Shinnok/Fujin Ship Manifesto

So this is one of my rarer and admittedly weirder ships, Shinnok/Fujin (also, ngl I’ve been dying to write a justification for this for… a long ass time lol.)

This is possibly very tough to really sell, because I’m fairly certain they have had absolutely 0 actual interaction on screen. I often make jokes along the lines of “it came to me in a dream” and “I’m pretty sure they made eye contact at some point in MKX”.

Part 1: Summer, where the fuck did this even come from?

TBH, the origin on my interest in this ship comes from an AU (I need to go back and work on at some point) that I call the “Kronika Wins AU” or affectionally also known as the “everything’s gone to shit timeline”.

So that particular AU follows the end of MK11, except in the alternate ending where Kronika ends up resetting the timeline again, this time wiping both Raiden and Liu Kang from existance. This leaves Fujin taking on the mantel of Earthrealm’s Guardian.
Things are very different in this timeline, but one thing that doesn’t change is Shinnok betraying the Elder Gods. Things change however around the time of his second invasion of Earthrealm, as Cetrion has a switch of sides, and tells both Fujin and Shinnok of what has been done, and the three team up to stop her.

So, originally that was what it was going to be. Fujin and Shinnok as allies against Kronika.
Except… As I was gathering and writing notes on ideas for the AU, they didn’t seem to want to stay as just allies.
Y’know how writers are always like “I have no control of my characters they do what they want”, well these two bitches basically did that to me.
By which I mean, as my thoughts developed on the AU, they started getting very touchy feely with each other. Like holding hands. A lot of hand holding tbh.
So, I thought about it, and began to think “oh hey, that’d pretty cute actually”. Originally I was gonna leave it ambiguous and let people come to their own conclusions, but then I went “wait, fuck it, this is my fic I do what I want”.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Part 2: The ship dynamic

Honestly, I think other than this being an enemies to lovers/lovers to enemies dynamic, that I love in general, I also feel like they have a very Hades and Persephone thing going on.

Also Shinnok has definite grump characteristics to Fujin literally walking sunshine personality.

Also, if I’ve learnt anything about my enjoyment of ships, I fucking love an overprotective older sibling who doesn’t like his younger sibling partner (Raiden) and an over enthusiastic annoying younger sibling who likes teasing their older sibling about their crush (Cetrion), so it hits both those notes too.

I dunno, they definitely could hit a lot of dynamic’s I enjoy, so I guess that’s why they ended up coming together like they did.

Part 3: The hate comment

Another interesting note on this ship: as of me posting this, it is the only ship I’ve written that I’ve ever gotten hate over.
Please behold this screenshot of said comment, because even tho I’ve since deleted it, it still holds a place in my heart as one of the funniest things that I’ve ever received.

Reasons I find this so hilarious:
1. This was a comment on the second Shinjin chapter in that particular AO3 post, which implies they made it past the 1st one and THEN decided later they didn’t like the ship.
2. The Shinnok being related to the storm bros has pretty much been put to bed, especially since MK11 gave him an entire extended family. Like that’d be the perfect time to mention a relation and they didn’t so… yeah, not canon, not incest, suck it.
3. This person somehow missed the two pages of Shinnok/Raiden, and that people, do in fact, ship Shinnok with one of his “sons”. But nah, my Rarepair only I ship is the problem. Clearly.

In Conclusion

But yeah. It’s not one that’s ever gonna become a powerhouse of the fandom (because I mean… yeah) but y’know I still like this little rarepair of mine :) I need to write more of it tbh…