Enemies to Lovers to Friends to Just F**k Already!
An analysis of the three prevailing relationship dynamics that dominates fandom conversation
Do you like the Shadow and Bone trilogy? No big deal if you don’t for sensible reasons such as it being predictable, breakneck-paced, and liberally inspired by fantasy books before it. From what I notice, though, a large part of people’s enjoyment at the time boiled down to two preferences: whether they liked enemies-to-lovers or friends-to-lovers. This, of course, is bound to happen in a novel series that plays just about everything else by the numbers. But as this conversation pops up again and again here and elsewhere, it warrants some sudern.
The enemies of lovers dynamic of this series is the dynamic of Darkling and Alina. In most of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, Alina Starkov is a seventeen/eighteen-year-old girl that has a rare superpower: the ability to redirect and generate light. Her narrative counterpart, called The Darkling, can – nomen est omen – generate darkness. In book one and the first season of the Netflix adaptation, The Darkling is (described) as this handsome, charismatic leader character that Alina, weak and incapable of acting out according to her wishes (though certainly not passive!), is drawn towards. Later we find out that The Darkling was using her. From that point on, they are narrative enemies. But, as if unable to let go of the initial spark between the two, author Leigh Bardugo constantly draws parallels between the two, humanizing The Darkling as if he’s not manipulative and a killer but just happens to have trauma. This culminates to a narrative section in the third book in which, after another major battle in the second, Alina and The Darkling have the ability to see each other across space and time. They have moments you could see as romantic, though are mostly more manipulations from The Darkling’s end. Alina tries to care for him, but can't fully bring herself to. Up until the very end, he seems to “care for her”.
I need to detour for the introduction of a very important word in my vocabulary: sudern. This is Bavarian/Austrian German and a shade to the general German word beschweren, meaning “to complain” or, literally translated, “weigh down”. To anyone not Viennese, Sudern is worse than beschweren, I would say, and raunzen - another Austrian German word - is worst. To the Viennese, sudern has positive connotations, a defining characteristic of anyone daring to call themselves Viennese; this DAZ blog post even mentions how Tyroleans and Upper Austrians, both states to the west of Vienna, have to come up with new forms of to keep up with the sheer, neverending mass of sudern that the Viennese do. Sudern, defined by German dictionary Duden as “to talk negatively about a subject”, falls somewhere between complaining and venting. It may enter the territory of gossip sometimes, but it doesn’t have a malicious hint to it like the stereotype of gossip has. It’s got a whiny character to it, because the person that does suder will have the self-awareness of the topic being a little silly and will regrettably become the center of the conversation during that timespan. The topic in question may not necessarily be a molehill turned to a mountain, mind you – though it can be, and certainly sudern features an element of exaggerating, a dry sense of dramatism that could never translate on a Tweet. The Suderant (a term reserved for the people that constantly do this) will know that nobody at the table will be able to solve the problem (real or imagined) at hand. Nor will they ask for it. There is no trauma dumped here, nobody is asked to turn to a psychologist, and you feel better when you do it… until the topic that made you suder happens again, and you have to suder again. Viennese know how to handle that, generally speaking; it’s in the good tone to suder every now and then. But raunzen is worse. Raunzen is when you are bitter. Raunzen is what you do when you are no longer aware of what you’re really complaining about, including the fact that you make everybody’s mood actively worse. Raunzen can go anywhere from “you are really bitter and have a personal problem” to actual ignorant and bigoted speech.
So. Be honest. In her thoughts, does Alina suder about The Darkling? Like if she was Viennese, does she suder about Darkling, or raunz about him? I would call it a healthy sense of being skeptical of somebody that, well, manipulated her and wants her. But fans would tell me she suders. Think about it, they would tell me. If you can’t stop talking about your enemy all the time… are they really just an enemy, or is that just complaining about an imaginary problem? Then surely, that imaginary problem, blown up and dramatized, is not much different from another human emotion that also blows up and dramatizes a person, turning them so large in your head that they become something close to nothing – something intangible and yet all-encompassing, something close to God. Whether you raunz or suder over the person, or do the latter first and do the former later, in the end, that obsession will look a whole lot like infatuation. And infatuation, well, that’s really a made-up problem with a rather obvious solution – sex, romantic love, happily ever after. Leigh Bardugo follows that line of thought. A good Suderantin this does not make of her or of Alina, but then again neither are Viennese.
In real life, normal people don’t talk about the things they hate unless they’re prompted to, even the raunzers. In real life, I don’t think about the people I hate. I wouldn’t even think of reconciling with people I hate, ever. In real life… who even has enemies that are people? Drake talks about having a lot of enemies in his best song, but in this same song Drake also sings about having girls like he really doesn’t: it is a perpetual fantasy. We can safely apply this to enemies to lovers as well. It’s not the enemy part that draws people to this trope. In fact, I would argue it’s not even the love part that people like. It’s the fantasy. It’s the infatuation tinged with temptation, always dark, always irresistible - and who doesn’t like the good old story of Eve and the apple? That the love interest is morally irredeemable only adds to the struggle of resistance, which makes it even hotter. Simply put, the appeal of enemies to lovers is, in my view, its centering of sexual attraction. There’s a joke between Joey Wheeler and Seto Kaiba in the abridged version of Yu-Gi-Oh: they don’t like each other, but can’t keep away from one another either, including sex dreams from Joey where he does dogplay with Kaiba. So, the third character, Tristan, calls: just fuck already!
And to get to that point, you’d think of at least one character of this dynamic as sexually attractive. We know The Darkling is hot. In fact, he even wields darkness, an almost comical literal transposition of the temptation and chemistry that is at play here. Thus, any love for the dynamic of Alina and The Darkling means Alina is subjugated into nothing more than projection for sexual fantasies towards him. It’s even here for a prompt list of enemies to lovers on Pinterest: Nothing like years of unbridled hatred to make for the best sex you ever had. And even this Tumblr post seems to get it, even though they use a lot of words to get to the important part: “UST” (unresolved sexual tension). Both posts really mask the core appeal: enemies are just sexual obsessions and the acknowledgement of it is what makes this trope. Other appeals, such as two opposing views eventually on the same side, are subjugated to the sexual fantasy.
The most hilarious form of this you can find in the first season of K Project. It doesn’t even commit all the way to the “to lovers” part, as this is not only anime but both characters of the dynamic are male. The blue-tinged Saruhiko is a sleazy, smart, collected character; his counterpart, ex-childhood friend Misaki, is hotheaded, rude, and brash. (That they are color coded for our convenience is very important). Whenever they are on screen together, it’s as though they’re not really enemies, just perpetually horny. And on top of this pre-existing chemistry, the sheer sexual energy both exude (or want us, the viewer, to assume) we get a sad sob story as to how Saruhiko betrayed the gang both were in, much to the dismay of Misaki. Hey, that’s just sudern. That’s not really a problem. Like, just fuck already!
This is not to say enemies of lovers, generally speaking, cannot be good. It can be if you include the messy factor of the acknowledgement of wrongdoing and, even more damningly, forgiveness. But by that point it wouldn’t look like the great majority of how this trope is done. It would look like its own, complicated, complex thing, bereft of the most major component of this trope. And anyway, it’s much sexier to imagine both people perpetually denying their horniness for one another, never really acting on that sexual desire lest it ends in a narrative dead-end of happy-ever-after. That is not to say that people are happy without the happily ever after. Take, for instance, this closing paragraph of Erin Francois’ article “Shadow & Bone: Alina Should Have Ended Up With The Darkling”:
Lastly, if this argument still has not won you over yet, I want to leave you today with an image. Imagine Alina has been stripped of her powers. She’s daydreaming again, her fingers unconsciously playing with the light streaming in through the window. But instead, there is the Darkling, his grey eyes almost sad but he’s smiling slightly, just at the corners of his lips. Alina looks up and her cheeks turn pink but he comes to sit beside her, taking her fingers and kissing them softly. Around them shadows begin to leap and dance and twirl. But it’s not his. It is hers. It’s the part of him lingering inside her. Even after she had lost everything, her light, she has kept just a little piece belonging to the Darkling, to Aleksander.
This fanfic paragraph shows rather clearly the fantasy aspect of this trope. Even if Shadow and Bone is dense and leaves little narrative room for alternatives, the strength of Bardugo’s character writing is enough for readers to sidestep any material present within the text to fully project their fantasies. It is no longer the death of the author, but the death of the text; put another way, people fantasize whatever they want no matter what is presented. Shows like K Project, of course, don’t even bother with dense, coherent narratives. You can stick anything to the wall in the name of ambition and people will do the thinking for you. Misaki and Saruhiko, god they are just so hot. Can’t you imagine these perpetually horny people as lovers? Please.
But… what if the enemy was somebody you’d thought of a lot? Not sexually, but rationally.
Episode 7 of Free Iwatobi Swim Club opens with a dream sequence from the perspective of Rin Matsuoka, who has thus far been a cold, bitter and rash (red-headed) childhood friend-slash-rival towards the protagonist, calm, collected (blue-haired) Haruka. In this dream, Rin visits Haruka’s home. There is nobody there but a fish in a bowl. Then Haruka appears. You’re home, Rin says. I’m here to challenge you to a race. Unfazed, Haruka replies, I only swim free. Haruka leaves to a pool. Come on, Haruka says. Rin quickly regains his composure, says, I’ll show you how different we are. Except it’s not Haruka anymore, but his dead dad, who runs away from Rin, leaving him to a procession where Rin finds his younger self with his sister. It is the funeral of his father and the younger Rin is telling his older self something we don’t hear. Then Rin wakes up.
This dichotomy of the trauma that Rin carries within himself and the outwardly aggressive attitude that he shows to most everyone is a major part of his character arc, brought to razor-sharp focus in this very episode. Haruka is not a friend, not a person, but a goal. If I can’t beat him, Rin confesses, I can’t move forward. On the other hand, prodigy Haruka has all but lost his passion for swimming, only really motivated because he is coerced to. If Rin is traumatized by his father’s passing and the perpetual danger that his dream is in (represented by losing to Haruka), then Haruka is traumatized by seeing Rin cry in that same event, incorrectly assuming that his ability makes his dearest friends sad. Later this episode, in the present-time, Rin beats Haruka at a race. Not only is Haruka devastated that he is still capable of emotion, but then Rin tells him I will never swim with you ever again. Never. Rin thinks he has what he wants. Haruka thinks he once again loses what he wishes to have.
Narratively, this is absolutely well-done. Realistically, though? The drama over swimming? This is the realm of the rivals-to-lovers dynamic. As mentioned previously, “Gotta-lotta-enemies” Drake doesn’t actually have enemies. At least, not like that. (No, not even the recent feud with Kanye is, in my opinion, like that). What he does have, however, are rivals - people clamoring for his position, trying to beat him at his own game. The crucial difference between enemies and rivals is that enemies want your annihilation, while (healthy) rivals don’t necessarily try to stop you in your path, just want to one-up you. An enemy may psychologically want the same thing as you, only differ in their methods and consider themselves the only person to the job, but the rival’s methods will largely resemble yours and accept your general existence. They are people you think and suder about and who you’d never count into your friend circle (even if they are friendly to you and vice versa), but also not hate or even obsess over. Even if obsession were to happen, that would definitely register as infatuation as opposed to raunzen or having a psychological problem. Sometimes fiction is icky, and as a writer and reader both, the whole idea of reconciliation is tedious to think about - you want the sex, and you want it morally okay in an online sphere where we find ourselves forced to moralize our every preference. The rival is a good source of that: somebody that is annoying and irritating, but not evil in any sense. What is the worst thing Rin does in Free, realistically? Push Haruka to a wall. So that’s being a messy seventeen-year-old boy, maximum. He’s not Tonya Harding. A rival may not be on the protagonist’s side necessarily, but the crucial difference to enemies to lovers is that any morally black act completely erases the possibility of the eventual end of sex and love. In this sense, rivals to lovers is a distant, eminently pleasant cousin of enemies to lovers. It is the empathetic fan’s trope if they want good old bickering and some decent conflict that never gets too heavy.
Anime likes these quite a bit; specifically, shonen and sports shonen. In many romantic animanga, the rival would be the second person of the love triangle, and as the relationship is being “fought over”, it can quickly lead to icky situations (a similar problem befalls many Western properties, wherein the line between enemy and rival is blurred thanks to the individualistic nature of that society). Kaguya-sama: Love is War is the only exception, to my knowledge, actively centering this rivalry trope and committing to it in a similar manner as many shonen do. In shonen, the rival is a staple of the character cast, here to oppose the protagonist at first, but then friendly and supportive after the decisive defeat: think of My Hero Academia’s Bakugou Katsuki (and Todoroki Shouto), Black Clover’s Yuno, Fairy Tail’s Gray Fullbuster… even if the protagonist was female, in the case of Soul Eater, it’s going to be the first important male character not her love interest (Death the Kid) that has a rival character (Black Star) or a dynamic similar to it. One of the godfathers of the shonen genre, Dragon Ball, also informs the template for every rival dynamic to come after. Vegeta is the only one who doesn’t soften up to Goku like other villains-turned-friends, remaining a rival to Goku the entire time, staying nearly as (but never exactly as) strong as Goku. Goku, usually carefree and totally relaxed, is willing to play ball with Vegeta - and seriously at that. Unsurprisingly, the highest ranking male-male ship for this show on Archiveofourown are these two. From the sports anime realm, aside Rin and Haruka, another good example would be Aomine Daiki and Kagami Taiga of Kuroko no Basket, who don’t have the mutually inflicted past childhood trauma Rin and Haruka do. Kagami never really thinks of Aomine nor vice versa, but both are hunky, handsome, practically dripping with libido to the point it’s a running joke in the case of Aomine. They are so close in terms of basketball prowess that they manage to unlock each other into previously unreachable zones during a match. I mean this literally:
A healthy rivalry leads to progression and character development for both protagonist and antagonist and is an ample opportunity to continue the line of thought from sudern to infatuation to a loving, bickering relationship at the end. It is crucial, in my view, that the romantic relationship is the ending here. Unlike with the enemies to lovers, where the fantasy carries the dynamic into infinity, the rival has a time limit. The very premise of Kaguya makes this clear: confession from either side marks an end, or more specifically a death. (To my surprise, the manga is ongoing despite both characters confessing and going steady, its most recent chapter reveals, at least to me, that it has now shifted to a gag manga rather than the oftentimes flimsy plot and conflict it used to employ). This is especially clear in the context of competitive sports. After losing to Kagami (and, in a broader sense, his high school team Seirin), Aomine (and team Touou) is relegated to a spectator and eventual supporter of the protagonist through the rest of the tournament. He is no longer the cold, single-minded antagonist that we were first introduced to, but neither is he really a rival to Kagami any longer as he is unable to reach the same heights that Kagami does. In Free, Rin’s character eventually reaches his end at the penultimate episode of the second season. He admits what has been hinted at for two seasons: that Haruka is the reason he has a goal, that catching up to Haruka’s skill level has been his goal. Now that he’s caught up to Haruka and is now his equal, he’s here to inspire Haruka to competitive college swimming. Rin is no longer a rival, not really. He is a friend again. After that, his role in the story also fades away.
For rivals to lovers, the transformative power is key: the rival dies so the lover can be born (even if they maintain every characteristic they initially possessed, which would go against the standard of progression and character arcs in the first place). And when they are just a friend, or even a lover, they are no longer performing the act that made the initial dynamic in the first place. To love in fiction, romantically or platonically, means that the conflict and sexual desire ebbs and ends. This is because in every romance, the infatuation aspect takes center stage - in the case of rivals to lovers, it is now transformed to a push-and-pull that makes it appealing and mutual in a way enemies to lovers doesn’t have to be. Love and devotion is the natural enemy of infatuation, and as rivals (already predisposed to assessing each other’s skill realistically) turn to friends (predisposed to assess each other’s personality realistically) and then to lovers (expected to know and realistically love every single crevice that the other possesses), there is no longer room to the temptation and the allure.
Is this good enough for people? It must be. After all, rivals to lovers implies friends, and in real life, friends date.
To go back to Shadow and Bone, the friends to lovers dynamic is Alina and Mal(yen; it’s important to me that you know he has a full name, that he isn’t just called mal like what Turks call big-headed animals or dumbasses). Mal is not just any friend; he is a childhood friend. He is handsome, charming, and flirty to other girls, which makes Alina feel insecure. But Mal only cares about Alina, and not only loves her, but actually vows to protect her for life, like the low-class soldier with a big heart that he is. The first book didn’t exactly convince me on the dynamic, but there is some good stuff in the second that made me care – if only because it made Alina’s character compelling and interesting. Mal, narratively and otherwise, has about the same appeal as a high school football jock, which is to say zero. Without Alina, he is effectively nothing. This last sentence isn’t a flippant attitude from my end. This is a fact confirmed in the series over and over again, all the way to a hilarious plot reveal at the climax of the third book.
Friends. The ambiguity of this term means you can take it to any point you want to: friends, as in, you greet them at the hallway, or friends, as in your best friend? Or even your childhood best friend? Research conducted by the University of Victoria in which roughly 1,900 participants were surveyed shows that people generally see their partners as friends first, and friendship turning romantic was evaluated as the best way to initiate a romance. This marks friends to lovers as the most realistic of the three common dynamics.
As this dynamic doesn’t have a baked-in conflict as much as rivals and enemies do (fighting with your friends is ugly and nobody really goes out of their way to do it), conflict may here seem tacked-on, inorganic and brought up only for the purpose of plot advancement. But this is not to say that this trope totally works freestyle, where the task is “two friends just happen to fall in love” and you’re supposed to figure out the rest on your own. Just as real-life friends don’t all want to bone one another, so do two characters that are friends. They do not see each other as sexual beings - or, put less weird, like that. Makes sense considering friends occupy a different place in our minds as crushes do, right? When a friend moves to crush territory, whether we know them for really long or don’t, that is awkward and needs to be sorted out. The sexual aspect never really appears in this dynamic. Even if the friends had sex, it’s a source of conflict. It’s not a release or relief, at least not until the end. Unlike enemies or rivals to lovers, the thing that propels the characters is romantic desire. It is the wish of spending all your time with the other, preferably happy. In fandom spaces is called pining, defined by Merriam-Webster as “to yearn intensely and persistently especially for something unattainable”. For extra seasoning of this dynamic, try mutual pining, where both characters yearn for the other and think they can’t have one another. Ninety percent of the time, this is what “moves” the plot of a given friends to lovers dynamic. (In fanfiction, the reasons as to why these two characters went from friends to pining for one another may altogether be skipped, or is never explored.) The conflict present is entirely internal - in mutual pining, this actually gets worse, because the characters aren’t supposed to figure out that they like each other. As the viewer and reader, we now know something either character don’t know in full: this is where our enjoyment comes from. The will-they-won’t-they element, if done right, can make for a compelling conflict. Less well done would be the conflict via misunderstanding or outright miscommunication; here, as the viewer, as omniscient as authors, we patronize the characters, thinking as friends, why aren’t you talking? More often, I’ve come across fan works that remove the element of conflict altogether or reduce it to an absolute minimum, leaving only the internalized anguish. Whether you choose to season it or not, however, much of friends to lovers is sexless and much of the conflict is played out the same way. It’s this element that turns friends to lovers comfortable, if predictable. It is a safe and good choice. Perfectly respectable, perfectly realistic.
It is interesting, then, that we are introduced to Mal as a reliable friend first in a flashback, and then in present time as a character Alina crushes over. The cut of time here is crucial. Mal is no longer a friend; in Alina’s eyes, he is a sexual being. I would argue much of their dynamic and the conflict thereof is the conflict of them as sexual beings and the reality of their situations, even well into them going steady. They never feel romantic as a result. Mal loves Alina, but her near-God like position in society writ large alienates her from him. Alina loves Mal, but her duties prevent her from devoting all her time to him. There is an argument going around that Mal refusing to see Alina for the position she’s meant to don, the sheer power that she has, is the reason why between The Darkling and him, he is the worse choice for Alina. In fact, it plays seamlessly into the main appeal of the friends to lovers dynamic: his reaction is realistic. If enemies to lovers is about the (sex) potential, friends to lovers is about the realism, and as youth of today has less casual hookups and spends more time online, it is the most realistic application of love as well. But is realism why we consume fiction? Isn’t it nicer to… imagine? More pleasant to freestyle? Most pleasant, in fact, to watch people play out, or hint at, their sexual desires?
The enemy is a sex fantasy. The rival awaits sure death. The friend is sexless. So which of these do I like?
Well, from all the mentioned characters, I like Free’s Rin - teenage angst will never not appeal to me. I like Saruhiko because he’s got a wonderful character design, an immaculate sense of style, and an irritating manner that I adore in characters. Unlike many other people reading Shadow and Bone, I like Alina. I think Bardugo wrote a decent teenager who reacted in every single manner like a teenager would. Her journey made the trilogy worth it to me. But ships… I don’t actually consume works with the express purpose of vicariously acting out my romantic fantasies. Call it having a hyperactive imagination, but I can do plenty of that thinking on my own without the help of a book, without the model of two characters going through the motions. I’m acquainted with the hurt these fantasies all contain, as if I’m too old to entertain these things, too smart to really trap myself into societal expectations of dating and marrying a man, but I seem can’t pull away from it either. Even in a romcom, where romance is the focal point, my gaze (literal and metaphorical) will glaze over the romance of the characters unless and until things start to get interesting: that is, different or erotic or earnest. Users waxing poetic on any of these tropes baffles me. (Conversely, users identifying themselves so earnestly with these tropes and the discourse online doesn’t.) Surely a work provides more than just a ship you disagree with, or a ship you do agree with. Surely a work must provide more: provide many lives crossing and many ideas expressed into one and many opportunities to feel and think both, provide the human experience refracted through the kaleidoscope. Isn’t all art just a work of passion? Isn’t that what we should be judging and evaluating art on, rather than reducing a work of literature, a work of art in general, to such a minor component?
In short, the overemphasis on romance - ships - and tropes in online circles is worrisome. If most of your taste past a certain age can be described as “it’s gay and it slaps”, that’s fine, but I worry about your vocabulary on describing why you like what you do without moralizing it. If you only ever read enemies to lovers or rivals to lovers or friends to lovers, maybe it’s time to branch out, see what else the written word can offer you, of which there’s aplenty. All that said, I’m not shocked at this development. Only ever reading fanfiction and never reading books is a sentiment so popular that it regularly becomes a hit tweet. In fanfiction, and slowly though seeping through mainstream literature as well, a trope is no longer a comparative shorthand for the critic but the transformative object, a shorthand of pre-existing material for the writer. What used to be “the genre” and “genre fans” that made easy categorization possible, it is now the trope that does the heavy lifting. Emboldened by the easily attained positive reception, there are too many writers that get lazy, leaning back too early, thinking going through the motions is enough. It’s not. For writing tropes and genres have to be secondary to the characters, to their arcs at hand, and the ideas one wants to employ. Only by writing the character like they are real human beings you might know can the dynamic move from a shorthand to a genuine, unique thing. And as readers and viewers, we need to demand this standard - lest art disappears into nothing, makes everybody around lazier and simpler, dulling everything, until finally, we treat art like sedation and kill ourselves from the inside.