You can scroll through my top ten shows and know exactly who I am and who I’ve been — a consistently queer, formerly goth, recovering musical theater nerd with a penchant for dry humor and scary women. Sharing this list is like showing you my diary if all my love poems were about Sandra Oh.

If this were completely honest, it would just be Buffy the Vampire Slayer listed ten times.

If you are a future lover/partner of mine, you don’t have to like these shows but if you do, there is a higher chance that I’ll hit pause on the show so we can play on the couch.

Who’d have thought this would be the most difficult thing for me to write for Autostraddle?

“I watched it all in one night, vacillating from helpless laughter (Olivia Coleman’s line readings!!!) to shocked surprise (“Where did you just go?”) and when it was over I sent profanity littered texts about it to one of my best friends, then watched the entire season again.”

“There isn’t a thing Friends did that Living Single didn’t do FIRST and with essentially 1/8th the budget. Tattoo it on my skin. I stand by it.”

And a healthy dose of women in top hats.

Wynonna Earp is funny and smart and full of found family feels, which I suppose is how it led me to my smart, funny found family.

“Fire is hot, water is wet and ‘The Wire’ is the greatest television show of all time. Facts on facts on facts.”

“This show gives me permission to be the person I am and the artist I want to become.”

One thing that does unite every show on this list is that each of them came into my life at the exact right time and also all influence my own writing in some way.

Listen, I love an ensemble drama!