Overwatch has a massive, near unavoidable fandom. After a year, which ‘ship reigns supreme?
For the one year anniversary of Overwatch, Tumblr’s Fandometrics blog, which compiles the most frequently used tags on the platform, took it upon themselves to analyze the fandom juggernaut. “During this 358 day period, the #overwatch tag alone garnered nearly 150 million engagements. It was the second most trending tag during this time,” they said in a blog post. “That’s trendier than every TV show and film, and even bigger, more generic tags like #GIF (No. 5) and #art (No. 7). The next highest trending video game-related tag was #Pokémon, at No. 20.”
That’s cool and all, but let’s get to the important part: which characters do people want to kiss each other the most? According total engagements, McHanzo—the pairing of McCree and Hanzo—wins by a pretty wide margin. Reaper76 and Pharmercy follow in 2nd and 3rd place. It’s honestly not a huge surprise. On places like Archive of Our Own, a fanfiction website, the McHanzo tag has over 2,500 fanworks in it, including the incredibly popular, long running fic “Hang The Fool.”
If you’re interested in what other ships are in the top ten, or what the fandom’s favorite support hero is, check out the rest of the post on Tumblr.