Complementary Ships
| Tropes and genres | |
|---|---|
| Synonym(s) | Complementary pairing, Compatible pairing, Ship mates, sister ship |
| Related tropes/genres | Side pairing, Pair the spares, OBHWF |
| See also | Shipping, Migratory Slash Fandom, Multishipping, Ship Dynamics, The Dynamic, Adjacent Ship, Derivative Ship |
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
Complementary Ships are ships that are considered complementary or compatible with one another. The inverse is rival ships, which are often pitted against one another in fandom ship wars.
Page Name
Fandom does not have a consistent term to describe this phenomenon. TV Tropes, known for inventing trope names and sometimes the tropes themselves, has a page on Ship Mates and a former page named Sister Ship.
Complementary configurations
Some fans favor a ship set that neatly pairs up a group of characters--e.g. for a group of four characters A, B, C, and D, a fan might be a die-hard A/B and C/D shipper.
Complementary ships are related to pairing the spares; however, pairing the spares generally refers to shipping characters in a side pairing simply because they are otherwise unattached leftovers rather than for genuine enthusiasm for that particular relationship, while complementary ships may have dedicated followings.
Examples
- Cloud/Tifa and Aerith/Zack (Final Fantasy VII)
- Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley and Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger AKA OBHWF (Harry Potter)
- Naruto x Hinata and Sasuke x Sakura (Naruto)
- SpecialShipping and OldRivalShipping (Pokémon Special)
- Zutara and Taang (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
- Castiel/Dean Winchester (Destiel) and Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester (Saileen) (Supernatural)
- Davekat and RoseMary (Homestuck)
- Frerard, Peterick, and Ryden (Bandom)
- Foxica and Fronnie, in the early days of the Five Nights at Freddy's fandom
Tagging Problems
Sometimes complementary ships cause cases of Bruce Banner Syndrome, in which a large volume of fan works tagged with "C/D" only feature that ship as a background pairing to a more popular ship "A/B". In this case, the less popular pairing may be a case of pair the spares more than an enthusiastically supported ship in its own right.
Examples
- Frerard does this to Ray/Mikey. (My Chemical Romance)
- Ineffable Husbands does this to Ineffable Bureaucracy. (Good Omens)
Other Types of "Complementary Ships"
A number of unrelated shipping patterns could be described as "complementary ships" and are listed here for convenience.
Same flavor
Some fans favor ships with similar Ship Dynamics (e.g. the Sweaterboy and the Absolute Nightmare, Big Guy Little Guy, etc).
See also: Migratory Slash Fandom
Examples
- Johnlock and MacDennis
- SuFin and DenNor (Hetalia: Axis Powers)
Same actors
- See also Actor-based crossover pairings.
Fans of one pairing may support another pairing of characters played by the same actors.
Those who support a pairing of fictional characters may also be the ones most likely support the RPF pairing of those characters' real-life actors, or vice versa.
See: Production Posse and Relationship Voice Actor
Examples
- Clarke Griffin/Lexa (The 100) and Elyza Lex (The Walking Dead)
- Reylo (Star Wars) and Adam Driver/Daisy Ridley (RPF)
- Frerard (My Chemical Romance) and FunPoison (Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys)
- Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens) and David Tennant/Michael Sheen (RPF)
External links
- TV Tropes: Ship Mates
- All the Tropes: Sister Ship