13 and 15 for the trope ask game!!
13. Grumpy/Sunshine
Looking through the internet lists of BL series for this trope, I might not like it very much??? Or at least its execution. Which seems wrong considering my main fandom before this was Zukaang in the ATLA fandom lol. But I also think they’re a little too generous with their inclusions. Wei Wuxian is not a sunshine character to me. He’s chaos incarnate. I’ve got two pairs I adore who qualify a bit more here, imo. What Did You Eat Yesterday’s Kenji and Shiro are pure sunshine/grumpy and the contrast infuses every episode’s plotting and everything about their character arcs. Kenji might be flighty and naive but his sunshine is always what’s melting Shiro’s fearful and icy heart.
I’ve also gotta throw PerthSanta in here. Their whole brand’s built off the trope dynamic. I think P10L introduced that fact superbly, but leave it to P’Done to craft it into a masterpiece in Love You Teacher. Their names are literally Sun and Cloud, after all. The tears are already starting! Behind many a good sunshine character is the pain he’s trying to outshine, and the reason he’s drawn to the storm cloud character is because the storm cloud knows how to hold him in the dark.
15. Love Triangle
Love Triangle’s gotta go to the best that’s ever done it: Light on Me (until they give me Color Rush 3, I fucking swear!!!). To actually leave most of us trying to guess how it’ll play out! Oh, but that’s not even the most impressive part. Every single lead character in this show reads as so particularly effeminate in realistic, subtle, and unique ways. Part of what made the love triangle so weighted was that each of them had specific queer hang-ups to face by pairing up with our sweet neurospicy Taekyung. It felt cruel to choose because you wanted so deeply for all of them to accept themselves. Very happy personally with my own personal choice getting his man but even happier with how they resolved it for everyone. I will fight anyone who comes for any one of these characters, including my head bitch in charge, Sohee!
