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Thx 𖹭

YES absolutely, arranged marriage strangers-to-lovers is so juicy, but yeah, the beginning can feel weirdly hard to crack. like… how do you start a relationship when there's no relationship yet?? you’re trying to build chemistry and stakes from nothing, and still make it feel emotionally real.

so let’s break it down 👇

🌶️the core tension = contract vs connection. they’re bound together by something external (family, politics, survival, magic law, whatever), not choice. that friction between “we have to be in this” and “do we want to be in this” is your heartbeat. → every early scene should let that tension breathe. → she doesn’t know if she can trust him. he doesn’t know what she wants. they misread each other. they pull back. they move forward. they get it wrong. it’s messy, because real closeness grows from uncertainty.

🌒 start after the decision, but before the comfort. you don’t need to open with the wedding or proposal unless it’s plot-critical. honestly, it’s often more powerful to start right after the commitment is sealed. → they’ve signed the papers. the ceremony is done. now they’re staring at each other in the hallway of a shared home like: “so… you want the left drawer or?” → this gives you room to explore who they are in proximity to each other, and how the arrangement shifts their behavior.

🔍 build tension through contrast. they should approach this situation differently. one might see it as duty. the other as punishment. one’s trying too hard. the other’s emotionally shut down. one’s deeply polite. the other pushes buttons. → the contrast gives you sparks. and from those sparks, you can build emotional ground.

🔥 scenes > exposition. show the distance through awkward firsts. → eating dinner together without talking. → realizing they don’t know how the other takes their tea. → one getting sick and the other not knowing if they’re allowed to help. these tiny moments do more than backstory ever could.

🕯️don’t skip the awkward stage. seriously. lean into it. the first time they argue, the first accidental touch, the first sign of protectiveness or jealousy. even the silence has texture. → when you show the shift from “i don’t know you” to “i’m starting to see you,” it hits harder. you want that moment later where the reader realizes: wait… they know each other now.

💡 quick prompts from me to get started:

she finds something of his in their shared space, something vulnerable.

one of them is forced to defend the other in public, even if they barely know them.

a shared chore, task, or journey where they have to cooperate, but completely clash.

someone from their past shows up and the other gets an unexpected glimpse of who they were before this marriage.

🌼 final note from me: you’re not writing a romance that starts with attraction. you’re writing one that starts with obligation and grows. and that’s so rich, because everything they learn about each other is earned.

Thx 𖹭

YES absolutely, arranged marriage strangers-to-lovers is so juicy, but yeah, the beginning can feel weirdly hard to crack. like… how do you start a relationship when there's no relationship yet?? you’re trying to build chemistry and stakes from nothing, and still make it feel emotionally real.

so let’s break it down 👇

🌶️the core tension = contract vs connection. they’re bound together by something external (family, politics, survival, magic law, whatever), not choice. that friction between “we have to be in this” and “do we want to be in this” is your heartbeat. → every early scene should let that tension breathe. → she doesn’t know if she can trust him. he doesn’t know what she wants. they misread each other. they pull back. they move forward. they get it wrong. it’s messy, because real closeness grows from uncertainty.

🌒 start after the decision, but before the comfort. you don’t need to open with the wedding or proposal unless it’s plot-critical. honestly, it’s often more powerful to start right after the commitment is sealed. → they’ve signed the papers. the ceremony is done. now they’re staring at each other in the hallway of a shared home like: “so… you want the left drawer or?” → this gives you room to explore who they are in proximity to each other, and how the arrangement shifts their behavior.

🔍 build tension through contrast. they should approach this situation differently. one might see it as duty. the other as punishment. one’s trying too hard. the other’s emotionally shut down. one’s deeply polite. the other pushes buttons. → the contrast gives you sparks. and from those sparks, you can build emotional ground.

🔥 scenes > exposition. show the distance through awkward firsts. → eating dinner together without talking. → realizing they don’t know how the other takes their tea. → one getting sick and the other not knowing if they’re allowed to help. these tiny moments do more than backstory ever could.

🕯️don’t skip the awkward stage. seriously. lean into it. the first time they argue, the first accidental touch, the first sign of protectiveness or jealousy. even the silence has texture. → when you show the shift from “i don’t know you” to “i’m starting to see you,” it hits harder. you want that moment later where the reader realizes: wait… they know each other now.

💡 quick prompts from me to get started:

she finds something of his in their shared space, something vulnerable.

one of them is forced to defend the other in public, even if they barely know them.

a shared chore, task, or journey where they have to cooperate, but completely clash.

someone from their past shows up and the other gets an unexpected glimpse of who they were before this marriage.

🌼 final note from me: you’re not writing a romance that starts with attraction. you’re writing one that starts with obligation and grows. and that’s so rich, because everything they learn about each other is earned.

"This life may not be perfect, but it's ours. We built it together for ourselves."

"You had me at hello, but you kept me with your heart."

"I didn't believe in fate until I met you."

"You're my today and all of my tomorrows."

"The best part of my day is when I get to be with you."

"I never thought I could feel like this with someone."

"I'd rather be with you than anywhere else in the world."

"Funny how life pushed us together and how we made sure to stay together."

"Even in a crowd, you're the only one I see."

"In a world full of chaos, you are my peace."

"You're the sweetest thing I ever laid my eyes on."

"Every love story is special, but ours is my favorite."

"I didn't know what true love was until you came into my life."

"With you, I've found my forever."

"You're mine in every multiverse, and I'm yours."

More: One-Liners Masterpost

Okay, it's finally time to edit. You've got all your materials sorted, it's time to dive right in. You want to start with the big edits first, aka the plot pass.

Now listen. You're going to want to linger and fix those little bits of grammar or dialogue, and I know it's so hard not to, but letting yourself get off-track might mean wasting hours on a scene you realize later you have to delete. Fix a few spelling errors, leave a note, and stay plot-focused.

Making Sense (Of the Plot)

In the plot pass, you're asking yourself some basic questions:

Do events follow a clear order? - When you're getting everything down on the page for the first time, scenes might get jumbled up or events might not have clear causes. Maybe you have a car crashing into the cafe pages before, but in a writing haze, you wrote your main characters having a casual conversation moments later. If the bad guy beats your heroes to treasure, is it clear how they got there? (Not everyone can be Yzma.)

Do circumstances feel contrived? If there are any problems that can be solved by your characters sitting down and talking to each other, it may be better to lean into their motivation for not speaking to each other, rather than coming up with bad romcom scenarios. If the plot can be resolved by the mcguffin the grandma had the whole time, it might be better to make finding that mcguffin part of the plot instead.

It doesn't have to be perfect, and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. If someone gets bitten by a werewolf, it's perfectly fine to have them turn into one at the worst possible moment. When it comes to contrived, you're looking for problems that seem easy to solve and look for more interesting ways to complicate them.

Are your character motivations consistent to the characters throughout the story? - They can change throughout the story, but character motivations do need to be linked to the actions they take. An out-of-nowhere betrayal is way more satisfying if you lay the groundwork for it ahead of time.

Take a moment to list out the motivations of the characters in a scene you're not quite sure of can help you figure how to fix it. Having an outline helps with this a lot!

Are you following an "if... then" format? - My brain doesn't work like this when I'm writing, because as a writer you know how A got to Z, and it seems (in your head) obvious how it happened. This is where my scene card outline come in handy, because I can look at my overview of what should happen and why, and then compare it to what actually happens in the scene. I've discovered so many threads I forgot to connect that way, like why a character had a certain device (I forgot to have him pick it up two scenes earlier), or adding a few simmering dialogue bits that make the big fight pay off much better.

Can you fix the "Because the Plot Demands It" scenes? - Look, sometimes your character needs to be in that haunted house to see that damn ghost, but your character isn't the type to set foot in such a place. It's really easy, especially in the first draft, to contrive a way in there (she took a wrong turn on her way to grandma's!), but retooling these scenes to connect them to the characters motivations and needs is the way to go. The main character doesn't want to go into that obviously cursed place, but her best friend hasn't shown up for school in three days and now she's crying for help from the second floor window. Your character's strong desire to be there for her friend is a much better way to get her into that house.

This is not always easy - it took me six fricken drafts to realize a critical part of a character's motivation was because his father blamed him for his mother's death - but it is going to be worth putting in the work to hammer down.

Do you have a solid timeline? - This might not seem as important, but it's super easy to accidentally fit two weeks worth of activities in three days. Make sure you have that on reference, even if you don't mention it in the book. Also make sure to gauge your distances if your characters are on a trip, because if you do accidentally say it takes two hours to drive from Seattle to Spokane instead of five, someone will dive down your throat for it. Not me. Just someone.

Okay, maybe me. Slow down, you maniacs.

Bizarro Fiction - a literary genre emphasizing weirdness, absurdity, and entertainment.

Elements of Bizarro Fiction

This genre contains different types of work under its broad umbrella, but here are a few common trends in bizarro books:

Absurdism: Absurdism is a genre of literature in which characters derive no meaning from their surroundings, often submitting themselves to the absurdity and randomness of existence. Many bizarro writers incorporate absurdist elements, characters, or situations into their work to further emphasize the futility of a character’s efforts and enhance humor.

Genre fiction: Many bizarro writers incorporate conventions of genre or speculative fiction—like sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, or westerns—into their work. Using the format of genre fiction offers bizarro writers a concrete selection of tropes and reader expectations on which they can play off.

Satire: Satire is a literary approach characterized by a thoughtful mocking of a particular cultural convention or phenomenon. Bizarro writers often incorporate satire into their work to offer a sense of meaning or add a layer of humor.

The grotesque: The grotesque shares similarities to the weird, with both techniques aiming to surprise readers with extreme, shocking, over-the-top, or out-of-place content. Many bizarro works play with the grotesque, including body horror and contortionism.

Weirdness: The unifying feature of bizarro fiction is weirdness, incorporating strange, bizarre, and shocking elements for entertainment and sometimes to make a point. Many bizarro publishers and writers emphasize that it’s not simply “weird for weird’s sake” but rather weirdness to entertain readers.

Notable Authors of Bizarro Fiction

HAMARTIA: A term from Greek tragedy that literally means "missing the mark." Originally applied to an archer who misses the target, a hamartia came to signify a tragic flaw, especially an error in perception, a lack of some important insight, or some blindness that ironically results from one's own strengths and abilities. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist frequently possesses some sort of hamartia that causes catastrophic results after he fails to recognize some fact or truth that could have saved him if he recognized it earlier. The idea of hamartia is often ironic; it frequently implies the very trait that makes the individual noteworthy is what ultimately causes the protagonist's decline into disaster. For instance, for the character of Macbeth, the same ambition that makes him so admired is the trait that also allows Lady Macbeth to lure him to murder and treason. Similarly, what ennobles Brutus is his unstinting love of the Roman Republic, but this same patriotism causes him to kill his best friend, Julius Caesar. These normally positive traits of self-motivation and patriotism caused the two protagonists to "miss the mark" and realize too late the ethical and spiritual consequences of their actions.

HUBRIS (sometimes spelled Hybris): The Greek term hubris is difficult to translate directly into English. It is a negative term implying both arrogant, excessive self-pride or self-confidence, and also a hamartia, a lack of some important perception or insight due to pride in one's abilities. It is the opposite of the Greek term arête, which implies a humble and constant striving for perfection and self-improvement combined with a realistic awareness that such perfection cannot be reached. As long as an individual strives to do and be the best, that individual has arête. As soon as the individual believes he has actually achieved arête, however, he or she has lost that exalted state and fallen into hubris, unable to recognize personal limitations or the humble need to improve constantly. This leads to overwhelming pride, and this in turn leads to a downfall.

Next up, worldbuilding! We're tackling this before structure, because you don't want to get too far into the weeds, realize a critical component of your story is wrong, and then throw your computer out the window in frustration.

Anyway, when it comes to worldbuilding, there's a lot of moving parts. There is no right or wrong way to worldbuild, but my preferred approach is to worldbuild as the story goes along. Any method works, and you can check out the worldbuilding tag for more. In editing your worldbuilding, you want to think about:

Trimming Front-loading/Info Dumps

When writing fantasy/sci-fi, getting down how the world works can take over the story. In first drafting, this is fine! But when you're trying to clean that draft up, it's better to weave this information in as you go.

Need to explain how the giant mechas guarding the city operate? Maybe your main character is trying to steal some precious alloy from one, giving you opportunity to explain how they work and how society feels about them. Have a magic system that relies on singing tunes? Show that off by having students practicing, or dueling rivals taking it too far.

You probably know by now that the thing you should avoid the most is "as you know" dialogue dumps - characters explaining concepts to each other that they both clearly understand. Another, weaker version of this is the "magic class" trap, where things are explained to the main character and the reader. A classroom environment is fine, but pair worldbuilding with action - demonstrations get out of hand, spells go wrong, etc. Make it fun!

Your World Needs Clear Rules (Sorry)

Listen, this is the part I hate. I have a WIP with the word "Rules" in the title and I'm still figuring out what those rules are. Argh. But the sooner you know the rules, the easier editing will be. The more clear those rules are to the reader, the more impactful breaking them will be.

If the rules of the world (you can't use warp speed too close to a planet's gravitational pull, the same type of magic cancels each other out) and the consequences of breaking them are clear, the pay-off will be satisfying for both you and the reader.

Use Your Environment to Your Full Advantage

You've no doubt heard 'make setting a character' and that's evergreen advice. Some of the best books out there are those where it feels like you could step through the page and into a real place, be it your childhood middle school or Narnia. Getting that feeling, however, is more than just describing a place really well.

Mood - How does the location make you feel? Does a dark, cramped room leave the characters with a feeling of dread? How would that feeling change if it was an overstuffed library with comfortable chairs?

Weather - Beyond the 'dark and stormy night' descriptions, weather impacts our daily lives and is often overlooked. A rain-drenched funeral scenes seems like it's the way to go, but how differently would that scene feel if it was a sunny day with birds singing?

City Versus Countryside - These books are a great reference for description, but also take a step back to compare how different situations would feel both in the setting and to your character. Quiet can mean very different things depending on where you are. A morning fog in the countryside might feel comforting to someone used to it, but to someone new to that environment, it might feel creepy. Think about both your environment and how your character reacts to it based on their backstory.

The Empty Room Problem

This is always a big challenge when moving from the first draft bare bones basics to fleshing things out. How much description is too much? (As a note, it's always okay to overcorrect - you'll have a chance to fix it later!) This post from @novlr has a lot of great questions - but you're still going to narrow it down to the most important details.

Escape the Movie Setting - You cannot describe the room like it's a movie set. Trying to do so is going to be overwhelming, and important details will be lost in the attempt. If you were to describe your room or your favorite coffee shop and could only highlight four or five details, what would you focus on? What gives the reader the essence of the place rather than a list of things that exist there?

Establish the Essentials - Is this your first character's first time in this room? Is it going to be key to several plot-important scenes? Some big, sweeping details when entering - how big it is, what's in it, where the windows are, how it feels, etc - are good to start with. Your character can briefly admire a full bookshelf in the first scene, and then study it in more detail in the second. If you have one scene in this place and spend too much time describing it, you're going to make your reader think it's more important than it is.

Engage the Senses - Does an old room smell musty? Does the coldness of the woods have a sharp taste? Does touching a shelf bring up a lot of dust? How does the lighting in the room make the main character feel?

HI THIS POST WAS SUPPOSED TO GO UP IN JANUARY. Uuuh things. Are happening. In the US. Alas.

ANYWAY, to wrap up our editing tips. Some of this you'll do on your own, some of it you'll need feedback on, a lot of it is going back and forth between various edits. It is a process.

Tone and Voice

In review, is your character's voice consistent? Do they remain solid as a character, or do they wildly change in how they speak and act in the middle of the book for no reason?

When it comes to tone, are you writing with a consistently used vocabulary and structure? I'm not talking about dialogue - does your story feel the same, no matter if it's in third person or first?

A tonal shift or word change might happen if you've been working a long time on a project, and that's just a matter of going back through the book to make sure things match up.

Tension and Pacing

Does the action rise and fall naturally? Are your characters given room to breathe when appropriate?

Have you resolved (or addressed) all your subplots? Did you leave any romance or relationships dangling? Are there any chunks of your book that feel like a side-quest that doesn't contribute to the rest of the plot?

How is your scene pacing? Like your book, your scenes can't be 100% tension - they need to rise and fall. Fights and action should build naturally. If you're dropping a character into a situation with no foreshadowing, or if they obtain some new nifty power without really earning it, you might be throwing the pacing off.

Again, this just takes going back over to see what little things you need to set up to make the pay-off worth it.

Line Edits

Hopefully you've saved this for last, I know you won't, I know I won't, but fiddling with the language is going to be better done at the very end. Look out for:

Overused Words and Phrases - I find with each project, I become overly fond of one particular word. It's useful and fantastic until it pops up a little too often, and then I need to work on changing it up. Same with phrases - if you're brain is like mind, it'll find a neat little turn of phrase and repeat that six or eight times when you only needed it once.

Hedging Words - Almost, nearly, not quite, seems, appears, etc - these words are perfectly fine in academic writing, but they weaken your descriptive work. Instead of saying "he almost hit me" for example, describe the motion and the character's reaction. If someone seems upset, how can you describe that through their body language?

Dialogue Tags - You can use fun dialogue tags, and you don't have to delete every -ly abverb attached to "said." However, as boring as it seems, keeping it simple with mostly using "said" and "replied" will do most of the job.

Re-Checking Sentence Structure - If all your sentences within a paragraph follow the same structure, your reader is likely to start to skim. Change things up with shorter sentences paired with longer ones. Chunk actions scenes with short, punchy sentences, make sure descriptive paragraphs don't have sentences that go on for way too long.

Feedback

There's no easy way to find a good critique partner. I wish there was. You can and should join writer's groups and offer exchanges, be they online or in person. Sometimes you can love someone's work, but you don't mess with them as a critique partner. It happens, keep trying.

When you do find a critique partner, it's always good to give them guidance on what you're looking for. Some good questions:

Pacing - When did they put the story down? Why?

Consistency - Was anything confusing? Did the character's choices make sense?

Plot - Where there any twists that were too obvious? Did the stakes feel important? Was the plot satisfying?

A Note on "Predictable" Plot

There is a consistent argument about predictive plots versus originality, but thinking too hard about it may lead you astray. Certain genres have expectations - cosy murders will be solved, romance will end with the leads getting together, etc. Readers often go into stories wanting some predictability, because it's the journey of the story that matters the most. Making sure the story is engaging to read is far more important than trying to be original.

That said, you'll find in your second and third drafts that you will be able to put your own design on familiar stories. Treading familiar ground in the first draft is common, but when taking another crack of it, you can raise the stakes and make that ending much more satisfying.

Writing Ideas: Back from the Dead

a list of resurrection tropes

Accidental Resurrection: A deceased character/s is brought back to life without having been intended to.

Attending Your Own Funeral: A resurrection happens when people are gathered together to mourn for a character's death.

Came Back Strong: A resurrected person is more powerful than they were before they died.

Damaged Soul: A resurrected person comes back in a worse mental state than before.

Death Amnesia: A resurrected character remembers nothing about the afterlife.

Escaped from Hell: Someone refuses to stay dead even though they're already in the afterlife, so they break out and head back to the land of the living.

Inhuman Human: A character is resurrected with their mind/soul intact but their body in bad condition.

Refusing Paradise: A dead character chooses resurrection over entering the peaceful afterlife.

Resurrection Revenge: A character comes back from the dead to avenge their own death.

Resurrection Sickness: Someone suffers physical weakness as a result of resurrection.

Resurrective Immortality: A form of immortality where it is possible to kill the individual, but they keep coming back to life afterwards.

Rotten Reincarnation: The cycle of death and rebirth is seen as heinous.

Unwanted Revival: A resurrected person isn't happy about being brought back to life.

Waking Up at the Morgue: When a resurrectee comes back to life, they're likely to find themselves wherever their dead body was stored.

We Can Rebuild Him: Saving a person's life by converting them into a cyborg.

Examples

In Classical Mythology, before Sisyphus 'died', he told his wife not to do any burial rites. When in the Underworld, he appealed to the queen of the underworld, Persephone, if he could go back up to earth to haunt his wife for not giving him the proper rites. She agreed and he came back from the dead.

Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert from Tangled. From the time that he says in the opening, "This is the story of how I died," it only leaves the viewer guessing until the climatic part, when he is fatally stabbed In the Back by Mother Gothel's dagger and, rather than let Rapunzel risk her freedom for his life, cuts off her hair with a broken mirror shard in a Heroic Sacrifice before breathing his last in her arms. Thankfully, Rapunzel's magic tear brings him back to life. This is justified, since in the original tale, Rapunzel healed her beloved prince's eyesight with her tear.

In The Brothers Grimm's "The Three Snake Leaves" the hero uses the titular leaves to bring his wife back from the dead. At first it seems fine, but after being resurrected her love for him has turned into hate and she tries to murder him on a sea voyage. He is rescued by a faithful servant and she is executed.

The basic premise of Pet Sematary is that what you bring back is not what first died. To disastrous degrees. Specifically, while they stop decaying and can pass for alive if cleaned up, what comes back is a moving corpse that cannot heal, saddled with whatever injuries may have killed it. To further worsen the deal, while the corpse has all the memories and echoes of their personality, what "comes back" is not the soul of the deceased but some form of Demon or Monster from Beyond the Veil bent on making the one who resurrected it suffer through killing those they hold dear, and then them.

Game of Throne's Jon Snow. Seemingly averted, for the most part. Despite his resurrection coming from circumstances similar to Beric Dondarrion's, the only marked change in him is a (more) melancholic demeanor and a new hairdo. His willingness to interpret the preceding events as an out from the Night's Watch may also count.

Inuit Mythology: Sedna is just an ordinary woman until her father chops off her fingers and throws her into the ocean. She becomes the goddess of the ocean, the most important goddess of the Inuit cosmology because it's only with her on their side that the people can avoid starvation. Her fingers turn into seals. Another version has her being thrown in the ocean first, followed by the chopping off of her fingers (which turn into seals), hands (which turn into walruses), and finally her arms (which turn into whales) to get her to stop clinging on to the boat.

Merlin (2008) has had a few resurrections, all of which went wrong. Tristan du Bois: undead wraith, Lancelot: Soulless Shell, Uther: Took a Level in Jerkass, which is quite impressive considering he was a genocidal tyrant in the first place.

The Twilight Zone (1959): In the episode "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank", a man comes back from the dead, but the townsfolk notice some things are off about him and decide that he's possessed by a demon. He manages to shame them away… and then lights his pipe without a match or lighter.

Osiris from the Ancient Egyptian pantheon died repeatedly only to return a short while later, suffering several indignities such as being resurrected without a penis, which was eaten by fish before it could be found and reattached. He averts the Trope in that he never came back in some monstrously horrific form, but true to it in that afterwards he was usually worse off than he was previously. And green.

The Lord of the Ring's Gandalf the Grey dies and comes back as Gandalf the White with augmented powers and authority. He is a lesser-angel figure on a mission from greater-angels and hasn't completed his quest so he is sent back and the restrictions previously placed on his power (to prevent overreliance or corruption) are relaxed.

Writing Template: Resurrection Scene

some references for the writing tip: "read a lot" / "read widely"

Active Reading ⚜ Tips for Active Reading

Critical Reading ⚜ Identifying Character Descriptions

Evaluating Sources ⚜ Primary Sources ⚜ Source Integration

Narrative Elements ⚜ Note Taking ⚜ Read like a Writer

Scientific Article ⚜ Your Reading Journal

⊹ If their personalities don’t change the way they love, I don’t care. Show me the emotionally constipated gremlin trying to say “I love you” through soup or blood sacrifices.

⊹ Miscommunication tropes are only tolerable if it’s because both characters are awkward disaster goblins who panic and start lying for no reason.

⊹ Romance should amplify character arcs, not replace them. If they abandon their goals the moment someone is cute at them, that’s not love, that’s weak writing.

⊹ Let them fall in love slowly. Through shared snacks, petty arguments, silent glances, sarcastic encouragement, bandaging each other’s wounds. Love is built. Not summoned.

⊹ Consent is hot. Clear boundaries are hot. Flirting where both parties know what they’re doing and still get flustered is the hottest.

⊹I don’t want “he was dark and brooding.” I want “he was emotionally unavailable and bad at feelings but showed up anyway and said 'I’m trying.'”

⊹ If you're writing a friends-to-lovers arc, the moment they realize is not when they see each other in a pretty outfit. It’s when they see them being genuinely kind. Or brave. Or stupidly loyal.

⊹ Physical affection is great, but emotional pattern recognition is better. I want “I noticed you chew your sleeve when you’re scared” kind of intimacy.

⊹ Let one character love the other first and let them suffer. Let them burn quietly in the corner while the other obliviously sharpens their sword.

⊹ If they don’t have a little bit of “I hate how much I love you,” what are we even doing here?

⊹ Sometimes the romance arc is learning to love yourself first. Or breaking a pattern. Or finally understanding you’re worthy of love at all.