Round One of Blogger Blitz: Shipping Wars is almost here, fight fans, and that means the time has come to announce the match schedule along with the details of each event. I did a random drawing on Twitter on Wednesday morning last week and posted the matchups but gave only the tiniest hints of what each event might be about. Today, each event will come with a full prompt to inspire our writers for their upcoming match. I’ll also be sharing the bracket for Blogger Blitz so that those who like to make predictions and compare brackets can do so to their heart’s content. Let’s hash out the schedule first!
SICK DAY SAVIOR
RED CORNER: Ashley Williams, sponsored by @ATBonfire
BLUE CORNER: Tyrande Whisperwind, sponsored by @flameflash
MATCH DATE: July 29th, 2019 at 9 AM EST
RESULTS DATE: August 2nd, 2019 at 9 AM EST
WORD LIMIT: 1000 words
Is there any sign of love more powerful than taking care of someone while they’re sick? Your Ship has called you in sore need of some medicine for a terrible cold, but you can’t just hand your sick buddy some pills – this cold has some kooky side effects that threaten to tear the whole house apart! What kind of bizarre illness has affected your Ship, and what can you do to protect them and their home until the sickness passes? We’ll find out in your submission for Sick Day Savior!
When you’ve cohabitated for awhile, it’s pretty much inevitable that at some point you and your roommate will end up caring for each other during sickness. When I was a kid, I’d lay on the couch all day watching television and sipping Gatorade while my mom occasionally had me stand up so she could Lysol my temporary living space. My own son gets super clingy when he gets sick, so we’ll often all catch whatever he has because he wants to sit and cuddle until he gets better. Sickness is all part of being a person, but luckily we have our relationships to give us strength during those difficult times. This event presents a video game twist by giving the sickness a bit more oomph than a typical cold. In past years I might’ve specified specific symptoms for the characters to combat, but I think giving each writer the opportunity to create an illness that fits their world will be a lot more fun! Look forward to the very first Shipping Wars match, Sick Day Savior, on Monday, July 29th.
CUISINE COLLECTOR
RED CORNER: Geralt of Rivia, sponsored by @wintendo_64
BLUE CORNER: N, sponsored by @tcclockworth
MATCH DATE: August 5th, 2019 at 9 AM EST
RESULTS DATE: August 9th, 2019 at 9 AM EST
WORD LIMIT: 1000 words
Choosing where to share a meal is the hardest part of any relationship. This place has better sides, that one has more dessert choices – how are you supposed to pick just one? In this event, you don’t – instead, you must choose four different locations from your game world to take your Ship for drinks, appetizers, a main course, and dessert. Whether you choose a location for its atmosphere or for a particularly delicious ingredient that can be found there, tell us why you selected each location and how they all tie together into the ultimate meal experience!
The number of memes about how difficult it is to choose a restaurant shows how universal of a relationship experience this really is. It doesn’t matter if I am planning a meal with my wife, coworkers, best friends, mother, or in-laws – no one can ever decide where in the world we’re supposed to get food. This event gets around that problem with a clever date idea that my wife suggested back when I was just her dorky boyfriend: pick up the best part of the meal from multiple locations and then enjoy them all together. I liked the idea so much that I proposed to her that night, so here’s hoping this event is just as exciting for our competitors! You’ll get to see their meal ideas on Monday, August 5th.
HECTIC HIKING
RED CORNER: Lightning Farron, sponsored by @LightningEllen
BLUE CORNER: Morgana, sponsored by @winstolf
MATCH DATE: August 12th, 2019 at 9 AM EST
RESULTS DATE: August 16th, 2019 at 9 AM EST
WORD LIMIT: 1000 words
Walking in the woods can be relaxing and fun under the right circumstances. In the wrong ones, it’s a nightmare straight out of a horror movie. In this event nothing has gone right for you or your Ship. You’ve gotten lost, your destination wasn’t nearly as impressive as the reviews said, and what should have been a special day is one of the worst in your relationship. Your challenge is to use whatever powers or charm you have at your disposal to save this day from disaster. Can you recover the joys of hiking and turn the day around while stuck in the middle of nowhere?
I first discovered the joy of hiking when my stepdad would take us to trails on the weekends during my teenagery. Since then I’ve had some great hikes with both friends and family – but I’ve also had some hikes that went woefully wrong. It only takes one panic attack on a cliff face to change your relationship with nature, and when a hike goes south it can be hard to recover because of the limited resources available to you. Luckily, our heroes are characters from video games, so their own tools and abilities will give them options to recover that no normal person could bring to bear! We’ll see if our competitors make it out of the woods with their relationships intact on Monday, August 12th.
WACKY WEDDING
RED CORNER: Itsuki Aoi, sponsored by @Pix1001
BLUE CORNER: Mortimer Goth, sponsored by @AlexSigsworth
MATCH DATE: August 19th, 2019 at 9 AM EST
RESULTS DATE: August 23rd, 2019 at 9 AM EST
WORD LIMIT: 1000 words
You have been cordially invited to a wedding as the plus one for your Ship. It’s supposed to be a fun trip where everyone gets to see each other after a long time apart; instead, things go wild when a freak storm threatens to tear up the venue! Everyone looks to you to save the wedding – wait, why you? You don’t even know the “lucky” couple? Turns out the whole wedding party, including your Ship, is too busy getting ready to tackle the problem. Tell us how you bring the wedding back from the brink!
In the first few years after I left college, weddings were the main place where everyone got to see each other again. Getting an opportunity to hang out and talk about old times while also celebrating a new marriage was always an exciting prospect, but sometimes weddings don’t go smoothly. I’ve found that when things get tough, the folks who are actually involved in the wedding are often too busy to correct the problem, meaning that guests get roped in to deal with last-minute nightmares. How will our heroes deal with the freak storm tearing up a wedding that is so important to their Ships? We’ll find out the answer on Monday, August 19th, which is coincidentally the date of my own wedding anniversary!
Here we have the full bracket for the first round of the competition! As you can see, the winners of matches one and three will face each other in the semifinals, as will the winners of matches two and four. I know some of you fight fans may have a fun time thinking about who will win each match and filling out your bracket all the way to the championship – you can make that process easier by using this Blogger Blitz Shipping Wars Bracket, made using a free template from printyourbrackets.com. If you do decide to make your own bracket, make sure to post it on Twitter and tag me @adventure_rules so I can promote your predictions to the full Blogger Blitz fanbase!
For competitors: as you begin writing your articles in anticipation of your upcoming matches, please remember as a courtesy to link Adventure Rules as well as the blog of your opponent in your post. Shoutouts don’t count as part of your word limit, and we want to encourage all of our readers to check out the other folks in the competition! Additionally, if you have any questions about your prompt, please contact me and let me know so that the judges and I can clarify any points which may seem tricky.
Round One is about to begin and it’s an exciting time to be a Blogger Blitz fan! If you just can’t get enough of the competition, there are a couple of websites you’ll want to check out. My friends Kim at Later Levels and Chris at Overthinker Y are Blogger Blitz veterans and also some of the event’s biggest fans, and they have taken it upon themselves to put together some articles sharing their excitement for Shipping Wars! To my understanding they are planning to do some commentary-style discussions of matches as well as predictions for future bouts, so you definitely won’t want to miss what they have in store. As always, I also want to give a big thanks to our judges @ZenMindZenLife, @AndrewTurnwall, and @JustGeekingBy for all the hard work they do behind the scenes to make the Blitz happen. If you’re not following them, you’ll definitely want to rectify that quickly!
Thanks for reading, fight fans, and we’ll see you next week for the first match of the competition!
Adventure Rules 