In middle school I met someone on AIM who sent me a novella her friend wrote and it was a romance story set in Vietnam written in broken English with a confusing alternating first person narration, and it was the most beautiful love story that absolutely demolished me for days.
I liked it so much I made my mom read it and her reaction was mostly “WHO sent this to you? WHY are you getting unpublished manuscripts from strangers on the internet?”
Spent my whole life thinking this is something that just happens to people, like “oh yeah, I got romance novel fished myself one time *blush*, what can you do I was just a kid, they know how to target adolescents with a heart that’s open to international literature.”
I don’t even remember how they sent the story. I feel like when I gave it to my mom it was in the form of a printed out AIM convo, but that can’t be right, can it? Surely that’s just my brain retconning maximum cringe into the memory
