Okay so first up, Spanish has different words for the verb, to love. There’s me gusta, te quiero, me encantas, te amo. And caveat: there are variations in Spanish speaking cultures on what the usage of those words is. Mexican culture is gonna differ slightly than Spanish culture which is gonna differ from Venezuelan culture and Argentinian etc. That said, here goes:
In the context of dating and romantic love, people often go through progressions of love, right? So that is why you’ll see people transition through me gusta, te quiero, and te amo.
Or as I like to classify it:
- me gusta: girl friend / boy friend (two words)
- te quiero: “girlfriend” / “boyfriend” (one word, quotation marks)
- te amo: GIRLFRIEND / BOYFRIEND.
Me gusta – that is “I like.” I like oranges, or yeah, that person is dope, I like her. Me gusta punk rock as the song goes etc. Nothing romantic ever.
Te amo: only means “I love you” in the romantic way. You really only reserve it for your significant other, when you are in a real committed relationship for a while. You know how saying “I love you” for the first time in a relationship is a big deal? Spanish allows you to express that meaning very clearly with te amo.
Te quiero – is the in-between stage of like and love. Quiero literally means “I want.” Yo quiero taco bell- I want taco bell. But, when used with pronouns and people, it means “I want you,” “I care for you,” “I love you” “I really like you.”
It can get really, really tricky, because it is a big catch all. The variation of usage ranges from “I love my dog” or “I love my friends” to “I love my child or parents”; however especially when paired with “mucho,” it can also mean “I care very deeply about you in a romantic way.”
So you really have to determine meaning through tone and context. Even before breaking the heteronormativity case that Val and Juls are operating under and introducing the “hey, you might like girls” layer, the vocabulary is already complicated just to distinguish “like” vs “like like.”
On top of all of that, Valentina is someone who has never been in love, doesn’t believe in romantic love, BUT she is also in canon, the character with the biggest heart and most universally beloved.
So what you’ve got is someone who throws herself into her feelings, has a lot of them, and feels DEEPLY, but is a complete bambi when it comes understanding how to differentiate friend love vs romantic love, how to articulate her feelings properly. It’s the reason why I refer to her as Unintentional Dreamboat, because she says these THINGS that are so genuinely romantic without realizing just how romantic they are.
(More thoughts under the cut)
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