Rarepair
| Synonyms: | rare pairing, uncommon pairing, ibara |
| See also: | crossover pairing, side pairing, unconventional pairing |
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Not to be confused with Rareshipping (Yu-Gi-Oh).
A rarepair is a term for a pairing or ship that is rare in a fandom. It is not featured in many fanworks and makes up a only small proportion of the overall total. A rare pair may be canon, but is often not. Some pairings may be shipped by a lot of fans, but be uncommon in fanworks. A rarepair may be a fan's OTP, or just shipped on the side.
Reasons for a pairing being uncommon include a lack of screentime or interaction in canon, one or both characters being unpopular in fandom, being a crossover ship, featuring an unpopular relationship dynamic (for example, age difference or incest), or the fandom base itself may be made up of people who prefer a different kind of ship – for example, a rare het pairing in a m/m slash-heavy fandom.
Poly ships are often considered rarepairs. The Leverage OT3 is an outlier and should not be counted.
Examples of rarepairs
- Scully/Krycek in The X-Files
- Rodney/Ronon in Stargate Atlantis
- Inui/Ryouma in Prince of Tennis
- Starsky/Huggy Bear or Hutch/Huggy Bear in Starsky & Hutch
- Darcy Lewis/Fandral in the Thor Movieverse
- Diana Prince/Harleen Quinzel in the DCU
- Barbara Holland/Nancy Wheeler in Stranger Things
- Pyrrha Nikos/Ruby Rose in RWBY
- Gabrielle/Joxer in Xena: Warrior Princess
- Takami Keigo/Shigaraki Tomura in Boku no Hero Academia
Rarepair-focused ...things
Multi-Fandom
- Works tagged Rare Pairing on Archive of Our Own
- Small fandom and rare pairing drabblethon
- Small Fandom and Rare Pairing/Rarely-Written Character Promote-a-thon
- Rare Pair Fest (link) exchange onLiveJournal and AO3
- Minority Pairings Community
- Recs tagged Rare Pairing at Fancake
- MM Rares
Fandom-Specific
- HP Rarities Exchange - Harry Potter rarepairs fic exchange.
- Transformers Rare Pairing community on Livejournal
- Spice Up Your Life: A Teen Wolf Ficathon, a Teen Wolf ficathon for any pairing but Sterek
- Marvel Rarepair - rarepairs of the Marvel Universe tumblr.
- The Flash RarePair - a rarepair Arrowverse tumblr.
- The 100 Rare Pairs Challenge - The 100, any paring except Bellarke or Clexa
- The 100 Rare Pairs Event - The 100, also any pairing except Bellarke or Clexa
- Untold Legends - a community exploring and celebrating the rarepairs of BBC Merlin
- Merlinity - a community "for lovers of Colin/Richard and Merlin/Gaius", BBC Merlin and Merlin RPF
- FE Rarepair Week (Fire Emblem series)
- Raven Cycle Rares, one-stop tumblr for everything rarepair in The Raven Cycle and The Dreamer Trilogy. They also maintain an active AO3 collection
- Saint Seiya Rarepair Week - For anything with less than 60 ships on AO3 and 100 on FFnet
prompts banner for Untold Legends by emjayelle
banner for Merlinity by glaringcandle
Additional Reading
- Slash is where you find it., by The Divine Adoratrice ("Why not go off the beaten path once in a while?") (July 14, 1998)
- Rarepairs, Archived version (So if you are a rarepairs writer, does the lack of feedback influence your writing them? ) (Jan 2005)
- Fandom Evolution & Rarepairs, Archived version (In order to understand the dynamic process of fandom, we have to look at its history. on fandom evolution.) (Jan 2005)
- "no one reads rare pairs", Archived version anon ask answered by sleepy-skittles (February 17, 2016)
- A short comic about shipping and why I need to stop doing it, Archived version by w1zrad-art (January 29, 2016)