If you’ve been following The Niche for any amount of time, you know that the only thing we love more than lesbianism is list-making. I’m here today to join these two areas with a definitive ranking of the greatest and most iconic lesbian TV couples of all time.

Now, I’m going to lay a couple of ground rules before we get on to the main proceedings:

Rule Number One: Both members of the couple have to be alive.

I was going to write down a second rule, but I just realized that Rule Number One narrows the field so substantially that it may be a struggle for me to even fill out a top ten list. So let’s get to it, shall we?

10. Kelly and Yorkie from Black Mirror

Wait, FUCK, they’re both dead.

That literally didn’t even occur to me until after I’d uploaded the photo. Fuck. Okay. Moving on.

9. Nomi and Amanita from Sense8

Now, I was only able to make it through two episodes of Sense8, but these two were the reason I even made it that far. Their show suffers from the same weird, bloated pacing that plagues nearly all Netflix originals, but they are the best and cutest part of it. That shot of the rainbow strap-on hitting the floor? Iconic.  Amanita’s cool-ass blue, purple, and pink Bi Pride dreads? Iconic. Nomi crying in Amanita’s arms after Amanita tells some TERF to hit the fucking road? I. Con. Ic.

I actually stopped watching the show because I saw a promo video where Nomi was, like, dying of a disease or something, and I didn’t want to saddle up for more dead lesbians. However, I’ve been informed that Nomi is presently alive and well, so I might just pick this back up. Or at least fast-forward to their scenes.

8. Santana and Brittany from Glee, I guess.

I don’t know. I was always more of a Faberry person. Like, I loved Santana, and her coming out was vital to my own. But I stopped watching after the end of the second season, so if Brittany was ever fleshed out as anything more than a joke character, I wasn’t around to see it. Anyway, here they are, being iconic and getting married at their wedding.

Okay, uh. Frankly, I’m struggling to think of any more couples that even fit the bill. I’m at a disadvantage here because The L Word was before my time, and every time I float the idea of watching it, a bunch of my older lesbian friends are like, “Don’t.” Orange is the New Black can choke, so every lesbian couple on that show is out, too. Not that I was ever that enamoured with Alex and Piper anyway, or Ruby “Genetically Engineered In A Government Lab To Appeal To Lesbians” Rose. I know there are some lesbians on Supergirl but I also know they’re queerbaiting Supergirl herself with Lex Luthor’s daughter or something, like, super hard.

Oh! A couple of my friends watch Wynonna Earp and there are lesbians on that. Let me Google “wynonna earp lesbians” real quick.

7. The Wynonna Earp Lesbians from Wynonna Earp

Don’t know anything about them, but they’re two women kissing and they’re not dead, so: top ten.

6. I just remembered Cosima and Delphine from Orphan Black

I started watching this show a couple years late and then I got all freaked out because I saw gifs of the black-haired one with, like, tubes in her nose, and I heard that the blonde one got shot to death in a parking lot? But, as of right now, they are apparently both still clinging to life, so they make the list.

Okay. Now I’m really struggling. Actually, at this point, I’m going to lower the bar a notch and say that the characters don’t even have to be women. They just have to exhibit lesbian behaviour.

5. Mac and Dennis from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

They’re high-fiving in front of a U-Haul. I mean, what more needs to be said?

4. Jim and Pam from The Office

There’s a reason Jim/Pam is the only acceptable heterosexual relationship in the history of television, and it’s because Jim Halpert is actually a lesbian. Look at that overgrown haircut. The sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The perpetual pranks on the annoying guy at the next desk. The soul-destroying crush on the straight best friend, who is engaged to boot. One time I watched the entirety of The Office from start to finish pretending that Jim was a lesbian and it made me forget that homophobia existed.

3. This is where I would put Rory and Paris from Gilmore Girls, if Amy Sherman-Palladino wasn’t a goddamned traitor who deserves to freeze in the fourth round of the ninth circle of Hell alongside Judas Iscariot.

I stole this picture from an article in the Atlantic entitled, “When Paris Met Rory: TV’s Last Great Teenage Girl Friendship,” and I would just like to invite the Atlantic and anyone else who thinks Rory and Paris are “friends” to eat my ass until the sun explodes. They kissed! On the mouth! In an episode directed by Jamie Babbit, the director of But I’m A Cheerleader! They’re lesbians. Fuck you, and fuck everyone who has ever hurt me.

2. I’m actually too upset about Paris and Rory to continue writing this article, so just pretend this slot and the next are filled with iconic lesbian TV couples.

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