The first and most accessible way to participate in Rarepair New Year is to...

Do whatever you want! \0/

Rarepair New Year is a fan-made Event with the primary idea of Celebrating Rarepairs! You can celebrate your favorite Rarepairs however you like. Any fictional ship you think is a Rarepair worth celebrating, go ahead and take this as an excuse to celebrate it! Any and all fandoms are welcome!

Feel free to tag #RarepairNewYear and #RarepairNewYear2026!

For even more hardcore fun, there are also an "Official" Event activities: These includes both the Rarepair New Year Ship Meme and the Rarepair New Year Raffle. This is what we refer to as the "Official Event", because this form of participation is a tad more structured with more rules.

For a quick summary of the Official Event, see the Timeline. For reference, also check out the FAQ if you have a question and this page is TL;DR.

Participating in the Official Event has a few prerequisite conditions:

(1) You must join the Official Event Discord. The Official Event Discord Server is the center of operations for the Official Event and Raffle. All Participants, Prize Volunteers, and Event Coordinators, must be active in the Official Event Discord Server.

(2) You must confirm that you are over the age of 18. While unofficial participation is open to all ages, the Official Event is restricted to Adults (18 years old or older). To register as an Adult in the Official Event, you must submit a form of authentication. This can be:

• the submission of an active Social Media (or Adjacent) account with a publicly visible activation date 5+ years old (recommended), Examples of which are: AO3, Twitter "X", Discord, DeviantArt, and YouTube. The event highly recommends this method of authentication as ideal for privacy and ease of use
• confirmation by an Admin who has borne witness to activity in already Authenticated environments (situational) If you are known by Event Admins, you may be eligible for automatic authentication. There is no guarantee of this being available to you.
• a censored Photo ID (not recommended) confirming you are over 18 years old, which may also require a randomly generated password by a Moderator that validates the submission.

(3) You must make an introductory post in the server within 24 hours of joining the server. Once in the Official Event Discord, users must make an Introductory Post stating their Discord Username/Alias, as well as their username/alias on (and providing an active link to the profile of) any Social Media or Social-Media-Adjacent site (such as but not limited to: AO3, Tumblr, and Twitter "X") that they wish to use for the purposes of the event. This will officiate the Event Registration and make the user an Event Participant.

The Big draw of the Official Event is the Raffle.

In this context, a "Raffle" is a kind of lottery, where participants who have earned "Event Tickets" get to put those tickets into a "Pot". Every "Pot" is associated with a "Prize" (which will be provided by a Prize Volunteer).

Certain kinds of Activity during the event will earn the Participant a number of Tickets (see #Earning Tickets for details). At the end of the event (on February 1st), the tickets earned will be tallied up, and participants will be asked to distribute their tickets into the Pots they wish to try to win. Participants may distribute their tickets in whatever manner they want, including withholding tickets or gifting them to other participants. Once all participants have been contacted about their ticket distribution, the Raffle will be held.

This is a digital raffle. As such, a random number generator will be used to randomly select one ticket for each Pot. The Participant who submitted that Ticket wins the prize associated with that Pot.

Once the prizes have been allotted, the Prize Winners will be put into contact with the Prize Volunteers, who will then be responsible for providing the winner with their prize.

Because the Raffle involves prizes, there are more strict rules regarding participation. The Event quantifies how many tickets a participant has earned for their activities based on a number of factors.

At the bare minimum, every unique piece of (Art)work (written or drawn) created by an Event Participant which:

1. is submitted to a Registered Social Media
2. is linked to in the Official Discord Server
3. features and celebrates a Rarepair
4. is Tagged in accordance with the Event's Tagging Standards

-will earn the Event Participant 1 Raffle Ticket for the Event Raffle, to be held at the end of the Event.

Bonus Raffle Tickets can be earned by having the Work meet certain qualifications.

If you want to participate in a different way, or you want to help make the Rarepair New Year Event work, you can apply for a couple of positions! This is completely voluntary, and would be putting you in direct contact with the Event host (Kamari333)!

One thing you can do is Volunteer to offer up a Prize in the Official Rarepair New Year Event Raffle!

You can offer anything you think would be fun! Whether it is a "free commission" (with whatever limitations or stipulations you want to set), or a small craft, or some other kind of service. We have had lovely artwork, cute oneshot fics, and even some crochet chickens in the past!

You can offer as many or as few items to your 'pot' as you like, and we are more than happy to work with you so that your terms and limitations are clear and accessible for everyone involved.

The Event aims for all Prizes to be delivered by the end of February, but if that timeframe isn't good for you, we can set a different expectation in advance!

Kamari333 is a very loud and opinionated person, and that means as an Event Host that they need other voices to help make this a good experience for a wider demographic of people.

You can offer beta testing of policies and accessibility options, help finetune rules, regulations, and moderation tools, and even weigh in on The Definition of a Rarepair! Event Coordinators would also be the 'title' of whoever wants to help run the Official Event Social Medias (with advertising, retweeting/reblogging the activities of other community members (like unofficial participants), and supporting anyone who wants to participate but needs a little extra help.

This is also the position that would set you up as a "Moderator" in the "Official Event Discord."

Kamari333 wants to make this event fun for a lot of people, while also keeping it fun for them too. If you think it would be fun or worthwhile to work on that with us, feel free to apply for this position!

If you are looking to assist by volunteering as a prize giver or event coordinator, please contact Kamari333 directly on any of their primary social medias.

This Event is meant to be inclusive and rewarding. As such, by becoming an Official Event Participant, you agree to the following Terms:

• You assert that you are an adult. The Official Event is 18+, and by joining you assert that you are of age and prepared to act respectfully towards your fellow shipper.

• All Ships are Welcome, provided they are: (1) fictional; (2) tagged accurately; (3) discussed in the appropriate channels as directed in the Official Event Server. As such, any forms of discrimination, harassment, or bigotry directed at another Event Participant for their chosen Ships will be met with swift consequences, up to and including being Banned from the Official Event (and the Official Event Discord).

  It is perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with, squicked, or triggered by Ships, and polite explanations of this are permissible. The line is drawn at the point another Event Participant is mentioned. "Ship and Let Ship."

• Broader forms of bigotry, discrimination, and bullying in reference towards anything else, including but not limited to: race; ethnicity; sexual preference; gender orientation; religion; personal definition of a sandwich; economic class; etc., will also be met with swift consequences.

• (It goes without saying, but) plagiarism will not be tolerated in this Event. Works which are found to have (for example) directly copied the exact words of another creative work, traced the shapes/composition of another creative work, or use any Generative AI (including but not limited to ChatGPT, Character.AI, and any other 'Language Learning Models') in the process of its creation, will be automatically disqualified from the Event, and may also result in swift consequences.

  'Spellcheck' (and any of its many variations) is an acceptable (and encouraged) exception.

This Event is meant to genuinely and unapologetically celebrate Rarepairs, so it is asked that all works submitted be those made in the spirit of that idea. There is a time and a place for fun meme-y silliness, crackshipping, and ironic participation, but that is not here or now.

In the spirit of free expression, there is intended to be plenty of wiggle room for this, but it is asked in good faith to remember that this Event is meant to be Sincerely Celebratory, whether that celebration is done in the form of deconstruction through Joy, Eroticism, Comedy, Grief, Loss, or Horror.