In the comments section for the Secret Admirer's contest I had a discussion with someone who believed their OTP was a crossover pairing, and I remembered a few more points about OTP. A few others got miffed at me, and tried telling me I was wrong for trying to lend the writer a helping hand, and the other insisted crossover pairings could be OTP.

The first got miffed because I also missed a couple of letters in their name, and claimed that the misspelled name was a "porn lovers name", while their name was a "fanfic lovers name". (I really have no clue what they meant by that, as I can't find the misspelling as a user on Wattpad, or any other site.) The other insisted I could believe what I wanted even after I gave actual definitions from other sites, ones that I trusted, rather then just my own definition.

First, here are the arguments put forth by these individuals. One argument put forth during the conversation was that a crossover OTP counts as an OTP if it is a favorite/preferred pairing, but that's only part of the picture as I've already said. Another assumption made was that an OTP is the one and only pairing that a person writes for, but in reality the majority of people will write for more then one ship. Another argued that a pairing simply needed to be popular to be an OTP, but that leaves out pairings which aren't popular in nature.

Here are some definitions from sights I trust, and are likely the definitions that the judges will be using.

Fanlore – "One True Pairing" is abbreviated as OTP -- it is the sole or primary pairing someone is interested in for a given fandom (On top of this there is an additional note on their page regarding OTP.) Fans who do read or create fanworks for multiple pairings in a single fandom may or may not have an OTP; if they do, they may describe their favorite pairing as their OTP.

Fanlore for those who don't know is a wiki dedicated to fandom, and fandom terminology, and delves at times into the history of the term, or at other times give interesting information gleaned from various fandoms. They also cite all of their sources. Much of the information goes back to the 00's if not the 90's.

Moonbeam's Predilections – refers to an author's preferred relationship pairing between certain characters within a fandom. (An OT3, for example, refers to one's preferred trio of lovers, when two just isn't enough.) Fans may have many pairings they support, even multiple OTPs in a single fandom for different sets of characters.

Moonbeam's Predilections is a fanfic writer whose list of terms was actually updated during Sepetember of last year, meaning the information is going to be accurate. Her list of fanfiction terms was when I first started posting ten years ago the go to on fanfiction terminology, and really should still be the go to for people. This writer actually has been writing fanfiction since 1996, which was back when fanfiction was exchanged in a very different manner then it is today. She's not just written non-crossover's but crossovers as well.

Those are just the ones I used in my reply to the person who insisted that crossover pairings count, and why I specifically choose them, but here are a few others.

Urban Dictionary – Meaning the your favorite combination of characters in a fandom. (December 27, 2004)

Wikipedia – To deem a ship OTP, one is declaring their deep emotional investment in it. On occasion, though, a person may not be able to decide on an OTP in a single fandom.

Now, there are definitions out there which leave out the words "a single fandom", but that does not mean an OTP is not meant to be from a single fandom. If you found the definition on a site dedicated to a single fandom, then that part should have been implied. Other definitions though as I've warned about in my previous OTP post are newer definitions written by people who didn't understand the meaning behind the word.

One of the other things I discussed is non-rabid OTP writers, and rabid OTP writers, and how a non-rabid OTP writer bases their pairing choices on truths/facts, but a rabid OTP writer bases their choices purely on the pitter patter feeling they get, and nothing else. The fact the pairing gives the reader a "pitter patter" feeling is important, but if that were the defining factor between what an OTP is, then one could have multiple pairings for one character. It is instead the pairing one feels is true for that given set of characters within a fandom.

The first point I wish to make is, just because a pairing feels true, does not mean it is true, and this is ultra important for this contest, as the judges will pick up on whether the pairing is true or not if they know the canon well, but also depending on how out of character the writer gets when they write the pairing, or how forced the pairing is. I didn't really go into how a pairing can't be true in my last chapter, so I'll start off with this.

There is a popular OTP in one of the fandoms I write for which is for most of the people who write said ship a false OTP. Here is how the fans of the pairing see their OTP, and then the reality check.

Shippers: The two are meant to be together as he swore to protect her, and they were childhood friends. The relationship chart released for the series also shows how much he cares for her in a romantic manner. They also look good together, look at all the fanart where they're the exact same height. Their personalities also mesh very well.

Reality: The two characters actually aren't childhood friends, but foster siblings. The reason he swears to protect her is because in Japan it is the duty of the oldest male in a family to protect the females of said family, and he is in fact the oldest male. The relationship chart in question, what the fans call proof is actually a mistranslation which rabbid fans of certain pairings for the fandom push, as they want that proof that their pairing will be canon so bad. This particular character is also half a head shorter, and at one point was a head shorter then her, so if one hasn't already realized, he's younger then her. He is physically between ten to twelve, thirteen at the most, and she is between fourteen and sixteen – that's also being nice as she's likely physically sixteen like the other characters. On top of this their personalities do not mesh well. She is constantly disrespecting him, and treating him like a child despite the fact he's one of the more powerful characters in canon. Her personality is also very childish, and he's a child genius who struggles to put up with childish antics.

Now, a few writers for this ship have managed to work with the above issues, and to accept the reality. The number I've found, I can still count on one hand, and one ended up chased off just because they tried to once write their ship as "just friends", and one of their readers blasted them. That was back when the actions of the older character were limited, and not as many childish antics occurred. In addition to this, the only writer I've seen successfully pull of said ship without things feeling strained was the one writer who quit writing fanfiction entirely. Everything just goes wrong for this pairing, and writers for the ship have resulted to fake AUs for their pairing to work, fake because they're still stripping the characters of what makes them who they are.

In other words it is possible to argue that another persons pairing isn't true. The above pairing I mentioned is so far the only pairing I've come across where no matter what way you look at it, the pairing won't work out though, and as such most pairings can be argued as true within a given context. What it comes down to is whether or not a person can present the pairing in their writing as being true in what they write, or if they're only a reader, support it with actual concrete evidence.

Take one of my own OTP for the Harry Potter fandom, Draco/Hermione.

As someone whose personal OTP is this ship, I can personally attest that most of the stories written for said ship aren't good, and are written by rabid OTP shippers. The two characters are constantly forced together in most fics, and Hermione forgets what Draco did to her, in other words forgives him way to easily. The romance between them is rushed to get to the good stuff, and the two become "Possession Sues" of their former selves, and the stories miss completely the reason the pairing is so charming – the overcoming of prejudices as well as the act of forgiveness. 

A Draco/Hermione fic which forces the two together wouldn't win, but one that focused on "the overcoming of prejudices as well as the act of forgiveness" would stand a chance of winning. In other words you can't be delusional about your shipping. The judges do pick up on when the plot is strained, the characterization is off, and ... well, when the writer is being delusional about their shipping.

OC and Crossover pairings can be argued as not being true though based on different reasons. Let's start off with OCs.

For those who don't know, an OC is an Original Character, meaning that the character is original to the fanfic writer, rather then the original creator. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, an OC is a character that does not exist naturally within the fandom, thus since they only exist because the fanfic writer created them, thus they can not be considered a true pairing. A good OC writer though should still make their OC ship believable to the reader though.

There is a bit more though. Most people who write stories with OC pairings never, ever use the same OC, even when the other character in the pairing is always the same. A good OC writer will adapt to the given story situation, and create an appropriate OC. Those that do us the same OC, well, there is a high chance said OC will show up in every single pairing regardless of who the canon character is. A lot of OCs also are paired up with a canon character not because the writer thinks that's the only possible pairing for the character, but because they're using the OC to self-insert themselves.

On top of this a good OC is not easy to write, and thus very few stories have ever won which contain OCs, let alone OCs in pairings. The exception to the rule seems to be RPF, as there is a much higher ratio. In the same regard it is harder to win with an RPF, as fictional fandoms are also favored, to the point there is at times no RPF winners. The last OTP contest is a prime example. (It was also the last Valentine's day contest.)

Now for Crossovers.

For a crossover pairing to work, the rules must be changed. An OTP however must be argued on the grounds that the rules don't change. One of my OTPs is Hantaru/Bambietta from Bleach for example, but this changes when one crosses Bleach over with Naruto. The pairing I prefer then becomes Gaara/Bambietta. Switch to almost any other crossover, and Hantaru/Bambietta would be the same though, because despite the rules changing, it's not enough to effect my preferred pairing choice.

Adding in crossover characters can also be like a franchise adding in new characters. An OTP may change with the introduction of the new character. Again, the rules change, but the rules changed within the fandom, not outside the fandom. In other words it was the original creator who changed the rules, not myself the fanfic writer. In fact, there are writers who specialize in pairings created because of changing the rules within the given fandom, just to see how relationships change. None of these writers though would call these pairings OTP though, as they don't have a favorite pairing, nor would these pairings work under normal circumstances.

Note – This note is a bit late, but in addition to the OTP business, here are a few more things one can get dinged for, for this contest.

– Not writing in English.
– Not falling into the word limit, though there has been a few exceptions. The work really stood out from other peoples stories.

– Not focusing on the prompt
– Writing original fiction, or not tagging your story in a manner that the judges know you're writing for an obscure fandom instead of writing original fiction.
– Writing fanfiction based off another persons fanfiction/fanwork outside of fanart for inspiration. While this doesn't count as plagiarism, it does count as "not being original", plus most people didn't bother crediting the original writer of the original fanfic. Judges also don't want people to be forced to read the already existing piece.

A writer can turn out a well written story which breaks any of the above criteria, but they're still not going to win the contest as these things mean instant disqualification. So to does not using proper formatting. The best way to put this is, when writing for a contest, you don't always get to write exactly what you want to.