#But perhaps that doesn't mean that I can't try to sabotage & deromanticize it with the messaging that underlies the story :3

[thelindenpapers]

The ✨neurodivergent urge✨ to further parse the evolutionary origins of crushes, and of the complicated, technologically-driven rise of parasocial relationships; as a way to help dismantle their sometimes distressing and distracting overwhelming effects on my psyche

Plus

The ✨anarchist urge✨ to continually challenge stories grounded in monarchial and gentry-centered settings and denounce them as classist, as very cruelly disingenuous, and as terribly problematic: given that such stories ultimately romanticize and make propaganda of characters who are of the exploitative and colonizing 1% -- ffs, none of us "commoners" would be invited to such parties! We'd be dressed in rags, frantically working ourselves to exhaustion and death in a horrifically dangerous factory, or dying of treatable illnesses in a filthy, freezing hovel, or --

Vs

The ✨mentally-exhausted abuse survivor and giddy-schoolgirl-ish urge✨ to pen a fun, heady, regency-era, bridgerton-esque romp of a romance where my suspiciously youthful and non-disabled self-insert builds a heartwarming friendship with (and subsequently falls in love with) my parasocial crush