It is generally agreed upon that a Rarepair is a Ship which is not commonly celebrated, or which has comparatively little content made of it. The exact metrics by which any one person determines the classification of a Rarepair varies wildly from person to person, with several possible variables such as Canonical content vs Fanon content vs Fanfic Content vs Fanart Content, and measuring by several different metrics.
This Event does not seek to police or influence any individual's or community's definition of a Rarepair.
That being said, for the purposes of this event, some Metrics must be measured and some restrictions must be applied, both for the sake of practicality and for the sake of making a Fun Game. These metrics and restrictions are meant to be applied solely and exclusively for participation in the Official Rarepair New Year Event Raffle Game. Any and all other participants, and any and all other contexts, need only consider these an optional perspective.
As everyone has their own idea of what quantifies a Rarepair, this Event has decided to strictly codify what it will recognize as a Rarepair for the purposes of qualifying for the Official Rarepair New Year Event Raffle. As such, the Event will be working off of the easily accessible metrics provided through AO3 and its tagging system to quantify and calculate Event-Certified Rarepair Status.
This decision has a number purposes:
- It allows for a fair and clear way to mathematically determine if a ship is a Rarepair, taking personal feelings as much out of the equation as possible. This means there won't be any hurt feelings over other participants earning tickets for activity around a ship someone else may not personally consider a Rarepair
- It centers the metrics by which a Rarepair is measured on an open access source, rather than requiring access to members-only or privatized data.
- It allows for an excuse to enjoy and celebrate tags and tagging practices (something the host of this event sincerely enjoys)
To make understanding the way The Event weighs the metrics of a Ship, two primers are available on this website laying out (1) AO3 Standard Tagging, and (2) filter-optimized UTMV Fandom Tagging on AO3.
The information in these Primers is laid out in an attempt to make finding your Ship's Event-Standard Ship Tag more accessible. Finding your Event-Standard Ship Tag is the first step to determining if your ship is a Rarepair for the purposes of The Event.
The metrics the Event uses to determine if your Ship is a Rarepair center around your Event-Standard Ship Tag. The number of works which come up from your Event-Standard Ship tag is compared to the number of works in the Fandom your Ship is associated with. (in the event of a crossover ship, the larger fandom's Work Number should be used)
Other factors include:
- the number of works in your fandom in general (i.e. a small enough fandom would qualify the ship as a Rarepair regardless of percentile)
- the wrangling status of the Ship Tag (e.g. an Unwrangled Ship Tag is more likely to be a Rarepair)
- the number of individuals who have contributed to the work count (i.e. a small enough group of individuals passionately celebrating a Ship with many works between them will not disqualify the Ship of Rarepair Status)
The exact numbers change a little from year to year as we try to make the Event better. 2025's calculations have yet to be solidly codified, but that will be determined before the start of the event.
As AO3 is constantly archiving more and more works, and therefore changing its metrics, the Event's Policy is that any Ship determined to be a Rarepair during the course of the Event Season will retain Rarepair Status, even if new metrics arise that would disqualify the Ship. Once there has been a determination in the Official Rarepair New Year Event Discord Server, which could be through informal conversation in the server itself or through acceptance of a submission with that Ship, that Ship will qualify until the end of the Event.
