#queenlander

275: Queenlander shippamor

[PT: 275: Queenlander shippamor /end PT]

DEFINITION ⦂⠀An attraction label where your attraction(s) are best defined by how Queen Maeve/Homelander feels for Homelander/Queen Maeve in The Boys.

ADDITIONAL ⦂⠀Coined on the 20th of October, 2025. Shippamor (Tumblr link) by twofacedboyfail.

TAGGING ⦂⠀@c1rcus-of-silliness @near-nia-river @orientation-archive @radiomogai

Their confrontation convo in season 3 was the closest thing we got but it was lacking and rushed. I want them to be civil but you can feel the underlying indifference, resentment, and loathing.

Here are some bits that are just chef's kiss:

Homelander: How long can hate hold you together?

Maeve: [insert number of years they have known each other] is quite a long time.

Homelander: Yes, it is.

Maeve: *just nods*

~•~•~•

Maeve: Eventually, I realized my spite didn't mean anything to you. As far as I can tell, you actually enjoy it.

~•~•~•

Homelander: Was there ever a time you actually still felt something even when we grew apart?

Maeve: No, does it make you feel better or worse?

i was gonna say i can't picture them having a calm, honest conversation about this at all but then i remembered I did kinda write a version of them doing this and saying a bunch of shit out loud that realistically, probably, they would not be capable of, in my fic, and i kinda handwaved it with "homelander has done a bunch of off-screen growth, er, sort of, by reconnecting with his son" (while maeve had done a lot of on-screen growth enough that she was ready to get #married and #therapized like lol who IS she??)

it's funny how often this happens to me where i have a thought like "oh that's not right, maeve would never do that/i don't like that scenario" then a few minutes later i remember I wrote that exact shit already lolol

anyway as much as it's fun and indulgent to explore those kinds of convos I do feel that in a closely-tethered-to-canon-as-we-know-it scenario that conversation would be very unlikely - not even because they hate each other too much, but because neither of them is that good at talking about their feelings and could never admit out loud what they really meant to each other. homelander has to couch it in delusions of shared grandeur, "we're different, we're better, no one else is like us, we only had each other (until you threw that away)" while maeve has to couch it in delusions of complete distance ("from the start, i hated you").

the juicy thing is that neither of them is being completely dishonest... each of their modes of denial works really well because it IS based in truth. homelander's right that he and maeve were in a unique position together and consequently understand each other better than most other people on the planet understand them. but he also refuses to accept their genuine human flaws and differences, both his and maeve's, because he so desperately wants to believe in the myth that they are a perfect god and goddess and everything is fine as long as they rule together because they're special and different but different TOGETHER so he's not alone . he doesn't want to acknowledge his own issues, of course, but he also is remarkably blind to how maeve is... not what he seems to believe she is. like. the fact that in 10+ years he never had the slightest inkling that she was fully in love with someone else, yeah we can joke about him being stupid or wrapped up in himself but it kinda has to be willful ignorance to a certain degree.

then on maeve's side, I think she's being honest when she claims "from the start, I hated you." but. selectively honest. she likes to tell herself that she hates homelander because he is bad and evil and all the things she is not (only the bad things she stood by for years, which she feels guilty for, but she didn't DO, no, her only sin was inaction!!!) but i think she really hates him more because she hates herself. and in homelander she sees some of the parts of herself she hates most, but also with a worse fate. that's why she's also telling the truth when she says, "what's more, I fucking pitied you." she would never be able to admit it but part of why homelander is comforting for maeve, why they get along in the first place, I think, on a subconscious level, is that he's like... a safety net, for her? that's not the right phrase. it's that he's #1 and she's #2. he alleviates the literal pressure of being the strongest being on the planet but also of being the most Supe. everything that maeve feels guilty about and disgusted with herself for, homelander is more. no matter how many people she accidentally kills or how many bad things she ignores or how fucked up her childhood was etc. she isn't the worst person, she isn't the least empathetic, she didn't have the most fucked up childhood. homelander is right there both implicitly and explicitly reassuring her that if she is not the #1 Best person alive she also surely cannot be the #1 worst.

anyway i'm rambling, as i do about them, so easily, at the slightest nudge. but i think both of them have to stick to these particular myths about their relationship when looking back on it because it's much harder to admit it was murkier than that. it's hard for homelander to admit they weren't just gods together, they were also HUMANS together (humans with a really unusual, not especially functional relationship but an intimate one nonetheless!!) . and it's hard for maeve to admit that many of the reasons she hated him were also the reasons she found comfort with him (not to mention the fact that there surely were times, especially earlier on, that she did not hate him, at least not completely.)

beyond the hidden narrative purposes of that line that go far beyond a punchline, if u think (as i often do) about what the in-universe explanation for a character's behavior would be, without just saying "for writing reasons"... why would maeve ask for elevators when she could probably just like, climb up the side of the building? or even RUN up the side? literally in ep 1 we see her run up a wall like nbd. if it's urgent why would she bother with an elevator?

sooo much of chess is so maeve-coded.

"Someone Else's Story" is soooo Maeve-coded. and 100% informs why Maeve treats annie the way she does. "And if that girl I knew should ask my advice, I wouldn't hesitate, she needn't ask me twice - 'Go now!' - I'd tell her that for free"... yep yep yep. and her entire character flaw of passivity. "In a way it's someone else's story, I don't see myself as taking part at all." yep go on keep telling yourself that as you flash back to flight 37 girl!!!

"Nobody's side" is so Maeve-coded too like. "The one I should not think of keeps rolling through my mind... and I don't want to let that go" of course you don't girl!!! keep thinking about elena!

and if i had to pick one line that captures what that relationship is like to Maeve. "I see my present partner in the imperfect tense." that's exactly it.

and tbh the entire Freddie/Florence relationship is soo Homelander/Maeve. "Florence quits" is like. almost exactly their confrontation in ep 305.

plus "Pity the child" and its various fragments are sooo homelander too like esp this one from the end of Florence Quits. feels exactly like his internal reasoning:

I'm not the type to be vindictive, holding some childish grudge How could I be? I'm in the spotlight, half of the world my judge All that I ask is those I work for, Those I give all my skills, all my time and pain, Those that I entertain, Give me the same compassion in return, But the fools never learn!

there is no real analogue for Anatoly in this situation though lmao like if very narrowly viewed thru the lens of s3 you could claim it's butcher as in the rival who 'steals' homelander's girl but it does not hold up in any other way

Another reason why I love your Maeve/Homelander snippets, takes, and posts is that you write them in shades of gray whereas others will write them as completely black and white. Whenever Maeve is in a WLW ship, it's always seen as good but I rarely seen her shipped in MF ships since Men Are Bad™.

Dare I say, you don't write her in a biphobic lens like some authors do. You acknowledge her bisexuality and not simply wave it as a phase.

Looking forward to any fics you write of them 🩷💜💙

hello again! always nice to hear kind words like this, thank you.

there definitely is some biphobia out there around Maeve. thankfully it tends to be rare/unintentional, due to the show explicitly calling out one form of biphobia (bi erasure) thru her storyline. (I think it's also rare simply due to there not being much discussion/fandom around her; i think if she was a character still presently on the show and heavily featured and had a large following there would be more of it... lmao). anyways, that's a big part of why i love her - i'm bi, and while canon bi representation has become more widespread and of better variety/quality in the last several years, it's still sometimes rare. and i love maeve for being a great example of a bi character whose bisexuality is acknowledged and does matter to the story of the show, who also happens to be someone i find fascinating for many other reasons!

you speak to something that does irk me around maeve and also around female bi characters in general - there often is that sense that bi women in fiction (or, fictional women whose sexuality is not explicitly labeled but who are shown to have attraction to/relationships with people of different genders) are Meant to be with Women, because that is the only way they are truly living their queerness and thus being Good Representation. i'll stop myself from going on a whole tangent about this... lmao.

in the case of Maeve, I do get it though. because i think a lot of the disinterest in maeve/homelander for some people is not just because he's a man, but also because it is explicitly not portrayed in a positive light in the present of canon, and because homelander is very much the villain of maeve's story in canon. like, not that you can't ship people who have an antagonistic relationship, of course, but like, i can get why some people look at that and are like "i'm just not interested in imagining when they were together"... on the other hand, though, i've seen much more positive reception towards maeve & butcher's hookup (though I disliked the execution of it quite a bit), and I suspect if they had shared even one (1) more substantial scene in s3 that wasn't pure exposition or that one hookup scene, then that ship would have a decent following. and if there were any other obvious male character for her to be shipped with, we might see it more, but the fact is that there's not a lot in canon to foster ships besides the ones already mentioned, unless you wanna work real hard for it :P

overall though I agree with what you're saying. I obviously do not see Maeve and Homelander's relationship as all good. i mean, as far as canon is concerned, I would say that yes, i do think it was "bad" for both of them. hm, bad is the wrong word - it was "wrong" for both of them. but there HAD to be enough "right" that they went there in the first place, and that there's still lingering tension there... at least on homelander's side. shades of gray, as you said.

necessary clarification that i mean no shade to others for holding the interpretations they do, but these are a few common interpretations i've seen in fic/fan posts about maeve and homelander that just ring false and not capturing the "gray" of it to me:

Homelander as totally submissive and Maeve as totally dominant in their (personal and/or sexual) relationship. i know this might be a Preference for some people, nothing wrong with that, but it always rings false to me based on what we know of both of them in canon. (this irks me in a similar way to people portraying maeve as like "always rude and obnoxious loves to swear and call everyone twinks loves to dominate men and OF COURSE she's always wearing a strap 100% of the time because she is mean and hard and rude and masculine and dominant." again, not that there is anything wrong with her being those things. she IS those things... to an extent. but i think it's a bit of flanderization taking the two (2) times she said the words "twink" and "bottom" and extrapolating that to make her a caricature. likewise, i won't claim to have spent half as much time ruminating over every aspect of homelander's portrayal as i have over maeve's, but this dynamic rings false for me on his side, too. it's not that I don't believe homelander could/would want to be submissive, or to be dominated. i do see that. but I have a really hard time imagining him opening up about that to anyone, even to Maeve; tbh to me that seems like it's probably a unique and very important aspect of his relationship with Madelyn, that he's able to let himself be both ordered around and "taken care of" by her... every time we see him with Maeve in the show, he's actually rather dominant and commanding of her. again, doesn't mean he only wants to be that, but it says to me that he feels that's what he's SUPPOSED to be with Maeve. i've written before about how a large aspect of their relationship to me is what they feel they're SUPPOSED to be performing - either literally for the public, but also performing intimately for each other for a "normal" hetero relationship. so it's not that I think homelander would never ever want to be pegged or maeve would never ever wanna slap him around or whatever. but i do think both characters a) want MORE than just that, and b) would not necessarily feel comfortable with doing those things with each other specifically.

Maeve 100% hating Homelander the whole time, her never wanting any part of the relationship and feeling forced into it. again, if someone resonates with this interpretation, that's fine, power to them. but it doesn't ring true for me, and also just preference-wise, I don't like the way this version of it gives her less agency, less responsibility in her own narrative. in ep 304, she actively takes responsibility for being with him even if she presently regrets it ("i'm the one who was with the asshole"), and she also notably never claims to Elena that she was forced into the relationship with him or that she never ever liked him. because she did, at some point.

A lack of acknowledgement of - or feeling the subtextual presence of - the fact that Maeve loved/loves someone else for the entire time she is with Homelander. canonically, Maeve was with Elena before she was with Homelander. she loved Elena first and life got in the way, but she still loves her. and idk, i get why if someone sets out to write about Maeve/Homelander as a relationship, they may or may not care so much about Maeve/Elena, and may or may not like the idea of that ship being "endgame". for me, i mean, full disclosure mosssst universes I imagine for this show i see their relationship as the hypothetical Ideal Endgame for Maeve (though it may be derailed or denied in a tragic story!)... but even if i'm writing a story/scenario that is Less about Maevelena, that is still a really important bit of context for Maeve and Homelander's relationship to me. Maeve comes into that relationship already knowing what true love feels like, and also believing that she fucked it up and lost it forever. However, I don't mean to say that must mean all portrayals depict her pining for Elena 100% of the time she's with Homelander. what I mean is, the context even colors WHY she would want homelander in the first place. for example: things went sour with her and elena bc their relationship had to be hidden - well, her relationship with homelander is extremely public, maybe that'll work better! ... Elena didn't understand/want the life that came with fame, well Homelander's right there in the same boat with Maeve! ... Maeve herself didn't want to come out, well, not only does she not need to come out about being with homelander, the whole world declares that they're Perfect together and WANTS this to happen! ... Maeve had trouble making it work with a Regular Person, so maybe it'll work if she gives it a try with not only a Supe, but someone who uniquely gets what it feels like being isolated even from other Supes!... and so on.

those are my pet peeves, lol, and as you can see, yeah, it's a lack of that Grayness. the grayness is specifically what interests me about these two. that feeling that they're soooo wrong for each other in truth, yet also feel so CLOSE to being right? Like if only, in another universe, maybe they'd live happily ever after. except i haven't found that universe and tbh have little interest in trying :) bc the "if only" is the point to me. which is distinct from what i love about maevelena, of course. maevelena is a ship i do desire a Happy Ending for (at least mostly! i enjoy a good angst/tragic fic too!). i think they're deeply FLAWED as a couple but also right for each other and can pull through a lot of hurt and difficulties to stick together. but they're not better because elena's a woman. and homelander's not wrong just because he's a man. Also, also, it needs to be said - it's not JUST about who's right for Maeve. i have always felt that Maeve is not the right "happy ever after" romantic partner for Homelander, either! idk if there's any other character who I would say IS the "right" romantic partner for him, insofar as such a thing exists, but it sure isn't Maeve. I think Homelander wants to believe that she is that person for him for longer than Maeve ever wants/manages to believe that Homelander is right for her - mainly due to what i discussed in point 3 above: Maeve has experienced that feeling of love, with Elena. Homelander has never had it - not from parents, not friends, not a romantic partner. I think he feels great passion and possessiveness over Maeve because he THINKS that is love, and it's the closest he's had up to that point in his life, maybe. and for many reasons Maeve is the only person that he could imagine being "right" for him based on who he is and the world he is in. but at his deepest subconscious level, he's gotta realize fairly early on that it's not quite right with Maeve just as much as she knows it. Homelander is someone who craves affection, honesty, mutual vulnerability, and unconditional love (understandable!). Maeve is someone who is famously bad at all of those things, even with the person she loves most. they have a lot in common, but their actual personalities and (forgive me) "love languages" just don't mesh very well. i think they both know this whilst continuing their active romantic/sexual relationship for quite a while before finally giving up... and i think they both stick in it for a while largely out of the fear that if this doesn't work (and, in maeve's mind, elena already 'didn't work'), then there's no one else for them. and that's not exactly a foundation for healthy, lasting love, but it IS a really really juicy, endlessly interesting dynamic to me!!!

Every time you post those random thoughts of yours about Maeve and Homelander, I always read them because you always point out how they can work even if it's just an AU, canon divergence,etc. My favorite ones so far you have blurbed out is young Maeve being adopted by Madelyn and that one post about what if Homelander told Maeve about Compound V before the events of season 2.

I've always wanted to see them in fanfic forms. Thank you so much for posting about this pairing because I don't see many talking about the depth and complications of their relationship 💖

anon, thanks so much for saying this, it means a lot to hear! I really like writing them too. it's funny because I am wholeheartedly a multishipper and don't buy in too heavily to "OTPs" but I suppose it's undeniable that maevelena is the relationship i fixate on the MOST and spend the most time with... largely because I've made up so much of it myself, lol, so there's a sense of freedom or almost imaginative ownership over it. or i guess just not being constricted much by canon or even accepted fanon because there ISN'T really any fanon for them besides what i go on and on about LMAO

anyway back to the point. i may not see maeve and homelander in the same "romantic happy endgame" way but they fascinate me just as much. specifically in that they AREN'T that. it's like they're fucked up friends, fake-dating, but also real soulmates, but not soulmates, actually toxic abusive spouses, but also strangers to each other, but also the only two people who are just as fucked up as each other, and have independently fucked up maternal relationships with the same toxic corporate maternal stand-in. so tasty! i could eat that shit every day! (I even regularly find myself trying to recreate "maeve and homelander but with the serial numbers filed off" in my original writing projects...)

and it's nice to hear that you enjoy my takes on it because - not that it matters, i think these thoughts about fictional characters regardless - often I feel that my vision on them is just not shared by many people lol. and I feel like part of it is due to who's there for what character*. painting real broad strokes with my generalization brush here - a lot of maeve fans are relatively less into detailed stuff of her with homelander, if it's not within a larger context of her having a romance with a female character. and on the other hand... (ooh, I could get into trouble for saying this, lmao not really, but just one time I posted a similar sentiment to this before and some stranger read it and thought it was specifically about them when it wasn't at all, and also literally wasn't meant in a negative fashion, but this person got very upset by it). ... most primarily-homelander fans seem to have a real different idea of Maeve and of Homelander & Maeve's relationship than I do. enough that I very rarely see other people's takes/fic about them that I vibe with. I do not mean this in a bad way! It's simply differences in personal opinions and taste. (I'm also just wildly picky about fic and fanon in general). At the same time, I am certain that the way I write Homelander probably feels wrong to a lot of people who are mainly fans of him. Y'know? (at a bare minimum, I am fully aware that I probably contradict small details of his established canon backstory at times, simply due to not rewatching and memorizing and double checking every detail about him the way I do about Maeve. lol)

I guess the funny thing about this pairing is that the two characters' general appeal/POV in the show is rather different, and also their relationship itself is not a major Selling Point in the show (for MOST PEOPLE, lol), thus there isn't a large "Maeve/Homelander" fandom, and thus creating the situation above. where it kinda feels like there's Homelander-oriented content imagining their relationship, and Maeve-oriented content imagining their relationship. I have noticed a similar trend, albeit slightly less so, when it comes to Maeve/Annie content - again, because the relationship isn't canon so there's not necessarily a unified Base for it, but it appeals to people who may be fans of either character slightly more than the other... but I often see slightly different Perceptions of maeveannie coming from people who seem to come at it from annie's angle vs. maeve's angle. if that makes sense. A pairing like maevelena doesn't super have that factor, though, given that it really just appeals to people who are there for Maeve, because, er, no one's looking up that ship for Elena (EXCEPT ME!!)

uhhh, anyway, back to the point. i have a handful of maeve/homelander concepts that are very vivid in my head - including those you mentioned, which I sometimes forget I've shared to some extent on tumblr before...! but I guess part of why I've never gone and written them into full-fledged fics is because I just wasn't certain there was an audience for it. or I guess I just don't know how to FIND the audience for it. 'cause I've written some maeve/homelander stuff I REALLY LOVE. It just happens to be in the form of flashback vignettes within my maevelena fic (which is not just about maevelena, but since people tend to categorize fics by what relationship is most dominant in it, in that sense, it's maevelena...). I've debated taking some of that stuff and posting it as oneshots to make it easier to find, but then I'm always like, are there really that many people searching for maeve/homelander content that would warrant this...?

i do have at least two more fics involving maeve/homelander in my WIPs right now tho... One is an extended form of that one you mentioned, where Maeve is raised by Madelyn and grows up in proximity to Homelander... the other which is also a combination story with maevelena but is maybe... sorta... maeve/homelander endgame? lol

anywho just rambling now, thanks a lot for letting me know you enjoyed this, and brb gonna go look up that 2nd post of mine you mentioned because I literally don't remember what i wrote about it and it sounds interesting