Editor Note: This entry has been merged with Draw The Squad.

About

The OTP and the Third Wheel Best Friend is an art challenge in which participants are requested to draw their favourite fictional pairing (also known as One True Pairing, or OTP for short) alongside a close character from the same universe based on a well known picture of a male sneaking a drink from a kissing couple and inspired by the Draw The Squad fanart trend.

Origin

The redraws are inspired by a picture of a male seen sneaking a drink from another girl's cup while she is busy kissing a different male. Although the background of the picture is unknown, many viewers saw the drinking guy to represent a third wheel, the person remaining in a group of three out of which two are in a romantic relationship, who was photobombing the picture. The original picture can most likely no longer be traced back, and over time various versions and qualities have been spread, but searches show that the picture was already shared as early as 2007^[1][2] with increasing spread in the following few years.

On July 6th, 2015, Tumblr user Bumbleshark posted a "Draw The OTP" post featuring the specific image,^[3] starting a series of replies featuring pairings in the style of the photograph; which managed to gather over 128,000 notes as of September 2016.

Background: Draw The Squad

Draw The Squad is a fanart trend that involves drawing images with multiple characters in flamboyant, outrageous poses or precarious situations. While the trend usually features a photograph of a group of people posed uniquely, with the suggestion to artists to replicate with their own choice of characters, when only two characters are the main focus in the image being replicated the caption instead reads “Draw your OTP.” Similarly, the drawing trend first began appearing as a “Draw your OTP” request (shown below).

Spread

[Researching]

Examples

External References