Turns out it’s not just us that are down bad for Genshin Impact’s boys – they’re the most popular options on the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own (AO3) right now. The list of the ‘Top 100 Video Game Ships’ is by Paulie/paulieponzi on X, takes inspiration from Centreoftheselights’ yearly lists, and uses a method of searching tags on AO3.
Coming out on top is Genshin Impact’s Childe/Genshin Impact’s Zhongli with more than 19k fanfictions. They make a divisive ship that has people going to bat for their favorites on both sides and still remain strong despite not having had any screentime together since version 1.1 way back in 2020.
The second entry on the list is the roommates Alhaitham and Genshin Impact’s Kaveh, who are totally just roommates and nothing more, despite talking about each other at any given moment, having complimentary color palettes, and Alhaitham holding on to Kaveh’s keys in his idle animation.
Moving down the list encounters Diluc/Kaeya – we’re not here to judge – Neuvillette/Wriothesley, Genshin Impact’s Cyno/Genshin Impact’s Tighnari, and Genshin Impact’s Chongyun/Genshin Impact’s Xingqiu among others. There are also two HSR pairings to note with Honkai Star Rail’s Blade/Honkai Star Rail’s Dan Heng, and Honkai Star Rail’s Aventurine/Honkai Star Rail’s Dr. Ratio. Let’s be honest, judging by some interactions in the game, these just write themselves.
A couple of female or mixed pairings made it into the list along with the landslide of guys. Genshin Impact’s Jean/Genshin Impact’s Lisa, Genshin Impact’s Raiden/Genshin Impact’s Yae Miko, and Genshin Impact’s Beidou/Genshin Impact’s Ningguang have a lot of fans, as does Genshin Impact’s Xiao/Lumine. Again, a lot of these are obvious pairings.
I’m also going to shout out some other entries in the list – Noctis/Prompto of Final Fantasy, Joker (or Ren) and Akechi or Ryuji from Persona 5, and Sans/Sans from Undertale also have plenty of people writing about them.
This list also isn’t just romantic pairings. A fun fact I didn’t know until reading about this is that any pairing listed with an ‘&’ instead of a slash means it’s platonic. So not all the Genshin Impact’s Diluc and Genshin Impact’s Kaeya fics are, y’know, questionable. Along with the Ragnvindr brothers, there’s also Childe & Zhongli and Alhaitham & Kaveh, though these fics are way further down the list than the romantic option.
The Genshin boys haven’t quite made it into the ‘All Time Top 100’ list, but maybe in a few years they will – after all, a lot of entries in the all-time list have been around for an age already, like the Sherlock and Supernatural ships of the early Tumblr days.
If this inspires you to log on and pull for characters on their rerun like Genshin Impact Wriothesley, Genshin Impact Alhaitham, and Genshin Impact Neuvillette, we have guides to help you build them.