That quote and the current description don't strike me as contradictory in the slightest.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I think it does. The reason I ask is that I noticed that at least a few examples were simply mentioning pairings that they liked within the same story, even if the two pairings had nothing to do with each other. IE "This story uses Alice/Bob and Carl/Diana,"even though Carl and Diana were never a romantic threat to Alice or Bob in canon or fanon (look at the second Comic Books example to see what I mean). That gave me impression that that first sentence of the quote, which was once present in the description, was leading to that kind of example.
edited 11th Aug '14 2:27:51 AM by Leaper
In fact, I see a lot of examples like that, which makes me even more nervous about my understanding of this trope. Help?
OK, I'm going to open a TRS thread soon. I want to figure this out.
I just slightly rewrote the definition of Ship Mates under the understanding that it was (according to its own definition and mentions on other pages) as Pair the Spares in fanfiction/fandom.
However, there's this quote on the discussion page answering what the definition is: "Quite simply, it the multiple pairings within a fandom that enthusiasts tend to like together. This may be because it frees up a potentially messy triangle or clear up sort of ambiguity between characters. Or perhaps the two or more pairs just complement each other."
This is also what the original definition said, kind of. Sort of.
So. Did I do anything wrong with my correction?