#konou and noir💙

[the-kingshound]

This is actually a VERY important point to me, because I DESPISE rivals to lovers while enemies to lovers and its different flavors is one of my favorite tropes. But even a trope one dislikes can have variants one likes.

For example, my two most despised romance tropes: - Rivals to lovers: I hate it because I really don't enjoy romances where the two characters are at each other's throats for "no reason" (as usually the rivalry isn't something actually serious like enemies to lovers have). But on the other hand, one-sided-rivals to lovers is something I adore. The very concept of one character considering the other one as their rival and being competitive and sometimes even agressive or rude with them, while the other one just tries to be nice and understand why the negative feelings is a very compelling narrative to me. - Childhood friends to lovers: so this one is to me either the most boring, sugarcoated and uninteresting tropes ever with your typical sweet golden retriever childhood friend, or the most toxic insane trope in the subcategory that has the childhood friend be possessive and entitled to the MC and quite often a "yandere" of sorts. On the other hand, estranged-childhood-friends to lovers is a huge soft spot of mine - the idea of childhood friends who somehow were separated, be it physical distance, one of them breaking the friendship for some reason, someone separating them... And then reuniting as adults, as entirely new people, and still reconnecting... delicious.

And same goes for the other way around, sometimes tropes I love can be written in ways I despise that ruin them to me. A good example to me is soulmates - this is one of my favorite tropes and it's hard to make it bad to me. I even like to think of some romances as being soulmates even if it's not an official statement. But one thing can easily ruin it to me... reincarnation. When the story actually goes into "we love each other in each life"... because reincarnation is a huge trigger of mine, and the exceptions of me being able to stomach a reincarnation story are few and far in-between. So having it ruin one of my favorite tropes is horrible.

Basically, any trope can be good or bad both based on personal tastes and writing style.

I swear we share one braincell because I am exactly like you on rivals to lovers and enemies to lovers. I can like one person being rival to another and the other being all normal and kind. OR personal fave (which can admittedly happen in TKH if you play a Hound which is caring and not hostile towards Arthur): characters which everyone labels as enemies/rivals but in truth they find kinship with each other.

I admit I like the softer slow burn of friends to lovers (except when as you said it devolves into weird toxic dynamics), and of course I like arranged marriages when done right (again when it doesn't become toxic or abusive or whatever the fuck happens with some webtoons/fanfictions/books). And again I'm with you on the reincarnation when one person doesn't know about it because wtf