Persona Rarepair Week

Challenge
Name:	Persona Rarepair Week
Date(s):	February 12 to February 18, 2024
Moderator(s):	@prarepairweek (2020), @prsnrarepairwk (2024)
Founder:
Type:	Fanweek
Fandom:	Persona
Associated Community:
URL:	Persona Rarepair Week 2020 Twitter, Persona Rarepair Week 2020 Tumblr, Persona Rarepair Week 2024 Twitter
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Persona Rarepair Week is a fanweek for underappreciated rarepairs for the Persona fandom in 2020 and 2024.

2020

Persona Rarepair Week 2020 was held from November 24 to November 30.

Rules

Rules were announced on a Twitter thread on September 30

• The rating is up to you and so is the ship; mlm, wlw, OT3, OT4 and so on
• The Week is dedicated to rarepairs and rarepairs only. By that we refer to EVERY and ANY ship that has little to no content at all ― in terms of numbers, the limit is 300 or less works on AO3.
• on another note: You can make content of different rarepairs through the week! for ex. you can draw ship A on day 1 and ship 2 on day 3 and so on!
• Use the hashtags #personararepairweek #personararepairweek2020 and if you post on Tumblr or Twitter, you are more than welcome to tag us! We'll be happy to retweet / reblog your work! ✨
• If you have any question, DMs are always open!
• Last but not least, have fun!!

Prompts

• Day 1: Roleswap ; Hanahaki
• Day 2: Angel/Demon ; Coffee Shop AU
• Day 3: Confession ; Childhood
• Day 4: Hurt/Comfort ; Future
• Day 5: Royal AU ; Roommates
• Day 6: Shadow ; Winter Date
• Day 7: Soulmates ; Study Session ; Free Day

2024

Persona Rarepair Week 2024, later cancelled, was programmed to be held from February 12 to February 18. In an anonymous ask which asked who the event runners were, the organizers replied they'd rather stay anonymous for their safety and privacy. The event was announced on December 9, 2023 and was liked eighty-three times and reblogged sixty times. On December 25, the organizers started a poll to vote for the dates of the event. The options were four possible dates from February and March. The earliest option won by 58 per cent of the votes.

Rules

Rules were posted on the Twitter account on January 6, 2024.

• This event is strictly SFW. NSFW and dead dove/problematic ships, such as adult x minor and incest ships won't be allowed.
• Any content containing triggering topics such as gore, blood, dereality, etc are highly advised to be tagged and flagged accordingly.
• Spoilers for recently released games such as Persona 5 Tactica need to be tagged as well.
• This event entries are not just limited to art and fanfic. Any media like cosplay, video edit, songs, etc. Are encouraged as well. Be creative!
• We are also open to late submissions/entries. This event is for fun so no one should feel burdened and rushed to submit one's entry on time.
• Be sure to tag your entries with #PRPW2024 so we can retweet everybody's wonderful work! Tagging us are also fine should we missed your work.

REGARDING RAREPAIRS;

Taking inspiration from Persona Rarepair Week held in 2020 by @prarepairweek, we are also using AO3 to determine which of the ships are considered "rarepairs". Therefore, we have decided that fanfic entries below 200 for Persona 1-4 and 400 for Persona 5 are the ones allowed for this event.

The Day After, a list of disqualified ships was released on popular demand.

Prompts

• Day 1: Reunion ; Sickfic
• Day 2: Domestic Life ; Long Distance Relationship
• Day 3: Valentine's Day ; Hurt/Comfort
• Day 4: Travel ; Gala
• Day 5: AU ; Crossover
• Day 6: Wedding ; Memories
• Day 7: Free Day

Controversy and Criticism

Followed the release of the rules, an anon asked through the event retrospring account what is considered a "problematic ship" as adult/minor and incest pairings were given as examples but they made it sound like those were not the only thing that counted as problematic, as the term is used so broadly that it would be useful to have clear guidelines in advance of everything that is not permitted. The organizers replied that by problematic ships, they meant ships that are deemed toxic and morally reprehensible including age gap, incest, non-con/dub-con, abusive/predatory and imbalance power dynamic. And that they only put out adult x minor and incest since it is usually the most prevalent within fandoms among other problematic tropes, although participants were also advised to not create content of abusive ships for this event to keep away any uneasiness that may arise among participants and avoid targetted harassments towards anyone.

This clarification was met with mixed reactions. Some fans pointed out that in a rarepair event, the only disqualification criteria should be popularity and nothing else.

"age gap" being listed with actual abusive dynamics seriously Also it's FICTION. Like, a great deal of ships in the actual games are "morally reprehensible".

by Justacollector

"rarepair week, but only for the rarepairs I like" 😬🤡

by mastershearts

When asked clarification about how big of an age gap is too much, the organizers replied that the age gap only aplies for adult x minor ships and not for adult x adult As people kept asking if their preferred ships were allowed, an anon asked if Sae x Adachi was allowed, as it could be seen as problematic due to some morally wrong things Adachi has done in canon. The organizers replied the ship was allowed. Another anonymous ask criticised this decision, saying that Adachi is a mysoginist rapist and that no change could make that ok. The anon gave their opinion that characters like Adachi or Akechi should be banned because it is always going to be toxic. To which he organizers replied that toxic dynamics are not allowed, so if someone writes about them, they have to keep in mind they must be portrayed in a good light.

Next day, the organizers tweeted to let people know that the ship involving Akechi and Sumire/Futaba was allowed. This generated a big amount of drama, as Akechi is 18 while Sumire and Futaba are still 15. The tweet was liked by four people, and quote-retweeted by sixty-six complaining about this decision and asking for the event cancellation.

why are we pretending ages are subjective. futaba is 16 for like 2 in game days and sumire turns 16 after the game is over iirc lol. they are 15. shipping them with characters who are 18 for the majority of the game is WEIRD

by vividblueberries

unfortunately i’ll be reconsidering my appearance in the event. the maturity levels between a 15 year old and a 17/18 year old are too different for me to personally be comfortable with participation. i wish you would’ve considered this before making this tweet

by hiyoriugh

Persona rarepair week already cannibalizing itself by trying to limit the ships "allowed" and allowing a ship that the rabid anti crowd deemed Immoral

by magatsuisangis

Cancellation

Followed the backlash from the previous days, on January 10, the organizers announced that the Persona Rarepair Week would be cancelled and the account deactivated due to the doxxing threats and pedophilia accusations they received. They also apologized for managing the event poorly in a way that made everyone unhappy.

Who the fuck threatened to doxx an acc over shipping high schoolers?? I feel so bad for them god.

They were a bit wishy-washy & I found funny how it somehow made both sides of the fandom want to quit the event yesterday, but no one deserves their info exposed over headcanons The current state of fandom is so sad. There always been fights & drama, but threatening to expose your personal info because you were ok with a ship on an event? Seriously?

(To not talk how people take art, scans & fan-translations for granted now & are so ungrateful abt it)

by nuzzlemuzzle

Tried to cater to antis, got the typical interrogation where they try and find something wrong, caved, un-caved, then got dox threats. Now imagine a world where from the very start it was "write whatever you want but we may or may not RT it/RT it to a side account". This event had no reason to go down like this. The crux of the problem lies in trying to cater to exclusionary people while having no set guidelines for their exclusions, rather than being inclusionary and adjusting accordingly to make the event fun for everyone. All of the antis complaining in QRTs of previous posts about how the event is ruined are failing to realize that it's only ruined because of the ridiculous rules that they set and continue to perpetuate. If this was an AO3 collection for example then all they'd have to do is filter out the things they don't like and pretend they don't exist. But instead of having their cake and eating it too, they decide to complain about how the cake is made, shove it off the table, then cry about how there is no cake.

by magatsuizanagis

Alright i avoided to talk about this for too long because i don't like drama but yall gonna hear about me because oh lord: I hate that you guys got to this point, they did not deserve the hate they recieved, even some of my moots called them things like weirdos, pr0shippers and god knows what, even when they said FROM THE BEGGINING dead dove/nsfw is not allowed? WHAT??? I'm so dissappointed I understand that with the amount of pr0shippers in this fandom yall are very warry (also the amount that is gonna start to say "uhhhh see? Anteez are badd" uhghhh) but they never intended to make a ship ped0philic or such. In internet it says Futaba is 15-16 and Akechi is 17-18, YES 15-18 age gap is WRONG but as long someone writes Akechi as 17 normal. Yes they could've done better research but is not excuse of what happened I'm grateful did not pull the stupid response "uhh they are fictionall it doesn't matteeerr" and took the time to explain what i explained, and yet this happened. I'm so sorry for the mods, i really hope they are ok after all this I know my moots are no harassers and they did not had anything to do with the doxxing, but i'm kinda dissapointed in you, how did this happened. And if someone who think doxxing someone over a ship read this: grow up.

by valvurarte