QZGS
RARE PAIR WEEK

2026

An event dedicated to ships you wish you thought of.

About

Dates: February 14-20
All forms of fanwork accepted.
No signup required!

Check our rules and regulations and see which pairings have been excluded.

Rules

Prompts

Take a look at our event schedule and choose which prompts you'd like to fill!

brought to you by ♛ glory pro alliance

About

This is a straightforward event: no signups, all fanworks, any level of participation! There are no minimum or maximum requirements, and you may post works according to any prompt of your liking, or even a combination of the day’s prompts.When you’re finished, post your rare pair fanwork on AO3 and any social media of your choice on the corresponding date. Time zones are not of concern.If you enjoy another participant’s works, leave them a comment and a kudos!

More Info

  • Our tags are: #qzgsrarepairweek #qzgsrpw2026

  • On AO3, you must add your fanwork to the QZGS Rare Pair Week collection (specifically for this year). You may tag it with QZGS Rare Pair Week 2026.

  • We do not mind if you post out of order or late, but the collection will close by the end of March, so we'd prefer if you submitted your works before then.

  • Including a contribution to RPW in an existing work that is otherwise unrelated to RPW is no longer allowed.

  • Adding on to an existing work that is related to past RPW events is also no longer allowed.

  • Posting separate works dedicated to different pairings into one compilation work is no longer allowed.

  • The main objective of RPW is to increase the number of works under rare pair tags, so we prefer that participants submit NEW WORKS to the event.

Rules & Regulations

last updated: 20 Jan 2026

This is a week for RARE PAIRINGS (in the English fandom), meaning that the following relationships are excluded:

  • Han Wenqing/Ye Xiu

  • Yu Wenzhou/Huang Shaotian

  • Yu Wenzhou & Huang Shaotian

  • Everyone/Ye Xiu (AllYe)

  • Everyone & Ye Xiu

  • Ye Qiu & Ye Xiu

  • Su Muqiu/Ye Xiu

  • Su Muqiu & Ye Xiu

  • Su Mucheng & Ye Xiu

  • Gao Yingjie/Qiao Yifan

  • Zhou Zekai/Ye Xiu

  • Sun Zheping/Zhang Jiale

  • Xu Boyuan (Blue River)/Ye Xiu

  • Wang Jiexi/Yu Wenzhou

  • Wang Jiexi/Fang Shiqian

  • Wang Jiexi/Ye Xiu

  • Han Wenqing/Zhang Xinjie

  • Huang Shaotian/Ye Xiu

The above ships have 20 or more fanworks dedicated to them on AO3 (at the time of writing this) (we also filter based on a number of other criteria to get a more accurate count). Any Ye Xiu ships not shown above are allowed. OT3s and moresomes are also allowed.

Barely Rare

Below is a bonus list of pairings which may soon not be considered rare:

  • Qiu Fei/Sun Xiang

  • Ye Xiu/Yu Wenzhou

  • Han Wenqing & Ye Xiu

  • Sun Zheping & Zhang Jiale

  • Chu Yunxiu/Su Mucheng

  • An Wenyi/Mo Fan/Qiao Yifan

Note that this is probably not a comprehensive list despite our best efforts.

Popular canoes

Below is yet another list of pairings which are fairly rare but gaining ground (maybe you want to hop in?):

  • Fang Rui/Lin Jingyan

  • Fang Rui & Lin Jingyan

  • Han Wenqing/Xu Boyuan/Ye Xiu

  • An Wenyi/Gao Yingjie/Qiao Yifan

  • Qiao Yifan/Ye Xiu

  • Qiu Fei & Ye Xiu

  • Wu Xuefeng & Ye Xiu

  • Tian Sen/Wang Jiexi

  • Sun Xiang/Zhou Zekai

  • Ye Xiu/One Autumn Leaf

  • Chen Guo/Wei Chen

  • Sun Xiang/Xiao Shiqin

  • Li Xuan/Wu Yuce

  • Guo Mingyu/Lu Liang

Further Guidelines

  • Common pairings may be referenced or featured as long as they remain background characters. Please tag pairings as (background), (minor), or (past) accordingly. Other indicators are fine as well.

  • When a pairing, rare or otherwise, is indicated as a minor ship in a work, that work will not count among those dedicated to that pairing.

  • From 2026 onward, we will focus our filtering based on the FIRST SHIP TAG on a fic. So even if your fic includes multiple pairings (platonic or romantic), we ask you to focus on ONE at a time to keep the counting easy for us.

  • This also means we won’t be accepting compilation works (works that feature different stories about different pairings as chapters) anymore. One (main) ship per work, please. (Compilation works about one ship are allowed, so long as the stories are related.)

  • If you tag a work blorbo/bleebus and blorbo & bleebus, it will count as ROMANTIC if you place the former first (as we have done), even if the work is tagged pre-slash or friendship.

  • Please categorize strictly PLATONIC ship fics under Gen & only Gen. (This does not apply to queer-platonic relationships, one-sided relationships, or mutual pining, which we expect to see outside of Gen.)

  • If a romantic ship is implied or open to interpretation, we recommend categorizing it as M/M, F/F, M/F, or Multi even if you place blorbo & bleebus ahead of blorbo/bleebus.

  • For Multi ships, place the polyship tag first in the ship list (YX/blorbo/bleebus followed by YX/blorbo, for example) and categorize as Multi.

  • If your work is about blorbo/bleebus specifically, we recommend you don't categorize it as Multi if it only features/implies Multi ships.

  • Avatar/avatar and avatar/player pairings are permitted, but avatars should have distinct personalities and traits compared to their corresponding players.

  • At the moment, we are only considering ENGLISH-language fanworks (art and writing) in our counts. Mark your artwork as English if you post. If you don't, we won't notice it when we review the numbers next year. (It goes without saying that we don't count outside of AO3.)

  • All NSFW and sensitive themes must be tagged accordingly, especially Underage.

  • Respect other participants and ships.

Questions? Send them to: [email protected]

Prompt Schedule

DateDayPrompts
February 141fear / boundaries / cast
February 152heft / reassurance / alive
February 163knowledge / deadly / stop
February 174save / near / journey
February 185decision / river / fresh
February 196firsts / moonlight / eerie
February 207free day!