Uh not to take over your post but I have. Thoughts!! I would like to share with the class,,,sorryhopeyoudon'tmindbutyouusuallydon'tso
I'll be honest, yeah, a lot of it can be attributed to the fact that people are just. Really insistent on making a GAY relationship rather than. A romantic relationship between two boys. But it's super fucking prevalent with Kubokai, and I don't think it's just because of Aren being who he is. It's also because Shun can seemingly be so easily be molded to fit that seme x uke shit.
Part of the thing I struggle with writing Shun is, obviously, he isn't as near and dear to my heart as Aren or Kusuo are. But it goes a bit beyond that. Shun, as a character, is very different from these two. Aren and Kusuo play a very different role in the narrative than Shun does. It's part of why I think Aren and Shun are such good friends—they're almost complete opposites, sans ideals and/or core moral beliefs. But Shun, by himself, rides a line that I think a lot of people—particularly novice writers or people without as much experience in hyperspecific character analysis (cough cough neurodiverse people)—struggle with. He's a well-developed character without being too complex.
Of course, this is an overstatement: Shun is complex in certain ways. The biggest one is his cowardice, while still being one of the bravest mofos in the show. It's his problems that don't have much complexity, and it all comes back to the fact that Shun at the end of the day is just a high school kid. The fact that Shun is never really thrust into actually high-stakes situations (and likely the fact that we are watching this from Kusuo's point of view, who thinks Shun is pathetic /affectionate), we don't see as much implication into the depth of his character, unlike Aren, Kusuo, or even Kokomi—characters who, yes, while high school kids, are also a lot more than that.
It is,,,hard to write a character who is. Normal. And that sounds crazy but it's true: especially for writers used to writing big, flashy things, dramatic problems, characters with evident depth. Shun is normal, but he is also a character deserving of the depth he has. It won't be someone like Kusuo, who is so obviously traumatized, or like Aren, who is,,,also so obviously traumatized. Shun grew up in a upper-middle class suburban area. His biggest issues aren't gang wars or fighting giant cat tanks—it's getting through high school, trying to fit in, trying to make his mom happy.
I think people exaggerate Shun's traits so,,,grotesquely,,,because it's so easy to do that to him. It's very easy to look at his friendship with Aren and say "this is the most interesting thing about him" and design him in a way to fulfil whatever weird, oddly fetishy and heteronormative idea of what a MLM relationship should be. And the reason this is so easy to do is because Shun's more obvious traits (his anxiety being a big one, his relationship with his mom being another) seem to always paint him as this little baby that needs to be sheltered. But the truth is, Shun would fucking hate being seen that way.
Shun is a major fucking asshole. Like obviously he's a good guy, but come on. He's a dick, just like the rest of the cast. It's hard to find the line of complexity with Shun, and even harder to find when he would draw the line. When does he stop being flustered and red and begins lashing out? When does he stop being the Jet Black Wings and starts being serious? When is he being a crybaby and will get over it within the hour, and when will something seriously leave an impact on him? Shun is all about finding those lines, about bridging the gap between his cowardice and his bravery. When people woobify him for Kubokai, they keep his more sensitive aspects and pave over that line until the other side of himself is erased.
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