Smash Fiction

The League finally meets up with Princess Peach and her band of rebels. With an army of Yoshis at their backs, they'll surely make quick work of Bowser and his Koopa Troop! I mean, it's not like Bowser has giant robots, moats filled with lava, or hundreds of other nasty surprises waiting for them, right? Vivian gets catty; Stitch gets into plants (literally); Dante makes pamphlets; Luna gets twice as sweet; and Nico's fixation on pro wrestling continues to grow. Additional music is "Deuces" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

This episode originally aired as the Patreon bonus episode for April 2018. The original description follows: It's that time again. Instead of Smash Fiction's usual brand of yelling and making lowbrow dick jokes, Itchy Brains is a time for having deep philosophical conversations about art and making highbrow dick jokes. This time I'm joined by MeganBob and Kit, and we're experimenting with the format a bit: whereas last time we centered our discussion around a single topic, this time we're centering it on a single work of art, "The Shape of Water." How does "Shape of Water" manage to be erotic without perpetuating the immoral qualities of pornography at its worst? How can you make an accurate period piece without endorsing the pervasive problematic attitudes of that time? What is "coding" and how has fiction used it to associate villains and monsters with certain real world marginalized groups? Would it have been more or less hot if we had seen that fish dick? Damn, didn't even make it to the end of the descri

In the year 20[redacted], the world has fallen into a super-cool but depressingly corporate cyberpunk dystopia, black leather and robot parts are always in fashion, and information is the #1 currency. Which could explain why Hiro Protagonist, the last freelance hacker and greatest swordsman in the world, finds himself in a race against both time and a very worthy opponent -- Overwatch's morally ambiguous hacking specialist, Sombra. Or it could maybe have something to do with the trickster machinations of a certain Smash Fiction Patron, but -- no. No, that's just crazy talk. After the same info, Hiro and Sombra must infiltrate the corporate megaplex in which it is housed, overcoming guards, security systems, and of course, each other. Will Hiro use his samurai swords and Sumerian language mysteries to show everyone why his name is still at the top of the leaderboard? Or will Sombra, with a muttered "cochino," give him a taste of her own personal brand of Snow Crash? In an episode churning with references to Se

When Mari McCabe, a.k.a. Vixen, learns of her ancestors' long-lost artifacts, extremely reliable Internet sources lead her to Wakanda. However, the king of Wakanda, Black Panther, holds the safety of his citizens at a paramount, and is there to greet Vixen when she arrives. Though she has claim to the apparently divine artifacts, he has the right to protect them from dishonorable hands. However could they possibly solve this dispute? As it turns out, with mystical claws! Miles wants you to be aware of Black Panther's cinematic success. Hub, from Titan Up the Defense, joins Dan to argue for all the animal powers you might've learned in Zoobooks as well as the comic animal powers you might not have considered. And MeganBob just wants everyone to be friends (though that might be too much to ask).

Surprise Party is back, and just in time, because it's a period of civil war and somebody needs to blow up that damn Death Star! Of course, it won't be Princess Leia and her friends on any mercy mission this time -- several fictional characters were beamed to this podcast by Smash Fiction hosts. Claire, Kit, and MeganBob have constructed three parties of new New Hopes, and with Dan as their high-minded Force ghost guide, they will compete in a series of scored contests to see who will be the first to shit-talk Grand Moff Tarkin, move along a group of Stormtroopers, and become more powerful than Darth Vader can possibly imagine! Featuring Claire's never-ending well of Looney Tunes references, Kit and Bob being entirely on the same page during character selection, and the game-wrecking potential of the ignominious Dumpus! As always, Smash Metafiction has a light side and a dark side and binds the universe together, so fire up your astromech droids and let's do a Star War!

Through a complicated series of events that could only have sprung from the sick and convoluted mind of Judge Miles, two of fiction's most adventurous, sex-crazed swashbucklers have found themselves marooned in a seedy criminal port city, and there's only one magical item that can get them out again! Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood's greatest time agent who is, of course, displaced in time, has discovered that the item lies somewhere inside the local crime lord's tower headquarters, and intends to use it to return to his own time to help fight off yet another alien invasion of London. But his rival, the well-known pirate of the Carribean as well as various mythologies, Captain Jack Sparrow, has also learned the item's location, and believes it can free him from the cursed gold coin that he couldn't help but pocket before leaving the Isla de Muerta. Which immortal Captain Jack can breach the tower walls, take out or sneak past the guards, seduce anyone in the immediate vicinity, and beat the other to the fabu

Having safely infiltrated Grimgrim Prison, our heroes must now find a way of freeing the Yoshi inmates from their Koopa captors. How long can they keep their true identities a secret before all hell breaks loose? What secret weapons will the Koopas deploy against them? And what exactly is Nico planning to do away from everyone else? Vivian hits the jackpot; Luna REALLY wants to make friends; Nico doesn't quite think things through; Stitch tries a new look; and Dante finds his true calling. Special thanks to Richard Bichler for the action music in this episode! Check out his work at youtube.com/richaadeb.

Happy April Fool's Day, listeners! Worry not, your regularly-scheduled League episode will be up tomorrow (April 2nd), but we decided to give you a little something extra on this most special of days. So what exactly does an April Fool's League episode sound like? Well, what about a different GM stepping in while Dan becomes a player? What about one of the weirdest League teams this side of Phyrexia? What about a murder mystery... in Candyland? Additional music this episode is "Take a Chance" and "Killers" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

This episode originally aired as the Patreon bonus episode for March 2018. The original description follows: I think it's safe to say that writing this song has been an exploration of Skeletor's sensitive and emotional, yet still very evil, side. Based on how many times he's utterly failed over the years, he's finally turned to a classical music piece to maybe make a name for himself, but even then, still can't escape He-Man. When I started out with writing this song, I was torn between writing a bombastic, dissonant piece or a more somber, emotional one. I basically attempted to combine all of those feelings into this twisted, classical amalgamation. I started out with samples of all the hosts' most terrifying Skeletor laughs and some extremely dissonant piano... and then, because I'm Liz Logan, thought it would be a great idea to go from evil (what you would expect) to something unexpected, i.e. pleasant sounding. Then, I wanted the end of the song to be Skeletor's mental snare and bass-driven march to actu

Nazis. Why'd it have to be Nazis? And on the moon, of all places. When space Nazis kidnap president James Marshall right off his Air Force One, NASA makes use of SCIENCE! to summon three of his look-alikes from alternate universes. From long ago in a galaxy far, far away comes former general, forever smuggler, and first-shooter, Han Solo! Swinging in with a whip and a fedora full of luck is archaeologist, professor, and repeated nuisance to Nazis, Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr! And last and definitely oldest comes former Bladerunner, neo-noir hide-and-seek champion, and toasted cheese enthusiast, Rick Deckard! Which of these men is a bad enough dude to save the president? Will Claire turn to the Dark Side after multiple jokes about patricide? Does Kit even care who wins as long as Rick Deckard loses? And can Liz keep it together after all the psychological abuse hurled her way when she never asked for this (except she totally did)?

Smash Metafiction presents the second episode of Collaboratory, in which Claire Mulkerin guides three other Smash Fiction hosts through a collaborative storytelling process using the characters, settings, genres, goals, and MacGuffins they each independently brought to the table, stitched together via the screenwriting steps and structure from the book Save The Cat! In this sophomore effort, a few similarities between story elements don't make things any less fun, as super-strong teenagers hang out in bell towers, Kit combines her greatest fear with her affection for popular '80s music, and Miles enters the lab for the first time...

A dispute over a minor magical artifact turns into a battle of the dark princesses of fighting games, as whip fetishist and least-dressed Soul Calibur character Ivy Valentine takes on Darkstalker's resident bat-winged succubus, Morrigan Aensland, and the fan-flinging queen of Kombat, Princess Kitana, in the first actual straight-up combat match of Season 3! Will Ivy's use of the Soul Edge be enough to overcome the disadvantages conveyed on her by the basic rules of boob physics? Will Morrigan's combo-spamming techniques and shapeshifting abilities win the day over her better-known foes? Or will Kitana just inexplicably turn everyone into babies and be done with it? Also, the hosts perform an experiment to determine just how many terrible puns can fit in one episode, James Bond suffers a quick and hideous death, and for the second time in Smash Fiction history, somebody says the words, "Fuck you, Miles." This week's episode is brought to you by Corn Nuts and "The Aughts."

Some difficulties during recording mean that this episode is a bit shorter than normal, but you still get a giant helping of Mushroom Kingdom action and intrigue! The League (and their new companion) have been found by Koopa Troops--it looks like their quest to free the land from Bowser won't be an easy one. Can the League stand up to some of their weirdest enemies yet? And what ill-advised and hideously impractical plan will they come up with to infiltrate an entire stronghold of these things? Dante goes old school; Luna makes sure everyone gets enough to eat; Stitch tries on some new kicks; Nico goes her own way; and Vivian REALLY plays against type.

We've got winter sports fever here at Smash Fiction, so we've put together the ultimate showcase of figure skating athleticism for your listening pleasure! Japan's Yuri Katsuki joins with his rival, Russia's Yuri Plisetsky, as the team known as Yuri(s) on Ice--and they had better be prepared to make history, because their opponents are the legendary Americans Chazz Michael Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy, better known as the Blades of Glory! Men will spin. Ice will be sliced. Same-sex coupling will be strongly implied. Will judge Dan be won over by Kit and Meganbob's contention that the Yuris' passion, love of pork, and actual visible skating skill will win the day? Or will Claire and special guest advocate Brad Bultman come flying down from the sky and successfully argue that skating prowess and blatant absurdity are not mutually exclusive?

It's another episode of Smash Metafiction, featuring the debut of a new experimental game -- Surprise Party! Drawing from fictional characters across the multiverse, the Smash Fiction hosts build their own adventuring parties of fighters, rogues, mages, clerics, and bards (not to mention the dreaded "dumpus") and see whose team can best complete the trials and tribulations of a previously existing story. In the inaugural episode, Dan guides three cobbled-together character coalitions through the plot of The Lord of the Rings, scoring them from best to worst in a series of contests that will, ultimately, determine which party successfully casts the Ring of Power into the fires of Mount Doooooooooooom! Will Sauron be defeated (by Claire's commitment to Jedi pacifism)? Will Middle-Earth be saved (thanks to a bunch of weirdos that only Miles has ever heard of)? Will Kit show up with any characters that are human and/or have the ability to speak? There's only one way to find out: Listen, you fools!

Well, listeners, it's finally happened. It was inevitable, really. It was clear right from the beginning that one day, these events would occur. Most of us never believed in the prophecy, but here we are. Smash Fiction has finally, officially caught the slashfic bug (MeganBob is actually the disease's primary carrier, so yeah, should have seen that one coming). Not only that, but we've infected the Gameable Podcast with it, as well. Kris and Katrina had no choice but to return to our show once again, this time for a series of arguments that would be purely speculative if they weren't so completely obvious. Smash Fiction's pledge has always been to answer the big questions, and this week, we tackle one of the biggest there's ever been. If, in one room, you were to put James Tiberius Kirk captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and his first officer, Commander Spock, and in another room, you put Frodo Baggins and his faithful friend and gardener, Samwise Gamgee...which hypothetical dream couple would be the first to

Now that the siege on Castle Grayskull has been broken, the League is finally able to catch their breath and begin to rebuild. Old injuries are addressed, new status quos are examined, and threats are flung in every direction. And finally, the League finds a new lead in their struggle against Phyrexia, which leads them to a new world... a very, very strange new world. Stitch plays keep-away; Nico redefines anti-social behavior; Luna hands out swag; Dante looks into some upgrades; and Mordin has an important decision to make.

This episode originally aired as the Patreon bonus episode for January 2018. The original description follows: Thanks to your continued support, I am... proud?... to bring you the latest bonus episode of Extraordinary League! It all started with a simple question I posed to myself: what would happen if a bunch of League characters got on a train? The answer ended up involving a lot more improvisation, sky pirates, and ghosts than you might initially think. I'm so grateful to all of you for making this possible--I hope you have as much fun listening to to it as we had making it. -Dan

What happens when the Opera Populaire's legendary Phantom and the man known as Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, start killing people simultaneously in a Paris that is now under the steely-eyed watch of the miserable but constantly rules-enforcing Inspector Javert? Why, the most musical episode of Smash Fiction in history, of course! As Todd and the Phantom attempt to avoid the investigative attentions of the good inspector (well, the lawful neutral inspector, at least), all the SmashFic hosts break into song, at least one of them raps, the long-lost Musical Round returns, and Rafael Medina is here, so some of it actually sounds good! Will the Phantom leave one last chronology-muddling rose on his enemy's grave, or will Sweeney Todd have a brand new flavor of pie to sell in Mrs. Lovett's shop? And how much singing is there in this episode, really? (Hint: So much. There's so much singing.)

In the inaugural episode of Smash Metafiction, Claire guides the Smash Fic hosts through a collaborative storytelling exercise that we like to call... Collaboratory. For reasons that are evident over the course of the show. Actually, you get to hear the conversation in which we decide on that name. It's fun times. Each of the hosts shows up with an existing fictional character or archetype, as well as a story element, including genre, setting, goal, and MacGuffin. Then, using screenwriting steps and structure from the book Save The Cat, they combine these disparate parts into a new, greater, and only slightly disfigured whole! This time around, sitcom characters terrorize the high seas, there's definitely room in the cast for Lady Gaga, and you'll never guess who Kit brings to the table...