Rarepair
| Synonyms: | rare pairing, uncommon pairing, ibara |
| See also: | crossover pairing, side pairing, unconventional pairing, crackship |
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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. Often, a rarepair may be also a crackship, but not necessarily if said crackship is popular. While both terms refer to non-traditional pairings, rarepair is more focused on low popularity ships between characters, while crackship focuses on exploring the interactions between characters that have no interaction in the source material for whatever reason. 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
- Cris/Sunny in OMORI
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
- Rare Pair Exchange (multifandom exchange)
- Rare Ship Swap
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
- Persona Rarepair Week - For anything less than 200 ships for Persona 1-4 and 400 for Persona 5 that aren't proship ships.
- 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
- Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange - gift exchange on Dreamwidth from 2016-ongoing.
- YGO Rarepair Week - Yu-Gi-Oh, For any ships with less than 60 works on Ao3 for Duel Monsters, less than 50 for GX, 5Ds, ZEXAL, ARC-V, and VRAINS, less than 30 for Sevens, and any Go Rush pairings.
- Aang Rarepair Week - Avatar: The Last Airbender, focused on any Aang pairings not in his top three (Kataang, Taang, Zukaang)
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)