The Big Eight

The Big Eight is the poly ship between Ana, Elsa, Flynn Rider, Hiccup, Jack Frost, Kristoff, Merida and Rapunzel from the Brave, Frozen, How to Train Your Dragon, Rise of the Guardians and Tangled fandoms.

Canon
The Big Eight consists of characters from different franchises and different companies altogether. Half of the characters are from Disney movies. While the rest of them are from Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures. While the characters from different movies never met, the ones who are from the same ones did, and even went on to be romantically involved in some cases. This is the case of Rapunzel and Eugene and Anna and Kristoff, who are romantically together. As well as Elsa and Anna, who are sisters.

Fanon
is a poly ship that consists of many characters. However, it started with just a ship and as the respective franchises grew more and more popular amongst fandom spaces, more ships joined and characters even started being shipped in multiple ways (different from how it started). The first ship that started it all was the one between Rapunzel and Hiccup. With the releases of both movies these two characters are from, Tangled and How to Train Your Dragon, in the year 2010, fans started shipping them and creating artworks where the chance for them to meet was possible, something that was not considered a possibility before since they're both from different universes.

In 2012, Brave and Rise of the Guardians were released and thus the second ship, Jarida, was born. Despite the fact that the Rise of the Guardians movie did not perform well at the box office, the character of Jack Frost got so popular within fandom spaces, like the ones on Tumblr and Deviantart, that he was added to the growing group, alongside Merida. Since the four of them were now intertwined as a poly ship, the ship between Jack and Rapunzel got way more popular than the initial one between the latter and Hiccup. And in late 2012/beginning of 2013, The Big Four group got created.

Fans started getting this newly-formed crossover fandom more and more known, getting it popular. And this led to tons of artwork of the four characters in different situations. LGBT+ fans within the fandom started feeling excluded from these spaces, so ships like the one between Merida and Rapunzel or Jack and Hiccup, were created. However, not all of the fanmade content was shippy, as most of them portrayed the four characters going on different adventures together, in different universes, even universes from other movies, like The Hunger Games.

And finally, later when the ship wars subsided, Kristoff and Flynn Rider were added to the group, making The Big Eight the group they are nowadays. Fans now usually ship Kristoff with Anna, Flynn with Rapunzel, Merida with Hiccup, and Elsa with Jack Frost.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * The Big Eight on Quotev