I think the romance is doing something narratively in tlt, even beyond just being Fun To Think About. Like I don’t read gideon’s devotion to harrow as a straightforward love story even though you could enjoy it on that level, because it’s also about the ways love & devotion can be fed back into systems that are out to exploit people. like imo gtn specifically is challenging the idea that love is automatically this empowering revolutionary force & working towards the idea that in a deeply flawed society people sometimes hurt each other not because they want to but because they don’t know how to stop, because the whole framework is one where certain people are seen as expendable. And I think htn is asking, if someone wanted to stop the cycle in their own personal life, how would they? Would it be recognizable as a victory to anyone else, if it meant giving up on the whole structure by which your life had been lived? I don’t think the next books are going to like nail down the answer to all the societal ills of the tlt universe but I am interested to see where gideon’s story specifically goes bc I think there’s setup to explore her whole Deal with self sacrifice more deeply