Smash Mansion: a Setting Made By and For Fans
Smash Mansion: a Setting Made By and For Fans
When fanfiction becomes self referential
Smash Mansion is a common element found in fanfiction of the Super Smash Bros Series, one that has no basis in any of the games. It is a building where the entire playable roster, referred to as Smashers, lives together. Despite not being canon, it has had a larger role in shaping Smash Bros fanfiction than any of the story modes found within the games.
The mansion itself has no defined form or location, authors are free to give it whatever design they want and place it wherever they want, most often in a world separate from anything represented in Smash Bros. Even with stories that don’t use Smash Mansion, it’s common for them to feature some sort of shared living space for the Smashers whose name fits into the formula of ‘Smash [type of building].’
Once I attempted to find the origins of Smash Mansion, to solve the mystery of who created an idea with such a hold on the fandom. It was a failure, even fellow fanfic authors were only able to offer different theories and observations, nothing conclusive. All of us used Smash Mansion because we saw other authors use it, yet we couldn’t trace the line of inspiration back to its source. But, I did find out what things looked like before Smash Mansion.
Surprisingly, things weren’t that different. The earliest fanfiction I found for the series on Fanfiction.net still had the idea of the roster living together, but the building hadn’t been standardized. A hotel and ‘Melee HQ’ made multiple appearances between different writers, but don’t appear to have ever had the grip that Smash Mansion would have on the fandom.
Knowing that the concept of the roster living together both predates and was commonplace before Smash Mansion does a lot to explain its dominance. There was already a niche to be filled, and so one idea evolved during the Melee era to become the default setting for fanfiction, which not even official story modes could supplant. I have a few theories of my own for why it was a mansion in particular that became popular.
A mansion carries connotations of wealth and prestige that make it easy to fantasize about. In contrast a headquarters or HQ sounds militant and impersonal, while hotels have a wide range of quality and are temporary residences without much social interaction between guests. Meanwhile living in a mansion together sounds like it would lead to people at least being aware of each other.
It’s possible an author on fanfiction.net called Game2002 helped at least popularize the concept, being a decently popular and prolific author within the fandom who used it right as the concept appears to have first emerged. This is only speculation based on circumstantial evidence, especially since Game2002’s earliest works were taken offline.
Regardless of how it became so dominant, it also has to be asked what effect that dominance had. And I’ll argue the effect was positive.
On Fanfiction.net Smash Bros is one of the top ten most written about video games and the only one among the top ten to be a fighting game. Meanwhile on Archive of Our Own, another major online hub for fanfiction, Smash Bros has 3,460 fanfics as of this writing1, while the second most popular fighting game series there, King of Fighters, is far behind at 809 fanfics.
This might be attributed to being both the best selling fighting game series and a crossover involving other highly popular series, but popularity does not always equal a flood of fanfiction2, and crossover titles don’t always get dedicated fanfiction for them proportional to the popularity of the source materials.
Marvel vs Capcom for example has only 47 fanworks on Archive of Our Own, while Darkstalkers, best known as ‘that dead series Morrigan in Marvel vs Capcom comes from,’ has 155. Meanwhile other series involved in Marvel vs Capcom like Marvel comics itself or Ace Attorney have fanfic counts with five digits. A similar story plays out with other crossover titles like Heroes of the Storm, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, and Project X Zone.
Based on this pattern, it’s clear that Smash Bros is an anomaly with the amount of fanfiction it has as a crossover fighting game. This comes with the obvious question of why it became such an anomaly, with a fanfiction ecosystem akin to a thriving forest when similar games are like barren deserts. Popularity can’t be entirely dismissed as a factor, but I’ll argue Smash Mansion is a key reason why.
Crossover games are all about the characters, but tend to have stories that still make fanfiction authors put in the work to get their favorite characters anywhere near each other for more than combat. In the case of Heroes of the Storm, its vague narrative stops at making an excuse for constant fighting, forcing fanfiction writers to carve out space for meaningful character interactions themselves. I should know, I wrote a Heroes of the Storm fanfic myself.
In contrast, Smash Mansion breaks down the crossover to one of its core appeals, different characters meeting. You don’t need to create an elaborate scenario to have Samus and Simon Belmont encounter each other, they can simply walk into the same room of Smash Mansion and have a conversation.
Not only is it easy to use, but Smash Mansion is also versatile. Adventure, slice of life, romance, mystery, all sorts of genres can use the setting of Smash Mansion. As a narrative tool it’s difficult to improve on. The results of its presence are plain to see, it helped many people unleash their imagination.
Maybe one day somebody will finally gather the evidence for a definitive conclusion on when and where Smash Mansion took form. Even if it never comes, the power of Smash Mansion is clear. There’s a reason people have been been writing about a fan made location for well over a decade, everyone is there.
If you’ve also contributed to the fanwork side of the Smash Bros fandom, I’d especially appreciate your feedback on this post. Assuming there’s interest, I could talk even more about Smash fanfiction and recommend some specific ones.
Do you read fanfiction? If you read Smash Bros fanfiction, what are some of your favorites? And for a broader question, are there any characters from different works that you’d love to see a conversation between?
The ‘as of this writing’ qualifier applies to every other number in this post sourced from Archive of Our Own. It should also be noted that fanfics on Archive of Our Own can be tagged as belonging to multiple fandoms, so something tagged as both Super Smash Bros and King of Fighters increases the fic count for both.
James Cameron’s Avatar, a film with an entire wikipedia page dedicated to box office records that it broke, currently has less fanfiction than the cult classic Disney movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire. That should demonstrate how impressive sales numbers doesn’t always mean there will be tons of fanfiction.