C: A pairing you wish you shipped, but just can’t
Oh, wow, sit tight, all of these are entirely predicated on God my life would be easier if I shipped the most popular ship in the fandom.
Charles Xavier/Erik Lensherr: I got committed to the tragic friendship way too young to change my mind, but I have nothing against the ship.
Any configuration at all of Jim Kirk/Spock/Bones McCoy: I just…struggle? I concur that Spock/Kirk is pretty gay in TOS and I want to ship it, and honestly Kirk/Bones should be my exact shit, but I just–look, Kirk is too in love with the Enterprise for anyone else to have a claim.
Buffy Summers/Spike: nope, nope, nope, nope, can’t do it. Too rapey, too much sexual assault, even if I didn’t like Angel I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Doc Holliday/Wynonna Earp: the show clearly really wants me to care about that pairing and like…I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, but I raise you Doc Holliday/Wyatt Earp and Wynonna/Dolls because Dolls is wonderful and Doc is so blindingly obviously in love with Wyatt and trying to work his issues out by fucking Wynonna, which, no judgement, because Wynonna is clearly trying to work out her own adequacy issues by fucking Doc.
Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter: I want to ship it just so I could stop feeling this level of seething wrath about it, I feel similarly about almost EVERY ship that the HP fandom likes, including literally anything that includes Severus Snape.
F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
I mean…I was a late-comer to the concept of internet fandom (the last…four or five years?) because of various reasons, but I’ve been a devoted consumer of any X-Men content I could afford to get my hands on since I was 7 and I’ve been collecting Animorphs books about as long, so there’s those.
Finx, reblogging some of your tags to commentate: #dang I feel the same way about pretty much every single ship you listed #but especially #reblogging bc you put into words the weirdness I feel about wynonna and doc getting together #it just doesn’t feel like they’re into /each other/ so much as the idea of each other #this might be kind of trite bc he’s semi-undead and all but doc feels kind of like a ghost in that he doesn’t really change/grow #to live is to change; the dead can’t change bc they can only relive the past #that’s what doc is doing: reliving the past #trying to be a better sidekick to this earp than he was to the last #maybe if she never looks at me the way wyatt did #if she looks at me the way wyatt never did #then I can somehow believe he’s forgiven me #idk if wynonna sees him for what he is or not but I think not #I think she wants to believe that all the bloodstains on his soul aren’t nearly as big as he thinks they are
Here is my thesis about Doc and Wynonna. You’re right, each of them is–basically–trying to have sex with the concept that the other embodies more so than with the person. Doc is trying to retroactively fix the damage he did to his relationship with Wyatt because he was evidently in love with Wyatt on some level, whether you want to read it as romantic or not (the way he treats acts suggests to me that probably the answer is yes, but that’s me). So then there’s Wynonna, who’s nothing like Wyatt except for all the ways that she’s exactly like Wyatt, and she carries Peacemaker with the same cock to her hip and proud tilt of her jaw, and–well. Wyatt is dead and Doc betrayed him and Doc wasn’t there for him and Wynonna’s kisses feel a lot like Wyatt slamming him into the wall to accuse him of being a traitor.
As for Wynonna…so much of Wynonna’s personality is about her belief that she’s not good enough, that core of certainty that she is not able to carry the weight of the Earp heir and, later, that only being the Heir is what makes her worthwhile as a person. If all that makes Wynonna worthwhile is her last name, she has to prove that she’s enough to be worthy of it.
And Doc is right there. Doc Holliday, who rode with Wyatt himself, as much of a legend as her own ancestor, and if he’s impressed with her…she must be doing it right. Right?
Doc believes he’s in love with her, but he’s more in love with her last name. Wynonna isn’t foolish enough think she’s in love with him, but some part of her craves that tacit approval. So they sleep together and work together and it’s not really good for anyone, and in the meantime Dolls stands back and quietly works on his own quest for redemption and tells Wynonna she’s good enough for anything, just the way she is, as herself, not the Heir, and I’m really frustrated with the fandom for not agreeing with me.