Everybody’s got a favorite romance trope, right? Give me two characters with a hundred arguments standing between them and making out and I’m a happy woman. While I’ve definitely got some more problematic faves, the five below are just meant to be in the time honored tradition of bickering-to-sharing-a-bed.
I’ve not seen the reboot season of Veronica Mars and I never will, because if you don’t know how to let your female protagonist grow and don’t believe a woman can be interesting when she’s secure in her attachments, well. You can fuck right off.
Veronica and Logan aren’t fire and water - they’re like, fire and fire. Their first kiss took me totally by surprise during my first watch of the series but also I don’t know how my disaster brain wasn’t clamoring for them to happen from the pilot onward. I appreciate that they can be vulnerable with each other; that they teach each other the value in vulnerability.
I’ve written about my undying love for Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride before - it’s the perfect intersection of creepy and whimsical and historical. Li Lan and Er Lang are blunt with each other and just beautiful, in the end.
I feel like Jake and Amy from Brooklyn 99 are an obvious choice but I don’t even care. I love them so much. They’re brilliant but they’re total weirdos and the will they/won’t they in the first two seasons is perfection.
While I’m sure I read or watched something as a teenager that induced my enemies to lovers mania, I feel like I can safely credit Son of the Shadows with cementing it. Liadan is a bit like Li Lan in that there’s something about Bran that instigates her - she’s always been strong, always known her own mind, and she won’t shrink from the challenge of a difficult man. And not difficult like, she’s going to change him. Difficult like someone who can go toe-to-toe with you is someone worth knowing better.
Also it’s Bran’s fault I romanticize the hell out of tattoos.
Beatrice and Benedick are the ultimate enemies to lovers. We owe them so much. Maybe this trope wouldn’t even exist with them.
So, what are some of your faves?