The "Knights Watch" podcast was actually a very interesting deep dive now that I've finished it. Especially since it wasn't so much political sperging. The panel were other fantasy authors, and they were talking more about why this particular meme landed a critical hit.
The big thing they decided on was that "Romance" that is geared towards men specifically has been lacking in literature for a very long time. Which is not a dig at JKR, since JKR is 1. A woman, and 2. Was not setting out to write a Romance. The Harry Potter story however is something most people have universal knowledge of, so they can understand the intent behind the meme. One of them commented that at some point in the early 60's, Romance plots geared towards men became far more pornographic before falling off entirely. At least in the west.
Which tracks in my mind.
The reason the "Tsundere" female archetype and love interest is even considered a strictly "Asian" thing is because Asian authors never went in the more pornographic direction that Western writers did. There were plenty of examples of unobtainable princess types who start out detesting the male lead in Western literature until the mid 20th century. "The Taming of the Shew" by William Shakespeare being one of the biggest examples in western literature. In modern pop literature, you had Aviendah, from the Wheel of Time for example. But again, this is a bad example because Robert Jordan had moved firmly into the Porn camp and his romance plots were very pornographic. And not monogamous in the slightest. Rand Al Thor ends up with three wives and fucks many more. Jordan does play around with the idea between Perrin and Faile, but he loses the plot on that fairly quickly (much like he loses every other plot as his story becomes too big to write).
And even with that, Wheel of Time was started in the 1980s. Its hardly new stuff. So this one meme has triggered a reaction because it essentially lit a candle in a dark void that has been sitting in popular culture for decades now.