Guishang and Fuqing: Complimentary Couples
So this is a concept in romantic fiction that makes theoretical sense but doesn't actually see a lot of practical use most of the time. Most of the time when you see a couple who acts in a supporting role to another one, it's in more to be a mentor. Show what a good relationship looks like or show how THEY'RE NOT LIKE OTHER COUPLES! This makes a lot of sense given that a SINGLE romantic story can be enough to base an entire plot around... But can it be enhanced by adding a second one?
Guishang and Fuqing are two couples from the game Honkai Star Rail featuring the pairings of Guinaifen and Sushang and Fu Xuan and Qingque respectively. When boiled down to their basics, they actually on paper make for a boring pair of complimentary couples as it can be seen as just the same couple twice. After all, in both you have a free spirit who avoids conventional work by taking part in their passions and enjoying life as it is while in the other half, you have someone driven by legacy, given great responsibility that they want to live up to and would quite possibly get in trouble for engaging in the same behavior as the other half of their pair. In a basic way, you can describe as the goofball and serious shipping archtype.
With one caveat: One is almost a subversion of the archtype by playing way more fast and loose with who is what in the archtype while the other is VERY strict in their roles.
As one might expect, the stricter pair is the easier to talk about. Fu Xuan is essentially second in the chain of command of a WORLD SHIP with her job being to predict the future so as to try and see the paths going forward that will see them safe to a new dawn. She is both navigator and diviner, with the literal title of Master Diviner. As you might expect, this makes someone who takes their role in the world very seriously because so many are reliant upon her and her skills. Add to that a genuine desire to someday be the leader of this ship, even enough so that before getting humbled, she'd shit talk the general's plan to his face, and a confidence in her abilities that also means she knows what they are capable of if used wrong and you have someone who is not about to let even an inch of slack enter her work flow.
Enter Qingque, the slacker. She is literally Fu Xuan's subordinate as she is a part of the same commission on the world ship, the Divination Commission. Just good luck ever finding her there. She will avoid work as best as she can and shrugs off any concern for what trouble that might bring her because she's too busy losing all her money playing fantasy Mahjong. She is capable, when she steps up she shows why she hasn't been fired, especially given the lifelong nature of those on board the world ship giving them more patience, but she rarely bothers. Fu Xuan is the only one who can reel her back in and make her dial in.
So the dynamic, at least for the most part, is pretty simple. The ever dependable Diviner punishing and getting mad at her favorite worker and her favorite worker repaying the times that Fu Xuan is in need of help by being able to do so and break character in being there for her. Also, to push Fu Xuan to find any sort of work life balance, even if the break that Fu Xuan is taking is to find Qingque. They are CLASSIC. They are their archtype to an extreme that is a lot of fun and very charming but can lack nuance.
Well, let's talk about nuance then. The literal guard and the street performer. On the surface, that's all this is. Sushang's character story even details their first meeting very much so like this. A troublemaker she rushed out to stop before she could cause more property damage. But... Then also goes on to help with her performances? That's just a rare favor like Qingque helping Fu Xuan though, right?
No, and that's where this gets weird. Sushang was explicitly sent here because she's bad at what she does. When she first arrives, she's here for training to be a better Cloud Knight is a bright eyed kid with ideals of heroes dancing in her mind. So while she technically has all this responsibility on her shoulders, it almost never is represented because her idea of dealing with that is by being a fairy tale character almost. That so long as she's helping people, she's doing her job, even if that help may be unorthodox.
Meanwhile, Guinaifen is a burnt out content creator who survived the apocalypse of her planet and should have been put to the sword with the rest of her family if this world planet had not instead shown them mercy and given them a second chance. She clearly struggles with some amount of depression and her more bubbly, "Yo, fam," is made pretty clear to be some amount of an act because her voice literally shifts when she's being more honest and real. This old planet of hers though was clearly based on Arthurian concepts, her birth name is Guinevere, and that instilled a core of loyalty and responsibility in her, which she strives to act on in her day to day life by giving back to the community that gave her a new lease on life, hence why she has a new name based on their traditions. She is VERY complicated for someone presents herself at first as just this weird streamer weaboo for the new culture she's a part of and who is being allowed to run around doing this instead of being the headliner for the performance troop that has taught her most of her acrobatics and the like.
Their dynamic has a lot more dynamism to it depending on where they are in their levels essentially. Raise the Cloud Knight level of Sushang and you balance that by pushing the sillier side of street performer Guinaifen. You push up the levels of depression that Guinaifen has and you crank up the warm hearted, country girl levels of Sushang to comfort her. It's harder to predict how they'll play out in a given scene, especially in fanfiction, because what the interpretation of the characters is in a given story is very important.
So, why do many fanfic writers then use them together? Well, because they play in the same space but in such different ways, it actually means that any grouping of the four together gives a lot of narrative utility while not feeling like talking to a different shaped clone of a character. After all, ESPECIALLY with the archtype at play here, bringing a couple with a similar dynamic is usually just kind of boring and too on the nose. If you get the troublemakers together, they'll make a bad plan. If you get the two serious together, they'll resolve that indeed, they shouldn't take the plunge, not unless you're using them in a mentor role which is usually a pretty lame way to fix the problem. "I was just like you but then I did the romantic cliche you're clearly going to do and it fixed everything."
That isn't the case here. You CAN have the most cliche options, Guinaifen absolutely can be a gremlin next to Qingque, but you can also pull the rug out from under either half of them by either Qingque admitting that she knows what lines not to cross, or Guinaifen bringing up how important it is to be there for a partner and that being very natural from them. Sushang and Fu Xuan can get worried about their responsibilities together but neither is going to have the same outlook on them, allowing Sushang to oversimplify things to Fu Xuan to give her perspective or for Fu Xuan to expand Sushang's perspective enough to make her be able to better handle a problem. Even better though is that putting the contrasting personalities STILL WORKS here. Guinaifen isn't just going to show how much worse Qingque could be, or doesn't have to, she instead can act on Fu Xuan's level and have a real conversation about the deeper levels on why Qingque may behave the way she does or how better to approach Qingque, since both seek such endless entertainment. Meanwhile, Qingque isn't going to just roll her eyes at fuddy duddy 2.0 with Sushang, she's going to kick out a chair for Mahjong and welcome a new player who might be able to then surprise Qingque about how while enjoying the game, Sushang is still paying attention to their surroundings because she's on patrol in the area, she's just learned how to have her fun while doing her responsibilities. And for Guishang, they have their extremes to look up to and work with in a way that can be more common but exceptionally useful to their own problems because they still are in the same space and seeing the other couple succeed or fail in love can be a good reminder to the other as to what they're missing.
These are just a few of the examples of why they're complimentary. Why they bounce off each and work so well. Why they're drawn together so easily as a cast to play off one another. Why the reaction I had when someone pointed out people commonly doing this wasn't "Of course they do, it's easy," it was, "Of course they, do it just makes sense!" They work in a way that makes what so easily is exceptionally contrived instead feel natural and that's a lot harder than you'd expect because it doesn't just come down to all four being good characters because anyone butting in on a romance is going to feel like some amount of a contrivance. To make a couple that fits the contrivance while just feeling correct?
Well, you'd need to be something like a Master Diviner to be able to work that out without just taking a risk honestly. See you next tale.
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