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Follow TV Tropes

Please don't list this on a work's page as a trope.
Examples can go on the work's YMMV tab.

Following

Alternate Self Shipping

Go To

"Sometimes they were always brothers, which, by the way, is not better. Sometimes it's his future self through some time travel magic, sometimes they magically get split into two. Sometimes they just happen to be two people who have no relation to one another, but just happen to look extremely similar and have almost the same name, which...okay, sure. And sometimes it just wasn't explained at all, and fans were just expected to take for granted that it's the same guy, and now there's two of them, and we're shipping him with himself! And, for the most part, fans just straight-up did take this for granted."
—Sarah Z on shipping the Once-ler and his "Greed-ler" self

Shipping is a great way to explore the dynamics between two (or more) characters. But sometimes, fans find a way to ship a character with themself. Not in the narcissist way either — they have an active, two-sided relationship with another distinct version of themself. This is sometimes known in fandom as "selfcest".

This usually involves Alternate Universe or cloning shenanigans or a Split Personality (even if it's not a Literal Split Personality, most fanart will depict it as such), especially when both versions of the character exist in canon. This is especially common when a character has an Evil Knockoff, due to the appeal of Angel/Devil Shipping.

However, it can extend to shipping alternate selves that exist beyond the work. Pairing different portrayals of a character with each other is a fun way to explore the differences between those portrayals. What if The Other Darrin's version of the character was distinct from the modern version of the character, and they became a pair? What if the character from an adaptation met their self from the original source material? This can also apply to Alternate Universe Fic creating distinct alternate versions of the canon characters, where the AU character gets paired with their canon counterpart. Rule 63 often leads to this. Sometimes the character has an Age-Gap Romance with a younger or older version of themself due to time travel shenanigans.

This can be common in works with a small cast, or at least cases where there are few other viable options for shipping a certain character, such as the Token Adult. The lesson to be learned here is that some fans will find a way to make ships for any fandom.

Often overlaps with Crack Ship due to the sheer implausibility of it all. When this occurs in the work proper (including specific fan works), it's Screw Yourself. Compare Incest Yay Shipping.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Death Note fandom has a small but dedicated contingent which ships Kira Light with mindwiped Light, in an Enemy Within-style thing.
  • Dirty Pair: There exists some fanarts pairing the original Lovely Angels with their Dirty Pair Flash counterparts. Sometimes adding the Adam Warren versions for variety.
  • Dragon Ball:
  • Fullmetal Alchemist has the popular slash pairing of Greed (the second incarnation) and Ling-while ultimately different people, Greed shares the same body as Ling. Pairing any the Homunculi may count as they're emotions of Father that he removed from himself.
  • Naruto: The titular character is technically able to create a clone of himself—of the opposite gender to top—and the fans haven't ignored its potential.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers: Himaruya's liberal use of opposite-gender counterparts and AUs in his own work, along with the possible nature of civil wars and so on, has led to some selfcest fics. One increasingly popular fanon pairing is Prussiacest, which basically pairs Prussia either with a copy of himself or his Nyotalia counterpart. The logic behind it being that only Prussia is awesome enough to be with Prussia.
  • There are many JoJo's Bizarre Adventure pairings which involve Stands and their users being shipped together.
    • Doppio is often shipped with his alternate personality Diavolo.
  • Jujutsu Kaisen: One popular ship in the fandom is Yuuji/Sukuna, often done by making Sukuna's Yuuji form his true self in reality.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • Rei Ayanami has a few dozen identical clones of herself stored in an LCL tank. She is the resident Innocent Fanservice Girl. Fans exploit the potential for perversion there.
    • Slash Fics featuring different versions of Kaworu (TV series, manga, Rebuild of Evangelion) are not uncommon.
  • Pokémon: The Series: There's at least one doppleganger shipping: between Ash and a cross-dressed Ash.
    • A variant of malevolent shipping: Ash and the king of Pokélantis, who takes Ash's form.
  • A recurring theme in Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanart is showing interactions between Homura pre-contract and post-contract, often adding Madoka into the mix.
  • Ranma ½:
    • Ranma's male and female sides often get shipped with one another. To up the ante, there are at least two Mind Screw fanfics where it is revealed that, thanks to some Time Travel, Ranma is both his own father and his own mother. (One where he's actually both Genma and Nodoka, and another where he gives himself up for adoption to the Saotomes.)
    • Other characters get shipped with themselves, either through alternate universes, or with creative use of the Spring of Drowned Twins (usually the "instant", i.e. temporary, powder form), adding a dose of Instant Drowned Male/Female water to make the pairing heterosexual.
  • Reborn! (2004):
    • There are fanworks that pair up the boys with their "ten years later" versions of themselves... there's even official art of the characters together with their older selves.
    • Pairing the hero Tsuna in Hyper Dying Will Mode with Tsuna in his normal state is far from uncommon.
  • The fandom of To Love Ru loves the idea of an actual Opposite-Sex Clone conveniently given a place in the male protagonist's Harem, due to his Attractive Bent-Gender as a result of a Transformation Ray, though such a clone doesn't exist in canon.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Perhaps the most popular pairing in the fandom is Yugi and Yami. Add in Yami's past self Atem for a threesome. There's also Bakura and "Ryo", and Marik and "Malik", fanon names for the evil and good sides of the characters. Kaiba and Set (his past self) is also popular.
    • The Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fandom has something called Monochromeshipping, which pairs up Season 3 Manjoume Jun with... Season 2 Majoume Jun (however, in most fanfiction, whatever happens between the two Juns happens purely in his head).
    • There's also Thundershipping, which pairs anime Manjoume with manga Manjoume. Judai×Haou and Johan×Possesed Johan are also fairly common.
  • Youko Kurama×Shuuichi Kurama is seen occasionally in YuYu Hakusho fanfic, but they're not usually portrayed as the same person.

    Comic Books 
  • A common joke in Legion of Super-Heroes fandom is Triplicate Girl sleeping with her alternate selves.
  • Loki fangirls tend to pair his female form with the man himself, usually his Tom Hiddleston incarnation. Or they just pair multiple male forms with each other, considering one of his tricks in the movies is to make multiple copies of himself. Fics make those copies tangible, of course. Since Loki: Agent of Asgard there are actually multiple versions of him around thanks to an impressive Timey-Wimey Ball, yes, some people ship them.
  • For the Archie canon of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic and Scourge showed popularity within the fandom. Scourge is Sonic from a Mirror Universe who eventually Took a Level in Badass and wore cool leather and had cool scars, along with being very popular with the fanbase (and fangirls especially), so its unsurprising the fanbase made Slash Fic of them.
  • Many Sonic the Comic fans, and even non-fans, ship Super Sonic and Sonic. This is because Super Sonic is a Superpowered Evil Side that later separated from Sonic.
  • A significant amount of fan art and fanfiction pairs Supergirl with her Earth-2 counterpart Power Girl.

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live Action 
  • Fight Club: A lot of fans online ship the Narrator and Tyler together due to the chemistry between Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. It is eventually revealed that Tyler is the Narrator's Sexier Alter Ego, which has not stopped shippers at all.
  • There has been a rise of Petercest fics since the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, between the older variants especially.

    Literature 
  • Harry Potter: There have been several fics involving Hermione misusing the Time Turner in order to seduce her past selves.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya:
    • Various doujins ship Mikuru and her future self.
    • Pairing the characters with their Suzumiya Haruhi no Seitenkan counterparts is surprisingly common, with Kyon and Kyonko being by far the most favorite.

    Live Action TV 
  • Doctor Who: Although never even hinted at in-series, the use of regeneration in Doctor Who, and the propensity for the Doctor to meet his past selves, has all the inevitable implications. There is even an entire LiveJournal community dedicated to exactly this. There are so many works devoted to relations between the Tenth Doctor and the copy regenerated from his preserved hand that they have their own ship name: Tencest.
  • It's not uncommon to find The Flash (2014) fanworks or edits shipping Caitlin Snow with Killer Frost. This saw its genesis with the Earth-2 Killer Frost, but became more popular once Earth-1 Frost became a Literal Split Personality.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Emu and Parado is a popular pairing, with Parado being very possessive of and obsessed with Emu and tends to get all No Sense of Personal Space with him. In episode 29, it’s revealed that Parado is Emu's Bugster, the true identity of his Split Personality M, and they are Sharing a Body, making it this trope since even though their personalities are different, from a certain point of view, Emu is essentially screwing himself.
  • Loki (2021): Loki frequently gets shipped with Sylvie, a female variant of him from an alternate timeline, with fans reasoning that they're basically separate characters given their wildly divergent upbringings. This is further fueled by scenes where they genuinely appear to have feelings for each other, culminating in them sharing a kiss in the sixth episode.
  • Once Upon a Time: As soon Regina separated her evil half, the Evil Queen, from her good half, there were a legion of fanfics spawned on AO3 shipping the "Jekyll" Regina and "Hyde" Queen. When the sixth season aired, the number of times the Evil Queen invades Regina's space only added fuel to the fire. These fanfics will also often include Emma in a dark form of an OT3.
  • Star Trek:
    • Given the existence of the Mirror Universe, it's inevitable that there are fics pairing the Prime characters with their dark mirror counterparts. Especially since the Intendant expressed such an interest in her other self in canon.
    • ''The Pride of Lions'' is a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which first asks the question of how a lower-class Terran like Mirror Bashir would have gotten genetic enhancements, reaches some dark conclusions, and then has the prime Bashir attempt to help him work through some of his problems. This provokes a violent reaction. Somehow they fall in love. Bashir wonders if this makes him an incredible narcissist, but others point out that the two men are nothing alike.
  • Power Rangers:
    • In many Power Rangers S.P.D. fics, the fact that Z can create duplicates comes to the fore for romantic or sexual purposes.
    • Tommy Oliver is sometimes paired with his clone/ancestor Tom. There are even a few fics that are threesomes of Tommy, Tom, and the White Stranger.
  • Courtesy of his visit to the post-apocalyptic future, Dean Winchester of Supernatural gets shipped with his alternate selves in fics, both in the form of Dean×future Dean and Dean×future Dean×future Castiel.

    Music 
  • Since her creation in Phase 3 of Gorillaz, Cyborg Noodle has naturally appeared in fanarts where she's making out with Real Noodle.
  • Vocaloid fanfiction and fanart tends to use this trope, mainly because the fandom likes creating Opposite Sex Clones of the official characters. A favorite pairing is Len×Rin, an official pair of Half-Identical Twins, which tends to overlap this with Brother–Sister Incest. And even they have their own fanmade gender-swapped clones, who actually don't look like just a second pair of the originals.
    • Shipping Vocaloids with fanmade gender-swapped counterparts was a common trend in the fandom for a long time, though it fell out of practice later when the number of official Vocaloids grew. There are still pockets of shippers for these pairs here and there, but they're not as widespread as they once were. Sometimes there are even full on songs about them, like this one for Miku and Mikuo (warning: It's a Tear Jerker).

    Theatre 
  • Be More Chill: For fans of the SQUIP who find shipping him with any of the human characters (most of whom are underage) to be full of No Yay, the most popular ship is "Riverway," referring to the fanon interpretations of the original Two Rivers production's SQUIP (played by Eric Williams Morris) and the off-Broadway and Broadway version of the SQUIP (played by Jason Tam). Occasionally this concept will expand to include other well-known productions or even the version of the SQUIP from the book.

    Video Games 
  • Bayonetta has had her character design from the second game shipped with her design from the first game. Particularly after the third game introduced the multiverse to the series and had these two versions of her appearing alongside the third game's version.
  • Bravely Default has some fans who ship Ringabel and Alternis Dim together. As the latter's name indicates, they are alternate dimension versions of the same person, with the caveat that Ringabel's amnesia led him to forget his true identity for much of the game.
  • Breath of Fire IV (unsurprisingly) has a prodigious amount of Fou-lu×Ryu fanart and fanfic—to the point that this pairing has earned not one but two Fan Nicknames: FouRyu and Yorae Dragon Masturbation Fanwork. This is only encouraged by the fact that the two are a Literal Split Personality and that there is a manga adaptation ongoing in the same manga magazine running Vassalord. By the same company that was responsible for Peacemaker Kurogane. If this isn't brain-breaking enough, consider that Fou-lu is strongly implied to have a romantic interest with a woman who cared for him and ultimately was murdered in an attempt to literally nuke him, leading to the Fan Nickname of FouMami for the second most common pairing in the BoF IV fandom. There is a decently large chunk of the Japanese fandom in particular who writes both FouMami and FouRyu. Particularly involving comfort selfcest.
  • Bungo to Alchemist: Shipping Atsushi Nakajima's Jekyll & Hyde personalities together is frequent, fueled further by a canonical game event where he's literally split in two.
  • Celeste has a number of fans who took the game’s Aesop just a little bit too far and ship Madeline with her Literal Split Personality, Badeline.
  • Fans of Clock Tower 2: The Struggle Within like to ship Alyssa with her male Split Personality, Bates.
  • Deadly Premonition has a not-insignificant following for York and Zach—the main character and his imaginary friend, who is technically his split personality. Although they technically share a body, it seems to be possible for them to meet and exist in separate bodies in the otherworld that appears in their dreams.
  • When Dante in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening gained the Doppleganger Style, it gave the fangirls an excuse to pair him with his clones.
  • Anders from Dragon Age II is sometimes paired with his Superpowered Evil Side, Justice/Vengeance.
  • Dragon Ball FighterZ has some fans who've taken to shipping Android 21's humanoid and Majin forms together, using the former to represent her original nature as a kindly researcher, and the latter the monsterous persona she developed as a result of her Horror Hunger.
  • Fire Emblem Heroes lends itself to this, due to its support mechanic allowing any two characters to be paired up, and some characters having multiple versions of themselves that can appear together, allowing for different versions of the same character to be paired together. This has led to several characters being shipped with other versions of themselves, especially characters that come in both genders like Robin, Corrin, Byleth, Shez, and Alear (who even canonically has their own gender-swapped counterpart from an alternate universe, in the Fell Xenologue DLC).
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia: Vert is sometimes shipped with her counterpart from the Ultradimension from Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. The anime's OVA hints at this.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • There's innumerable stories and drawings which pair the Squaresoft version from Kingdom Hearts with their original inspirations.
    • The nature of the series means that many ships are technically this, including popular ones like Ventus and his Enemy Without Vanitas, and Roxas and his (kind of) Opposite-Sex Clone Xion.
  • Given that there are three paths for each character in Elsword this is prevalent among the characters. It isn't uncommon to see two or even all three versions of one character being paired together in fanworks.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Sheik/Zelda is popular despite Sheik literally being Zelda crossdressing (many fanfics ignore this and write her as being biologically male and her own character). Super Smash Bros. added fuel to the fire by separating Zelda and Sheik in the fourth title; at least one fic has shipped them as OOT Sheik and TP Zelda.
    • Dark Link and regular Link (of any game/universe) are paired together very often (with a personality usually being invented out of whole cloth for Dark Link, seeing as he only exists to be a Mirror Boss).
    • Linkcest is exceedingly common on the slash side of the fandom. The classic and child Links are almost always ignored in selfcest works, with a focus being on the Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Hyrule Warriors and Breath of the Wild incarnations. They're technically assumed to be related (only Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time's Links are actually confirmed to be) but at the same time are reincarnations of each other.
    • Hilda/Zelda and Ravio/Link from The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is dangerously close to selfcest. They're technically counterparts but have enough comparisons to blur the lines.
  • Mega Man:
    • Classic has Gemini Man, a narcissist with the ability to clone himself. The self-love implications aren't lost on fandom.
    • Mega Man Zero has Zero×Omega, with Omega having Zero's original body.
    • Mega Man ZX has Vent and Aile, who are basically opposite-gendered versions of the same person. They have been shipped together.
  • Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA-: Tamonten has been shipped with Bishamonten, even though they're Literal Split Personalities of a single Buddhist deity (Vaiśravaṇa).
  • OMORI has inspired a lot of this, due to The Reveal of the existence of Sunny and Faraway Town and that Omori is the Anthropomorphic Personification of Sunny's depression.
  • Onmyōji (2016):
  • Persona:
    • Ever since she was revealed as a new playable character in Persona 3 Portable, there have been fans who ship both the male and female Persona 3 protagonists. It's even teased in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, where their first interaction looks like Love at First Sight along with their sense of familiarity with each other, which causes both Junpei and Teddie to believe they are soulmates.
    • Persona 4 fandom: Shadows in Persona act as a character's Enemy Without. Shadow-on-human action? There's a pretty huge chunk of Yaoi Fangirls who will slash Yosuke with himself, or Kanji with his Armoured Closet Gay, or Teddie with his nihilism, or even the MC with his shadow, though he never had one. This all applies to the girls too (such as Chie and Dominatrix Bananahead), but it's just more prominent among Yaoi Fangirls. Naoto×Shadow Naoto is one of the more popular Human×Shadow pairings.
  • Pokémon:
    • More than a few fanworks ship Red's classic design (Gen 1-Gen 2) with his modern one. Red's fanon design (Pixiv!Red, Uber!Red), and occasionally a cross-canon counterpart like Ash from the anime or Red from Pokémon Adventures, have been added into the mix.
    • Due to the ability to choose between three designs of Calem and Serena from Pokémon X and Y people have begun shipping the canon design, Ambiguously Brown design, and blue eyed design.
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: From the moment she was first revealed in a trailer, fans were shipping Rivet with Ratchet. Though she wasn't confirmed to be an alternate dimension version of Ratchet until the game itself came out. Probably fueled by their being the last Lombax in their respective universes.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: Shipping the Classic and Modern versions of characters (mostly Sonic) isn't too uncommon.
  • Super Robot Wars:
  • Fanshipping of Luc and Sasarai in Suikoden. While they are Polar Opposite Twins in terms of personality and their canonical relationship more closely resembles Cain and Abel, they are still cloned Artificial Humans of their father means that they are genetically identical, making any pairing with them riding the line.
  • Tales of the Abyss: The clones Asch and Luke. There are plenty of fanfics pairing them together. And then there's Sync×Ion×Florian... fandom has affectionately dubbed this particular brand of Screw Yourself "Replicacest".
  • Tales of Xillia 2: Due to the canonical existence of Fractured Dimensions, some fans ship their counterparts together, such as the protagonist Ludger and his older Alternate Self Victor or the two versions of Milla.
  • Ever since Tomb Raider: Underworld, there's been an increasing number of pics with Lara and her Doppelganger from that game.
  • There's less of this from Touhou Project fandom than one would expect from a fandom full of Self-Fanservice. What does exist involves interaction between counterparts from PC-98 and Windows continuities, the canon doppelgangers in Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, and the characters who can use body doubles to attack (especially Yuuka and Flandre). Or Yukari could just be fooling around again.
    • Fanartists have taken advantage of Youmu's ability for shippy purposes, since she's a half-ghost with a one human and one ghost body, especially since in canon her ghost half can be altered into a copy of her human half.
  • The Undertale fandom has a large amount of this. Alternate Universe Fic is extremely popular within the fandom, with several of these alternate universes being rather popular themselves. Some fanworks ship the alternate versions of the characters together; this is especially common with the different versions of Sans. The most popular pairings between the different versions of Sans even have their own ship names.
  • Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are sometimes shipped together, particularly since they get split into separate bodies at the end of the game, making it possible.
  • Yandere Simulator: Some fans like to pair Yandere-Chan with her canon male counterpart Yandere-Kun. Ocasionally, you will see the female rivals being shipped with their respective male counterparts from Yandere Dev's April Fool's Day video "Yandere Simulator Male Rival Introduction Video".
  • "In Stars And Time": Loop is revealed to be the version of Siffrin from Video Game/STARTAGAINSTARTAGAINSTARTAGAIN:aprologue which completely reframes almost all of their dialogue including the bits where they compare themselves to “an old bonded couple” as part of the teasing and annoying banter and to throw him off from figuring it out. Also if you win and pin them down so they can’t fight anymore and then tell them that you think their help is why you were able to succeed where they failed they blush. If self-shipping romantically is going to be not squicky anywhere here's a good spot because they have canonically became different individuals and while still similar in some ways they've also already developed both mental and physical differences. Also since both are canonically asexual and Loop doesn't even have a mouth Screw Yourself and the associated Squick is implausible for several reasons. This hasn't stopped the fanfic writers but still.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
  • Fate Series:
    • Saber is often shipped with her alternate counterparts from across the multiverse, including her Alter, Lancer, and Mysterious Heroine selves.
    • Her Master Shirou is no slouch in this department, either: his counterparts from Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA and Fate/Grand Order (which is his body possessed by Senji Muramasa) are sometimes paired up with him to offer some contrast between their outlooks on life, to say nothing of his pair-ups with the multiple versions of his alternate future self EMIYA.
  • Danganronpa:
    • The twist ending of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony allows for this, as it reveals that the characters are in fact actors in a popular TV show and were brainwashed into forgetting their past lives and given different personalities than the ones they had before the game. Thus, it's common to ship the characters' "pregame" and "ingame" selves, the most common victim of this being Shuichi, with his "pregame" self often interpreted as a sadomasochistic Yandere in contrast to his shy and gentle ingame personality.
    • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair also has a lot of this between Hajime and his alternate personality Izuru.

    Web Animation 
  • ENA: Happy ENA and Sad ENA are often split up into two entities and paired up.
  • Flippy×Flippy is surprisingly popular within the Happy Tree Friends fandom.

    Webcomics 
  • While Elliot and his Opposite-Sex Clone Ellen from El Goonish Shive would rather avoid thinking about it in the webcomic, there are naturally Rule 34 pics of them together.
  • Homestuck: Quite common in the fandom, particularly with the Time players whose powers include Stable Time Loop formation. Dreambubbles allow characters to contact alt-universe dead versions of themselves in their sleep. With the way the trolls' Bizarre Alien Biology works, ancestor/descendant pairings may or may not have hints of this, though it's closer to incest; ancestors and descendants are born centuries apart and happen to have very similar genetic makeup.

    Web Videos 
  • Discussed extensively in Sarah Z's video about the history of the Once-ler fandom, which famously had people shipping the Once-ler with AU versions of himself. Sarah explains that this came about because, while the Once-ler was a seriously popular character on Tumblr at the time and people wanted to ship him, there was no one from the source material to ship him with; Ted and Audrey are children and, as she puts it, "people weren't quite freaky enough to ship him with the Lorax yet." This, combined with the fact that the movie has the Once-ler change from a starry-eyed innocent to a greedy Corrupt Corporate Executive so quickly, it felt like two different characters, made the fandom split the character into two; the original, sweet Once-ler, and the evil version they nicknamed "the Greed-ler." Sarah then goes on to describe how this led to the creation of thousands of alternate Once-lers in the fandom, most of which bore practically no resemblance to the original character. In her analysis, Sarah suggests that part of the appeal may have been that the Once-ler was a sort of Gateway Character for sympathetic, tragic, and oddly appealing villains. Most of the fans were young teens, and he appeared in a children's movie, plus he was presented as likable from the outset and was redeemed at the end, so you didn't have to feel bad or "justify" liking him. The ship then came from people wanting to explore shipping dynamics like Foe Romance Subtext, Dating Catwoman, Mind Game Ship and Angel/Devil Shipping, but, because they were quite young, weren't familiar with media that actually contained those elements. So they did it with the Once-ler, because it was safe and familiar.
  • All of the ships in Thomas Sanders' web series Sanders Sides are basically this, since the characters are different aspects of Thomas' personality played by Thomas. Quite a few people in the fandom ship all of the original Sides together, the ship name being LAMP/CALM, from each first alphabet of the Sides' names.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time:
    • The series has an in-universe Rule 63 version known as "Fionna and Cake", which also happens to be in-universe fanfiction. One of the most common ships is Finn with his counterpart Fionna (though just as many people tend to depict Fionna as Finn's long-lost twin sister). Bubblegum×Gumball and Marceline×Marshall Lee are also common pairings.
    • Although the pairing is uncommon, there are some fanworks which ship Finn with Fern. Even those which take the stance that the characters are currently completely different people are still in this zone, because Fern still used to be a version of Finn from an offshoot timeline (and they even share all their memories from before their timelines diverged).
    • Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake introduced Winter King, Ice King's alternate universe counterpart who transferred his insanity to his world's Bubblegum and somehow became a lot more conventionally attractive as a result. Due to his interactions with Simon in the episode, some have started shipping the two, though a lot of people do it jokingly in the style of Oncest, and call it "Simoncest".
  • After an entire arc centered around alternate universes (each with their own Ben) occurred in Ben 10: Omniverse, fans began shipping the different Bens in various combinations with each other. Examples include Prime Ben/No-Watch Ben and Nega Ben/Benzarro.
  • Danny Phantom:
    • Somehow, there are Danny Fenton×Danny Phantom pairing fan-works, even though they're the same person... at least when Danny hasn't used the Fenton Ghost Catcher to separate his human and ghost halves, that is. Some of said fanfics involve said invention, and others take place in an alternate universe where they're completely different people. This ship is even common enough to have not one, but three names: Pitch Pearl is the standard name, Red Pearl is for when Phantom is under Freakshow's control, and Heroic Amusement is for when the fanwork is based heavily on the episode "Identity Crisis" (which itself is likely the main reason for this ship, due to it containing an instance of Danny being temporarily split into two people).
    • Danny also gets shipped with his Opposite-Sex Clone Dani, as well as his Ax-Crazy future self.
  • Gravity Falls:
    • There's more than a few fics slashing Dipper with his magic photocopier duplicate Tyrone.
    • Dipper and Bipper isn't an uncommon ship. Falls under both this and Foe Yay Shipping, because Bipper is Dipper possessed by Bill.
    • On the fanon side, there exists a rather popular AU called "Reverse Pines" where Dipper and Mabel are evil. Naturally, fans ship them with their canon incarnations.
  • The Loud House: Occasionally, you'll see one of the Loud siblings shipped with their gender-flipped counterpart from the canon episode "One of the Boys".
  • Miraculous Ladybug already has split identity romance problems with Marinette/Ladybug and Adrien/Cat Noir, but some fans will split up the identities entirely to make them attracted to themselves.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • It's very common to ship the Mane 6 with their fanmade Rule 63 counterparts, heavily inspired by fics like On a Cross and Arrow.
    • There's a considerable amount of fan art and fan fiction that exaggerates Trixie's early-show narcissism by having her literally fall in love with herself.
    • There is fanart of Pinkie Pie being shipped with "Pinkamena," the name used to denote her flat-haired, depressed, often Ax-Crazy persona, with Pinkie cheering her up.
    • The introduction of the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls franchise, which provides human versions of every character and is semicanonically linked to the main universe, has led to self-shipping. The most common candidates for this approach seem to be Rainbow Dash (who can tolerate her own ego) and Fluttershy (combining a touch of xenophilia with being her most easily trusted potential partner). The most common almost-candidates being Trixie (who usually can't get along enough with herself but is very likely to try anything which promises "more Trixie") and Twilight (who due to the shows' different audiences was arugably written with a mild fascination for humans or being human, but is more attracted to any existing Twilight x Sunset relationship than herself directly).
  • Some OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes fanworks ship the happy-go-lucky titular protagonist KO with his edgy and irritable alter ego TKO. While the two are able to interact inside of their shared mindscape in canon, fanworks sometimes skip this and depict them as having somehow gained separate bodies or simply being entirely different people.
  • In the The Powerpuff Girls fandom, there's a small number of fans who ship the girls with their Evil Counterparts from an Alternate Universe, the Powerpunk Girls.
  • There are South Park fans who ship Eric Cartman with himself. This does have canon evidence, not just because Cartman is a narcissist, but because "Tweek x Craig" has sufficient Ship Tease with his imaginary friend Cupid Cartman, who resembles a cherub version of himself, and ends with Cartman masturbating to the thought of Cupid Cartman having sex with him.
  • Thanks to the episode "Change Your Mind", in which Steven's human and gem halves are temporarily separated, there are a variety of Steven Universe and especially Steven Universe: Future fanfics which ship Steven's human side and gem side. Many comments along the lines of "well, you're supposed to love yourself..." are made. When such fics bother to acknowledge the fact that, in canon, his human half is all but stated to slowly die without his gem, they generally Hand Wave it by stating that he's fine if they're in physical contact with each other; since Steven is a fairly cuddly person anyway, that doesn't even get in the way of G-rated fluff, wherein he constantly hugs and holds hands with himself, both affectionately and to stay alive.
  • Warden paired with either himself or his future self is one of the more popular pairings in the Superjail! fandom, fueled by a scene in which two versions of himself hug each other at their trial, prompting the judge to tell him to "stop touching yourself!"
  • Transformers: There's numerous fanart and fanfic of transformers (usually Autobots) somehow running into their Shattered Glass counterparts and getting... screwed.
  • Total Drama: While it's not so common, many fans enjoy pairing Mike with his alternate personalities (or just pairing off the alters with each other). Perhaps the most strange of them all is shipping Mike with his evil alter, Mal.
  • What If: While also not common, after episode four of the series some fans have begun shipping Doctor Strange Supreme with other versions of himself. One Archive of Our Own story depicts him being paired up with his MCU counterpart (or at least a variant with very similar history), and another story has Supreme paired up with his other half from episode four. There are at least a few more. Fanart has also begun popping up online.

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