#My top ten hasn't been shifted in approximately 830 days

[gaywatch]

What are some ships/pairings/otps that have buried themselves so deep in your heart that you won’t ever be able to be anything but absolutely insane about them?

Like they are either constantly on your mind and you can’t shake them or you don’t think about them as often but when you do (or something reminds you of them) it’s like a punch to the gut and all the feelings come rushing back to you at once in an overwhelming way… I’m so curious because you obviously watch so many things and see a lot of connections between characters so I’m just wondering which ones have dug their claws in just a little too deep?

Okay, first of all, this is a banger question and a banger way to phrase it so good on you. <3

Any of the first five ships I ever had can make me feral at a moment's notice, and I could write an essay about any of them with zero prep time. My peak shipping period for all of them was high school and college, when my obsessive capacity was... particularly impressive. I made fanvids for four out of five (in one case I made 10+), fake trailers for a couple, and at least began writing a fanfic for four out of five of these as well:

Phantom/Christine (Phantom of the Opera)

David/Maddie (Moonlighting)

Jack/Elizabeth (Pirates of the Carribean)

House/Cameron (House MD)

Jareth/Sarah (Labyrinth)

This list alone tells you a lot about me, tbh.

Every single one of these come with the warning that you should never bring them up to me unless you're prepared for a highly intense and opinionated lecture.

And it's always difficult to compete with the formative stuff, right? They hit you hard at a hard-hitting age, that's a lot to surpass.

WELL.

I got into queer ships when I was 22, just out of college but still in the vital Young Adult stage, and long story short the rest of my life is quite literally all Star Trek 2009's fault. I saw the movie and (hilariously) got enough of a Kirk/Spock vibe that I wondered if anyone and the WiLd AnD cRaZy IdEa that they should be together or maybe that was just me and this was a Brand New Idea.

That gives you a good idea of how ignorant of queer fandom I was.

Anyway, fifteen-going-on-sixteen years later I'm drowning in queer ships but these ten in particular have some kind of cryptic Lovecraftian hold on my being despite the fact that as I've gotten older my appreciation for the fictional gays has grown wider, meaning it's usually less concentrated. So instead of having a list a mile long to answer your question, it still ultimately boils down to a top ten (in no order, don't do that to me):

Kirk/Spock (Star Trek: TOS)

Eliot/Quentin (The Magicians)

Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian (The Untamed)

Kang Yohan/Kim Gaon (The Devil Judge)

Thor/Loki (MCU)

Holmes/Watson (Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie films)

Lestat/Louis (Interview with the Vampire)

Shiro/Keith (Voltron)

[redacted] (redacted)*

Arthur/Merlin (Merlin)

Nowadays the big indicator that I don't just love a ship, I love a ship, is if I'm so compelled that I feel the urge to Make Something (huge mega ADHD bonus points if I actually do it), usually a fanvid or a fic. And that holds true for...yeah, 9/10 of these.

Every now and then I'll remember one of these and feel that obsessive urge to think about nothing else for like a month and fully re-immerse. But Gaywatch, writing, and DMing for my D&D group make that really difficult. They're always there, though, and if I can ever think of way to shove them into Gaywatch for the excuse to obsess I totally do. (Merlin, for example, came in a really strong second for a Patreon poll last year but didn't win. And I was like 'fuck it this is my house and I'll watch Merlin after the winner' because I'd been waiting actual years to watch it for the channel.)

So yeah, if any of these--even the First Five because I'm obnoxious--make it into Gaywatch content somehow, that is not an accident. (If you were looking for details about each one I'm legit not capable of that. It'd be paragraphs per ship at least and we'd never get out of here.)

*Redacted because purity culture froths at the mouth whenever this ship is so much as mentioned. If anyone ever asked me point-blank if I shipped this I'd tell the truth, but Tumblr specifically can make talking about the ship insufferable/impossible.