"Hello, Starlight"

💞Ships Week 2026: #1 – #20 💞

It's the big one! Welcome to the final day of ships week. Here are your top 20 ships of the last year, with the full list under the cut:

1. Byler +22 Will Byers & Mike Wheeler, Stranger Things

2. Spamtenna Spamton & Ant Tenna, Deltarune

3. Jayvik Jayce & Viktor, Arcane

4. Phan +4 Daniel Howell & Phil Lester, YouTubers

5. Sonadow +14 Sonic & Shadow, Sonic the Hedgehog

6. Hollanov Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Heated Rivalry

7. Polytrix Rumi & Zoey & Mira, KPop Demon Hunters

8. Buddie -1 Evan Buckley & Edmundo Diaz, 9-1-1

9. Destiel -4 Dean Winchester & Castiel, Supernatural

10. Krusie Kris Dreemurr & Susie, Deltarune

11. Caitvi +74 Caitlyn Kiramman & Vi, Arcane

12. Superbat +31 Superman & Batman, the DC Universe

13. Pureshadow* Pure Vanilla Cookie & Shadow Milk Cookie, the Cookie Run franchise

14. Stobotnik Agent Stone & Dr. Robotnik, Sonic the Hedgehog

15. Radiostatic Alastor & Vox, Hazbin Hotel

16. Gelphie Glinda Upland & Elphaba Thropp, Wicked

17. Pazzi Paige Bueckers & Azzi Fudd, WNBA players

18. Radioapple -12 Lucifer Morningstar & Alastor, Hazbin Hotel

19. Bucktommy -7 Evan Buckley & Tommy Kinard, 9-1-1

20. Hannigram -7 Hannibal Lecter & Will Graham, Hannibal

when mike “understands her better then anyone” but max said “the fact is, she’s not yours. she’s her own person capable of making her own decisions.” and when el came to her having a full on identity crisis asking how she knows what she likes max said “you just need to find something that feels… like you.” and helped her become more then a number. helped her become jane.

when mike “understands her better then anyone” but hopper adopted her when she was more alone then she had ever been, instantly treating her like his own and putting her first always.

when mike “understands her better then anyone” but el found will in the upside down when they were just kids, and they had been siblings ever since. they lived in california together and will helped her try and cope with the terrible bullies by being the nurturing brother that he is, and when the cops came to take her will defensively said “we’re her brothers, and we’re family.”

in every universe, except here, i guess

and i have never seen queerbait executed with this level of craft and sustained commitment. the framing, the lighting, the emotional framework, you don’t accidentally build a multi season romantic visual arc. you don’t accidentally create a pattern of longing shots, mirrored staging, and genre coded intimacy. in everything i know about this craft, choices like that are intentional. they require planning. they require collaboration across departments.

and then the writers had the audacity to pretend they never built anything at all. as if the audience hallucinated the visual cues. as if the cinematography, the blocking, the score, the narrative parallels, all of it, just materialised without intention. it’s insulting. it’s dishonest. and it’s a betrayal of the queer audience they kept stringing along.

no competent director would stage emotionally loaded beats like that without expecting a payoff. no producer with any professional integrity would sign off on that level of thematic negligence. and the writers? my ex‑professor would’ve obliterated their entire arc in front of the seminar for structural incoherence alone. this is unprofessional storytelling from top to bottom, a complete breakdown of narrative responsibility across the pipeline.

smallville: clark and lana

bones: bones and booth

finn and noah had the kind of chemistry you don’t teach. it’s the sort of on screen connection that directors build entire seasons around, the kind that lets you hold a shot a beat longer because the actors can carry the silence. their scenes already had that charged stillness, that soft, trembling intimacy that cinematographers dream of capturing. the camera loved them, not in a flashy way, but in that quiet, instinctive way where the frame leans in because it knows something is happening.

and maybe that’s why it hurts so much. because from a craft perspective, they were positioned to break boundaries in a genre that desperately needed it. they could have shifted the emotional centre of the story, not through shock value, but through honesty. through the kind of queer tenderness that rarely gets to exist in mainstream sci‑fi without being coded, sidelined, or softened into metaphor.

there was magic there, real, cinematic magic. the kind you recognise instantly when you’ve studied this stuff, when you’ve spent years analysing how performance, blocking, colour, and subtext braid together to create meaning. it was all right there, humming under the surface, waiting for someone in the writers’ room to trust what the camera was already telling us.

and don’t even get me started on the cinematography, because the receipts are everywhere. you don’t repeatedly isolate two characters in soft, intimate close ups, build entire emotional beats around negative space, or bathe them in a golden yellow light that literally functions as a visual metaphor for queer longing unless you’re doing it on purpose. that’s not something a rogue camera operator just “feels in the moment.” that’s not how sets function. that’s not how blocking meetings go. that’s not how shot lists are built.

every choice, lens, angle, lighting temperature, colour palette, depth of field, is a conversation between the director, the DP, the gaffer (lighting department), the production designer, and the actors’ performances. it’s a chain of intention. so the idea that finn and noah’s chemistry somehow “accidentally” shaped the visual language of the show is laughable. if anything, the camera recognised that chemistry because the story was already leaning that way. the cinematography was reinforcing a narrative trajectory the scripts were too scared to commit to.

and that’s the part the duffers don’t want to admit: the camera has been telling the truth from day one. the framing treats mike and will as emotional mirrors. the lighting shifts when they’re together. the blocking pulls them into private two‑shots even in ensemble scenes. the visual grammar codes them as the emotional core long before the dialogue catches up. that’s not subtext, that’s text delivered through image.

Will the Wise Sorcerer, Mike the Brave Paladin, Dustin the Bard, Lucas the Ranger, and Holly the Heroic among others. Vecna would embrace his Dark Wizard persona fully as the Mind Flayer stands behind him as a summoned dragon.

As Mike shields the party from incoming magic projectiles, Will guides the rest for their last assault alongside Holly with her powers to cast dimension door.

this is what happens when u enable me lets go

(spoilers ahoy)