oh i do have a lot of ships where the older one tops! for instance mo du/silent reading is my bible and the work that pushed me into danmei in the first place, and the gong is older than the shou by around seven years.

for me it's more like...i'd automatically be more interested in any given work when it's marketed as gekokujou-flavored (not necessarily younger/older but also lower ranking/higher ranking, etc.) even without knowing anything else about the work, whereas marketing any given work as featuring older top/younger bottom wouldn't appeal to me in the same way.

also i have this thing where in some cases the opposite of my preferred dynamic squicks me off pretty badly and that's also something i take into consideration. student/teacher? yes please, but teacher/student? no thank you lol

i don't read works featuring younger bottom/older tops exclusively either, it's just that a lot of specific tropes/characterization that i enjoy can be found in those works. i am but a simple ojisan with simple needs 🥺🥺🥺

for me he is a Wife but he is not a True Fufu Wife(TM) on account of him being a Neurotic Catholic.

True Fufu Wife(TM) has a sense of peculiarity to them. they twist their own morality; their logic is often known only them, following pathways that are a world onto itself. both people and rules bend to fit them. they flit among the masses as some sort of almost-whimsical outlier.

sunday has some fufu traits, but his catholicism inhibits the rest. catholicism restrains, and sunday restrains himself first and foremost. there is a sense of jaggedness to his neuroticism and obsessiveness that almost seems clumsy, because his control issues are startlingly obvious. his self-deprivation is also obvious for all to see, and that renders him and his motives less murky than True Fufu Wife(TM)'s might have been.

i keep saying that he is essentially an ayato expy, but their backstories are deliciously contrasting—ayato is as close to an agnostic as one can be in a land literally ruled by a god, whereas sunday twists himself into painful shapes in deference of a long-dead god. their core traits are extremely similar in ways that matter to my dick, but ayato actually has the space to harness his True Fufuness and sunday just... doesn't.

this is going to become a mini galladay manifesto but for me there is a certain balancing act in gallagher that i find really appealing--the push-and-pull of two people with too many things at stake who are so used (too used) to putting on an act, to being in control. two people trying to tear down the other's picture-perfect masks and in the process exposing unexpected glimpses of the 'real' them that they have otherwise buried. the violence they inflict on one another both through words and through actions in lieu of tenderness, with themselves as a collateral. the struggle for dominance and the blurring thereof--who is the one holding the leash? who is the one being undone?

the primary reason i dislike Sadistic Dom Daddy Top(tm) is that in many media featuring this trope, the character is paired with a woobified bottom, all teary-eyed softness and simpering platitudes. it's like watching someone punch a tofu, there is nothing i find enjoyable in that. it doesn't help that a lot of times the Sadistic Dom Daddy Top(tm) only seems to exist as a tool to make the audience coo over the whumped bottom. it's like that sexy lamp test wherein if you can take the female character out of a media, replace her with a sexy lamp, and the plot still works, then that female character isn't well-written enough to be relevant to the story. if i want the audience to coo over the bottom suffering at the hand of another, Mob Ojisans(tm) exist as a plot device lol

but anyway. while it's true that a lot of galladay fancreations are grittier and often feature D/s or humiliation elements--in most of them, the push-and-pull is still there. even on his knees sunday doesn't break.

we see this in canon too, in their dialogues the way sunday stood perfectly poised and gallagher lounged casually in that one cutscene of them together. they are both in their elements, two different but equally powerful forces. i love mindfuckery and powerplay, i love seeing characters come undone at the hand of another, i love barbed banters filled with doublespeak and thinly-veiled threats. i love unhealthy obsessions manifesting in mutual acts of cruelty. galladay has those elements in spades, and then some.

the way i see it is--gallagher and sunday are both liars playing their roles to perfection. it is only with each other that they can be true to themselves, if only to some small degree, if only by force. they inflict violence on one another expecting--desiring--a retaliation. i'd like to think that they both need that, these small moments of ugly honesty. they won't admit it out loud, won't be gentle about it, won't even be gentle to themselves, but in these moments they can allow their mask to slip and blame the other for it, and isn't that what love is about?