series.
4983977
Boltstrike58, your assigned spirit is Ninten, the protagonist of the first game in the Mother series, Earthbound's prequel.
4983990
Anon Y Mous, your assigned spirit is Ellie the Elephant, an animal companion from the Donkey Kong Country series. Also, hey, I can't believe this inspired you to try writing!
4984016
Kai Creech, your assigned spirit is Shinobu, from the Ninja Launcher streetpass game on the 3DS. Well then.
4984018
YarnWeaver, your assigned spirit is Freezie, the ice block with a face from the original arcade Mario Bros.
4984028
Captain_Hairball, your assigned spirit is Kanden, one of the bounty hunters from Metroid Prime Hunters.
4984033
Unified Dreams, your assigned spirit is Mr. Frosty, that one walrus miniboss from like every Kirby game.
4984036
Tethered-Angel, your assigned spirit is Gryomite, a peripheral that R.O.B. attaches to. Not to be confused with the NES game it's used with.
Welp, sign me up. Not sure how well I'll do with Romance, but I do love
trying to fit two pieces from different puzzles togethercrossovers.4984039
Gyromite... the little top thing ROB launches as his B? That'll be interesting.
4984052
Yes. And yeah, EQG stuff is totally fine. It's right there in the prompt.
Throw me a good one!
4984039
Man, when you said any character you really meant every character.
Ellie the elephant... I can work with that. ;)
Might as well.
4984039
Oh I should have bought a lottery ticket; I can really work with that guy! Know just who to ship him with too.
I haven't actually ever written anything on this site.
In fact, I haven't written anything in well over a year and a half.
I do not understand the concept of Smash Brothers, and have never played a Nintendo game besides Super Mario Bros in my life.
.....
Oh to hell with it.
Sign me up! I'm intrigued!
4984039
Oof. Forgot just how wide a net I was casting here. At least it's not a Fire Emblem character...
One research trip to YouTube later...
Oh, I can work with this. I can definitely work with this.
Sure, I'll give this a try. Pass me a Spirit
I'll take a roll of the dice, please.
4984045
River Road, your assigned spirit is Smeargle, the artistic beagle Pokémon that can learn every move.
4984059
Wanderer D, your assigned spirit is Pigma Dengar, a traitor to team Star Fox.
4984070
Don't you have that big, under-wraps project, though? Eh, screw it, I'm just glad you're here. Masterweaver, your assigned spirit is Enguarde, an animal companion from Donkey Kong Country. He is a swordfish.
4984111
No Raisin, your assigned spirit is Goldeen, the most disappointing Pokémon in Smash Bros. history. They're nice to look at, I suppose.
4984156
Dark Spark, your assigned spirit is Crispin, from the streetpass mii plaza game Feed Mii. The good news is, it won't be just you, literally nobody will have any clue who this guy is!
4984186
vladspellbinder, your assigned spirit is Boo Mario, the spooky form of Mario from Super Mario Galaxy. Yes, your spirit is an actual ghost.
4984203
Kris Overstreet, your assigned spirit is Kaepora Gaebora, the owl from Ocarina of Time who never shuts up.
4984167
Funny story, they're actually doing an event ingame that boosts the spawn rate of Fire Emblem characters. I've been skipping over those, otherwise like 1/5 of participants would be getting them.
4984209
Yesssss... we will ship them... my precious...
...oh wait, wrong Smeargle. Nevermind. I can work with that one, too.
(Such a shame that Palette Swap isn't canon)
I'll do it
I have two questions. First, who do I get? Second, what is crackshipping?
4984212
Can we use OC?
4984228
Oh you sweet summer child...
To explain "Crackshipping" one must first explain "Shipping".
"Shipping" comes from "Relationship" and just basically means putting two (or more!) characters into some sort of relationship, normally romantic, but "friend shipping" is also a thing.
"Crackshipping" is what you get when you pair two (or more!) people together who have no business what-so-ever being paired up. Either they utterly hate each other, like Harry and Draco from the Harry Potter stories, or they are from two differnt series or medias that have never crossed over, such as shipping Raven from Teen Titans with Danny from Danny Phantom.
Or you "ship" someone with an inanimate object. Or any other "odd" bit of romance.
It has... been a long time since I played Super Mario Galaxy. Time to do some research. And by research I mean watching Let's Plays and game clips.
Edit: And now I'm disappointed, it's just one of the various costumes Mario puts on. I was thinking it was like the "Nega Mario" opponent or something.
I think I'll try my luck with a re-roll, having "Boo Mario" is barely any better than just having normal Mario which kinda just ruins the whole point of using the Smash Spirits instead of the main roster characters.
4984209
Okay, so I get... a fish to work with.
4984252
4984230
That pretty much sums it up
. As for your other question, no, you may not use an original character. However, background characters are fair game, and many of those have little preestablished personality traits. You could easily use, say, Caramel, and write him however you wanted.
4984267
So, who do i get?
4984278
They're sent out in batches. Have some patience.
4984280
Alright
4984255
Ok, with the reroll, your new spirit is Bonus Fruit, from the Pac-Man series. There are eight in total, and not all are actually fruits: cherry, strawberry, orange, apple, melon, Galaxian, bell, and key.
4984283
Crystal Hoof, your assigned spirit is Starlow, a recurring helper from the Mario & Luigi RPG series.
4984308
I can work with that
4984209
Y'know,
I told myself that I wouldn't reroll, no matter the outcome.
That being said, this character appears to have both almost no character and no silly gimmicks.
As a compromise, I'll give myself two weeks to get at the least the start of something promising before throwing in the towel.
Here goes nothin'.
God...desses help us all.
This looks like fun. Haven't played much Smash, but there's always time for something new. If there's still time, please sign me up.
4984428
It's most certainly not too late! libertydude, your assigned spirit is Felix, from the Golden Sun games.
Hmmmm...
I will give it a shot! Should be interesting, considering I have never played Super Smash...
What the heck, sign me up please!
4984616
Well, Amber Sparks, let's hope you've played Pokémon before, because your assigned spirit is Yveltal, the legendary embodiment of destruction. Also, welcome to Fimfiction!
I probably shouldn't be too tempted by this, but what the heck, give me one.
4985740
Would you be up for judging instead? It might actually take slightly less time than writing an entry. If you do end up participating, your assigned spirit is the Moblin, a common enemy from the Legend of Zelda franchise.
4985857
Hmm, true.
I'll still mull over the moblin prompt (I had my fingers crossed for a Zelda or Fire Emblem spirit, 'cause those're the ones I might actually, like, know and stuff), but I'd be willing to judge, yeah.
Yeesh, uh, I'm not finding like anything to work with with Gyromite. I'd like to try a reroll please.
Edit- I hope you haven't been skipping over every Fire Emblem spirit cause I've got my fingers seriously crossed for one.
4986228
Sure thing. Your new spirit is Sharla, the rifle-toting party member from the original Xenoblade Chronicles. The FE thing is a moot point now, as the event ended. Still, Sharla is from an RPG and has personality, though. Hope you have better luck with her!
4986383
Oh, I know Sharla! That'll be fun. Thanks!
Ends February 28… hm. I might be open to judging.
4986524
Great! Please let me know once you've decided one way or the other.