You Make Me Dance Episodes 1 & 2

– But do you even know him that well? Do you know what he’s like? – Your brother? He’s so picky.

me, an aroace: idk maybe i could see myself in a relationship they don’t look horrible

me, as soon as someone approaches me with romantic intent: 

Love Triangles & Tropes

I have to talk about love triangles for a moment and it is all Light on Me’s fault. 

Most BLs don’t employ true love triangles. Instead they throw in a faen fatal as a plot device who is obviously not a real threat to the main couple for various reasons: 

They’re an underdeveloped character with little back story. 

They’re the wrong gender. 

They enter late in the narrative and/or have very little screen time. 

They engage in no significant romance tropes with the lead. 

With a faen fatal we all know that our two boys will end up together. 

A love triangle is different. 

In a love triangle the audience actually believes the second lead has a good chance of winning over the main character. The second lead is given back story, is the correct gender to be competition, and has significant screen time. And, of course, tropes are used to make the burgeoning romance believable. 

Guess who is great on love triangles and even better at giving audiences bad cases of Second Lead Syndrome?

Why yes, that would be Korea.

When I posted about Korea’s history with BL, I talked about how strategic and clever they are with tropes. I think this is one of the reasons they are so good at believable love triangles. 

But so far they haven’t given us a love triangle in BL… until NOW. 

Light on Me is the Perfect Love Triangle

For the purposes of argument (and because of various elements like the lingering gaze, romance narrative conceits, focus of the camera lens etc) I am going to go with the following:

TaeKyung = our POV or main character (uke*)

ShinWoo = Lead (seme) 

DaOn = Second Lead (seme)

* In addition to specializing in soft low heat BL, Korea likes a slow burn romance and a weak seme/uke dynamic. So we are going back to the original definition of uke: basically the character the others are pursuing and want to take care of. 

Light on Me is using heavy hitting BL tropes to weight TaeKyung’s options fairly. Almost every time the director doles out one significant trope to SinWoo they will then give the same trope to DaOn or vise versa. It’s so smart and fun to watch I started keeping score. 

Crash Into Me AKA Proximity Alert 

(Camera then shows ShinWoo watching this, when it’s a trope he already got to have with TaeKyung.) 

Messy Eater

(Camera then shows DaOn watching this, when it’s a trope he already got to have with TaeKyung.) 

Meet Me In The Library 

Head Touch

(Honestly I am Team ShinWoo solely based on this neck grab.) 

Wound Tending

Light on Me is a master class in how to use tropes to manipulate audience sympathy so they can’t decide which pairing they prefer. Basically, this is how you infect fans with Second Lead Syndrome. It’s SO GOOD. 

Also, did you notice how they spaced this flip-flopping out at first, but then it got closer together? Crash into me with seme 1 then not with seme 2 until a few episodes later. But as the series progresses and the tension increases, the same trope for one seme comes closer in time to the same trope for the other seme, until finally at the end of episode 8, both semes want to wound tend TaeKyung in the same scene! Which mean’s this show is also pacing its tropes to amp up love triangle tension. 

This is clever enough to be mind boggling. I can’t even. 

On the other hand, they will dole out specific tropes to each seme (that the other one doesn’t get to have). So ShinWoo got to tie the shoelaces. But DaOn loaned the umbrella. SinWoo gets to grab and physically demonstrate interest. DaOn gets to flirt and verbally indicate interest. 

Partly this is because TaeKyung is on an enemies-to-lovers arc with SinWoo, but on a friends-to-lovers arc with DaOn (see True Beauty). But also it’s because the two semes are very different personalities. 

Similarly the narrative parcels out TaeKyung’s responses accordingly. 

So TaeKyung collar grab’s SinWoo. This is a trope that is always uke to seme in an agro relationship, because when an uke acts aggressively you know something is going down. It’s commonly used to give uke agency for the first kiss (see We Best Love). TaeKyung also rescues ShinWoo from bullies and gets hurt in the process, another aggressive move with relation to this particular seme and more common in enemies to lovers (see PeteKao in the Kiss series). 

Since DaOn is on a friends to lovers track, TaeKyung is a lot softer with him. 

In fact TaeKyung keeps trying to take care of DaOn, and even performs some seme acts of service (even though he’s the uke character), which is Korea being unbelievably clever with their love triangle. I mean how can we not root for them as a couple? 

Look, I’ve seen the seatbelt trope a million times but only PeteKao have ever flipped it so far as I can recall, and that’s just because Pete keeps getting beaten tf up. This is the kind of proprietary behavior (see also buckling on a safety helmet) only performed by seme on uke. 

Also TaeKyung took care of DaOn when he was sick, remotely, but still he used the umbrella to tell DaOn who was doing it. This is playing with the idea of mutual responsibility and partnership which is very unusual in BL, and makes me like them as a couple all the more because they act on an equal footing. Mutual care is adorable. (See Oxygen for more of this kind of exchange.) 

The interesting thing about DaOn as a second lead is that we know more about his back story than we do our mains. We know he is a neglected child, a people pleaser, and the ultimate caregiver. We watch him fall in love with TaeKyung because TaeKyung is the first person to give DaOn care back. Of course he wants to hold onto that. Also it makes DaOn very very VERY sympathetic to watchers. 

It got bad enough in episode 8 that I begin to wonder, despite all the many narrative clues, if DaOn actually might win TaeKyung in the end. 

See what I mean? 

Second Lead Syndrome! 

I know this has been a praise post, but flipping heck do I hate a love triangle. Because ARGH I want them both! 

Bravo, Korea. 

Someone on Instagram pointed out how Ohm plays a game when he tags Nanon. So I went to his insta to see for myself too. Check these out ( even if you have already noticed some, trust me, see them all!)

Yes we get it, Nanon belongs to you 🙄

BUT WHAT IS THIS OHM??

????

Either the tag placement was really not thought about or thought out too well 😂😂😂

BONUS:

Someone played along 🤩

Yu Zhen & Shi Lei always ending up in bed together

KIT | GEN Y EPISODE 12

inkpaa endgame 🙏

can we talk about the casual intimacy of this episode? we don’t need to see kisses or bed scenes to know that sarawat and tine are two people who love and care deeply for each other. the cuddles, the grins, the excitement about moving in together, figuring out each other quirks and learning how to live with each other, opening cans of soda for each other, learning each other’s favourite dishes and ladling them out on the other’s plate, the quick cheek kisses, brushing their teeth together, sleeping in the same bed, the blushes, the fact that sarawat never pressures tine to tell his brother even when type prompts him to tell the truth multiple times… 

it shows, without doubt, that sarawat and tine are two people in their first serious relationship. that they enjoy each other’s company, that they want it to work and so they make it work. the domesticity of this episode illustrates their relationship perfectly. two toothbrushes in a cup by the sink. their posters all over the walls. the bracelets. one bed. a life shared.

honestly, hats off to bright and win and the production team for portraying sarawat and tine as two real people who love each other dearly, for keeping their private moments private, and for showing them as two very different people who want to make their relationship work. this episode showcased how real the both of them are, and it was absolutely heartwarming to see.

( I hope you tell that person how you feel ) — SO NOT WORTH IT, episode 11 🌈