when mirage arcs first went out i got a lot of responses that amounted to or said explicitly that romance was boring & detracted from the story and ‘i would have liked to read these books w/o romance’ and i would very much like readers and writers both to consider the historical

circumstances that create a demand for romance narratives for marginalized groups—lesbians, bipoc, etc—and why you are perceiving a glut of them when there isnt one. i would ask that you think about the historical archive into which you are entering and the historical narrative

in which you are taking part that has both socially & legally taken great steps to strip marginalized groups of the right to love, marriage, and sex. the public indecency laws that police & surveil and violently punish noncis, nonhetero, nonwhite bodies for expressing desire at

all. and the ways in which your inclination to resist romance when it comes to these groups is in fact complicit with and in line with a continuing history that strips marginalized groups of love and desire. and that if for whatever reason you are being criticized for not being

enough in your writing that it is possibly not a failure of reading but instead a failure to access or bridge the gap that brings the complex psychologies of marginalized groups to life on the page. this is really a point that is better suited to the longer form but there is a

real and urgent imperative to represent the complex love lives of marginalized groups and you don’t have to meet it, but you should also ask yourself why you dont want to meet it when the ideal version of many marginalized groups is neutered, loveless, without community & alone.

thats what makes us palatable to outsiders.