“Like everyone else, you’ve probably grown up watching a lot of movies, and the thing about movies is that the stories that offer the most escapism by nature give you the least accurate picture of the real world. Lacking are the movies about how the universe is a big unfair mess of random shit and awkward gray areas in which you are entitled only to die screaming. Your life is not a character arc in which the Love Interest is obligated to appear at some point – it is a horribly free-form escalator ride to the grave, and it’s up to you to make the most of it by shaping yourself into the kind of person that the kind of person you’re attracted to would plausibly find attractive. Something you’re clearly not doing already, because you have the dating profile of the hero, the protagonist, the One True Human, who is intrinsically attractive without having to grow as a person.”
– Winston Rowntree